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Thoughts on Evolution From Scientists and Other Intellectuals Compiled by: Sean D. Pitman M.D. Updated: October,
2004
The Philosophy of Evolution "Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species, was published in 1859. It is perhaps the most influential book that has ever been published, because it was read by scientist and non- scientist alike, and it aroused violent controversy. Religious people disliked it because it appeared to dispense with God; scientists liked it because it seemed to solve the most important problem in the universe-the existence of living matter. In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit in with it. Lipson, H.S. [Professor of Physics, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK], "A physicist looks at evolution," Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 4, May 1980, p.138.
"In fact the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won't fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling." Erasmus Darwin, in a letter to his brother Charles, after reading his new book, "The Origin of Species," in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life of Charles Darwin," [1902], Senate: London, 1995, reprint, p215.
"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." Lewontin, Richard C. [Professor of Zoology and Biology, Harvard University], "Billions and Billions of Demons", Review of "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," by Carl Sagan, New York Review, January 9, 1997. (Emphasis in original)
"Another reason that scientists are so prone to throw the baby out with the bath water is that science itself, as I have suggested, is a religion. The neophyte scientist, recently come or converted to the world view of science, can be every bit as fanatical as a Christian crusader or a soldier of Allah. This is particularly the case when we have come to science from a culture and home in which belief in God is firmly associated with ignorance, superstition, rigidity and hypocrisy. Then we have emotional as well as intellectual motives to smash the idols of primitive faith. A mark of maturity in scientists, however, is their awareness that science may be as subject to dogmatism as any other religion." Peck, M. Scott [psychiatrist and Medical Director of New Milford Hospital Mental Health Clinic, Connecticut, USA], "The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth," [1978], Arrow: London, 1990, p.238.
"Spencer's belief in the universality of natural causation was, together with his laissez-faire political creed, the bedrock of his thinking. It was this belief, more than anything else, that led him to reject Christianity, long before the great conflict of the eighteen-sixties Moreover, it was his belief in natural causation that led him to embrace the theory of evolution, not vice versa. ... His faith was so strong that it did not wait on scientific proof. Spencer became an ardent evolutionist at a time when a cautious scientist would have been justified at least in suspending judgement. ... for him the belief in natural causation was primary, the theory of evolution derivative." Burrow, John W. [Professor of Intellectual History, University of Sussex, UK], "Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory," [1966], Cambridge University Press: London, 1968, reprint, pp.180-181, 205).
"Naturalism ... (in modern metaphysics) the view that everything (objects and events) is a part of nature, an all-encompassing world of space and time. It implies a rejection of traditional beliefs in supernatural beings or other entities supposedly beyond the ken of science. Human beings and their mental powers are also regarded as normal parts of the natural world describable by science. ... (in philosophy of mind) physicalism, i.e. materialism in combination with the view that mentalistic discourse should be reduced, explained or eliminated in favour of non- mentalistic scientifically acceptable discourse." Mautner, Thomas [Visiting Fellow, School of Humanities, Australian National University], "The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy," [1996], Penguin: London, Revised, 2000, p.373
"Evolution is the creation-myth of our age. By telling us our origin it shapes our views of what we are. It influences not just our thought, but our feelings and actions too, in a way which goes far beyond its official function as a biological theory." Midgley, Mary [former Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK], "The Religion of Evolution," in Durant J., ed., "Darwinism and Divinity: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief," Basil Blackwell: Oxford UK, 1985, p.154.
"Darwin's three mistakes were that (1) he dismissed mass extinction as artifacts of an imperfect geologic record; (2) he assumed that species diversity, like individuals of a given species, tends to increase exponentially with time; and (3) he considered biotic interactions the major cause of species extinction. Those mistakes led to the theory propounded in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (Darwin, 1859), which has been adopted by many as the scientific basis of the social philosophies. The Darwinian theory of evolution has two themes: common descent and natural selection. Creationists are barking up the wrong tree when they question common descent, which is amply documented by scientific evidence. Darwin's mistakes were in his emphasis on biotic competition in natural selection. We learned evolution in school, along with aphorisms about the struggle for existence, natural selection, adaptation, and survival of the fittest. Few of us have found it necessary to check the scientific basis of the Darwinian theory. I did not bother to read Origin of the Species until I started to write a book on the terminal Cretaceous mass extinction. Only then did I realize how wrong Darwin was on some critical issues and how unfortunate it is that his mistakes have been misused by ideologists for their propaganda. This essay is an attempt to renounce social Darwinism... Darwin's theory in biology, transferred to Germany and nurtured by Ernst Haeckel, inspired an ideology that led eventually to the rise of the Nazis... We have suffered through two world wars and are threatened by an Armageddon. We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It is about time we cry: 'The Emperor Has No Clothes.'" Hsu, Kenneth, geologist at the Geological Institute at Zurich; Darwin's three mistakes, Geology, vol. 14, 1986, p. 532-534
"There was little doubt that the star intellectual turn of last week's British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Salford was Dr John Durant, a youthful lecturer from University College Swansea. Giving the Darwin lecture to one of the biggest audiences of the week, Durant put forward an audacious theory-that Darwin's evolutionary explanation of the origins of man has been transformed into a modern myth, to the detriment of science and social progress. Durant said that scientists and popularisers have asked too much of the theory of evolution, demanding that it explain... "Life, the Universe, and Everything". As a result Darwin's theory has burst at the seams, leaving a wreckage of distorted and mutilated ideas, and man's understanding of his society has been hobbled by his inability to escape the conservative myths he has created. Durant bemoaned the transformation of evolutionary ideas into "secular or scientific myths". ... they have assumed the social role of myths-legends about remote ancestors that express and reinforce peoples' ideas about the society around them. "Like the creation myths which have so largely replaced, theories of human evolution are basically stories about the first appearance of man on Earth and the institution of human society," said Durant. ... Durant concludes that the secular myths of evolution have had "a damaging effect on scientific research", leading to "distortion, to needless controversy, and to the gross misuse of science". "How evolution became a scientific myth," New Scientist, 11 September 1980, p.765.
