Stephen E. Jones

Creation/Evolution Quotes: Unclassified quotes: March 2007

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The following are quotes added to my Unclassified Quotes database in March 2007. The date format is dd/mm/yy.
See copyright conditions at end.

[Jan; Feb (1), (2); Apr; May; Jun; Jul; Aug; Sep; Oct; Nov; Dec]

2/03/2007
"All this makes a much more complex picture of hominoid evolution than we once imagined. It no longer 
resembles a ladder but is, instead, more like a bush. ... Hominids evolved, as did many other mammal groups, 
with diverse and overlapping, radiations. There is no clearcut cut and inexorable pathway from ape to human 
being." (Pilbeam, D., "Rearranging Our Family Tree," Human Nature, June 1978, pp.39-45, pp.44-45. In 
Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," 
Creation-Life: San Diego CA, 1982, pp.76-77)

2/03/2007
"Still, doubts about the sequence of man's emergence remain. Scientists concede that even their most 
cherished theories are based on embarrassingly few fossil fragments, and that huge gaps exist in the fossil 
record. Anthropologists, ruefully says Alan Mann of the University of Pennsylvania, "are like the blind men 
looking at the elephant, each sampling only a small part of the total reality." His colleagues agree that the 
picture of man's origins is far from complete." (Mann, A., in "Puzzling Out Man's Ascent," TIME, 
November 7, 1977, p.77 ).

2/03/2007
"The simple idea of evolution, which it is no longer thought necessary to examine, spreads like a tent over 
all those ages that lead from primitivism into civilization. Gradually, we are told, step by step, men produced 
the arts and crafts, this and that, until they emerged in the light of history. Those soporific words `gradually' 
and `step-by-step,' repeated incessantly, are aimed at covering an ignorance which is both vast and 
surprising. One should like to inquire: Which steps? But then one is lulled, overwhelmed, and stupefied by 
the gradualness of it all, which is at best a platitude, only good for pacifying the mind, since no one is 
willing to imagine that civilization appeared in a thunderclap." (de Santillana, G. & von Dechend, H., 
"Hamlet's Mill," Gambit: Boston, 1969, p.68. In Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to 
The Troubled Waters of Evolution," Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.77) 

2/03/2007
"The fossil record has been elastic enough, the expectations sufficiently robust, to accommodate almost any 
story." [Pilbeam, D., "Patterns of Hominoid Evolution," in ,Delson, E., ed., "Ancestors: The Hard Evidence," 
Alan R. Liss: New York NY, 1985, p.53.. In Lubenow, M.L.*, "Bones of Contention: A Creationist 
Assessment of the Human Fossils," [1992], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Fourth Printing, 1994, p.182)

2/03/2007
"... in the present state of our knowledge, I do not believe it is possible to fit the known hominid fossils into 
a reliable pattern." (Leakey, M., "Disclosing the Past: An Autobiography," Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984, 
p.214. In Lubenow, M.L.*, "Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of the Human Fossils," [1992], 
Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Fourth Printing, 1994, p.182)

2/03/2007
"The human fossil record is no exception to the general rule that the main lesson to be learned from 
paleontology is that evolution always takes place somewhere else." (Jones, J.S. & Rouhani, S., "How Small 
Was the Bottleneck?" Nature, Vol. 319, 6 February 1986, p.449. In Lubenow, M.L.*, "Bones of 
Contention: A Creationist Assessment of the Human Fossils," [1992], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Fourth 
Printing, 1994, p.182)

2/03/2007
"So one is forced to conclude that there is no clearcut scientific picture of human evolution." (Martin, R., 
"Man Is Not An Onion," New Scientist 4, August 1977, p.285. In Lubenow, M.L.*, "Bones of 
Contention: A Creationist Assessment of the Human Fossils," [1992], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Fourth 
Printing, 1994, p.182)

3/03/2007
"Interestingly, despite almost a decade of technically sophisticated analyses of australopithecine remains, 
there is still considerable controversy over their functional and phylogenetic significancein particular 
whether they are too divergently specialized to be considered suitable ancestors for Homo. (Hopson, J.A. 
& Radinsky, L.B., "Vertebrate Paleontology: New Approaches and New Insights," Paleobiology, Vol. 6, 
No. 3, Summer 1980, pp.250-270, p.263. In Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel 
to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.78)

3/03/2007
"Although most studies emphasise the similarity of the australopithecines to modern man, and suggest, 
therefore, that these creatures were bipedal tool-makers at least one form of which (Australopithecus 
africanus -'Homo habilis', `Homo africanus') was almost directly ancestral to man, a series of multivariate 
statistical studies of various postcranial fragments suggests other conclusions. Their locomotion may not 
have been like that of modern man, and may, though including a form or forms of bipedality, have been 
different enough to allow marked abilities for climbing. Bipedality may have arisen more than once, the 
Australopithecinae displaying one or more experiments in bipedality that failed. The genus Homo may, in 
fact, be so ancient as to parallel entirely the genus Australopithecus thus denying the latter a direct place 
in the human lineage." (Oxnard, C.E., "The place of the australopithecines in human evolution: grounds for 
doubt?," Nature, Vol. 258, 4 December 1975, pp.389-395, p.389)

3/03/2007
"The uneroded footprints show a total morphological pattern like that seen in modern humans .... Spatial 
relationships of the footprints are strikingly human in pattern .... The Laetoli hominid trails at site G do not 
differ substantially from modern human trails made on a similar substrate." (Busse, P.H. & Heikes, K.E., 
"Evolutionary Implication of Pliocene Hominid Footprints,"  Science, Vol. 208, April 11, 1980, pp.175-176, 
p.175. In Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," 
Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, pp.79-80) 

3/03/2007
"University of Chicago anthropologist Russell Tuttle says that the Laetoli footprints are `virtually human,' 
that they `do not match the foot bones found in Hadar,' and that, in fact, Lucy's pelvis was `better suited for 
climbing than for walking.'" (W. Herbert, "Was Lucy a Climber? Dissenting Views of Ancient Bones," 
Science News, Vol. 122, August 1982, p.116. In Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated 
Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.80) 

3/03/2007
"The basic features of galaxies, stars, planets and the everyday world are essentially determined by a few 
microphysical constants and by the effects of gravitation. Many interrelations between different scales that 
at first sight seem surprising are straightforward consequences of simple physical arguments. But several 
aspects of our Universe-some of which seem to be prerequisites for the evolution of any form of life-depend 
rather delicately on apparent 'coincidences' among the physical constants." (Carr, B.J. & Rees, M.J., "The 
anthropic principle and the structure of the physical world," Nature, Vol. 278, 12 April 1979, pp.605-612)

3/03/2007
"BIOLOGY'S understanding of how evolution works, which has long postulated a gradual process of 
Darwinian natural selection acting on genetic mutations, is undergoing its broadest and deepest revolution 
in nearly 50 years. At the heart of the revolution is something that might seem a paradox. Recent discoveries 
have only strengthened Darwin's epochal conclusion that all forms of life evolved from a common ancestor. 
Genetic analysis, for example, has shown that every organism is governed by the same genetic code 
controlling the same biochemical processes. At the same time, however, many studies suggest that the 
origin of species was not the way Darwin suggested or even the way most evolutionists thought after the 
1930's and 1940's, when Darwin's ideas were fused with the rediscovered genetics of Gregor Mendel." 
(Rensberger, B.C., "Recent Studies Spark Revolution in Interpretation of Evolution," The New York Times, 4 
November 1980, p.C3. Emphasis original)

3/03/2007
"Exactly how evolution happened is now a matter of great controversy among biologists. Although the 
debate has been under way for several years, it reached a crescendo last month, as some 150 scientists 
specializing in evolutionary studies met for four days in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History to 
thrash out a variety of new hypotheses that are challenging older ideas. The meeting, which was closed to 
all but a few observers, included nearly all of the leading evolutionists in paleontology, population genetics, 
taxonomy (the science of classifying organisms) and related fields. ... No clear resolution of the 
controversies was in sight." (Rensberger, B.C., "Recent Studies Spark Revolution in Interpretation of 
Evolution," The New York Times, 4 November 1980, p.C3)

3/03/2007
"At issue during the Chicago meeting was macroevolution, a term that is itself a matter of debate but which 
generally refers to the evolution of major differences, such as those separating species or larger 
classifications. Macroevolution, many would agree, is, for example, what made crustaceans different from 
mollusks. It is the process by which birds and mammals evolved out of reptiles. It is also what gave rise to 
major evolutionary innovations shared by many groups, such as the flower in higher plants or the eye in 
vertebrates. Darwin suggested that such major products of evolution were the results of very long periods 
of gradual natural selection, the mechanism that is widely accepted today as accounting for minor 
adaptations. These small variations, considered products of microevolution, account for such things as the 
different varieties of finches Darwin found in the Galapagos Islands. Under human control, or `artificial 
selection,' microevolution has produced all the varieties of domestic dog, all of which remain members of a 
single species. Darwin, however, knew he was on shaky ground in extending natural selection to account for 
differences between major groups of organisms. The fossil record of his day showed no gradual transitions 
between such groups but he suggested that further fossil discoveries would fill the missing links." 
(Rensberger, B.C., "Recent Studies Spark Revolution in Interpretation of Evolution," The New York 
Times, 4 November 1980, p.C3)

3/03/2007
"`The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist,' declared Niles Eldredge, a 
paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Dr. Eldredge reminded the 
meeting of what many fossil hunters have recognized as they trace the history of a species through 
successive layers of ancient sediments. Species simply appear at a given point in geologic time, persist 
largely unchanged for a few million years and then disappear. There are very few examples - some say none - 
of one species shading gradually into another. ... Dr. Eldredge, along with Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard 
University paleontologist, reiterated the hypothesis that new species arise not from gradual changes but in 
sudden bursts of evolution. As they see it, species remain largely stable for long periods and then suddenly 
change dramatically. The transition happens so fast, they suggest, that the chance of intermediate forms 
being fossilized and found is nil. Drs. Eldredge and Gould represent a school of thought called `'punctuated 
equilibrium,' and although many paleontologists are adherents, many evolutionists from other backgrounds 
still consider themselves gradualists closer to the traditional Darwinian mold." (Rensberger, B.C., "Recent 
Studies Spark Revolution in Interpretation of Evolution," The New York Times, 4 November 1980, p.C3. 
"Eldridge" corrected to "Eldredge")

3/03/2007
"Others who dispute the punctuated equilibrium idea include population geneticists, who breed vast 
colonies of fruit flies, following the course of mutations to see how they change the species over many 
generations. After some 40 years of manipulating the evolution of fruit flies, which spawn generations in 
days, many bizarre changes have been seen, but fruit flies always remain fruit flies. John Maynard Smith of 
the University of Sussex, England, attempted to bridge one gap between the rival schools. He noted that 
paleontologists and geneticists have very different perceptions of evolutionary time. Fifty thousand years - 
a period that Dr. Gould said could easily be considered an instantaneous `punctuation' in his hypothesis - is 
plenty of time for much gradual change to accumulate in the eyes of a geneticist, Dr. Smith said. Still, Dr. 
Gould asserted, 50,000 years of change might be only 1 percent of the total time a species existed. If its hard 
parts remained unchanged for the other 99 percent of a five-million-year existence, he maintained, that stasis 
was a phenomenon at great variance with the traditional Darwinian view." (Rensberger, B.C., "Recent 
Studies Spark Revolution in Interpretation of Evolution," The New York Times, 4 November 1980, p.C3)

3/03/2007
"A related controversy involved a kind of inverse of the mystery that originally confronted Darwin. 
Evolution and natural selection were originally postulated to explain the bewildering diversity of life forms. 
Nowadays it is seen as an equally great mystery that the diversity is confined within only a few basic types 
of organisms. As Richard Lewontin, a Harvard geneticist, put it, `Most conceivable organisms don't exist.' 
Even if one includes all the known extinct species, it is still possible to imagine other forms of life that would 
seem to be biologically plausible but which are unknown in reality. "Why are there no organisms with 
wheels?" Dr. Lewontin said, citing what he conceded was a trivial example. More significantly, why are there 
no six-legged vertebrates? The answers to such questions, many evolutionists felt, might well be tied in with 
the problem of the origin of species. The classic Darwinian answer is that such things could well arise but 
only if they improved an organism's ability to flourish in its habitat. The fact that certain conceivable 
organisms are unknown reflects either the selection bias of the environment or simply the fact that the 
requisite mutations have never occurred. Most biologists today feel the answer must be more complex or 
something else entirely. One widely mentioned factor involved constraints inherent in the embryological 
development of an organism. There appear to be natural laws that govern the way cells assemble themselves 
into specialized tissues. No one knows what the laws are, but they appear to channel embryological 
development into certain patterns. Bilateral symmetry may be one pattern that applies to many groups." 
(Rensberger, B.C., "Recent Studies Spark Revolution in Interpretation of Evolution," The New York 
Times, 4 November 1980, p.C3)

3/03/2007
"Closely related is the idea that there are macromutations. These are alterations in the genetic message that 
have unexpectedly large consequences for the organism. Fruit fly breeders have observed mutations that in 
one step convert eyes to wings, head to genitals or mouth parts to legs. The `misplaced' structures are 
complete in every detail. Such oddities, according to Stuart A. Kauffman of the University of Pennsylvania, 
suggest that a single `point mutation' may sometimes trigger a cascade of effects that alter the expression of 
entire sets of genes. Although most evolutionists reject the idea that new species arise as such one-
generation macromutants - sometimes called `hopeful monsters' - many suspect that certain kinds of 
mutations may indeed cause much larger changes than early geneticists believed possible." (Rensberger, 
B.C., "Recent Studies Spark Revolution in Interpretation of Evolution," The New York Times, 4 November 
1980, p.C3)

3/03/2007
"On this issue, as on several others, evolutionists are in dispute. This is partly caused by the complexity of 
the processes of life, which involve everything from molecular interactions to the behavior of social groups. 
It is also the result of so many disciplines being involved since evolution is a factor in every life science. But 
it also reflects a more fundamental problem - the great difficulty of formulating a testable hypothesis that can 
resolve some differences. The fact of evolution is well established. But after four days of what Dr. Gould 
called `a healthy and joyous debate,' there seemed to be little agreement on how anybody could establish 
with some certainty that it happened one way and not another." (Rensberger, B.C., "Recent Studies Spark 
Revolution in Interpretation of Evolution," The New York Times, 4 November 1980, p.C3) 

3/03/2007
The creativity of evolution How did the glorious complexity of the living world ever come into being? 
As we examine the molecular mechanisms of life we uncover a baffling array of chemical systems whose 
integrated intricacy makes us feel we are looking at a masterpiece of purposeful design. Who, or what, was 
the designer? The dogma of modern biology says that there was no purposeful designer. It says that, like all 
the molecular mechanisms which sustain life, the creation and continuing diversification of life proceeds 
automatically, powered by the blind laws of physics and chemistry. The process by which living things give 
rise to new and often more complex living things has become known as `evolution', and the central working 
principle of evolution is known as `natural selection'." (Scott, A., "Vital Principles: The Molecular 
Mechanisms of Life," Basil Blackwell: Oxford UK, 1988, p.171) 

3/03/2007
"The final conflict (20:7-10) When the thousand years are finished, Satan is released from his prison. 
Then it becomes very clear that the final and most terrible persecution, by means of which antichristian 
forces are going to oppress the Church, is instigated, in a most direct manner, by Satan himself. The devil 
musters Gog and Magog for a final attack upon 'the camp of the saints, the beloved city'. The expression 
'Gog and Magog' is borrowed from the book of Ezekiel [Eze 38:2], where the term undoubtedly indicates the 
power of the Seleucids especially as it was revealed in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, the bitter enemy of 
the Jews. The centre of his kingdom was located in Northern Syria. Seleucus established his residence there 
in the city of Antioch on the Orontes. To the east his territory extended beyond the Tigris. To the north the 
domain over which the Seleucids ruled included Meshech and Tubal, districts in Asia Minor. Accordingly, 
Gog was the prince of Magog, that is, Syria. Therefore the oppression of God's people by 'Gog and Magog', 
refers, in Ezekiel, to the terrible persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes, ruler of Syria. The book of 
Revelation uses this period of affliction and woe as a symbol of the final attack of Satan and his hordes 
upon the Church." (Hendriksen, W.*, "More than Conquerors: An Interpretation of the Book of Revelation," 
[1940], Tyndale Press: London, Reprinted, 1966, p.193) 

3/03/2007
"In preparing for my interview with Craig, I had gone to the Internet sites of several atheist organizations to 
see the kind of arguments they were raising against the Resurrection. For some reason few atheists deal with 
this topic. However, one critic raised an objection that I wanted to present to Craig. Essentially, he said a 
major argument against the empty tomb is that none of the disciples or later Christian preachers bothered to 
point to it. He wrote, `We would expect the early Christian preachers to have said: "You don't believe us? Go 
look in the tomb yourselves! It's at the corner of Fifth and Main, third sepulcher on the right." Yet, he said, 
Peter doesn't mention the empty tomb in his preaching in Acts 2. Concluded this critic, `If even the disciples 
didn't think the empty tomb tradition was any good, why should we?' Craig's eyes widened as I posed the 
question. `I just don't think that's true,' he replied, a bit of astonishment in his voice, as he picked up his 
Bible and turned to the second chapter of Acts, which records Peter's sermon at Pentecost. `The empty 
tomb is found in Peter's speech,' Craig insisted. `He proclaims in verse 24 that `God raised him from the dead, 
freeing him from the agony of death.' `Then he quotes from a psalm about how God would , not allow his 
Holy One to undergo decay. This had been written by David, and Peter says, `I can tell you confidently that 
the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day.' But, he says, Christ `was not 
abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all 
witnesses of the fact.' Craig looked up from the Bible. `This speech contrasts David's tomb, which remained 
to that day, with the prophecy in which David says Christ would be raised up-his flesh wouldn't suffer 
decay. It's clearly implicit that the tomb was left empty.' Then he turned to a later chapter in the book of 
Acts. `In Acts 13:29-31, Paul says, `When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him 
down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he was seen 
by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. Certainly the empty tomb is implicit there.' He 
shut his Bible, then added, `I think it's rather wooden and unreasonable to contend that these early 
preachers didn't refer to the empty tomb, just because they didn't use the two specific words empty tomb. 
There's no question that they knew-and their audiences understood from their preaching-that Jesus' tomb 
was vacant." (Strobel, L.P.*, "The Evidence of the Missing Body," in "The Case For Christ: A Journalist's 
Personal Testimony of the Evidence for Jesus," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 1998, pp.294-296. Emphasis 
original)

3/03/2007
"I had spent the first part of our interview peppering Craig with objections and arguments challenging the 
empty tomb. But I suddenly realized that I hadn't given him the opportunity to spell out his affirmative case. 
While he had already alluded to several reasons why he believes Jesus' tomb was unoccupied, I said, `Why 
don't you give me your best shot? Convince me with your top four or five reasons that the empty tomb is a 
historical fact.' Craig rose to the challenge. One by one he spelled out his arguments concisely and 
powerfully. `First,' he said, `the empty tomb is definitely implicit in the early tradition that is passed along by 
Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, which is a very old and reliable source of historical information about Jesus. 
`Second, the site of Jesus: tomb was known to Christian and Jew alike. So if it weren't empty, it would be 
impossible for a movement founded on belief in the Resurrection to have come into existence in the same 
city where this man had been publicly executed and buried. `Third, we can tell from the language, grammar, 
and style that Mark got his empty tomb story-actually, his whole passion narrative-from an earlier source. In 
fact, there's evidence it was written before A.D. 37, which is much too early for legend to have seriously 
corrupted it. `A. N. Sherwin-White, the respected Greco-Roman classical historian from Oxford University, 
said it would have been without precedent anywhere in history for legend to have grown up that fast and 
significantly distorted the gospels. `Fourth, there's the simplicity of the empty tomb story in Mark. Fictional 
apocryphal accounts from the second century contain all kinds of flowery narratives, in which Jesus comes 
out of the tomb in glory and power, with everybody seeing him, including the priests, Jewish authorities, 
and Roman guards. Those are the way legends read, but these don't come until generations after the events, 
which is after eyewitnesses have died off. By contrast, Mark's account of the story of the empty tomb is 
stark in its simplicity and unadorned by theological reflection. `Fifth, the unanimous testimony that the 
empty tomb was discovered by women argues for the authenticity of the story, because this would have 
been embarrassing for the disciples to admit and most certainly would have been covered up if this were a 
legend. `Sixth, the earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the historicity of the empty tomb. In other words, 
there was nobody who was claiming that the tomb still contained Jesus' body. The question always was, 
'What happened to the body?' `The Jews proposed the ridiculous story that the guards had fallen asleep. 
Obviously they were grasping at straws. But the point is this: they started with the assumption that the 
tomb was vacant! Why? Because they knew it was!" (Strobel, L.P.*, "The Evidence of the Missing Body," in 
"The Case For Christ: A Journalist's Personal Testimony of the Evidence for Jesus," Zondervan: Grand 
Rapids MI, 1998, pp.296-298)

4/03/2007
"It is now rather generally agreed by anthropologists that australopithecines were contemporaries of Homo 
erectus, even though some believe the latter had evolved from the former. If that is the case, why could not 
Homo sapiens have where fossils of Homo erectus and Australopithecus were found at the same 
level. But then he also reminds us of the following discovery, originally noted by his father Louis Leakey, 
but thereafter mostly ignored. At one locality, remains of a stone structure-perhaps the base of a circular 
hut-were uncovered; there is an excellent date of 1.8 million years for this. [Leakey, R.E., "Hominids in 
Africa," American Scientist, March/April 1976, p.177] Now a circular stone hut could hardly have been 
constructed by anyone but a true human being, but the stratigraphic level of this structure was below the 
levels of fossils of both Australopithecus and Homo erectus!" (Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: 
An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, 
pp.80-81)

4/03/2007
"What I describe in this book is evidence that evolution is not quite what neatly all of us thought it to be a 
decade or two ago. This evidence comes largely from the record of fossils--a record that until recently was 
not well scaled against absolute time. The record now reveals that species typically survive for a hundred 
thousand generations, or even a million or more, without evolving very much. We seem forced to conclude 
that most evolution takes place rapidly, when species come into being by the evolutionary divergence of 
small populations from parent species. After their origins, most species undergo little evolution before 
becoming extinct." (Stanley, S.M., "The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of 
Species," Basic Books: New York NY, 1981, p.xv)

4/03/2007
"It is only fair to report that, while this `punctuational' view has displaced the traditional `gradualistic' 
view in the minds of many evolutionists, there remain dissenters. Among these are some physical 
anthropologists, who continue to assert that modern humans have evolved by the gradual, persistent 
modernization of an apelike ancestor. In chapter 7 I offer opposition to this traditional portrayal of our 
ancestry." (Stanley, S.M., "The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species," 
Basic Books: New York NY, 1981, p.xv)

4/03/2007
"I also explore the history of the traditional, gradualistic view. Among the most fundamental questions here 
is why Charles Darwin was a gradualist. I hope that my explanations for Darwin's position will be given due 
consideration by historians of science, and I do not mean to be critical of Darwin here. For many reasons, he 
could only have been a gradualist." (Stanley, S.M., "The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and 
the Origin of Species," Basic Books: New York NY, 1981, p.xv)

4/03/2007
"The emergence of the punctuational model of evolution during the past decade has at times caused 
acrimonious debate. This is an exciting time in the history of evolutionary science, and those of us laboring 
in this complex discipline can only hope that, during the next few years, important truths will float to the top 
of our collective crucible without occasioning undue rancor. I do not violate this wish by attacking the 
biblical creationists in chapter 8 of this book. The fact is, the fundamentalist creationists are parading 
antiscientific views falsely under a counterfeit banner of science. The recent antievolutionary efforts of the 
creationists constitute a grievous insult to natural science to astronomy, as well as to geology and biology, 
and even to physics and chemistry, on which the other three sciences are partly founded. It is, after all, the 
behavior of atoms that reveals the earth to be more than four billion years old." (Stanley, S.M., "The New 
Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species," Basic Books: New York NY, 1981, pp.xv-
xvi)

5/03/2007
"During the present century, the idea that adaptive innovations arise by rapid speciation has appeared 
sporadically in paleontology, without taking hold. Otto Schindewolf (1936, 1950) was a prime mover here, 
but as described earlier his views were extreme, in part reflecting the influence of DeVries and Goldschmidt. 
Schindewolf believed that a single Grossmutation could instantaneously yield a form representing a new 
family or order of animals. This view engendered such visions as the first bird hatching from a reptile egg. 
However unacceptable his explanations may have seemed, Schindewolf at least confronted the failure of the 
fossil record to document slow intergradations between higher taxa. As discussed above, Simpson 
addressed the same problem in 1944 with his less heterodox idea of quantum evolution. In his second book 
on large-scale evolution, Simpson (1953) cited the work of Schindewolf more frequently than that of any 
other author, but with strong expressions of disagreement." (Stanley, S.M., "Macroevolution: Pattern and 
Process," [1979], The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore MD, Reprinted, 1998, p.35)

5/03/2007
"Early in this chapter, it was noted that there has recently been renewed expression of support for the 
importance in macroevolution of what Goldschmidt (1940) termed the hopeful monster (Frazzetta, 1970; 
Gould, 1977c; Bush, 1975). Goldschmidt's monster was a single animal that served as the progenitor of a new 
higher taxon. At least in principle, Goldschmidt accepted Schindewolf's extreme example of the first bird 
hatching from a reptile egg. The problem with Goldschmidt's radical concept is the low probability that a 
totally monstrous form will find a mate and produce fertile offspring. For this reason, it may be that the 
hopeful monster sensu stricto will find no place in the modern punctuational view. In fact, some of the 
authors who have purported to resurrect the hopeful monster seem actually to be softening Goldschmidt's 
concept somewhat. The degree of freakishness that is permissible in generational transitions can only be 
considered in terms of probability. At present, we have no means of rigorously assessing the matter in 
morphologic terms, but two guidelines seem appropriate: (1) If strange new phenotypic traits emerge in a 
single individual, they cannot be fixed, even within a small population, if the individual is so bizarre that it 
cannot find a mate and produce fertile offspring (only after the first generation is inbreeding of bizarre 
individuals possible). (2) Somewhat more aberrant traits may be fixed, however, if they result from the 
germinal mutation of a female, but only if her offspring interbreed, a qualification that reduces the 
probability." (Stanley, S.M., "Macroevolution: Pattern and Process," [1979], The Johns Hopkins University 
Press: Baltimore MD, Revised, 1998, p.159)

5/03/2007
"The Origin of Differences Between Higher Taxa The second question raised above has more substantive 
implications than the first. Can the microevolutionary processes studied by population geneticists account 
for macroevolutionary phenomena or do we need to postulate new kinds of genetic processes? The large 
morphological (phenotypic) changes observed in evolutionary history, and the rapidity with which they 
appear in the geological record, is one major matter of concern. Another issue is stasis-the apparent 
persistence of species, with little or no morphological change, for hundreds of thousands or millions of 
years. The apparent dilemma is that microevolutionary processes apparently yield small but continuous 
changes, while macroevolution as seen by punctualists occurs by large and rapid bursts of change followed 
by long periods without change." (Stebbins, G.L. & Ayala, F.J., "Is a New Evolutionary Synthesis 
Necessary?" Science, Vol. 213, 28 August 1981, pp.967-971, p.969)

