Thoughts on Evolution
From Scientists and Other Intellectuals
Compiled
by: Sean D. Pitman M.D.
Updated:
October, 2004
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Purpose: The quotes themselves are primarily intended to show the confusion that exists even within the scientific community concerning the theory of evolution. There does seem to be a general agreement that evolution "happened" and is "happening", but no one seems to have a very clear idea as to exactly how evolution works. While reading these quotes, I think that many will get a sense that even those who are in the know and who ardently believe that evolution happens are still unclear about exactly how it happens. This is interesting because the general public has been led to believe that the very process of evolution is clearly understood by the scientific community. The truth is that scientists have very few solid examples of evolution in action where new functions are actually produced. The few examples that they do have seem to show some interesting limits in evolutionary potential. Often such observations are bent, molded or exaggerated to fit some a priori assumptions that do not truly match the observations as well as might be hoped. Surprisingly, even the interpretations of scientists are often colored by philosophy and personal bias. Yes, even among scientists there are those who freely confess that they have a need to believe in evolution that goes beyond any demonstration of fact or the scientific method. This is not too surprising since humans are quite prone to bias. And yet, many scientists claim to rise above such biases. You be the judge. However, in reading these quotes remember that quotes can be taken out of context quite easily and may not clearly represent the actual views of the listed author. I have reviewed the original material for many, but not all or even most, of these quotes. I am relying on the credibility of secondary sources for the most part until I am able to review each one of them personally. Even then, and even with the best of intentions to accurately present the author's views, errors or misrepresentations may occur. Since many of my secondary sources have a bias toward design theory and creationism, as well as evolutionism, one should keep this in mind as these quotes are read. The ideas presented might be interesting, but should only be used as occasion for further review. If any errors or misrepresentations are found please inform me at Seanpit1@juno.com.
Evolutionist Perspective: I also strongly recommend reading what evolutionists have to say about many of these quotes. A very good source of such comments can be found at: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/project.html
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 eight quotes are from a recorded discussion which included some interesting comments from Colin Patterson, late senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History. The fact that Patterson was not aware that someone was recording his comments has been used as reason enough to dismiss what Patterson said since he certainly would not have said things like he did if he knew he was being recorded. Perhaps this is true, but even so, his comments are still quite interesting. Others are disturbed by the "underhanded" way in which the recording was obtained and the transcript published without Patterson's consent. However, since Patterson was speaking at a public event, the recording and publication of such an event is not illegal, underhanded, or immoral. Patterson did later respond to and clarify his statements. This very interesting letter is also included below. A copy of the original recording and/or a transcript of the event can be obtained through: http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/audios/c010.htm
"But it's true that for the last eighteen months or so, I've been kicking around non-evolutionary or even anti-evolutionary ideas."
"Now, one of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let's call it non-evolutionary, was last year I had a sudden realization. For over twenty years I had thought that 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 was quite a shock, to learn that one can be so misled for so long."
"So either there is something wrong with me, or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally I know there's nothing wrong with me. So for the last few weeks, I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people. The question is this: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that you think is true?"
"Well, I'm not interested in the controversy over teaching in high school, and if any militant creationists have come here looking for political ammunition, I hope they'll be disappointed."
"I shall take the text of my sermon from this book, Gillespie's Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation....He takes it for granted that a rationalist view of nature has replaced an irrational one, and of course, I myself took that view, up until about eighteen months ago. And then I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."
"Well, we're back to the question I've been putting to people, 'Is there one thing you can tell me about evolution?' And the absence of an answer seems to suggest that it is true, evolution does not convey any knowledge, or if so, I haven't yet heard it."
"Now I think many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here."
"So that's my first theme. That evolution and creationism seem to be showing remarkable parallels. They are increasingly hard to tell apart. And the second theme is that evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge, apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics."
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist; British Museaum of Natural History, London, Discussion at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, 5 November, 1981. Transcripts as well as a copy of the original tape can be obtained at: http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/audios/c010.htm
The following quote is part of a personal letter from Colin Patterson to Luther Sunderland:
"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument."
Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History. The quote is from a personal letter dated 10th April 1979 from Dr. Patterson to creationist Luther D. Sunderland and is referring to Dr. Patterson's book "Evolution" (1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.).
It should be noted that after hearing about the above quotes, Patterson said that his letter and talk were not meant to cast doubt upon evolution, but to criticize taking evolution for granted before approaching "systematics." As can be easily gathered from his book, "Evolution", as well as other writings, Patterson had no doubt that the theory of evolution was true as far as an explanation of origins. In fact, Patterson discusses the above events specifically. A Mr. Theunissen wrote to Patterson asking him about the above quote and, according to talk.origins http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html, this is what that Patterson said in his reply to Theunissen:
Dear Mr. Theunissen,Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."
I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.
That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.
I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that skepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.
Yours Sincerely,
[signed]
Colin Patterson
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.Evolution, 2nd Edition (1998), Page 122
"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.
Note: Some have questioned my use of Huxley's quote here asking, "What does it have to do with the theory of evolution?" The answer can be found in the statements of Provine, Shallis, and Simpson just above. The theory of evolution provides a means for the philosophical belief in a "purposeless and materialistic process" of life. Some, like Huxley, find this state of meaninglessness to be rather "liberating".
"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 Emeritus of Philosophy, University of California, Davis], "The Faith of Darwinism," Encounter, Vol. 74, November 1959, p.54.
"UNEMBARRASSED", GOULD & ELDREDGE, "In fact, most published commentary on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had previously been simply embarrassing; 'all these years of work and I haven t found any evolution'. (R.A. REYMENT Quoted) "The occurrences of long sequences within species are common in boreholes and it is possible to exploit the statistical properties of such sequences in detailed biostratigraphy. It is noteworthy that gradual, directed transitions from one species to another do not seem to exist in borehole samples of microorganisms." (H.J. MACGILLAVRY Quoted) "During my work as an oil paleontologist I had the opportunity to study sections meeting these rigid requirements. As an ardent student of evolution, moreover, I was continually on the watch for evidence of evolutionary change. ...The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. These species appear in the section (first occurrence) without obvious ancestors in underlying beds, are stable once established." Paleobiology, Vol.3, p.136
PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM, S.M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins U. "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...a punctuational model of evolution...operated by a natural mechanism whose major effects are wrought exactly where we are least able to study them in small, localized, transitory populations. ...The point here is that if the transition was typically rapid and the population small and localized, fossil evidence of the event would never be found.", New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981 pp.77, 110
PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM? COLIN PATTERSON, British Mus. of N. H., "Well, it seems to me that they have accepted that the fossil record doesn't give them the support they would value so they searched around to find another model and found one. ...When you haven't got the evidence, you make up a story that will fit the lack of evidence. ", Quoted in: DARWIN'S ENIGMA, p. 100
INAPPLICABLE
TO "KINDS", Valentine (Univ. of CA) & Erwin (MI St. Univ),
"We conclude that...neither of the contending theories of evolutionary
change at the species level, phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibrium, seem
applicable to the origin of new body plans.", Development As An
Evolutionary Process, p.96, 1987.
