Stephen E. Jones

Creation/Evolution Quotes: Unclassified quotes: July 2005 (1)

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The following are unclassified quotes posted in my Internet messages of July 2005 (1).
The date format is dd/mm/yy. See copyright conditions at end.

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

1/07/2005
"And so it has gone, and goes, in field after field: ecology, psychology, public health, fill in your own favorite 
here. Over and over, scientists ignore, distort or suborn the truth for the sake of their personal, political and 
professional agendas. And now it's happening again, in the battle between Darwinian materialism and the 
burgeoning Intelligent Design (ID) movement. ... This new struggle has less to do with `Inherit the Wind' 
stereotypes and cliches -- crusading scientists and liberals vs. Bible- thumping buffoons -- than with the future 
of scientific inquiry, indeed the very nature of knowledge itself. Yes, many of the movement's researchers commit 
Christianity on a regular basis. Some are politically conservative. But ID's significance extends far beyond the 
preferences of its practitioners. To adapt a Clinton-era formulation, `It's the universe, stupid.' As science, ID 
holds that it's possible to seek and study evidence of intelligent design in the physical and biological worlds 
without positing either the identity or intent of the designer. So far, much of the work has centered on Darwinian 
materialism, which is not exactly the same thing as evolution. No serious scientist or informed layperson denies 
the fact of evolution, in the sense that species come, go and change over time. There's a fossil record of 
infuriating gaps, wondrous complexity and endless surprises to ponder. The problem with Darwinian materialism 
is that, as a matter of faith, it holds that all this happened at random...and that, as a matter of dogma, no other 
explanations may even be considered. ID considers other explanations. In `Darwin's Black Box,' Lehigh 
University biologist Michael Behe shows that the `irreducible complexity' of even a single cell argues against 
random evolution within the few billion years allotted by geology and cosmology. Baylor University 
mathematician William Dembski works on what he calls `specified complexity' -- discerning design via 
mathematical analysis. His first major work, `The Design Inference,' was published by Cambridge University 
Press, not exactly a bunch of creationist hooters. Last year, biologist Jonathan Wells published `Icons of 
Evolution,' showing that many of the standard textbook `proofs' were ambiguous, misleading and in at least one 
case, openly fraudulent. The movement has also received fair and serious Page One Sunday coverage in the New 
York Times and Los Angeles Times, as well as in publications ranging from `First Things' to Seattle and San 
Francisco city papers. There was even a conference at Yale. The response of the Darwinian fundamentalists has 
been, to say the least, vicious. Leave aside Darwinian Richard Dawkins' generic sneer that anybody who 
questions the materialist gospel must be `ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).' 
Mr. Behe has been savaged by his peers. Mr. Dembski was removed from his position as director of Baylor's 
Polanyi Center -- an act described by Baylor President Robert B. Sloan as `related to matters of internal 
relationships and not to his academic work.' Mr. Wells has been virtually excommunicated from the scientific 
establishment, even though no one has refuted a single statement in his book and many Darwinians have 
admitted they knew about the fakery all along. Why the denials? Why the rage? Well, scientists are human. They 
don't like being told they might be wrong, or that their life's work can be questioned. Some can't get beyond 
viewing ID as back-door creationism; give in here today and the Inquisition will be stoking the fires tomorrow. 
But the most basic resistance, I suspect, involves a fear that dares not speak its name -- the foreboding that 
science itself may someday demonstrate that science is neither the sole nor final source of verifiable truth 
concerning the universe and that portion of it known as us. For scientists who cannot bear the thought, survival 
may indeed be more important than accuracy." (Gold P., "Darwinism in denial?," The Washington Times, August 
23, 2001. Discovery Institute: Seattle WA)

1/07/2005
"There is also a unique reason why scientists are particularly averse to developing an opinion that the theory of 
unintelligent evolution cannot explain all of the diversity of life on earth, and that an intelligent-designer theory 
may be necessary to explain at least some of the diversity of life. In litigation, even if a lawyer does develop an 
internal belief about the data that conflicts with the presentation he or she needs to make in court, the lawyer is 
expected to keep that belief private. The lawyer's obligation is not to be actually sincere but to 
appear sincere. Thus there is no danger to the lawyer's livelihood if the lawyer develops a private 
understanding of the data that conflicts with the understanding to be presented in court. But in science the rule 
is different. Scientists are supposed to be actually sincere. They are supposed to develop genuine, 
individual opinions about the data and then express those opinions. Thus it is vital to a scientist's career 
not to develop opinions which, if expressed, will end that career, because opinions once developed are 
supposed to be expressed, not hidden in favor of expressing opinions the scientist does not sincerely believe. 
For brevity's sake, we may call this the "sincerity rule." Because of the fear that to admit the presence of 
intelligent design would undermine the social predominance of science (and thus its funding and prestige), no 
leader of a major American scientific institution can publicly abandon the paradigm of unintelligent evolution and 
yet retain his position of leadership. As in any human organization, the people who most effectively advance the 
interests of the scientific establishment are the ones chosen to lead the establishment. Those who impede the 
achievement of the establishment's ends are rejected. Thus, there is simply no purpose for scientists to take the 
time to consider the challenges to the paradigm and develop an individual response, because if that response is a 
rejection of the paradigm, the scientist must either suppress it (and violate the rule that scientists should be 
sincere) or else express it (and likely end his career). Everyone below the top on the hierarchy ladder knows that 
to question unintelligent evolution will mean the end of career advancement; so for them, too, there is simply no 
incentive to consider that the challenges to unintelligent evolution might be valid. On the contrary, there are very 
strong incentives not to consider those challenges in any way that might lead to accepting them. The "sincerity 
rule" means that if scientists develop a disbelief in unintelligent evolution, they must express it. Thus, 
preservation of career advancement opportunities is predicated on the maintenance of belief in unintelligent 
evolution. That is why challenges to the theory of evolution at best will receive a condescending hearing in 
forums dominated or controlled by the science establishment." (Sisson E.*, "Teaching the Flaws in Neo-
Darwinism," in Dembski W.A., ed., "Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing," ISI 
Books: Wilmington DE, 2004, pp.87-88. Emphasis in original)

4/07/2005
"MATTHEW 16:28 ... Jesus concludes his remarks with the following solemn prediction: 28. I solemnly declare to 
you that there are some of those that are standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of man 
coming in his royal dignity. As to `I solemnly declare' see on 5:18. It introduces a very important statement. The 
difficulty which many readers have experienced with this passage can be avoided by bearing in mind that Jesus 
did not say, `Some of those that are standing here shall not taste death until the Son of man shall come in the 
glory of his Father, with his angels,' but, `... until they see the Son of man coming in his royal dignity.' To `taste 
death' means to experience it, that is, to die. For the term `Son of man' see on 8:20. That the coming of the Son of 
man `in his royal dignity,' a coming whose date is so clearly fixed in the mind of Jesus that he is able to add that 
some of the men whom he addresses are going to see it before they die, cannot refer to the second coming is 
clear from 24:36 (cf. Mark 13:32), where Jesus specifically declares that the date of that coming is 
unknown to him. To be sure, the `coming to render to each according to his deeds' (verse 27) and the `coming in 
his royal dignity' or literally 'in his kingship' [In addition to `kingdom' the Greek word Basileia also has this 
abstract meaning `kingship,' `royal reign' or `royal dignity,' whichever of these suits the context best (cf. Matt. 
6:10; Luke 17:21; I Cor. 15:24)] (verse 28) are closely related. They are not identical, however. Here in 16:27, 28, as 
well as in 10:23 (see pp. 0 467, 468, where this subject is discussed in greater detail) Jesus is making use of 
`prophetic foreshortening.' He regards the entire state of exaltation, from his resurrection to his second coming, 
as a unit. In verse 27 he describes its final consummation; here in verse 28 its beginning. Here, then, he is saying 
that some of those whom he is addressing are going to be witnesses of this beginning. They are going to see the 
Son of man coming `in his royal dignity,' that is, coming in majesty, to reign as king. Is not he the One who was 
destined to rule as `King of kings and Lord of lords' (Rev. 19:16)? Here in Matt. 16:28 the reference is in all 
probability to: a. his glorious resurrection, b. his return in the Spirit . on the day of Pentecost, and in close 
connection with that event, c. his reign from his position at the Father's right hand, a rulership that would become 
evident in the history of the post- Pentecost church as described in the book of Acts. Again and again these 
great happenings (a, b., and c., just mentioned) are in Scripture associated with the ideas of power, kingship, 
exaltation, and coronation, as anyone can see for himself by studying such passages as Acts 1:6-8; 2:32-36; Eph. 
1:19-23; Phil. 2:9; Heb. 2:9; I Peter 1:3; and Rev. 12:10. As a result of Jesus' resurrection and return in the Spirit on 
the day of Pentecost changes so vast would begin to take place that, as outsiders saw it, the world would be 
turned `upside down' (Acts 17:6). Momentous events were about to occur: the `becoming of age' of the church, 
with spiritual illumination, love, unity, and courage prevailing within its ranks as never before, the extension of 
the church among the Gentiles, the conversion of people by the thousands, the presence and exercise of many 
charismatic gifts (Acts 2:41; 4:4, 32-35; 5:12-16; 6:7; 19:10, 17-20; I Thess. 1:8-10). All of these things certainly 
justified the prediction that the Son of man would be coming `in his kingship,' that is `in his royal dignity.' Jesus 
predicts that this will take place during the lifetime of some of those whom he is now addressing. That too was 
literally fulfilled. B y no means all of those who heard the Lord make this prediction lived or were present to see 
its plenary fulfilment. Judas Iscariot never saw any of it. Thomas was not present with the other disciples on the 
Sunday evening of the day of the resurrection. James, the brother of John, saw only the beginning of the 
wonderful period described in the book of Acts (see Acts 12:1). Some of the apostles were absent when certain 
important events took place (John 21:2). The transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-8), at which occasion `our Lord Jesus 
Christ ... received from God the Father honor and glory' (II Peter 1:17; `majesty' also, verse 16) is by some 
regarded as included in the prediction made in 16:28. It was witnessed by only three of the apostles. But whether 
it be included or not, sufficient other evidence has been mentioned to show that the prediction of Jesus was 
literally and gloriously fulfilled." (Hendriksen W., "The Gospel of Matthew: New Testament Commentary:," 
[1973], The Banner of Truth Trust, 1982, reprint, pp.659-660. Emphasis in original)

4/07/2005
"Inclusivism believes that, because God is present in the whole world (premise), God's grace is also at work in 
some way among all people, possibly even in the sphere of religious life (inference). It entertains the possibility 
that religion may play a role in the salvation of the human race, a role preparatory to the gospel of Christ, in 
whom alone fullness of salvation is found. The premise seems theologically well founded. God is present as the 
triune Creator and Redeemer everywhere-in the far reaches of space, in every culture, and in every human heart. 
Therefore, divine grace is also prevenient everywhere - since God has created the whole world, since Jesus Christ 
died for all humanity, and since the Spirit gives life to creation. Most specifically and crucially, inclusivists 
believe that the Spirit is everywhere at work in advance of the mission to prepare the way for Jesus Christ. We 
refuse to allow the disjunction between nature and grace or between common and saving grace, on the 
supposition that, if the triune God is present, grace must be present too. The inference is more controversial, 
though I think it only draws out what is inherent in the premise. Hitherto it has only seldom been proposed that 
the Spirit might be present in the religious sphere of human life. Theologians may have been willing to say that 
God's grace operates outside the church-but not to say that grace may be encountered in the context of the non-
Christian religions. Inclusivism runs a risk of suspicion in suggesting that non-Christian religions may be not 
only the means of a natural knowledge of God, but also the locale of God's grace given to the world because of 
Christ." (Pinnock C.H., "An Inclusivist View," in Okholm D.L. & Phillips T.R., ed., "Four Views on Salvation in a 
Pluralistic World," [1995], Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 1996, reprint, p.98)