5/03/2007
"Forty years ago Goldschmidt argued that the incompatibility is real: `The decisive step in evolution, the 
first step towards macroevolution, the step from one species to another, requires another evolutionary 
method than that of sheer accumulation of micromutations.' [Goldschmidt, R.B., "The Material Basis of 
Evolution," Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1940, p.183] The specific solution postulated by 
Goldschmidt, that is, the occurrence of systemic mutations, yielding hopeful monsters, can be excluded in 
view of current genetic knowledge, but the issue raised by him deserves attention. Single-gene or 
chromosome mutations may have large effects on the genotype because they act early in the embryo and 
their effects become magnified through development. Single-gene -macromutations- have been carefully 
analyzed, for example, in Drosophila melanogaster mutations such as `bithorax' and the homeotic mutants 
that transform one body structure, for example, antennae, into another, such as legs. These large effect 
mutations are not incompatible with the synthetic theory. Whether the kinds of morphological differences 
that characterize different taxa are due to such `macromutations' or to the accumulation of several mutations 
with small effect has been examined particularly in plants where fertile interspecific, and even intergeneric, 
hybrids can be obtained. The results of numerous studies do not support the hypothesis that the 
establishment of macromutations is necessary for divergence at the macroevolutionary level ... . In animals, 
even a familial character, the presence of three ocelli in drosophilids, can be changed by artificial selection, 
demonstrating that a family-distinctive trait can be produced by the accumulation of small mutations present 
in natural populations ... . Moreover, Lande has convincingly shown that major morphological changes, 
such as in the number of digits or limbs, can occur in a geologically rapid fashion through the accumulation 
of mutations each with a small effect ... . In general, the evidence from plants as well as from animals 
supports Fisher's [Fisher, R.A., "The Genetic Theory of Natural Selection," Clarendon: Oxford, 1930] 
theoretical argument that the probability of incorporation of a mutation in a population is inversely 
proportional to the magnitude of the mutation's effect on the phenotype." (Stebbins, G.L. & Ayala, F.J., "Is a 
New Evolutionary Synthesis Necessary?" Science, Vol. 213, 28 August 1981, pp.967-971, p.969)

5/03/2007
"Nevertheless, rapid phenotypic evolution may be caused by relatively slight genetic changes that affect 
critical stages of development. ... How often mutations with large phenotypic effects are involved in the 
origin of new taxa is also an unsolved question. The punctualists' thesis that such mutations may have been 
largely responsible for macroevolutionary change is based on the rapidity with which morphological 
discontinuities appear in the fossil record ... . But the alleged evidence they present does not necessarily 
support the proposition. Microevolutionists and macroevolutionists use different time scales. The 
`geological instants' during which speciation and morphological shifts occur may involve intervals of the 
order of 50,000 years. There is little doubt that the gradual accumulation of small-effect mutations may yield 
sizable morphological changes during periods of that length. Anderson's study of body size in Drosophila 
pseudoobscura may serve as an example ... . Large populations, derived from a single set of parents, were 
set up at different temperatures and allowed to evolve on their own. A gradual, genetically determined, 
change in body size ensued, with flies kept at lower temperature becoming larger than those kept at higher 
temperatures. After 12 years, the mean size of the flies from the population kept at 16°C had become, when 
tested under standard conditions, approximately 10 percent greater than the size of the flies from the 
populations at 27°C; the change of mean value being greater than the standard deviation in size at the time 
when the tests were made. Assuming ten generations per year, the populations diverged at an average rate 
of 8 x 10-4 of the mean value per generation." (Stebbins, G.L. & Ayala, F.J., "Is a New Evolutionary 
Synthesis Necessary?," Science, Vol. 213, 28 August 1981, pp.967-971, p.969)

5/03/2007
"Paleontologists have emphasized the `extraordinary high net rate of evolution that is the hallmark of human 
phylogeny' [Stanley, S.M., "Macroevolution, Pattern and Process," Freeman: San Francisco, 1979]. 
Interpreted in terms of the punctualist hypothesis, human phylogeny would have occurred as a succession 
of jumps, or geologically instantaneous saltations, interspersed by long periods without morphological 
change. Could these bursts of phenotypic evolution be due to the gradual accumulation of small changes? 
Consider cranial capacity, the character undergoing the greatest relative amount of change. The fastest rate 
of net change occurred between 500,000 years ago, when our ancestors were represented by Homo 
erectus, and 75,000 years ago, when Neanderthal man had acquired a cranial capacity similar to that of 
modern humans. In the intervening 425,000 years, cranial capacity evolved from about 900 cubic centimeters 
in Peking man to about 1400 cubic centimeters in Neanderthal people. Let us assume that the increase in 
brain size occurred in a single burst at the rate observed in Drosophila pseudoobscura of 8 x 10-4 of the 
mean value per generation. The change from 900 to 1400 cubic centimeters could have taken place in 540 
generations or, if we assume 25 years per generation, in 13,500 years. Thirteen thousand years are, of 
course, a geological instant. Yet, this evolutionary "burst" could have taken place by gradual accumulation 
of small-effect mutations at rates compatible with those observed in microevolutionary studies ... ." 
(Stebbins, G.L. & Ayala, F.J., "Is a New Evolutionary Synthesis Necessary?" Science, Vol. 213, 28 August 
1981, pp.967-971, pp.969-970)

6/03/2007
"The reorganization required for the origin of the highest categories may seem so great that only "hopeful 
monsters" will do. here, however, we must consider the size and complexity of the organisms. Such changes 
would probably have been impossible except in an organism of very small size and simple anatomy. I have 
recorded more than 100,000 newborn guinea pigs and have seen many hundreds of monsters of diverse 
sorts, but none were remotely `hopeful,' all having died shortly after birth if not earlier." [Wright, S.G., 
"Character Change, Speciation, and the higher Taxa," Evolution, Vol. 36, No. 3, 1982, p. 440. In Morris, 
H.M., "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," Creation-Life 
Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.87)

7/03/2007
"Another example of unnecessary complexity is the blood clotting cascade. When you cut your finger, 
blood proteins immediately begin to clump together, the wound is soon dammed up, and the cut stops 
bleeding within five to ten minutes. The initial injury sets off a waterfall of from eight to thirteen separate 
chemical reactions in two chain reactions, with each chemical transformation giving rise to the next chemical 
transformation in an orderly sequence. At least thirteen different proteins - coagulation factors - form the 
normal clotting cascades in humans, and if one of these factors is missing the person can have a bleeding 
disorder such as hemophilia. The complete blood clotting cascade is quite complex, and an armchair 
biologist would be hard pressed to predict its details from a priori considerations, from first principles, or 
from the requirements of the blood clotting system. One of the factors - Hageman Factor or Factor XII - even 
appears to be unnecessary: those people, who through genetic disorders, develop without any Factor XII 
do not have bleeding problems; and whales, dolphins and porpoises, which normally do not have any 
Factor XII, survive injuries quite normally (Katz, M.J., "Templets and the Explanation of Complex Patterns," 
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1986, p.52)

7/03/2007
"The Ultimate Coincidence Perhaps we should call it the First Coincidence. Or the Last Coincidence. 
Either would suit, but 'Ultimate' most fits its superlative significance. It's the most important coincidence in 
our life, in everybody's life; in the life of our planet, our Solar System and our Universe. To begin with, it 
brought us all together. It's the reason we are. And if ever its felicitous consonance should alter, we won't 
be around to speculate whether it was a happy accident or part of a grand unified design. Nothing will be 
around. We're talking about fundamental here; the fundamental physical laws pertaining to the day-to-day 
running of the Universe. Physicists call them the fundamental constants - things like the masses of atomic 
particles, the speed of light, the electric charges of electrons, the strength of gravitational force ... They're 
beginning to realise just how finely balanced they are. One flip of a decimal point either way and things 
would start to go seriously wrong. Matter wouldn't form, stars wouldn't twinkle, the Universe as we know it 
wouldn't exist and, if we insist on taking the selfish point of view in the face of such epic, almighty 
destruction, nor would we." (Plimmer, M. & King, B., "Beyond Coincidence: Stories of Amazing 
Coincidences and the Mystery and Mathematics that Lie Behind Them," [2004], Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest 
NSW, Australia, Extended Edition, 2005, p.303. Emphasis & ellipses original)

7/03/2007
"The cosmic harmony that made life possible exists at the mercy of what appear, on the face of it, to be 
unlikely odds. Who or what decided at the time of the Big Bang that the number of particles created would 
be one-in-a-billion more than the number of anti-particles, thus rescuing us by the width of a whisker from 
annihilation long before we even existed (because when matter and anti-matter meet, they cancel each other 
out)? Who or what decided that the number of matter particles left behind after this oversized game of 
cosmic swapsy would be exactly the right number to create a gravitational force that balanced the force of 
expansion and didn't collapse the Universe like a popped balloon? Who decided that the mass of the 
neutron should be just enough to make the formation of atoms possible? That the nuclear force that holds 
atomic nuclei together, in the face of their natural electromagnetic desire to repulse each other, should be 
just strong enough to achieve this, thus enabling the Universe to move beyond a state of almost pure 
hydrogen? Who made the charge on the proton exactly right for the stars to turn into supernovae? Who 
fine-tuned the nuclear resonance level for carbon to just delicate enough a degree that it could form, making 
life, all of which is built on a framework of carbon, possible?" (Plimmer, M. & King, B., "Beyond 
Coincidence: Stories of Amazing Coincidences and the Mystery and Mathematics that Lie Behind Them," 
[2004], Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest NSW, Australia, Extended Edition, 2005, pp.303-304) 

7/03/2007
"The list goes on. And on. And as it goes on - as each particularly arrayed and significantly defined 
property, against all the odds, and in spite of billions of alternative possibilities, combines exquisitely, in the 
right time sequence, at the right speed, weight, mass and ratio, and with every mathematical quality precisely 
equivalent to a stable universe in which life can exist at all - it adds incrementally in the human mind to a 
growing sense, depending on which of two antithetical philosophies it chooses to follow, of either supreme 
and buoyant confidence, or humble terror. The first philosophy says this perfect pattern shows that the 
Universe is not random; that it is designed and tuned, from the atom up, by some supreme intelligence, 
especially for the purpose of supporting life. The other says it's a one in a trillion coincidence." (Plimmer, M. 
& King, B., "Beyond Coincidence: Stories of Amazing Coincidences and the Mystery and Mathematics that 
Lie Behind Them," [2004], Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest NSW, Australia, Extended Edition, 2005, p.304. 
Emphasis original) 

8/03/2007
"In Down's day, the theory of recapitulation embodied a biologist's best guide for the organization of life 
into sequences of higher and lower forms. (Both the theory and `ladder approach' to classification that it 
encouraged are, or should be, defunct today. ... This theory, often expressed by the mouthful `ontogeny 
recapitulates phylogeny,' held that higher animals, in their embryonic development, pass through a series of 
stages representing, in proper sequence, the adult forms of ancestral, lower creatures. Thus, the human 
embryo first develops gill slits, like a fish, later a three-chambered heart, like a reptile, still later a mammalian 
tail. Recapitulation provided a convenient focus for the pervasive racism of white scientists: they looked to 
the activities of their own children for comparison with normal, adult behavior in lower races." (Gould, S.J., 
"Dr. Down's Syndrome," in "The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History," [1980], Penguin: 
London, Reprinted, 1990, pp.135-136)

8/03/2007
"Fetoscopy makes it possible to observe directly the unborn child through a tiny telescope inserted through 
the uterine wall .... The development of the child- from the union of the partners' cells to birth-has been 
studied exhaustively. As a result, long-held beliefs have been put to rest. We now know, for instance, that 
man, in his prenatal stages, does not go through the complete evolution of life- from a primitive single cell to 
a fishlike creature to man. Today it is known that every step in the fetal developmental process is 
specifically human." (Schwabenthan, S., "Life Before Birth," Parents, Vol. 54, October 1979, pp. 44-50, 
p.50. In Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of 
Evolution," Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, pp.96-97)

8/03/2007
"The position of Homo habilis was more contentious. Many people felt that he was an advanced form of 
Australopithecus africanus and that the term Homo was unjustified, but it seemed to us that his bigger 
brain and association with a diverse tool kit merited the term. Subsequently, when chimpanzees were 
discovered to use 'tools' for certain purposes, some doubt was again cast on whether tool making could be 
used as one of the criteria for Homo. But in my view the objects used by chimpanzees are in a very 
different category from the stone tools of Homo habilis. They are merely grass stalks and other things 
modified for their required use by biting or breaking by hand, and cannot be compared to a diverse tool kit 
requiring considerable manual dexterity to shape each tool to a preconceived pattern." (Leakey, M.D., 
"Disclosing the Past," Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 1984, p.214)

8/03/2007
"Many of my colleagues expend a great deal of time and mental energy in reconstructing trees of hominid 
evolution. They juggle with Miocene apes, the various australopithecines, and with types of early Homo, 
sometimes making a simple evolutionary pattern and sometimes ones that are extremely complex. It is good 
fun, and an entertaining pastime if not taken too seriously, but in the present state of our knowledge I do 
not believe it is possible to fit the known hominid fossils into a reliable pattern. There are too many gaps, 
and some of the specimens are not sufficiently well dated for their position to be determined with accuracy. 
Added to this there is the matter of nomenclature. Given an entire skull it is likely that most anatomists and 
anthropologists would agree on what type of being it represented, but with incomplete specimens, 
sometimes mere scraps of bones or a few teeth, the position is very different. Moreover, the circumstances 
attending the discovery of many fossil hominids have often been far from ideal. Some have been surface 
finds that have been attributed to the deposits on which they were found without sufficient emphasis being 
given to the possibility that they might have been derived from another level and therefore not be of the age 
claimed for them. If there were more specimens to fill the gaps, and better-documented evidence, there would 
certainly be much closer agreement about the evolutionary pattern. Needless to say, on my lecture tours I 
am often asked to express my opinion, but I invariably decline. My reply is that we require a great deal more 
evidence before we can hope to formulate a reliable reconstruction. We do not know, for example, whether 
some of the fossils we have are in the main line of hominid evolution or relics of unsuccessful side branches 
like the robust australopithecines. This factor alone is of vital importance in arriving at a correct solution. 
For the present we would do well to concentrate on discovering new, firmly dated specimens and spend less 
time in putting forward our own, personal interpretations." (Leakey, M.D., "Disclosing the Past," Weidenfeld 
& Nicolson: London, 1984, pp.214-215) 

8/03/2007
"The extent of the universe's fine-tuning makes the Anthropic Principle perhaps the most powerful argument 
for the existence of God. It's not that there are just a few broadly defined constants that may have resulted 
by chance. No, there are more than 100 very narrowly defined constants that strongly point to an intelligent 
Designer. [Ross, H.N.*, "Why I Believe in Divine Creation," in Geisler, N.L. & Hoffman, P., eds., "Why I Am a 
Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe," Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 2001] We've already 
identified five of them. Here are ten more: 1. If the centrifugal force of planetary movements did not precisely 
balance the gravitational forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun. 2. If the universe had 
expanded at a rate one millionth more slowly than it did, expansion would have stopped, and the universe 
would have collapsed on itself before any stars had formed. If it had expanded faster, then no galaxies would 
have formed. 3. Any of the laws of physics can be described as a function of the velocity of light (now 
defined to be 299,792,458 meters per second). Even a slight variation in the speed of light would alter the 
other constants and preclude the possibility of life on earth. 4. If water vapor levels in the atmosphere were 
greater than they are now, a runaway greenhouse effect would cause temperatures to rise too high for 
human life; if they were less, an insufficient greenhouse effect would make the earth too cold to support 
human life. 5. If Jupiter were not in its current orbit, the earth would be bombarded with space material. 
Jupiter's gravitational field acts as a cosmic vacuum cleaner, attracting asteroids and comets that might 
otherwise strike earth. 6. If the thickness of the earth's crust were greater, too much oxygen would be 
transferred to the crust to support life. If it were thinner, volcanic and tectonic activity would make life 
impossible. 7. If the rotation of the earth took longer than twenty-four hours, temperature differences would 
be too great between night and day. If the rotation period were shorter, atmospheric wind velocities would 
be too great. 8. The 23-degree axil [sic] tilt of the earth is just right. If the tilt were altered slightly, surface 
temperatures would be too extreme on earth. 9. If the atmospheric discharge (lightning) rate were greater, 
there would be too much fire destruction; if it were less, there would be too little nitrogen fixing in the soil. 
10. If there were more seismic activity, much more life would be lost; if there was less, nutrients on the ocean 
floors and in river runoff would not be cycled back to the continents through tectonic uplift. (Yes, even 
earthquakes are necessary to sustain life as we know it!) Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has calculated the 
probability that these and other constants-122 in all-would exist today for any planet in the universe by 
chance (i.e., without divine design). Assuming there are 1022 planets in the universe (a very large number: 
1 with 22 zeros following it), his answer is shocking: one chance in 10138-that's one chance in one with 138 
zeros after it! 6 There are only 1070 atoms in the entire universe. In effect, there is zero chance that 
any planet in the universe would have the life-supporting conditions we have, unless there is an 
intelligent Designer behind it all." (Geisler, N.L.* & Turek; F.*, "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist," 
Crossway Books: Wheaton IL, 2004, pp.104-106. Emphasis original) 

9/03/2007
"Hitler believed in struggle as a Darwinian principle of human life that forced every people to try to dominate 
all others; without struggle they would rot and perish ... Even in his defeat in April 1945 Hitler expressed his 
faith in the survival of the stronger and declared the Slavic peoples to have proven themselves the stronger. 
(Hoffman, P., "Hitler's Personal Security: : Protecting the Führer, 1921-1945," Pergamon Press: London, 1979, 
p.264. In Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of 
Evolution," Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.98)

9/03/2007
"Why do creationists seem to be the consistent winners in public debates with evolutionists? ... we 
biologists are our own worst enemies in the creationist-evolutionist controversies. We must no longer duck 
this and other issues related to biology and human affairs, and when we do face them we must think clearly 
and express ourselves accordingly. We may still not be consistent winners in the creationist-evolutionist 
debates, but let the losses that occur be attributable to other than lapses in professional standards." 
(Dubay, D., "Evolution/Creation Debate," Bioscience, Vol. 30, January 1980, pp.4-5. In Morris, H.M.*, 
"Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," Creation-Life 
Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.118)

9/03/2007
"Ideally, prebiotic chemists should imitate the conditions of the early Earth as best they can in their 
laboratory, then step aside and observe what happens. What they have done instead is attempt a total 
synthesis of RNA, in the style I have just described. One early target for synthesis, for example, is 
adenosine, a combination of the sugar ribose with the base adenine. ... ribose can be prepared by heating 
formaldehyde, usually in alkali. Unfortunately, the mixture produced is a total mess. You get some ribose, 
but in small amounts along with scores of closely related substances. The same is true for adenine 
production from solutions of cyanide; hordes of products are produced. Prebiotic chemists, however, then 
take pure adenine and heat it with pure ribose under a new set of conditions. The reaction goes poorly, but 
some adenosine may be produced. This result qualifies as a prebiotic synthesis of adenosine. It is now 
legitimate to use high concentrations of pure adenosine for the next step. Adenine, ribose, and adenosine 
have been used as a relay, a tactic that is permissible in total synthesis but ludicrous as a model for our early 
planet. It would be much more realistic to heat together the entire formaldehyde and cyanide products, 
which would furnish the mother of all messes. Better yet, the chemist should simply mix the cyanide and 
formaldehyde starting materials. But we know what happens in that case; the two substances have a great 
affinity for each other and their reaction takes off in a direction that bears no resemblance to life as we know 
it. This example does not represent an isolated lapse. If one digs into the literature behind almost any of the 
prebiotic claims that buttress RNA world, one finds no greater degree of merit." (Shapiro, R., "Planetary 
Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life beyond Earth," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, 1999, p.111)

9/03/2007
"Miller's Lagoon The news reached me first at home as I read my New York Times on Independence 
Day, 1996. The headline proclaimed, `Chemist Adds Missing Pieces to Theory on Life's Origins,' while the 
subhead added, `All four chemical bases of RNA can arise in nature.' A box associated with the article 
echoed the message: `It is now known that all four components of RNA can be produced by natural 
processes on the face of the earth, a finding that has profound implications for scientists' thinking about the 
origins of life.' ... My attention had certainly been caught. I had just published a review about the `prebiotic' 
claims for adenine, one of the four RNA bases. I had come to the conclusion that only traces of it, at best, 
would be found on our planet before life began. ... There was no new information about adenine, however. 
The New York Times account announced a new `prebiotic' synthesis for two other RNA bases, cytosine 
and uracil: `Both substances might have been produced by the lifeless young oceans in ample quantities by 
a process involving the evaporation of sea water in tropical lagoons, the freezing of sea water in polar 
regions and the mixing of their products in the open ocean.... The evaporative part of the process, Dr. Miller 
said, could have concentrated the traces of urea that accumulate in sea water as a result of reactions in the 
atmosphere caused by lightning flashes.' ... Had a vexing problem in the origin of life been solved so readily? 
.... My conclusions, which were highly pessimistic, have been sent to an appropriate journal ... Miller and 
Robertson did not experiment with lagoon simulations, however. They ran their reactions in the laboratory 
using pure, concentrated chemicals and sought the highest possible yield by varying the conditions." 
(Shapiro, R., "Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life beyond Earth," John Wiley & Sons: New York 
NY, 1999, pp.111-113. Emphasis original)

9/03/2007
"To start, I questioned first why lagoons were required. Most descriptions of the prebiotic soup have 
allowed it to cover the globe. Why not assume that the reaction took place in open ocean? Unfortunately, 
this would not work. Miller himself and other scientists have calculated that concentrations of most 
chemicals in the ocean would be very low. Urea is ... produced only in modest amounts by lightning spark 
discharges. We would not expect much of it to accumulate on a global basis. For the new reaction to 
succeed, we need very high concentrations of urea. To get them, we would need to evaporate an amount of 
ocean water sufficient to fill a pond down to the size of a bathtub, concentrating it to one-millionth of its 
initial volume. The concept of drying lagoons comes immediately to mind. ... " (Shapiro, R., "Planetary 
Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life beyond Earth," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, 1999, p.113)

9/03/2007
"One advantage of urea is its great solubility, which would protect it from this fate. But this benefit was 
counterbalanced by a disadvantage. Urea is unstable over long time periods, forming ammonia and carbon 
dioxide. ... If the evaporation of the lagoon went slowly, and was occasionally reversed by rain and the 
incursion of rivers, all would be lost. The synthesis would require a very broad, shallow lagoon, in a very 
arid and rainless climate, with continuous winds to speed the evaporation. If partial evaporation could take 
place under such circumstances, why didn't it go further to provide the extreme concentration needed for the 
reaction? One reason was that the rate of fluid loss slowed as the liquid grew more thick. But also, as the 
liquid grew more dense, its level simply sank below the sandy floor of the lagoon, protecting it from further 
evaporation. We have to specify further that the lagoon have a rocky, impermeable floor rather than a 
porous one. There are no data on the occurrence of such lagoons today, but since little is known about the 
early Earth, we can imagine one there. ... But my reading led me to another hazard in the evaporative process. 
... the simple amino acid, glycine, reacts with urea more quickly than the chemical that forms cytosine. If 
glycine were present in the lagoon, then, it would spoil the pudding. But would it be there? The answer 
would definitely be yes, if we are stocking our ocean by the product of lightning storms. Amino acids were 
the most prominent products of the Miller-Urey electric spark experiment. So interference by glycine appears 
a formidable roadblock, until prebiotic chemists devise some way to produce urea without glycine." 
(Shapiro, R., "Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life beyond Earth," John Wiley & Sons: New York 
NY, 1999, pp.114-115)

9/03/2007
"We have concentrated our glycine-free urea solution in just a few years and are ready for the reaction. How 
much time will we need to carry it out? That will depend on the actual circumstances. If we assume a nice 
summer temperature of about 30°C (88°F), and fairly concentrated urea, it might take twenty-five years to get 
a good deal of reaction. This is much longer than the time permitted for rapid concentration. If our bathtub 
full of solution were spread over a large area, it would almost certainly dry up completely, killing the 
reaction. But a few modifications to the lagoon should alter that. We can give the lagoon a gentle slope 
draining toward the center, with a small crevasse or pocket to hold the final fluid. But now we need the other 
partner, to combine with the urea. The partner's name, cyanoacetaldehyde, was furnished previously, but for 
the sake of the readers, I will call it CAT for short. The Miller and Robertson paper implied that CAT had 
been waiting patiently alongside the urea as the evaporation proceeded. In the New York Times article, 
CAT was called `another quite common component of sea water that also owes its formation partly to 
lightning bolts.' But I knew of no reference documenting that fact. My own search on CAT turned up some 
other alarming news about its behavior, however: It more resembles a prowling tiger than a sleeping kitten. It 
pounces avidly on almost every type of molecule that might inhabit a primordial soup: cyanide, amines, 
sulfur compounds, you name it. If deprived of any prey, it self-destructs. At the temperature we mentioned 
previously, half of it would be gone in thirty years (another reason why the evaporation has to be run 
quickly). For CAT to be common, some source must be pouring it into the oceans at a substantial rate. I 
turned to the Nature article for instruction. This document only stated, however, that CAT came from the 
reaction of another substance, cyanoacetylene (I will call it CECIL), with water, and referred me to another 
paper. I learned that CAT is a tame pussy compared to CECIL. The latter can be produced in spark discharge 
experiments but reacts very rapidly with the other products. To demonstrate the production of CECIL at all, 
you need to use a special atmosphere unlike those proposed for the early Earth. We can flag this as another 
problem, but we will assume that CECIL got into the lagoon somehow, and cytosine was made. We can 
check off the successful preparation of another raw material needed for RNA world." (Shapiro, R., "Planetary 
Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life beyond Earth," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, 1999, pp.115-116. 
Emphasis original)

9/03/2007
"But we have barely begun the job of creating RNA. Our cytosine supply, which we have left sitting in a 
crevasse in a rock, must return to the sea so that it can meet the other components. Furthermore, this liaison 
must take place within a limited period of time. When it is left alone in water, cytosine selfdestructs in a 
reaction that was discovered in my own laboratory some years ago. At room temperature, half of it will be 
gone in 300 years. To avoid this problem, we will specify that an earthquake ruptures the barrier and floods 
the lagoon basin soon after the cytosine has been prepared. A batch of cytosine has been prepared and 
released into the sea in a warm temperate area. Other RNA components, according to the New York Times 
article, were prepared in polar regions. Each of them would diffuse out into the oceans that covered the 
planet, and there is a danger that the various pieces of RNA would simply get lost in that huge volume. We 
would need to produce much more cytosine if we need to stock the entire ocean with a sufficient 
concentration of it. But a calculation showed me that even if we lined all of the oceans of the Earth with 
Miller-type lagoons and had them churning out cytosine continually on a batchwise basis, we could not 
produce enough for that purpose. Fortunately, other prebiotic chemists have tackled that problem. They 
have abolished the ocean model of the soup and replaced it with a plan for the early Earth in which the 
various tasks needed for RNA construction are placed in separate locations that are conveniently close to 
one another. One such illustration placed a glacier, a lava flow, hot springs, a pond formed by a soft comet 
impact, a lake named for Charles Darwin, and several other features in the same environment, as an aurora 
flickered overhead. Such a combination hardly seems common or likely, but we are compelled to adopt it if 
we maintain that pathways to RNA must have existed on the early Earth." (Shapiro, R., "Planetary Dreams: 
The Quest to Discover Life beyond Earth," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, 1999, p.116)