Implication Of The Fossils
PALEONTOLOGY DOES NOT PROVE EVOLUTION, D.B. KITTS, University of Oklahoma, "The claim is made that paleontology provides a direct way to get at the major events of organic history and that, furthermore, it provides a means of testing evolutionary theories....the paleontologist can provide knowledge that cannot be provided by biological principles alone. But he cannot provide us with evolution.", Evolution, Vol.28, p.466
DON'T USE THE FOSSILS, MARK RIDLEY, Oxford, "...a lot of people just do not know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the fossil record. ...In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." New Scientist, June, 1981, p.831
FOSSILS INDICATE CREATION! E.J.H. CORNOR, Cambridge "Much evidence can be adduced in favor of the Theory of Evolution from Biology, Biogeography, and Paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation." CONTEMPORARY BOTANICAL THOUGHT, p.61
'Biologists would dearly like to know how modern apes, modern humans and the various ancestral hominids have evolved from a common ancestor. Unfortunately, the fossil record is somewhat incomplete as far as the hominids are concerned, and it is all but blank for the apes. The best we can hope for is that more fossils will be found over the next few years which will fill the present gaps in the evidence.' The author goes on to say: 'David Pilbeam [a well-known expert in human evolution] comments wryly, "If you brought in a smart scientist from another discipline and showed him the meagre evidence we've got he'd surely say, 'forget it: there isn't enough to go on'."
(Richard E. Leakey, The Making of Mankind, Michael Joseph Limited, London, 1981, p. 43)
"The fossil record pertaining to man is still so sparsely known that those who insist on positive declarations can do nothing more than jump from one hazardous surmise to another and hope that the next dramatic discovery does not make them utter fools ... Clearly some refuse to learn from this. As we have seen, there are numerous scientists and popularizers today who have the temerity to tell us that there is 'no doubt' how man originated: if only they had the evidence..."
(William R Fix, The Bone Pedlars, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984, p.150)
"As yet we have not been able to track the phylogenetic history of a single group of modern plants from its beginning to the present."
(Chester A Arnold, Professor of Botany and Curator of Fossil Plants, University of Michigan, An Introduction to Paleobotany, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947, p.7)
"The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms that lie between species, the more they have been frustrated."
(John Adler with John Carey: Is Man a Subtle Accident, Newsweek, Vol.96, No.18 (November 3, 1980, p.95)
"Despite the bright promise that palaeontology provides means of 'seeing' Evolution, it has provided 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 palaeontology does not provide them."
(David Kitts, Ph.D. Palaeontology and Evolutionary Theory, Evolution, Vol.28 (Sep.1974) p.467)
"Feathers are features unique to birds, and there are no known intermediate structures between reptilian scales and feathers. Notwithstanding speculations on the nature of the elongated scales found on such forms as Longisquama ... as being featherlike structures, there is simply no demonstrable evidence that they in fact are. They are very interesting, highly modified and elongated reptilian scales, and are not incipient feathers."
(Feduccia, Alan (1985) "On Why Dinosaurs Lacked Feathers" The Beginning of Birds, Eichstatt, West Germany: Jura Museum, p. 76
The following quote is an interesting attempt to explain the charge of circular reasoning when using fossils to date rocks and rocks to date fossils:
"III.
STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY
Taking all these facts into consideration, then, it has been found possible to
construct a history of the earth, at any rate from the times when conditions
became comparable with what they are now."
(R H Rastall, Lecturer in Economic Geology, Cambridge University: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol.10 (Chicago: William Benton, Publisher, 1956, p.168)
This next quote is from the botanist Eldred Corner. Though a firm evolutionist he was distinctly aware of the problems that tropical plant fossils posed for the theory of evolution:
"The theory of evolution is not merely the theory of the origin of species, but the only explanation of the fact that organisms can be classified into this hierarchy of natural affinity. Much evidence can be adduced in favour of the theory of evolution - from biology, bio-geography and palaeontology, but I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favour of special creation. If, however, another explanation could be found for this hierarchy of classification, it would be the knell of the theory of evolution. Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition.
Textbooks hoodwink. A series of more and more complicated plants is introduced - the alga, the fungus, the bryophyte, and so on, and examples are added eclectically in support of one or another theory - and that is held to be a presentation of evolution. If the world of plants consisted only of these few textbook types of standard botany, the idea of evolution might never have dawned, and the backgrounds of these textbooks are the temperate countries which, at best, are poor places to study world vegetation. The point, of course, is that there are thousands and thousands of living plants, predominantly tropical, which have never entered general botany, yet they are the bricks with which the taxonomist has built his temple of evolution, and where else have we to worship?"
(Prof. E. J. H. Corner (Professor of Tropical Botany, Cambridge University, UK), 'Evolution' in Contemporary Botanical Thought", Anna M. Macleod and L. S. Cobley (editors), Oliver and Boyd, for the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 1961, p. 97.)
There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff.
(Colin Patterson, a director of the Natural History Museum of England-- Colin Patterson, Harper's, February 1984, p.60)
Dr. Niles Eldridge of the American Museum of Natural History admitted in an interview that the Museum houses a display of alleged horse evolution, which is misleading and should be replaced. It has been the model for many similar displays across the country for much of this century.
(Bethel, Tom, "The Taxonomic Case Against Darwin," Harper Magazine, Feb. 1985, pp. 49-61. Niles Eldredge is quoted on page 60. Note that Dr Eldredge still believes in horse evolution, just not in the smooth sequence of horse evolution that is presented in the museum)
On December 9 archeologist and paleo-anthropologist Mary Leakey died at age 83. Although Leakey was convinced that man had evolved from ape-like ancestors, she was equally convinced that scientists will never be able to prove a particular scenario of human evolution. Three months before her death, she said in an interview: "All these trees of life with their branches of our ancestors, that's a lot of nonsense."
(Associated Press (AP) Dec. 10, 1996)
"Eleven human skeletons, the earliest known human remains in the Western hemisphere, have recently been dated by this new accelerator mass spectrometer technique. All eleven were dated at about 5,000 radiocarbon years or less! If more of the claimed evolutionary ancestors of man are tested and are also found to contain carbon-14, a major scientific revolution will occur and thousands of textbooks will become obsolete."