4/07/2005
"Let me sketch the way in which I see inclusivism to be congruent with the Scriptures. In the Old Testament, 
Melchizedek is an important symbol (Gen. 14:17-24). The story of his encounter with Abram shows that God was 
at work in the religious sphere of Canaanite culture. Abram accepts the blessing of this pagan priest and pays 
tithes to him. He is satisfied that the king of Salem worships the true God under the name El Elyon. God seems to 
be teaching Abram that his election does not mean that he is in exclusive possession of God, but rather that God 
is calling him to be a means of grace to all nations among whom God is also and already at work.` Melchizedek 
represents for me the larger group of pagan saints in Scripture among whom God worked . For too long we have 
stared at the corrupt forms of religion mentioned in the Bible as if they represented the fullness of what religion 
can be according to the Scriptures, when there is more to it than that. In the New Testament, Cornelius is a key 
symbol (Acts 10:1-48). God used this godly Gentile to teach the apostle Peter that there is no partiality in God's 
dealings with humanity. Though a non-Christian and a Gentile, Cornelius was devout and God-fearing- evidently 
God was present in the religious sphere of his life. He represents the wider hope of the book of Acts and the New 
Testament generally that affirms that God never leaves himself without witness among all peoples (Acts 14:17). 
More exposition can be found in my book A Wideness in God's Mercy. I believe that the Bible supports 
inclusivism. It declares Jesus to be the fundamental way to salvation as God's eternal Son and sacrifice but does 
not confine the saving impact of God's saving work to one segment of history. God has been at work saving 
human beings before Jesus was born and does so where Jesus has not been named. The patriarch Abraham was 
justified by faith without knowing Jesus, and Paul holds him up as a model believer for us all, even though he 
never heard the gospel (Rom. 4:1-25). Faith in Jesus as the Savior of the world leaves room for us to be open and 
generous to other religious traditions. Scripture encourages us to see the church not so much as the ark, outside 
of which there is no hope of salvation, but as the vanguard of those who have experienced the fullness of God's 
grace made available to all people in Jesus Christ. The Spirit is universally present in the world as well as 
uniquely present in the fellowship of the church." (Pinnock C.H., "An Inclusivist View," in Okholm D.L. & 
Phillips T.R., ed., "Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World," [1995], Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 1996, 
reprint, pp.109-110)

5/07/2005
"Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior 
creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our 
civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever 
knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name 
was Charles Darwin. To be fair, others had had inklings of the truth, but it was Darwin who first put together a 
coherent and tenable account of why we exist. Darwin made it possible for us to give a sensible answer to the 
curious child whose question heads this chapter. We no longer have to resort to superstition-when faced with 
the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man? After posing the last of these 
questions, the eminent zoologist G.G. Simpson put it thus: `The point I want to make now is that all attempts to 
answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely.'" 
(Dawkins R., "The Selfish Gene," [1976], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, 1989, New edition, p.1)

5/07/2005
"The most singular of these, perhaps immortal, fallacies, which live on, Tithonus-like, when sense and force have 
long deserted them, is that which charges Mr. Darwin with having attempted to reinstate the old pagan goddess, 
Chance. It is said that he supposes variations to come about `by chance,' and that the fittest survive the 
`chances' of the struggle for existence. and thus `chance' is substituted for providential design. It is not a little 
wonderful that such an accusation as this should be brought against a writer who has, over and over again, 
warned his readers that when he uses the word `spontaneous,' he merely means that he is ignorant of the cause 
of that which is so termed ; and whose whole theory crumbles to pieces if the uniformity and regularity of natural 
causation for illimitable past ages is denied." (Huxley T. H., "On the Reception of the `Origin Of Species,'" in 
Darwin F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. I., 1959, reprint, 
p.553)

7/07/2005
"By now it is becoming evident that the story of the making of our planet is a remarkable one. A number of 
different circumstances seem to have combined together to make the earth a suitable abode for life. Whether or 
not, considered only from a physical point of view, the formation of our solar system came about as a result of 
some astronomically rare event we have no means of knowing. In view of what we have learned, it is not unlikely. 
At all events we can be certain that when we compare the earth with the other planets, all the favours of fortune 
seem to have gone into its making. Situated at the right distance from the sun, built to the right size, its 
radioactive elements concentrated in its crust, uniquely provided with a satellite large enough to brighten the 
night and control the rhythm of nature, rotating in such a way as to produce day and night and seasonal 
variations in temperature, largely covered with water which keeps the temperature more constant still, provided 
with continents and ocean basins and with just about the right amount of water to fill them, provided with an 
atmosphere of the right kind, and with an ocean containing salt which enables clouds and rain to form in the 
atmosphere but an ocean which, to preserve life over geological time, has never developed strong alkalinity or 
acidity and in which toxic metals have been removed by absorption on a suitable precipitate-what more can we 
ask? Such are the facts." (Clark R.E.D.*, "The Universe: Plan or Accident?: The Religious Implications of Modern 
Science," [1949], Paternoster: London, Third edition, 1961, pp.89-90)

8/07/2005
"The next chapter will show that Huxley is now seen more as a pseudo-Darwinian who had little real sympathy 
for natural selection or the Darwinian approach to the history of life. Huxley was an important figure not because 
he forced through the arguments for a Darwinian view of evolution but because his maneuvering behind the 
scenes ensured that the evolutionists who regarded Darwin as their figurehead were able to take over the British 
scientific community. It was through persuasion and through success in the politics of science that Darwinism 
came to dominate British biology. There are some scientists today who resent the claim that skills in the area of 
public relations help a theory to gain acceptance. They feel that objective evidence in favor of the theory must be 
the dominant factor. Yet sociologists who study the acceptance of new ideas within the modern scientific 
community have shown that it is to some extent a social process (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984). David Hull (1978) has 
suggested that the image presented to the world by the supporters of a new theory may be very important, 
especially when there are apparently valid arguments both for and against the theory. The advantage will be 
gained by the side that presents its case most effectively, stressing the positive aspects of its own position and 
undermining the influence of its opponents. The successful group will evade objections or deflect them by 
making concessions that do not threaten its basic principles. Its members will present a united front, never falling 
out in public even when they have disagreements over how the theory should be applied. Biologists loyal to the 
Darwinian symbol gained the day because they employed these tactics and thereby outmaneuvered both the 
anti-evolutionists and those who wanted to found rival schools of evolutionism. Their PR skills were helped by 
the ineptness of their opponents, who were in any case handicapped by the need to rethink their position in 
response to the Darwinian threat. To succeed in the game of scientific politics, Darwin had to play his cards very 
carefully. " (Bowler P.J., "The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth," The Johns Hopkins 
University Press: Baltimore MD, 1988, pp.68-69)

9/07/2005
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to 
accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not 
say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He 
would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil 
of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or some thing 
worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and 
call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human 
teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (Lewis C.S.*, "Mere Christianity," [1952] Fount: 
London, 1977, reprint, p.52)

9/07/2005
"Attitudes to the Evidence ... The extraction from the Gospels of evidence about the life and career of Jesus is a 
singularly difficult, delicate process. Students of the New Testament, it has been suggested, would be well 
advised to study other, pagan fields of ancient history first - because they are easier!' For the study of the highly 
idiosyncratic Gospels requires that all the normal techniques of the historian should be supplemented by a mass 
of other disciplines, though this is a counsel of perfection which few students, if any, can even begin to meet: 
People have been attempting to write lives of Jesus for a very long time. There have been more of them than of 
any other man or woman in history; 60,000 were written in the nineteenth century alone. Unable, like anyone else, 
to dissociate themselves from their own environment and age, these writers have all superimposed upon the 
history of the first century AD something which more properly belongs to their own time. As Gunther Bornkamm 
points out, We need only read Albert Schweitzer's famous book The Quest of the Historical Jesus to realize 
swiftly how the individual essays and pictures were determined by the typical dominant images of the 
Enlightenment, of German idealism, of incipient socialism, by the image of the rationalistic teacher of virtue, by 
the romantic concept of the religious genius, by the ideal of the champion of the abused proletariat and of a new, 
more just order of society, by the idea of Kantian ethics, and finally also by the bourgeois religiosity of the 
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Of course we can say that every period, like history in general, sees Jesus' 
own history and figure with its own eyes. And we, he adds, are certainly no exception to this rule. But let us at 
least, in this post-Freudian epoch, be on our guard against introducing unconscious modernizations, so that we 
can then get on with our task of discovering and isolating the specific, and often to ourselves alien, features 
peculiar to the first, and not the twentieth, century AD. The task has often been declared impossible on the 
grounds that our information is too little and too late, and can do no more than create the picture of a picture, and 
can yield only the whisper of Jesus' voice. But nowadays more and more scholars appreciate that this conclusion 
is unduly pessimistic. T. W. Manson, for example, has declared: `I am increasingly convinced that in the Gospels 
we have the materials - reliable materials - for an outline account of the ministry as a whole. J. Knox, too, believed 
us to be `left with a very substantial residuum of historically trustworthy facts about Jesus, his teaching and his 
life'. And now Geza Vermes expresses `guarded optimism concerning a possible discovery of the genuine 
features of Jesus'. ... So the further attempt that has been made in the present book is surely in itself not 
unjustified, though the degree of its adequacy is, of course, a very different matter. There are three possible 
approaches to this task. One can write as a believer, or as an unbeliever, or (as I have attempted to do) as a 
student of history seeking, as far as one's background and conditions permit, to employ methods that make belief 
or unbelief irrelevant. There are many who maintain that no one except a believer in Jesus' divinity is entitled to 
write a single word about him. W. G. Kummel and Vincent Taylor expressed this view in uncompromising terms. ... 
Certainly, some partial measure of scepticism regarding the Gospel stories is inevitable, if historical standards are 
going to be applied. ... This sceptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a 
human being never existed at all and is a myth. ... from the eighteenth century onwards, there have been attempts 
to insist that Jesus did not even `seem' to exist, and that all tales of his appearance upon the earth were pure 
fiction. In particular, his story was compared to the pagan mythologies inventing fictitious dying and rising gods. 
... More convincing refutations of the Christ-myth hypothesis can be derived from an appeal to method. In the 
first place, Judaism was a milieu to which doctrines of the deaths and rebirths of mythical gods seems so entirely 
foreign that the emergence of such a fabrication from its midst is very hard to credit. But above all, if we apply to 
the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings Jesus 
containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of 
pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. Certainly, there are all those 
discrepancies between one Gospel and another. But we do not deny that an event ever took place just because 
pagan historians such as, for example, Livy and Polybius, happen to have described it in differing terms. That 
there was a growth of legend round Jesus cannot be denied, and it arose very quickly. But there had also been a 
rapid growth of legend round pagan figures like Alexander the Great; and yet nobody regards him as wholly 
mythical and fictitious. To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has `again 
and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years `no serious scholar has ventured 
to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' - or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of 
the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary. They have not, that is to say, been accepted 
as presenting an objective picture. True, the life of Jesus is a theme in which the notorious problem of achieving 
objectivity reaches its height. And in consequence certain critics have concluded, not merely that most writers, 
whether they admit it or not, approach the Gospels with preconceived ideas, but that in dealing with a subject 
such as this which stirs profound feelings, it is impossible to be objective; so that it is obligatory for everyone 
attempting to deal with the subject to commit himself, to stand up and be counted, to make `a personal response 
for or against the New Testament explanation' - as the evangelists demanded. et this attitude is the very negation 
of history and must be rejected by anyone who seeks to study it. Certainly, every such student will have his own 
preconceptions. But he must be vigilant to keep them within limits; as J. B. Bury remarked, it is essentially absurd 
for a historian to wish that any alleged fact should turn out to be true or false. Careful scrutiny does not 
presuppose either credulity or hostility. Neither the believers nor the unbelievers must be allowed to make him 
their slave .He must first try to decide, as far as he can, what Jesus said and did. And then he has to consider the 
significance of those words and deeds. He has to consider, also, what significance Jesus himself attached to 
them. It is not his job to determine whether Jesus was right or wrong in so doing. But he does have the function 
of deciding what that significance was. This is the critical approach he must adopt; and without it, as Peter de 
Rosa insists, `Jesus Christ will never be relevant to our time.' A short way back, exception was taken to the view 
that everything the evangelists say must be assumed correct until it is proved wrong. Should we, therefore, 
accept the opposite opinion, which has been locked in an agonizing struggle with it for two hundred years, that 
all the contents of the Gospels must be assumed fictitious until they are proved genuine? No, that also is too 
extreme a viewpoint and would not be applied in other fields. When, for example, one tries to build up facts from 
the accounts of pagan historians, judgment often has to be given not in the light of any external confirmation - 
which is sometimes, but by no means always, available - but on the basis of historical deductions and arguments 
which attain nothing better than probability. The same applies to the Gospels. Their contents need not be 
assumed fictitious until they are proved authentic. But they have to be subjected to the usual standards of 
historical persuasiveness. It is most important, therefore, when we are deciding which parts of the Gospels can be 
accepted or rejected, to be clear about the exact nature of the criteria likely to achieve this result. It is true that 
every critic is inclined to make his own rules. But he ought to be able to define what they are. Failure to do so 
was the besetting weakness of that most beguiling of all lives of Jesus, by Ernest Renan (1863): `He had not 
specified the objective criteria by which he could justify his acceptance of some items as historical and others as 
not.'" (Grant M., "Jesus," [1977], Rigel: London, 2004, reprint, pp.197-201)