__________
Keep in mind, in reading the following quotes from Grasse, that Grasse was a devoted evolutionist even though he didn't believe that the mechanism was well understood. The last quote from Grasse listed here will make this quite clear.
"Today, our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the weaknesses of the interpretations and extrapolations that theoreticians put forward or lay down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs." Grasse, Pierre-P. [editor of the 28-volume "Traite de Zoologie", former Chair of Evolution, Sorbonne University and ex-president of the French Academie des Sciences], "Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation", Academic Press: New York NY, 1977, p.8.
"Directed by all-powerful selection, chance becomes a sort of providence, which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshipped...To insist, even with Olympian assurance, that life appeared quite by chance and evolved in this fashion, is an unfounded supposition which I believe to be wrong and not in accordance with the facts." Grasse, Pierre-P., [editor of the 28-volume "Traite de Zoologie", former Chair of Evolution, Sorbonne University and ex-president of the French Academie des Sciences], "Evolution of Living Organisms Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation", [1973], Academic Press: New York NY, 1977, p.107
"Zoologists and botanists are nearly unanimous in considering evolution as a fact and not a hypothesis. I agree with this position and base it primarily on documents provided by paleontology, i.e., the history of the living world ... [Also,] Embryogenesis provides valuable data [concerning evolutionary relationships] ... Chemistry, through its analytical data, directs biologists and provides guidance in their search for affinities between groups of animals or plants, and ... plays an important part in the approach to genuine evolution." Pierre P. Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, pp. 3,4,5,7 ___________
The following quote is part of a personal letter from Colin Patterson to Luther Sunderland:
In the last book that Colin Patterson wrote before he died he said:
[The] "misprints" shared between species ... are (to me) incontrovertible evidence of common descent.
"The personal and intellectual drama of Darwin and Dana provides the main subject for this essay, but I also write to illustrate a broader theme in the lives of scholars and the nature of science: the integrative power of worldviews (the positive side), and their hold as conceptual locks upon major innovation (the negative side)." Gould, Stephen Jay [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University], "Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History", [1998], Vintage: London, 1999, reprint, p.103.
"These so-called M and N notebooks were written in 1838 and 1839, while Darwin was compiling the transmutation notebooks that formed the basis for his sketches of 1842 and 1844. They ... include many statements showing that he espoused but feared to expose something he perceived as far more heretical than evolution itself: philosophical materialism-the postulate that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. ... The notebooks prove that ... the primary feature distinguishing his theory from all other evolutionary doctrines was its uncompromising philosophical materialism. .... In the notebooks Darwin resolutely applied his materialistic theory of evolution to all phenomena of life, including what he termed "the citadel itself" - the human mind. And if mind has no real existence beyond the brain, can God be anything more than an illusion invented by an illusion? In one of his transmutation notebooks, he wrote: `Love of the deity effect of organization, oh you materialist!...'" Gould, Stephen Jay [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, USA], "Darwin's Delay," in "Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History," [1978], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, pp.23-25.
"By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous. Together with Marx's materialistic theory of history and society and Freud's attribution of human behavior to influences over which we have little control, Darwin's theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism-of much of science, in short-that has since been the stage of most Western thought." Futuyma, Douglas J. [Professor of Evolutionary Biology, State University of New York, Stony Brook], "Evolutionary Biology", [1979], Sinauer Associates: Sunderland MA, Second Edition, 1986, p.2.
"This was only one of Pasteur's experiments. It is no easy matter to deal with so deeply ingrained and common-sense a belief as that in spontaneous generation. One can ask for nothing better in such a pass than a noisy and stubborn opponent, and this Pasteur had in the naturalist Felix Pouchet, whose arguments before the French Academy of Sciences drove Pasteur to more and more rigorous experiments. When he had finished, nothing remained of the belief in spontaneous generation. We tell this story to beginning students of biology as though it represents a triumph of reason over mysticism. In fact it is very nearly the opposite. The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a "philosophical necessity." It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing. I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the origin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous generation. What the controversy reviewed above showed to be untenable is only the belief that living organisms arrive spontaneously under present conditions. We have now to face a somewhat different problem: how organisms may have arisen spontaneously under different conditions in some former period, granted that they do so no longer." "One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation." "Time is the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years... Given so much time the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles." George Wald (1967 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine), "The Origin of Life," Scientific American, vol. 191 1954, p. 46; reprinted on p. 307-320, A Treasury of Science, Fourth Revised Edition, Harlow Shapley et al., eds., Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1958. p 309.
One is forced to conclude that many scientists and technologists pay lip-service to Darwinian theory only because it supposedly excludes a creator." Dr. Michael Walker, Senior Lecturer Anthropology, Sydney University. Quadrant, October 1982, page 44.
