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The following are unclassified quotes posted in my email messages in July-December, 2002.
The date format is dd/mm/yy. See copyright conditions at end.
[January-June, July, August, September, October, November, December]
July 19/07/02 "For most of their evolutionary history, fundamental aspects of the anatomy and way of life of these lineages do not change significantly. Very few intermediates between groups are known from the fossil record. This pattern is most conspicuous for the major groups of nonvertebrate metazoans ... over a very short time in the Early Cambrian, they underwent an explosive radiation. Over a period of approximately 5 million years, they gave rise to all the major groups alive today, as well as a smaller number of extinct groups (Bowring et al. 1993). By 525 million years ago, all of the living phyla and most of their constituent classes had diverged. Sponges, arthropods, primitive chordates, echinoderms, bryozoans, brachiopods, molluscs, annelids, and so on were all recognizable by this time. Among the molluscs, all the modern classes - scaphopods, gastropods, monoplacophorans, and pelecypods - were known by the end of the Lower Cambrian. ... In all the major lineages, the earliest known members had already achieved the basic body plan of their living descendants. ... Few fossils are yet known of plausible intermediates between the invertebrate phyla, and there is no evidence for the gradual evolution of the major features by which the individual phyla or classes are characterized." (Carroll R.L., "Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution," Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1997, pp.2,4) 19/07/02 "I call this experiment `replaying life's tape.' You press the rewind button and, making sure you thoroughly erase everything that actually happened, go back to any time and place in the past-say, to the seas of the Burgess Shale. Then let the tape run again and see if the repetition looks at all like the original. ... Run the tape again, and let the tiny twig of Homo sapiens expire in Africa. Other hominids may have stood on the threshold of what we know as human possibilities, but many sensible scenarios would never generate our level of mentality. Run the tape again, and this time Neanderthal perishes in Europe and Homo erectus in Asia (as they did in our world). The sole surviving human stock, Homo erectus in Africa, stumbles along for a while, even prospers, but does not speciate and therefore remains stable. A mutated virus then wipes Homo erectus out, or a change in climate reconverts Africa into inhospitable forest. One little twig on the mammalian branch, a lineage with interesting possibilities that were never realized, joins the vast majority of species in extinction. So what? Most possibilities are never realized, and who will ever know the difference?" (Gould S.J.*, "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History," [1989], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, pp.48, 320) 19/07/02 "One of the creationist arguments has been that the concept of evolution is invalid because it cannot be reproduced in the laboratory and it cannot be tested experimentally. If true, this argument would be serious, because a scientific theory is valid only if it can be tested by experiments that might show it to be wrong. If the experiments are carried out and do not contradict it, the theory remains acceptable. But it is not true that the occurrence of evolution cannot be tested in the laboratory. We have just described some experiments with bacteria and fruitflies that have clearly demonstrated the occurrence of natural selection, adaptation, and speciation. Of course, the evolutionary events that took place over a period of many thousands of years cannot be reproduced in the laboratory." (Dulbecco R., "The Design of Life," Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1987, p.444) 20/07/02 "Evolution in biology is a loose and comprehensive term applied to cover any and every change occurring in the constitution of systematic units of animals and plants, from the formation of a new subspecies or variety to the trends, continued through hundreds of millions of years, to be observed in large groups." (Huxley J.S., "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis," [1942], George Allen & Unwin: London, 1945, reprint, p.42) 21/07/02 "The origin of life on the surface of the Earth is a unique historical event whose character cannot be established by experiments in contemporary laboratories ... Many scientists have taken this position on the origin of life. Jacques Monod, the distinguished French molecular biologist, said as much in 1970 in his elegant book Chance and Necessity. There is no way, he argued, that an event as improbable as the emergence of life on Earth could be analyzed by science, which is able to deal only `with events that form a class. ... A decade later, Francis H.C. Crick, co-originator of the structure of DNA, put the argument more specifically: the chances that the long polymer molecules that vitally sustain all living things, both proteins and DNA, could have been assembled by random processes from the chemical units of which they are made are so small as to be negligible, prompting the question whether the surface of the Earth was fertilized from elsewhere, perhaps from interstellar space. `Panspermia' is the name for that." (Maddox J., "What Remains To Be Discovered:. Mapping the Secrets of the Universe, the Origins of Life, and the Future of the Human Race," [1998], Touchstone: New York NY, 1999, reprint, p.131) 23/07/02 "The basic structure of my argument is this. Scientists, historians, and detectives observe data and proceed thence to some theory about what best explains the occurrence of these data. We can analyse the criteria which they use in reaching a conclusion that a certain theory is better supported by the data than a different theory that is, is more likely, on the basis of those data, to be true. Using those same criteria, we find that the view that there is a God explains everything we observe, not just some narrow range of data. It explains the fact that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate within it, that it contains conscious animals and humans with very complex intricately organized bodies, that we have abundant opportunities for developing ourselves and the world, as well as the more particular data that humans report miracles and have religious experiences. In so far as scientific causes and laws explain some of these things (and in part they do), these very causes and laws need explaining, and God's action explains them. The very same criteria which scientists use to reach their own theories lead us to move beyond those theories to a creator God who sustains everything in existence." (Swinburne R.G., "Is There a God?," Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, 1996, p.2. Emphasis in original) 23/07/02 "And yet the more we know about the universe, the more we come to see how little we know. When the cosmos was thought to be but a tidy garden, with the sky its ceiling and the earth its floor and its history coextensive with that of the human family tree, 'It was still possible to imagine that we might one day comprehend it in both plan and detail. That illusion can no longer be sustained. We might eventually obtain some sort of bedrock understanding of cosmic structure, but we will never understand the universe in detail; it is just too big and varied for that. If we possessed an atlas of our galaxy that devoted but a single page to each star system in the Milky Way (so that the sun and all its planets were crammed on one page), that atlas would run to more than ten million volumes of ten thousand pages each. It would take a library the size of Harvard's to house the atlas, and merely to flip through it, at the rate of a page per second, would require over ten thousand years. Add the details of planetary cartography, potential extraterrestrial biology, the subtleties of the scientific principles involved, and the historical dimensions of change, and it becomes clear that we are never going to learn more than a tiny fraction of the story of our galaxy alone-and there are a hundred billion more galaxies. As the physician Lewis Thomas writes, "The greatest of all the accomplishments of twentieth-century science has been the discovery of human ignorance." Our ignorance, of course, has always been with us, and always Will be. What is new is our awareness of it, our awakening to its fathomless dimensions, and it is this, more than anything else, that marks the coming of age of our species." (Ferris T., "Coming of Age in the Milky Way," [1988], Vintage: London, 1991, reprint, p.382-383) 25/07/02 "But suppose we lay aside a priori prohibitions against design. In that case, what is wrong with explaining something as designed by an intelligent agent? Certainly there are many everyday occurrences which we explain by appealing to design. Moreover, in our workaday lives it is absolutely crucial to distinguish accident from design. We demand answers to such questions as, Did she fall or was she pushed? Did someone die accidentally or commit suicide? Was this song conceived independently or was it plagiarized? Did someone just get lucky on the stock market or was there insider trading? Not only do we demand answers to such questions, but entire industries are devoted to drawing the distinction between accident and design. Here we can include forensic science, intellectual property law, insurance claims investigation, cryptography, and random number generation-to name but a few. Science itself needs to draw this distinction to keep itself honest. As a January 1998 issue of Science made clear, plagiarism and data falsification are far more common in science than we would like to admit. What keeps these abuses in check is our ability to detect them." (Dembski W.A., "No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence," Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham MD, 2002, p.5) 25/07/02 "In its affirmative form, the Law of Biogenesis states that all living organisms are the progeny of living organisms that went be fore them. The familiar Latin tag is Omne vivum ex vivo-All that is alive came from something living; in other words, every organism has an unbroken genealogical pedigree extending back to the first living things. In its negative form, the law can be taken to deny the occurrence (or even the possibility) of spontaneous generation. Moreover, the progeny of mice are mice and of men, men- "homogenesis," or like begetting like. The Law of Biogenesis is arguably the most fundamental in biology, for evolution may be construed as a form of biogenesis that provides for the occasional begetting of a variant form." (Medawar P.B. & Medawar J.S., "Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology," Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1983, p.39) 25/07/02 "I have been scanning the stars in search of extraterrestrial intelligence (an activity now abbreviated as SETI, and pronounced SETee) for more than thirty years. ... With the marvelous technological advances we have made in the intervening years, we could repeat the whole of Project Ozma today in a fraction of a second. We could scan for signals from a million stars or more at a time, at distances of at least a thousand light-years from Earth. ... Until the late 1980s, the fact that we had not yet found another civilization, despite continued global efforts and better equipment, simply meant we had not looked long enough or hard enough. No knowledgeable person was disappointed by our inability to detect alien intelligence, as this in no way proved that extraterrestrials did not exist. Rather, our failure simply confirmed that our efforts were puny in relation to the enormity of the task-somewhat like hunting for a needle in a cosmic haystack of inconceivable size ... I am telling my story because I see a pressing need to prepare thinking adults for the outcome of the present search activity-the imminent detection of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization. This discovery, which I fully expect to witness before the year 2000, will profoundly change the world." (Drake F. & Sobel D., "Is Anyone Out There?: The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence," [1991], Pocket Books: New York, 1994, pp.xi-xiii) 26/07/02 "Because so much of medicine is applied biology, it might be judged a selfevident truth that biology has exercised a penetrating, wide-ranging, and wholly beneficent effect on medical education and on the physician's thinking. In reality this has not been so. Biology in an old-fashioned sense (that which would have been recognized by Charles Darwin) has imposed an almost intolerable pedagogic burden on medical education and has been deemed responsible, too, for such grave fallacies as the Panglossism we shall discuss below. It is indeed a profoundly important lesson that a human being is an animal, but it was not a biologist who taught it. Aristotle was aware of it, and it is implicit in Plato's great chain of being. In any event, it was a London physician, Edward Tyson, who in 1669 demonstrated for all to see the affinity between monkey, man, and a baby chimpanzee (a "pygmie")." (Medawar P.B. & Medawar J.S., "Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology," Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1983, pp.39-40) 29/07/02 "The tough-minded scientist is a mechanist through and through. He usually denies that he has any metaphysical beliefs at all. Yet mechanism is as much a metaphysical belief as is panexperientalism or any other organismic philosophy." (Birch L.C., "Biology and the Riddle of Life," University of New South Wales Press: Sydney, Australia, 1999, p.54) 29/07/02 "But one of its premisses was shown by Darwin and his successors to be clearly false. Complex animals and plants can be produced through generation by less complex animals and plants- species are not eternally distinct; and simple animals and plants can be produced by natural processes from inorganic matter. This discovery led to the virtual disappearance of the argument from design from popular apologetic-mistakenly, I think, since it can easily be reconstructed in a form which does not rely on the premisses shown to be false by Darwin. This can be done even for the argument from spatial order. We can reconstruct the argument from spatial order as follows. We see around us animals and plants, intricate examples of spatial order in the ways which Paley set out, similar to machines of the kind which men make. We know that these animals and plants have evolved by natural processes from inorganic matter. But clearly this evolution can only have taken place, given certain special natural laws. These are first, the chemical laws stating how under certain circumstances inorganic molecules combine to make organic ones and organic ones combine to make organisms. And secondly, there are the biological laws of evolution stating how organisms have very many offspring, some of which vary in one or more characteristics from their parents, and how some of these characteristics are passed on to most offspring, from which it follows that, given shortage of