9/07/2005
"If an omnipotent Creator exists He might have created things instantaneously in a single week or through 
gradual evolution over billions of years. He might have employed means wholly inaccessible to science, or 
mechanisms that are at least in part understandable through scientific investigation. The essential point of 
creation has nothing to do with the timing or the mechanism the Creator chose to employ, but with the element of 
design or purpose. In the broadest sense, a "creationist" is simply a person who believes that the world (and 
especially mankind) was designed, and exists for a purpose." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Darwin on Trial," [1991], 
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second edition, 1993, p.115)

9/07/2005
"In a broader sense, however, a creationist is simply a person who believes in the existence of a Creator who 
brought about the existence of the world and its living inhabitants in furtherance of a purpose. Whether the 
process of creation took a single week or billions of years is relatively unimportant from a philosophical or 
theological standpoint. Creation by gradual processes over geological ages may create problems for biblical 
interpretation, but it creates none for the basic principle of theistic religion. And creation in this broad sense, 
according to a 1991 Gallup poll, is the creed of 87 percent of Americans." (Johnson, P.E.*, "What is Darwinism?Origins of life: Born in a watery 
commune," Nature, Vol. 427, No. 6976, 19 February 2004)

11/07/2005
"The function of auxiliary hypotheses in scientific testing suggests that many scientific theories, including those 
in so-called hard sciences, may be very difficult, if not impossible, to falsify conclusively. Yet many theories that 
have been falsified in practice via the consensus judgment of the scientific community must qualify as scientific 
according to the falsifiability criterion. Since they have been falsified, they are obviously falsifiable, and since 
they are falsifiable, they would seem to be scientific. [Laudan L., `The Demise of the Demarcation problem'; 
Laudan, `Science at the Bar,' p.354]. And so it has gone generally with demarcation criteria. Many theories that 
have been repudiated on evidential grounds express the very epistemic and methodological virtues (testability, 
falsifiability, observability, etc.) that have been alleged to characterize true science. Many theories that are held 
in high esteem lack some of the allegedly necessary and sufficient features of proper science. As a result, with 
few exceptions most contemporary philosophers of science regard the question `What methods distinguish 
science from non-science?' as both intractable and uninteresting. What, after all, is in a name? Certainly not 
automatic epistemic warrant or authority. Thus philosophers of science have increasingly realized that the real 
issue is not whether a theory is scientific but whether it is true or warranted by the evidence. Thus, as Martin 
Eger has summarized, `demarcation arguments have collapsed. Philosophers of science don't hold them anymore. 
They may still enjoy acceptance in the popular world, but that's a different world.' [Eger M., quoted by J. Buell in 
`Broaden Science Curriculum,' Dallas Morning News, March 10, 1989]. The `demise of the demarcation problem,' 
as Laudan calls it, implies that the use of positivistic demarcationist arguments by evolutionists is, at least prima 
facie, on very slippery ground. Laudan's analysis suggests that such arguments are not likely to succeed in 
distinguishing the scientific status of descent vis-a-vis design or anything else for that matter. As Laudan puts it 
`If we could stand up on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like 'pseudo-science.'... They do only emotive 
work for us.' [Laudan L., `The Demise of the Demarcation problem', in `But Is It Science?', Ruse M., ed., 
Prometheus Books: Buffalo N.Y, 1988, pp.337-350] If philosophers of science such as Laudan are correct, a 
stalemate exists in our analysis of design and descent. Neither can automatically qualify as science; neither can 
be necessarily disqualified either. The a priori methodological merit of design and descent are indistinguishable if 
no agreed criteria exist by which to judge their merits." (Meyer S.C.*, "The Methodological Equivalence of Design & Descent: 
Can There be a Scientific `Theory of Creation'?," in Moreland J.P.*, ed., "The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific 
Evidence for an Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1994, p.75)

11/07/2005
"A concept of the universal ancestor turns on more than phylogenetic trees, however. The Archaea and Bacteria 
share a large number of metabolic genes that are not found in eukaryotes. If these two `prokaryotic' groups span 
the primary phylogenetic divide and their genes are vertically (genealogically) inherited, then the universal 
ancestor must have had all of these genes, these many functions: This distribution of genes would make the 
ancestor a prototroph with a complete tricarboxylic acid cycle, polysaccharide metabolism, both sulfur oxidation 
and reduction, and nitrogen fixation; it was motile by means of flagella; it had a regulated cell cycle, and more. 
This is not the simple ancestor, limited in metabolic capabilities, that biologists originally intuited. That ancestor 
can explain neither this broad distribution of diverse metabolic functions nor the early origin of autotrophy 
implied by this distribution. The ancestor that this broad spread of metabolic genes demands is totipotent, a 
genetically rich and complex entity, as rich and complex as any modern cell-seemingly more so." (Woese C., "The universal ancestor," Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 95, Issue 12, June 9, 1998, pp.6854-6859)

11/07/2005
"Yet the totipotent ancestor also fails: it cannot explain the manner of the ancestor's evolution, i.e., how it became 
so miraculously complex in so short a time and just as rapidly gave rise to the ancestors of the three primary lines 
of descent. All of this apparently happened in far less than 1 billion years, whereas evolution within each of the 
three primary lines of descent has been going on for over 3 billion years now with outcomes that don't even 
begin to compare with the spectacular ones associated with the ancestor and its original offspring yet experience 
teaches that complex, integrated structures change more slowly than do simple ones. Moreover, the totipotent 
ancestor associates physiologies that have not been observed together in any modern lineage and asks that all 
of this come about through vertical inheritance. Thus, we are left with no consistent and satisfactory picture of 
the universal ancestor. It is time to question underlying assumptions." (Woese C., "The universal ancestor," Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 95, Issue 12, June 9, 1998, pp.6854-6859)

11/07/2005
"But the skies that gave now took away. Only 53 millimeters of rain fell the year after the flood, and only 53 
millimeters fell the year after that. The plants did not set half enough seed to replace the bumper crop from the 
year of the Child [El Nino]. The finches had overshot the carrying capacity of their desert islands, and now Lisle 
Gibbs watched their populations crash. He went on observing the huge flocks of Darwin's finches on Daphne 
Major in 1983 and 1984, banding the newcomers and marking the deaths in his field notebooks with little crosses. 
Finches were dying right and left, as they had died in Boag's drought. Would evolution continue to shoot like an 
arrow in the same direction, or reverse? How were the birds evolving now? He could not tell until he had 
accumulated a long enough record and fed it into a computer. In September 1985 Lisle was back home at the 
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where the Grants were teaching in those days. It had taken Lisle a year just 
to enter all of the data from his water proof notebooks into the computer. He had spent months and months 
checking and double-checking the data for errors and checking and rechecking the program with which he would 
analyze the data for evolutionary trends. Now he ran the program. "I cranked out the numbers, and I was 
praying," he says. "I remember the actual moment when I hit the return key. After all that work ..." What he saw 
on the screen was so dramatic that at first he refused to believe it. He checked and rechecked. It was true. Natural 
selection had swung around against the birds from the other side. Big birds with big beaks were dying. Small 
birds with small beaks were flourishing. Selection had flipped. Both big males and big females were dying, he 
noticed, but many more males than females-again, the reverse of the drought. Everything the drought had 
preferred in size large-weight, wingspan, tarsus length, bill length, bill depth, and bill width-the aftermath of the 
flood favored in size small. At first, Lisle Gibbs and the Grants were not sure why the flood year dragged the 
birds backward like that, although it did make intuitive sense that an epic flood would undo the work of an epic 
drought. But eventually they came to understand why the flood favored small finches over big ones. With ten 
times more small seeds lying around, the large finches had trouble finding large seeds. They could still eat small 
seeds, of course, but they had the tools for large seeds, and they had a lifetime of experience hunting and 
cracking large seeds; and of course being big birds they had to eat many more small seeds to stay alive. So as 
seed supplies ran lower and lower, the bigger birds had more and more trouble. They were in the same sort of 
predicament that big young finches experience in their first few months of life. They paid dearly for their large 
size, because it gave them a larger appetite, and they could not make it up to themselves with their large beaks. 
Some of the large-beaked birds made the shift, but slowly and not as well as those with the right equipment. The 
net result of natural selection during Gibbs's watch was as stark as during Boag's drought. The birds took a giant 
step backward, after their giant step forward. A terrible drought like the one in 1977 may come once or twice in a 
finch's lifetime, and an El Nino like the one that came in 1983 is a once-in-a-lifetime event. So having witnessed 
both the year of the drought and the year of the flood the finch watchers were now staring at an extraordinary 
picture. Clearly, selection pressures on a creature in the wild are far more intense in some years than others. But 
more than that, even the most intense selection pressures can actually reverse themselves during the creature's 
lifetime. Not only can evolution push a species fast in one direction. Evolution can reverse direction and push it 
back just as swiftly." This was not just a freak of Darwin's finches. Naturalists are now documenting similar 
reversals of fortune elsewhere in nature as well, including populations of Darwin's "imps of darkness," the marine 
iguanas of the Galapagos. (Weiner J., "The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time," Alfred A. 
Knopf: New York NY, 1994, pp.104-106)