"Darwinian theory is the creation myth of our culture. It's the officially sponsored, government financed creation myth that the public is supposed to believe in, and that creates the evolutionary scientists as the priesthood... So we have the priesthood of naturalism, which has great cultural authority, and of course has to protect its mystery that gives it that authority---that's why they're so vicious towards critics." Phillip Johnson, On the PBS documentary "In the Beginning: The Creationist Controversy" [May 1995]
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented." Provine William B., [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], "Darwin Day" website, University of Tennessee Knoxville, 1998.
"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent." Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], ", "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life", Abstract of Will Provine's 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.
"It is no more heretical to say the Universe displays purpose, as Hoyle has done, than to say that it is pointless, as Steven Weinberg has done. Both statements are metaphysical and outside science. Yet it seems that scientists are permitted by their own colleagues to say metaphysical things about lack of purpose and not the reverse. This suggests to me that science, in allowing this metaphysical notion, sees itself as religion and presumably as an atheistic religion (if you can have such a thing)." Shallis, Michael [Astrophysicist, Oxford University], "In the eye of a storm", New Scientist, January 19, 1984, pp.42-43.
"Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material." Simpson, George Gaylord [late Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, USA], "The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of its Significance for Man," [1949], Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1960, reprint, p.344.
"I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. & For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political." Aldous Huxley: Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff.
"Unfortunately many scientists and non-scientists have made Evolution into a religion, something to be defended against infidels. In my experience, many students of biology - professors and textbook writers included - have been so carried away with the arguments for Evolution that they neglect to question it. They preach it ... College students, having gone through such a closed system of education, themselves become teachers, entering high schools to continue the process, using textbooks written by former classmates or professors. High standards of scholarship and teaching break down. Propaganda and the pursuit of power replace the pursuit knowledge. Education becomes a fraud." George Kocan, Evolution isn't Faith But Theory, Chicago Tribune, Monday, April 21, 1980.
"We are told dogmatically that Evolution is an established fact; but we are never told who has established it, and by what means. We are told, often enough, that the doctrine is founded upon evidence, and that indeed this evidence 'is henceforward above all verification, as well as being immune from any subsequent contradiction by experience;' but we are left entirely in the dark on the crucial question wherein, precisely, this evidence consists." Smith, Wolfgang (1988) Teilhardism and the New Religion: A Thorough Analysis of The Teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books & Publishers Inc., p.2
At this point, it is necessary to reveal a little inside information about how scientists work, something the textbooks don't usually tell you. The fact is that scientists are not really as objective and dispassionate in their work as they would like you to think. Most scientists first get their ideas about how the world works not through rigorously logical processes but through hunches and wild guesses. As individuals they often come to believe something to be true long before they assemble the hard evidence that will convince somebody else that it is. Motivated by faith in his own ideas and a desire for acceptance by his peers, a scientist will labor for years knowing in his heart that his theory is correct but devising experiment after experiment whose results he hopes will support his position. Boyce Rensberger, How the World Works, William Morrow, NY, 1986, pp. 17 18. Rensberger is an ardently anti-creationist science writer.
"Any suppression which undermines and destroys that very foundation on which scientific methodology and research was erected, evolutionist or otherwise, cannot and must not be allowed to flourish ... It is a confrontation between scientific objectivity and ingrained prejudice - between logic and emotion - between fact and fiction ... In the final analysis, objective scientific logic has to prevail - no matter what the final result is - no matter how many time-honoured idols have to be discarded in the process ... After all, it is not the duty of science to defend the theory of evolution and stick by it to the bitter end -no matter what illogical and unsupported conclusions it offers ... If in the process of impartial scientific logic, they find that creation by outside intelligence is the solution to our quandary, then Lets cut the umbilical chord that tied us down to Darwin for such a long time. It is choking us and holding us back ... Every single concept advanced by the theory of evolution (and amended thereafter) is imaginary as it is not supported by the scientifically established probability concepts. Darwin was wrong... The theory of evolution may be the worst mistake made in science." I L Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities PO Box 231, Greenvale, New York 11548: New Research Publications, Inc. pp 6-8, 209-210, 214-215. I.L.Cohen, Member of the New York Academy of Sciences and Officer of the Archaeological Institute of America.
"In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit in with it." H. J. Lipson, F.R.S. "A physicist looks at evolution" Physics Bulletin, vol 31, 1980
"I think we need to go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know this is an anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it." H. S. Lipson; Prof of Physics, University of Manchester, A paper published by The Institute of Physics, IOP Publishing Ltd., 1980
'We have no acceptable theory of evolution at the present time. There is none; and I cannot accept the theory that I teach to my students each year. Let me explain. I teach the synthetic theory known as the neo-Darwinian one, for one reason only; not because it's good, we know it is bad, but because there isn't any other. Whilst waiting to find something better you are taught something which is known to be inexact, which is a first approximation. . .' Professor Jerome Lejeune: From a French recording of internationally recognized geneticist, Professor Jerome Lejeune, at a lecture given in Paris on March 17, 1985. Translated by Peter Wilders of Monaco.
"The secrets of evolution are time and death. Time for the slow accumulations of favorable mutations, and death to make room for new species." Carl Sagan, "Cosmos," program entitled "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue."
"Time is, in fact, the hero of the plot... given so much time the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles." George Wald, "The Origin of Life," Physics and Chemistry of Life, 1955, p. 12.
"It was-and still is-very hard to arrive at this concept from inside biology. The trouble lay in an unremitting cultural struggle which had developed from 1860 onward between biologists on the one hand and the supporters of old beliefs on the other. The old believers said that rabbits had been created by God using methods too wonderful for us to comprehend. The new believers said that rabbits had been created from sludge, by methods too complex for us to calculate and by methods likely enough involving improbable happenings. Improbable happenings replaced miracles and sludge replaced God, with believers both old and new seeking to cover up their ignorance in clouds of words, but different words. It was over the words that passions raged, passions which continue to rumble on in the modern world, passions that one can read about with hilarious satisfaction in the columns of the weekly science magazine Nature and listen to in basso profundo pronouncements from learned scientific societies." Hoyle, Fred [late mathematician, physicist and Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge University], "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, p.3.