food and other environmental needs, there will be competition for survival, in which the fittest will survive. Among organisms very well fitted for survival will be organisms of such complex and subtle construction as to allow easy adaptation to a changing environment. These organisms will evince great spatial order. So the laws of nature are such as, under certain circumstances, to give rise to striking examples of spatial order similar to the machines which men make. Nature, that is, is a machine-making machine. In the twentieth century men make not only machines, but machine making machines. They may therefore naturally infer from nature which produces animals and plants, to a creator of nature similar to men who make machine-making machines." (Swinburne R.G., "The Existence of God," Clarendon Press: Oxford UK, Revised Edition, 1991, pp.135-136) 29/07/02 "I conclude that the easy acceptance of neo-Darwinism as a complete and adequate explanation for all biological reality has indeed been based in the metaphysical needs of a dominant materialistic consensus. One can be a theistic `Darwinian,' but no one can be an atheistic `Creationist.'" (Wilcox D.L., "Tamed Tornadoes," in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?" Foundation for Thought and Ethics: Richardson TX, 1994, p.215. http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/fte/darwinism/chapter13b.html) 31/07/02 "The organic diversity becomes, however, reasonable and understandable if the Creator has created the living world not by caprice but by evolution propelled by natural selection. It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's, method of Creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 b.c.; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way." (Dobzhansky T.G., "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution," in Zetterberg J.P., ed., "Evolution Versus Creationism: The Public Education Controversy," Oryx Press: Phoenix AZ, 1983, p.22. Emphasis in original) [top] August 1/08/02 "Fossils of trilobites appeared suddenly in the geological record during the early part, but not quite at the base of the Cambrian period, perhaps 540 million years ago. If you are tempted by the word 'dramatic' then this is one occasion where you could be forgiven for weakening. When you visit a rock section spanning the right bit of the early Cambrian - and there are such profiles in Newfoundland, Mongolia and Siberia - there will be not a sniff of a trilobite as you work your way upwards from one bed to its successor: this is the most methodical way to trudge upwards through geological time. Then, quite suddenly, a whole Profallotaspis or an Olenellus as big as a crab will pop out into your waiting hands as you split the rock. These are trilobites with lots of segments and big eyes: striking things, not little squitty objects. It is an appearance as dramatic as that of the sorcerer in Swan Lake, who accompanied the first theatrical explosion I ever experienced. You are tempted to cry out: 'bang!'. And as you continue to collect a foot or so higher into younger strata, the first trilobite will be joined by others, maybe half a dozen or so different species, and all individually distinctive ones at that." (Fortey R.A., "Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution," [2000], Flamingo: London, 2001, reprint, p.115) 2/08/02 "As a grace-note on this discovery, Riccardo noticed that the trilobite's design had been anticipated by the great seventeenth century Dutch scientist Christian Huygens (1629-95) and the French polymath Rene Descartes (1586-1650). They had sketched out an optical 'cure' for spherical aberration in a lens which proposed a compensating bowl designed almost exactly like that of the trilobite. This may indeed be a wonderful example of Art imitating Nature, or perhaps rather of Nature anticipating Science - by more than 400 million years. S. J. Gould commented in an article in Natural History in 1984 that 'the eyes of trilobites ... have never been exceeded for complexity and acuity by later arthropods ... I regard the failure to find a clear "vector of progress" in life's history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record.' The point Gould makes is that it is hard to see how the trilobite could have achieved its optical design in a still more sophisticated fashion; there remains a feeling that arthropods ought to have learned some cleverer visual tricks since the Devonian." (Fortey R.A., "Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution," [2000], Flamingo: London, 2001, reprint, p.102) 2/08/02 "But if we look at the individual elements of the trilobite eye, we find that the lens systems were very different from what we now have. Riccardo Levi-Setti (a Field Museum research associate in geology and professor of physics at the University of Chicago) has recently done some spectacular work on the optics of these lens systems. Figure 7 shows sketches of a common type of trilobite lens. Each lens is a doublet (that is, made up of two lenses. The lower lens is shaded in these sketches and the upper one is blank. The shape of the boundary between the two lenses is unlike any now in use either by humans or animals. But the shape is nearly identical to designs published independently by Descartes and Huygens in the seventeenth century. The Descartes and Huygens designs had the purpose of avoiding spherical aberration and were what is known as aplanatic lenses. The only significant difference between them and the trilobite lens is that the Descartes and Huygens lenses were not doublets - that is, they did not have the lower lens. But, as Levi-Setti has shown, for these designs to work underwater where the trilobite lived, the lower lens was necessary. Thus, the trilobites 450 million years ago used an optimal design which would require a well trained and imaginative optical engineer to develop today-or one who was familiar with the seventeenth century optical literature." (Raup D.M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History: Chicago IL, January 1979, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp.22-29, p.24). 2/08/02 "The very fact that we have three great, independently established facts pointing to the resurrection of Jesus-namely, the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith is a powerful argument from coherence for the historicity of the resurrection. ... But does the resurrection of Jesus adequately explain this body of evidence? Is it any better an explanation than the implausible naturalistic explanations proferred in the past? ... The resurrection hypothesis, we have seen, exceeds counter-explanations like hallucinations or the wrong tomb theory precisely by explaining all three of the great facts at issue, whereas these rival hypotheses only explain one or two. ... This is perhaps the greatest strength of the resurrection hypothesis. The conspiracy theory or the apparent death theory just do not convincingly account for the empty tomb, resurrection appearances, or origin of the Christian faith: on these theories the data (for example, the transformation in the disciples, the historical credibility of the narratives) become very improbable. By contrast, on the hypothesis of the resurrection it seems extremely probable that the observable data with respect to the empty tomb, the appearances, and the disciples' coming to believe in Jesus' resurrection should be just as it is." (Craig W.L., "Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics," [1984], Crossway Books: Wheaton IL, Revised Edition, 1994, pp.294-295) 2/08/02 "Even more interesting, however, than the confession itself was what followed it: the admission [by Darwin in his Descent of Man] of a new factor in the variation of species, more momentous in its implications for his theory than even sexual selection, and which he did not afterward elaborate upon or so much as refer to again (except in the conclusion, where the point was repeated in almost exactly the same words). Falling under none of the other categories that he recognized as responsible for evolution-natural selection, sexual selection, the direct action of the environment, the effect of use and disuse, and correlation of structure- the variation induced by this new factor was of no service to the organism, either in its inception or in its later development. And the nature of its cause was unknown. Darwin could only assume that, whatever its cause, so long as it continued to act `uniformly and energetically' over a long period, the result would be the production not of `mere slight individual differences, but well-marked constant modifications.' (Darwin C., "Descent of Man," 1st edition, 1871, Vol. I, p.153) Not only did these variations arise `spontaneously,' in the sense he had used the term in the Origin, but-and here he went far beyond the Origin-having so arisen, they were not subject to any selective process, natural or sexual, since they were in no way beneficial to the organism (although injurious variations would be eliminated by selection). And these variations would persist so long as either the original conditions producing them persisted or as the free crossing of individuals insured the normal operation of heredity. The latter, he suspected, was more important than the former: `They relate much more closely to the constitution of the varying organism, than to the nature of the conditions to which it has been subjected.' (p.154) Darwin had come far indeed from the doctrine of natural selection. As Mivart and others were quick to point out, this admission of an unknown cause as one of the means by which man attained his present state-"aided perhaps by others as yet undiscovered' dangerously undermined Darwin's enterprise. What before was said to be entirely explained was now, at a critical point, left unexplained. The admission that `strange and strongly-marked peculiarities of structured could arise from unknown causes, and could be perpetuated without reference to any principle of selection or adaptation, opened the way for those sudden leaps of nature-and of God-which had traditionally been invoked to explain the origin of species, and especially the origin of man." (Himmelfarb G., "Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution," [1959], Elephant Paperbacks: Chicago IL, 1996, reprint, pp.368-370) 3/08/02 "Piltdown Man became an anomaly after the discovery of `Peking Man' in China in the 1930s (in which Teilhard also played an important role) led the experts to hypothesize a different path of evolution for early man, and retesting eventually established in 1953 that the skull skilfully combined the jaw of an orangutan with the skull of a modern man. Until the Piltdown fossil became inconvenient, after the British scientists who received the credit for its discovery had passed from the scene, the skull was guarded from skeptical investigators in a safe in the British Natural History Museum. Considering that some knowledgeable scientists had expressed skepticism about Piltdown Man from the time of its discovery, this concealment of the evidence is a greater scandal than the original fraud." (Johnson P.E., "Darwin on Trial," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second Edition, 1993, p.203) 3/08/02 "Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. ... I look with confidence to the future,- to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality ... for thus only can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed." (Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition, 1928, reprint, p.456) 4/08/02 "By the very standards scientists choose to limit what may properly fall under the purview of their discipline, the theory of evolution does not qualify. Even Theodosius Dobzhansky admits that theories of evolution evade the scientific process. Dobzhansky laments the fact that `evolutionary happenings are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible. It is as impossible to turn a vertebrate into a fish as it is to effect the reverse transformation.' Dobzhansky is chagrined and reluctantly acknowledges that `the applicability of the experimental method to the study of such unique historical processes is severely restricted before all else by the time intervals involved, which far exceed the lifetime of any human experimenter.' Embarrassing, to say the least. Here is a body of thought, incapable of being scientifically tested, claiming to be scientific in nature. It can't be observed, it can't be reproduced, it can't be tested, and yet its proponents demand that it be regarded as the supreme, unimpeachable truth regarding the origin and development of life!" (Rifkin J., "Algeny," Viking Press: New York NY, 1983, p.118) 4/08/02 "Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old applewoman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism-the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist." (Chesterton G.K., "Orthodoxy," [1908], Fontana: London, 1961, reprint, p.149) 4/08/02 "All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, `Medieval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles,' they answer, `But medievals were superstitious', if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in miracles. If I say `a peasant saw a ghost,' I am told, `But peasants are so credulous.' If I ask, `Why credulous?' the only answer is- that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland." (Chesterton G.K., "Orthodoxy," [1908], Fontana: London, 1961, reprint, pp.149-150) 4/08/02 "...the unbeliever ... may say that there has been in many miraculous stories a notion of spiritual preparation and acceptance; in short, that the miracle could only come to him who believed in it. It may be so, and if it is so how are we to test it? If we are inquiring whether certain results follow faith, it is useless to repeat wearily that (if they happen) they do follow faith. If faith is one of the conditions, those without faith have a most healthy right to laugh. But they have no right to judge. Being a believer may be, if you like, as bad as being drunk, still if we were extracting psychological facts from drunkards, it would be absurd to be always taunting them with having been drunk. Suppose we were investigating whether angry men really saw a red mist before their eyes. Suppose sixty excellent householders swore that when angry they had seen this crimson cloud: surely it would be absurd to answer `Oh, but you admit you were angry at the time.' They might reasonably rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), `How the blazes could we discover, without being angry, whether angry people see red?' So the saints and ascetics might rationally reply, ` Suppose that the question is whether believers can see visions-even then, if you are interested in visions it is no point to object to believers.' You are still arguing in a circle-in that old mad circle with which this book began." (Chesterton G.K., "Orthodoxy," [1908], Fontana: London, 1961, reprint, p.150) 4/08/02 "Atheism provides some valuable correctives to and modifications of theism. Many of its arguments either correct misconceptions some theists have of God or of his relation to the world or else they expose contradictory theistic concepts. ... However, as a total world view atheism does not measure up. First, its arguments are invalid and often self-defeating. Second, many atheistic arguments are really reversible into reasons for believing in God. Finally, atheism provides no solution to basic metaphysical questions regarding the existence of the universe or the origin of personality and the actualization of the world process." (Geisler N.L.