10/03/2007
"Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because 
evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus' earthly life was supposedly made necessary. 
Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of 
god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is 
what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing!" (Bozarth, G.R., "The Meaning of Evolution," 
American Atheist, February 1978, pp.19, 30, p.30. In Morris, H.M.*, "That Their Words May Be Used 
Against Them: Quotes from Evolutionists Useful for Creationists," Master Books: Green Forest AR, 1997, 
p.375) 

10/03/2007
"After the general Darwinian theory of the evolution of prehuman life was accepted, there were many poorly 
thought-out attempts to apply pure Darwinian ideas to human affairs: the struggle for existence, for 
instance, must be a good thing; therefore, highly competitive economic systems were good, war was good, 
and so on. At one time, even child labor was justified on such grounds. But the more one looks into it, the 
clearer it becomes that man does not operate primarily by natural selection, because he has a new method 
for evolving. Man is able to transmit the results of his experience, his knowledge, his ideas, cumulatively 
from generation to generation, which no animal can do. So human evolution occurs primarily in the realm of 
ideas and their results-in what anthropologists call culture-with natural selection playing a minor role, so 
that evolution proceeds much faster and is not always related merely to survival. (Huxley, J.S., "At Random: 
A Television Preview," in Tax, S. & Callender, C., eds., "Evolution After Darwin: Issues in Evolution," 
University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Vol. III, 1960, p.45. Emphasis original)

10/03/2007
"Darwinism has come of age, so to speak. We are no longer having to bother about establishing the fact of 
evolution, and we know that natural selection is the major factor causing evolutionary change. Our problems 
now concern working out in detail how natural selection operates, defining what we mean by `increase of 
organization,' tracing the general trends that appear in the course of evolution, and so on." (Huxley, J.S., "At 
Random": A Television Preview," in Tax, S. & Callender, C., eds., "Evolution After Darwin: Issues in 
Evolution," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Vol. III, 1960, p.45)

10/03/2007
"Of course, the most striking phenomenon in biological evolution is the emergence of mind out of an 
apparently mindless universe. ... I should like to stress this fundamental point: the real nub of evolution, the 
aspect which is still the most mysterious, is the fact of subjective experience, which is assuming increasing 
importance." (Huxley, J.S., "`At Random': A Television Preview," in Tax, S. & Callender, C., eds., "Evolution 
After Darwin: Issues in Evolution," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Vol. III, 1960, pp.45,48)

10/03/2007
"Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational 
discussion. Before Darwin, people like Paley with his famous Evidences could point to the human hand or 
eye and say: `This organ is beautifully adapted; it has obviously been designed for its purpose; design 
means a designer; and therefore there must have been a supernatural designer.' Darwin pointed out that no 
supernatural designer was needed; since natural selection could account for any known form of life, there 
was no room for a supernatural agency in its evolution." (Huxley, J.S., "`At Random': A Television Preview," 
in Tax, S. & Callender, C., eds., "Evolution After Darwin: Issues in Evolution," University of Chicago Press: 
Chicago IL, Vol. III, 1960, pp.45-46)

10/03/2007
"There was no sudden moment during evolutionary history when `spirit' was instilled into life, any more 
than there was a single moment when it was instilled into you. I know that certain theological doctrines say 
it is suddenly pumped into the human embryo at-isn't it the third month?-but that is a completely arbitrary 
theological postulate. I think we can dismiss entirely all idea of a supernatural overriding mind being 
responsible for the evolutionary process." (Huxley, J.S., "`At Random': A Television Preview," in Tax, S. & 
Callender, C., eds., "Evolution After Darwin: Issues in Evolution," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 
Vol. III, 1960, p.46)

10/03/2007
"I am an atheist, in the only correct sense, that I don't believe in the existence of a supernatural being who 
influences natural events. ... . At present, the fundamental barrier between most theologians and most 
scientists is that scientists see no evidence of a supernatural agency interfering with the course of nature, or 
any need to postulate one." (Huxley, J.S., "`At Random': A Television Preview," in Tax, S. & Callender, C., 
eds., "Evolution After Darwin: Issues in Evolution," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Vol. III, 1960, 
pp.46,48)

10/03/2007
"This morning I was talking about religion in an age of science. This religion would suit you very nicely, 
Julian, because it gets away from superstition and miracles. Science can strengthen religion, and not upset 
it. There is no need of that. I've learned from anthropologists that every primitive tribe, without exception, 
has a religion. They thought one group up the Orinoco was without religion, but that has been checked, and 
it was a misunderstanding. So religious belief is built into us as part of a reaction against mysteries we can't 
solve easily. To make ourselves comfortable, we turn to miracles and the supernatural.." (Shapley, H., "`At 
Random': A Television Preview," in Tax, S. & Callender, C., eds., "Evolution After Darwin: Issues in 
Evolution," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Vol. III, 1960, p.48)

10/03/2007
"Evolution encompasses changes of vastly different scales - from something as insignificant as an increase 
in the frequency of the gene for dark wings in beetles from one generation to the next, to something as 
grand as the evolution and radiation of the dinosaur lineage. These two extremes represent classic examples 
of micro- and macroevolution. Microevolution happens on a small scale (within a single population), while 
macroevolution happens on a scale that transcends the boundaries of a single species. Despite their 
differences, evolution at both of these levels relies on the same, established mechanisms of evolutionary 
change." ("Evolution at different scales: micro to macro," Understanding Evolution, University of 
California, Berkeley) 

10/03/2007
"Gould vs. Johnson: The Campion Debate Just fourteen months after the Berkeley colloquium, Phillip 
Johnson's plane began its descent into Logan Airport in Boston, carrying him on a collision course with 
Stephen Jay Gould. In a matter of hours Johnson would be meeting the prestigious Harvard evolutionist for 
the first time at a private gathering of experts called together to discuss the problem of `Science and 
Creationism in Public Schools.' ... What he did not quite expect was the ferocious attack and intense duel 
that would break out. Gould had already established his reputation as one of the twentieth century's most 
prolific masters of scientific prose and was undoubtedly America's most popular and widely read 
spokesperson for evolution. ... On Saturday morning as the participants were gathering for the second 
session, Johnson and Gould met briefly. Their chat was polite, but Gould signaled to Johnson that, having 
read the material shipped from Berkeley, his response to Johnson was going to be an urgent polemic. He 
told Johnson, `You're a creationist, and I've got to stop you.' As the morning session got underway, 
Johnson was first given an opportunity to summarize the gist of his Berkeley paper and the much shorter 
`Campion Summary.' For over an hour Johnson reviewed point after point of his thesis. Near the end of his 
presentation, paleontologist David Raup briefly interjected his own evaluation of Johnson's work. He said 
that he had read the Berkeley paper and had even distributed it and discussed it with his students in one of 
his graduate seminars at the University of Chicago. Raup said he and his students agreed that Johnson's 
scholarship was fully accurate in its scientific detail and contained a clear understanding of 
macroevolution's anomalies and empirical gaps. In fact, said Raup, the various lines of evidence for 
Darwinian macroevolution were not nearly as strong as one would hope. The key point was clear-Raup had 
briefly but unmistakably certified the empirical quality of Johnson's critique. At this point, Gould 
immediately seized the floor and `donned the mantle of Darwin.' Displaying agitation in voice and shaking 
bodily, he began to set the record straight. In what one observer described as an `obliteration attack,' Gould 
started pelting Johnson's thesis with vehement criticisms. Oddly, Gould argued that there is plenty of 
scientific evidence in the fossil record for Darwinian evolution and cited a number of fossil series that 
allegedly supported the validity of step-by-step Darwinian macroevolution. On this point, Gould was clearly 
backing away from the critical stance that had made him famous-that gradualistic neo-Darwinism was 
incapable of accounting for the rarity of transitional fossils. On the contrary Gould implied that the branches 
of evolutionary trees could be reasonably traced in the fossil record. Very early in the attack, Johnson 
stepped in with strong rebuttals of a number of Gould's points, and immediately the two were engaged in a 
furiously paced seesaw debate that lasted for nearly an hour before a spellbound audience. The rhetorical 
purpose of Gould was clear-to so bury Johnson's criticism in a torrent of contrary evidence that the net 
effect would be to illegitimize both the logos and ethos of Johnson's critique while defending classic 
neo-Darwinism. However ... many felt the emotional intensity of Gould's all-out attack clashed with the spirit 
of the meeting and somewhat undermined his credibility. ... In the final analysis, many who attended 
described the private debate as a draw." (Woodward, T.E., "Doubts about Darwin: A History of Intelligent 
Design," Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 2003, pp.79,82-83. Emphasis original) 

10/03/2007
"In this early stage of circulating copies of his paper to wider circles of scientific critics, there looms one 
other huge milestone: the private 1989 meeting of a dozen scholars at the Campion Center in Boston. Again, 
for details I will refer the reader to chapter four of Doubts About Darwin, but one highlight stands out: an 
impromptu debate with Stephen Jay Gould. To appreciate the debate, one must grasp the surprising (though 
quiet) certification of empirical accuracy that immediately preceded it. The unexpected defender of Johnson 
here, shortly before the debate erupted, was David Raup, a well-known evolutionary paleontologist with a 
reputation of brutal honesty about empirical gaps in the neo-Darwinian scenario. Raup had already read 
Johnson's original Berkeley paper and had used it in a graduate seminar at the University of Chicago. He 
and his students had found no factual errors as they reviewed the paper. As an open-minded scientist, he 
came to respect Johnson's scholarship, although he was not persuaded to abandon hope that evolutionary 
explanations would ultimately be found for the nagging anomalies. ... Raup's interjection seems to have 
provoked his long-time friend Stephen Jay Gould to launch a verbally intense, argumentative assault on 
Johnson. His line of argument, in effect, retreated from his previous outspoken criticism of evolutionary 
gradualism, into a defense of classic neo-Darwinism. This surprised several in the audience. Yet Johnson 
was not surprised at the attack. Gould had told him that morning after shaking hands, `You're a creationist, 
and I've got to stop you.'" (Woodward, T.E., "Putting Darwin on Trial: Phillip Johnson Transforms the 
Evolutionary Narrative," in Dembski, W.A., ed., "Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent 
Design Movement," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2000, pp.64-65. Emphasis original) 

10/03/2007
"Our confidence in the fact of evolution rests upon copious data that fall, roughly, into three great classes. 
First, we have the direct evidence of small-scale changes in controlled laboratory experiments of the past 
hundred years (on bacteria, on almost every measurable property of the fruit fly Drosophila), or observed 
in nature (color changes in moth wings, development of metal tolerance in plants growing near industrial 
waste heaps), or produced during a few thousand years of human breeding and agriculture. Creationists can 
scarcely ignore this evidence, so they respond by arguing that God permits limited modification within 
created types, but that you can never change a cat into a dog (who ever said that you could, or that nature 
did?)." (Gould, S.J., "Darwinism Defined: The Difference Between Fact and Theory," Discover, January 
1987, pp.64-70, pp.65,68)

10/03/2007
"Second, we have direct evidence for large-scale changes, based upon sequences in the fossil record. The 
nature of this evidence is often misunderstood by non-professionals who view evolution as a simple ladder 
of progress, and therefore expect a linear array of `missing links.' But evolution is a copiously branching 
bush, not a ladder. Since our fossil record is so imperfect, we can't hope to find evidence for every tiny 
twiglet. (Sometimes, in rapidly evolving lineages of abundant organisms restricted to a small area and 
entombed in sediments with an excellent fossil record, we do discover an entire little bush-but such 
examples are as rare as they are precious.) ... In other words, we usually find sequences of structural 
intermediates, not linear arrays of ancestors and descendants. Such sequences provide superb examples of 
temporally ordered evolutionary trends. Consider the evidence for human evolution in Africa. What more 
could you ask from a record of rare creatures living in terrestrial environments that provide poor opportunity 
for fossilization? We have a temporal sequence displaying clear trends in a suite of features, including 
threefold increase of brain size and corresponding decrease of jaws and teeth. (We are missing direct 
evidence for an earlier transition to upright posture, but wide-ranging and unstudied sediments of the right 
age have been found in East Africa, and we have an excellent chance to fill in this part of our story.) What 
alternative can we suggest to evolution? Would God-for some inscrutable reason, or merely to test our faith-
--create five species, one after the other (Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanus, Homo habilis, H. 
erectus, and H. sapiens), to mimic a continuous trend of evolutionary change?" (Gould, S.J., "Darwinism 
Defined: The Difference Between Fact and Theory," Discover, January 1987, pp.64-70, p.68)

10/03/2007
"Or, consider another example with evidence of structurally intermediate stages-the transition from reptiles 
to mammals. The lower jaw of mammals contains but a single bone, the dentary. Reptiles build their lower 
jaws of several bones. In perhaps the most fascinating of those quirky changes in function that mark 
pathways of evolution, the two bones articulating the upper and lower jaws of reptiles migrate to the middle 
ear and become the malleus and incus (hammer and anvil) of mammals. Creationists, ignorant of hard 
evidence in the fossil record, scoff at this tale. How could jaw bones become ear bones, they ask. What 
happened in between? An animal can't work with a jaw half disarticulated during the stressful time of 
transition. ', The fossil record provides a direct answer. In an excellent series of temporally ordered structural 
intermediates, the reptilian dentary gets larger and larger, pushing back as the other bones of a reptile's 
lower jaw decrease in size. We've even found a transitional form with an elegant solution to the problem of 
remaking jaw bones into ear bones. This creature has a double articulation-one between the two bones that 
become the mammalian hammer and anvil (the old reptilian joint), and a second between the squamosal and 
dentary bones (the modern mammalian condition). With this built-in redundancy, the emerging mammals 
could abandon one connection by moving two bones into the ear, while retaining the second linkage, which 
becomes the sole articulation of modern mammals." (Gould, S.J., "Darwinism Defined: The Difference 
Between Fact and Theory," Discover, January 1987, pp.64-70, p.68)

10/03/2007
"Third, and most persuasive in its ubiquity, we have the signs of history preserved within every organism, 
every ecosystem, and every pattern of biogeographic distribution, by those pervasive quirks, oddities, and 
imperfections that record pathways of historical descent. These evidences are indirect, since we are viewing 
modern results, not the processes that caused them, but what else can we make of the pervasive pattern? 
Why does our body, from the bones of our back to the musculature of our belly, display the vestiges of an 
arrangement better suited for quadrupedal life if we aren't the descendants of four-footed creatures? Why 
do the plants and animals of the Galapagos so closely resemble, but differ slightly from, the creatures of 
Ecuador, the nearest bit of land 600 miles to the east, especially when cool oceanic currents and volcanic 
substrate make the Galapagos such a different environment from Ecuador (thus removing the potential 
argument that God makes the best creatures for each place, and small differences only reflect a minimal 
disparity of environments)? These similarities can only mean that Ecuadorian creatures colonized the 
Galapagos and then diverged by a natural process of evolution." (Gould, S.J., "Darwinism Defined: The 
Difference Between Fact and Theory," Discover, January 1987, pp.64-70, p.68) 

15/03/2007
"In fact, most people mistakenly believe that the creation account in Genesis is directly antithetical to the 
theory of evolution by natural selection, but this simply isn't the case. The opposite of evolution is most 
definitely not the six-day creation story in Genesis; it is an instantaneous creation by fiat that takes no time 
at all. On this view, any type of stepwise creation event that takes more than a split second is itself 
`evolutionary' by its very nature, since evolution by its very nature is merely `change with respect to time.' 
This being the case, the Genesis account turns out to be just as `evolutionary' as modern Darwinian theory, 
insofar as it describes a stepwise process of creation that took place in six major stages or `days.' Thus, the 
true issue here isn't the character or number of evolutionary stages that led to humanity. It is whether or not 
a larger Designer was actually involved in the evolutionary process. And since most people (including most 
scientists) mistakenly associate atheism with evolution and God with Genesis, they can't seem to fathom 
that the biblical creation account could itself be evolutionary in nature, just as they also find it hard to 
believe that God could ever be the cause of the evolutionary process itself." (Corey, M.A.*, "The God 
Hypothesis: Discovering Design in Our `Just Right' Goldilocks Universe," Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham 
MD, 2001, p.22)

15/03/2007
"A similar rationale can also be applied to the common belief that humans descended from apes. Most 
religious individuals are deeply offended by such rhetoric, but the Bible itself tells us that God created 
humans out of the moistened dust of the earth (which is mud), and surely mud is much lower on the 
ontological scale of being than any ape! Accordingly, the true question that is at issue here isn't the 
underlying medium that we were created out of, but whether or not God had anything to do with it. If God is 
involved, it doesn't seem to matter what He fashioned us out of, but if God is left out of the equation, 
many people will tend to be offended even if we're told that humans descended from a superhuman race of 
extraterrestrials." (Corey, M.A.*, "The God Hypothesis: Discovering Design in Our `Just Right' Goldilocks 
Universe," Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham MD, 2001, p.22. Emphasis original)

15/03/2007
"What we're finding is that many of the historical facts of science have been skewed in favor of a 
nontheistic view of reality. The unsuspecting student of science isn't generally told that the modern 
scientific movement was initially founded by devout believers or that there can be no such thing as natural 
laws without a Divine Lawgiver to create them. Instead, he or she is quietly duped into believing that 
scientific truth has nothing at all to do with the existence of a Divine Creator. For the most part, this subtle 
form of brainwashing has been remarkably successful. That is, until now-because for the first time in human 
history, we finally have at our disposal a genuine scientific proof for the existence of God ... . This is due 
to the fact that the theistic explanation for the Big Bang accounts for the known scientific facts much better 
than any type of nontheistic explanation. Indeed, this evidence is so compelling that one prominent 
researcher has blatantly declared, `If you're religious, it's like looking at God.' [Smoot, G. in Maugh, T.H., 
"Relics of 'Big Bang' Seen for First Time," Los Angeles Times, 24 April 1992, pp.A1, A30] A great many 
other scientists have openly shared this sentiment. Sir Fred Hoyle, the physicist who discovered the 
mechanism by which carbon is generated inside the stars, has even gone so far as to say that the existing 
physical evidence reveals the tinkering of a `Supercalculating Intellect,' who has clearly `monkeyed' with the 
basic features of chemistry and physics [Hoyle, F., "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections", in 
Engineering and Science, November 1981, p.12]. In fact, Hoyle believes that this conclusion is 
inescapable: `I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference 
that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they 
produce inside the stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deep-laid 
scheme. If not then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents.' [Hoyle, F. in Stockwood, M., 
ed., "Religion and the Scientists: Addresses Delivered in the University Church, Cambridge," SCM Press: 
London, 1959, p.82] This confession is all the more remarkable because Hoyle was once a committed atheist 
who openly admitted that his Godless theories were designed to explain God away once and for all." (Corey, 
M.A.*, "The God Hypothesis: Discovering Design in Our `Just Right' Goldilocks Universe," Rowman & 
Littlefield: Lanham MD, 2001, pp.22-23. Emphasis original)

15/03/2007
"Other scientists are beginning to follow suit. The British author and physicist Paul Davies, for instance, 
has openly admitted to believing in a grand `cosmic blueprint,' [Davies, P.C.W., "The Cosmic Blueprint," 
[1987], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1995, p.200] and in his most recent book, The Mind of 
God, he concludes that the evidence for Intelligent Design is truly overwhelming. Even John Gribbin and 
Martin Rees have gone so far as to ask the following `heretical' questions on the back of their book, 
Cosmic Coincidences: `Was the universe made for man?' and `What was in the mind of God 15 billion 
years ago?' The great Stephen Hawking, whom many consider to be the most gifted physicist since Einstein, 
openly admitted that his goal is to `know the mind of God.' [Hawking, S.W., "A Brief History of Time," 
[1988]. Bantam: London, Reprinted, 1991, p.185] Of course, one can't know the mind of a being that 
doesn't exist, so Hawking must also be counted amongst those scientists who believe in some type of 
Creator. Now, it doesn't take a genius to see that the evidence must be overwhelmingly in favor of an 
Intelligent Designer in order for so many scientists to be openly talking about Him. Indeed, lengthy 
discussion about the possible existence of God can be found in many otherwise nontheistic treatises, such 
as those written by Richard Dawkins or Stephen Jay Gould. But why would these individuals devote even a 
single page to a being whose possible existence they believe is absurd? Again, it's because the scientific 
evidence for Design is truly that compelling." (Corey, M.A.*, "The God Hypothesis: Discovering Design in 
Our `Just Right' Goldilocks Universe," Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham MD, 2001, p.23) 

15/03/2007
"The specific resonances within atomic nuclei are something like that, except in this case the particular 
energy enables the parts to stick together rather than to fly apart. In the carbon atom, the resonance just 
happens to match the combined energy of the beryllium atom and a colliding helium nucleus. Without it, 
there would be relatively few carbon atoms. Similarly, the internal details of the oxygen nucleus play a 
critical role. Oxygen can be formed by combining helium and carbon nuclei, but the corresponding 
resonance level in the oxygen nucleus is half a percent too low for the combination to stay together easily. 
Had the resonance level in the carbon been 4 percent lower, there would be essentially no carbon. Had that 
level in the oxygen been only half a percent higher, virtually all of the carbon would have been converted to 
oxygen. Without that carbon abundance, neither you nor I would be here now. I am told that Fred Hoyle, 
who together with Willy Fowler found this remarkable nuclear arrangement, has said that nothing has 
shaken his atheism as much as this discovery. ... in the November 1981 issue of the Cal Tech alumni 
magazine ... he wrote: `Would you not say to yourself, "Some supercalculating intellect must have designed 
the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces 
of nature would be utterly minuscule." Of course you would.... A common sense interpretation of the facts 
suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that 
there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to 
me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.' [Hoyle, F., "The Universe: Past and 
Present Reflections", in Engineering and Science, November 1981, p.12]" (Gingerich, O., "Dare a Scientist 
Believe in Design", in Templeton, J.M, ed., "Evidence of Purpose: Scientists Discover the Creator," 
Continuum: New York NY, 1994, pp.24-25) 

15/03/2007
"Perhaps the best-known example of an additional organizing principle in nature is the so-called 
cosmological principle, which asserts that matter and radiation are distributed uniformly in space on a 
large scale. As we saw in Chapter 9 there is good evidence that this is the case. Not only did the matter and 
energy which erupted from the big bang contrive to arrange itself incredibly uniformly, it also orchestrated 
its motion so as to expand at exactly the same rate everywhere and in all directions. This uncanny 
conspiracy to create global order has baffled cosmologists for a long while. The cosmological principle is 
really only a statement of the fact of uniformity. It gives no clue as to how the universe achieved its 
orderly state. Some cosmologists have been content to explain the uniformity by appealing to special initial 
conditions (i.e. invoking a weak organizing principle), but this is hardly satisfactory. It merely places 
responsibility for the uniformity with a metaphysical creation event beyond the scope of science. An 
alternative approach has been a search for physical processes in the very early stages of the universe that 
could have had the effect of smoothing out an initially chaotic state. This idea is currently very popular, 
especially in the form of the inflationary universe scenario ... . Nevertheless, whilst inflation does have a 
dramatic smoothing effect, it still requires certain special conditions to operate. Thus one continues to fall 
back on the need for either God-given initial conditions, or a cosmological organizing principle in addition to 
the usual laws of physics. (Davies, P.C.W., "The Cosmic Blueprint: Order and Complexity at the Edge of 
Chaos," [1987], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1995, pp.152-153. Emphasis original)

15/03/2007
"Another set of `meaningful coincidences' have recently attracted the attention of scientists. This time the 
coincidences do not refer to events but to the so-called constants of nature. These are numbers which crop 
up in the various laws of physics; examples include the mass of the electron, the electric charge of the 
proton and Newton's gravitational constant (which fixes the strength of the gravitational force). So far the 
values of these various constants are unexplained by any theory, so the question arises as to why they 
have the values that they do. Now the interesting thing is that the existence of many complex structures in 
the universe, and especially biological organisms, is remarkably sensitive to the values of the constants. It 
turns out that even slight changes from the observed values suffice to cause drastic changes in the 
structures. In the case of organisms, even minute tinkering with the constants of nature would rule out life 
altogether, at least of the terrestrial variety. Nature thus seems to be possessed of some remarkable 
numerical coincidences. The constants of nature have, it appears, assumed precisely the values needed in 
order that complex self-organization can occur to the level of conscious individuals. Some scientists have 
been so struck by this contrivance, that they subscribe to something called the strong anthropic 
principle, which states that the laws of nature must be such as to admit the existence of consciousness in 
the universe at some stage. In other words, nature organizes itself in such a way as to make the universe 
self-aware. The strong anthropic principle can therefore be regarded as a sort of organizing meta-principle, 
because it arranges the laws themselves so as to permit complex organization to arise." (Davies, P.C.W., 
"The Cosmic Blueprint: Order and Complexity at the Edge of Chaos," [1987], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 
1995, p.163. Emphasis original) 

15/03/2007
"I believe that science is in principle able to explain the existence of complexity and organization at all levels, 
including human consciousness, though only by embracing the 'higher-level' laws. Such a belief might be 
regarded as denying a god, or a purpose in this wonderful creative universe we inhabit. I do not see it that 
way. The very fact that the universe is creative, and that the laws have permitted complex structures to 
emerge and develop to the point of consciousness - in other words, that the universe has organized its own 
self-awareness - is for me powerful evidence that there is 'something going on' behind it all. The impression 
of design is overwhelming. Science may explain all the processes whereby the universe evolves its own 
destiny, but that still leaves room for there to be a meaning behind existence." (Davies, P.C.W., "The Cosmic 
Blueprint: Order and Complexity at the Edge of Chaos," [1987], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1995, p.203. 
Emphasis original)

15/03/2007
"Those who would appeal to holism must distinguish between two claims. The first is the statement that as 
matter and energy reach higher, more complex, states so new qualities emerge that can never be embraced 
by a lower-level description. Often cited are life and consciousness, which are simply meaningless at the 
level of, say, atoms. Examples of this sort seem to be, quite simply, incontrovertible facts of existence. 
Holism in this form can only be rejected by denying the reality of the higher-level qualities, e.g. by claiming 
that consciousness does not really exist, or by denying the meaningfulness of higher-level concepts, such 
as a biological organism.Since I believe that it is the job of science to explain the world as it appears to us, 
and since this world includes such entities as bacteria, dogs and humans, with their own distinctive 
properties, it seems to me at best evasive, at worst fraudulent, to claim that these properties are explained by 
merely defining them away." (Davies, P.C.W., "The Cosmic Blueprint: Order and Complexity at the Edge of 
Chaos," [1987], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1995, pp.198-199. Emphasis original)