Religious Implications
"Charles Robert Darwin stands among the giants of Western thought because he convinced a majority of his peers that all of life shares a single, if complex, history. He taught us that we can understand life's history in purely naturalistic terms, without recourse to the supernatural or divine." Eldredge, Niles [Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History], "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p.13.
"Here, then, is Darwin's dangerous idea: the algorithmic level *is* the level that best accounts for the speed of the antelope, the wing of the eagle, the shape of the orchid, the diversity of species, and all the other occasions for wonder in the world of nature. It is hard to believe that something as mindless and mechanical as an algorithm could produce such wonderful things. No matter how impressive the products of an algorithm, the underlying process always consists of nothing but a set of individually mindless steps succeeding each other without the help of any intelligent supervision; they are "automatic" by definition: the workings of an automaton. They feed on each other, or on blind chance-coin-flips, if you like-and on nothing else. ... Can it really be the outcome of nothing but a cascade of algorithmic processes feeding on chance? And if so, who designed that cascade? Nobody. It is itself the product of a blind, algorithmic process. As Darwin himself put it, in a letter to the geologist Charles Lyell shortly after publication of Origin, "I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent...if I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish..." F. Darwin 1911, vol. 2, pp. 6-7) According to Darwin, then, evolution is an algorithmic process." (Dennett, Daniel C.[Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, USA], "Darwin 's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and The Meanings of Life," [1995], Penguin: London, 1996, reprint, pp.59-60. Emphasis Dennett's.
"Dr. Gray goes further. He says, `The proposition that the things and events in nature were not designed to be so, if logically carried out, is doubtless tantamount to atheism.' Again, `To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos... If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have occurred and the results we behold around us were undirected and undesigned; or if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show that such belief is atheistic.' We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism? It is Atheism. This does not mean, as before said, that Mr. Darwin himself and all who adopt his views are atheists; but it means that his theory is atheistic, that the exclusion of design from nature is, as Dr. Gray says, tantamount to atheism." Hodge, Charles [late Professor of Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA], in Livingstone D.N., eds., "What Is Darwinism?", 1994, reprint, p.156
"Thus, a century ago, [it was] Darwinism against Christian orthodoxy. To-day the tables are turned. The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy, preached by its adherents with religious fervour, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers imperfect in scientific faith." Grene, Marjorie [Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of California, Davis], "The Faith of Darwinism," Encounter, Vol. 74, November 1959, pp.48-56, p.49
"The more one studies palaeontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion." More, Louis T. [late Professor of Physics, University of Cincinnati, USA], "The Dogma of Evolution," Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1925, Second Printing, p.160.
"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory-is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation-both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof" Matthews, L. Harrison [British biologist and Fellow of the Royal Society], "Introduction", Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," J. M. Dent & Sons: London, 1976, pp.x,xi, in Ankerberg J.* & Weldon J.*, "Rational Inquiry & the Force of Scientific Data: Are New Horizons Emerging?," in Moreland J.P., ed., "The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1994, p.275.
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox but harder to eradicate." Dawkins, Richard [Zoologist and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University], "Is Science a Religion?" The Humanist, Vol. 57, No. 1., January/February 1997.
"It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." Dawkins, Richard [Zoologist and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University], "Put Your Money on Evolution", Review of Johanson D. & Edey M.A., "Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution", in New York Times, April 9, 1989, sec. 7, p34.
"...although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Dawkins, Richard [zoologist and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University], "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.6.
"The concept of organic evolution is very highly prized by biologists, for many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle. This is probably the reason why severe methodological criticism employed in other departments of biology has not yet been brought to bear on evolutionary speculation." Conklin, Edwin G. [Professor of Biology , Princeton University, USA], "Man Real and Ideal", Scribner, 1943, p.147, in Macbeth N., "Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason", Gambit: Boston MA, 1971, pp.126-127.
"Reduced to the initial and still crude form in which it is now emerging in the modern world, the new religious spirit appears, as we have said (cf. I), as the impassioned vision and anticipation of some super-mankind ... To believe and to serve was not enough: we now find that it is becoming not only possible but imperative literally to love evolution." Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, [French Jesuit priest and paleontologist], "Christianity and Evolution", 1971, pp183-184, in Bird Wendell R., "The Origin of Species Revisited", Regency: Nashville TN, Vol. II, 1991, p.264
"But in our own culture, where many people officially have no religion at all, and those who have can chop and change, new faiths have much more scope and can become more distinctive. They are hungrily seized on by people whose lives lack meaning. When this happens, there arise at once, unofficially and spontaneously, many elements which we think of as characteristically religious. We begin, for instance, to find priesthoods, prophecies devotion, bigotry, exaltation, heresy- hunting and sectarianism, ritual sacrifice, fanaticism, notions of sin, absolution and salvation, and the confident promise of a heaven in the future. ... Marxism and evolutionism, the two great secular faiths of our day, display all these religious-looking features. They have also, like the great religions and unlike more casual local faiths, large-scale, ambitious systems of thought, designed to articulate, defend and justify heir ideas - in short, ideologies." Midgley, Mary [former Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK]., "Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears," [1985], Methuen: London, 1986, reprint, p.15
Evolutionists purport to explain where we came from and how we developed into the complex organisms that we are. Physicists, by and large, do not. So, the study of evolution trespasses on the bailiwick of religion. And it has something else in common with religion. It is almost as hard for scientists to demonstrate evolution to the lay public as it would be for churchmen to prove transubstantiation or the virginity of Mary." Wills, Christopher [Professor of Biology, University of California, San Diego], "The Wisdom of the Genes: New Pathways in Evolution," Basic Books: New York NY, 1989, p.9.
