Stephen E. Jones

Creation/Evolution Quotes: Unclassified quotes: March 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18/03/2007
"The creationists have por