15/03/2007
"Strong organizing principles - additional laws of physics that refer to the cooperative, collective properties 
of complex systems, and which cannot be derived from the underlying existing physical laws - remain a 
challenging but speculative idea. Mysteries such as the origin of life and the progressive nature of 
evolution encourage the feeling that there are additional principles at work which somehow make it `easier' 
for systems to discover complex organized states. But the reductionist methodology of most scientific 
investigations makes it likely that such principles, if they exist, risk being overlooked in current research."
(Davies, P.C.W., "The Cosmic Blueprint: Order and Complexity at the Edge of Chaos," [1987], Penguin: 
London, Reprinted, 1995, p.199)

15/03/2007
"The emerging picture of cosmological development is altogether less gloomy. Creation is not 
instantaneous; it is an ongoing process. The universe has a life history. Instead of sliding into 
featurelessness, it rises out of featurelessness, growing rather than dying, developing new structures, 
processes and potentialities all the time, unfolding like a flower. The flower analogy suggests the idea of a 
blueprint - a pre-existing plan or project which the universe is realizing as it develops. This is Aristotle's 
ancient teleological picture of the cosmos. ... In this more canalized picture, matter and energy have innate 
self-organizing tendencies that bring into being new structures and systems with unusual efficiency. Again 
and again we have seen examples of how organized behaviour has emerged unexpectedly and 
spontaneously from unpromising beginnings. In physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, biology, 
computing - indeed, in every branch of science - the same propensity for self-organization is apparent." 
(Davies, P.C.W., "The Cosmic Blueprint: Order and Complexity at the Edge of Chaos," [1987], Penguin: 
London, Reprinted, 1995, p.200. Emphasis original)

15/03/2007
"The latter philosophy has been called `predestinist' by the biologist Robert Shapiro, because it assumes 
that the present form and arrangement of things is an inevitable outcome of the operation of the laws of 
nature. I suspect he uses the term pejoratively, and I dislike the mystical flavour it conveys. I prefer the word 
predisposition. Who are the predestinists? Generally speaking, they are those who are not prepared to 
accept that certain key features of the world are simply `accidents' or quirks of nature. Thus, the existence of 
living organisms does not surprise a predestinist, who believes that the laws of nature are such that matter 
will inevitably be led along the road of increasing complexity towards life. In the same vein, the existence of 
intelligence and conscious beings is also regarded as part of a natural progression that is somehow built 
into the laws. Nor is it a surprise to a predestinist that life arose on Earth such a short period of time 
(geologically speaking) after our planet became habitable. It would do so on any other suitable planet. The 
ambitious programme to search for intelligent life in space, so aptly popularized by Carl Sagan, has a strong 
predestinist flavour. Predestiny - or predisposition - must not be confused with predeterminism. It is entirely 
possible that the properties of matter are such that it does indeed have a propensity to self-organize as far 
as life, given the right conditions. This is not to say, however, that any particular life form is inevitable. In 
other words, predeterminism (of the old Newtonian sort) held that everything in detail was laid down from 
time immemorial. Predestiny merely says that nature has a predisposition to progress along the general lines 
it has. It therefore leaves open the essential unknowability of the future, the possibility for real creativity 
and endless novelty. In particular it leaves room for human free will. ... There is also a strong element of 
predestiny, or predisposition, in the recent work on the so-called anthropic principle. Here the emphasis lies 
not with additional laws or organizing principles, but with the constants of physics. ... the values adopted 
by these constants are peculiarly felicitous for the eventual emergence of complex structures, and especially 
living organisms." (Davies, P.C.W., "The Cosmic Blueprint: Order and Complexity at the Edge of Chaos," 
[1987], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1995, pp.200-201. Emphasis original)

15/03/2007
"If one accepts predisposition in nature, what does that have to say about meaning and purpose in the 
universe? Many people will find in the predestinist position support for a belief that there is indeed a cosmic 
blueprint, that the present nature of things, including the existence of human beings, and maybe even each 
particular human being, is part of a preconceived plan designed by an all-powerful deity. The purpose of the 
plan and the nature of the end state will obviously remain a matter of personal preference. Others find this 
idea as unappealing as determinism. A plan that rigidly legislates the detailed course of human and 
nonhuman destiny seems to them a pointless charade. If the end state is part of the design, they ask, why 
bother with the construction phase at all? An all-powerful deity would be able to simply create the finished 
product at the outset. A third point of view is that there is no detailed blueprint, only a set of laws with an 
inbuilt facility for making interesting things happen. The universe is then free to create itself as it goes 
along. The general pattern of development is 'predestined', but the details are not. Thus, the existence of 
intelligent life at some stage is inevitable; it is, so to speak, written into the laws of nature. But man as such 
is far from preordained." (Davies, P.C.W., "The Cosmic Blueprint: Order and Complexity at the Edge of 
Chaos," [1987], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1995, p.202)

15/03/2007
"The question remains, however: How or why were the laws and the initial state of the universe chosen? ... 
According to the general theory of relativity, there must have been a state of infinite density in the past, the 
big bang, which would have been an effective beginning of time. Similarly, if the whole universe recollapsed, 
there must be another state of infinite density in the future, the big crunch, which would be an end of time. 
Even if the whole universe did not recollapse, there would be singularities in any localized regions that 
collapsed to form black holes. These singularities would be an end of time for anyone who fell into the black 
hole. At the big bang and other singularities, all the laws would have broken down, so God would still have 
had complete freedom to choose what happened and how the universe began." (Hawking, S.W., "A Brief 
History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes," [1988], Bantam: London, Reprinted, 1991, pp.183-184)

15/03/2007
"When we combine quantum mechanics with general relativity, there seems to be a new possibility that did 
not arise before: that space and time together might form a finite four-dimensional space without 
singularities or boundaries like the surface of the earth but with more dimensions. It seems that this idea 
could explain many of the observed features of the universe, such as its large-scale uniformity and also the 
smaller-scale departures from homogeneity, like galaxies-, stars,- and even human beings. It could even 
account for the arrow of time that we observe. But if the universe is completely self-contained, with no 
singularities or boundaries, and completely described by a unified theory, that has profound implications for 
the role of God as Creator. Einstein once asked the question: "How much choice did God have in 
constructing the universe?" If the no boundary proposal is correct, he had no freedom at all to choose initial 
conditions. He would, of course, still have had the freedom to choose the laws that the universe obeyed. 
This, however, may not really have been all that much of a choice; there may well be only one, or a small 
number, of complete unified theories, such as the heterotic string theory, that are self-consistent and allow 
the existence of structures as complicated as human beings who can investigate the laws of the universe 
and ask about the nature of God." (Hawking, S.W., "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black 
Holes," [1988], Bantam: London, Reprinted, 1991, p.184)

15/03/2007
"However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by 
everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be 
able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the 
answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we would know the mind of God." 
(Hawking, S.W., "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes," [1988], Bantam: London, 
Reprinted, 1991, p.185)

16/03/2007
"To avoid the ludicrous, we must write: ... ---> ????? ---> ???? ---> ??? ---> ??-? ---> man ---> ... The dilemma 
of religion is that the sequence is meaningless unless we attach explicit significance to at least one of its 
members (to the left of man) and yet attempts to do so have always led in the past to absurdities. The 
position of most scientists can, we think, be said to accord with one or other of the following three points of 
view: (1) there is no such sequence; (2) the correct sequence is the simplistic one, God-man; (3) there is such 
a sequence, but since we know nothing about it there is no point in discussing it. Our opinion is that all of 
these are wrong. The correct position we think is: there is such a sequence, and among the question marks 
to the left of man there is a term in the sequence, an intelligence, which designed the biochemicals and gave 
rise to the origin of carbonaceous life. Still further to the left there is another still higher level of intelligence 
that controlled the coupling constants of physics. This may seem a grey form of religion, not at all suited to 
the wearing of gaudy clothes or to parades in the streets on saints' days, but it is far better to be in with a 
chance of being modestly right, instead of being faced by the absolute certainty of being overwhelmingly 
wrong. Where does the sequence going to the left stop? It doesn't. It goes on and on and on, with ever-
rising levels denoted by more and more question marks. But like a convergent mathematical sequence of 
functions it has an idealized limit, with the property that by going far enough to the left the terms differ by as 
little as one pleases from the idealized limit. It is this idealized limit that is God, and God is the universe: 
God = universe." (Hoyle, F. & Wickramasinghe, N.C., "Evolution from Space," [1981], Granada: London, 
Reprinted, 1983, p.158. Emphasis original)

17/03/2007
"Bitter experience has taught us that fundamentalist religion, which in its aggressive form is one of the 
unmitigated evils of the world, cannot be quickly replaced by benign skepticism and a purely humanistic 
world view, even among educated and well-meaning people .... Liberal theology can serve as a buffer." 
(Wilson, E.O., "The Relation of Science to Theology," Zygon, Vol. 15, No. 4, September/December 1980, 
pp.425-434. In Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of 
Evolution," Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, pp.147-148)

17/03/2007
"As were many persons in Alabama, I was a born-again Christian. When I was fifteen, I entered the 
Southern Baptist Church with great fervor and interest in the fundamentalist religion; I left at seventeen 
when I got to the University of Alabama and heard about evolutionary theory." (Wilson, E.O., "Toward a 
Humanistic Biology," The Humanist, Vol. 42, September/October 1982, pp. 38-41, 56-58, p.40. In Morris, 
H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," Creation-Life 
Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.150)

17/03/2007
"In addition to being logically flawed, neo-Darwinism has unfortunate psychological consequences. Yet it is 
being taught as `gospel truth'; the lip service being paid to science's fallibility does little to lessen neo-
Darwinism's impact. The upshot is that the civil liberties of those who disagree with the theory are being 
compromised. Of this situation the ACLU and its backers seem to have little inkling. Before I proceed to the 
central issue, three short quotations will set out the psychological consequences of teaching neo-
Darwinism. First, `If anything characterizes `modernity,' it is loss of faith in transcendence' (Chronicle of 
Higher Education, January 9, 1978). Second, `There is no doubt that in developed societies education has 
contributed to the decline of religious belief' (Edward Norman, in Christianity and the World Order 
[Oxford University Press, 1976]). Third, one reason education undoes belief is its teaching of evolution; 
Darwin's own drift from orthodoxy to agnosticism was symptomatic. Martin Lings is probably right in saying 
that `more cases of loss of religious faith are to be traced to the theory of evolution ... than to anything 
else' (Studies in Comparative Religion, Winter 1970). The Civil Liberties Union's handling of the 
creationist case abets the historical drift these quotations point to with logic that runs roughly as follows: 
Major premise: Creationism is religion rather than science; therefore, according to the principle of separation 
of church and state, creationism may not be taught in public schools. Minor premise: The science which is 
and should be taught our children `must be explanatory [and] rely exclusively upon the workings of natural 
law' (ACLU's witness Michael Ruse, a Canadian philosopher of science, as quoted in Civil Liberties, 
February 1982). Unspoken conclusion: The only explanation for human existence that public schools may 
teach is a natural-law theory which precludes in principle, as we shall see, even the possibility of (a) purpose 
and (b) intervention in the workings of the observable universe. Restated to bring out its practical import, 
the ACLU position is that it is science's responsibility to explain things by natural laws. The alternative to 
such natural explanations is supernatural ones. Thus, insofar as religion involves the supernatural, church-
state separation requires that only irreligious explanations of human origins may be taught our children. 
Already we may be wondering if this is what our forebears intended by the First Amendment." (Smith, H.,
"Evolution and Evolutionism," Christian Century, July 7-14, 1982, p.755. Emphasis original)

17/03/2007
"Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most 
deliberate study and dispassionate judgement of which I am capable, that -the view which most naturalists 
entertain, and which I formerly entertained - namely, that each species has been independently created - is 
erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called 
the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as 
the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am 
convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification." (Darwin, C.R., 
"The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the 
Struggle for Life," First Edition, 1859, Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1985, p.69) 

17/03/2007
"Once again, Sam Harris put the point with percipient bluntness, taking the example of the Al-Qaida leader 
Osama bin Laden ... Why would anyone want to destroy the World Trade Center and everybody in it? To 
call bin Laden `evil' is to evade our responsibility to give a proper answer to such an important question. 
Why would anyone want to destroy the World Trade Center and everybody in it? To call bin Laden `evil' is 
to evade our responsibility to give a proper answer to such an important question. `The answer to this 
question is obvious - if only because it has been patiently articulated ad nauseam by bin Laden himself. The 
answer is that men like bin Laden actually believe what they say they believe. They believe in the literal 
truth of the Koran. Why did nineteen well-educated middle-class men trade their lives in this world for the 
privilege of killing thousands of our neighbors? Because they believed that they would go straight to 
paradise for doing so. It is rare to find the behavior of humans so fully and satisfactorily explained. Why 
have we been so reluctant to accept this explanation? [Harris, S., "The End of Faith," W.W. Norton & Co: 
New York, 2004, p.29]" (Dawkins, R., "The God Delusion," Bantam Press: London, 2006, pp.303-304. 
Emphasis original)

17/03/2007
"The respected journalist Muriel Gray, writing in the (Glasgow) Herald on 24 July 2005, made a similar 
point, in this case with reference to the London bombings. `Everyone is being blamed, from the obvious 
villainous duo of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, to the inaction of Muslim `communities'. But it has never 
been clearer that there is only one place to lay the blame and it has ever been thus. The cause of all this 
misery, mayhem, violence, terror and ignorance is of course religion itself, and if it seems ludicrous to have 
to state such an obvious reality, the fact is that the government and the media are doing a pretty good job of 
pretending that it isn't so.' Our Western politicians avoid mentioning the R word (religion), and instead 
characterize their battle as a war against `terror', as though terror were a kind of spirit or force, with a will and 
a mind of its own. Or they characterize terrorists as motivated by pure `evil'. But they are not motivated by 
evil. However misguided we may think them, they are motivated, like the Christian murderers of abortion 
doctors, by what they perceive to be righteousness, faithfully pursuing what their religion tells them. They 
are not psychotic; they are religious idealists who, by their own lights, are rational. They perceive their acts 
to be good, not because of some warped personal idiosyncrasy, and not because they have been possessed 
by Satan, but because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning 
faith." (Dawkins, R., "The God Delusion," Bantam Press: London, 2006, p.303. Emphasis original) 

17/03/2007
"Dawkins would, I think, protest that religious world views offer motivations for violence that are not 
paralleled elsewhere - for example, the thought of entering paradise after a suicidal attack. [Dawkins, "God 
Delusion," pp.303-304] Yet this conclusion is a little hasty and poorly argued. The God Delusion is to be 
seen as one of a number of books to emerge from the events now universally referred to as '9/11' - the 
suicide attacks on buildings in Washington and New York. For Dawkins, it is obvious that it is religious 
belief that leads to suicide bombings. It's a view that his less critical secular readers will applaud, provided 
they haven't read the empirical studies of why people are driven to suicide bombings in the first place. As 
Robert Pape showed in his definitive account of the motivations of such attacks, based on surveys of every 
suicide bombing since 1980, religious belief of any kind is neither necessary nor sufficient to create suicide 
bombers - despite Dawkins' breezy simplifications. [Pape, R.A., "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of 
Suicide Terrorism," Random House: New York, 2005] (Remember, the infamous `suicide vest' was invented 
by Tamil Tigers back in 1991.) Pape's evidence is that the fundamental motivation is political: the desire to 
force the withdrawal of foreign forces occupying land believed to belong to an oppressed people, who have 
seriously limited military resources at their disposal. This isn't what Dawkins will want to hear, but it is an 
important element in reflecting on how this phenomenon arose, and what might need to be done to end it." 
(McGrath, A.* & McGrath, J.C.*, "The Dawkins Delusion?," SPCK: London, 2007, pp.49-50. Emphasis original) 

17/03/2007
"ASK someone to sketch a personality profile of a typical suicide bomber and the chances are it would not 
come close to describing the four young men who, it seems, blew themselves up in London two weeks ago. 
Even from their friends and families the refrain has been, `I can't believe he would have done such a thing - 
not him.' And when you look at who they were, it is hard to believe. There was Mohammad Sidique Khan, 
father and teaching assistant, loved by the children he taught and well respected by his community; Hasib 
Hussain, the `nice lad' from a close-knit family; Shehzad Tanweer, the cricket-loving sports science 
graduate; and Germaine Lindsay, a young father described as `dead brainy' by a schoolmate. None of them 
had a criminal record, none was mentally ill, none was especially poor, and they were mostly well educated. 
All of them grew up in the UK. In short, they were not what you'd expect in a suicide bomber. Except you'd 
be wrong. Most suicide bombers anywhere in the world appear to be normal. Study after study has shown 
that suicide terrorists are better off than average for their community and better educated. They are also 
rarely suicidal in the pathological sense. Ariel Merari, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University who has traced 
the background of every suicide bomber in the Middle East since 1983, has found symptoms of mental 
illness or drug and alcohol abuse in very few. They don't have to be Islamic extremists either, or even 
radicalised by faith. True, the London bombers were all Muslims, as are the vast majority of suicide attackers 
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel. Yet many of the suicide bombers in Lebanon in the 1980s were from secular 
Christian backgrounds. And one of the modern pioneers of suicide terrorism, the Tamil Tigers, are secular 
Marxist-Leninists." (Bond, M., "Turning ordinary people into suicide bombers," New Scientist, 23 July 
2005) 

18/03/2007
"Colin Patterson ... is a senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum, in London. Dr. 
Patterson is the author of the book Evolution and is recognized as the world's leading 
paleoichthyologist. On November 5, 1981, Dr. Patterson delivered a speech before a group of experts on 
evolutionary theory at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Patterson dared to suggest to his 
colleagues that the scientific theory that he and they had devoted a lifetime to was mere speculation, 
without any significant evidence to back it up. Here's how Dr. Patterson explained his change of mind 
concerning the theory of evolution: `Last year I had a sudden realization. For over twenty years I had 
thought I was working on evolution in some way. one morning I woke up and something had happened 
in the night; and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not 
one thing I knew about it. That's quite a shock, to learn that one can be so misled so long.... So for the 
last few weeks I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people.... Can you 
tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?...All I got ... was 
silence.... The absence of answers seems to suggest that...evolution does not convey any knowledge, 
or, if so, I haven't yet heard it.... I think many people in this room would acknowledge that during the 
last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you have experienced a shift from evolution as 
knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that it's true of me and I think it is true of a good many of you 
here.... Evolution not only conveys no knowledge but seems somehow to convey antiknowledge.' 
[Patterson, C., "Evolutionism and Creationism," Speech delivered at the American Museum of Natural 
History, New York, NY, November 5, 1981]" (Rifkin, J., "Algeny," Viking Press: New York NY, 1983, 
p.113. Ellipses Rifkin's)

18/03/2007
"Is it really possible to believe that we are all wrong-that we have been living under a grand illusion no more 
real than Alice's Wonderland? Psychiatrist Karl Stern of the University of Montreal says it is quite possible 
indeed. As to the question of sanity vs. insanity, Stern asks us all to detach ourselves from our 
preconceived biases and consider the merits of the Darwinian argument. The; theory, says Stern, goes 
something like this: `At a certain moment of time, the temperature of the Earth was such that it became most 
favourable for the aggregation of carbon atoms and oxygen with the nitrogen-hydrogen combination, and 
that from random occurrences of large clusters molecules occurred which were most favourably structured 
for the coming about of life, and from that point it went on through vast stretches of time, until through 
processes of natural selection a being finally occurred which is capable of choosing love over hate and 
justice over injustice, of writing poetry like that of Dante, composing music like that of Mozart, and making 
drawings like those of Leonardo.' [Stern, K. "The Flight from Women," Farrar, Straus & Giroux: New York 
NY, 1965, p.290]. Stern's opinion of the evolutionary theory is not likely to win many friends within the 
scientific community. Speaking strictly from the point of view of a psychiatrist, he argues: `Such a view of 
cosmogenesis is crazy. And I do not at all mean crazy in the sense of slangy invective but rather in the 
technical meaning of psychotic. Indeed such a view has much in common with certain aspects of 
schizophrenic thinking.' [Ibid.] (Rifkin, J., "Algeny," Viking Press: New York NY, 1983, pp.113-114)

18/03/2007
"A rallying of the ranks would definitely be needed if creationists argued that evolution was a religion. 
Constitutional scholars do not scoff at the issue, one expert at Harvard recently saying that it is `far from a 
frivolous argument.' (Broad, W.J., "Creationists Limit Scope of Evolution Case," Science, Vol. 211, March 
20, 1981, pp.1331-1332. In Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled 
Waters of Evolution," Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, pp.131-132)

18/03/2007
"The creationists have portrayed Darwinism as a cornerstone of `secular humanism,' a term they use to 
describe the belief that man, not God, is the source of right and wrong. They blame humanist teaching for all 
sorts of modern ills-from juvenile delinquency to the high rate of abortions-and want to replace it with the 
teaching of Christian morality .... As the creationists' goals become clear, many scientists, realizing that they 
have been secular humanists all along, are beginning to marshal their forces .... Evolutionists are beginning 
to realize that, for the first time in half a century, they may have to defend themselves in court." (Gurin, J., 
"The Creationist Revival," The Sciences, New York Academy of Science, Vol. 23, April 1981, p.34. In 
Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," 
Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.132)

18/03/2007
"I am interested in the evolution of complex biochemical systems. Many molecular systems in the cell 
require multiple components in order to function. I have dubbed such systems "irreducibly complex." (Behe 
1996b, 2001) Irreducibly complex systems appear to me to be very difficult to explain within a traditional 
gradualistic Darwinian framework, because the function of the system only appears when the system is 
essentially complete. (An illustration of the concept of irreducible complexity is the mousetrap pictured on 
this page, which needs all its parts to work.) Despite much general progress by science in the past half 
century in understanding how complex biochemical systems work, little progress has been made in 
explaining how such systems arise in a Darwinian fashion. I have proposed that a better explanation is that 
such systems were deliberately designed by an intelligent agent. (Behe 1996b, 2001) The proposal of 
intelligent design has proven to be extremely controversial, both in the scientific community (for example, 
see Brumfel, G. 2005. Nature 434:1062-1065) and in the general news media. (Behe 1996a, 1999, 2005) My 
current work involves: 1) educating various groups to overcome mistaken ideas of what exactly intelligent 
design entails, so that they can make informed judgments on whether they think it is a plausible hypothesis; 
and 2) trying to establish a reasoned way to determine a rough dividing line between design and non-design 
in biochemical systems." (Behe, M.J.*, "Michael J. Behe, Ph.D. Professor Biochemistry, Department of 
Biological Sciences, Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA) 

18/03/2007
"In the past half-century biology has made astonishing progress in understanding the molecular and cellular 
basis of life. In light of this progress it is fair to ask whether Darwin's mechanism of natural selection acting 
on random variation appears to be a good explanation for the origin of all, or just some, of the molecular 
systems science has discovered. In Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Behe 
1996) I argued that some biochemical systems, such as the blood clotting cascade or bacterial flagellum, are 
resistant to Darwinian explanation because they are irreducibly complex. I defined irreducible complexity as a 
single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic 
function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. 
(1996, 39) The difficulty for Darwinian theory is that an irreducibly complex system cannot be produced 
directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same 
mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an 
irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. (1996, 39) To illustrate the 
concept with a familiar example for a general readership, I pointed to a simple mechanical mousetrap, 
composed of several parts such as the base, hammer, spring and so on, and noted that the absence of any 
of the parts destroys the mouse-catching ability of the trap. Darwin's vision of natural selection gradually 
improving function in `numerous, successive, slight modifications'(Darwin 1859) appears not to fit well with 
such systems. I went on to argue that, since intelligent agents are the only entities known to be able to 
construct irreducibly complex systems, the biochemical systems are better explained as the result of 
deliberate intelligent design." (Behe, M.J.*, "Self-Organization and Irreducibly Complex Systems: A Reply to 
Shanks and Joplin," Philosophy of Science, Vol. 67, No. 1, March 2000), pp. 55-162)

19/03/2007
"The American public is almost entirely divided between those who believe that God created man at one 
time in the last 10,000 years and those who believe in evolution or an evolutionary process involving God. 
Of the participants in the poll, 44 percent, nearly a quarter of whom were college graduates, said they 
accepted the statement that `God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 
10,000 years.' Nine percent agreed with the statement: `Man has developed over millions of years from less-
advanced forms of life. God had no part in this process.' Thirty-eight percent said they agreed with the 
suggestion that `Man has developed over millions of years from less-advanced forms of life, but God guided 
this process, including, man's creation.' Nine percent of those interviewed simply said they did not know." 
(Gallup Poll, "44% Believe God Created Mankind 10,000 Years Ago," San Diego Union, August 30, 1982. 
In Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," 
Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.164) 

19/03/2007
"Darwin returned to England at 27 in a robust state of mind and body. It was not until a year later, when he 
began to write in his evolutionary notebooks, that he first felt and commented on his illnesses, forcing 
himself into a lifetime of severe, repugnant, and sometimes ludicrous disability. [Stone, I., "The Death of 
Darwin," in Cherfas, J., ed., "Darwin up to Date," New Scientist Guide, IPC Magazines, 1982, p. 69]" 
Morris, H.M.*, "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters of Evolution," 
Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.169) 

19/03/2007
"The biographer Irving Stone, who is an ardent evolutionary humanist and profound admirer of Charles 
Darwin, attributed all his troubles to the intense conflicts generated by his evolutionary theory, blaming 
opposition of the Christians and creationists of the day. Stone does acknowledge, however, that Darwin 
hated to `think about the demon of evolution he had released upon an unwilling and unprepared world' 
[Stone, I., "The Death of Darwin," in Cherfas, J., ed., "Darwin up to Date," New Scientist Guide, IPC 
Magazines, 1982, p. 69]" (Morris, H.M., "Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to The Troubled Waters 
of Evolution," Creation-Life Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, p.170)

19/03/2007
"Certain patterns must be completely templeted The first principle of templeting reminds us that all 
patterns can be constructed from a completely explicit blueprint, even when such detailed specifications are 
not actually necessary, and the nonparsimonious behaviour of Nature demonstrates that such 
overdetermined explanations can be good explanations for certain natural phenomena. The second principle 
of templeting points out that a complete specification is at times an inescapable necessity." (Katz, M.J., 
"Templets and the Explanation of Complex Patterns," Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1986, 
p.55. Emphasis original)