*, "Christian Apologetics," Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 1976, pp.234-235) 5/08/02 "The major problem with our current teaching of evolution is that it is being taught solely from the philosophic viewpoint of a closed system, a system which excludes God. If we teach our children that all that exists is a cosmic machine, and it is governed by pure chance, then how do we answer their questions about the meaning and purpose of human life? If all we teach is the closed system view of the world, our children tend to picture themselves and others as mere objects-cogs in the cosmic machine-the end- products of genetics plus environment. In the final analysis a human being becomes nothing more than a highly sophisticated computer, an object to be manipulated and reprogrammed at will. The alternative is to accept the open system view of the world. This system not only allows for an outside power in the forming of the Universe, it offers us a whole new perspective for our lives. Our minds are freed from the bondage of the closed cosmic machine to contemplate the God who created the universe-the God who made us-the power whom we can come to know and rely on in our personal daily lives. Thus, we can find meaning and significance in our lives." (Wiester J.L., "The Genesis Connection," Thomas Nelson: Nashville TN, 1983, pp.216-217. Emphasis in original) 5/08/02 "One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for `scientific conditions' in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other. The fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of love. If you choose to say, `I will believe that Miss Brown called her fiance a periwinkle or any other endearing term, if she will repeat the word before seventeen psychologists,' then I shall reply, `Very well, if those are your conditions, you will never get the truth, for she certainly will not say it.' It is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be surprised that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies do not arise. It is as if I said that I could not tell if there was a fog because the air was not clear enough; or as if I insisted on perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse." (Chesterton G.K.*, "Orthodoxy," [1908], Fontana: London, 1961, reprint, pp.150-151) 5/08/02 "There can be no response to the question of the meaning of life if we leave our own life out. Schopenhauer described materialism as the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself." (Birch L.C., "Biology and the Riddle of Life," University of New South Wales Press: Sydney, Australia, 1999, p.135) 7/08/02 "A rash of books published over the last twenty years has claimed-directly or indirectly-that human selfishness is to be expected, given our evolutionary history. After pointing to examples of selfish behavior in a variety of animal species, the writers imply (as if describing the animal behaviors were sufficient) that because self-interested behavior is seen throughout nature perhaps humans need not feel so ashamed of their narcissism and greed. ... The flaws in this argument are obvious. Anyone with a modest knowledge of animal behavior and only minimal inferential skill can find examples of animal behavior to support almost any ethical message desired. Those who wish to sanctify the institution of marriage can point to the pair bonding of gibbons; those who think infidelity is more natural can point to chimpanzees. If you believe that people are naturally sociable, point to baboons; if you think they are solitary, point to orangutans. If you believe sex should replace fighting, point to bonobo chimpanzees. If you want mothers to care for infants, point to rhesus monkeys; if you prefer the father to be the primary caretaker, point to titi monkeys. If you believe that surrogate care is closer to nature, point to lionesses. If you are certain that men should dominate harems of beautiful women, point to elephant seals; if you believe women should be in positions of dominance, point to elephants. Nature has enough diversity to fit almost any ethical taste." (Kagan J., "Three Seductive Ideas," Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1998, p.188) 8/08/02 "Wracked by doubts and indecision, and fearful of the controversy his theories might unleash, Darwin nevertheless pushed forward to finish The Origin of Species. Published on November 24, 1859, the book forever demolished the premise that God had created the earth precisely at 9:00 AM on October 23, 4004 B.C.-and that all species of living creatures had been immutably produced during the following six days-as seventeenth-century churchmen had so carefully formulated." (Jones J.S. [Steve], "Introduction," Darwin C.R., "The Voyage of the Beagle: Journal of Researches Into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World," [1909], Modern Library: New York NY, 2001, reprint, pp.iii.-iv) 12/08/02 Darwin assumed the presence in nature of individual variations which were inherited. Modern experimental work has done much to clear up this situation. It is now known that many individual differences are due to the influence of the environment and are not passed on to descendants and that most other individual characters do not mark the appearance of new features but are merely the result of varied combinations of characters already present in the species. Under such circumstances, all selection could do would be to sort out the best of the existing factors. Beyond this the evolutionary process could not go, were it not that occasionally there occur mutations-definite changes in the germ cells which give rise to the next generation- produced seemingly without relation to the needs of the animal and making definite, although usually small, changes in the structure of the descendants. Though mainly injurious and hence quickly weeded out, an occasional favorable mutation would offer new material for the selective process to work upon; a "chance" mutation increasing the length of a giraffe's neck without other unfavorable accompanying features might tend to be bred into the race. Such an evolutionary process would obviously be slow in action." (Romer A.S., "Vertebrate Paleontology," [1933], University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Second Edition, 1945, Fifth Impression, 1953, p.4) 12/08/02 "In many groups of fossils it would seem that there has been no such `indecision' as the theory just outlined would suggest; groups once started along an evolutionary line have seemingly kept straight on toward a `goal' without deviation. Because of this, there has been built up a theory of orthogenesis, or `straight-line' evolution. But the apparent absence of side branches may be due to the fact that they were nipped in the bud; selection alone might have resulted in an advance in the single direction of greatest adaptive value. Much seeming orthogenesis may thus be explained through mutation and selection. There are still, however, many puzzling facts; and we are far from a complete and satisfactory solution to all of our problems of vertebrate evolution." (Romer A.S., "Vertebrate Paleontology," [1933], University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Second Edition, 1945, Fifth Impression, 1953, p.4) 15/08/02 "We know that evolution happened, and we know how much time it took, but we have little idea of how it worked. Were primitive forms of life made of primitive molecules, which evolution then perfected to build more complex forms? Molecular biologists have discovered that, on the contrary, the same kinds of protein molecule are used for similar chemical functions by all organisms alive today. "What holds for a coli bacterium is true for an elephant" was one of Monod's slogans. The protein molecules of even the most primitive organisms are unbelievably complex; they are made up of thousands of atoms woven into precisely ordered three-dimensional fabrics. I cannot describe them by analogy to any familiar image because nothing like them exists in the macroscopic world. How did they arise? Jacob compares today's molecular biologists to the Renaissance anatomists who first dissected the human body and described its intricate organs: "To rationalize the structures revealed by the scalpel, sixteenth-century anatomists had to invoke God's will. To rationalize the structures revealed by X-ray analysis of proteins, twentieth-century biologists have to invoke natural selection." In both instances we are faced by the end products of 3 billion years of evolution and cannot guess its beginnings." (Perutz M.F., "Is Science Necessary?: Essays on Science and Scientists," [1989], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, 1991, reprint, p.212) 15/08/02 "According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. But since the order of negative entropy is essential to any information flow-since information is itself negative entropy- and entropy is always increasing according to the Second Law, it is obvious from the outset that unlike energy, information can all too easily be destroyed. Books can be burned, as Hitler showed, and a tape recording can be wiped clean by a magnet. The destruction of the great library of Alexandria during the siege of 639 to 640 A.D. is one of the tragedies of history. But can information also be created? In particular: how could information have been created from the random pro cesses of the inorganic universe? Thus the genesis of information is clearly defined as the fundamental problem in the genesis of Life." (Black S., "The Nature of Living Things: An Essay in Theoretical Biology," Martin Secker & Warburg: London, 1972, p.103) 16/08/02 "Come and see the world as it once was through the crystal eyes of the trilobite. We shall find out how trilobites tell us the pattern of evolution, and how it can be read from the rocks. We shall discover how faith in trilobites not merely moves mountains but shifts whole continents." (Fortey R.A., "Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution," [2000], Flamingo: London, 2001, reprint, p.23) 16/08/02 "The Astonishing Hypothesis is that `You,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: `You're nothing but a pack of neurons.' This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today that it can truly be called astonishing." (Crick F.H.C., "The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul," [1994], Touchstone: New York NY, 1995, p.3) 16/08/02 "It must be admitted, however, that it is a considerable strain on one's credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs (the eye of vertebrates, or the bird's feather) could be improved by random mutations. This is even more true for some of the ecological chain relationships (the famous yucca moth case, and so forth). However, the objectors to random mutations have so far been unable to advance any alternative explanation that was supported by substantial evidence." (Mayr E., "Systematics and the Origin of Species," [1942], Columbia University Press: New York NY, Reprinted, 1982, p.296) 19/08/02 "Microevolution within the species proceeds by accumulation of micromutations and occupation of the available ecological niches by the preadapted mutants. Microevolution, especially geographic variation, adapts the species to the different conditions existing in the available range of distribution. Microevolution does not lead beyond the confines of the species, and the typical products of microevolution, the geographic races, are not incipient species. There is no such category as incipient species. Species and the higher categories originate in single macroevolutionary steps as completely new genetic systems. The genetical process which is involved consists of a repatterning of the chromosomes, which results in a new genetic system. The theory of the genes and of the accumulation of micromutants by selection has to be ruled out of this picture." (Goldschmidt R.B., "The Material Basis of Evolution," [1940], Yale University Press: New Haven CT, Reprinted, 1982, p.296) 20/08/02 "One must constantly ask oneself 'Is the present a long enough key to unlock the secrets of the past?' ... Even within the brief life of mankind (with 99% of it in the 'Stone Age') there were great geological events that are not recorded in our histories. ... Charles Lyell the arch-priest of uniformitarianism of course knew something about present-day violent happenings such as eruptions and earthquakes, but was not in a position to apply that knowledge properly to the past. To many it may seem that the arguments between 'catastrophism' and 'uniformitarianism' are long past, with the latter victorious. ... Things happen, that is to say the unusual happenings, the rare events, which I think are far more important than is generally, appreciated. ... In a phrase that has often been quoted since, I have summed up geological history as being like the life of a soldier: 'Long periods of boredom and short periods of terror' (Ager 1973, 1981a, 1993)". (Ager D.V., "The New Catastrophism: The Importance of the Rare Event in Geological History," Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1993, pp.xviii-xix) 21/08/02 "I think that all theories of evolution tend to reflect the scientific trends of their time. I have lived to see the purely morphological period of biology with its evolutionary corollary, the construction of phylogenetic trees, invention of missing ancestors, and a philosophical outlook variously termed mechanism, materialism, monism. The fol lowing period of experimental biology was skeptical of, if not actually hostile to, evolution, as it could not be attacked in laboratory experimentation. Mechanism became unpopular and vitalistic and teleological trends invaded evolutionary thought in the form of creative evolution, emergent evolution, psycho-Lamarckism. The rise of genetics brought back a mechanistic attitude ... But, just as has been the case in chemistry and physics, mechanistic analysis of evolution will sooner or later reach a point where an interpretation in terms of known processes will meet with difficulties." (Goldschmidt R.B., "The Material Basis of Evolution," [1940], Yale University Press: New Haven CT, Reprinted, 1982, p.297) 21/08/02 "I need only quote Schindewolf (1936), the most progressive investigator known to me, who showed that the material presented by paleontology leads to exactly the same conclusions as derived in my writings, to which he refers. He elaborates the thesis that macroevolution on a higher level takes place in an explosive way within a short geological time, followed by a slower series of orthogenetic perfections, as exemplified in the oft-quoted evolutionary series. He realizes that the conception of preadaptation accounts completely for this type of evolution. He shows by examples from fossil material that the major evolutionary advances must have taken place in single large steps, which affected early embryonic stages with the automatic consequence of reconstruction of all the