(Walter T. Brown, In the Beginning (1989), p. 95)
Dr. David Pilbeam an anthropologist at Harvard seems to have come to similar conclusions. In a 1978 review of Richard Leakey's book ORIGINS, he said that it was, "a clear statement of our current consensus view of human evolution and remarkably up to date" but he concluded with the following sobering thoughts: "My reservations concern not so much this book but the whole subject and methodology of paleoanthropology. But introductory books - or book reviews - are hardly the place to argue that perhaps generations of students of human evolution, including myself, have been flailing about in the dark: that our data base is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our theories. Rather the theories are more statements about us and ideology than about the past. Paleoanthropology reveals more about how humans view themselves than it does about how humans came about. But that is heresy."
(David Pilbeam, Review of Richard Leakey's book ORIGINS, American Scientist, 66:379, May-June 1978)
More on “Early” Man
APES UP FROM?, DONALD JOHANSON, "At any rate, modem gorillas, orangs and chimpanzees spring out of nowhere, as it were. They are here today; they have no yesterday...., LUCY, p.363
RECONSTRUCTIONS? EARNST A. HOOTEN, Harvard, "To attempt to restore the soft parts is an even more hazardous undertaking. The lips, the eyes, the ears, and the nasal tip, leave no clues on the underlying bony parts. You can with equal facility model on a Neanderthaloid skull the features of a chimpanzee or the lineaments of a philosopher. These alleged restorations of ancient types of man have very little if any scientific value and are likely only to mislead the public.... So put not your trust in reconstructions.", UP FROM THE APE, p.332
RECONSTRUCTIONS? W. HOWELLS, Harvard, "A great legend has grown up to plague both paleontologists and anthropologists. It is that one of; men can take a tooth or a small and broken piece of bone, gaze at it, and pass his hand over his forehead once or twice, and then take a sheet of paper and draw a picture of what the whole animal looked like as it tramped the Terriary terrain. If this were quite true, the anthropologists would make the F.B.I. look like a troop of Boy Scouts.", MANKIND SO FAR, p. l38
THEORY DOMINATED DATA, DAVID PILBEAM, YALE, "I am also aware of the fact that, at least in my own subject of paleoanthropology, "theory" - heavily influenced by implicit ideas almost always dominates "data". ....Ideas that are totally unrelated to actual fossils have dominated theory building, which in turn strongly influence the way fossils are interpreted." Quoted in BONES OF CONTENTION p.127
PARANORMAL ANTHROPOLOGY, LORD SOLLY ZUCKERMAN, "We then move right of the register objective truth into those fields of presumed biological science, like extrasensory perception or the interpretation of man's fossil history, where to the faithful anything is possible and where the ardent believer is sometimes able believe several contradictory things at the same time." BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER, p.19
Similarities do Not Necessarily Mean Common Ancestry
BASIS OF "FAMILY TREE". ROGER LEWIN, Editor, Research News, Science, "The key issue is the ability correctly to infer a genetic relationship between two species on the basis of a similarity in appearance, at gross and detailed levels of anatomy. Sometimes this approach....can be deceptive, partly because similarity does not necessarily imply an identical genetic heritage: a shark (which is a fish) and a porpoise (which is a mammal) look similar…, BONES OF CONTENTION, 1987, p. 123
PROVEN ANCESTRY? RICHARD C. LEWONTIN, Prof. of Zoology, Harvard, "Look, I'm a person who says in this book [Human Diversity, 1982 that we don't know anything about the ancestors of the human species. All the fossils which have been dug up and are claimed to be ancestors we haven't the faintest idea whether they are ancestors. ....All you've got is Homo sapiens there, you've got that fossil there, you've got another fossil there...and it's up to you to draw the lines. Because there are no lines.", Harpers, 2/84
Ramapithecus is a Discarded Ape
"APE MAN" OUT, ROGER LEWIN, Ed., Research News, Science, "The dethroning of Ramapithecus from putative first human in 1961 to extinct relative of the orangutan in 1982 is one of the most fascinating, and bitter, sagas in the search for human origins." BONES OF CONTENTION, 1987, p.86
"APES",
Robert B. Eckhardt, Penn. State Univ., "...there would appear to be little
evidence to suggest that several different hominoid species are represented
among the Old World dryopithecine fossils... (Ramapithecus, Oreopithecus,
Limnopithecus, Kenyapithecus). They themselves nevertheless seem to have been
apes morphologically, ecologically, and behaviorally.", Scientific
American, Vol.226, p.101
Australopithecus
SECOND "APE MAN" OUT, ROGER LEWIN, Ed., Research News, Science, Richard and his parents, Louis and Mary, have held to a view of human origins for nearly half a century now that the line of true man, the line of Homo large brain, tool making and so on has a separate ancestry that goes back millions and millions of years. And the apeman, Australopithecus, has nothing to do with human ancestry." BONES OF CONTENTION, 1987, p.18
LEAKEY DEFECTION, "Dr. Leakey bases his repudiation of Darwin on the results of his long search in East Africa for the remains of the original man. The generally accepted post Darwin view is that man developed from the baboon 3 to 5 million years ago. But Leakey has found no evidence of a spurt in development at that time.", Chicago American, 1/25, 1967
DISMISSED APE, LORD SOLLY ZUCKERMAN, "His Lordship's scorn for the level of competence he sees displayed by paleoanthropologists is legendary, exceeded only by the force of his dismissal of the australopithecines as having anything at all to do with human evolution. 'They are just bloody apes', he is reputed to have observed on examining the australopithecine remains in South Africa.. Zuckerman had become extremely powerful in British science, being an adviser to the government up to the highest level...,while at Oxford and then Birmingham universities, he had vigorously pursued a metrical and statistical approach to studying the anatomy of fossil hominids....it was on this basis that he underpinned his lifelong rejection of the australopithecines as human ancestors.", Roger Lewin, BONES OF CONTENTION, 1987, p.164, 165
DEFINITELY AN APE, LORD SOLLY ZUCKERMAN, "The australopithecine skull is in fact so overwhelmingly simian as opposed to human (figure 5) that the contrary proposition could be equated to an assertion that black is white.", BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER, p.78
UNHUMAN, LIKE THE ORANGUTAN, CHARLES E. OXNARD, Dean of Graduate School, Prof. of Biology & Anatomy, USC, "....conventional wisdom is that the australopithecine fragments are generally rather similar to humans....the new studies point to different conclusions. The new investigations suggest that the fossil fragments are usually uniquely different from any living form: when they do have similarities with living species, they are as often as not reminiscent of the orangutan, ...these results imply that the various australopithecines are really not all that much like humans. ....may well have been bipeds, .... but if so, it was not in the human manner. They may also have been quite capable climbers as much at home in the trees as on the ground..", The American Biology Teacher, Vol.41, May 1979, pp.273-4