"Finally, the evolutionary vision is enabling us to discern, however incompletely, the lineaments of the new religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era. Just as stomachs are bodily organs concerned with digestion, and involving the biochemical activity of special juices, so are religions psychosocial organs concerned with the problems of human destiny, and involving the emotion of sacredness and the sense of right and wrong. Religion of some sort is probably necessary." Huxley, Julian [late grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, former Professor of Zoology at King's College, London, and founding Director-General of UNESCO], "The Humanist Frame," in "Essays of a Humanist," [1964], Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1969, reprint, p.91.
"The doctrine of evolution by natural selection as Darwin formulated, and as his followers still explain it, has a strong anti-religious flavour. This is due to the fact that the intricate adaptations and co-ordinations we see in living things naturally evoking the idea of finality and design and, therefore of an intelligent providence, are explained, with what seems to be a rigorous argument, as the result of chance. It may be said, and the most orthodox theologians indeed hold, that God controls and guides even the events due to chance - but this proposition the Darwinians emphatically reject, and it is clear that in the Origin evolution is presented as an essentially undirected process. For the majority of its readers, therefore, the Origin effectively dissipated the evidence of providential control. It might be said that this was their own fault. Nevertheless the failure of Darwin and his successors to attempt an equitable assessment of the religious issues at stake indicates a regrettable obtuseness and lack of responsibility." Thompson W.R, [Entomologist and Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, Ottawa, Canada], "Introduction," in Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition, 1967, reprint, p.xxiii.
"In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created: it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion. " Huxley, Julian [late grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, former Professor of Zoology at King's College, London, and founding Director-General of UNESCO], "The Humanist Frame", in "Essays of a Humanist," [1964], Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK, 1969, reprint, pp.82-83.
"With the failure of these many efforts [to explain the origin of life] science was left in the somewhat embarrassing position of having to postulate theories of living origins which it could not demonstrate. After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past." Eiseley, Loren C., [late Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania], "The Immense Journey," [1946], Vintage: New York NY, 1957, reprint, p.199.
"Discussions of evolution came to an end primarily because it was obvious that no progress was being made....When students of other sciences ask us what is now currently believed about the origin of species we have no clear answer to give. Faith has given place to agnosticism.... Biological science has returned to its rightful place, investigation of the structure and properties of the concrete and visible world. We cannot see how the differentiation into species came about. Variation of many kinds, often considerable, we daily witness, but no origin of species.... I have put before you very frankly the considerations which have made us agnostic as to the actual mode and processes of evolution. When such confessions are made the enemies of science see their chance.... Let us then proclaim in precise and unmistakable language that our faith in evolution is unshaken." Bateson, William [late founder of the science of Genetics, first Professor of Genetics, Cambridge University, UK], "Evolutionary Faith and Modern Doubts." An address delivered to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 28 December, 1921, Science, vol. LV, p.55., in More L.T., "The Dogma of Evolution", Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1925, p.28.
"As far as Christianity was concerned, the advent of the theory of evolution and the elimination of traditional teleological thinking was catastrophic. The suggestion that life and man are the result of chance is incompatible with the biblical assertion of their being the direct result of intelligent creative activity. Despite the attempt by liberal theology to disguise the point, the fact is that no biblically derived religion can really be compromised with the fundamental assertion of Darwinian theory. Chance and design are antithetical concepts, and the decline in religious belief can probably be attributed more to the propagation and advocacy by the intellectual and scientific community of the Darwinian version of evolution than to any other single factor." Denton M.J., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," Burnett: London, 1985.
"Before Darwin, we thought that a benevolent God had created us." Gould, Stephen Jay [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University], "So Cleverly Kind an Animal," in "Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History," [1978], Penguin: London UK, 1991, reprint, p.267.
"Evolutionary man can no longer take refuge from his loneliness by creeping for shelter into the arms of a divinized father-figure whom he has himself created, nor escape from the responsibility of making decisions by sheltering under the umbrella of Divine Authority, nor absolve himself from the hard task of meeting his present problems and planning his future by relying on the will of an omniscient but unfortunately inscrutable Providence. " Huxley, Julian S. [late grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, former Professor of Zoology at King's College, London, and founding Director-General of UNESCO], "Essays of a Humanist," [1964], Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK, 1969, reprint, p.83.
"I suppose I had better mention the concept of a divine creator, but personally I do not find that particular hypothesis useful and I am tempted to ask about the cosmic accident that created Him (presumably before the 'big bangs' that started the universe). And what did He do before He created the world and mankind?" Ager, Derek V. [Emeritus Professor of Geology, University College of Swansea, Wales], "The New Catastrophism: The Importance of the Rare Event in Geological History," Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1993, p.149.
"I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy." Hoyle, Sir Frederick [late mathematician, physicist and Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge University], "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 20, 1982, pp.1- 35, p.23.