later phases of development. He shows that the many missing links in the paleontological record are sought for in vain because they have never existed: `The first bird hatched from a reptilian egg.' .... It is gratifying that all the disciplines which furnish material for the understanding of evolution-taxonomy and morphology, descriptive and experimental embryology, static and dynamic (physiological) genetics, comparative anatomy and paleontology-supply ample and parallel evidence for a theory of evolution which is more plausible than the neo-Darwinian theory." (Goldschmidt R.B., "The Material Basis of Evolution," [1940], Yale University Press: New Haven CT, Reprinted, 1982, p.395) 22/08/02 "Among the remains of early life on earth, the fossil record we find buried in ancient sedimentary rocks bears evidence of an extraordinary group of marine creature, the trilobites. The position of these invertebrates in the evolution of the animal kingdom is extraordinary because of their early ascent to a high level of functional complexity, described in fascinating detail by their persistent and ubiquitous fossil remains. Trilobites could see their immediate environment with amazingly sophisticated optical devices in the form of large composite eyes, the first use of optics coupled with sensory perception in nature. As a unique feat in the history of life, their eye lenses were shaped to correct for optical aberrations, with design identical to that proposed (quite independently of any knowledge of trilobites) by Descartes and Huygens." (Levi-Setti R., "Trilobites," [1975], The University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 1993, Second Edition, p.1) 22/08/02 "Trilobites share with many other invertebrates in the drama of the `Cambrian explosion': the rapid evolution of amazingly sophisticated and diverse life forms at the beginning of the Cambrian period, some 570 million years ago. In a sort of chain reaction triggered by plant life through a large-scale photosynthetic release of oxygen in the atmosphere, the pattern and rate of biological evolution was tremendously accelerated. Energy-releasing, oxygen-burning processes became available to the evolution of animal fife. The newly discovered powerhouse fostered experimentation with ever more demanding levels of body activity and multiplication of forms. During a relatively short (geologic) time, perhaps a few million years, different new schemes of bodybuilding emerged that involved the construction of internal and external skeletons or exoskeletons. These could support increasingly complex body structures and functions. The genetic radiation of new life forms found countless environments devoid of enemies in which to adapt and prosper." (Levi-Setti R., "Trilobites," [1975], The University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 1993, Second Edition, p.1) 23/08/02 "On the other hand, we must beware, even while holding to the Biblical account, of putting into the original state of man more that the narrative warrants. The picture given us of the first man in the Bible is primitivein every way. The Adam of the book of Genesis is not a being of advanced intellectual attainments, or endowed with an intuitive knowledge of the various arts and sciences. If his state is far removed from that of the savage, it is equally far removed from that of the civilised man. The earliest steps in what we call civilization are of later date, and are duly recorded, though they belong, not to the race of Seth, but to that of Cain. It is presumed that man had high and noble faculties, a pure and harmonious nature, rectitude of will, capability of understanding his Creator's instructions, and power to obey them. Beyond that we need not go. The essence of the Biblical view is summed up in the words of the Preacher: `God made man upright; but they sought out many inventions.'" (Orr, J.*, "The Christian View of God and the World," [1887], Kregel: Grand Rapids MI, 1989, pp.185-186) 24/08/02 "Of course, the laws of physics existed prior to their discovery by man. And we shouldn't perhaps be too surprised that the drive to optimize biological function-one of the fundamental evolutionary forces in all biological organisms-caused trilobites to follow physical laws to the fullest possible extent in their development of visual systems. The real surprise should not be that they did construct eyes that work according to the laws of physics, but that they did it with such ingenuity. The basic lens designs recognized in the original studies by Clarkson are reproduced in figures 10b and 11b. These drawings schematize the eyes of two dalmanitid trilobites: on the left, Crozonaspis struvei (Henry), from the Middle Ordovician of Brittany; and on the right, Dalmanitina socialis (Barrande), a Middle Ordovician species from Bohemia. The thick biconvex lens shape of both results from the matching of two basic parts: an upper lens unit and an intralensar bowl. A wavy interface separates (and unites) the two components." (Levi-Setti R., "Trilobites," [1975], The University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 1993, Second Edition, p.45. Emphasis in original) 24/08/02 "Scientists often display a human failing: whenever they get hold of some new bit of truth they are inclined to decide that it is the whole truth." (Simpson G.G., "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, pp.276-277) 24/08/02 "The resulting synthetic theory ... has often been called neo-Darwinian, even by those who have helped to develop it, because its first glimmerings arose from confrontation of the Darwinian idea of natural selection with the facts of genetics. The term is, however, a misnomer and doubly confusing in this application. The full-blown theory is quite different from Darwin's and has drawn its materials from a variety of sources largely non-Darwinian and partly anti-Darwinian. Even natural selection in this theory has a sense distinctly different, although largely developed from, the Darwinian concept of natural selection." (Simpson G.G., "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.277) 25/08/02 "Christianity is a religion and not a science. In science the principle of inter-subjectivity or objectivity prevails. What is true for one scientist must be true for all. But this is not true in religion, for if the pure in heart see God, then the impure do not, and what is true for the pure is not true for the impure. God draws near to those who draw near to Him, and He is a rewarder of them who diligently seek Him. He is not known to those who do not draw close to Him or to those who refuse to seek Him. What is true for some is emphatically not true for all. In the Gospels a very wealthy young man refused to make the motions of faith. He was intrigued by Jesus Christ, but when the issue became sharply one of Christ or his possessions, the tug of his possessions was the stronger, and sorrowfully he left Jesus Christ. He wanted religion without the motions of faith. It is not a rash presumption to believe that many scientists and educated men wish for peace of mind, relief from a guilty conscience, hope for the life to come, and the blessedness of faith in God. But they find themselves caught between their science and their religious hopes, unable to move. Being possessed of great intellectual riches which manage to come first in their sentiments, they leave Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus refused to pursue the rich young man and make other terms, so today we cannot lessen or cheapen or alter the terms of the gospel for our men of science. There is no other Saviour than Jesus Christ, and there is no other means of having Him than by the motions of repentance and faith. Therefore, if a scientist comes to God he must come in the same way as any other person comes to God. He must make the appropriate spiritual motions. He must repent; he must confess his sin to God; he must believe in Jesus Christ with all his heart." (Ramm, B.L.*, "The Christian View of Science and Scripture," [1954], Paternoster: London, Reprinted, 1960, p.245) 25/08/02 "We might have expected that the animal phyla would have appeared at different times over the course of the fossil record. In fact at least some representatives of almost all of the animal phyla and many of the classes living today appeared by the end of the great Cambrian radiation (550 million years ago) at the beginning of the Paleozoic. This is the starting point for most of the animal fossil record." (Ruppert E.E. & Barnes R.D., "Invertebrate Zoology," [1968], Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: Orlando FL, Sixth Edition, 1994, p.597) 26/08/02 "There is nothing in the fossil record that reveals the evolutionary origins of major animal groups. Our speculations about those origins and the relationships of animal phyla and classes, therefore, continue to be based largely on comparative morphology and development. However, a new source of information is beginning to influence our investigations. This is the comparison of nucleotide, or amino acid, sequences in nucleic acids and proteins." (Ruppert E.E. & Barnes R.D., "Invertebrate Zoology," [1968], Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: Orlando FL, Sixth Edition, 1994, p.597) 27/08/02 "The realization that trilobites made recourse to a doublet lens structure to achieve the goal of improving their vision left me with the uncanny feeling that, if needed, nature could have equally well developed other multi-element optical instruments that are touted as unique creations of human ingenuity. In our case, a doublet structure is added to the already sophisticated aspheric correcting interface. The design of the trilobite's eye lens could well qualify for a patent disclosure. Prior art would mention the Schmidt plate of modern telescopes, a Cartesian surface performing function similar to that of the wavy interface of the trilobite's eye lens." (Levi-Setti R., "Trilobites," [1975], The University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 1993, Second Edition, p.57) 29/08/02 "Christianity and scientific atheism, however, are both rivals and enemies, and the debate between them has been anything but honorable. Christianity is, or has been, the prevailing religion of most countries which permit free elections and attempt to guarantee basic human rights. Scientific atheism, on the other hand, is or has been the `religion' of those nations in which people have been `liquidated' on the basis of race or social class `for the good of the state.' Individual guilt or innocence - important to Christians and those whose outlook has been shaped by Christianity-is irrelevant in scientific atheism be cause `good' and `evil' are meaningless without some concept of God. In Stalinist Russia in the 1920s through the 1950s, in Nazi Germany in the 1930s through the 1940s, and in Pol Pot's Cambodia in the 1970s through the 1980s, to list three of the worst examples, millions of people, including children, were murdered because their race or social class made them `undesirables.' In Christianity, murder is an aberration. In political atheism, it is the norm." (Koster, J.P. Jr., `The Atheist Syndrome,' Wolgemuth & Hyatt: Brentwood TN, 1989, p.4) 29/08/02 "Scientific atheism sustains itself as a `religion' by claiming to be based on factual evidence. Unlike most religions, which require the believer to accept some matters on faith, scientific atheism states flatly that faith is irrelevant and only facts matter. Atheism tolerates no rivals. You either believe in the `facts' of scientific atheism, or you are `wrong.' Even so, in countries where atheism is the official creed, a significant number of people - and in some cases a majority - continue to believe in God and to practice their faith despite economic and political discrimination against believers. Where fear and force are available, atheists have never been reluctant to use them." (Koster, J.P. Jr., "The Atheist Syndrome," Wolgemuth & Hyatt: Brentwood TN, 1989, p.4) 30/08/02 "The idea of an unchanging world also corresponded to a literal reading of the powerfully poetic opening of the Book of Genesis, in which God is said to have created each species independently, simultaneously, and relatively recently-a little over six thousand years ago by reckonings based on Scripture." (Keeton W.T., Gould J.L. & Gould C.G., "Biological Science," [1967], W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, Fourth Edition, 1986, p.12) 30/08/02 "Biblical Creationists accept on faith the literal Old Testament account of creation. Their beliefs include (1) a young earth, perhaps less than 10,000 years old; (2) catastrophes, especially a worldwide flood, as the origin of the earth's present form, including mountains, canyons, oceans, and continents; and (3) miraculous creation of all living things, including humans, in essentially their modern forms. If you are a Creationist, the Bible-not nature-dictates what you believe. Creationists subordinate observational evidence to doctrine based on their interpretation of sacred texts. The tenets of biblical Creationism are not testable, nor are they subject to dramatic change based on new data. In other words, Creationism is a form of religion." (Hazen R.M. & Trefil J., "Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy," [1991], Anchor Books: New York NY, 1992, reprint, p.243) 30/08/02 "There are a number of theories on the origin of life: 1. Steady state theory - This suggests that the earth and the species on it have always existed. Life therefore had no origin. 2. Creation theory - This is the belief that the earth and the species upon it were created by a single event initiated by a 'super-being' or 'God'. 3. Cosmozoan (Panspermian) theory - This theory states that life arose elsewhere in the universe and arrived on earth by some means, e.g. UFOs. 4. Spontaneous generation theory - This theory contends that life arose from non-living material on a number of separate occasions. 