11/07/2005
"The stutter-step quality of the action is yet another reason that natural selection has been missed in most 
studies of live populations in the wild. If you measure natural selection over the course of a whole generation 
you may miss the many slings and arrows that it has taken along the way, the conflicting pressures in the nest, in 
the first days out of the nest, and on the yearlings and the adults; or on the acorn, the green shoot, and the 
towering oak. Each stage of life may have experienced an intense episode of natural selection, and yet their 
effects may have obscured each other's traces by the time the very last of the generation has shuffled off the 
earth. Species of animals and plants look constant to us, but in reality each generation is a sort of palimpsest, a 
canvas that is painted over and over by the hand of natural selection, each time a little differently. When the 
finch watcher Jamie Smith left the Galapagos and began watching the sparrows on the island of Mandarte, in 
British Columbia, he did not know if he would find selection events there. .... There is a small resident population 
of sparrows. They are there year round. They do not migrate. .... A few years ago, Smith was working on a paper 
on natural selection in these song sparrows, looking at the same traits as in Darwin's finches. His major result 
was there was no evolution in the birds. .... Smith told [Dolph] Schluter that natural selection was not doing 
anything to his sparrows. .... Schluter was fresh from the Galapagos at the time, and he was full of the power of 
natural selection. ... Dolph took a look. He knew that Smith had checked for evolutionary trends by comparing a 
generation of sparrows at birth and the same generation at death. Dolph decided to look at the birds year by year 
instead. He also broke each year into three components, studying the young sparrows' survival rates in their first 
year of life, as they weathered their first Canadian winter; their survival as adult birds in each succeeding winter; 
and their success in rearing offspring in each breeding season. When Schluter put the sparrows under the 
microscope in this way he found that natural selection had been working quite ruthlessly among the sparrows. 
Among the males, selection had worked to eliminate the outliers-the birds that deviated most toward large or 
small. This is what is known as stabilizing selection. This kind of selection pressure helps to explain why the 
sparrows on the island are so much less variable than the finches on Daphne. Among the females, Schluter found 
oscillating selection, and the case was remarkably similar to the one on Daphne Major. There had been two 
tremendous population crashes in the course of the study, just as on Daphne. One crash was caused by bitter 
cold weather, high winds, and snowfall, during the winter of 1987-88. ... The second population crash was not 
caused by a hard winter-in fact, the sparrow watchers still do not know what was killing their birds. But the 
females were pushed one way by the first crash, and the other by the second, again much as on Daphne Major. 
`My result: lots of 'selection,' says Dolph merrily. `At least one event every year.' Yet when he summed all these 
changes over the lifetime of a generation of sparrows, he saw no selection at all, just as Smith had said. `So we 
were both right,' Dolph concludes. Summed over years, the effects of natural selection were invisible. But at each 
stage of their lives and each year of their lives the sparrows on that little island had been `daily and hourly 
scrutinized' by the hand of natural selection, much as Darwin imagined, only in fast motion. The population on 
Mandarte is still being pushed every year, first left, then right. Smith and his team have not progressed as far as 
the Grants in determining the causes behind those pushes. They have never tried to count the seeds and bugs 
on the island and match them with the numbers of the sparrows, for instance. (Mandarte is much more 
complicated than Daphne.) But year after year they are seeing fluctuating selection at different life stages-
opposing selection, between young and old stages of life, just as in the finches. And they are seeing oscillating 
selection from one year to the next, also as in Darwin's finches. `You start to view species not as constant entities 
but as fluctuating things,' Dolph says. `A species looks steady when you look at it over years-but when you 
actually get out the magnifying glass you see that it's wobbling constantly. So I guess that's evolution in 
action." (Weiner J., "The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time," Alfred A. Knopf: New York NY, 
1994, pp.106-108)

11/07/2005
[Luke 16:]27, 28 The rich man now realises that through his worldly, selfish and heartless life he has plunged 
himself irrevocably into everlasting pain, but entreats Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers to warn them that 
they must repent of their evil life in time so that they should not also after death enter into the abode of torment. 
[29] Abraham, however, answers that they have no excuse if they remain unrepentant. They have the Law and 
the Prophets to teach them the way to salvation. If they listen to these-and they have full opportunity for it-they 
will be saved. Abraham's reply serves at the same time as a clear reminder to the rich man that he has no excuse 
for having lost his chance to be saved, for he, too, had the Law and Prophets to show him the way if he had been 
willing to follow the divine guidance. [30] The rich man reveals the typical attitude of the Jews who repeatedly 
ask for signs-signs so astounding as to compel them to believe in Jesus. He says that if Lazarus were to go back 
to them from the dead his brothers will be converted. Abraham, however, answers that, if they are so full of 
unbelief and worldly-mindedness that they do not listen to the Word of God (the Old Testament at that time), 
they will persist in 'their unbelief even if someone were to arise from the dead. These last words of the parable 
were undoubtedly uttered by the Saviour with a view to His own resurrection. The sign for which the Jews had 
so often asked would be given by His resurrection, but He knew that even this would not move the worldly-
minded to a saving faith in Him. And this was abundantly proved by the actual course of events. The Saviour 
related this parable not in order to satisfy our curiosity about life after death but to emphasise vividly the 
tremendous seriousness of life on this side of the grave-on the choice made here by us depends our eternal weal 
or woe. And however rich and honoured a man may outwardly be and however much his life may be filled with 
worldly pleasure, this will not in eternity be able to effect the slightest change in his condition if he has departed 
this life without the salvation of God. On the other hand, even if a man was a sick beggar on earth, but is really a 
child of God at heart and does not try to hide behind his poverty and misery in a life of embitterment and 
unbelief, he will inherit the richest blessedness. The parable, however, does not teach that the possession of 
worldly goods as such will cause a man to land in everlasting perdition, and that a life of poverty and want will of 
itself bring to a man eternal bliss. Everything depends on the attitude which a person reveals towards his wealth 
or towards his poverty-whether he believes in God with a repentant heart and serves Him, whatever his external 
circumstances may be, or whether he rejects Him-a thing which may be done in poverty as well as in wealth." 
(Geldenhuys J.N., "Commentary on the Gospel of Luke," [1950], Marshall Morgan & Scott: London, 1961, reprint, 
pp.426-427)

11/07/2005
"There are, however, certain qualifications of this all-powerful character of God. He cannot arbitrarily do anything 
whatsoever that we may conceive of. He can do only those things which are proper objects of his power. Thus, 
he cannot do the logically absurd or contradictory. He cannot make square circles or triangles with four corners. 
He cannot undo what happened in the past, although he may wipe out its effects or even the memory of it. He 
cannot act contrary to his nature-he cannot be cruel or unconcerned. He cannot fail to do what he has promised. 
In reference to God's having made a promise and having confirmed it with an oath, the writer to the Hebrews 
says: `So that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God should prove false, we ... 
might have strong encouragement' (Heb. 6:18). All of these `inabilities,' however, are not weaknesses, but 
strengths. The inability to do evil or to lie or to fail is a mark of positive strength rather than of failure." (Erickson 
M.J.*, "Christian Theology," [1983], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 1988, Fifth printing, pp.277-278.
Ellipses in original)

13/07/2005
"But in our assertion of the absolute power of God it is necessary to guard against misconceptions. The Bible 
teaches us on the one hand that the power of God extends beyond that which is actually realized, Gen. 18:14; Jer. 
32:27; Zech. 8:6; Matt. 3:9; 26:53. We cannot say, therefore, that what God does not bring to realization, is not 
possible for Him. But on the other hand it also indicates that there are many things which God cannot do. He call 
neither lie, sin, change, nor deny Himself, Num. 23:19; I Sam. 15:29; II Tim. 2:13; Heb. 6:18; Jas. 1:13,17. There is no 
absolute power in Him that is divorced from His perfections, and in virtue of which He can do all kinds of things 
which are inherently contradictory." Berkhof L.*, "Systematic Theology," [1932], Banner of Truth: London, 
British Edition, 1958, Third printing, 1966, p.80)

13/07/2005
"Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and 
remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. `Rum thing,' he went 
on. `All that stuff of Frazer's about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.' 
To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man (who has certainly never since 
shown any interest in Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not-as I would 
still have put it-'safe,' where could I turn? Was there then no escape?"(Lewis C.S.*, "Surprised by Joy: The 
Shape of My Early Life," Harvest: New York NY, 1955, pp.223-224)

13/07/2005
"The most potent figure, not only in the history of religion, but in world history as a whole, is Jesus Christ: the 
maker of one of the few revolutions which have lasted. Millions of men and women for century after century have 
found his life and teaching overwhelmingly significant and moving. And there is ample reason, as this book will 
endeavour to show, in this later twentieth century why this should still be so. " (Grant M., "Jesus," [1977], Rigel: 
London, 2004, reprint, p.1)

13/07/2005
"Of the five points of Darwin's theory, the most controversial today are gradualism, with Niles Eldredge (1971, 
1985; Eldredge and Gould 1972) and Stephen Jay Gould (1985, 1989, 1991) and their supporters pushing for a 
theory called punctuated equilibrium, which involves rapid change and stasis, to replace gradualism; and 
the exclusivity of natural selection, with Eldredge, Gould, and others arguing for change at the level of genes, 
groups, and populations in addition to individual natural selection (Somit and Peterson 1992). Ranged against 
Eldredge, Gould, and their supporters are Daniel Dennett (1995), Richard Dawkins (1995), and those who opt for a 
strict Darwinian model of gradualism and natural selection. The debate rages, while creationists sit on the 
sidelines hoping for a double knockout. They will not get it. These scientists are not arguing about 
whether evolution happened; they are debating the rate and mechanism of evolutionary change. 
When it all shakes down, the theory of evolution will be stronger than ever. ." (Shermer M.B., "Why People 
Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time," W.H. Freeman & Co: 
New York NY, 1997, p.141. Emphasis in original)

13/07/2005
"In his biology textbook Miller makes the preposterous claim that Darwin `remained a devout Christian all his life' 
[Miller K.R. & Levine J., "Biology," Prentice Hall: Columbus OH, 5th teachers edition, 2000, p. 270]. On the 
contrary, Darwin was never more than a lukewarm believer, and by the time of his death described himself as an 
agnostic." (Johnson, P.E.*, "The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism," Intervarsity Press: 
Downers Grove IL., 2000, p.182)

13/07/2005
"The doctrine of the Trinity is a crucial ingredient of our faith. Each of the three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is 
to be worshiped, as is the Triune God. And, keeping in mind their distinctive work, it is appropriate to direct 
prayers of thanks and of petition to each of the members of the Trinity, as well as to all of them collectively. 
Furthermore, the perfect love and unity within the Godhead model for us the oneness and affection that should 
characterize our relationships within the body of Christ. It appears that Tertullian was right in affirming that the 
doctrine of the Trinity must be divinely revealed, not humanly constructed. It is so absurd from a human 
standpoint that no one would have invented it. We do not hold the doctrine of the Trinity because it is self-
evident or logically cogent. We hold it because God has revealed that this is what he is like." (Erickson M.J.*, 
"Christian Theology," [1983], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 1988, Fifth Printing, p.342)

14/07/2005
"The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by 
the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, 
including the world of living things. Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in 
the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. 
Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is 
ideology, not science." (Schönborn C., "Finding Design in Nature," The 
New York Times July 7, 2005)