"It is important to notice that it was not necessary for a scientist to renounce religion in order to be a member in good standing of the new order. Simple theism, such as Darwin possessed in 1859, interfered little with the practice of science because it had no doctrines that prescribed beliefs about the world. The more complex the theology, the greater was the potential for interference. The problem, then, was not theism, but positive theological content. Scientists who were theists could also be positivists. Those who were orthodox usually became more liberal in their theological views as they drew closer to positive science. The shift from one episteme to another required not the surrender of religion as such, but rather its replacement by positivism as the epistemological standard in science. And this eventually took God out of nature (if not out of reality) as effectively as atheism. That religion could continue under such terms often concealed from participants what had actually occurred. Nor were they the only ones deceived. In the new episteme reality was always an inference. Men would never be able to claim certainty for their beliefs while they continued within its boundaries. Popularizers of the new science who spread a gospel of metaphysical materialism based on science's supposed certain authority appreciated the real significance of what had happened as little as did the theologians who thought successful accommodation of a divinely revealed religion to the new science was a simple matter of shedding a few antiquated superstitions." Gillespie, Neal C. [professor of history at Georgia State University, USA], "Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 1979, p.153.
"The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species signified the end of an automatic acceptance of the God-given nature of human morality& Evolution does not give us a complete set of ethical norms such as the Ten Commandments, yet an understanding of evolution gives us a world view that can serve as a sound basis for the development of an ethical system...." Ernst Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, Harvard Univ. Press, 1988, pp. 75, 89.
The Fossil Record
"A record of pre-Cambrian animal life, it appears, simply does not exist. Why this lamentable blank? Various theories have been proposed; none is too satisfactory. It has been suggested, for example, that all the Pre-Cambrian sediments were deposited on continental areas, and the absence of fossils in them is due to the fact that all the older animals were seadwellers. But that all these older sediments were continental is a theory which opposes, without proof, everything we know of deposition in later times. Again, it is suggested that the Pre-Cambrian seas were poor in calcium carbonate, necessary for the production of preservable skeletons; but this is not supported by geochemical evidence. Yet again, it is argued that even though conditions were amenable to the formation of fossilizable skeletal parts, the various phyla only began to use these possibilities at the dawn of the Cambrian. But it is, a priori, hard to believe that the varied types present in the early Cambrian would all have, so to speak, decided to put on armour simultaneously. And, once again, it has been argued that the whole evolution of multicellular animals took place with great rapidity in late Pre-Cambrian times, so that a relatively short gap in rock deposition would account for the absence of any record of their rise. Perhaps; but the known evolutionary rate in most groups from the Cambrian on is a relatively leisurely one, and it is hard to convince oneself that a sudden major burst of evolutionary advance would be so promptly followed by a marked 'slowdown'. All in all, there is no satisfactory answer to the Pre-Cambrian riddle." Romer Alfred S. [late Professor of Zoology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University], "The Procession of Life," The World Publishing Co: Cleveland OH, 1968, pp.19-20.
"From 1860 onward the more distant fossil record became a big issue, and over the next two decades discoveries were made that at first seemed to give support to the theory particularly the claimed discovery of a well-ordered sequence of fossil horse' dating back about 45 million years. Successes like this continue to be emphasized both to students and the public, but usually without the greater failures being mentioned. Horses according to the theory should be connected to other orders of mammals, which common mammalian stock should be connected to reptiles, and so on backward through the record. Horses should thus be connected to monkeys and apes, to whales and dolphins, rabbits, bears. ... But such connections have not been found. Each mammalian order can be traced backward for about 60 million years and then, with only one exception the orders vanish without connections to anything at all. The exception is an order of small insect-eating mammal that has been traced backward more than 65 million years..." Hoyle, Sir Frederick [late mathematician, physicist and Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge University], "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, p.107.
"The only illustration Darwin published in On the Origin of Species was a diagram depicting his view of evolution: species descendant from a common ancestor; gradual change of organisms over time; episodes of diversification and extinction of species. Given the simplicity of Darwin's theory of evolution, it was reasonable for paleontologists to believe that they should be able to demonstrate with the hard evidence provided by fossils both the thread of life and the gradual transformation of one species into another. Although paleontologists have, and continue to claim to have, discovered sequences of fossils that do indeed present a picture of gradual change over time, the truth of the matter is that we are still in the dark about the origin of most major groups of organisms. They appear in the fossil record as Athena did from the head of Zeus-full-blown and raring to go, in contradiction to Darwin's depiction of evolution as resulting from the gradual accumulation of countless infinitesimally minute variations, which, in turn, demands that the fossil record preserve an unbroken chain of transitional forms." Schwartz, Jeffrey H. [Professor of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, USA], "Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, 1999, p.3.
"A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general. these have not been found-yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks." Raup, David M. [Professor of Geology, University of Chicago], "Evolution and the Fossil Record," Science, Vol. 213, No. 4505, 17 July 1981, p.289.
"In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families and that nearly all new categories above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences. Simpson, George Gaylord [late Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University], "The Major Features of Evolution," [1953], Columbia University Press: New York, 1955, Second Printing, p.360.
"If the creationists want to impress the Darwinian establishment, it will be no use prating on about what the fossils say. No good Darwinian's belief in evolution stands on the fossil evidence for gradual evolution, so nor will his belief fall by it." Ridley, Mark [zoologist, Oxford University], "Who doubts evolution?" New Scientist, Vol. 90, pp.830-832, 25 June 1981, p.832.