LIKE PYGMY CHIMP, ADRIENNE L ZIHLMAN, U. C. Santa Cruz, "Zihlman compares the pygmy chimpanzee to "Lucy," one of the oldest hominid fossils known and finds the similarities striking. They are almost identical in body size, in stature; and in brain size.... These commonalties, Zihlman argues indicate that pygmy chimps use their limbs in much the same way Lucy did....", Science News, Vol.123, Feb.5. 1983, p.89
AUSTRALOPITHECINES, William Howells, Harvard, "...the pelvis was by no means modern, nor were the feet: the toes were more curved than ours; the heel bones lacked our stabilizing tubercles; and a couple of small ligaments that, in us, tighten the arch from underneath, were apparently not present. The finger bones were curved as they are in tree climbing apes." GETTING HERE, 1993, p.79
SHRIVELED STATUS, MATT CARTMILL, Duke; DAVID PILBEAM Harvard; GLYNN ISAAC Harvard; "The australopithecines are rapidly shrinking back to the status of peculiarly specialized apes...", American Scientist, (JulyAugust 1986) p.419
Failed Links: Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Java Man, Peking Man
BELIEVE IT, SEE IT, ROGER LEWIN, Editor of Research News, Science, "How is it that trained men, the greatest experts of their day, could look at a set of modern human bones the cranial fragments and "see" a clear simian signature in them; and see in an apes jaw the unmistakable signs of humanity. The answers, inevitably, have to do with the scientist's' expectations and there effects on the interpretation of the data … It is, in fact, a common fantasy, promulgated mostly by the scientific profession itself, that in the search for objective truth, data dictate conclusions. If this were the case, then each scientist faced with the same data would necessarily reach the same conclusion. But as we've seen earlier and will see again and again, frequently this does not happen. Data are just as often molded to fit preferred conclusions.", BONES OF CONTENTION, pp.61, 68
FALSIFIED CASTS, ALES HRDLICKA, Smithsonian (Re: Java Man)None of the published illustrations or casts now in various institutions is accurate." Science, Aug.17, 1923
EVIDENCE
MISSING, WILLIAM HOWELLS, Harvard, "Java Man went into Dubois' locker for a
time. But Peking Man seems to have gone into Davy Jones' locker, and for good.
He disappeared, one of the first casualties of the war in the Pacific, half a
million years after he had died the first time." MANKIND IN THE MAKING,
p.165
Neandertals and Cromagnons are not "Missing Links" in Human Evolution
EVOLUTION OR VARIATION? "....a Neanderthaler is a model of evolutionary refinement. Put him in a Brooks Brothers suit and send him down to the supermarket for some groceries and he might pass completely unnoticed. He might run a little shorter than the clerk serving him but he would not necessarily be the shortest man in the place. He might be heavier-Featured, squattier and more muscular than most, but again he might be no more so than the porter handling the beer cases back in the stock room." EVOLUTION, TimeLife Nature Library.
LARGER BRAIN, WILLIAM HOWELLS, Harvard, "The Neanderthal brain was most positively and definitely not smaller than our own; indeed, and this is a rather bitter pill, it appears to have been perhaps a little larger.", MANKIND SO FAR, p.165
MODERN
CAME FIRST, O. BARYOSEF, Peabody Museum, Harvard, B. VANDERMEERCH, Univ.
Bordeaux, "Modern Homo sapiens preceded Neanderthals at Mt. Carmel.
...modern looking H. sapiens had lived in one of the caves some 50,000 to
100,000 years ago, much earlier than such people had been thought to exist
anywhere. ...The results have shaken the traditional evolutionary scenario,
producing more questions than answers." Scientific American, p.94, April
1993
Modern Human Morphology "Older" than Proposed Ancestors
RUINED FAMILY TREE, "Either we toss out this skull [1470] or we toss out our theories of early man," asserts anthropologist Richard Leakey of this 2.8 million year old fossil, witch he has tentatively identified as belonging to our own genus. "It simply fits no previous models of human beginnings." The author, son of famed anthropologist Louis S. B. Leakey, believes that the skull's surprisingly large braincase "leaves in ruins the notion that all early fossils can be arranged in an orderly sequence of evolutionary change.", National Geographic, June 1973, p.819
HUMAN BRAIN, "Leakey further describes the whole shape of the brain case [1470] as remarkably reminiscent of modern man, lacking the heavy and protruding eyebrow ridges and thick bone characteristics of Homo erectus." Science News, 102 (4/3/72) p.324
HUMAN BRAIN, Dean Falk, St. U. of N.Y. at Albany, "...KNMER 1805 Homo habilis should not be attributed to Homo... the shape of the endocast from KNMER (basal view) is similar to that from an African pongid, where as the endocast of KNMER 1470 is shaped like that of a modern human." Science, 221, (9/9/83) p.1073
HUMAN BRAIN "The foremost American experts on human brain evolution Dean Falk of the State University of New York at Albany and Ralph Holloway of Columbia University usually disagree, but even they agree that Broca's area is present in a skull from East Turkana known as 1470. Philip Tobias...renowned brain expert from South Africa concurs." Anthro Quest: The Leakey's Foundation News. No.43 (Spring 91) p.13
NOT ERECTUS, "According to paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York the African skulls...assigned to erectus often lack many of the specialized traits that were originally used to define that species in Asia, including the long low cranial structure thick skull bones, and robustly built faces. In his view, the African group deserves to be placed in a separate species..." Discover, 9/94, p.88
"OLD" MODERN MEN, Louis Leakey, 'In 1933 I published on a small fragment of jaw we call Homo kanamensis, and I said categorically this is not a nearman or ape, this is a true member of the genus Homo. There were stone tools with it too. The age was somewhere around 2.5 to 3 million years. It was promptly put on the shelf by my colleagues, except for two of them. The rest said it must be placed in a 'suspense account.' Now, 36 years later, we have proved I was right." Quoted in BONES OF CONTENTION, p.156
'THE OLDEST MAN', "[African Footprints] ....they belonged to the genus Homo (or true man), rather than to manapes (like Australopithecus, who was once a thought to be the forerunner of man but is now regarded as a possible evolutionary dead end). ....they were 3.35 million to 3.75 million years old. ....they would, in Mary Leakeys words, be people 'not unlike ourselves,'...." Time, Nov. 10, 1975, p.93
TOO HUMAN TOO OLD, Russel H. Tuttle, Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Affiliate Scientist, Primate Research Center, Emory University, "In sum, the 3.5millionyearold footprint trails at Laetoli sight G resemble those of habitually unshod modem humans…If the G footprints were not known to be so old, we would readily conclude that they were made by a member of our genus...in any case we should shelve the loose assumption that the Laetoli footprints were made by Lucy's kind..." Natural History, 3/90, p.64.