5. Biochemical evolution theory - This theory suggests that life arose from the combination of simple molecules into complex ones and their evolution, via coacervates, into cells. Of these theories, that of biochemical evolution is the most widely accepted by present-day scientists." (Toole G. & Toole S., "Understanding Biology for Advanced Level," Hutchinson: London, 1987, p.203) 30/08/02 "For biologists, then, creationism connotes the teaching that the Lord created every single species of animal and plant found in the world today, whereas biological orthodoxy has it that existing species arose over hundreds of millions of years as a result of the differentiation and divergence of their several biogenetic lineages-a hypothesis compatible with all the empirical evidence." (Medawar P.B. & Medawar J.S., "Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology," Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1983, p.62) 30/08/02 "This hypothesis of evolution, of course, cannot be reconciled with a literal reading of the book of Genesis. ... Anyone who believes in Genesis as a literal description of history must hold a world view that is entirely incompatible with the idea of evolution, not to speak of science itself. The literalist must believe that different forms of life were individually created and did not develop from common ancestors. Not only species but everything in the physical universe originated not by material, natural processes but by supernatural acts-miracles." (Futuyma D.J., "Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution," Pantheon: New York NY, 1982, pp.10,12) 30/08/02 "Evolution The gradual process by which the present diversity of plant and animal life arose from the earliest and most primitive organisms, which is believed to have been continuing for at least the past 3000 million years. Until the middle of the 18th century it was generally believed that each species was divinely created and fixed in its form throughout its existence (see special creation). ... Special Creation. The belief, in accordance with the Book of Genesis, that every species was individually created by God in the form in which it exists today and is not capable of undergoing any change. It was the generally accepted explanation of the origin of life until the advent of Darwinism. The idea has recently enjoyed a revival, especially among members of the fundamentalist movement in the USA, partly because there still remain problems that cannot be explained entirely by Darwinian theory. However, special creation is contradicted by fossil evidence and genetic studies, and the pseudoscientific arguments of creation science cannot stand up to logical examination." (Isaacs A., Daintith J. & Martin E., eds., "Concise Science Dictionary," [1984], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, Second Edition, 1991, pp.251, 646-647) 30/08/02 "EVOLUTION (1) Microevolution: changes in appearance of populations and species over generations. (2) Macroevolution or phyletic evolution; origins and EXTINCTIONS of species and grades (see SPECIATION). ... It is usually accepted that causes off evolutionary change include NATURAL SELECTION and GENETIC DRIFT, and that macroevolutionary change can be explained by the same factors that bring about microevolution. ... Opposed to evolutionary explanations of the composition of the Earth's fauna and flora is the group of views termed 'special creationism', which holds that there are no bonds of genetic relationship between species, past or present." (Abercrombie M., Hickman M., Johnson M.L. & Thain M., "The New Penguin Dictionary of Biology," [1951], Penguin Books: London, Eighth Edition, 1990, pp.194-195) 30/08/02 "evolution Change, with continuity in successive generations of organisms (i.e. 'descent with modification' as Darwin called it). The phenomenon is amply demonstrated by the fossil record, for the changes over geological time are sufficient to recognize distinct eras, for the most part with very different plants and animals." (Allaby M., ed., "A Dictionary of Zoology," [1991], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, Second Edition, 1999, p.198) 30/08/02 "creationism A modern variant of special creation, in which it is maintained that all 'kinds' of organisms were created during one week, 6000-10000 years ago, exactly as is stated in the book of Genesis. Creationism involves a rejection not only of the concept of evolution but also of the whole of geology and radiometric dating. ... special creation The belief that the origin of life and the diversity of life result from acts of God whereby each species was created separately. Evolution is implicitly rejected as the explanation of these phenomena. See CREATIONISM; CREATION `SCIENCE'." (Allaby M., ed., "A Dictionary of Zoology," [1991], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, Second Edition, 1999, pp.139-140, 501) 30/08/02 "Public misunderstanding of scientific principles as applied to the study of animal diversity was evident on March 19, 1981, when the governor of Arkansas signed into law the Balanced Treatment for Creation- Science and Evolution-Science Act (Act 590) of 1981). .... Enactment of this law led to a historic lawsuit tried in December 1981 in the court of Judge William. R. Overton, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Arkansas. .... On January 5, 1982, Judge Overton permanently prohibited the state of Arkansas from enforcing Act 590. Considerable testimony during the trial addressed the nature of science. On the basis of testimony by scientists, Judge Overton stated explicitly these essential characteristics of science: 1. It is guided by natural law. 2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law. 3. It is testable against the empirical world. 4. Its conclusions are tentative, that is, are not necessarily the final word. 5. It is falsifiable. The pursuit of scientific knowledge must be guided by the physical and chemical laws that govern the state of existence. Scientific knowledge must explain what is observed by reference to natural law without requiring the intervention of any supernatural being or force." (Hickman C.P., Jr., Roberts L.S. & Larson A., "Animal Diversity," [1995], McGraw-Hill: Boston MA, Second Edition, 2000, p.2) 30/08/02 "... laws and forces of nature of themselves explain nothing-apart, that is, from the way in which these laws and forces are combined, and co-operate to the production of special results. .... To borrow a phrase for which J.S. Mill acknowledges his indebtedness to Dr. Thomas Chalmers-in order to explain nature as we find it, we need to take account, not only of "laws," but of the "collocation" of laws. A machine-e.g., a printing- press-produces its results through the operation of laws. Yet the laws would accomplish nothing were it not that the machine is put together in a certain way, and that the forces at work in it are regulated and directed to a certain end. Laws alone, therefore, do not explain the universe; there is needed plan, direction, guidance; there is needed the mind and the hand behind the machine the combination of laws and forces- guiding it in the work it has to do." (Orr, J.*, "The Bible Under Trial: Apologetic Papers in View of Present- Day Assaults on Holy Scripture," 1907, p.151) 31/08/02 "Perhaps most importantly, if the world and its creatures developed purely by material, physical forces, it could not have been designed and has no purpose or goal. The fundamentalist, in contrast, believes that everything in the world, every species and every characteristic of every species, was designed by an intelligent, purposeful artificer, and that it was made for a purpose. Nowhere does this contrast apply with more force than to the human species. Some shrink from the conclusion that the human species was not designed, has no purpose, and is the product of mere material mechanisms-but this seems to be the message of evolution." (Futuyma D.J., "Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution," Pantheon: New York, 1982, pp.12- 13) 31/08/02 "Further analysis of the possible effects of the birefringence of calcite suggests that they were probably unimportant (Clarkson and Levi-Setti 1975). As to lens defects due to chromatic aberration, these also were considered unimportant, since even at moderate depths in sea water, the environment is essentially monochromatic. ... Why did the phacopid trilobite develop such a sophisticated optical system? Were the perfected images produced by the corrected lenses exploited in any way? Were there other advantages that favored the evolution and retention of these optimal lens structures? What we would like to hear, to appease our Darwinian upbringing, is that new visual structures were evolved in response to new environmental pressures as a means of survival." (Levi-Setti R., "Trilobites," [1975], The University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 1993, Second Edition, p.59) 31/08/02 "Of course there were scientists who thought the evidence favouring DNA was inconclusive and preferred to believe that genes were protein molecules. Francis, however, did not worry about these sceptics. Many were cantankerous fools who unfailingly backed the wrong horses. One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by news papers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid." (Watson J.D., "The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA," [1968], Penguin: Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK, 1978, reprint, p.24) [top] September 1/09/02 "(yom) day, time, year. ... It can denote 1. the period of light (as contrasted with the period of darkness), 2. the period of twenty-four hours, 3. a general vague "time," 4. a point of time. 5 a year (in the plural; 1 Sam 27:7; Ex 13: 10. etc.)" (Coppes L.J., "yom. day, time, year," in Harris R.L., Archer G.L. & Waltke B.K., eds, "Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament," [1980], Moody Press: Chicago IL, 1992, Twelfth Printing, Vol. I, p.370) 1/09/02 "The optical arrangement is clearly a very sophisticated structure which quite belies the antiquity of the animal. This may come as something of a surprise: we might expect an eye from half-way along optical history to have a slightly slung-together look, or at least broadly to resemble the eyes of many other lowly animals, as does the run-of-the-mill trilobite eye. But the eye of Phacops is something unexpected, a sports coupe in the age of the boneshaker." (Fortey R.A., "Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution," [2000], Flamingo: London, 2001, reprint, pp.98,100) 1/09/02 "Euan noticed something else about the construction of the trilobite's eyes: the smaller lenses were concentrated at the top of many eyes. The eye surface - known as the corneal surface had to be moulted along with the rest of the animal's hard exoskeleton as it grew. The eye itself grew in size in harmony with the rest of the animal: more lenses were added after each moult as the new skeleton hardened. New crystals were added in from the top of the eye in a zone of generation. With successive moults these lenses were incorporated into the main body of the eye, passed downwards in a graded chain. These differences in lens size also helped to maintain the regularity of the design across the curved surface of the eye. It is fiendishly clever (as Hercule Poirot would to say) that these 'primitive' animals could play such games with the mineral world in the service of eye geometry." (Fortey R.A., "Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution," [2000], Flamingo: London, 2001, reprint, p.97) 7/09/02 "Comparative studies of the reception of Darwinism in different European cultures indicate that the popularization of evolutionary science was rarely, if ever, a straightforward process in which the science of an elite simply diffused down ward to a mass audience. Darwin's science was actively seized. It was vulgarized in the promotion of particular political goals and these, in turn, often reflected local circumstances. ... Despite the variability of context, one message was put out loud and clear by leaders of secular movements in every European country. Taken to its logical conclusion, Darwin's theory was the apotheosis of a scientific naturalism that simply could not be squared with a historic Christianity. In Germany, Haeckel was adamant that there was no middle ground. It was either Darwinian evolution or miracles." (Brooke J.H., "Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives," [1991], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1995, Reprinted, pp.302-303) 7/09/02 "The proposition that Darwin's description of natural selection and Christian images of divine activity were fundamentally incompatible was not the invention of secularists alone. In his book What is Darwinism? (1874), the Princeton theologian Charles Hodge reached the same conclusion. His was no diatribe against Darwin. He saw no reason in Scripture to reject evolution out of hand. Nor was there any intrinsic objection to the idea of theistic evolution, in which the development of new species was under divine control. In fairness to Darwin, he also acknowledged that neither the theory nor its author were atheistic in the sense that an original Creator was denied. In the last analysis, however, he could not see how a process in which natural selection worked on random variations could be said to be anything other than effectively atheistic, since the doctrine of an active providence working to specific designs was evacuated. ... It should not be difficult to see why intelligent people have often taken the view that Darwin's theory, properly understood, and Christian conceptions of an active providence are not merely incompatible but belong to two mutually exclusive worlds of thought. " (Brooke J.H., "Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives," [1991], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1995, Reprinted, pp.303-305. Emphasis in original) 7/09/02 "Christians who agreed with Hodge [that Darwinism was effectively atheistic] could only have their suspicions confirmed by the eagerness with which Darwin's science was welded into a scientistic world- view. Back in 1838 Darwin had recognized that, in one vital respect at least, his theorizing coalesced with the positivist doctrines of Auguste Comte (1798-1857). In his schematic history, Comte had argued that human societies had passed through three stages, the theological, the metaphysical, and, finally, the positive scientific stage when what passed for knowledge had to be expressed in terms of natural laws. Final causes had no place in that final stage. In his metaphysical notebook, Darwin had written: "M. Le Comte argues against all contrivance ... it is what my views tend to." (Brooke J.H., "Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives," [1991], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1995, Reprinted, p.304. Emphasis in original) 7/09/02 "In losing his beautiful daughter [Annie, in 1851] - the little girl who had meant so much to him with her perfect character, so charming and gentle, a child who had never knowingly upset anyone and who was bright and intelligent, funny and affectionate - he had also lost any remaining vestige of religious faith he may have had. From that moment on, Darwin was a total, uncompromising atheist: his only god was rationality, his only saviour, logic and science; to that end he would continue to dedicate his life. There was no meaning to existence other than a culmination of biological events. life was selfish and cruel, headless and heartless. Beyond biology there was nothing." (White M. & Gribbin J., "Darwin: A Life in Science", [1995], Simon & Schuster London, 1996, p.156) 7/09/02 "Clearly Darwin had outgrown what he must have perceived as the notions of religious idealists who were guided solely by emotion and a fatal cocktail of fear and faith. From somewhat unorthodox Christian he had swung through agnosticism (actually a term coined by Huxley to describe his own position some ten years later), atheism and on almost to a precursor of existentialism. In both the microcosm seen through the lens of his microscope and the macro-scale universe beginning to be revealed by the astronomers of the day, he could see only struggle, temporary victory and defeat; lying beneath it all, black and unmoving, there was a complete absence of meaning." (White M. & Gribbin J., "Darwin: A Life in Science", [1995], Simon & Schuster London, 1996, p.224) 9/09/02 "Not many years ago when I was an atheist, if anyone had asked me, `Why do you not believe in God?' my reply would have run something like this: ... If you ask me to believe that this is, the work of a benevolent and omnipotent spirit, I reply that all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Either there is no spirit behind the universe, or else a spirit indifferent to good and evil, or else an evil spirit.' There was one question which I never dreamed of raising. I never noticed that the very strength and facility of the pessimists' case at once poses us a problem. If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? Men are fools, perhaps; but hardly so foolish as that. The direct inference from black to white, from evil flower to virtuous root, from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise, staggers belief. The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been the ground of religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held." (Lewis C.S.