16/07/2005
"An ostrich has callouses on its legs where it kneels on the ground. To an extent, these develop during its 
lifetime, in much the same way as a sailor's palms grow tough if he continually wrestles with ropes. Similarly, if we 
walk barefoot for long enough, our soles become hard and leathery. But in both cases, the thickening begins 
before birth- inside an ostrich's egg and inside a human womb. We are born with the job already half done. The 
thickening process is dictated by our genes. So how could this have come about? Lamarck would have had no 
difficulty in replying that it was an obviously useful attribute acquired gradually over many generations, and 
passed on to our children. But so long as Weismann's barrier was sacrosanct, such an explanation was not 
allowed. Now that the barrier has apparently been penetrated, the easy answer may yet turn out to be the right 
one, even if the detail is not immediately understood. (The neo-Darwinist explanation ... is tortuous in the 
extreme.)." (Hitching F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Or Where Darwin Went Wrong," Pan: London, 1982, p.152)

16/07/2005
"At The Institute for Genomic Research [TIGR], a sandy-haired biologist named Scott Peterson and his team are 
trying to create something nature has not: a single-celled creature with the smallest number of genes necessary 
to stay alive. ... Predictably, he has chosen to study nature's simplest bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium. Found 
in the comfy environs of the human urogenital tract, the needs of this mycoplasma are easily fulfilled, and so, 
over its long evolutionary history, it has shed thousands of unnecessary genes, becoming the very model of 
austerity. (The genome of food- poisoning culprit E. coli, considered a basic life-form, is nine times bigger.) By 
tinkering with mycoplasma's slender set of genes, Peterson is in search of answers to two fundamental questions: 
How many genes, exactly, does a cell need to live? And which genes are they? ... The search for the smallest 
genome stretches back to 1955, when biophysicist Harold Morowitz began collecting a Noah's ark of microbes in 
his lab at Yale and inspecting each organism's simple circular chromosome. One day he found an impressively 
runty germ, a species of Mycoplasma, and decided to study it. NASA funded the research, figuring that alien life 
might resemble something as seemingly primitive and genetically streamlined as mycoplasma. ... Peterson's office 
has ... a diagram taped to his filing cabinet. .... It represents the more than 1,700 genes of Haemophilus influenzae-
-the first complete sequence of a bacterial genome. ... Determined to crack a simpler, more manageable genome, 
Venter's team set their sights on M. genitalium. Three months later, Claire Fraser, now president of the institute, 
had nailed the 470-gene sequence. ... Peterson's first step was to disrupt mycoplasma's genes in various places to 
figure out which were crucial. To do this, he attacked the mycoplasma genome with bits of DNA called 
transposons that sneak their way into chromosomes. The invading transposons landed at random within the 
mycoplasma gene sequence, wreaking havoc. By looking at the cells that died from the attack, Peterson could see 
where the invading transposon had landed and thereby pinpoint genes essential for the bacterium's life. After 
this meticulous screening, he and Clyde Hutchison, a colleague from the University of North Carolina at Chapel 
Hill, identified a list of 300 or so essential genes. Without any one of these genes, mycoplasma would die. Yet 
that turned out not to be the sought-after minimal set. If the roughly 300 genes were strung together and slipped 
into a mycoplasma cell, the most likely result was one pathetically dependent bacterium, if it survived at all. .... 
The transposon research showed who the team's best players were, but the analysis missed bit players whose 
teamwork was crucial. In order to approach a real minimal set of genes, Peterson says, you'd have to take genes 
out a few at a time, a technically challenging proposition. Therefore, `the way to prove that you've got a minimal 
cell is to make it,' he says. But that approach means creating an organism that is utterly new to the face of the 
Earth. ... The team believes they have properly identified more than 200 crucial genes, including ones for eating, 
metabolism, and structure. But they have no clue what another 100 of mycoplasma's most essential genes do. 
`One bad choice could kill the whole thing,' Peterson says. Attempts at computer-modeling life haven't shed 
much light on the problem. A Japanese group called E-Cell tried in 1997 to create a digital minimal cell. Their 127-
gene, less-than-minimal model of a mycoplasma cell was able to simulate life, but not replicate it. The barrier was 
science's murky sense of how, among other things, mycoplasma divides. `In this particular area,' says E-Cell 
leader Masaru Tomita, `we have to wait for the science to catch up.' ... Mix-and-match chromosome construction 
could also prove a powerful weapon for tackling questions of evolution. M. genitalium's closest relative is M. 
pneumoniae, which can cause a bad cough. By comparing the siblings' sequences, it appears that M. genitalium 
evolved directly from its older brother by discarding 210 genes. Imaginative chromosome reengineering could 
allow a researcher to replay the divergence of the two species in a frame-by-frame reverse slow motion. `One 
could start to add the 210 genes back sequentially to M. genitalium,' says Peterson, `and ask questions about the 
evolution.'bIronically, the one question genomic engineering may not be able to answer is which genes are 
absolutely essential for life. One issue is how to define life--the life-support-machine dilemma, on the most basic 
level. Normally, says Peterson, M. genitalium replicates itself in about 12 hours. A minimal creature, enfeebled by 
a bare-bones set of genes, could take much longer, perhaps a month. `And it's so sick that I have to feed it and 
nurture it. Is that life?' Peterson asks. Even genes designated dispensable may be long- term evolutionary 
investments. During the first round of experiments, researchers found that the bacteria could live without the 
gene they believe encodes RecA, a protein that can repair genetic errors. Does that make RecA dispensable? 
Without the recA gene, mycoplasma cells may survive in the lab, says Peterson, but `in a million years you might 
suspect they won't be around anymore.' Experiments have also shown that the amount of sugar available 
determines which bacterial genes are crucial for metabolism. So which would be crucial for a minimal cell? ... 
`There's a constant debate over nature or nurture--they're inseparable,' says Craig Venter. `I naively thought that 
we could have a molecular definition for life, come up with a set of genes that would minimally define life. Nature 
just refuses,' he says softly, `to be so easily quantified.' ... Losing genes is old hat for Mycoplasma, but the 
losses over the eons have made its members pathetically reliant. They cannot make raw materials for proteins, 
DNA, or their cell membranes. So in a lab they demand a diet of ground-up cow hearts, blood serum, and other 
delicacies. `They're high maintenance,' says one assistant. ... Peterson's project--like so many in biotech research-
-will further our understanding of how genes work together. And it could someday lead to the creation of an 
entirely artificial single-celled organism, assembled from off-the-shelf components like DNA, proteins, lipids, and 
sugars. `I think someday science will be in that position,' says Peterson, `where we will have to ask: Should we or 
shouldn't we?' ...Venter, who maintains informal ties with the institute, says he has no interest in that project. 
`Right now, the only way you can get life is from life itself,' Venter says. `We're working in that direction, but 
we're a long way away from making the decision to go ahead and do that experiment.'" (Kintisch E., "Is Life That 
Simple?," Discover, Vol. 22, No. 4, April, 2001)

16/07/2005
"All theories which profess to explain the origin of species may be divided into four main groups. 1. Atheistic 
evolution. There is no God and therefore no supernatural creative activity. The origin of life and the origin of 
species are explicable as the result of natural agencies and natural law. 2. Deistic evolution. God exists 
and created the world, but does not interfere in the process of creation. There is nothing miraculous in the origin 
of life or in the origin of species. Both can be explained as the result of natural agencies without invoking 
supernatural intervention. For controversial purposes, atheistic and Deistic evolution are indistinguishable, but a 
man need not be a Deist in theology to be a deistic evolutionist. Many Catholic biologists are Deistic 
evolutionists, so far at least as the evolution of man's body is concerned. 3. Special creation. There is 
nothing in this theory repugnant, as Philip Gosse's theory is repugnant, to an exalted conception of God. Neither 
the philosopher nor the scientist can adduce a single valid reason against the possibility of special 
creation. The principal obstacle to the acceptance of special creation is neither science nor philosophy, but 
fashion. The mental climate of the day renders it difficult for us to accept special creation. Phrases such as 
`fundamentalism,' `the Bible belt,' etc., handicap the special creationist by importing emotional prejudices into 
what should be a purely scientific discussion, but our attitude. to this hypothesis should be determined by the 
evidence. If, for instance, the evolutionist could produce true lineage series of fossils linking family with family, 
and class with class, and order with order, and phylum with phylum, I for one would have no hesitation in 
rejecting special creation. If, on the other hand, the special creationist had a completely satisfactory answer to 
the horse series, to vestigial remains, and to the embryological evidence, I should regard the suddenness with 
which new types appear as conclusive in favour of special creation. 4. Theistic evolution, differs from 
special creation in that it postulates the evolution of man's body from that of the simplest forms of life, 
and differs from Deistic evolution in that it invokes supernatural activity to bring about the more radical 
changes in the human pedigree. Natural agencies, according to this view, are adequate for minor evolution but 
require to be supplemented by supernatural agencies to provoke major evolution." (Lunn A., ed., "Is Evolution 
Proved?: A Debate Between Douglas Dewar and H.S. Shelton," Hollis & Carter: London, 1947, pp.14-15. 
Emphasis in original)

16/07/2005
"Fiat Creationism. At the opposite end of the spectrum is what is sometimes termed fiat creationism. This is the 
idea that God, by a direct act, brought into being virtually instantaneously everything that is. Note two features 
of this view. One is the brevity of time involved, and hence the relative recency of what occurred at creation. 
While there were various stages of creation, one occurring after another, no substantial amount of time elapsed 
from the beginning to the end of the process. Perhaps a calendar week or so was involved. Another tenet of this 
view is the idea of direct divine working. God produced the world and everything in it, not by the use of any 
indirect means or biological mechanisms, but by direct action and contact. In each case, or at each stage, God did 
not employ previously existing material. New species did not arise as modifications of existing species, but they 
were fresh starts, so to speak, specially created by God. Each species was totally distinct from the others. 
Specifically, God made man in his entirety by a unique, direct creative act; man did not come from any previously 
existing organism. It should be apparent that there is no difficulty in reconciling fiat creationism with the biblical 
account. Indeed, this view reflects a strictly literal reading of the text, which is the way the account was 
understood for a long time in the history of the church. The statement that God brought forth each animal and 
plant after its kind has traditionally been interpreted as meaning that he created each species individually. It must 
be pointed out, however, that the Hebrew noun min, which is rendered "kind" in most translations, is simply a 
general term of division. It may mean species, but there is not enough specificity about the word to conclude that 
it does. Therefore, we cannot claim that the Bible requires fiat creationism; nevertheless, it is clear that it most 
certainly permits it. It is at the point of the scientific data that fiat creationism encounters difficulty. For when 
those data are taken seriously, they appear to indicate a considerable amount of development, including what 
seem to be transitional forms between species. There are even some forms which appear to be ancestors of the 
human species." (Erickson M.J.*, "Christian Theology," [1983], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 1988, Fifth Printing, 
pp.479-480)

16/07/2005
"The endeavor to understand the universe has marked human culture in every period and in nearly every society. 
In the perspective of the Christian faith, this endeavor is precisely an instance of the stewardship which human 
beings exercise in accordance with God's plan. Without embracing a discredited concordism, Christians have the 
responsibility to locate the modern scientific understanding of the universe within the context of the theology of 
creation. The place of human beings in the history of this evolving universe, as it has been charted by modern 
sciences, can only be seen in its complete reality in the light of faith, as a personal history of the engagement of 
the triune God with creaturely persons. ... According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe 
erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the `Big Bang' and has been expanding and cooling ever since. 
Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of 
galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth 
(formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is 
little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is 
general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.54 billion years ago. Since it 
has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all 
living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the 
physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the 
development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of 
evolution. While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and 
molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 
years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor 
in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of Homo sapiens. With the 
development of the human brain, the nature and rate of evolution were permanently altered: with the introduction 
of the uniquely human factors of consciousness, intentionality, freedom and creativity, biological evolution was 
recast as social and cultural evolution." (International Theological Commission Communion and Stewardship, 
"Human Persons Created in the Image of God," The 
Roman Curia, 2000)