MODERN
& TALL, RICHARD LEAKEY, ....the boy from Turkana was surprisingly large
compared with modern boys his age; he could well have grown to six feet. ....he
would probably go unnoticed in a crowd today. This find combines with previous
discoveries of Homo erectus to contradict a long held idea that humans have
grown larger over the millennia.", National Geographic, p.629, Nov., 1985
Modern Human Morphology Around Before Lucy
CHARLES E. OXNARD Dean, Grad. School, Prof. Bio. and Anat., USC, "...earlier finds, for instance, at Kanapoi...existed at least at the same time as, and probably even earlier than, the original gracile australopithecines... almost indistinguishable in shape from that of modern humans at four and a half million years..." American Biology Teacher, Vol.41, 5/1979, p.274.
HENRY M. MCHENRY, U. of C., Davis, "The results show that the Kanapoi specimen, which is 4 to 4.5 million years old, is indistinguishable from modern Homo sapiens..." Science Vol.190, p.~28.
WILLIAM HOWELLS, Harvard, "...with a date of about 4.4 million, [KP 271] could not be distinguished from Homo sapiens morphologically or by multivariate analysis by Patterson and myself in 1967 (or by much more searching analysis by others since then). We suggested that it might represent Australopithecus because at that time allocation to Homo seemed preposterous, although it would be the correct one without the time element.", HOMO ERECTUS, 1981, p.79-80.
EVE KICKED OUT, STEPHEN J. GOULD, "...'mitochondral Eve' hypothesis of modern human origins in Africa, suffered a blow in 1993, when the discovery of an important technical fallacy in the computer program used to generate and assess evolutionary trees debunked the supposed evidence for an African source...disproving the original claim.", Natural History, 2/94, p.21
The Geologic Column
VON ENGELN & CASTER, "If a pile were to be made by using the greatest thickness of sedimentary beds of each geological age, it would be at least 100 miles high. ....lt is, of course, impossible to have even a considerable fraction of this great pile available at any one place. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado, for example, is only one mile deep." GEOLOGY, p.417
BUILT BY CORRELATION, L. DON LEET (Harvard) & SHELDON JUDSON (Princeton), "Because we cannot find sedimentary rocks representing all of earth time neatly in one convenient area, we must piece together the rock sequence from locality to locality. This process of tying one rock sequence in one place to another in some other place is known as correlation, from the Latin for 'together' plus 'relate'". PHYSICAL GEOLOGY, P.181
"Use
of the lead/uranium ratio, however, soon demonstrated its age to be more than
two thousand million years,.... To some thoughtful stratigraphers this amazing
discovery presented a dilemma, for if the known stratified rocks have been
accumulating throughout this vast span of time the average rate of deposition
must have been extremely slow, yet there is very good evidence that individual
beds accumulated rapidly. Thus Schuchert ....found that if a geologic column
were built up by superposing the thickest known part of each of the geologic
systems in North America, from Cambrian to the present, the composite record
would be about 259,000 feet thick. If we combine his results with the latest
estimates of time based on radioactive minerals, we get the figures in Table 5,
in which the last column indicates the estimated average rate of deposition.
Internal evidence in the strata, however, belies these estimates. In the Coal
Measures of Nova Scotia, for example, the stumps and trunks of many trees are
preserved standing upright as they grew, clearly having been buried before they
had time to fall or rot away. Here sediment certainly accumulated to a depth of
many feet within a few years. ln other formations where articulated skeletons of
large animals are preserved, the sediment must have covered them within a few
days at the most. Abundant fossil shells likewise indicate rapid burial, for if
shells are long exposed on the sea floor they suffer abrasion or corrosion and
are overgrown by sessile organisms or perforated by boring animals. At the rate
of deposition postulated by Schuchert, 1000 years, more or less, would have been
required to bury a shell 5 inches in diameter. With very local exceptions fossil
shells show no evidence of such long exposure." PRINCIPLES OF STRATIGRAPHY,
p. 128.
NILES ELDREDGE, Columbia Univ. "And this poses something of a problem,: If we date the rocks by their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about patterns of evolutionary change through time in the fossil record?" TIME FRAMES, 1985, p.52
TOM KEMP, Oxford, "A circular argument arises: Interpret the fossil record in the terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?" New Scientist, Vol.108, Dec.5, 1985, p. 67
J. E. O'ROURKE, "The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.", American Journal of Science, Vol. 276, p.51
D. B. KITTS, Univ. of Oklahoma, "But the danger of circularity is still present.... The temporal ordering of biological events beyond the local section may critically involve paleontological correlation....for almost all contemporary paleontologist it rest upon the acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis.", Evolution Vol. 28, p.466
DAVID M. RAUP, U. of Chicago; Field Museum of N.H., "The charge that the construction of the geologic scale involves circularity has a certain amount of validity...Thus, the procedure is far from ideal and the geologic ranges are constantly being revised (usually extended) as new occurrences are found.", FMONH Bulletin, Vol. 54, Mar. 1983, p.21
Alternate
Explanations
TIME RELATIONS?, DUNBAR & ROGERS "....though facies and faunal relations are recorded in the rocks and fossils, and their determination can be reasonable exact and objective, time relations are not so recorded, and their determination remains an ideal, toward which we strive, but which we can only approximate.... It follows that correlation, being....essentially an interpretation, is the result of personal judgment, and that it can never be wholly objective,....", PRINCIPLES OF STRATIGRAPHY, p.272
FOSSIL
PROGRESSION?, DAVID M. RAUP, Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of
Chicago, "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." New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, 1981
Geologic
Implication Of Greenhouse Effect:
CLIMATE OF THE PAST, DOTT AND BATTEN, Evolution of the Earth, "Devonian land plants are similar the world over, suggesting that climate was rather uniform. Wide distribution of richly fossiliferous middle Paleozoic marine carbonate rocks, and especially the great latitudinal spread of fossil reefs, suggest subtropical conditions....lt. has long been felt that the average climate of the earth through time has been milder and more homogeneous than it is today. If so the present certainly is not a very good key to the past in terms of climate!" p.298
DIFFICULT
FOR WHOM? VON ENGELN & CASTER, "The warm, equable climate,
characteristic of the entire Cretaceous, prevailed also over most of the world
throughout the Jurassic with, possibly, localized exceptions. This universal
tropicallity is difficult to explain." GEOLOGY, p.491
RECORD IS CATASTROPHIC, DAVID M. RAUP, Chicago Field Museum, Univ. of Chicago, "A great deal has changed, however, and contemporary geologists and paleontologists now generally accept catastrophe as a 'way of life' although they may avoid the word catastrophe... The periods of relative quiet contribute only a small part of the record. The days are almost gone when a geologist looks at such a sequence, measures its thickness, estimates the total amount of elapsed time, and then divides one by the other to compute the rate of deposition in centimeters per thousand years. The nineteenth century idea of uniformitarianism and gradualism still exist in popular treatments of geology, in some museum exhibits, and in lower level textbooks....one can hardly blame the creationists for having the idea that the conventional wisdom in geology is still a noncatastrophic one." Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin (Vol.54, March 1983), p.2 1
"THE RULE", ROBERT H. DOTT, Presidential Address To Society of Economic Paleontologists & Mineralogists, "I hope I have convinced you that the sedimentary record is largely a record of episodic events rather than being uniformly continuous. My message is that episodicity is the rule, not the exception. .we need to shed those lingering subconscious constraints of old uniformitarian thinking." Geotimes, Nov. 1982, p.16
CATACLYSMIC BURIAL, JOHN R. HORNER, "There was no question anymore. We had one huge bed of maiasaur bones--and nothing but maiasaur bones--stretching a mile and a quarter east to west and a quarter-mile north to south. Judging from the concentration of bones in various pits, there were up to 30 million fossil fragments in that area. At a conservative estimate, we had discovered the tomb of 10,000 dinosaurs. . .