19/03/2007
"DNA: the archetypic templet The replication, the transcription, and the translation of DNA provide 
dramatic examples of the need for maximal templets in assembling certain complex natural patterns. DNA 
molecules are long strings of subunits, and these subunits (nucleotides) come in four different varieties: 
adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. The four nucleotides are topologically naive - they can be strung 
together in any combination and the almost limitless variety of DNA sequences is directly responsible for 
the almost limitless variety of organisms. Encoded in their nucleotide sequences, DNA molecules contain 
much of the heritable information of organisms. There are three major steps in the expression of the encoded 
information, and each step is carried out by a particular set of enzymes. First, there is replication, in which a 
complementary DNA copy is made from a precursor DNA strand; the major enzymes at work in replication 
are DNA polymerases. Second, there is transcription, in which a complementary RNA copy is made from a 
precursor DNA strand; the major enzymes at work in transcription are RNA polymerases. Third, there is 
translation, in which a protein molecule is made from a precursor RNA strand. Proteins are assembled on 
tiny intracellular machines called ribosomes, under the guidance of a host of special enzymes. All three 
decoding processes rely on maximal templets, and all three produce completely templeted patterns. In 
replication, for instance, the two complementary DNA molecules are unwound from their double helical coil 
and new complementary chains are constructed, nucleotide by nucleotide. Each adenine in the preexisting 
chain templets the addition of a thymine in the new chain, each thymine templets the addition of an adenine, 
each cytosine templets the addition of a guanine, and each guanine templets the addition of a cytosine. The 
new chain becomes an exact complement, a `negative', of the templet chain and it becomes an exact copy, a 
`positive', of the complement to the templet chain. The `universal laws' for nucleotide assembly allow 
sequences to be built in any order and natural DNA patterns are archetypic templeted patterns; templeting 
is also an important mechanism in the fabrication of many other biological patterns, from molecules to 
organelles to teeth to spots. (Katz, M.J., "Templets and the Explanation of Complex Patterns," Cambridge 
University Press: Cambridge UK, 1986, pp.56-57. Emphasis original)

19/03/2007
"Other templets in the real world Templets pervade the real world, and there are many examples of maximal 
templets - templets specifying the entire topology of a pattern. Large illuminated signs composed of 
hundreds of light bulbs forming designs or advising us to EAT AT JOE'S are completely templeted; the 
bulbs can potentially be arranged into any order, and the particular pattern of interest is built on a specific, 
completely prespecified templet of sockets. Hooked rugs are templeted; the strands of yarn can potentially 
be woven into any imaginable design, and the actual design to be stitched is prespecified by an explicit 
drawing on the background canvas. The letters of a crossword puzzle can, in theory, be arranged in almost 
any order, but each particular crossword puzzle is templeted by a set of blank squares and by the 
accompanying word clues. The notes of a piece of music can be juxtaposed in any possible order, but the 
detailed pattern of J.S. Bach's Well-tempered Clavier is completely prespecified in the templet of the 
musical score. Business forms comprise a set of organized, labelled blanks, such as: `Name , Date ____,' etc. 
The words that fill these forms can potentially be arranged in any order on a blank page, but the particular 
form at hand templets the words into one particular pattern." (Katz, M.J., "Templets and the Explanation of 
Complex Patterns," Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1986, p.57. Emphasis original)

19/03/2007
"selection pressure a measure of the amount of relative reproductive disadvantage of one phenotype 
over another of the same species living together in the same area. Such pressure is usually represented by 
the selection coefficients which can have a value from zero (no selective disadvantage, maximum FITNESS) 
to 1.0 (complete selective disadvantage leading to actual death or GENETIC DEATH, minimum fitness)." 
(Hale, W.G., Margham, J.P. & Saunders, V.A., "Collins Dictionary of Biology," [1988], HarperCollins: 
Glasgow UK, Second Edition, 1995, pp.556-557. Emphasis original) 

19/03/2007
"selection pressure The extent to which organisms possessing a particular characteristic are either 
eliminated or favoured by environmental demands. It indicates the degree of intensity of natural selection".
(Martin, E. & Hine, R.S., eds., "Oxford Dictionary of Biology," [1985], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, 
Fourth Edition, 2000, p.536. Emphasis original)

19/03/2007
"selection pressure Pressure exerted by the environment, through natural selection, on evolution. Thus 
weak selection pressures result in little evolutionary change and vice versa." (Allaby, M., ed., "A Dictionary of 
Zoology," [1991], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, Second Edition, 1999, p.486). Emphasis original)

19/03/2007
"Constraints upon phenotype from the environment, which produce this differential gene transmission, are 
termed ' selection pressure '. It is commonly assumed that all regular components of a species' phenotype 
have been favoured by natural selection, but evolution may sometimes result from causes other than natural 
selection (see GENETIC DRIFT)." (Thain, M. & Hickman, M., "The Penguin Dictionary of Biology," [1951], 
Penguin: London, Tenth Edition, 2000, p.438. Emphasis original) 

20/03/2007
"Trust the evolutionary process. It's all going to work out all right." (Leary, T., "The Politics of Ecstasy," 
Ronin: Berkeley CA , 1998., 1968, p. 361. In Ankerberg, J.* & Weldon, J.*, "Darwin's Leap Of Faith," 
Harvest House Publishers: Eugene OR, 1998, p.17) 

20/03/2007
"THE THEORY of evolution has recently been the focus of a great deal of controversy. The most publicised 
challenge came from scientists who are fundamentalist Christians, and who therefore reject the idea of 
evolution altogether. Yet a second debate is also under way. In this case, the argument is not about 
 whether evolution has occurred-both sides are convinced that it has-but about how . Does the modern 
"synthetic theory" or "neo-Darwinism" provide an adequate explanation of evolution, or is something more 
required?" (Ho, Mae-Wan, Saunders, P. & Fox, S.W., "A New Paradigm of Evolution," New Scientist , Vol. 
109, 27 February 1986, pp.41-43, p.41. Emphasis original)

20/03/2007
"The synthetic theory states that evolution is brought about by the natural selection of random variations. 
Of crucial importance to the theory is the word `random', which is taken to imply not just that variations do 
not tend to occur in useful directions but also that little if anything can be said about them. Within neo-
Darwinism, natural selection is the only `direction-giving' or `creative' force in evolution. Post neo-Darwinist 
evolutionary theory, however, focuses on natural process. At every level, from the prebiotic to the 
organismic, variations arise not at random but in ways that are largely determined by the laws of physics 
and chemistry. While the doyen of contemporary neo-Darwinists, Ernst Mayr, may rejoice in what he 
perceives to be `the final emancipation of biology from the physical sciences' during the past 25 years, those 
within the new paradigm recognise that there is no question of enslavement or emancipation. As physicists 
and chemists learn to deal with increasingly complex systems and to analyse phenomena such as self-
organisation, the physical and biological sciences are-or should be-coming together on equal terms. The 
new paradigm seeks to exploit this development to the full. Neo-Darwinism is doing its utmost to ignore it." 
(Ho, Mae-Wan, Saunders, P. & Fox, S.W., "A New Paradigm of Evolution," New Scientist , Vol. 109, 27 
February 1986, pp.41-43, p.41)

20/03/2007
"The new, larger view has far-reaching consequences, not just for the theory of evolution itself, but also for 
the sorts of research that are considered relevant to it. We illustrate this by describing work done in three 
areas: prebiotic evolution, biological form and heredity. In each case both the approach and the 
understanding obtained are fundamentally different for those offered within the neo-Darwinist paradigm. A 
primary question for evolutionary theory is how life itself emerged. From the scientific point of view, the 
simplest unit of life is a particular microorganisation of matter that exhibits metabolism, reproduction and 
other processes. But how did such organisation arise? For a long time most people believed that life arose 
through divine action. Louis Pasteur raised the possibility of a scientific answer when he asked in 1864, `Can 
matter organise itself?' The neo-Darwinists' reply is that it cannot, except through natural selection, and so 
they tend to assume that the first organic matrix was random. The particular conjunctions of atoms that are 
necessary for life seem to be exceedingly improbable, similar to the chance that a monkey at a typewriter will 
produce the Origin of Species . Neo-Darwinists, therefore, need a kind of explanation not found elsewhere 
in science. They invoke natural selection as the only possible means of creating information, of introducing 
the determinism that characterises the process of inheritance in organisms. The genetic code is considered 
to be mainly the result of accidents "frozen" by natural selection. In order to place DNA and natural 
selection at the very beginning of evolution, some are even willing to leave the Earth and suppose that life 
originated in a distant galaxy. Neo-Darwinists have difficulty with the emergence of life partly because their 
theory of evolution is based firmly on genes. Hence they find it impossible to conceive of life except in terms 
of self-replicating nucleic acids. This turn of mind leads them to suppose that the first RNAs, which they 
believe arose by chance, must have acted as enzymes themselves and also coded for the enzymes that 
enabled them to reproduce. The RNAs that replicated most successfully would, they argue, have come to 
predominate. By itself, however, competitive replication of RNAs would result in nothing but `selfish 
replicators' like the `selfish DNA' that occurs m all genomes. It would not bring about cellular functions." 
(Ho, Mae-Wan, Saunders, P. & Fox, S.W., "A New Paradigm of Evolution," New Scientist , Vol. 109, 27 
February 1986, pp.41-43, p.41). 

20/03/2007
"Darwin was struck by a number of facts observed during his voyage which seemed at odds with the view 
that each species had been individually created. The organic life and fossils he studied so intensively and 
collected with such assiduity seemed littered with clues, odd similarities and juxtapositions. Why did closely 
allied animals replace one another as one travelled southwards? Why did extinct fossil species show such a 
close structural relation to living animals? Above all, why, in the Galapagos islands did the finches and the 
giant tortoises show slight variations from island to island, so that the local inhabitants could always tell 
from which island a tortoise had come? The more closely different species resembled each other in adjacent 
areas or in different epochs in the same-area, the more likely did it seem that those species might share a 
common ancestor, and the less plausible seemed the hypothesis of a separate creation of each separate 
species." (Burrow, J.W., "Editor's Introduction," in Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of 
Natural Selection," First Edition, 1859, Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1985, p.27)

20/03/2007
"The immediate furore created by the publication of The Origin was not due simply to the fact that it 
contradicted the literal word of the first chapter of Genesis. Christians had already begun to reconcile 
themselves to the new geology, to the doctrine of `successive creations' and to interpreting the seven days 
allotted to the Creation in a metaphorical sense. Religious doubt, that characteristic Victorian malaise, with 
its crop of social and spiritual disasters, of `dangerous' books and clerical resignations, had become almost a 
commonplace of the intellectual scene since the first impact of the new, German historical criticism of the 
Bible in the eighteen-forties. It reached a climax within a few months of the appearance of The Origin with 
the publication of Essays and Reviews , which became, in the short run, even more notorious than The 
Origin , and which, though owing nothing to Darwin, showed how far some liberal-minded churchmen were 
prepared to go in repudiating an orthodox literalism." (Burrow, J.W., "Editor's Introduction," in Darwin, C.R., 
"The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," First Edition, 1859, Penguin: London, Reprinted, 
1985, p.40)

20/03/2007
"The Origin owed its notoriety primarily to two things. First, it destroyed at one blow the central tradition 
of recent English Protestant apologetics - Natural Theology. All the beautiful and ingenious contrivances in 
nature which Rational Christianity had explained as evidence of the benevolent design of an Almighty 
Clockmaker, Darwin's theory explained by the operation of natural selection-. the struggle for life resulting in 
the preservation of certain random variations in offspring. A number of readers and reviewers found that 
they could tolerate evolution provided it was interpreted as ultimately purposive, but could not stomach 
natural selection. This was a sophisticated reaction, however, and at this level the reviews were by no 
means universally hostile." (Burrow, J.W., "Editor's Introduction," in Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species 
by Means of Natural Selection," First Edition, 1859, Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1985, pp.40-41)

20/03/2007
"At a lower level of sophistication hostility was more nakedly theological, ranging from the crude 
waggishness of Punch to the pious indignation of the Methodist Recorder . At this level too, Darwin 
became specially notorious for something he had deliberately not said in The Origin , though his argument 
undoubtedly implied it: that man was first cousin to - not descended from, though this was an error often 
made - the apes. Darwin had written in his notebook: `Animals may partake from our common origin in one 
ancestor ... we may be all netted together'. Darwin only completed this aspect of his theory in later books, 
 The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), but the 
public seized on it at once - probably because the issue had already been fully aired at the time of the 
publication of The Vestiges of Creation . Darwinism became `the monkey theory', even though monkeys 
are not particularly singled out in The Origin . This issue was also the crux of the famous incident at the 
Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860 between Bishop Wilberforce and T. H. Huxley, when 
Huxley made the celebrated retort to the Bishop's sarcastic enquiry whether he claimed descent from an ape 
on his father's or his mother's side, that he would rather have an ape for a grandfather than a man who 
misused his gifts to obscure important scientific discussion by rhetoric and religious prejudice." (Burrow, 
J.W., "Editor's Introduction," in Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," First 
Edition, 1859, Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1985, p.41)

20/03/2007
"The controversy over The Origin , as the Saturday Review remarked, 'passed beyond the bounds of 
the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street', but ultimately the fate of the theory 
depended on its reception by scientific opinion, the only kind of reception Darwin really cared about. Here 
the attack was led by Sir Richard Owen, England's leading anatomist, who had coached Wilberforce and had 
himself written a fiercely unfair and misleading criticism of The Origin in the Edinburgh Review . The 
tactics of those reviewers who treated The Origin with a pretence of scientific objectivity were to attack 
things Darwin had not said, wheeling out old arguments against Lamarck and The Vestiges , and to claim, 
because Darwin could not actually point to species changing in consequence of natural selection, that The 
Origin was `mere speculation' or `mere hypothesis'. Darwin was accused of transgressing sound Baconian 
principles of induction. This latter argument was a frequently recurring one in nineteenth-century English 
controversy; it is on the whole a safe prediction that when, in the polemical writing of the period, one finds 
an invocation of Bacon, something particularly obscurantist and unhelpful is about to follow. Nevertheless, 
the hope of a fair hearing among the younger scientists which Darwin expressed at the end of The Origin 
proved as well-founded as his despair of their seniors. Within a decade Darwinism had become scientifically 
respectable, as the younger biologists, and a few of the more established ones, in Germany and America as 
well as Britain, adopted Darwin's theory." (Burrow, J.W., "Editor's Introduction," in Darwin, C.R., "The 
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," First Edition, 1859, Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1985, 
p.42)

20/03/2007
"Among the general public Darwinism also made headway. To some the implications of the theory seemed 
negative and desolating. The whole earth no longer proclaimed the glory of the Lord. Paradoxically, in 
revealing the closeness of man's links with the rest. of creation, Darwin seemed to have cut the emotional 
ties between man and nature. The world was not, apparently, the rational design in every detail of a 
superintending Being, whose purposes, though infinitely beyond man's full comprehension, were in some 
sense akin to the purposes and feelings of man himself - at least they were purposes. Nature, according to 
Darwin, was the product of blind chance and a blind struggle, and man a lonely, intelligent mutation, 
scrambling with the brutes for his sustenance. To some the sense of loss was irrevocable; it was as if an 
umbilical cord had been cut, and men found themselves part of `a cold passionless universe'. Unlike nature 
as conceived by the Greeks, the Enlightenment and the rationalist Christian tradition, Darwinian nature held 
no clues for human conduct, no answers to human moral dilemmas. It seems probable that the popularity, in 
this century, of ethical doctrines, both of the existentialist and of the more typically Anglo-Saxon varieties, 
which regard goodness as created by human choice and commitment rather than as an innate property of 
things, owes a good deal to the underlying assumption of the purposelessness of the physical world. 
Philosophers may protest that the repudiation of naturalistic ethics rests on logical, not on scientific 
grounds, but when one is talking of the vulgarization of philosophical doctrines logic may not be the 
decisive factor. Hume demolished the logical basis of the argument from design, the core of Natural 
Theology, in his Dialogues on Natural Religion , but it was Darwin's provision of an alternative theory 
which caused such a widespread intellectual crisis." (Burrow, J.W., "Editor's Introduction," in Darwin, C.R., 
"The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," First Edition, 1859, Penguin: London, Reprinted, 
1985, p.43) 

20/03/2007
"Generations of biology students may have been misled by a famous set of drawings of embryos published 123 
years ago by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel. They show vertebrate embryos of different animals passing 
through identical stages of development. But the impression they give, that the embryos are exactly alike, is 
wrong, says Michael Richardson, an embryologist at St. George's Hospital Medical School in London. He hopes 
once and for all to discredit Haeckel's work, first found to be flawed more than a century ago. Richardson had 
long held doubts about - Haeckel's drawings because they didn't square with his understanding of the rates at 
which fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals develop their distinctive features. So he and his colleagues did their own 
comparative study, reexamining and photographing embryos roughly matched by species and age with those 
Haeckel drew. Lo and behold, the embryos `often looked surprisingly different,' Richardson reports in the August 
issue of Anatomy and Embryology . [Richardson, M.K., et al., "There Is No Highly Conserved Embryonic Stage 
in the Vertebrates," Anatomy and Embryology , Vol. 196, No. 2, August 1997, pp.91-106] One striking deviation 
from reality, Richardson says, appears in Haeckel's drawings of embryos in the `tail bud' stage, which he depicted 
as identical for different species. While real embryos do share many features at this stage, such as a tail and 
identifiable body segments, they also have key differences. Human embryos, for example, have tiny protrusions 
called limb buds, says Richardson, particularly if they have developed to the point of having as many body 
segments as Haeckel gives them. But Haeckel did not include limb buds. And in his drawings, the chick embryo 
eye is blackened, like a mammal's, `but it wouldn't be pigmented this early,' Richardson says. He adds that 
Haeckel has given the bird embryo a curl in the tail that resembles a human's. Not only did Haeckel add or omit 
features, Richardson and his colleagues report, but he also fudged the scale to exaggerate similarities among 
species, even when there were 10-fold differences in size. Haeckel further blurred differences by neglecting to 
name the species in most cases, as if one representative was accurate for an entire group of animals. In reality, 
Richardson and his colleagues note, even closely related embryos such as those of fish vary quite a bit in their 
appearance and developmental pathway. `It looks like it's turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in 
biology,' Richardson concludes." (Pennisi, E., "Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered," Science , Vol. 277, 5 
September 1997, p.1435)

21/03/2007
"Embryos of different species of vertebrate share a common organisation and often look similar. Adult 
differences among species become more apparent through divergence at later stages. Some authors have 
suggested that members of most or all vertebrate clades pass through a virtually identical, conserved stage. 
This idea was promoted by Haeckel, and has recently been revived in the context of claims regarding the 
universality of developmental mechanisms. Thus embryonic resemblance at the tailbud stage has been 
linked with a conserved pattern of developmental gene expression - the zootype. Haeckel's drawings of the 
external morphology of various vertebrates remain the most comprehensive comparative data purporting to 
show a conserved stage. However, their accuracy has been questioned and only a narrow range of species 
was illustrated. In view of the current widespread interest in evolutionary developmental biology, and 
especially in the conservation of developmental mechanisms, re-examination of the extent of variation in 
vertebrate embryos is long overdue. We present here the first review of the external morphology of tailbud 
embryos, illustrated with original specimens from a wide range of vertebrate groups. We find that embryos 
at the tailbud stage - thought to correspond to a conserved stage - show variations in form due to allometry, 
heterochrony, and differences in body plan and somite number. These variations foreshadow important 
differences in adult body form. Contrary to recent claims that all vertebrate embryos pass through a stage 
when they are the same size, we find a greater than 10-fold variation in greatest length at the tailbud stage. 
Our survey seriously undermines the credibility of Haeckel's drawings, which depict not a conserved stage 
for vertebrates, but a stylised amniote embryo. In fact, the taxonomic level of greatest resemblance among 
vertebrate embryos is below the subphylum. The wide variation in morphology among vertebrate embryos is 
difficult to reconcile with the idea of a phyogenetically-conserved tailbud stage, and suggests that at least 
some developmental mechanisms are not highly constrained by the zootype. Our study also highlights the 
dangers of drawing general conclusions about vertebrate development from studies of gene expression in a 
small number of laboratory species." (Richardson, M.K., et al., "There is no highly conserved embryonic 
stage in the vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development," Anatomy and 
Embryology, Vol. 196, No. 2, July, 1997)

21/03/2007
"Problems for primitive heterotrophs Let us suppose that all the difficulties that we have been discussing 
were somehow overcome, and let us now consider how the very first organisms might have fared. 
According to the doctrine of chemical evolution these organisms were heterotrophs, that is to say they 
depended on organic foods. The diet of primordial soup was so adequate, it is said, that these organisms 
had no need for metabolic pathways to begin with. Such pathways could evolve gradually as the foods ran 
out (by the mechanism proposed by Horowitz in 1945; see figure 1.12). A -> B -> C -> D Figure 1.12. 
According to Horowitz (1945 [Horowitz, N.H., "On the Evolution of Biochemical Syntheses," Proc. Natl 
Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 31, No. 6, June 1945, pp.153-157]), a metabolic pathway would have evolved 
backwards. D was at first a vital molecule available in the environment. D gradually ran out, giving 
organisms time to evolve an internal source - by converting C, some simpler precursor, that was still in the 
environment. As C ran out there would then be selection pressures to find some other environmental 
molecule, B, and the means to convert it to C. Hence complex molecules that were originally provided by a 
primordial soup came to be made instead from simple commonly available molecules such as CO2 and N2. To 
have one's food provided sounds like an easy sort of life, but in reality there would be great difficulties with 
such an idea. There are problems of assimilation. To be a heterotroph implies an ability to recognise 
molecules, or at the very least to distinguish between classes of them. For the eventual evolution of 
metabolic pathways, specific recognition devices would be required. Thinking along the lines of current 
means of biomolecular control, some kind of structure would seem to be needed that could form specific 
sockets corresponding to the molecules in the environment. But until you have the ability to recognise at 
least some molecular units, how do you reach the point of being able to manufacture such specific devices? 
... The trouble is that a socket (such as that in an enzyme or a transport protein) that can recognise another 
molecule is much more difficult to engineer than the molecule itself. ... So what were the control techniques? 
How was tarry chaos avoided? If the enzymes in today's cells can cope so well this is partly because the 
molecules that they come across belong to a quite limited set. An enzyme may distinguish between D-
glucose and D-fructose, because these are among the relatively few kinds of molecules that it encounters: 
but it can easily be confused by molecules from a larger range. ... A primitive organism, lacking such 
customs control and living in a tarry `broth' that contained for every `correct' molecule a myriad of similar 
`incorrect' ones would have to have far more accurate enzymes to bring about any particular sequence of 
reactions. So that is the problem: how to evolve accurate recognising structures from a molecular 
technology that probably could not tell glycine from alanine, let alone D from L. Until you know one 
molecule from another how do you start to do the kind of sophisticated chemistry needed to make the 
membranes, the active centres and so on, on which molecular discrimination depends?" (Cairns-Smith, A.G., 
"Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life," [1982], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 
1987, Reprinted, 1987, pp.59-60) 

21/03/2007
"At this point, we can merge the account of the Eigen group with an earlier theory of Norman Horowitz 
[Horowitz, N.H., "On the Evolution of Biochemical Syntheses,"  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 31, 
No. 6, June, 1945, pp.153-157]. The earliest cells may have relied on the soup for their supply of construction 
units and suitable sources of energy. As cells proliferated, their numbers gradually exhausted the goodies made 
by prebiotic chemical synthesis. Let us suppose that until now an important chemical had beer made in the 
soup by the route A -> B -> C -> D . In this scheme, was an abundant and inexhaustible material, such as a 
major component of the atmosphere. The early organisms required only the last product, D, for their 
important processes. Eventually, as the organisms multiplied, consumption of D exceeded its constant 
production and supplies became scarce. Competition for the limited available amounts of D stiffened, and 
survival became difficult. Eventually, an organism acquired through mutation the ability to produce D from C 
internally, by enzymecatalyzed pathways. This organism could grow using C instead of D. It proliferated, 
and dominated the environment. Ultimately, the competition either learned to make D from C or it simply died 
out, and the favorable mutant diversified further. Whatever the path, after a time C was also depleted. A 
scramble then resulted until organisms learned to make C from B. This process was extended backward, until 
the simplest resources were used in life processes. Ultimately, photosynthesis was developed. At that point, 
some organisms could use solar energy directly, in addition to the normal components of the air and soil. 
The soup was no longer needed." (Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth," 
Summit Books: New York NY, 1986, pp.165-166) 

21/03/2007
"One principle must be emphasized. That is, no complex system could develop instantaneously. There had 
to be a period of sequential development. Morowitz (1992) calls this the principle of continuity. Horowitz 
(1945 [Horowitz, N.H., "On the Evolution of Biochemical Syntheses,"  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 31, 
No. 6, June, 1945, pp.153-157]) first enunciated this principle in connection with the development of 
synthetic metabolic pathways. He pointed out that since many intermediates in biosynthetic pathways have 
no other function, a pathway had to be developed in a direction inverse from the synthetic sequence. 
Otherwise, no positive selection could occur, and negative selection would eliminate the useless variants. 
This scenario assumes a genetic mechanism already in place. However logically imperative the Horowitz 
hypothesis (the retrograde hypothesis) may be, it must be recognized that at the early time that metabolism 
started, enzymes (whether RNA or protein based) could not have had the high specificity found today. In 
fact, metabolism must have started non-enzymatically, using as catalysts amino acids, small peptides, clays, 
and the same basic cofactors (or their analogs) used today: pyridoxal, nicotinamide, pyrophosphate, thiamin, 
folic acid, metal ions, etc." (McClendon, J.H., "The origin of life," Earth-Science Reviews, Vol. 47, Issue 1-
2, 1 July 1999, pp.71-93, p.87)

21/03/2007
"The Metabolism of the `First' Living Organisms In a recent article Garrett Hardin [Scientific Monthly 
Vol. 70, 1950, pp.178-179] says, "Regarding the origin of life there are at the present time only two scientific 
hypotheses that are given serious consideration.... we may call these the 'Autotroph Hypothesis' and the 
'Heterotroph Hypothesis.' According to the former, the first form of terrestrial life must have been some 
organism that could manufacture its own organic substance out of inorganic substrates, as can 
contemporary green plants. The Heterotroph Hypothesis, on the other hand, states that the first `organism' 
was one of severely limited synthetic abilities, subsisting on a readily available menu of organic materials 
formed by nonvital processes." He goes on to say that only the heterotroph hypothesis, which has been 
developed of recent years by A. I. Oparin, J. B. S. Haldane, A. Dauvillier and E. Desguin, N. H. Horowitz and 
C. B. van Niel merits serious consideration. I must admit to a certain degree of uncertainty as to just how 
these two hypotheses are to be distinguished. If the autotroph hypothesis assumes that the first living 
organisms sprang directly from inorganic matter, whereas the heterotroph hypothesis assumes that it was 
necessary that there first be present a complex system of organic compounds, then I must unhesitatingly 
subscribe to the latter. ... If the two hypotheses are to be separated on the basis of whether the first living 
systems enjoyed on the one hand autotrophic or on the other hand heterotrophic metabolism, as they exist 
in modern organisms, then I find greater difficulty in choosing between the two." (Blum, H.F., "Time's Arrow 
and Evolution," [1951], Harper Torchbooks: New York NY, Second Edition, 1955, Revised, 1962, pp.169-170. 
Emphasis original) 