17/07/2005
"Those who believe in the principle of gradual evolution, will not readily admit that the sense of smell in its 
present state was originally acquired by man, as he now exists. He inherits the power in an enfeebled and so far 
rudimentary condition, from some early progenitor, to whom it was highly serviceable, and by whom it was 
continually used." (Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: 
London, Second edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922, p.25)

17/07/2005
"The Rev. Dr. Haughton, after giving (Proc. R. Irish Academy, June 27, 1864, p. 715) a remarkable case of 
variation in the human flexor pollicis longus, adds, `This remarkable example shows that man may sometimes 
possess the arrangement of tendons of thumb and fingers characteristic of the macaque; but whether such a case 
should be regarded as a macaque passing upwards into a man, or a man passing downwards into a macaque, or 
as a congenital freak of nature, I cannot undertake to say.' It is satisfactory to hear so capable an anatomist, and 
so embittered an opponent of evolutionism, admitting even the possibility of either of his first propositions." 
(Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: London, Second 
edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922, p.63)

17/07/2005
"Man in the rudest state in which he now exists is the most dominant animal that has ever appeared on this earth. 
He has spread more widely than any other highly organised form: and all others have yielded before him. He 
manifestly owes this immense superiority to his intellectual faculties, to his social habits, which lead him to aid 
and defend his fellows, and to his corporeal structure. The supreme importance of these characters has been 
proved by the final arbitrament of the battle for life. Through his powers of intellect, articulate language has been 
evolved; and on this his wonderful advancement has mainly depended. As Mr. Chauncey Wright remarks: `A 
psychological analysis of the faculty of language shews, that even the smallest proficiency in it might require 
more brain power than the greatest proficiency in any other direction.' He has invented and is able to use various 
weapons, tools, traps, &c., with which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and otherwise obtains food. He 
has made rafts or canoes for fishing or crossing over to neighbouring fertile islands. He has discovered the art of 
making fire, by which hard and stringy roots can be rendered digestible, and poisonous roots or herbs 
innocuous. This discovery of fire, probably the greatest ever made by man, excepting language, dates from 
before the dawn of history. These several inventions, by which man in the rudest state has become so pre-
eminent, are the direct results of the development of his powers of observation, memory, curiosity, imagination, 
and reason. I cannot, therefore, understand how it is that Mr. Wallace [Quarterly Review, April 1869, p.392] 
maintains, that `natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to that of an 
ape." (Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: London, 
Second edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922, pp.72-73)

17/07/2005
"Nevertheless, I did not formerly consider sufficiently the existence of structures, which, as far as we can at 
present judge, are neither beneficial nor injurious; and this I believe to be one of the greatest oversights as yet 
detected in my work. I may be permitted to say, as some excuse, that I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to 
shew that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent 
of change, though largely aided by the inherited effects of habit, and slightly by the direct action of the 
surrounding conditions. ... Some of those who admit the principle of evolution, but reject natural selection, seem 
to forget, when criticizing my book, that I had the above two objects in view; hence if I have erred in giving to 
natural selection great power, which I am very far from admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is in 
itself probable, I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate 
creations." (Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: London, 
Second edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922, p.92)

17/07/2005
"Our domestic dogs are descended from wolves and jackals, and though they may not have gained in cunning, 
and may have lost in wariness and suspicion, yet they have progressed in certain moral qualities, such as in 
affection, trust-worthiness, temper, and probably in general intelligence. The common rat has conquered and 
beaten several other species throughout Europe, in parts of North America, New Zealand, and recently in 
Formosa, as well as on the mainland of China. Mr. Swinhoe, who describes these two latter cases, attributes the 
victory of the common rat over the large Mus coninga to its superior cunning; and this latter quality may 
probably be attributed to the habitual exercise of all its faculties in avoiding extirpation by man, as well as to 
nearly all the less cunning or weak-minded rats having been continuously destroyed by him. It is, however, 
possible that the success of the common rat may be due to its having possessed greater cunning than its fellow-
species, before it became associated with man. To maintain, independently of any direct evidence, that no animal 
during, the course of ages has progressed in intellect or other mental faculties, is to beg the question of the 
evolution of species." (Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: 
London, Second edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922, pp.122-123)

17/07/2005
"The Duke of Argyll remarks, that the fashioning of an implement for a special purpose is absolutely peculiar to 
man; and he considers that this forms an immeasurable gulf between him and the brutes. This is no doubt a very 
important distinction ; but there appears to me much truth in Sir J. Lubbock's suggestion, that when primeval man 
first used flintstones for any purpose, he would have accidentally splintered them, and would then have used the 
sharp fragments. From this step it would be a small one to break the flints on purpose, and not a very wide step 
to fashion them rudely. This latter advance, however, may have taken long ages, if we may judge by the immense 
interval of time which elapsed before the men of the neolithic period took to grinding and polishing their stone 
tools. In breaking the flints, as Sir J. Lubbock likewise remarks, sparks would have been emitted, and in grinding 
them heat would have been evolved: thus the two usual methods of `obtaining fire may have originated.'" 
(Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: London, Second 
edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922, pp.125-126)

17/07/2005
"In 1880 I published, with Frank's assistance, our Power of Movement in Plants. This was a tough piece of work. 
The book bears somewhat the same relation to my little book on Climbing Plants, which Cross-Fertilisation did to 
the Fertilisation of Orchids ; for in accordance with the principles of evolution it was impossible to account for 
climbing plants having been developed in so many widely different groups, unless all kinds of plants possess 
some slight power of movement of an analogous kind." (Darwin C.R., in Barlow N., ed., "The Autobiography of 
Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton & Co: New York, 1969, 
reprint, p.135)

17/07/2005
"Every naturalist, who believes in the principle of evolution, will grant that the two main divisions of the 
Simiada?, namely the Catarhine and Platyrhine monkeys, with their sub-groups, have all proceeded from some 
one extremely ancient progenitor. " (Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], 
John Murray: London, Second edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922, p.238)

17/07/2005
"The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any 
extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from 
some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in 
the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and 
defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies--between the Tarsius and 
the other Lemaridae-between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or 
Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which 
have become extinct." (Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: 
London, Second edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922 p.241)

17/07/2005
"The question whether mankind consists of one or several species has of late years been much discussed by 
anthropologists, who are divided into the two schools of monogenists and polygenists. Those who do not admit 
the principle of evolution, must look at species as separate creations, or in some manner as distinct entities; and 
they must decide what forms of man they will consider as species by the analogy of the method commonly 
pursued in ranking other organic beings as species." (Darwin C.R., "The Descent of Man and Selection in 
Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: London, Second edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922, p.272)

17/07/2005
"To begin with a paradox: Darwin, Lamarck, and Haeckel-the greatest nineteenth-century evolutionists of 
England, France, and Germany, respectively-did not use the word evolution in the original editions of their great 
works. Darwin spoke of `descent with modification,' Lamarck of `transformisme.' Haeckel preferred 
`Transmutations-Theorie' or `Descendenz-Theorie.' Why did they not use `evolution' and how did their story of 
organic change acquire its present name? Darwin shunned evolution as a description of his theory for two 
reasons. In his day, first of all, evolution already had a technical meaning in biology. In fact, it described a theory 
of embryology that could not be reconciled with Darwin's views of organic development. In 1744, the German 
biologist Albrecht von Haller had coined the term evolution to describe the theory that embryos grew 
from preformed homunculi enclosed in the egg or sperm (and that, fantastic as it may seem today, all future 
generations had been created in the ovaries of Eve or testes of Adam, enclosed like Russian dolls, one within the 
next- a homunculus in each of Eve's ova, a tinier homunculus in each ovum of the homunculus, and so on). ... 
Haller chose his term carefully, for the Latin evolvere means `to unroll'; indeed, the tiny homunculus 
unfolded from its originally cramped quarters and simply increased in size during its embryonic development. ... 
`Evolution' as a description of Darwin's `descent with modification' was not borrowed from a previous technical 
meaning; it was, rather, expropriated from the vernacular. Evolution, in Darwin's day, had become a common 
English word with a meaning quite different from Haller's technical sense. The Oxford English Dictionary 
traces it to a 1647 poem of H. More: `Evolution of outward forms spread in the world's vast spright [spirit].' But 
this was `unrolling' in a sense very different from Haller's. It implied `the appearance in orderly succession of a 
long train of events,' and more important, it embodied a concept of progressive development -an orderly 
unfolding from simple to complex. The O.E.D. continues, `The process of developing from a rudimentary to a 
mature or complete state.' Thus evolution, in the vernacular, was firmly tied to a concept of progress. Darwin did 
use evolve in this vernacular sense-in fact it is the very last word of his book. `There is grandeur in this view of 
life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this 
planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most 
beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.' Darwin chose it for this passage because he 
wanted to contrast the flux of organic development with the fixity of such physical laws as gravitation. But it was 
a word he used very rarely indeed, for Darwin explicitly rejected the common equation of what we now call 
evolution with any notion of progress. In a famous epigram, Darwin reminded himself never to say `higher' or 
`lower' in describing the structure of organisms-for if an amoeba is as well adapted to its environment as we are to 
ours, who is to say that we are higher creatures? Thus Darwin shunned evolution as a description for his descent 
with modification, both because its technical meaning contrasted with his beliefs and because he was 
uncomfortable with the notion of inevitable progress inherent in its vernacular meaning.... Evolution entered the 
English language as a synonym for `descent with modification' through the propaganda of Herbert Spencer, that 
indefatigable Victorian pundit of nearly everything. Evolution, to Spencer, was the overarching law of all 
development. And, to a smug Victorian, what principle other than progress could rule the developmental 
processes of the universe? Thus, Spencer defined the universal law in his First Principles of 1862: 
`Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes 
from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity.' Two other aspects of Spencer's 
work contributed to the establishment of evolution in its present meaning: First, in writing his very popular 
Principles of Biology (1864-67), Spencer constantly used `evolution' as a description of organic change. 
Second, he did not view progress as an intrinsic capacity of matter, but as a result of `cooperation' between 
internal and external (environmental) forces. This view fit nicely with most nineteenth-century concepts of 
organic evolution, for Victorian scientists easily equated organic change with organic progress. Thus evolution 
was available when many scientists felt a need for a term more succinct than Darwin's descent with modification." 
(Gould S.J., "Darwin's Dilemma," in "Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History," [1978], Penguin: London, 
1991, reprint, pp.34-37)

17/07/2005
"But Lynn Margulis took the idea further, proposing that at least two other features of the eukaryotic cell had 
been acquired by endosymbiotic means. One was the flagellum, the whip-like structure which propels some 
eukaryotic cells. (Structurally, it is different from and more complex than the cilia of simple cells.) Noting that the 
Protist Myxotricha is propelled by spirochaetes attached to its surface, she proposed that flagella are 
incorporated spirochaetes. Finally in 1970 she completed the picture by suggesting that the centriole- the device 
which separates the chromosomes at cell division - was also of endosymbiotic origin. The eukaryotic cell, it 
seems, is an ogre who has enslaved no fewer than four other organisms to work for it. Of course, this daring 
hypothesis leaves us with numerous problems. How, for instance, did the cell manage before it acquired 
mitochondria? Why is some of the old circular DNA left over in the cytoplasm? Do the plastids of plants and the 
mitochondria of animals have a common origin? And so on. However, we need not pursue these technical points. 
All we need do is register the fact that Darwinian theory scarcely explains such an astonishing development. To 
be sure, to postulate endosymbiosis is not an explanation; it is simply a description. It offers no explanation of 
how meiosis appeared. It does not account for the appearance of novel structures such as the nucleolus, the 
Golgi apparatus, or the microtubules which distinguish the eukaryotic cell. Above all, it does not explain how 
DNA came to be organised into chromosomes and enveloped in a nuclear membrane. In short, far too many 
things seem to have been happening at once for chance to be an adequate explanation, and we are left with an 
enigma." (Taylor G.R., "The Great Evolution Mystery," [1983], Abacus: London, 1984, reprint, pp.212-213)