What could such a deposit represent? None of the bones we found had been chewed by predators. But most of the bones were in poor condition. They were either broken or damaged some other way, some broken in half, some apparently sheared lengthwise. They were all oriented from east to west, which was the long dimension of the deposit. Smaller bones, like hand and toe bones, skull elements, small ribs and neural arches of vertebrae, were rare in most of the deposit. At the easternmost edge of the deposit, however, these bones were the most common elements. All the bones were from individuals ranging from 9 feet long to 23 feet long. There wasn't one baby in the whole deposit. The bone bed was, without question, an extraordinary puzzle. First there was the terrible condition of the bones. As early as the first Brandvold site, we thought that a mud flow might have done this. However, on reflection, the condition of the bones argued for something other than animals just being buried alive, even in a vicious mud flow from a breached lake. As I mentioned before, it didn't make sense that even the most powerful flow of mud could break bones lengthwise when they were still padded in flesh and tied together by ligaments. Nor did it make sense that a herd of living animals buried in mud would end up with all their skeletons disarticulated, their bones almost all pointing in one direction and most of the small bones at one edge of the deposit. It seemed that there had to be a twofold event, the dinosaurs dying in one incident and the bones being swept away in another. . .
Over time, of course, the stench disappeared and the killing field turned into a boneyard. Perhaps beetles were there to clean the bones. The bones lay in the ash and dirt. Some fossilization occurred, as well as some acid destruction of the bones. . .
Then there was a flood. This was no ordinary spring flood from one of the streams in the area, but a catastrophic inundation. Perhaps, as John Lorenz thought, a lake was breached, turning the field of death--now covered with partially fossilized, partially dissolved skeletons, unconnected by ligaments, flesh and skin--into a huge slurry as the water floated the bones, mud and volcanic ash into churning fossil soup. The bones of the maiasaurs would have been carried to a new location and left there as the floodwaters or mud settled. Had this occurred, the bones would have acquired their uniform orientation, and the smallest pieces, weighing the least, would have been carried the farthest. Finally the ash, being light, would have risen to the top in this slurry, as it settled, just as the bones sank to the bottom. And over this vast collection of buried, fossilized dinosaur bones would have been left what we now find--a thin but unmistakable layer of volcanic ash. That's our best explanation. It seems to make the most sense, and on the basis of it we believe that this was a living, breathing group of dinosaurs destroyed in one catastrophic moment." DIGGING DINOSAURS, 1988, p.131
EDWIN D. MCKEE, "The chief significance of ripple lamination in the geologic record is that it is an indicator of environments involving large and rapid sand accumulation… areas where addition of new sand normally is at a slow rate have little chance of developing into superimposed ripple lamination…In contrast, areas in which sand accumulates periodically but rapidly, as in river flood plains were sand laden waters of strong floods suddenly lose velocity are very favorable for building up ripple laminated deposits." Primary Sedimentary Structures and Their Hydrodynamic Interpretation, Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, p.107.
ADOLF SClLACHER, Geoiogisches Inst., Univ. Frankfurt, "This proves instantaneous deposition of the individual beds, as postulated by the turbidity-current theory....the sandy layers of the Flysch did not accumulate gradually but were cast instantaneously by turbidity currents each bed in its entire thickness, in a matter of hours or less." Journal of Geology, Vol. 70, p. 227.
Alan V. Jopling, Dept. of Geology, Harvard, "it is reasonable to postulate a very rapid rate of deposition; that is a single lamina would probably be deposited in a period of seconds or minutes rather than in a period of hours. ...there is factual evidence from both field observation and experiment that laminae composed of bed material are commonly deposited by current action within a period of seconds or minutes." Some Deductions on the Temporal Significance of Laminae, Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp.880-887.
"Hanging from a ceiling beam in the 40yearold building's basement are several rows of formations not usually seen so close to ground level. Stalactites. Yep, stalactites more than 100 of the squiggly, slippery rock formations that thousands of people pay to see in places named Carlsbad and Mammoth....They are natural cave ornaments, pure and simple....Deputy Chief Ray Hawkins has been parking in the basement of the building at Harwood and Main streets since the 1960s and can't remember a time when the mineralsickles weren't hanging around." Dallas Morning News, 4/4/1994, p. 13A
Randomness of Life and DNA
"... Life cannot have had a random beginning ... The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the power of 40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court ..."
(Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space)
"The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it ... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution ... if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."
(Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer, cosmologist and mathematician, Cambridge University)
"...An intelligible communication via radio signal from some distant galaxy would be widely hailed as evidence of an intelligent source. Why then doesn't the message sequence on the DNA molecule also constitute prima facie evidence for an intelligent source? After all, DNA information is not just analogous to a message sequence such as Morse code, it is such a message sequence."
(Charles B Thaxton, Walter L Bradley and Robert L Olsen: The Mystery of Life's Origin, Reassessing Current Theories (New York Philosophical Library 1984) pp 211-212)
"Evolution lacks a scientifically acceptable explanation of the source of the precisely planned codes within cells without which there can be no specific proteins and hence, no life."