21/03/2007
"I would like to say something concerning your calculations on probability, because you are touching upon 
an argument that Horowitz [Horowitz, N.H., "On the Evolution of Biochemical Syntheses,"  Proc. Natl. 
Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 31, No. 6, June, 1945, pp.153-157] and Oparin [Oparin, A.I., "Life, Its Nature, Origin, 
and Development," Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1961] presented. They propose that some type of selection 
operates on the molecular level before the appearance of a living unit and then this brings about 
accumulation of molecules or aggregate; which approach more and more, and finally reach, the property of 
the living, which has the ability to reproduce persistently and then with sufficient mutability to evolve 
through selectivity and adaptability. The trouble is that this type of argument requires that molecules have a 
high capacity of self-copy and it also tacitly endows molecules with the ability of really natural selection and 
evolution similar to that which operates in the biological domain. Of course, there is chemical selectivity 
(affinity, specific reactivity, complementariness, etc.) and, incidentally, much of this is important in many 
biochemical details we study nowadays (enzyme-substrate, antigen-antibody interaction, etc.). There is also 
a continuous flux of atoms and molecules building up and down in complexity depending on the physical 
and chemical environment and on the property of the molecules (free energy, etc.). Some of the more 
complex molecules (aggregates) are more stable under certain conditions than the less complex molecules 
from which they are formed. Much of the synthesis and polymerization work presented here is this type of 
chemistry. Some of the molecules (polymers) also have great affinity to associate with similar molecules (cf. 
crystallization). The question is, will this lead through selection to a continuously evolving hierarchy of 
molecules with greater and greater ability of more and more accurate self-reproducibility until the self-
reproducibility reaches a frequency and accuracy which will persistently overcompensate the combined 
randomization effects? To allow this to happen, one requirement is that more than half of certain kinds of 
molecules (polymers) must copy themselves quite faithfully before they break down. This is difficult to 
account for if we use the known theories of physics and chemistry. According to current quantum 
mechanics, the probability of self- reproducing states is zero [Wigner, E. P. (1961), in "The Logic of Personal 
Knowledge, Collection of Essays presented to Michael Polany," [sic] Routledge and Kegan Paul, London]. 
An even further requirement is that with increasing complexity and organization, self-reproducibility of 
molecules should be more and more probable. Obviously, this cannot be reconciled with thermodynamic 
principles. A third requirement is that these processes should go on persistently. Selection and evolution 
can occur only if there is a persistent reproduction first which overcompensates the randomization effects, 
and furthermore if there is some differential in the reproduction rate in more than one persistently self-
reproducing species. Therefore a further requirement is that there should be occasional changes 
('mutations') in the reproducing molecules to allow selection by preferential rates of reproduction, `adjusted' 
to a constantly changing environment. Of course, the rate of `beneficial mutations' should be greater than 
that of the `damaging mutations.' All of the foregoing is assumed by Horowitz and Oparin to happen to 
molecules. I am afraid they do assume that molecules possess a highly accurate and persistent self-copy 
ability (that is, persistent self- reproducibility) sufficient to overcome the combined effects of randomization; 
then they possess capacity for a moderate mutability rate, and thus the capacity for natural selection. Then 
they propose that this type of behavior of molecules may have accounted for the `evolution' of the first 
persistently self-reproducible system with the capacity for natural selection. I don't follow their logic." 
(Mora, P.T., "Discussion," of "Synthesis of Nucleosides and Polynucleotides with Metaphoric Esters," by 
George Schramm, in Fox, S.W., ed., "The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices," 
Proceedings of a Conference Conducted at Wakulla Springs, Florida, Oct. 27-30, 1963, Academic Press: New 
York NY, 1965, pp.311-312) 

21/03/2007
"Norman Horowitz, the Caltech biologist who played key roles in understanding a variety of scientific 
questions, including genetics, evolutionary theory and whether there is life on Mars, died Wednesday at his 
home in Pasadena. He was 90. Horowitz was best known for conceiving the pyrolytic release experiment, 
instruments for which were carried to the surface of Mars aboard each of the two Viking landers in 1976. ... 
The instruments took small samples of Martian soil and incubated them in a light chamber in the presence of 
the two gases, which had been radioactively labeled. After 120 hours, any organic compounds that might 
have formed were broken down under high heat - a technique called pyrolysis - and studied with a mass 
spectrometer to determine if they had incorporated any radioactive carbon. They had not, and the 
experiments were taken as strong proof that life did not then exist on Mars ... As a postdoctoral fellow at 
Stanford during the World War II years, Horowitz worked with geneticists Beadle and Edward L. Tatum ... 
The work earned Beadle and Tatum the 1958 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. ... In a crucial paper in 
1945, Horowitz [Horowitz, N.H., "On the Evolution of Biochemical Syntheses,"  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 
USA, Vol. 31, No. 6, June, 1945, pp.153-157] also addressed how complex pathways within cells to synthesize 
biologically important compounds could have originated. He pointed out that many such compounds were 
known to be synthesized step by step using intermediate compounds that apparently had no other roles in 
the cell. How could such a synthetic pathway have evolved, he asked, if it served no purpose until it was 
complete? Horowitz reasoned that the end product of the pathway was at first obtained by organisms 
directly from the environment, where it could have been produced by non-biological mechanisms, as has 
been shown by many researchers. It was then possible to reasonably assume, he said, that the ability to 
synthesize the compound biologically could arise by a series of separate single mutations. The first such 
mutation might, for example, produce the desired end product in one step from some other compound in the 
environment. The next mutation would produce that product's precursor, and so on down the line until a 
complete series of reactions would yield the desired product from readily available, simple materials. Each 
successive mutation would provide a selective advantage by making the organism less dependent on 
chemicals in its environment. `I know of no alternative hypothesis that is equally simple and plausible,' 
Beadle said. Horowitz's formulation is now widely accepted. " (Maugh, T.H., "Norman Horowitz, 90; Caltech 
Biologist Known for Insights on Evolution, Mars," Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2005)

21/03/2007
"Horowitz Model Horowitz proposed that biosynthetic pathways grew by a process of `retrograde 
evolution,' [Horowitz, N.H. , "On the Evolution of Biochemical Syntheses," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., Vol. 31, 
June 1945, pp.153-157] a process which Miller and Orgel [Miller, S.L. & Orgel, L.E., "The Origins of Life on 
the Earth," Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1974. p.186] discuss in some detail. When a nutrient was 
exhausted by an organism, others of its kind were selected which were able to manufacture the nutrient from 
an immediate precursor, presumably because these organisms had the necessary enzyme(s). Suppose that a 
pathway A -> B -> C -> D -> E exists in an ancient organism. When the supply of E is exhausted the 
organism evolves an enzyme to make E from D. In turn, D to A runs out and an opportunity is given to the 
organism to develop a metabolic sequence. Objections to Horowitz's scheme have been raised by both Ycas 
[Ycas, M., "On earlier states of the biochemical system," J. Theoret. Biol., Vol. 44, March 1974, pp.145-160] 
and Cairns-Smith. [Cairns-Smith, A.G., "A case for an alien ancestry," Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B., Vol. 189, May 6, 
1975, pp.249-274] There must be a stock-pile of necessary intermediates available in the environment the 
production of which obligingly disappears one by one in sequence. Metabolic intermediates in general have 
short half-lives." (Aw, S.E.*, "Chemical Evolution: An Examination of Current Ideas," Master Book 
Publishers: San Diego CA, 1982, pp.140-141. Emphasis original)

22/03/2007
"The earliest known organisms on earth, the cyanophytes, and some bacteria were able to fix nitrogen in the 
atmosphere by attaching hydrogen to it. This generates a molecule soluble in water which cells can utilise. 
This these microorganisms were able to do with the greatest of ease, which is the case with the 
corresponding modern species also. The fascinating process by which these minute organisms, only 
fractions of a millimetre in diameter, are able to fix the comparatively unreactive nitrogen molecules of the 
atmosphere, has only recently come to light after many years of intensive research. The work of Hughes, 
Pickett and Talarmin of Sussex University and Pombeiro of Lisbon [Emsley, J., "Molybdenum lies at the 
heart of Nitrogen Fixation," New Scientist, 10th April 1986, p.30) has shown that there is a key enzyme, a 
nitrogenase, which contains an atom of molybdenum. Molybdenum can, in association with the special 
protein, attract a nitrogen molecule N2. The nitrogen is then swamped with hydrogen ions H+ from water 
while the molybdenum supplies electrons. Ammonia NH3 is formed. So simple yet so wonderful and 
beautifully refined. Attempts are now being made to imitate the behaviour of the enzyme and the 
molybdenum combination in the laboratory and so do away with complicated fertilizer plants which at 
present operate only at high temperatures and great expense. The living cells do all their work at room 
temperature utilising the 'solar panel' energy of chlorophyll." (Ambrose, E.J., "The Mirror of Creation," 
Theology and Science at the Frontiers of Knowledge, Number 11, Scottish Academic Press: Edinburgh UK, 
1990, p.80) 

23/03/2007
"In the world of Darwin, man has no special status other than his definition as a distinct species of animal. 
He is in the fullest sense a part of nature and not apart from it. He is akin, not figuratively, but literally, to 
every living thing, be it an amoeba, a tapeworm, a seaweed, an oak tree, or a monkey-even though the 
degrees of relationship are different and we may feel less empathy for forty-second cousins like the 
tapeworm than for, comparatively speaking, brothers like the monkeys... ." (Simpson, G.G., "The World into 
Which Darwin Led Us," Science, Vol. 131,1 April 1960, pp.966-974, p.970. In Ankerberg, J.* & Weldon, 
J.*, "Darwin's Leap Of Faith," Harvest House Publishers: Eugene OR, 1998, p.19)

23/03/2007
"If no one knows what time, though it will be soon enough by astronomical clocks, the lonely planet will 
cool, all life will die, all mind will cease, and it will all be as if it had never happened. That, to be honest, is the 
goal to which evolution is traveling, that is the benevolent end of the furious living and furious dying.... All 
life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again. The final result ... is to deprive it 
completely of meaning." (Paul, L.A., "The Annihilation of Man: A Study of Crisis in the West," Faber & 
Faber: London, 1945, p.154. In Ankerberg, J.* & Weldon, J.*, "Darwin's Leap Of Faith," Harvest House 
Publishers: Eugene OR, 1998, p.22)

23/03/2007
"The highly visible conflict between evolutionary biology and creationism has stimulated much commentary 
in the scientific press about the relationship between science and religion. The Scientist, Science, 
Nature, and many other journals have given much space to the issue. Even the National Academy of 
Sciences has issued a statement on science and religion. A clear consensus emerges from this outpouring of 
literature. Scientists vigorously claim that no conflict exists between science and `reasonable' religion (of 
course excluding fundamentalism, whether Islamic or Christian). The implications of modern science, 
however, are clearly inconsistent with most religious traditions. No purposive principles exist in nature. 
Organic evolution has occurred by various combinations of random genetic drift, natural selection, 
Mendelian heredity, and many other purposeless mechanisms. Humans are complex organic machines that 
die completely with no survival of soul or psyche. Humans and other animals make choices frequently, but 
these are determined by the interaction of heredity and environment and are not the result of free will. No 
inherent moral or ethical laws exist, nor are there absolute guiding principles for human society. The 
universe cares nothing for us and we have no ultimate meaning in life." (Provine, W.B., "Scientists, Face It! 
Science And Religion Are Incompatible," The Scientist, Vol. 2, No. 16, 5 September 1988, p.10)

23/03/2007
"These implications of modern science produce much squirming among scientists, who claim a high degree 
of rationality. Some, along with many liberal theologians, suggest that God set up the universe in the 
beginning and/or works through the laws of nature. This silly way of trying to have one's cake and eat it too 
amounts to deism. It is equivalent to the claim that science and religion are compatible if the religion is 
effectively indistinguishable from atheism. Show me a person who says that science and religion are 
compatible, and I will show you a person who (1) is an effective atheist, or (2) believes things demonstrably 
unscientific, or (3) asserts the existence of entities or processes for which no shred of evidence exists." 
(Provine, W.B., "Scientists, Face It! Science And Religion Are Incompatible," The Scientist, Vol. 2, No. 16, 
5 September 1988, p.10)

23/03/2007
"A thoughtful attorney from San Antonio, Tex., wrote recently to ask, "Is there an intellectually honest 
Christian evolutionist position? Or do we simply have to check our brains at the church house door?" The 
answer is, you indeed have to check your brains. Why do scientists publicly deny the implications of 
modern science, and promulgate the compatibility of religion and science? Wishful thinking, religious 
training, and intellectual dishonesty are all important factors. Perhaps the most important motivation in the 
United States, however, is fear about federal funding for science. Almost all members of Congress profess to 
being very religious. Will Congress continue to fund science if science is inconsistent with religion? 
Scientists are trading intellectual honesty for political considerations." (Provine, W.B., "Scientists, Face It! 
Science And Religion Are Incompatible," The Scientist, Vol. 2, No. 16, 5 September 1988, p.10)

23/03/2007
"This is sad, because intellectual honesty and critical thinking are the ideals of modern science, and are in 
very short supply. The gullibility of the U.S. public is legendary around the world. Among the Japanese, 6% 
are creationists 44% of Americans are. Sixty-nine percent of people in the U.S. say that God has led or 
guided them in making decisions, and an even greater percentage believe in ghosts and astrology. One of 
our greatest national problems is lack of critical thinking. How can we hope to promote critical thinking when 
scientists will not even face the implications of their own work?" (Provine, W.B., "Scientists, Face It! 
Science And Religion Are Incompatible," The Scientist, Vol. 2, No. 16, 5 September 1988, p.10)

23/03/2007
"We must recognize what modern science has done to us and try to understand its implications for the 
foundation of morality and meaning in life. Although no cosmic or ultimate meaning for humans exists, we 
can certainly lead deeply meaningful lives. I am married to a talented and beautiful woman, have two 
wonderful sons, live on a farm, teach at a fine university, and have many excellent friends. But I will die and 
soon be forgotten-all meaning in my life is proximate. Likewise, the nonexistence of ultimate moral laws in no 
way prevents a robust moral and ethical basis to society. These issues are tough, but we should face them 
squarely." (Provine, W.B., "Scientists, Face It! Science And Religion Are Incompatible," The Scientist, 
Vol. 2, No. 16, 5 September 1988, p.10)

23/03/2007
"Now for our glance backwards-bearing always in mind that Darwin (like Wordsworth in this respect, if in no 
other) owed much more to Nature than to books. Darwin's `general agent', 'bull-dog' and knight-at-arms, T.H. 
Huxley, in his chapter `On the Reception of the "Origin of Species" ' (Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 
Vol. II, Ch. V), after saluting Darwin as the Newton of biology, goes on to show that the influence of 
Darwinian ideas has spread far beyond that special field. `The oldest of all philosophies', says Huxley with 
one of his fine rhetorical gestures `the oldest of all philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand and 
foot and cast into utter darkness during the millennium of theological scholasticism [Huxley's reading was 
far wider than Darwin's, but perhaps it did not include Augustine and Aquinas]. But Darwin poured new life-
blood into the ancient frame; the bonds burst, and the revivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself 
to be a more adequate expression of the universal order of things than any of the schemes which have been 
accepted by the credulity and welcomed by the superstition of seventy later generations of men.' The 
emergence of the philosophy of Evolution `in the attitude of claimant to the throne of the world of thought', 
he adds, `is the most portentous event of the nineteenth century' . [Huxley T. H., "On the Reception of the 
`Origin of Species,'" in Darwin F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New 
York NY, Vol. I., Reprinted, 1959, p.534]" (Willey, B., "Darwin's Place in the History of Thought," in Banton, 
M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium," Quadrangle Books: Chicago IL, 1961, 
p.6)

23/03/2007
"Nor has the influence of Darwinian ideas been less profound, beyond the realms of Biology. The oldest of 
all philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand and foot and cast into utter darkness during the 
millennium of theological scholasticism. But Darwin poured new lifeblood into the ancient frame ; the bonds 
burst, and the revivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be a more adequate expression of the 
universal order of things than any of the schemes which have been accepted by the credulity and welcomed 
by the superstition of seventy later generations of men. To any one who studies the signs of the times, the 
emergence of the philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claimant to the throne of the world of thought, 
from the limbo of hated and, as many hoped, forgotten things, is the most portentous event of the 
nineteenth century." (Huxley T. H., "On the Reception of the `Origin of Species,'" in Darwin F., ed., "The Life 
and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. I., Reprinted, 1959, p.534)

23/03/2007
"It is true enough that evolutionary ideas, of one sort or another, can be traced back to the pre-Socratic 
philosophers. It would be quite impossible in the space of one lecture (even if I were competent to do it) to 
tell the story in any completeness; most of you will know it already, and besides, the facts are set forth in H. 
F. Osborn's From the Greeks to Darwin (Columbia University Biological Series, No. 1, 1894). I will merely 
turn a spot-light upon a few points along the immense panorama. Empedocles of Agrigentum (495-435 B.C.) 
taught that the world was composed of four elements continually tossed to and fro by the opposing forces 
of attraction (love) and repulsion (hate). From this chance play of love and hate Nature throws up all 
conceivable forms, including plants and animals. Many of these living forms are incomplete or monstrous, 
and only those are preserved which are fitted to survive. On Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) we may dwell a little 
longer, for-as might be expected of so great a thinker-he touches upon all the relevant questions. It is 
especially interesting, too, that Aristotle is the only ancient writer referred to by Darwin in the `Historical 
Sketch' which he added to the third edition of the Origin, and that he seems to have misunderstood the 
drift of the passage he quotes from the Physics. Aristotle was a teleologist, seeing Nature as a graded 
system ordered towards the perfection of each form from the polyp up to man. ... As a thinker who believed 
that Nature is purposive, striving always after the better, Aristotle makes a point of refuting Empedocles and 
others who had taught that chance ruled supreme, and that the existing forms and adaptations were simply 
those which survived because they happened to be thrown together as if by design. This is the passage 
referred to in Darwin's `Historical Sketch', and I suspect that he only read that part of it which he quotes as 
having been pointed out to him by a friend. At any rate, he stands Aristotle on his head, praising him faintly 
for foreshadowing the principle of `natural selection', and not noticing that the remarks he quotes are from 
the summary of the Empedoclean doctrine, which Aristotle gives merely to demonstrate its absurdity." 
(Willey, B., "Darwin's Place in the History of Thought," in Banton, M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of 
Society: A Centenary Symposium," Quadrangle Books: Chicago IL, 1961, pp.6-7)

23/03/2007
"I said a moment ago that I doubted whether Huxley had read Augustine or Aquinas, and my reason for this 
reference was that both the Father and the Schoolman can be said to have held views about the Creation far 
more consonant with Darwin's than is often supposed, and far more `enlightened' than those of the 
fundamentalist Victorians attacked by Huxley. Augustine glossed the Creation story in Genesis by saying, 
in effect, that in the first days God created the plants and animals causaliter, that is to say, by infusing 
into the earth the necessary energy or potency so that it could thereafter produce the creatures by `natural' 
unfolding, God resting from his labours. Aquinas, expounding Augustine, appears to sanction this view. 
Thus Pusey in 1878, while denouncing Darwin for his theory of man's descent, could yet admit Evolution in 
the animal and vegetable kingdoms as a theory in perfect accord with the teaching of western theology 
since Augustine, and not excluded by Scripture. Aubrey Moore, one of the Victorian theologians who, after 
the first furore about Darwinism had simmered down, did most to promote the peaceful co-existence of 
Science and Religion, argued that the antithesis between Creation and Evolution was unreal: `The facts of 
Nature are the acts of God'. When we say `God made us' we don't mean to deny the facts of reproduction; 
and similarly we may say `God made the species' without denying his method of evolving them. [Moore, 
A.L., "Science and the Faith," Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co: London, 1887, pp.178ff.]" (Willey, B., 
"Darwin's Place in the History of Thought," in Banton, M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A 
Centenary Symposium," Quadrangle Books: Chicago IL, 1961, pp.6-7) 

23/03/2007
"It was odd, Moore felt, that the question between the mutability or immutability of species should ever 
have appeared to be a religious question at all. Who invented the doctrine of immutability? not Augustine 
nor Aquinas nor Bacon; the true culprits were Milton, Ray and Linnaeus-and especially Milton, whose 
description of the creatures emerging fully-formed from the earth had been accepted as authoritative. Since 
we know that Milton was Darwin's favourite reading in his youth, and always accompanied him on his 
excursions from the `Beagle', let us remind ourselves of the picture of creation given in Paradise Lost. It is 
that which Darwin spent the next twenty years in trying to blot out from his imagination:

[on the sixth day of creation God bids the earth bring forth beasts, each after his kind]
			The Earth obey'd, and straight 
	Op'ning her fertile womb team'd at a birth 
	Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, 
	Limb'd and full grown....
	The grassy clods now calv'd; now half appear'd 
	The Tawny- lion, pawing to get free
	His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, 
	And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce, 
	The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole 
	Rising, the crumbl'd earth above them threw 
	In hillocks; the swift stag from under ground 
	Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould 
	Behemoth biggest born of earth upheav'd
	His vastness; fleec't the flocks and bleating rose 
	As plants; ambiguous between sea and land 
	The river horse and scaly crocodile.
			Book VII, 453 ff.

If then, neither the Bible, nor the Fathers, nor the Schoolmen support it, why should modern Christians feel 
obliged to defend an exploded scientific theory? [Moore, A.L., "Science and the Faith," Kegan Paul, Trench, 
Trubner & Co: London, 1887, pp.178ff.]" (Willey, B., "Darwin's Place in the History of Thought," in Banton, 
M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium," Quadrangle Books: Chicago IL, 1961, 
pp.8-9)

23/03/2007
"`There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the 
Creator into a few forms or into one; and that ... from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and 
most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.' [Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species," John Murray: 
London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, p.429] There might be grandeur in it for Kingsley, and Aubrey 
Moore, and a few other stalwart liberals and modernists, but not for Samuel Wilberforce or Dr Pusey or the 
general mass of believers and their ecclesiastical spokesmen. For them, in spite of Darwin's pious gesture of 
appeasement, it meant the banishment of the idea of God the creator and designer to such a distance that it 
lost all religious meaning. Darwin's vestigial theism was no comfort to them; he had not attacked Moses, 
certainly; but if he were right, Moses must be wrong." (Willey, B., "Darwin's Place in the History of 
Thought," in Banton, M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium," Quadrangle 
Books: Chicago IL, 1961, pp.13-14)

23/03/2007
"It was the substitution of `chance' for `design' that caused most of the offence, and seemed to place Darwin 
in the atheistical succession from Epicurus and Lucretius and all the later materialists. It was of no avail for 
Darwin to explain, as he did, that in nature nothing happens by chance, but all according to the strict 
determination of physical law. `Chance' does not mean `no cause'; it means `cause unknown'; it is, he said, a 
term which `serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation'. Yet he 
habitually spoke as if the useful variations, which Nature selects from the mass of useless ones, were (like 
the latter) thrown up at random; and if things happen like this, it was felt, they happen without the 
conscious purpose or design of an intelligent agent." (Willey, B., "Darwin's Place in the History of 
Thought," in Banton, M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium," Quadrangle 
Books: Chicago IL, 1961, p.14)

23/03/2007
"Could an elaborate structure like the eye, for example, have been formed in this way? Darwin often admitted 
that he was `staggered' (a favourite word of his) by the eye, and told Asa Gray (in 1860) that `the eye to this 
day gives me a cold shudder'. Throughout his life Darwin had moods in which it seemed difficult or 
impossible to conceive `this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far 
backwards and forwards into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity'; [Darwin, C.R., in Barlow, 
N., ed., "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882," W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, 1958, pp.92-
93] and at such times, as he says, `I deserve to be called a Theist'. Yet, by his own admission also, these 
impressions gradually became weaker; disbelief `crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. 
The rate was so slow that I felt no distress'. The Duke of Argyll records some significant words spoken to 
him by Darwin in the last year of the latter's life, during a talk about the wonderful contrivances in nature: `I 
said it was impossible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect and expression of mind'. 
Darwin looked at him very hard, and said `Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at 
other times', and he shook his head vaguely, adding, `it seems to go away'. [Darwin, CR., in Darwin, F., ed., 
"The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. I., 1898, p.285] It went away, and 
with it went, as Darwin sorrowfully confessed in old age, his powers of responding to music, poetry and 
landscape, in all of which he had once delighted. `My mind', he said, `seems to have become a kind of 
machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts'." (Willey, B., "Darwin's Place in the 
History of Thought," in Banton, M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium," 
Quadrangle Books: Chicago IL, 1961, p.14)

23/03/2007
"I quoted, a moment ago, Darwin's avowal that he was not an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence 
of God. But that subtle schoolman, Dr Pusey, said of him, as of modern scientists generally (as distinct from 
the older scientists from Copernicus to Newton and beyond), that he had done something worse than to 
deny God; he had forgotten Him. Worse, because denial at least implies the presence in the mind of the 
object denied, whereas it is of the essence of Darwinism to eliminate God, as far as may be, from our 
thoughts about the creation and its history. Pusey connects this loss of spiritual perception-the common 
outcome of modern science-with the narrowing effects of specialisation, and quotes from Newman the 
observation that `any one study ... exclusively pursued, deadens in the mind the interest, nay the 
perception, of any other'. [Pusey, E.B., "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith," 1878] And this is 
perhaps the heart of the religious criticism of all science, Darwinian or other, that in attending exclusively to 
the How it loses interest in the Whence and the Why." (Willey, B., "Darwin's Place in the History of 
Thought," in Banton, M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium," Quadrangle 
Books: Chicago IL, 1961, p.15)

23/03/2007
"Science, qua science, must do this; its very raison d'etre is to replace the supernatural by the natural, 
the unknown by the known, fable by fact, and while it is engaged upon this task it must be provisionally 
atheistic or cease to be itself. Perhaps Darwin would have been wiser not to mention the Creator at all in the 
Origin; as it was, he made people feel that he believed too much not to believe more, or too little not to 
believe less still. A God who breathed life into the primordial forms, and then rested from his work for ever 
after, did not satisfy the religiously-minded. Darwin had devoted himself so whole-heartedly to displacing 
divine acts and fiats by chance and selection, that he might as well have gone the whole way back to 
Epicurus and declared for the eternity of matter. But, as I have said, Darwin regarded all such questions as 
insoluble puzzles, and distractions from the real business of his life. It was very inconsiderate of `clever' 
people to pester him with them, especially as he `enjoyed' such poor health." (Willey, B., "Darwin's Place in 
the History of Thought," in Banton, M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium," 
Quadrangle Books: Chicago IL, 1961, p.15)

23/03/2007
"It would be absurd to blame Darwin for not having been a profound metaphysician or theologian; the work 
he did accomplish was more than enough for the lifetimes of several ordinary men. But there were and are 
others for whom God is no optional hypothesis, to be occasionally used when other explanations fail, but 
the central, all-demanding fact of experience; and it was left to such people to reconcile Darwinism with their 
faith if they could. The later history of Christian apologetics has shown that the thing could be done. It was 
done by declaring that God has not rested after the seventh day, but has been immanent in nature 
throughout, so that the facts of nature are the acts of God. One may go further and say that Darwin has 
positively helped to restore buoyancy to religion by forcing it to abandon some of its most untenable 
defences. Though scriptural fundamentalism was undermined by historical and textual criticism far more 
than by natural science, Darwin contributed his share to the weakening of that bibliolatry which was the 
bane of popular Protestantism. And in so far as he reduced the authority of the old argument from design, 
he was discrediting what had always been, in reality, a precarious line of defence. As Pascal had long ago 
said, Nature proves God only to those who already believe in Him on other grounds." (Willey, B., "Darwin's 
Place in the History of Thought," in Banton, M.P., "Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary 
Symposium," Quadrangle Books: Chicago IL, 1961, pp.15-16)