18/07/2005
"David Hull, who reviewed my book Darwin on Trial for Nature ... did not present any scientific 
evidence on the crucial point at issue, which is whether the blind watchmaker really has the power to do all the 
necessary creating. Such evidence is unnecessary, according to Hull's implicit logic, because an explanation of 
the blind watchmaker type is the only possibility acceptable to science. Even if the Darwinian theory of today is 
imperfect, as Hull concedes it to be, it is nonetheless the best naturalistic theory currently available and 
therefore, by definition, the closest approximation to truth which is available to us. Criticism of the kind provided 
in Darwin on Trial is thus inherently beside the point, and need not be taken seriously. .... Because there 
is no positive evidence that the blind watchmaker can create complex biological systems, the defenders of 
Darwinism must establish that no other possibility needs to be considered. And so David Hull like all the others 
dives straight into theology, and comes up with some well known arguments against the existence of God. ... 
Faced with answering a critique of the scientific evidence for Darwinism, the reviewer for Nature , the 
most prestigious organ of the scientific establishment, changes the subject and brings God directly into the 
argument. The blind watchmaker must be responsible for creation because the world looks cruel and wasteful to 
the selective vision of a Darwinist. The essential premise of this utterly unscientific argument is that a world 
created by God would have to be a world in which waste and cruelty are totally absent. Why should those of us 
who dispute that premise permit biologists and atheistic historians of science to shield it from criticism by 
pretending to have expert knowledge about what God would have done?" (Johnson, P.E.*, "Disestablishing Naturalism," 1992 Founder's 
Lectures, Part 3, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. February 17, 1992)

18/07/2005
"Popper proposed the falsifiability criterion as a test for distinguishing science from other intellectual pursuits, 
among which he included pseudoscience and metaphysics. These terms have caused some confusion, because 
in ordinary language we identify "science" as the study of a particular kind of subject matter, such as physics or 
biology, as opposed to (say) history or literature. Popper's logic implies that a theory's scientific status depends 
less upon its subject matter than upon the attitude of its adherents towards criticism. A physicist or a biologist 
may be dogmatic or evasive, and therefore unscientific in method, while a historian or literary critic may state the 
implications of a thesis so plainly that refuting examples are invited. Scientific methodology exists wherever 
theories are subjected to rigorous empirical testing, and it is absent wherever the practice is to protect a theory 
rather than to test it." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Darwin on Trial," [1991], InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second 
Edition, 1993, pp.149-150)

18/07/2005
"How does Darwinism fare if we judge the practices of Darwinists by Popper's maxims? Darwin was relatively 
candid in acknowledging that the evidence was in important respects not easy to reconcile with his theory, but in 
the end he met every difficulty with a rhetorical solution. He described The Origin of Species as `one long 
argument,' and the point of the argument was that the common ancestry thesis was so logically appealing that 
rigorous empirical testing was not required. He proposed no daring experimental tests, and thereby started his 
science on the wrong road. Darwin himself established the tradition of explaining away the fossil record, of citing 
selective breeding as verification without acknowledging its limitations, and of blurring the critical distinction 
between minor variations and major innovations. The central Darwinist concept that later came to be called the 
`fact of evolution'-descent with modification-was thus from the start protected from empirical testing." (Johnson 
P.E.*, "Darwin on Trial", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second edition, 1993, p.151)

18/07/2005
"As we have seen, the doctrine that only purposeless forces played a role in biological history is not an empirical 
finding but a metaphysical assumption built into the definition of science. This foundational assumption is 
protected from criticism by the "two subjects" doctrine, which identifies naturalism with science and objections 
to naturalism with religion. If the NAS were to declare explicitly that science favors atheism over theism, the 
pretense that science and religion are separate subjects would have to be abandoned. It would follow that 
creationists should have a fair opportunity to argue that the naturalistic conclusions presented to the public in 
the name of science are philosophical assumptions rather empirical findings and that there is nothing in the 
nature of science that requires legitimate empirical research to be based on a dogmatic adherence to metaphysical 
naturalism." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Reason in the Balance", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1995, p.190)

18/07/2005
"Yet if the design hypothesis must be denied consideration from the outset, and if, as the NAS also asserts, 
exclusively negative argumentation against neo-Darwinism is "unscientific," then, Johnson asserts, "the rules of 
argument ... make it impossible to question whether what we are being told about evolution is really true." 
Defining opposing positions out of existence "may be one way to win an argument," but, says Johnson, it 
scarcely suffices to demonstrate the superiority of a protected theory." (Meyer S.C.*, "Darwin in the Dock: A 
History of Johnson's Wedge," Touchstone, Vol. 14, No. 3, April, 2001)

18/07/2005
"Public understanding of the defects of Darwinism is limited because the educators think it their duty to 
indoctrinate, and prestigious propagandists like Richard Dawkins protect the theory effectively with ridicule and 
bullying. (This method of dealing with criticism is itself a hallmark of bad science.) Readers who are not 
intimidated should be sure to read Michael J. Behe's Darwin's Black Box, which shows why the 
mutation/selection mechanism has been all but abandoned as an explanation for the irreducible complexity found 
in the biochemistry of organisms." (Johnson, P.E.*, in "Denying 
Darwin: David Berlinski and Critics," Commentary, September 1996, p.22)

18/07/2005
"Darwin pressed ahead with Origin, working continuously for a year to expand his 1844 sketch into 
publishable form. ... His determination to forge ahead despite the rough going, spurred on by the knowledge that 
competition was in the wind had a certain ruthlessness about it. Wallace, far away on the other side of the world, 
was ignored. Finally, on 24 November 1859, the book was published, all 1,250 copies of the first edition having 
been pre-sold to booksellers. Wallace has a brief mention in the introduction. So does Darwin's friend Joseph 
Hooker. None of his evolutionist contemporaries or predecessors is referred to, apart from a sly unfavourable 
comment on the anonymous author of Vestiges of Creation. Darwin had become extremely protective of his 
brainchild. He used the words 'my theory' no less than forty-five times." (Hitching F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Or 
Where Darwin Went Wrong," Pan: London, 1982, pp.247-249l)

18/07/2005
"As Darwin put it: `If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have 
been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I 
can find out no such case.' But this was hardly a concession. Darwin may sound generous here, allowing that his 
theory would `absolutely break down,' but his requirement for such a failure is no less than impossible. For no 
one can show that an organ `could not possibly' have been formed in such a way. So in short order Darwin 
reduced what seemed to be a dilemma for his theory into a logical truism. Evolution was protected from criticism, 
and all that was needed to explain complexity was a clever thought experiment." (Hunter, C.G.*, "Darwin's God 
Evolution and the Problem of Evil," Brazos Press: Grand Rapids MI, 2001, p.75. Emphasis in original)

18/07/2005
"The question, however, is whether the strictly materialistic Darwinian theory provides a correct description of 
the history of those relationships, and whether it is consistent with the evidence. Science, like religion, can take a 
wrong turn if it disregards important parts of reality in order to protect a cherished dogma. The question I am 
raising is whether this has happened in the case of Darwinism." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Evolution and Theistic Naturalism," Founder's 
Lectures, Part 1, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1992)

18/07/2005
"I think that Michael Ruse and Henry Morris are both right to insist that cultural acceptance of Darwinism has 
important consequences for politics and morality. Recognition of this factor, however, also has important 
implications for how we should regard Darwinism's rules of reasoning. Are those rules designed to protect a 
charter of liberty from scientific criticism-criticism that might, wittingly or unwittingly, give aid and comfort to 
persons who want to deprive the Darwinist establishment of its cultural authority? ... Darwinism's rules of 
reasoning not only protect the cultural authority of Darwinists. They also permit Darwinist writers to take the 
mutation/selection paradigm for granted even when they are describing evidence that directly contradicts it." 
(Johnson, P.E.*, "Darwinism's Rules of 
Reasoning," in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?" Foundation for Thought and 
Ethics: Richardson TX, 1994, pp.11-12) 

18/07/2005
"Metaphysical naturalists understandably don't require much confirming evidence for a thesis that is so 
congenial to their philosophy. They also see no point in criticisms that point out the inadequacy of the 
supporting evidence. If this particular version of the Blind Watchmaker thesis is faulty, then something else very 
much like it must be true anyway. What else could have happened? If one believes in the existence of an 
omnipotent creator, a lot else could have happened. Nonetheless, many of the most influential voices in Christian 
academia are as protective of Darwinian "scientific theory" as the metaphysical naturalists. Even though they 
acknowledge that practically all the leading Darwinists of the twentieth century have employed their theory in 
popular presentations and textbooks to discredit the idea that God had anything to do with our creation, these 
Christian intellectuals insist that the theory itself is entirely benign, and even conducive to a theistic 
interpretation."
(Johnson, P.E.*, "God and Evolution: An 
Exchange," First Things, 34, June/July 1993, pp.38-41)

18/07/2005
"Save the Baptists! Yes, of course, but not by all means. Not if it means tolerating the deliberate 
misinforming of children about the natural world. According to a recent poll, 48 percent of the people in the 
United States today believe that the book of Genesis is literally true. And 70 percent believe that "creation 
science" should be taught in school alongside evolution. Some recent writers recommend a policy in which 
parents would be able to "opt out" of materials they didn't want their children taught. Should evolution be taught 
in the schools? Should arithmetic be taught? Should history? Misinforming a child is a terrible offense. A faith, 
like a species, must evolve or go extinct when the environment changes. It is not a gentle process in either case. 
... This is already accepted practice, but we tend to avert our attention from its implications. We preach freedom 
of religion, but only so far. ... It is nice to have grizzly bears and wolves living in the wild. They are no longer a 
menace; we can peacefully coexist, with a little wisdom. The same policy can be discerned in our political 
tolerance, in religious freedom. You are free to preserve or create any religious creed you wish, so long as it does 
not become a public menace. .... The message is clear: those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who 
insist on keeping only the purest and wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage 
or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes they fight for. ... If you insist on teaching your children 
falsehoods-that the Earth is flat, that "Man" is not a product of evolution by natural selection-then you must 
expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teaching as 
the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our 
future well-being-the well-being of all of us on the planet-depends on the education of our descendants." 
(Dennett D.C., "Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life," Penguin: London, 1995, 
pp.516,519. Emphasis in original)

18/07/2005
"The fallacy of begging the question is committed when, instead of offering proof for its conclusion, an argument 
simply reasserts the conclusion in another form. Such arguments invite us to assume that something has been 
confirmed when in fact it has only been affirmed or reaffirmed. ... Arguments that beg the question are circular 
arguments. They make use of the capacity of our language to say a thing in many different ways, ending 
where they began and beginning where they end. They are like the proverbial three morons, each of whom tied 
his horse to another's horse, thinking that he had in this way secured his own horse. Naturally, all three horses 
wandered away because they were anchored to nothing but each other." (Engel S.M., "With Good Reason: An 
Introduction to Informal Fallacies," St. Martin's Press: New York, Fourth Edition, 1990, pp.134-135. Emphasis in 
original)