(David A Kaufman, Ph.D., University of Florida, Gainsesville)
"Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which - a functional protein or gene - is complex beyond ... anything produced by the intelligence of man?"
(Molecular biologist Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (London: Burnett Books, 1985) p 342.)
"There is no agreement on the extent to which metabolism could develop independently of a genetic material. In my opinion, there is no basis in known chemistry for the belief that long sequences of reactions can organize spontaneously -- and every reason to believe that they cannot. The problem of achieving sufficient specificity, whether in aqueous solution or on the surface of a mineral, is so severe that the chance of closing a cycle of reactions as complex as the reverse citric acid cycle, for example, is negligible."
(Orgel, Leslie, "The origin of life -- a review of facts and speculations," Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 23 (Dec 1998): 491-495. pp. 494-495)
Genetic Phylogeny
Biologists aren't entirely satisfied with the intrinsic subjectivity of classification, and have hoped that molecular biology would yield a more quantitative approach. It was hoped that comparisons of the nucleotides of DNA or RNA sequences would yield quantitative numbers that could be used to classify organisms with a high degree of accuracy. According to an article in the January 1998 issue of Science:
Animal relationships derived from these new molecular data sometimes are very different from those implied by older, classical evaluations of morphology. Reconciling these differences is a central challenge for evolutionary biologists at present. Growing evidence suggests that phylogenies of animal phyla constructed by the analysis of 18S rRNA sequences may not be as accurate as originally thought. (Maley & Marshall, "The Coming of Age of Molecular Systematics,” Science, 23 January 1998, page 505)
The article then discusses a figure that shows that mollusks are more closely related to deuterostomes than arthropods when the creatures being compared are a scallop (a mollosk), a sea urchin (a deuterostome), and a brine shrimp (an arthropod). That isn't too surprising. Intuitively, a scallop seems more like a sea urchin than a shrimp, and the 82% correlation between the scallop and sea urchin shown on their diagram isn't surprising.
But when a tarantula is used as the representative of the arthropod, there is a 92% correlation between the scallop and the tarantula. It doesn't seem reasonable that a scallop should be more closely related to a harry, land-dwelling spider than to a sea urchin. This is troubling to the authors of the Science article, which leads them to remark:
The critical question is whether current models of 18S rRNA evolution are sufficiently accurate … current models of DNA substitution usually fit the data poorly. (Ibid)
Mutations
"One of the ironies of the history of biology is that Darwin did not really explain the origin of new species in The Origin of Species, because he didn't know how to define species. The Origin was in fact concerned mostly with how a single species might change in time, not how one species might proliferate into many."
Futuyma, Douglas J. [Professor of Evolutionary Biology, State University of New York, Stony Brook], "Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution," Pantheon: New York NY, 1982, p.152.
"Micromutations do occur, but the theory that these alone can account for evolutionary change is either falsified, or else it is an unfalsifiable, hence metaphysical theory. I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But this is what has happened in biology: ... I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science. When this happens many people will pose the question: How did this ever happen?"
(S Lovtrup, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (London:Croom Helm, p.422))
"Generation after generation, through countless cell divisions, the genetic heritage of living things is scrupulously preserved in DNA ... All of life depends on the accurate transmission of information. As genetic messages are passed through generations of dividing cells, even small mistakes can be life-threatening ... if mistakes were as rare as one in a million, 3000 mistakes would be made during each duplication of the human genome. Since the genome replicates about a million billion times in the course of building a human being from a single fertilized egg, it is unlikely that the human organism could tolerate such a high rate of error. In fact, the actual rate of mistakes is more like one in 10 billion."
(Miroslav Radman and Robert Wagner, The High Fidelity of DNA Duplication... Scientific America. Vol. 299, No 2 (August 1988, pp 40-44. Quote is from page 24))
"As a final comment, one can only marvel at the intricacy in a simple bacterium, of the total motor and sensory system which has been the subject of this review and remark that our concept of evolution by selective advantage must surely be an oversimplification. What advantage could derive, for example, from a "preflagellum" (meaning a subset of its components), and yet what is the probability of "simultaneous" development of the organelle at a level where it becomes advantageous?"
Dr. Robert Macnab of Yale University (1978) "Bacterial Mobility and Chemotaxis: The Molecular Biology of a Behavioral System" CRC Critical Reviews in Biochemistry, vol. 5, issue 4, Dec., pp. 291-341
"[Natural selection] may have a stabilizing effect, but it does not promote speciation. It is not a creative force as many people have suggested." Daniel Brooks, as quoted by Roger Lewin, "A Downward Slope to Greater Diversity," Science, Vol. 217, 24 September 1982, p. 1240.
"The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds." Francisco J. Ayala, "The Mechanisms of Evolution," Scientific American, Vol. 239, September 1978, p. 65.
"To propose and argue that mutations even in tandem with 'natural selection' are the root-causes for 6,000,000 viable, enormously complex species, is to mock logic, deny the weight of evidence, and reject the fundamentals of mathematical probability."
Cohen, I.L. (1984) Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities , New York: New Research Publications, Inc., p. 81
"In all the thousands of fly-breeding experiments carried out all over the world for more than fifty years, a distinct new species has never been seen to emerge ... or even a new enzyme."
(Gordon Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery (New York: Harper and Row, 1983, pp 34, 38)
MICHEL DELSOL PROF. OF BIOLOGY, UNIV. OF LYONS, "If mutation were a variation of value to the species, then the evolution of drosophila should have proceeded with extreme rapidity. Yet the facts entirely contradict the validity of this theoretical deduction; for we have seen that the Drosophila type has been known since the beginning of the Tertiary period, that is for about fifty million years, and it has not been modified in any way during that time." ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE LIFE SCIENCES Volume II, p. 34.
Colin Patterson, British Museum of Natural History, "No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever gotten near it and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question.", CLADISTICS, BBC, March 4 1982.
"It may be time to rethink Our thoughts about the mechanisms for antibiotic - resistance patterns...The anaerobic bacteria, from the bowels of three members of an lt',45 Arctic expedition have survive 140 yrs and are showing resistance patterns to modern antibiotics. Current theories suggest that antibiotic resistance is linked to long-term exposure to antibiotics. Needless to say, antibiotics were not developed until long after these 19th century bacteria and their hosts have been buried in arctic permafrost.'' Medical Tribune, 12/29/88, p.23
S.M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins U. "...natural selection, long viewed as the process guiding evolutionary change, cannot play a significant role in determining the overall course of evolution. Macroevolution is decoupled from microevolution." Pro. N. A. S., v 72, p.648
S. M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins Univ. "Once established, an average species of animal or plant will not change enough to be regarded as a new species, even after surviving for something like a hundred thousand or a million, or even ten million generations… Something tends to prevent the wholesale restructuring of a species, once it has become well established on earth." Johns Hopkins Magazine, p.6, June, 1982.