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"Theology places no limits on the modes of His working, Who works all things in all. If God willed that 
organic life should start out of inorganic masses, Theology would accept it at once, since our Lord has said, 
`My Father worketh hitherto and I work.' [John v. 17 ] It would be to Theology only a renewal of what it 
already believes, that `God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
life, and man became a living soul.' [Gen. ii. 7] The workings in nature are to Theology only the workings of 
God. For nature, although men ascribe to it wisdom and power, and personify it as if it were a goddess, is 
but a name for an effect, whose Cause is God. But science too says, `Tertium non datur.' [Virchow die 
Freiheit der Wisscnschaft, p. 20] There is no other choice left; either spontaneous generation, or a Creator. If 
any lay down, `I accept not creation;' then his second thesis must be, `Then I accept spontaneous 
generation.' But for this we have no evidence of fact.'" (Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To 
Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: 
Oxford, 1878, pp.6-7. Emphasis original) 

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"Again, physical science now assumes as certain truth (would that it believed truths of the Word of God as 
unhesitatingly!) an unproved theory, that Almighty God did not create all the forms of animal creation at 
once, but some primordial germs only, out of which all the rest were evolved. Evolution is, for the day, a sort 
of Gospel, or at least an axiom of physical science. Apart from unproved and unprovable and therefore 
unscientific details, the principle, that God may have created some things in that ""of all things which 
have their birth corporeally and visibly, some hidden seeds lie hid in those corporeal elements of this 
world," [14 de Trin. iii. 8. n.] is no other than the teaching of our Western Theology since S. Augustine. Far 
more developement might be granted, than science can prove, a wider range might be given to the popular 
theory of evolution than exact science yet admits of; the number of species of which human experience 
knows, might be reduced indefinitely, without contradicting the Bible history of the creation; "God made the 
beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 
after his kind." [15 Gen. i. 25] To our unimaginative minds, the unity of types in creation, amid a variety 
which the human mind cannot grasp, seems more explicable by the unity of its Author than by transformist 
theories. Even in works of human creativeness (as works of art, fiction, poetry, even music) we are 
accustomed to recognise sameness of authorship by some recurring characteristic. We do not ascribe it to 
poverty of imagination, but to some pleasure which the soul takes in its creations. But while we think the 
transformist theories a mere imagination, Theology does not hold them excluded by Holy Scripture, so that 
they spare the soul of man." (Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by 
H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, p.7. Emphasis 
original) 

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"[David again speaks of the developement in his mother's womb, almost, but for his reverence, as if he were 
writing in our century. "Thou [Ps. cxxxix. 13] hast created my inward parts; Thou didst interweave me [with nerves and 
veins and arteries] in my mother's womb: my substance (his self, his undeveloped substance) was not hid 
from Thee, when I was made in secret, and variegated (with all the intricacy of our physical structure.) Thine 
eyes did see my formless substance; the ball, which was afterwards to be unwound, as what lay yet 
undeveloped was expanded into the rudimental shape of the future being: "and in Thy book were they all 
written, 26 which day by day were formed, when as yet there were none of them." But that Theology would 
not identify David's words with modern physical theories, we might speak of this as a doctrine of the 
evolution of the individual. Yet David believed in his Maker and glorified Him. His own creation was to him 
matter of awe and admiration and praise." (Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by 
H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, p.8. Emphasis 
original) 

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"It may seem to be beginning a great way off, but, in a place of education, it is not amiss to say, `One reason 
of this alienation of modern physical science, is its exclusiveness.' A thoughtful writer has said, `Special 
studies, which bring into play a particular aptitude of intelligence, without paralysing the rest, are 
conformable to the wants of nature. Exclusive studies, which amass a sort of congestional life upon one 
point of the mind, leaving the rest in inaction, are an abnormal developement, an excrescence of intellectual 
life; so that while special science forms men who are eminent, exclusive science produces judgements which 
are false. Exclusive science is the only one injurious to religion; but it is also the only one opposed to it.' [P. 
Caussette, Le bon sens de la foi. P. ii. L. iii. c. 1. T. ii. p. 233.] ``What withholds a man from faith, is not the 
knowledge of nature, which any one has, but the knowledge of religion which he has not.' [ Ib. p. 238] We 
readily recognise in other subjects the special peril of exclusiveness, in narrowing the range of thought. 
Theological exclusiveness or narrowness is a by-word to physical science. Physicists would seem to hold it 
almost impossible, that a Theologian should not be narrow. It seems to them a strange phenomenon, a thing 
to be noted, when he is not so. Why, but because the all-importance of this study is supposed so to rivet 
the minds of those devoted to it as to indispose them to take in thoughts which lie outside of it, much more 
those which at first sight seem to impinge against it? It could hardly be held to be so universal a fruit of 
Theological study, unless there were some widely prevailing cause. It cannot be that the grandest study, in 
which wisdom power love goodness and all besides are infinite, should be narrowing, universally and alone. 
It must be a deep human infirmity, which should contract the conception of infinity. If the exclusive study of 
the highest be, as men say, narrowing, other studies may well look to it. This narrowing cannot be confined 
to Theology. It is not a mere retort, but the acknowledgement of a common human infirmity, if Theology 
says to Natural science, `Change but the name, the tale is told of thee.' `Any one study, of whatever kind, 
exclusively pursued,' says a very thoughtful writer, ['Lectures on University subjects,' by J. H. Newman, 
D.D. p. 322. 1859] `deadens in the mind the interest, nay the perception of any other. ... You can hardly 
persuade some men to talk about anything but their own pursuit; they refer the whole world to their own 
centre, and measure all matters by their own rule.-It is clear that the tendency of science is to make men 
indifferentists or sceptics, merely by being exclusively pursued.' And this it does, partly by losing sight of 
what is spiritual, God, the soul, freewill, human responsibility, and all the truths of revelation, through being 
immersed in the material; partly by forgetting the bounds which belong to it as science, i.e. as accurate 
knowledge, `encroaching on territory not its own, and undertaking problems which it has no instruments to 
solve.'" (Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the 
University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, pp.9-10. Emphasis original) 

24/03/2007
"Modern science in England does not, for the most part, deny God. ... But science, which does not deny 
God, may forget Him. It would very likely acknowledge Him, if it were asked. But it is so busy about 
secondary causes, that it has no time to think about the First Cause. Time and thought are fully occupied 
without Him. It goes back from link to link, and forgets that the chain is but a weight, unless it is fastened 
somewhere. Every secondary cause is at once a cause and an effect; an effect of what goes before, a cause 
of what succeeds it. But where is the First Cause, upon which it depends? Natural science has to do with 
created things, how they act on each other. The belief in a First Cause, or a Creator, belongs to man, as a 
creature, not as an investigator of science. It cannot find God or the soul at the bottom of its crucible. ... The 
thought of a First Cause belongs to Theology, or in its degree, to Philosophy, not to the natural sciences. It 
is foreign to the researches of Physical Science; so much so, that when one, who had traced the 
developement [sic] of species through all links possible and impossible, closed his book, not as a 
philosopher but as a Theist, by speaking of life with its several powers having `been originally breathed by 
the Creator into a few forms or into one,' [Darwin `Origin of Species,' end.] his expression was criticised, 
because it acknowledged God as the Author of all. It, in fact, brings back the old belief, that God is the 
Ultimate Cause of all that is, because, at all events, He infused into those supposed primordial principles the 
power of generating, step by step, whatever was developed from them. But there is an unconscious as well 
as a conscious disbelief in God; and the unconscious disbelief in Him is often the more dangerous, because 
the more subtle. To deny God, is more the sin of those rebellious spirits, who dispute His claim over our 
wills. To forget God may be human infirmity, in every thing which absorbs the mind, in intellectual 
ambition, as well as in the slavery to sense, or in the shadowy day-dreams of human greatness. ... Yet to 
deny God requires more belief in God than to forget Him. To deny God implies that He has a claim to be 
believed; it virtually acknowledges the claim which it resists. God is in his thoughts, though as yet put away 
from them. The latent belief, though resisted and repelled, may, by God's mercy and grace, yet reassert itself, 
when the hindrance put to it by man's will is, by whatever means, withdrawn. The fast-closed doors may at 
length be opened. ... Atheism has been formally pronounced to be `a system too religious, because there is 
something better than to deny religion. It is to forget it.' [Arnold Ruge, Annales de Halle, in Causette ii. 252]" 
(Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University 
of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, pp.10-11. Emphasis original)

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"The vast and wonderful progress of natural science has tempted it, like so many other conquerors, to over- 
pass its bounds. It goes beyond its bounds, if it argues against creation, on the ground that the emergence 
of matter into being is `unthinkable;' [Nineteenth Century, Sept. 1878. p. 445.] in other words, that we, being 
creatures of very limited faculties, whose highest intelligence is the capacity of conceiving an Intelligence 
infinitely above our own, cannot think how that Intelligence could act, or how It could effect what we 
cannot imagine, how It would effect. But are then men so sure that they can form any idea of created things 
which they have every day in their mouths? What a puzzle are time and space, if we think of them in 
themselves, not of things which take place in them. ... Time to come is a mere creature of the imagination; it 
is not yet, it may never be: time past has ceased to be. The present has no duration. Both exist only in the 
soul. Once time was not: there was nothing but God's ever- present eternity. Once again, we are told, it `shall 
be no more.' [Rev. x. 6] But even now, what is it? Time is present, only at this moment; in the next, what is 
now present, will have ceased to be. Time seems long or short, according to our own feelings. If we are 
weary, it seems to be long; if happy, short. It is not measured by the motion of the heavenly bodies or any 
other, but rather itself measures them; nor is it any measure of eternity. But what can we think of that, which 
has ceased to be in the single moment, in which we think of it? And yet it has such hold of our imagination, 
that we cannot picture to ourselves its not being. Again we speak continually of `infinite space,' but we are 
baffled and cast back upon ourselves, if we think of it: and at last the religious mind takes refuge in the 
thought, that it is the Presence of the Infinite God, Who is wholly every where, but the whole of Him no 
where. Even in mathematics we have things demonstrated to us, which, if we attempt to set our 
demonstration before our eyes, seem to us absolutely impossible. What right then have we to reject 
anything because it is not `thinkable?' But is it then more `thinkable,' i. e. can we better picture to ourselves, 
how a single `cell of protoplasm generated at the bottom of the sea' [Haeckel i. pp 184, 185] should develope 
of itself into all this beautiful and boundless variety of intricate forms every where spread before our senses; 
or how `vitality should be generated out of matter,' [Caussette ii. 357] or how matter should be self-existent, 
i. e. God; or how that `God-matter, in all eternity divided in thousands of millions of scattered atoms in 
imaginary spaces, should once have been united by a law of arbitrary cohesion, called chance?' [Ib. 358]. Is 
not chance that God, to escape the acknowledgment of Whose Being the eternity of matter is assumed?" 
(Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University 
of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, pp.12-13) 

24/03/2007
"To speak gravely of the formation of the eye only, Reusch says (Bibel und Natur, p. 386.) `The discussion 
of this point is one of the best parts in Frohschammer's criticism on Darwinism. He says very aptly, `So 
therefore out of imperfect eyes without crystal lenses and all besides, eyes with crystal lenses and 
horny surface are to be formed by natural selection. That could only happen, either if, in that most imperfect 
eye, this perfect one were already laid as in a seed, which only needs developement; but this would imply an 
inner principle of developement, and the external principle of developement by natural selection, assumed 
by Darwin, would be superfluous, or at least, no longer the primary and only principle; or, if the capacity for 
further improvement or for adding to the crystal lens did not yet exist in that most imperfect eye, then its 
formation even in its very earliest beginnings could only have been either through generatio aequivoca, 
or through accident, or through a distinctly divine creative agency. As Darwin accepts nothing of all this, 
the matter remains unexplained; i.e. the possibility of the transformation is not shewn, and the difficulty is 
not therefore solved. Darwin indeed likens the perfect eye to the telescope, and the action of `natural 
selection' in relation to the perfecting of the eye, to the exertions of human intelligence in the improvement 
and perfecting of the telescope. But this is certainly wrong; for unconscious nature can no more imitate or 
exercise the activity of the optician carried on upon a definite plan, than it can imitate or replace the activity 
of the artist, e.g. of the painter or the clockmaker. The material requirements for works of art certainly all exist 
in nature; but nevertheless, no one could say, that nature is able of itself to produce a painting or a clock. 
Darwin on this point falls into a formal Personification of natural selection, in order to keep up his limping 
explanation of the origin of the perfected eye. Natural selection is to `observe minutely,' and `select 
carefully,' and `with unerring tact discover each improvement for further perfecting.' Were that to be 
understood literally, Darwin would himself thereby introduce into nature a power acting according to 
design, which would make all his other attempts at explanation superfluous. But any how, according to 
Darwin's intention, it is only to be understood figuratively, and then such expressions are perfectly 
inadmissible. `Natural selection,' as the complex of merely operating causes, cannot observe, select, and 
proceed on a definite plan, but must take every thing as it comes, and can only use and retain favourable 
circumstances or alterations; or more justly expressed, these changes when they once exist, maintain 
themselves, because they exist. Natural selection therefore cannot strive for more perfect eyes, but can only 
preserve them, and use them, when they exist and therefore have in some way originated. Darwin himself 
acknowledges, `If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have 
been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.' [Origin 
of Species, p. 146. ed. 6.] The most perfect eyes cannot be explained by numerous slight successive 
modifications: for they are distinguished from the imperfect eyes by substantially new parts which cannot 
issue in continual developement out of the former, unless they are already laid up in them from the 
beginning on a regular plan; in which case they could only have arisen through a sudden spring, and so 
through an incomprehensible, mysterious occurrence, not through natural selection." (Pusey, E.B.*, 
"Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 
November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, p.23. Emphasis original) 

24/03/2007
"I have been asked, in the name of some young members of the University who heard this sermon, whether I 
account the animal derivation of the body of man to be a theory contradictory to Revelation, and should, 
on theological grounds, hold it to be impossible that science could establish it. I would, in answer, recall the 
distinction between the scientific and what has been called `the mythological' or transformist part of Mr. 
Darwin's theory. The question as to `species,' of what variations the animal world is capable, whether the 
species be more or fewer, whether accidental variations may become hereditary, whether the `struggle for 
existence' may have occasioned animals which once existed to disappear, whether e. g. the animals ranged 
under the tribe of felis or canis were each originally variations of some common progenitor, and the like, 
naturally fall under the province of science. In all these questions Mr. Darwin's careful observations gained 
for him a deserved approbation and confidence. These questions have no bearing whatever upon Theology. 
Professor Reusch says, `I should not be at all concerned about Vogt's statement ... to the effect that he must 
decline the last results of the Darwinian system, but that, in regard to the more nearly-related types, he could 
declare himself an adherent of it. With this restriction, I could myself become a Darwinian without ceasing to 
be a Theologian who believes in the Bible: a relationship of race between more nearly related types of the 
animal and vegetable kingdom, even when one extends the relationship very far, has theologically nothing 
which one need apprehend.' [Bibel und Natur, p. 373.] Unhappily, on his scientific investigations Darwin 
grafted a theory which belonged to theology, not to natural science. In geological remains, there has been 
observed a gradation from the more imperfect to the more advanced. This might obviously have been 
through the continued action of the Creator and, down to Lamarck and Mr. Darwin, was held by scientific 
men also to have been so. No one doubted it, who believed in creation at all. We were not there, and as we 
cannot understand why God created at all, so neither can we tell what end He had in creating anything 
which He did create. We know that God created orders of beings of immense intelligence, of whose numbers 
we know nothing. ... In this immensity of creation, it seems to me an improbable assumption, that all the 
creations in this our planet were completed at once. It was chiefly in order to escape the belief that there 
were successive creations ... that the theory of evolution was invented." (Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not 
Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, 
James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, p.25) 

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"Mr. Darwin urges this in self-defence against critics of his book. `I may be permitted to say, as some 
excuse, that I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to shew that species had not been separately created, 
and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change, though largely aided by the 
inherited effects of habit, and slightly by the direct action of the surrounding conditions. I was not, 
however, able to annul the influence of my former belief, then almost universal, that each species had been 
purposely created; and this led to my tacit assumption, that any detail of structure, excepting rudiments, 
was of some special, though unrecognised, service. Any one, with this assumption in his mind, would 
naturally extend too far the action of natural selection, either during past or present times. Some of those 
who admit the principle of evolution, but reject natural selection, seem to forget, when criticising my book, 
that I had the above two objects in view; hence, if I have erred in giving to natural selection great power, 
which I am very far from admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, I have at 
least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.' [Darwin, the 
Descent of man, P. 1. c. 2. p. 61.] It was then so far, with a quasi-Theological, not with a scientific object, that 
he wrote his book. He wished `to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.' Why? With the all-but-infinity 
of creation, which the telescope unfolds, what are we, that we should object to any mode of creation, as 
unbefitting our Creator? A result, which is arrived at under a bias, lies under a suspicion as to its validity. 
People catch at what seems to them evidence, on what seems to them previous probability. The reproach is 
cast upon Theologians; it is not likely to belong to them alone." (Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, 
Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James 
Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, pp.25-26. Emphasis original) 

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"Even granted, that intermediate types (the absence of which is so strongly urged against Mr. Darwin's 
theory, a lacuna which he himself in a degree feels, although he ascribes it to the imperfections of our 
geological records) ... For thousands of years (or tens of thousands according to these theorists) there is no 
trace of any such change. The only presumption that it ever was, the only evidence which science would 
admit in any other case, would be, its taking place now, when science could examine the evidence for the 
alleged facts. Nature remains the same; its laws are the same. Why, if they were not regulated by the will of 
its Creator, was it once so prolific in forming new classes of animals, and now is still?" (Pusey, E.B.*, 
"Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 
November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, p.26. Emphasis original) 

24/03/2007
"The transformation-theory of Darwin is quite apart from the `survival of the strongest in the battle for life.'
This struggle would be between animals of the same general habits of life. It is in keeping, that rats, leeches, 
cock-roaches, bees, swallows, thrushes, should have supplanted others of their own kind. [Darwin's Origin 
&c. p. 59. ed. 6] But our supposed progenitors survive still. Kangaroos and apes still exist." (Pusey, E.B.*, 
"Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 
November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, p.27) 

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"The transformation-theory was a special object of Darwin's interest, he tells us, because it dispensed with 
the intervention of a personal Creator. Darwin's German translator noted the inconsistency of assuming for 
once a First Cause, and then denying His interference ever after. `A personal act of creation is still required 
for Darwin's first organic being, and if it is requisite once, then it appears to us an utter matter of 
indifference, whether the first act of creation occupied itself with one or with ten or with a hundred thousand 
species.' [Bronn, p. 516, quoted by Reusch, p. 351.]" (Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To 
Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: 
Oxford, 1878, p.27)

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"Darwinism was acceptable to German atheists, because, with that one exception, it removed God out of 
sight. `As I observed before,' says C. Vogt, `this Creator, who from time to time changed the furnishing of 
his earth, and created a new one after he had annihilated the old, would never get into my head.-It is not 
strange, that the view of Darwin met with the most vehement contradiction.-Its consequences are 
unquestionably frightful for a certain direction of mind. There is no question that Darwin's theory, without 
any ceremony, turns out of doors a Personal Creator and his interferences in the change of the creation, and 
the creation of species, in that it does not leave the very least room for the working of such a being.' 
[Vorlesungen, ii. pp. 259, 260.] A graver writer says, `This is the great attractiveness of this theory. It points 
out to materialism a possibility of referring the origin and continued existence of all living beings to an 
accidental coincidence of external physical and chemical processes. Darwin has brought the goal, at which 
Materialism drives with all its might, so invitingly near.' Pfaff, die neuesten Forschungen, p. 107. Rolle says, 
`After the advance of science had long stood in awe before this last bulwark of the theory of creation, it was 
reserved to Darwin &c.' [Der Mensch, &c. p. 64.]" (Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To 
Faith: A Sermon Read by H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: 
Oxford, 1878, pp.27-28)

24/03/2007
"Darwinism, then, is in an inconsistent position. It is not Atheistic in itself; it cannot be so, except by the 
further assumption of the eternity of matter and spontaneous generation. But it is inconsistent, in its belief 
in a Creator Who is to be eliminated from all interference with the works which He has made. ... A First 
Cause, which is introduced as a `Deus ex machinâ,' to save us from the conception of the eternity of matter, 
but who, after the creation, looked on unconcerned upon the results of his act upon his creatures, would be 
an Epicurean god, whose being would be inconsistent not only with God's revelation of Himself, but with 
any conceptions of an intelligent Theism. But this belief Darwin tells us, it was his object to establish. It was 
the essence of Darwinism." (Pusey, E.B.*, "Un-Science, Not Science, Adverse To Faith: A Sermon Read by 
H.P. Liddon at the University of Oxford, 3 November 1878, James Parker & Co: Oxford, 1878, p.28)

24/03/2007
"By offering evolution in place of God as a cause of history, Darwin removed the theological basis of the 
moral code of Christendom. And the moral code that has no fear of God is very shaky. That's the condition 
we are in.... I don't think man is capable yet of managing social order and individual decency without fear of 
some supernatural being overlooking him and able to punish him." (Durant, W., "Are We in the Last Stage 
of a Pagan Period?" Chicago Tribune Syndicate, April 1980. In Morris, H.M.*, "The Long War Against 
God: The History and Impact of the Creation/Evolution Conflict," [1989], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Eighth 
Printing, 1996, p.149)

24/03/2007
"I just skimmed through Dr. Pusey's sermon, . as published in the Guardian, but it did [not] seem to me 
worthy of any attention. As I have never answered criticisms excepting those made by scientific men, I am 
not willing that this letter should be published; but I have no objection to your saying that you sent me the 
three questions, and that I answered that Dr. Pusey was mistaken in imagining that I wrote the 'Origin ' with 
any relation whatever to Theology. I should have thought that this would have been evident to any one 
who had taken the trouble to read the book, more especially as in the opening lines of the introduction I 
specify how the subject arose in my mind. This answer disposes of your two other questions; but I may add 
that many years ago, when I was collecting facts for the 'Origin,' my belief in what is called a personal God 
was as firm as that of Dr. Pusey himself, and as to the eternity of matter I have never troubled myself about 
such insoluble questions. Dr. Pusey's attack will be as powerless to retard by a day the belief in Evolution, 
as were the virulent attacks made by divines fifty years ago against Geology, and the still older ones of the 
Catholic Church against Galileo, for the public is wise enough always to follow Scientific men when they 
agree on any subject ; and now there is almost complete unanimity amongst Biologists about Evolution, 
though there is still considerable difference as to the means, such as how far natural selection has acted, 
and how far external conditions, or whether there exists some mysterious innate tendency to perfectability. " 
(Darwin, C.R., Letter to C. Ridley, November 28, 1878, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles 
Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. II., Reprinted, 1959, pp.411-412) 

24/03/2007
"I am obliged by your kind letter and the enclosure. - the publication in any form of your remarks on my 
writings really requires no consent on my part, and it would be ridiculous in me to give consent to what 
requires none. I should prefer the part of volume not be dedicated to me (though I thank you for the 
intended honour) as this implies to a certain extent my approval of the general publication, about which I 
know nothing. - Moreover though I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to 
me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any 
effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, 
which follow from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on 
religion, and I have confined myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biassed by the pain 
which it would give some members of my family, if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion. - I am sorry 
to refuse you any request, but I am old and have very little strength, and looking over proof-sheets (as I 
know by present experience) fatigues me much." (Darwin, C.R., Letter to Edward Aveling, October 13, 1880. 
In Feuer, L.S., "Is the `Darwin-Marx correspondence' authentic?" Annals of Science, Vol. 32, No. 1, 
January 1975, pp.1-12. http://darwin.gruts.com/articles/2000/marx/) 

25/03/2007
"It would be difficult to give any rational explanation of the affinities of the blind cave-animals to the other 
inhabitants of the two continents on the ordinary view of their independent creation." (Darwin, C.R., "The 
Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 
1882, p.111)

25/03/2007
"On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, why should that part of the 
structure, which differs from the same part in other independently created species of the same genus, be 
more variable than those parts which are closely alike in the several species? I do not see that any 
explanation can be given. But on the view that species are only strongly marked and fixed varieties, we 
might expect often to find them still continuing to vary in those parts of their structure which have varied 
within a moderately recent period, and which have thus come to differ." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of 
Species By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, 
pp.122-123)

25/03/2007
"In the vegetable kingdom we have a case of analogous variation, in the enlarged stems, or as commonly 
called roots, of the Swedish turnip and Ruta baga, plants which several botanists rank as varieties produced 
by cultivation from a common parent: if this be not so, the case will then be one of analogous variation in 
two so-called distinct species; and to these a third may be added, namely, the common turnip. According to 
the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we should have to attribute this 
similarity in the enlarged stems of these three plants, not to the vera causa of community of descent, and 
a consequent tendency to vary in a like manner, but to three separated yet closely related acts of creation. " 
(Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], John Murray: London, Sixth 
Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, p.125)

25/03/2007
"Mammals offer another and similar case. I have carefully searched the oldest voyages, and have not found 
a single instance, free from doubt, of a terrestrial mammal (excluding domesticated animals kept by the 
natives) inhabiting an island situated above 300 miles from a continent or great continental island; and many 
islands situated at a much less distance are equally barren. ... Yet it cannot be said that small islands will not 
support at least small mammals, for they occur in many parts of the world on very small islands, when lying 
close to a continent; and hardly an island can be named on which our smaller quadrupeds have not become 
naturalised and greatly multiplied. It cannot be said, on the ordinary view of creation, that there has not 
been time for the creation of mammals; many volcanic islands are sufficiently ancient, as shown by the 
stupendous degradation which they have suffered, and by their tertiary strata: there has also been time for 
the production of endemic species belonging to other classes; and on continents it is known that new 
species of mammals appear and disappear at a quicker rate than other and lower animals. Although terrestrial 
mammals do not occur on oceanic islands, aerial mammals do occur on almost every island. ... Why, it may 
be asked, has the supposed creative force produced bats and no other mammals on remote islands? On my 
view this question can easily be answered; for no terrestrial mammal can be transported across a wide space 
of sea, but bats can fly across." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," 
[1859], John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, pp.350-351) 