18/07/2005
"The one thing that Darwin could not admit was that God somehow played an active role in controlling the 
direction of evolution. This emerges clearly in the interaction with his leading American supporter, the botanist 
Asa Gray. .. Gray ... was a deeply religious man who felt that he could only accept evolution if it could be seen as 
the unfolding of a divine purpose. ... Gray found the element of random variation in Darwin's theory 
unacceptable. If God was to have any influence over the direction of evolution He must surely exert more 
positive control than this. Gray argued that ... variation has been led along certain beneficial lines." ... Here, from 
one of Darwin's own supporters, was one of the most basic arguments against natural selection. ... Darwin 
realized that this line of thinking would ultimately lead to natural selection being rejected as superfluous and he 
responded to Gray ... "However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief "That 
variation has been led along certain beneficial lines" ... For Darwin's opponents, however, the possibility that 
variation might be directed along purposeful channels became the foundation upon which they hoped to 
construct an alternative theory of evolution. ... The exponents of what has sometimes been called 'theistic 
evolutionism' believed that variation was an active force driving the species in a predetermined direction." 
(Bowler P.J., "Charles Darwin: The Man and His Influence," [1990], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 
2000, reprint, pp.158-161)

18/07/2005
"DURING THESE two years [1837-1839] I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was 
quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) 
for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the 
argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its 
manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its 
attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the 
Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian." (Darwin C.R., 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.85l)

18/07/2005
"By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles 
by which Christianity is supported,that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do 
miracles become,-that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by 
us,-that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,-that they differ in 
many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye 
witnesses;-by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they 
influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation." (Darwin C.R., 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.86l)

18/07/2005
"But I was very unwilling to give up my belief ;- I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often 
inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii 
or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more 
and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince 
me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no 
distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed 
hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to 
show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, 
will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine." (Darwin C.R., 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, pp.86-87l)

18/07/2005
"Moreover though I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly 
or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & 
freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follow[s] from the 
advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined 
myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biassed by the pain which it would give some members of 
my family, if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion." (Darwin, C.R., Letter to Edward Aveling, 13 October 
1880, in Desmond, A.J. & Moore, J.R., "Darwin," [1991], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1992, p.645)

18/07/2005
"One of the radical differences between physical and biological phenomena lies in the fact that the former must 
necessarily and absolutely obey the laws of matter. Gravity exerts its action on all material bodies; nothing in the 
gravitational field escapes its universal influence. The living being reacts to physical law, escaping from it to a 
greater or lesser extent. For instance, the wings of birds and insects allow them to defy the law of gravity without 
violating it. Necessity does not imperatively impose its laws on the living world. Proof of this is seen in the 
morphological and functional variety of plants and animals that succeed in overcoming the greatest physical 
difficulties, living in polar or torrid zones; they manifest, within the same environment, a great diversity in form 
and behavior. Therefore, the living being, because of its structural complexity, its mechanisms, and its 
`inventions' partly escapes physical laws or eludes them. one of its constant victories is indeed to avoid the law 
of entropy and to become a `machine' which permanently opposes it. ... The living world is thus governed by 
rules to which the Universe of inert matter is not subject. We rarely discover these rules because they are highly 
complex; they are not easily expressed in mathematical terms because the number of parameters they involve is 
so great." (Grasse P.-P., "Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation," [1973], 
Academic Press: New York NY, 1977, pp.1-2)

19/07/2005
"The linguistic evidence has not always been given its proper weight in dating the book [of Daniel]. Scholars 
have long been aware that the language of Daniel is earlier than the second century. The consensus was that the 
Hebrew resembled that of the Chronicler and was earlier than that of the Mishnah; it is noticeably closer to 
Chronicles than to Qumran [site of Dead Sea Scrolls] (second-first centuries). Similarly the Aramaic (2:4b- 7:28) is 
closer to that of Ezra and the fifth-century papyri than to that from Qumran. ... All evidence (except the inference 
that Antiochus Epiphanes and other historical data are in the author's view) points to a date earlier than the 
second century. The historical data of all chapters, from Babylonian to Ptolemaic and Seleucid, indicate an earlier 
date. The linguistic evidence, both Hebrew and Aramaic, suggests a date possibly in the fourth or even fifth 
century. The evidence of the LXX and Qumran indicates that Daniel was in existence in its full form, and had 
been distributed over a relatively wide area, prior to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes [215-164 BC]." (La Sor 
W.S.*, Hubbard D.A.* & Bush F.W.*, "Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and Background of the Old 
Testament," [1982], Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, 1987, reprint, pp.666-667)

19/07/2005
"Omnipotence. God is all-powerful and able to do whatever he wills. Since his will is limited by his nature, God 
can do everything that is in harmony with his perfections. There are some things which God cannot do because 
they are contrary to his nature as God. He cannot look with favor on iniquity (Hab. 1:13), deny himself (2 Tim. 
2:13), lie (Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18), or tempt or be tempted to sin (James 1:13). Further, he cannot do things which are 
absurd or self-contradictory, such as make a material spirit, a sensitive stone, a square circle, or a wrong to be 
right. These are not objects of power and so denote no limitation of God's omnipotence." (Thiessen H.C*. & 
Doerksen V.D.*, "Lectures in Systematic Theology," [1949], Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, Revised, 1977, p.82)

19/07/2005
"Present-day ultra-Darwinism, which is so sure of itself, impresses incompletely informed biologists, misleads 
them, and inspires fallacious interpretations. The following is one of the numerous examples found in books 
today: "In microorganisms, the generation time is rather short and the size of the population can be enormous. 
Therefore, mutation acts as a very powerful evolutionary process during a shorter lapse of time than in 
populations of higher organisms" (Levine, 1969, p. 196, the italics are mine). This text suggests that modern 
bacteria are evolving very quickly, thanks to their innumerable mutations. Now, this is not true. For 
millions or even billions of years, bacteria have not transgressed the structural frame within which they have 
always fluctuated and still do. It is a fact that microbiologists can see in their cultures species of bacteria 
oscillating around an intermediate form, but this does not mean that two phenomena, which are quite distinct, 
should be confused; the variation of the genetic code because of a DNA copy error, and evolution. To vary 
and to evolve are two different things; this can never be sufficiently emphasized ... Bacteria, which are both 
the first and the most simple living beings to have appeared, are excellent subject material for genetic and 
biochemical study, but they are of little evolutionary value.".(Grasse P.-P., "Evolution of Living Organisms: 
Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation," [1973], Academic Press: New York NY, 1977, p.6. Emphasis in 
original)

19/07/2005
"As the late John von Neumann pointed out, a machine that replicates itself can, with some difficulty be 
imagined; but such a machine that could originate itself offers a baffling problem which no one has as yet solved. 
In the present case, we are trying to understand how a self-replicating machine came into existence; this poses 
problems that are indeed difficult to formulate in our imagination, and should not be passed over too lightly." 
(Blum H.F., "Time's Arrow and Evolution," [1951], Harper Torchbooks: New York NY, Second edition, 1955, 
Revised, 1962, pp.178G-178H)

19/07/2005
"Despite the numerous objections which have been advanced by scholars who regard this as a vaticinium ex 
eventu (or prophecy written after the event), there is no good reason for denying to the sixth century Daniel the 
composition of the entire work. This represents a collection of his memoirs made at the end of a long and eventful 
career which included government service from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar in the 590's to the reign of Cyrus the 
Great in the 530's. The appearance of Persian technical terms indicates a final recension of these memoirs at a time 
when Persian terminology had already infiltrated into the vocabulary of Aramaic. The most likely date for the final 
edition of the book, therefore, would be about 530 B.C." (Archer G.L., "A Survey of Old Testament Introduction," 
[1964], Moody Press: Chicago IL, 1966, Third printing, p.367)

19/07/2005
"The date of Daniel, whether Maccabean or not, is to be decided on other grounds. Much effort has been 
expended on studying its language and history with a view to determining its date. ... There are, it is true, three or 
four Greek words in Daniel - the names of musical instruments. These by no means prove an authorship during 
the period of Greek supremacy - 333 B.C. and following. The Greek language was spread by Greek merchants and 
colonists long before this. A Greek coin, the drachma, is mentioned in Ezra 2:69 and Nehemiah 7:70,72 as used in 
Persian times. ... Dr. Albright, in excavations at Beth-Zur, had discovered a Greek drachma in the Persian layer, 
fully confirming the references in Ezra and Nehemiah and showing the early spread of Greek influences. 
Furthermore, Greek inscriptions have been found in the Persian palaces at Persepolis, so there is no longer any 
need to be troubled about three Greek words in Daniel. They do not prove a late date." (Harris R.L., "Inspiration 
and Canonicity of the Bible: An Historical and Exegetical Study," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 1957, pp.148-149)

19/07/2005
"One of your books, The Blind Watchmaker, argues the case for the cumulative power of natural selection in the 
adaptation of organisms. Tell us about the metaphorical title of that book. The "watchmaker" comes from William 
Paley, the eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century theologian who was one of the most famous exponents of the 
argument of design. Paley the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century theologian who was one of the most 
famous exponents of the argument of design. Paley famously said that if you are wandering along and stumble 
upon a watch and you pick it up and open it, you realize that the internal mechanism-the way in which it's all 
meshed together-is detailed perfection. Add this to the fact that the watch mechanism has a purpose-namely, 
telling the time-then this compels you to conclude that the watch had to have a designer. Paley then went on 
throughout his book giving example after example of detailed structure of living organisms-eyes, heart, bowels, 
joints, and everything about animals-showing how beautifully designed they apparently are, how well they work, 
how intricately the parts mesh together, just like the cog wheels of a watch. And if the watch had to have a 
watchmaker, then of course these biological structures also had to have a designer. My reason for beginning The 
Blind Watchmaker was Paley. He really saw the magnitude of the problem of adaptation when most people just 
didn't see how elegant, how beautiful, apparent design in life is. Paley saw that, and Darwin saw that. And 
Darwin was introduced to it at least partly by Paley. All undergraduates at Cambridge had to read William Paley. 
He at least put the question right. So the only thing Paley got wrong, which is quite a big thing, was the answer 
to the question. And nobody got the right answer until Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century." (Dawkins R., 
"Interview," in Campbell N.A., Reece J.B. & Mitchell L.G., "Biology," [1987], Benjamin/Cummings: Menlo Park 
CA, Fifth Edition, 1999, p.412)

19/07/2005
"In another of your books, The Selfish Gene, you argue that genes are the units upon which natural selection 
acts and that organisms are `survival machines' for genes. To what extent are humans exceptions to this 
mechanistic view of life? Humans are fundamentally not exceptional because we came from the same evolutionary 
source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and our brains. 
However, the brains that natural selection gave us are exceptionally big brains, so big that they have done a 
rather unusual thing. Using language and culture, humans have formed societies in which there is something like 
Darwinian evolution going on, though it is not really Darwinian. We live in a highly domestic environment, 
largely governed by technology, largely divorced from the environment in which our genes were originally 
naturally selected. So what is different about us is that it is no longer possible to look at a human the way one 
might look at a wildebeest or a kangaroo and ask, `Why is that? What's that kangaroo doing that increases its 
gene survival?' If you see a wild animal doing something in the wild, then it's sensible to ask the question, `What 
is it about that behavior, or what is it about that morphological structure, which improves its survival, or more 
particularly the survival of its genes?' And you can't do that for humans? No, you can't look at humans playing 
the violin, or trying to run a company, or writing a book or writing a symphony, and ask, `In what way does 
writing this symphony benefit survival and replication of that human's genes?' because it doesn't. You have to be 
more sophisticate