STEPHEN GOULD, Harvard, "...one outstanding fact of the fossil record that many of you may not be aware of; that since the so called Cambrian explosion...during which essentially all the anatomical designs of modern multicellular life made their first appearance in the fossil record, no new Phyla of animals have entered the fossil record.", Speech at SMU, Oct.2, 1990
PRESTON CLOUD & MARTIN F. GLAESSNER, "Ever since Darwin, the geologically abrupt appearance and rapid diversification of early animal life have fascinated biologist and students of Earth history alike....This interval, plus Early Cambrian, was the time during which metazoan life diversified into nearly all of the major phyla and most of the invertebrate classes and orders subsequently known." SCIENCE, Aug.27, 1982
RICHARD MONASTERSKY, Earth Science Ed., Science News, "The remarkably complex forms of animals we see today suddenly appeared....This moment, right at the start of the Earth's Cambrian Period...marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the seas with the earth's first complex creatures....'This is Genesis material,' gushed one researcher....demonstrates that the large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian and that they were as distinct from each other as they are today...a menagerie of clam cousins, sponges, segmented worms, and other invertebrates that would seem vaguely familiar to any scuba diver." Discover, p.40, 4/93
RICHARD DAWKINS, Cambridge, "And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists....the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation...", THE BLIND WATCHMAKER, 1986, p229-230
H.S. LADD, UCLA, "Most paleontologists today give little thought to fossiliferous rocks older than the Cambrian, thus ignoring the most important missing link of all. Indeed the missing Precambrian record cannot properly he described as a link for it is in reality, about ninetenths of the chain of life: the first ninetenths.", Geo. So. of Am. Mem. 1967, Vol.ll, p.7
PERCY E. RAYMOND, Prof. of Paleontology, Harvard, "It is evidence that the oldest Cambrian fauna is diversified and not so simple, perhaps, as the evolutionists would hope to find it. Instead of being composed chiefly of protozoa's, it contains no representatives of that phylum but numerous members of seven higher groups are present, a fact which shows that the greater part of the major differentiation of animals had already taken place in those ancient times.", PREHISTORIC LIFE, 1967 p.23
Trees and Fish in the Cambrian
JOHN E. REPETSKI, U.S. Geological Survey, "The oldest land plants now known are from the Early Cambrian... Approximately 60 Cambrian sporegenera are now on record ....represent 6 different groups of vascular plants...", Evolution, Vol. 13, June '59, p.264-275
DANIEL I. AXELROD, UCLA, "This report of fish material from Upper Cambrian rocks further extends the record of the vertebrates by approximately 40 million years." [WY, OK, WA, NV, ID, AR] Science, Vol. 200, 5 May, 1978, p.529
"Evolutionary Trees" Contradicted By Fossils
SEPARATE LIVING KINDS, STEPHEN JAY GOULD, Harvard, "Our modern phyla represent designs of great distinctness, yet our diverse world contains nothing in between sponges, corals, insects, snails, sea urchins, and fishes (to choose standard representatives of the most prominent phyla).", Natural History, p.15, Oct. 1990
SEPARATE FOSSIL KINDS, Valentine (U. CA) & Erwin (MI St.), "If we were to expect to find ancestors to or intermediates between higher taxa, it would be the rocks of the late Precambrian to Ordovician times, when the bulk of the world's higher animal taxa evolved. Yet traditional alliances are unknown or unconfirmed for any of the phyla or classes appearing then.", Development As An Evolutionary Process, p.84, 1987.
"TREES" NOT FROM FOSSILS, S. J. GOULD, Harvard, "The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have dta only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of the fossils.", Nat. His., V.86, p.13
STORY TIME, COLIN PATTERSON, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Nat. History, "You say I should at least 'show a photo of the fossil from which each type or organism was derived.' I will lay it on the line-there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." "It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another. ... But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test. ... I don't think we shall ever have any access to any form of tree which we can call factual." HARPER'S, Feb. 1984, p.56
ARBITRARY ARRANGEMENT, R.H. DOTT, U. of Wis. & R.L. BATTEN, Columbia U., A.M.N.H., "We have arranged the groups in a traditional way with the 'simplest' forms first, and progressively more complex groups following. This particular arrangement is arbitrary and depends on what definition of 'complexity' you wish to choose. ...things are alike because they are related, and the less they look alike, the further removed they are from their common ancestor." EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH, p.602
UNRELATED LOOKALIKES, J.Z. YOUNG, Prof. of Anatomy, Oxford, "....similar features repeatedly appear in distinct lines. ...Parallel evolution is so common that it is almost a rule that detailed study of any group produces a confused taxonomy. Investigators are unable to distinguish populations that are parallel new developments from those truly descended from each other." LIFE OF THE VERTEBRATES, p.779
INTERPRETATION OF SIMILARITY, T.H. MORGAN Prof. Zoology, Columbia, Univ., "If, then, it can be established beyond dispute that similarity or even identity of the same character in different species is not always to be interpreted to mean that both have arisen from a common ancestor, the whole argument from comparative anatomy seems to tumble in ruins.", SCI. MO., l6;3;237, p.216
NONGENETIC SIMILARITY, SIR GAVIN DEBEER, Prof. Embry., U. London, Director BMNH, "It is now clear that the pride with which it was assumed that the inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor explained homology was misplaced; for such inheritance cannot be ascribed to identity of genes. The attempt to find homologous genes has been given up as hopeless." Oxford Biology Reader, p.16, HOMOLOGY AN UNSOLVED PROBLEM
EMBRYONIC RECAPITULATION?, Ashley Montagu, "The theory of recapitulation was destroyed in 1921 by Professor Walter Garstang in a famous paper. Since then no respectable biologist has ever used the theory of recapitulation, because it was utterly unsound, created by a Nazi-like preacher named Haeckel.", Montagu-Gish Prinston Debate, 4/12/1980
Significant Change Is Not Observed
BOTHERSOM DISTRESS, STEPHEN J. GOULD, Harvard, Lecture at Hobart & William Smith College, 14/2/1980. "Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome....brings terrible distress. ...They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don't change, its not evolution so you don't talk about it."