*, "The Problem of Pain," [1940], Fount: London, 1977, reprint, pp.11-13) 9/09/02 "Like E.O. Wilson, I was brought up a Southern Baptist. Like him, I encountered the theory of evolution as a teenager. Like him, I was bowled over by its power and beauty. Like his religious faith, mine did not survive this encounter with science in good shape. But there is one difference between Wilson and me. He seems to have had no trouble filling the void. I, in contrast, regularly get wistful about the days when the question of purpose was settled once and for all, when I knew for certain why I was here and how I was supposed to behave. And somehow I find it hard to believe that he never does. So I ask him: Doesn't he long for the days when he believed there was a God up there watching over him? Doesn't he lose any sleep over life after death? He shakes his head firmly. "None," he says finally and proudly. I don't worry about my own immortality." Still, a funny thing happened a couple of years ago. Harvard was honoring Martin Luther King, Sr., and Reverend King, as part of the festivities, was preaching at the Harvard Memorial Chapel. Wilson, being a southerner, was invited to the service. There was a large turnout. The reverend preached fervently, and the congregation sang richly, and one of the hymns hit home with Wilson-"one of the good, old-timey ones that I hadn't heard since I was a kid." Partway through it, E.O. Wilson-scientific materialist, detached empiricist, confirmed Darwinian-started crying. As if in atonement, he has a perfectly rational explanation. It was tribal," he says. It was the feeling that I had been a long way away from the tribe." (Wright R., "Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information," Times Books: New York NY, 1988, pp.191-192) 9/09/02 "Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade-a secular religion rnasquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense. We make and test risky predictions all the time; our success is not dogma, but a highly probable indication of evolution's basic truth. As in any historical science, most predictions refer to an unknown past (technically called `postdictions' in the jargon). For example, every time I collect fossils in Paleozoic rocks (550 to 225 million years old), I predict that I will not find fossil mammals-for mammals evolved in the subsequent Triassic period (while young-earth creationists, claiming that God made life in six days of twenty-four hours, should expect to encounter mammals in all strata). If I find fossil mammals, particularly such late-evolving creatures as cows, cats, elephants, and humans, in Paleozoic strata, our evolutionary goose is cooked." (Gould S.J.*, "Magnolias from Moscow," in "Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History," Harmony Books: New York NY, 1995, p.409) 10/09/02 "It is, as I call now see, probable that all organic beings, including man, possess peculiarities of structure, which neither are now, nor were formerly of any service to them, and which, therefore, are of no physiological importance. We know not what produces the numberless slight differences between the individuals of each species, for reversion only carries the problem a few stops backwards, but each peculiarity must have had its efficient cause. If these causes, whatever they may be, were to act more uniformly and energetically during a lengthened period (and against this no reason can be assigned), the result would probably be not a mere slight individual difference, but a well marked and constant modification, though one of no physiological importance. Changed structures, which are in no way beneficial, cannot be kept uniform through natural selection, though the injurious will be thus eliminated. Uniformity of character would, how ever, naturally follow from the assumed uniformity of the exciting causes, and likewise from the free intercrossing of many individuals. During successive periods, the same organism might in this manner acquire successive modifications, which would be transmitted in a nearly uniform state as long as the exciting causes remained the same and there was free inter crossing. With respect to the exciting causes we can only say, as when speaking of so-called spontaneous variations, that they relate much more closely to the constitution of the varying organism, than to the nature of the conditions to which it has been subjected." (Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: London, Second Edition, 1922, reprint, pp.92-93) 13/09/02 "First, it may be thought that, successful though naturalistic science is, it is spectacularly insufficient in explaining the origin of mind which is best accounted for by divine creative interventions. Second, one may be puzzled by the finely adjusted details of physical existence which seem just right for the evolution of conscious life - at least, in so far as they look like necessary conditions for that evolution - and a version of the design argument for a god's existence may be suggested. It is here that appeals to the so-called `anthropic principle' may be made. But, third, it can be argued that the facts of mental life support mind-body dualism, which holds that the mind is a substance distinct from the body; and inasmuch as this is a plausible view so the dualist theory of a god distinct from the world gains in plausibility." (Olding A., "Modern Biology and Natural Theology," Routledge: London, 1991, pp.xx-xxi) 13/09/02 "It seems to me also that the line of your pursuits may have led you to view chiefly the difficulties on one side, and that you have not had time to consider and study the chain of difficulties on the other, but I believe you do not consider your opinion as formed. May not the habit in scientific pursuits of believing nothing till it is proved, influence your mind too much in other things which cannot be proved in the same way, and which if true are likely to be above our comprehension. I should say also there is a danger in giving up revelation which does not exist on the other side, that is the fear of ingratitude in casting off what has been done for your benefit as well as for that of all the world and which ought to make you still more careful, perhaps even fearful lest you should not have taken all the pains you could to judge truly." (Darwin, Emma, personal letter 1839 to her husband Charles, in Barlow N., ed., "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, 1969, reprint, p.236) 13/09/02 "But even the simplest of these substances represent extremely complex compounds, containing many thousands of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in absolutely definite patterns, which are specific for each separate substance. To the student of protein structure the spontaneous formation of such an atomic arrangement in the protein molecule would seem as improbable as would the accidental origin of the text of Virgil's `Aeneid' from scattered letter type." (Oparin A.I., "The Origin of Life," [1938], Morgulis S., transl., Second Edition, 1965, pp.132-133). 14/09/02 "Researchers have considered the 97% of the DNA in the human genome that does not encode protein as 'junk DNA.' ... Most of this enormous, silent genetic majority has long been thought to have no real function--hence it's name: `junk DNA.' But one researcher's trash is another researcher's treasure, and a growing number of scientists believe that hidden in the junk DNA are intellectual riches .... Rather than being considered a catalogue of useful genes interspersed with useless junk, each chromosome is beginning to be viewed as a complex `information organelle,' replete with sophisticated maintenance and control systems--some embedded in what was thought to be mere waste. ... when geneticists started studying complex, multicellular organisms, it was easy to dismiss the vast reaches of non-protein-coding DNA as a wasteland. Now, however, that notion is being overturned as researchers find that junk DNA is not a single midden heap ... but a complex mix of different types of DNA, many of which are vital to the life of the cell. ... now it seems that patches of really important regulatory elements can be buried among the junk DNA. ... These key regulatory elements can even occur in what many geneticists have considered the ultimate in genetic detritus: the repetitive sequences scattered throughout the genomes of higher organisms. These genetic stutters have come to epitomize junk because their structures are simple to the point of absurdity, sometimes including only two or three nucleotides repeated thousands of times. In addition, the lengths and compositions of these repetitions often vary wildly between species, between organisms of the same species, even between cells of the same organism. ... Now, however, it appears some repetitive sequences may contain stretches of DNA needed for gene regulation. ... in a dramatic reversal, the repetitive sequences, once thought to be the epitome of genetic debris, now seem to be needed to maintain the integrity of the chromosomes. ... the status of junk DNA ... is likely to keep on rising over the next couple of years. Enough gems have already been uncovered in the genetic midden to show that what was once thought to be waste is definitely being transmuted into scientific gold." (Nowak R., "Mining treasures from 'junk DNA'," Science, Vol. 263, No. 5147, p.608) 14/09/02 "The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule of DNA. We have had it from the very beginning, built into the first cell to emerge, membranes and all, somewhere in the soupy water of the cooling planet three thousand million years or so ago. All of today's DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboration of that first molecule. In a fundamental sense we cannot claim to have made progress, since the method used for growth and replication is essentially unchanged. ... We have come a long way on that old molecule. We could never have done it with human intelligence, even if molecular biologists had been flown in by satellite at the beginning, laboratories and all, from some other solar system. We have evolved scientists, to be sure, and so we know a lot about DNA, but if our kind of mind had been confronted with the problem of designing a similar replicating molecule, starting from scratch, we'd never have succeeded. We would have made one fatal mistake: our molecule would have been perfect. Given enough time, we would have figured out how to do this, nucleotides, enzymes, and all, to make flawless, exact copies, but it would never have occurred to us, thinking as we do, that the thing had to be able to make errors." (Thomas L., "The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher," [1979]. Bantam: New York NY, Reprinted, 1986, pp.22-23). 15/09/02 "It is interesting to notice that a large part of the world has now adopted a negative creed, as little supported by the findings of science as is the positive creed of the religious. The attitude of science to spiritual matters has evidently been widely and profoundly misunderstood. The public seems to believe that a materialistic philosophy has been established by the findings of science. Science is materialistic inasmuch as all its data are material events and can therefore give no information about anything but matter. For Science to affirm or deny the existence of the soul would be as absurd, as for Religion to affirm or deny the Law of Conservation of Energy. If a man allows his whole existence to be guided by science, he will be a materialist, but if he chooses to be so guided, it is not the fault of Science. It would seem that the fallacy that materialism is a proven truth has infected a great part of the civilised world, and has probably gone far to contribute to the disintegration of moral values which is causing the present world-convulsion." (Sherwood Taylor F., "The Century of Science," Readers Union: London, Second Edition, 1942, p.256) 15/09/02 "I suggest that all these paleoanthropological narratives approximate the structure of a hero tale, along the lines proposed by Vladimir Propp in his classic Morphology of the Folktale (1928). They feature a humble hero who departs on a journey, receives essential equipment from a helper or donor figure, goes through tests and transformations, and finally arrives at a higher state. But it is part of my argument that, as in Propp's tales, this narrative schema can accommodate widely varying sequences of events, heroes and donors corresponding to the underlying evolutionary beliefs of their authors. A main goal of this book is to show how widely the followers of Charles Darwin depart from Darwinian natural selection as the guiding force that helps the hero forward, and how their interpretations of the fossil record vary according to their convictions about this primary causal agent." (Landau M., "Narratives of Human Evolution," Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1991, p.xi) 16/09/02 "The course of evolution since his emergence is seen to be determined by new factors of a nonbiological kind: man himself began to produce a new set of causal factors and thereby initiated a new kind of evolution. Finally, it is believed that an understanding of these factors will enable modern man to direct his own evolution. Though these may be verifiable contentions, they far exceed what can be inferred from the study of fossils alone and in fact place a heavy burden of interpretation on the fossil record - a burden which is relieved by placing fossils into preexisting narrative structures. The fossil record itself may gain much of its aura of self-evidence from the incantatory authority of the ancient narrative structures it follows." (Landau M., "Narratives of Human Evolution," Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1991, p.148) 17/09/02 "Nevertheless, nagging thoughts remain. Can it really be true that Darwinism, which overturns all our former ideas about man and nature, has no unsettling consequences? Traditional morality is based, in part, on the idea that human life has a special value and worth. If we must give up our inflated conception of ourselves, and our picture of the world as made exclusively for our habitation, will we not have to give up, at the same time, those elements of our morality which depend on such conceptions? The feeling that Darwin's discovery undermines traditional religion, as well as some parts of traditional morality, will not go away, despite the nice logical points