25/03/2007
"The naturalist, looking at the inhabitants of these volcanic islands in the Pacific, distant several hundred 
miles from the continent, feels that he is standing on American land. Why should this be so? why should 
the species which are supposed to have been created in the Galapagos archipelago, and nowhere else, bear 
so plainly the stamp of affinity to those created in America? There is nothing in the conditions of life, in the 
geological nature of the islands, in their height of climate, or in the proportions in which the several classes 
are associated together, which closely resembles the conditions of the South American cost: in fact, there is 
a considerable dissimilarity in all these respects. On the other hand, there is a considerable degree of 
resemblance in the volcanic nature of the soil, in the climate, height and size of the islands, between the 
Galapagos and Cape Verde archipelagoes: but what an entire and absolute difference in their inhabitants! 
The inhabitants of the Cape Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the Galapagos to 
America. Facts such as these, admit of no sort of explanation on the ordinary view of independent creation: 
whereas on the view here maintained, it is obvious that the Galapagos Islands would be likely to receive 
colonists from America, whether by occasional means of transport or (though I do not believe in this 
doctrine) by formerly continuous land, and the Cape Verde Islands from Africa; such colonists would be 
liable to modification, - the principle of the inheritance still betraying their original birthplace." (Darwin, C.R., 
"The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, 
Reprinted, 1882, p.354) 

25/03/2007
"The relations just discussed, - namely, lower organisms ranging more widely than the higher, - some of the 
species of widely-ranging genera themselves ranging widely, - such facts, as alpine, lacustrine, and marsh 
productions being generally related to those which live on the surrounding low lands and dry lands, - the 
striking relationship between the inhabitants of islands and those of the nearest mainland - the still closer 
relationship of the distinct inhabitants of the islands in the same archipelago - are inexplicable on the 
ordinary view of the independent creation of each species, but are explicable if we admit colonisation from 
the nearest or readiest source, together with the subsequent adaptation of the colonists to their new 
homes." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], John Murray: 
London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, pp.358-359)

25/03/2007
"We can see why characters derived from the embryo should be of equal importance with those derived from 
the adult, for a natural classification of course includes all ages. But it is by no means obvious, on the 
ordinary view, why the structure of the embryo should be more important for this purpose than that of the 
adult, which alone plays its full part in the economy of nature. Yet it has been strongly urged by those great 
naturalists, Milne Edwards and Agassiz, that embryological characters are the most important of all; and this 
doctrine has very generally been admitted as true. Nevertheless, their importance has sometimes been 
exaggerated, owing to the adaptive characters of larvae not having been excluded; in order to show this, 
Fritz Müller arranged by the aid of such characters alone the great class of crustaceans, and the arrangement 
did not prove a natural one. But there can be no doubt that embryonic, excluding larval characters, are of the 
highest value for classification, not only with animals but with plants. Thus the main divisions of flowering 
plants are founded on differences in the embryo, - on the number and position of the cotyledons, and on the 
mode of development of the plumule and radicle. We shall immediately see why these characters possess so 
high a value in classification, namely, from the natural system being genealogical in its arrangement."
(Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], John Murray: London, Sixth 
Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, pp.368-369)

25/03/2007
"Geoffroy St. Hilaire has strongly insisted on the high importance of relative position or connexion in 
homologous parts; they may differ to almost any extent in form and size, and yet remain connected together 
in the same invariable order. We never find, for instance, the bones of the arm and fore-arm, or of the thigh 
and leg, transposed. Hence the same names can be given to the homologous bones in widely different 
animals. ... Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of 
the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes. The hopelessness of the attempt has been 
expressly admitted by Owen in his most interesting work on the 'Nature of Limbs.' On the ordinary view of 
the independent creation of each being, we can only say that so it is; - that it has pleased the Creator to 
construct all the animals and plants in each great class on a uniform plan; but this is not a scientific 
explanation. The explanation is to a large extent simple on the theory of the selection of successive slight 
modifications, each modification being profitable in some way to the modified form, but often affecting by 
correlation other parts of the organisation. In changes of this nature, there will be little or no tendency to 
alter the original pattern, or to transpose the parts. The bones of a limb might be shortened and flattened to 
any extent, becoming at the same time enveloped in thick membrane, so as to serve as a fin; or a webbed 
hand might have all its bones, or certain bones, lengthened to any extent, with the membrane connecting 
them increased, so as to serve as a wing; yet all these modifications would not tend to alter the framework of 
the bones or the relative connexion of the parts. If we suppose that an early progenitor - the archetype as it 
may be called - of all mammals, birds, and reptiles, had its limbs constructed on the existing general pattern, 
for whatever purpose they served, we can at once perceive the plain signification of the homologous 
construction of the limbs throughout the class. ... Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the general pattern of 
an organ might become so much obscured as to be finally lost, by the reduction and ultimately by the 
complete abortion of certain parts, by the fusion of other parts, and by the doubling or multiplication of 
others, - variations which we know to be within the limits of possibility." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of 
Species By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, 
pp.382-383)

25/03/2007
"There is another and equally curious branch of our subject; namely, serial homologies, or the comparison 
of the different parts or organs in the same individual, and not of the same parts or organs in different 
members of the same class. Most physiologists believe that the bones of the skull are homologous - that is, 
correspond in number and in relative connexion - with the elemental parts of a certain number of vertebræ. 
The anterior and posterior limbs in all the higher vertebrate classes are plainly homologous. So it is with the 
wonderfully complex jaws and legs of crustaceans. It is familiar to almost every one, that in a flower the 
relative position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, as well as their intimate structure, are intelligible 
on the view that they consist of metamorphosed leaves arranged in a spire. In monstrous plants, we often 
get direct evidence of the possibility of one organ being transformed into another; and we can actually see, 
during the early or embryonic stages of development in flowers, as well as in crustaceans and many other 
animals, that organs, which when mature become extremely different are at first exactly alike. How 
inexplicable are the cases of serial homologies on the ordinary view of creation! Why should the brain be 
enclosed in a box composed of such numerous and such extraordinarily shaped pieces of bone, apparently 
representing vertebræ? As Owen has remarked, the benefit derived from the yielding of the separate pieces 
in the act of parturition by mammals, will by no means explain the same construction in the skulls of birds 
and reptiles. Why should similar bones have been created to form the wing and the leg of a bat, used as 
they are for such totally different purposes, namely flying and walking? Why should one crustacean, which 
has an extremely complex mouth formed of many parts, consequently always have fewer legs; or conversely, 
those with many legs have simpler mouths? Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, in each 
flower, though fitted for such distinct purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern? On the theory of 
natural selection, we can, to a certain extent, answer these questions." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species 
By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, p.384) 

25/03/2007
"As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts and improves the inhabitants of each country only in 
relation to their co-inhabitants; so that we need feel no surprise at the species of any one country, although 
on the ordinary view supposed to have been created and specially adapted for that country, being beaten 
and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land. Nor ought we to marvel if all the 
contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the human 
eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee, 
when used against an enemy, causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such great numbers 
for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by 
our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidæ 
feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars; or at other such cases. The wonder indeed is, on the theory 
of natural selection, that more cases of the want of absolute perfection have not been detected." (Darwin, 
C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 
1872, Reprinted, 1882, pp.414-415)

25/03/2007
"How inexplicable on the theory of creation is the occasional appearance of stripes on the shoulders and 
legs of the several species of the horse-genus and of their hybrids! How simply is this fact explained if we 
believe that these species are all descended from a striped progenitor, in the same manner as the several 
domestic breeds of the pigeon are descended from the blue and barred rock-pigeon!" (Darwin, C.R., "The 
Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, 
Reprinted, 1882, p.415)

25/03/2007
"On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, why should specific characters, 
or those by which the species of the same genus differ from each other, be more variable than generic 
characters in which they all agree? Why, for instance, should the colour of a flower be more likely to vary in 
any one species of a genus, if the other species possess differently coloured flowers, than if all possessed 
the same coloured flowers? (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," [1859], 
John Murray: London, Sixth Edition, 1872, Reprinted, 1882, pp.415-416)

25/03/2007
"I may be permitted to say as some excuse, that I had two distinct objects in view, firstly, to shew that 
species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of 
change, though largely aided by the inherited effects of habit, and slightly by the direct action of the 
surrounding conditions. Nevertheless I was not able to annul the influence of my former belief, then widely 
prevalent, that each species had been purposely created; and this led to my tacitly assuming that every 
detail of structure, excepting rudiments, was of some special, though unrecognised, service. Any one with 
this assumption in his mind would naturally extend the action of natural selection, either during past or 
present times, too far. Some of those who admit the principle of evolution, but reject natural selection, seem 
to forget, when criticising my book, that I had the above two objects in view; hence if I have erred in giving 
to natural selection great power, which I am far from admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is 
in itself probable, I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate 
creations." (Darwin, C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," John Murray: London, 
First Edition, 1871, Vol. 1, pp.152-153. 
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F937.1&viewtype=text&pageseq=165)

28/03/2007
"Humans: unique animals Like the apes, humans are hominoids, so they have the same basic 
characteristics as the apes ... In humans there is a continued extension of those trends in characteristics 
described for the apes, and humans differ from them in certain obvious features of appearance and 
functional anatomy. Every animal species has some features that make it unique, because it develops 
adaptations that help it to survive and reproduce in its particular environment. Humans, however, have 
some very special adaptations, and it is these that make the human a unique animal." (Newton, T.J. & Joyce, 
A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], McGraw-Hill Book Co: Sydney NSW, Australia, Third Edition, 
1995, Reprinted, 1996, p.347. Emphasis original)

28/03/2007
"Stance and locomotion Humans are erect and bipedal: adaptations for an upright 
stance and locomotion involving only two feet are characteristically human. The upright stance is 
maintained by the arrangement of the vertebrae of the spine into an S-shaped curve, which enables 
the head to be balanced on top of the neck. The vertebrae in the lower or lumbar region are wedge-
shaped from front to back, thus forming a forward-jutting curve ... Because of this curvature, the pelvis 
tends to slope back and down. The pelvis in humans is broad, shorter from top to bottom than in other 
hominoids, and bowl-shaped. As a consequence of the upright stance, the human pelvis gives support to 
the abdominal organs, as well as giving attachment to the muscles that move the lower limbs and control the 
posture of the body. In the female, the pelvis also supports the developing foetus during pregnancy. The 
female pelvis tends to be slightly broader than that of the male, to allow the passage of the infant at birth ... 
The head of the femur, or thigh bone, is large and fits into the acetabulum (hip socket) of the 
pelvis. Because the pelvis is broad, the hip sockets are wide apart, but the thigh bones still tend to converge 
towards the knees. This arrangement of the thigh bones forms an angle to the vertical, termed the 
carrying angle ... which ensures that weight distribution remains close to the central axis of the body 
when walking. This arrangement also allows for greater stability when walking as it enables the body to be 
rotated about the lower leg and foot and each footstep to follow a more or less straight line. The human foot 
is probably the most distinctive adaptation to a bipedal mode of locomotion. In becoming a highly 
specialised locomotory organ it has lost all its grasping ability, or prehensibility. This is most 
noticeable with the big toe, which in humans is aligned alongside the other toes, and is quite large. The 
bones of the foot between the toes and the ankle, the metatarsals, are shaped in such a way that 
they form two arches: a longitudinal arch running from front to back, and a transverse arch running from 
side to side (the latter arch being unique to humans ..). Possession of these two arches has enabled humans 
to perfect bipedal locomotion. Humans walk bipedally using the striding gait-walking in such a way that the 
hip and knee are fully extended ...Bipedalism has resulted in the human limb proportions being significantly 
different from those of the other hominoids. Human legs are proportionately longer than the lower limbs of 
the apes, probably a consequence of the striding gait. This increased limb length in comparison to body size 
has resulted in a lower centre of gravity for humans, and hence greater stability when standing erect ... ." 
(Newton, T.J. & Joyce, A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], McGraw-Hill Book Co: Sydney NSW, 
Australia, Third Edition, 1995, Reprinted, 1996, pp.347-348. Emphasis original) 

28/03/2007
"The human hand The human hand differs structurally and functionally from that of the other hominoids. 
It is short and broad, with short, straight fingers and a long, strong thumb when compared to that of an ape. 
This arrangement gives the thumb a great degree of freedom, and it can readily oppose each of the other 
digits, thumb-tip to fingertip, allowing humans to grasp objects with precision. The precision grip, such as 
that used for holding a pencil when writing or a needle when sewing, is highly developed in humans. When 
grasping an object between the undersides of the fingers and the palm of the hand, a power grip can be 
used. The power grip, which exerts considerable strength, is found in other primates, such as the gorilla and 
chimpanzee ... ." (Newton, T.J. & Joyce, A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], McGraw-Hill Book Co: 
Sydney NSW, Australia, Third Edition, 1995, Reprinted, 1996, p.348. Emphasis original)

28/03/2007
"The human brain Humans have relatively large brains: they range in size from 900 to 2200 cm^3, but 
average around 1350 cm^3. This contrasts markedly with those of the other hominoids, which average 
between 400 and 500 cm^3. Most of the increase in brain size is associated with the cerebrum, which is 
divided by a longitudinal fissure into two halves, the left and the right hemi spheres. The outer portion of 
these hemispheres is the cortex, and it is this portion of the human brain that shows the greatest degree of 
development. The surface area of the cerebral cortex is greatly increased by foldings, called convolutions, 
which give a resulting surface area 50 per cent greater than a brain with no convolutions. The front part of 
the cerebrum, known as the frontal lobe, has the greatest relative enlargement in surface area. In humans it 
makes up 47 per cent of the total cortical surface, whereas in pongids it com prises only 33 per cent. It is in 
the frontal lobe that the higher functions of thinking, reasoning, planning and processing take place." 
(Newton, T.J. & Joyce, A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], McGraw-Hill Book Co: Sydney NSW, 
Australia, Third Edition, 1995, Reprinted, 1996, pp.348-349. Emphasis original)

28/03/2007
"A large brain requires a large brain case, or cranium, and in humans more of the skull is used in housing the 
brain than in the apes. As a consequence, the brow tends to be vertical and lacks the prominent brow ridges 
possessed by the other hominoids. These features, together with a shortening of the snout, have given 
humans a characteristic flat face, although the bones of the nose have been left protruding. Thus, humans 
have a far more prominent nose than any other primate. As the teeth have reduced in size there has been a 
corresponding decrease in the size of the jaw. These factors have resulted in a flatter face. The jaw is 
attached to the side of the skull by the jaw muscles. These are not as powerful as those of the other 
hominoids-especially the gorilla, whose large jaw muscles have needed modifications of the skull to ensure 
adequate attachment ... At the base of the cranium there is an opening, the foramen magnum ... through 
which the spinal cord passes as it descends from the brain. In humans, as a consequence of erect stance, 
the foramen magnum is located well forward and vertically beneath the top of the skull. This permits the 
skull to be balanced easily on the spine, with no need for special areas for the attachment of powerful neck 
muscles as in the other hominoids. In the apes, with their quadrupedal stance, the foramen magnum is 
placed further toward the back of the skull ... Their skull is not well balanced, the greater part of its weight 
lying well forward of the body, thus requiring large neck muscles to attach it to the spinal column ...." 
(Newton, T.J. & Joyce, A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], McGraw-Hill Book Co: Sydney NSW, 
Australia, Third Edition, 1995, Reprinted, 1996, p.349. Emphasis original)

28/03/2007
"Human dentition Human dentition is unique. In humans, both males and females have canine teeth that 
do not project beyond the level of the other teeth as they do in the apes. In fact, human canines look more 
look incisors: besides being small, they do not interlock with one another. ... The small canine teeth and 
relatively small incisors have resulted in a shortening of human dentition from the front of the mouth to the 
back. As a consequence, the shape of the tooth row has been altered: it no longer resembles the inverted-U 
pattern of the other hominoids; rather, it has assumed a parabolic shape ...." (Newton, T.J. & Joyce, A.P., 
"Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], McGraw-Hill Book Co: Sydney NSW, Australia, Third Edition, 1995, 
Reprinted, 1996, p.349. Emphasis original)

28/03/2007
"Speech Humans have a prominent chin, which, when coupled with the shortened jaw, has provided 
some of the tongue's muscles with a more forward attachment. This has resulted in a greater degree of 
freedom for their tongue in the front of the mouth, an important factor for the formation of certain distinctive 
sounds during speech. Also important in this respect is the position of the voice box, or larynx: it lies 
directly below the tongue and soft palate, another consequence of human's erect stance. Together, these 
structural features make speech possible. When air passes over the vocal cords in the larynx they produce 
sounds that can be modulated by a highly mobile tongue, acting in conjunction with the hard and soft 
palate. the teeth and the lips .... However, these structural features alone are not responsible for speech. 
Speech is very much a product of the human brain, and the portion of the cerebrum devoted to the muscles 
of speech is very large, second only to the portion devoted to the muscles of the hand." (Newton, T.J. & 
Joyce, A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], McGraw-Hill Book Co: Sydney NSW, Australia, Third 
Edition, 1995, Reprinted, 1996, pp.349-350. Emphasis original)

28/03/2007
"Body covering Humans appear to be relatively hairless, and have been referred to as 'naked apes'. This, 
in fact, is untrue. Humans are very hairy, but the hairs are so fine that, except for the scalp, the armpits and 
the pubic areas, many areas of the human body appear to be naked. With adolescence, males grow hair on 
their faces, arms, legs and chests, although the density of hair varies with each individual. Occasionally, 
males have dense hair on their backs and shoulders. An unusual feature of human body and facial hair is 
that it does not start to grow until puberty, and some human biologists have suggested that it may be a 
visual signal of sexual maturity. The relative hairlessness of humans has been explained by some scientists, 
including Charles Darwin, as a cooling device. Humans have millions of tiny sweat glands all over their 
bodies. As the sweat evaporates, the body is cooled. Hair would reduce the efficiency of this process, but 
the absence of hair also increases susceptibility to cold. To compensate for this, humans tend to have a 
layer of fat just below the skin to help retain body heat when temperatures drop." (Newton, T.J. & Joyce, 
A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], McGraw-Hill Book Co: Sydney NSW, Australia, Third Edition, 
1995, Reprinted, 1996, pp.350-351. Emphasis original)

28/03/2007
"Sexual characteristics The human female has well-developed breasts, a feature shared by no other 
primate. It has been suggested that the large, conspicuous breasts of the human female have a sexual as well 
as a maternal function. Sexual attractiveness may have played an important part in establishing and 
maintaining human pair-bonds, which would have been very important for the survival of offspring. If 
couples did not stay together in a stable relationship, offspring would have had little chance of survival. For 
perhaps similar reasons, the penis of the human male is very large compared with that of the other primates. 
Additionally, females can receive a male for sexual intercourse at any time, and there is no period of oestrus 
as in the other primates." (Newton, T.J. & Joyce, A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], McGraw-Hill 
Book Co: Sydney NSW, Australia, Third Edition, 1995, Reprinted, 1996, p.351. Emphasis original)

28/03/2007
"Care of the young The period of development after birth during which most growth occurs is very long 
in humans, and considerable parental care is required. Compared to that of the other hominoids the rate of 
human growth and development is very slow, especially the period between weaning (the time breast 
feeding is stopped) and puberty. The delay in puberty appears to be an evolutionary trend in the primates, 
being at its most extreme in humans. During the period of juvenile dependence, ideas and techniques can be 
passed from one generation to another." (Newton, T.J. & Joyce, A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," [1979], 
McGraw-Hill Book Co: Sydney NSW, Australia, Third Edition, 1995, Reprinted, 1996, p.351. Emphasis 
original)

28/03/2007
"The eight main features discussed above are unique to humans. It is important to remember that some of 
these features-such as the increase in the size of the brain and the increase in the period of growth and 
development-are only extensions of trends that are displayed by the evolutionary relationships among the 
other primates; others, such as the erect stance, the striding gait, and the development of speech, are purely 
human characteristics. (There are many sociological and psychological features displayed by modern 
humans that have not been discussed here. Most of these features are the consequences of human cultural 
development in relatively recent times ...)." (Newton, T.J. & Joyce, A.P., "Human Perspectives, Book 1," 
[1979], McGraw-Hill Book Co: Sydney NSW, Australia, Third Edition, 1995, Reprinted, 1996, p.351)

29/03/2007
"Has the Creator since the Cambrian formations gone on creating animals with same general structure.- 
miserable limited view." (Darwin, C.R., "Notebook B 212-216," in "Charles Darwin's Notebooks, 1836-1844: 
Geology, Transmutation of Species, Metaphysical Enquiries," Barrett, P.H., et al., eds, Cornell University 
Press, Ithaca NY, 1987, p.224)

30/03/2007
"In contrast with all later genera, the earliest-known lungfish, Diabolichthyes from the Lower Devonian of 
China, shows a remarkable mosaic of characters considered typical of lungfish and primitive rhipidistians .... 
The pattern of the skull roof is clearly comparable with that of later lungfish, but the ventral surface of the 
skull shows that the basicranial articulation was still mobile and that the palatoquadrate was not fused to the 
braincase. The posterior portion of the braincase has not been described, but comparison with the primitive 
rhipidistian Youngolepis suggests that the ethmoid and otic-occipital elements were separately ossified. 
The premaxilla is recognizable as a distinct tooth-bearing bone of the skull margin that separates the anterior 
narial opening from the mouth cavity. The vomer occupies a position that is comparable to that of primitive 
rhipidistians, and the parasphenoid is a long, toothed element extending anteriorly between the pterygoids. 
In contrast with all later lungfish, the dentary retains marginal teeth. On the other hand, the teeth on the 
premaxilla do not form a marginal row but were exposed primarily within the mouth cavity. The teeth 
covering the pterygoid and prearticular are densely packed and arranged in a radiating pattern, as in later 
lungfish, but are not fused to form definite tooth plates. Diabolichthys is clearly allied with later lungfish 
in the emphasis on the palatal dentition and in the pattern of the dermal skull roof, but it retains many 
features that reflect an ancestry among the crossopterygians. The postcranial skeleton of Diabolichthys 
has not been described, but that of the slightly younger genus Uranolophus resembles that of 
rhipidistians ... Diabolichthys comes from a facies that is transitional between marine and continental. 
Other early Devonian lungfish are known from freshwater and marine deposits. All lungfish other than 
Diabolichthys are distinguished by ossification of the braincase as a single unit to which the 
palatoquadrate is fused, the loss of the pre maxillae, and the great reduction in the anterior extent of the 
parasphenoid. The advanced pattern of the palate and braincase are already evident in Uranolophus from 
the Lower Devonian of North America .... Unlike most later lungfish, Uranolophus lacks tooth plates. The 
pteryogoids are elongate triangular bones that cover most of the palate. Both they and the prearticulars bear 
tooth ridges on their margins. Well-defined tooth plates are a hallmark of more advanced lungfish. In the 
middle Devonian genus Dipterus ... there are large paired plates with radiating rows of denticles that 
occupy much of the surface of the pterygoids and smaller plates that developed from the vomers. Another 
pair are borne on the prearticulars." (Carroll, R.L., "Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution," W.H. Freeman 
& Co: New York NY, 1988, p.148) 

30/03/2007
"Dipterus ... genus of very primitive lungfish, among the earliest known, found as fossils in European and 
North American Devonian rocks (the Devonian Period lasted from 408 to 360 million years ago). Very similar 
to the crossopterygians, the lobe-finned fishes that gave rise to the first amphibians, Dipterus retained many 
archaic features, including two dorsal fins and a tail that resembled a lobe-finned tail. Functional lungs were 
probably present in Dipterus, and a freshwater habitat is indicated. The skull bones of Dipterus, though still 
primitive, consist of a mosaic of small bones; Dipterus had already initiated the unusual bone pattern seen in 
more advanced lungfish. Similarly, Dipterus evidences the beginnings of the lungfish trend toward extreme 
deossification of skeletal elements. Dipterus was probably the direct ancestor of the modern Australian 
lungfish, the genus Neoceratodus." ("Dipterus," Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopaedia Britannica 
Online. Accessed 30 March 2007. Emphasis original)

30/03/2007
"Early lungfishes are represented by the genus Dipterus ... Dipterus, a fish of middle Devonian age, 
possessed many of the generalized sarcopterygian characters that were outlined above for the primitive air-
breathing fishes, such as a long, fusiform body terminating in a strong, heterocercal tall, paired fins of the 
archipterygial type, with a strong central axis down the middle of each fin, and with subsidiary bony rays 
diverging on either side of this axis, and two dorsal fins. The large, heavy rounded scales were of the 
cosmoid type. Contrasted with these primitive characters there were various specialized features that 
indicate even in as early a form as Dipterus the trends that were to take place in the evolution of the 
dipnoans. For instance, there was considerable reduction of bone in the internal skeleton of this fish, and 
such a development is found in all of the later lungfishes. The braincase, too, was poorly ossified, although 
in those Devonian lungfishes in which the braincase has been preserved a certain amount of bone is 
present. Subsequent to Devonian times the ossification of the braincase was to be completely suppressed. 
The jaws were partially ossified, yet even here a process of chondrification was beginning that was to 
become typical of later dipnoans. The skull was composed of numerous bony plates. In general there was a 
great multiplication of bones covering the head in Dipterus, and because of this it is almost impossible to 
indicate any homologies between the bones of the skull in this fish and the skull bones in other bony fishes. 
Likewise, the dentition in Dipterus had become highly specialized. The marginal teeth were suppressed in 
both the upper and lower jaws, and mastication of the food was effected by large, tooth-bearing plates, 
those above being formed by the pterygoid bones of the palate and those below by the prearticular bones 
of the lower jaw. On these plates the teeth were arranged in a fan-shaped fashion, a pattern that was to be 
carried on through the evolutionary history of the lungfishes. Obviously such teeth were adapted for 
crushing hard food, and it is probable that the food of the Devonian lungfish, Dipterus, was rather similar 
to that of the modern Australian lungfish, consisting of small invertebrates and vegetable matter." (Colbert, 
E.H. & Morales, M., "Evolution of the Vertebrates: A History of the Backboned Animals Through Time," 
[1955], John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, Fourth Edition, 1990, Second Printing, 1992, p.63) 

30/03/2007
"Prior to the Devonian period (between 410 and 360 million years ago), nothing lived on land, save for a 
few spiky, low plants, some scorpions and other insects. The earth was congregated into large 
continents completely different from the ones we know today, and in a constant - albeit slow - state of 
change. There were massive freshwater lakes, and while the land was a bare, desolate place, these lakes 
and oceans writhed with life. ... It was during this period, often called the Age of Fishes, that the first 
bony fishes, the vertebrates, appeared on the scene. ... The vertebrates were divided into two groups: 
the ray-finned fishes, or Actinopterygii, with the single dorsal fin and paired pectoral and pelvic fins 
common to most modern fishes; and the lobe-finned fishes - the coelacanth, the lungfish, and the 
rhipidistian-whose fins appeared to sprout from the end of fleshy, limb-like lobes, almost like toeless 
legs. These were known as Sarcopterygii (from the Greek sarco meaning fleshy, and pterygii, 
wing or fin), and were characterised also by their extra dorsal fin. ... Some time towards the end of the 
Devonian period, a single species of freshwater lobe finned fish evolved legs. In its new guise of 
Ichthyostega (literally, walking fish) it crawled out of the water to conquer the land this much 
scientists agreed upon. What was not so certain was which of the group evolved into Ichthyostega: 
the lungfish, rhipidistian, or coelacanth?" (Weinberg, S., "A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the 
Coelacanth," [1999], Fourth Estate: London, Reprint, 2000, pp.28,30)

*Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists.

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