DESIGNS, S.J. GOULD, Harvard, "We can tell tales of improvement for some groups, but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than a saga of accumulating excellence....I regard the failure to find a clear 'vector of progress' in life's history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record....we have sought to impose a pattern that we hoped to find on a world that does not really display it.", Natural His., 2/82, p.22
Required Transitional Forms Missing
DARWIN'S BIGGEST PROBLEM, "....innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? ....why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory". ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES.
MORE EMBARRASSING, DAVID M. RAUP, Univ. Chicago; Chicago Field Mus. of N.H., "The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would.... Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. ...ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as the result of more detailed information." F.M.O.N.H.B., Vol.50, p.35
GOOD RECORD-BAD PREDICTION, NILES ELIDRIDGE, Columbia Univ., American Museum of Nat. Hist., "He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search. ... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong." The Myths of Human Evolution, p.45-46
Proposed Links "Debunked"
STORY TIME OVER, DEREK AGER, Univ. at Swansea, Wales, "It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student...have now been 'debunked.' Similarly, my own experience of more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineage's among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved them equally elusive.", PROC. GEOL. ASSO., Vol.87, p.132
"FOSSIL BIRD SHAKES EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESIS", Nature, Vol. 322, 1986 p.677, "Fossil remains claimed to be of two crow-sized birds 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx have been found. ...a paleontologist at Texas Tech University, who found the fossils, says they have advanced avian features. ...tends to confirm what many paleontologists have long suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the direct line to modern birds."
REPTILE TO BIRD W.E. SWINTON, "The origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved." BIOLOGY & COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY OF BIRDS Vol. 1, p.1.
Systematic Gaps
ORDERS, CLASSES, & PHYLA, GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON, Harvard, "Gaps among known species are sporadic and often small. Gaps among known orders, classes, and phyla are systematic and almost always large.", EVOLUTION OF LIFE, p. 149
GENUINE KNOWLEDGE, D.B. KITTS, University of Oklahoma, "Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them... The 'fact that discontinuities are almost always and systematically present at the origin of really big categories' is an item of genuinely historical knowledge.", Evolution, Vol. 28, p. 467
NOT ONE ! D.S. WOODROFF, Univ. of CA, San Diego, "But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition." Science, Vol.208, 1980, p.716
EVIDENCE A MATTER OF FAITH, A.C. SEWARD, Cambridge, PLANT LIFE THROUGH THE AGES, p.561, "The theoretically primitive type eludes our grasp; our faith postulates its existence but the type fails to materialize."
"WE KNEW BETTER", NILES ELDREDGE, Columbia Univ., American Museum Of Natural History, "And it has been the paleontologist my own breed who have been most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality: .... We paleontologist have said that the history of life supports that interpretation [gradual adaptive change], all the while knowing that it does not.", TIME FRAMES, 1986, p.144
Punctuated Equilibrium
"At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains the "official" position of most Western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Bauplane are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do not count). Even so convinced a gradualist as G. G. Simpson (1944) invoked quantum evolution and inadaptive phases to explain these transitions." Gould, Stephen J. [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, USA] & Eldredge, Niles [Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History], "Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered," Paleobiology, Vol. 3, 1977, pp.115-147, p.147.
"...we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not." Eldredge, Niles [Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History], "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p.44.
"Darwin's own bulldog, Huxley, as Eldredge reminds us yet again, warned him against his insistent gradualism, but Darwin had good reason. His theory was largely aimed at replacing creationism as an explanation of how living complexity could arise out of simplicity. Complexity cannot spring up in a single stroke-of chance: that would be like hitting upon the combination number that opens a bank vault. But a whole series of tiny chance steps, if non-randomly selected, can build up almost limitless complexity of adaptation. It is as though the vault's door were to open another chink every time the number on the dials moved a little closer to the winning number. Gradualness is of the essence. In the context of the fight against creationism, gradualism is more or less synonymous with evolution itself. If you throw out gradualness you throw out the very thing that makes evolution more plausible than creation. Creation is a special case of saltation-the saltus is the large jump from nothing to fully formed modern life. When you think of what Darwin was fighting against, is it any wonder that he continually returned to the theme of slow, gradual, step-by- step change?" Dawkins, Richard [Zoologist and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University], "What was all the fuss about?" Review of Eldredge N., "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster, 1985, Nature, Vol. 316, August 1985, pp.683-684.
Paleontology once more, furnishes both the most direct evidence for the fact of evolution, and the most imposing evidence against the conception of evolution as a continuous, gradual progression of adaptive relationships. "Gaps in the fossil record" were a serious stumbling block in Darwin's time, and despite the discovery of many missing linked for example the striking completion of horse family history, or the discovery of the bird ancestor Archaeopteryx, with its reptilian features-they still persist. Moreover, they persist systematically: over and over, with suddenness termed "explosive," a bewildering variety of new types appear: this is true, notably, for example, of the origin of the major mammalian types. Thus, as G.G. Simpson's calculations of rates of evolution show, the bat's wing if evolved by "normal" Mendelian mutation and selective pressure, would have had to begin developing well before the origin of the earth!" Grene, Marjorie [Professor E |