about what follows from what, and despite the fact that one might not want to side with evolution's enemies. I believe this feeling is justified. There is a connection between Darwin's theory and these larger matters, although the connection is more complicated than simple logical entailment. I shall argue that Darwin's theory does undermine traditional values. In particular, it undermines the traditional idea that human life has a special, unique worth." (Rachels J., "Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism," [1990], Oxford University Press: New York NY, 1999, reprint, pp.3-4) 19/09/02 "The application of what I have been saying to the creationist controversy is straightforward. It seems to me that the attempts by creationists to foist their particular brand of dreadful science on public school curricula are pernicious. We should resist such attempts and resist them effectively in the political realm. But some of the creationists who are making such attempts are, to put it not too harshly, shysters. So there may well be circumstances in which only the bad effective argument will work against them in the political or legal arenas. If there are, then I think, though I come to this conclusion reluctantly, it is morally permissible for us to use the bad effective argument, provided we continue to have qualms of conscience about getting our hands soiled. But I also believe we must be very careful not to allow ourselves to slide all the way down the slippery slope to intellectual corruption. Perhaps, if we divide up the labor so that no one among us has to resort to the bad effective argument too frequently, we can succeed in resisting effectively without paying too high a price in terms of moral corruption." (Quinn P.L., "Creationism, Methodology, and Politics," in Ruse M., ed., "But is it Science?: The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, 1996, pp.398-399) 18/09/02 "Traditional morality depends on the idea that human beings are in a special moral category: from a moral point of view, human life has a special, unique value, while non-human life has relatively little value. Thus the purpose of morality is conceived to be, primarily, the protection of human beings and their rights and interests. This is commonly referred to as the idea of human dignity. But this idea does not exist in a logical vacuum. Traditionally it has been supported in two ways: first, by the notion that man is made in the image of God, and secondly, by the notion that man is a uniquely rational being. ... Darwin's theory does not entail that the idea of human dignity is false-to say that it does would violate the logical stricture against deriving 'ought' from 'is'. Darwinism does, however, undermine the traditional doctrine, in a sense that I will explain, by taking away its support. Darwinism undermines both the idea that man is made in the image of God and the idea that man is a uniquely rational being. Furthermore, if Darwinism is correct, it is unlikely that any other support for the idea of human dignity will be found. The idea of human dignity turns out, therefore, to be the moral effluvium of a discredited metaphysics." (Rachels J., "Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism," [1990], Oxford University Press: New York NY, 1999, reprint, pp.4-5) 19/09/02 "If there is no God and no after-life, it is important that we should believe this because it will prevent us wasting our time in prayer and worship and vain pursuit of everlasting life; it will also prevent us disseminating false information on important matters. Nevertheless, it is, I think, difficult to avoid the view that it is more important to believe that there is a God, if in fact there is a God, than to believe that there is no God, if in fact there is no God. Thus failure to hold a true belief that there is a God could lead to us failing to worship a God to whom worship is due; whereas, if through a false belief that there is a God, we worship a God who does not exist, no-one is thereby wronged. Further, failure to hold a true belief that there is a God could lead to the loss of everlasting life, for if this belief is conjoined with a true belief that, if there is a God, he will give everlasting life after death to those who live a certain kind of life on Earth, a man who has these beliefs is in a position to gain that life. And even if the other religious belief is that if there is a God he will give everlasting life after death to any who try to live a good life on Earth, those beliefs together could encourage a man to persevere with a worthwhile life on Earth and so gain that everlasting life ..., whereas failure to hold a true atheistic belief could involve at most the waste of a short finite life. This seems to be one correct point in the argumentation of Pascal's Wager, in which there are a number of incorrect points ..." (Swinburne R.G., "Faith and Reason," Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1981, p.81) 19/09/02 "The `theory of evolution' is an overworked term, in its popular usage, and unfortunate besides, because it implies that, after all, there may be something dubious about it. Evolution is a fact, like digestion. I have never seen my own digestive processes, but I would not be so fatuous as to cast doubt on their existence by talking-about the `theory of digestion.' The phrase is doubtless the expression of a die-hard prejudice." (Howells, W.W., "Mankind So Far," Doubleday, Doran & Co: Garden City NY, 1946, p.5) 20/09/02 "No one disputes the fact that modern humans and the living great apes had a common ancestor. We have enough characteristics in common for it to be clear that our lives diverged comparatively recently. We still share something like 98 percent of our genetic material with chimpanzees. The similarities between us and the apes are evident and easily understood. It is the differences that are perplexing. Why should our backs be straight, our skins bare, and our lives laced together with webs of words? Somewhere in the genetic 2 percent that makes us uniquely human lie reasons to account for the fact that our posture, our locomotion, and our intellect should be so different from theirs. We seem to have spent a large part of the last 10 million years rushing through a series of evolutionary adaptations while the apes changed relatively little. Why? What was it that made such changes necessary? Something must have happened to us that didn't happen to the chimps and gorillas. But what? Theories abound and range, according to your taste, from environmental factors that drove our ancestors out of the forest, to banishment from the Garden of Eden by divine decree. In other words, we became erect, naked, and intelligent either because of a change of climate or due to an act of God. Both theories are tenable. Scientists, of course, tend to favor the former, but it is important to understand that, in the absence of appropriate fossil evidence, it is actually no more susceptible to proof than any of the more traditional accounts of creation." (Watson L., "The Dreams of Dragons: Riddles of Natural History," William Morrow & Co: New York NY, 1987, p.127) 20/09/02 "Thus a biologist of repute at Oxford, having been challenged for an actual case of Natural Selection in the second sense, gave the instance of black moths in a certain wood. The trees of the woods were dark pines; with the result that white moths had a bad time, being easily picked off, while the black moths flourished. But when the trees of the wood were gradually replaced by light coloured birch trees, it was the other way about; the white moths flourished and the black moths diminished. Surely it hardly needed great learning to expect such a result! But the scientist mixed up that obvious result with a totally different thing, to wit, the turning of the black moths into white moths through the new birch plantation." (Belloc H. "Essays of a Catholic Layman in England," Sheed & Ward: London, 1931, p.206) 20/09/02 "Darwin's Missing Evidence. In his time certain species of moths were light in color. Today in many areas these species are largely dark. If he had noticed the change occurring, he would have observed evolution in action ... Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, the centenary of which we celebrate in 1959, was the fruit of 26 years of laborious accumulation of facts from nature. Others before Darwin had believed in evolution, but he alone produced a cataclysm of data in support of it. Yet there were two fundamental gaps in his chain of evidence. First, Darwin had no knowledge of the mechanism of heredity. Second, he had no visible example of evolution at work in nature. It is a curious fact that both of these gaps could have been filled during Darwin's lifetime. Although Gregor Mendel's laws of inheritance were not discovered by the community of biologists until 1900, they had first been published in 1866. And before Darwin died in 1882, the most striking evolutionary change ever witnessed by man was taking place around him in his own country. The change was simply this.- Less than a century ago moths of certain species were characterized by their light coloration, which matched such backgrounds as light tree trunks and lichen-covered rocks, on which the moths passed the daylight hours sitting motionless. Today in many areas the same species are predominantly dark! We now call this reversal `industrial melanism.'" (Kettlewell H.B.D., "Darwin's Missing Evidence," Scientific American, Vol. 201, No. 3, March 1959, pp.48-53, p.48) 20/09/02 "Obviously, I love and cherish Darwinian evolutionary theory, as one of the great intellectual achievements of all time. But my pleading is not just for Darwinism, or any kind of evolutionism. It is for all human inquiry, particularly all scientific inquiry. If Darwinism is beaten down by the Creationists, who falls next? ... In a sense, these are dark days. The threat will not vanish, unless we fight. But, the battle can be won. Darwinism has a great past. Let us work to see that it has an even greater future." (Ruse M., "Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies," [1982], Addison-Wesley: Reading MA, 1983, Third Printing, p.329) 21/09/02 What about observations of selection actually changing one form to another? Again we turn to Darwin's homeland, for the best-known sets of studies on natural selection in action are those by English evolutionists on the evolving melanic forms in moths. To take the most fully documented case, the moth Biston betularia, it has been recorded beyond doubt that in the past century the moth has evolved, from a uniformly mottled, light gray color to a dark "melanic" form. And, the reason is unequivocally a function of natural selection. The chief danger to the moths is predators, specifically birds that eat them. Against a clean, lichen-colored tree, the light mottled moths are well camouflaged, whereas the melanic moths are at a selective disadvantage. However, in the past 100 years, thanks to the rise of industry, the consequent air pollution and the soot-blackening of tree barks, the tables have turned. Now, it is the melanic forms that are camouflaged and at an adaptive advantage, and it is the gray forms that stand out and are picked off by predators. ... Not only has this process been actually seen to happen, but the conclusions been backed up by experiment. The late H.B.D. Kettlewell of Oxford University released hundreds of light and dark moths in polluted and unpolluted areas of England (Birmingham and Dorset, respectively). Expectedly, it was found that birds in Birmingham could spot gray forms more easily, and that birds in Dorset could spot melanic forms more easily. These differences were also dramatically underlined when moths were recaptured. Proportionately, far more melanic forms could be taken in Birmingham, and proportionately far more gray forms in Dorset. ... In short, everything points to the effectiveness of selection." (Ruse M., "Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies," [1982], Addison-Wesley: Reading MA, 1983, Third Printing, pp.101,103) 21/09/02 "Darwin realized that the vast majority of offspring produced by most organisms failed to survive to reproduce. What, then, he asked, determines who succeeds in reproducing and who does not? In an analog to the practices of animal breeders and plant propagators, he surmised that nature selects the offspring that are going to be the parents of the next generation. And which ones does nature select? Those that are best able to survive and reproduce. This somewhat tautological concept of natural selection-that the fittest survive and those that survive are the fittest-is, even today, the centerpiece of evolutionary theory." (Ehrlich P.R., "The Machinery of Nature," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1986, p.62) 21/09/02 "Just as we see no reason to suppose that unusual processes were going on in the early universe, there is no reason to postulate special starting conditions for the Big Bang. For example, we saw that during the particle era electrons and positrons annihilated each other until only electrons were left. One to explain this would be to assume that there were more electrons than positrons at the moment of creation. But this is no explanation at all-it merely assumes what we want to prove. Therefore, rather than make such arbitrary assumptions, we will assume that equal numbers of positrons and electrons were present at creation and look to the laws of physics to tell us how there came to be more of one than the other at a later time. Thus we come to our second rule. Rule II: No special conditions may be postulated at the creation. ... One of the striking facts about the earthly environment is the noticeable scarcity of antimatter. Small amounts can be created in specialized laboratories, but all of the antimatter created in the history of science would not fill a thimble. Our satellites and planetary probes have landed on, or passed near, most other important bodies in our solar system and brought back the same verdict: no antimatter anywhere. ... The question of how to explain this apparent imbalance in nature is known as the antimatter problem. The antimatter problem can be resolved in only two ways: either there was a preponderance of matter over antimatter when the Big Bang entered the particle era, or the antimatter in the galaxy has somehow segregated itself from the matter, and some of the more distant galaxies are, in fact, antigalaxies. If indeed there was an imbalance at the one- millisecond point, then there are two ways in which it could have arisen: either the universe started out with more matter than antimatter, or there is some process in the period before the start of the particle era that produced more matter than antimatter. ... While we cannot prove that there are no regions of antimatter anywhere in the universe, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that there are. In the face of this result, interest in this particular solution to the antimatter problem has waned considerably in recent years. THE BIG BANG STARTED WITH MORE MATTER THAN ANTIMATTER This solution cannot be ruled out either, since it is impossible to go backward in time and see the Big Bang. Perhaps, if no other solution can be found, we would be forced to fall back on this