STEPHEN T. GOIJLD, Harvard, "A mutation doesn't produce major new raw material. You don't make a new species by mutating the species. ...That's a common idea people have; that evolution is due to random mutations. A mutation is NOT the cause of evolutionary change." Lecture at Hobart and William Smith College, 14/2/1980
STEPHEN T. GOUI.D, 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. NATURAL HISTORY, 2/82, P. 22,23
STEPHEN. T GOULD Harvard, "I well remember how the synthetic theory beguiled me with its unifying power when I was a graduate student in the mid -1960's. Since then I have been watching it slowly unravel as a universal description of evolution…I have been reluctant to admit it - since beguiling is often forever - but if Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory is accurate, then that theory as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy." Paleobiology Vol. 6 1980 p. 120.
THEODOSIUS DOBZHANSKY, "....one can say that mutations are owing to incorrect copying, to occasional mistakes in the generally so remarkably accurate process of replication.... You may, if you wish, compare mutations to accidental misspellings or misprints which even the most experienced copyist may from time to time....harmfulness of most mutants is just what could be reasonably expected. ....an accident, a random change, in any delicate mechanism can hardly be expected to improve it. Poking a stick into the machinery of one's watch or into one's radio set can hardly be expected to make it work better.", HEREDITY AND THE NATURE OF MAN, p.126
JEAN ROSTAND, "No, decidedly, I cannot make myself think that these 'slips' of heredity have been able, even with the cooperation of natural selection, even with the advantage of the immense periods of time in which evolution works on life, to build the entire world, with its structural prodigality and refinements, its astounding 'adaptations,...I cannot persuade myself to think that the eye, the ear, the human brain have been formed in this way; " The Orion Book of Evolution, p. 17
No Such Thing as a “Simple” Life Form
J. MONOD, "....we have no idea what the structure of a primitive cell might have been. The simplest living system known to us, the bacterial cell....in....its overall chemical plan is the same as that of all other living beings. It employs the same genetic code and the same mechanism of translation as do, for example, human cells. Thus the simplest cells available to us for study have nothing 'primitive' about them....no vestiges of truly primitive structures are discernible." CHANCE AND NECESSITY, p. 134. College text used by students just a generation ago is under serious attack. New insights into planetary formation have made it increasingly doubtful that clouds of methane and ammonia ever dominated the atmosphere of the primitive earth....If scientists have, by and large, tossed out the old ideas, they have not yet reached a consensus on the new. Time, 10/11/1993
CARL SAGAN Cornell, "The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10 to the 12th power bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannicas.", Life, Vol.10 p.894. RICIHARD DAWKINS, Oxford, "Some species of the unjustly called 'primitive' amoebas have as much information in their DNA as 1000 Encyclopedia Britannicas.", The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p.116.
MICHAEL DENTON Molecular Biologist (Agnostic), "To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the portholes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.... Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which functional protein or gene - is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man?", EVOLUTION, A THEORY IN CRISIS, 1985, pp. 327-8, 342.
Creatures Bigger and Better in the Past
VON ENGELN & CASTER, "Also that mammalian life was richer in kinds, of larger sizes, and had a more abundant expression in Pliocene than in later times.", GEOLOGY, p.19
"Leakey...had been scouring the globe since 1931. Over the years he has unearthed the bones of an ancient pig as big as a rhino, a six foot tall sheep a twelve foot tall bird and the flat - topped skull of the erect 'Nutcracker man'."; TIME MAGAZINE, March 10, 1961
CLIFFORD SIMAK, TRILOBITE, DINOSAUR AND MAN, p.158 . "In general all the Pennsylvanian insects were larger than the ones we know today."
Archaeology
'I know of no finding in archaeology that’s properly confirmed which is in opposition to the Scriptures. The Bible is the most accurate history textbook the world has ever seen.’
Dr Clifford Wilson, formerly director of the Australian Institute of Archaeology, being interviewed by radio by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR radio transcript No. 0279–1004).
General Statements
"Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority. There is no publication in the scientific literature in prestigious journals, specialty journals, or books that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred. There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations."
(Behe, Michael J. (1996) Darwin's Black Box, The Free Press, p. 185)
Recently two prominent British scientists, Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, admittedly were 'driven by logic' to conclude that there must be a Creator. "It is quite a shock," said Wickramasinghe, a professor of applied mathematics and astronomy. The Sri Lankan-born astronomer explained: "From my earliest training as a scientist I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has had to be very painfully shed. I am quite uncomfortable in the situation, the state of mind I now find myself in. But there is no logical way out of it. Once we see . . . that the probability of life, originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect 'deliberate,' " or created. Professor Wickramasinghe also said: "I now find myself driven to this position by logic. There is no other way in which we can understand the precise ordering of the chemicals of life except to invoke the creations on a cosmic scale. . . . We were hoping as scientists that there would be a way round our conclusion, but there isn't."
(-- Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, As quoted in "There Must Be A God," Daily Express, Aug. 14, 1981 and "Hoyle On Evolution," Nature, Nov. 12, 1981, 105.)
CARL SAGAN, Cornell, "Unacceptable high mutation rates will, of course, occur at much lower u.v. doses, and even if we imagine primitive organisms having much less stringent requirements on the fidelity of replication than do contemporary organisms, we must require very substantial u.v. attenuation for the early evolution of life to have occurred..", Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol.39, p.197
FRANCIS CRICK, "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going." LIFE IT SELF, 1981, p. 88.
ILYA PRIGOGIN (Nobel Laureate) "Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures. The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred." Physics Today, Vol.25 p.28.
ISAAC ASIMOV, "As far as we know, all changes are in the direction of increasing entropy, of increasing disorder, of increasing randomness, of running down. Yet the universe was once in a position from which it could run down for trillions of years. How did it get into that position?" Science Digest, May 1973, pp.76-77
H.J. LIPSON, Physics, U. of Manchester, "I think however that we should go further than this and admit that the only accepted explanation is creation. I know that is anathema to physicists, as it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.", Physics Bulletin,Vol.31, 1980, p.138
G.J. VAN WYLEN, RICHARD SONNTAG, "...we see the second law of thermodynamics as a description of the prior and continuing work of a creator, who also holds the answer to our future destiny and that of the universe." FUNDAMENTALS OF CLASSICAL, THERMODYNAMICS, 1985, p.232.
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