one, but it does constitute a violation of Rule 2. Besides, there is an inherent ugliness in assuming what should be proved, for it simply leads us to the obvious next question: Why should the universe have started this way? To a physicist, the only net particle number that does not need to be explained is zero." (Trefil J.S., "The Moment of Creation: Big Bang Physics From Before the First Millisecond to the Present Universe," Charles Scribner's Sons: New York NY, 1983, pp.32,38-40. Capitals in original) 22/09/02 "Despite the fact that we have to push into regions of energy and temperature that we have not, and probably cannot, explore experimentally, we can still do so in a way that is in harmony with the traditional way science is done and that does not simply introduce special ad hoc assumptions to explain what we find. So important is this aspect of modern cosmology in this age of creation "science" that we will state it as a basic rule (Rule I). Rule I: The laws of nature that have operated at any time since the Big Bang still operate today and can be understood by theories which can be tested experimentally. The philosophically inclined reader will recognize this rule as a statement of the doctrine of uniformitarianism, which first arose during the debates on geological evolution during the nineteenth century. It is not a statement that can be proved in the way that a theorem in geometry can be proved, but it reflects an important frame of mind among scientists. It is always possible to "explain" any known fact by tailoring a theory to fit it. Such explanations abound among believers in UFOs and other paranormal phenomena. They have the same validity in physics as Kipling's Just So Stories do in biology. If conventional theories simply cannot explain a given phenomenon, of course, unconventional ideas may become necessary. Until that time we will abide by Rule I." (Trefil J.S., "The Moment of Creation: Big Bang Physics From Before the First Millisecond to the Present Universe," Charles Scribner's Sons: New York NY, 1983, pp.32-33) 22/09/02 "Finally, we may whimsically observe that the virgin birth of Christ was even more miraculous than it has been presented, for it is very difficult to see how an all-female gamete could have developed into a viable fetus. This is a frivolous point, however. After all, many theologians argue that the virgin birth is not meant to be taken literally, while others might reasonably suggest that miracles occur when God chooses to suspend the natural laws; and if once the laws are suspended, then anything can happen." (Tudge C., "The Engineer in the Garden: Genetics: From the Idea of Heredity to the Creation of Life." [1993], Pimlico: London, 1995, reprint, p.154) 22/09/02 "Consider what is known about selection pressures in natural populations. In only a relative handful of cases has this been studied directly, the most famous example being that of the peppered moth, Biston betularia, in England. ... The question remains: How typical are the strong selection pressures uncovered in these and the handful of other studies? From the studies that have been done, one might conclude that evolution has been zig-zagging along under the influence of strong selection tracking an everchanging environment. In other words, strong selection operating in different directions at different times could, over long periods, produce products of evolution that (especially in groups without fossil records) are indistinguishable from those produced by constant weak selection operating in one direction. But the question cannot yet be answered because the sample of studies of selection in nature is clearly biased toward those in which the operation of strong selection has attracted the attention of investigators. To understand nature as a whole, we need to avoid such bias." (Ehrlich P.R., "The Machinery of Nature," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1986, pp.72-74) 23/09/02 "Textbooks thus begin by truncating the scientist's sense of his discipline's history and then proceed to supply a substitute for what they have eliminated. Characteristically, textbooks of science contain just a bit of history, either in an introductory chapter or, more often in scattered references to the great heroes of an earlier age. From such references both students and professionals come to feel like participants in a long- standing historical tradition. Yet the textbook-derived tradition in which scientists come to sense their participation is one that, in fact, never existed. For reasons that are both obvious and highly functional, science textbooks (and too many of the older histories of science) refer only to that part of the work of past scientists that can easily be viewed as contributions to the state merit and solution of the texts' paradigm problems. Partly by selection and partly by distortion, the scientists of earlier ages are implicitly represented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method has made seem scientific. No wonder that textbooks and the historical tradition they imply have to be rewritten after each scientific revolution. And no wonder that, as they are rewritten, science once again comes to seem largely cumulative." (Kuhn T.S., "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," [1962], University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Third edition, 1996, pp.137-138) 23/09/02 "Scientists are not, of course the only group that tends to see its discipline's past developing linearly toward its present vantage. The temptation to write history backward is both omnipresent and perennial. But scientists are more affected by the temptation to rewrite history, partly because the results of scientific research show no obvious dependence upon the historical context of the inquiry, and partly because, except during crisis and revolution, the scientist's contemporary position seems so secure. More historical detail whether of science's present or of its past, or more responsibility to the historical details that are presented, could only give artificial status to human idiosyncrasy, error, and confusion. Why dignify what science's best and most persistent efforts have made it possible to discard? The depreciation of historical fact is deeply, and probably functionally, ingrained in the ideology of the scientific profession, the same profession that places the highest of all values upon factual details of other sorts." (Kuhn T.S., "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," [1962], University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Third edition, 1996, p.138) 23/09/02 "And so the two greatest scientists that England has produced came to lie side by side in the Abbey- Newton, who banished miracles from the physical world and reduced God to the role of a cosmic designer who on the day of creation had brought the clockwork mechanism of the universe into being to tick away according to the inevitable laws of its nature; and Darwin, who banished not only miracles but also creation and design from the world of life, robbed God of his role of creator of man, and man of his divine origin." (Huxley J.S. & Kettlewell H.B.D., "Charles Darwin and His World," [1965], Book Club Associates: London, 1975, reprint, p.126) 23/09/02 "There is an additional factor that needs to be taken into account here. The recent growth in the creationist movement has been matched by an increase in the number of popular science books on evolution, often written by authors who are openly hostile to religion. Some indeed have used their account of evolution to build an atheistic worldview at odds with any concept of creation or providence. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, has done this in his well-known books and essays (e.g. Wonderful Life, Dinosaur in a Haystack). He makes it clear that he believes humans are merely an accidental outcome of evolutionary history, the product of an uncaring Universe and not in any way created in God's image. This view is not put forward as a personal opinion but is presented as a definite conclusion that science compels us to accept. It may seem like a small point but Gould, in the name of science, is dismissing a concept that is central to the Jewish and Christian religions. Small wonder, then, that the creationists rise up in protest. For the growth of the creationist movement has been fuelled by a sense of outrage at the way atheist beliefs and secular values are often presented as if they were part of biological science. To put it in the vernacular: if someone says `my science shows that your religion is bunk', the natural reaction is `well then there must be something wrong with your science.'" (Young D., "The Evolution of Creationism," Australasian Science, Vol. 23, No. 3, April 2002, pp.20-21. http://www.control.com.au/233religion2.htm) 23/09/02 "Natural Selection in Action. Natural Selection can be seen to be at work here and now in directing evolution. ... An example of this type of research is that of H.B.D. Kettlewell on 'industrial melanism' in moths.... Up to 1848 the British Peppered Moth existed in its typical grey form known as Biston betularia, which is remarkably well adapted to resemble the lichens on the bark of trees. From that date, a dark melanic variety appeared, known as carbonaria, which is extremely conspicuous against the natural bark of trees. It is controlled by a single dominant Mendelian gene and is slightly more vigorous than the normal grey type. Nevertheless, because of its conspicuous colour the carbonaria variety was constantly eliminated, and this variety only persisted in the populations of the Peppered Moth because the same mutation kept on occurring again and again. The Industrial Revolution brought about a marked change in the environment, since the pollution of the air by increasing quantities of carbon dust killed the lichens on the trees and rendered their trunks and branches black. Under these conditions it is the carbonaria variety which is favoured and the betularia penalized. This has been proved by direct observation of the feeding of birds, and by measurement of the survival rates of the different forms in the different environments. The dark carbonaria form survives 17% less well in an unpolluted area and 10% better in a polluted area. One hundred years ago the dark variety of the Peppered Moth formed less than 1% of the population; today in industrial areas it forms 99%, and selection has made it more intensively black than when it first appeared." (de Beer G., "A Handbook on Evolution", Trustees of the British Museum of Natural History: London, Fourth Edition, 1970, pp.21-22) 23/09/02 "Equivocation is when the meaning of words is shifted. Many false arguments use equivocation to convince an audience. Equivocation makes natural selection slippery and provides its apparent scientific power. If natural selection were consistently either tautology [T], or special definition [SD], or metaphysics [M] or lame [L], then it would not have lasted so long in the scientific arena. ... The illusion is achieved by shifting between T, SD, M, and L. In this way natural selection can appear to have all the good qualities one could want in science: empirical, measurable, explanatory, general, testable, non-tautologous, and true. This shift can happen rapidly during a book or lecture. Once we understand the principle, watching natural selection in action is like watching the three-shell game at the carnival. One never knows which of the walnut shells the pea will be under next. Proponents of natural selection have many options during a debate. These options depend on which version (T,SD,M,L) they are using when challenged. ... In summary, the scientific stature of natural selection is an illusion. The illusion is created by shifting back and forth between various formulations tautology (T), special definitions (SD), metaphysics (M), and lame formulations (L)." (ReMine W.J.*, "The Biotic Message: Evolution Versus Message Theory," St. Paul Science: Saint Paul MN, 1993, pp.107-108) 24/09/02 "For we shall find that since the time of Hume, the fashionable scientific philosophy has been such as to deny the rationality of science. ... Some variant of Hume's philosophy has generally prevailed among men of science. But scientific faith has risen to the occasion, and has tacitly removed the philosophic mountain. In view of this strange contradiction in scientific thought, it is of the first importance to consider the antecedents of a faith which is impervious to the demand for a consistent rationality. We have therefore to trace the rise of the instinctive faith that there is an Order of Nature which can be traced in every detailed occurrence. Of course we all share in this faith, and we therefore believe that the reason for the faith is our apprehension of its truth. .... How has this conviction been so vividly implanted in the European mind? When we compare this tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of other civilisations when left to themselves, there seems but one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher." (Whitehead A.N., "Science and the Modern World," [1926], Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK, 1938, reprint, pp.14-15, 24) 24/09/02 "The melanism of moths occurs in many parts of the world that are not industrialized, and in environments that are quite different. ... In each case recurrent mutation has provided the source of the change, and natural selection, as postulated by Darwin, has decided its destiny. ... Had Darwin observed industrial melanism he would have seen evolution occurring not in thousands of years but in thousands of days-well within his lifetime. He would have witnessed the consummation and confirmation of his life's work." (Kettlewell H.B.D., "Darwin's Missing Evidence," Scientific American, Vol. 201, No. 3, March 1959, pp.48-53, p.53) 25/09/02 "Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all. How, then, are scientists brought to make this transposition? Part of the answer is that they are very often not. Copernicanism made few converts for almost a century after Copernicus' death. Newton's work was not generally accepted. particularly on the Continent, for more than half a century after the Principia appeared. Priestley never accepted the oxygen theory, nor Lord Kelvin the electromagnetic theory, and so on. The difficulties of conversion have often been noted by scientists themselves. Darwin, in a particularly perceptive passage at the end of his Origin of Species, wrote.. `Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume .... I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. ... [B]ut I look with confidence to the future,-to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.' And Max Planck, surveying his own career in his Scientific Autobiography, sadly remarked that `a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.'" (Kuhn T.S., "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," [1962], University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Third edition, 1996, pp.150-151) 25/09/02 "'That is all very well,' you may say. 'It seems to be true that natural selection can turn moths black in industrial areas, can keep protective coloration up to the mark, can produce resistant strains of bacteria and insect pests But what abo