The God Delusion - an Appraisal  - Appendix 4

   

Appendix 4 - Quotes about Evolution

 

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Appendix 4 : Quotes about Evolution

 

 

The purpose of this page is to challenge thinking about evolution by seeing what others say about it, for it clearly is the lynchpin of Richard's thinking. Is he the one who is in delusion? These quotes could be much more extensive. We have simply included these as a starter.

 

Credits : Much of the information and the quotes in this Appendix come from John Blanchard's excellent book, Does God Believe in Atheists. Some come from Charles Colson in How Now Shall We Live? Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator, has not been quoted but is very worth reading for the early chapters about Evolution and Darwin's thinking.

 

 

1. Definitions:

 

Evolution – the process by which nature is said to have constantly improved itself through gradual development

 

Micro-evolution – the theory that in organisms of the same species different characteristics emerge as the result of adaptation to differing natural environments.

 

Macro-evolution – the theory that as a result of natural selection all life-forms have evolved from a common ancestor in a continuity of nature that goes back to a single primal origin.

 

Natural selection – the theory that organisms prey on each other in order to survive, and at the same time they develop new characteristics in order to cope with the environment in which they find themselves. The theory continues that where these new characteristics become a permanent feature, a new species emerges, whereas those life-forms which adapt less well die out.

 

Survival of the Fittest – another phrase meaning ‘natural selection', first coined by Herbert Spencer but later used by Darwin as an alternative to ‘natural selection'.

 

Synthetic theory – although organic evolution could not be brought about by natural selection alone, it could happen if mutations (inheritable genetic changes taking place over an immense period of time) were added to the process [this is neo-Darwinism as opposed to classical-Darwinism]

 

Palaeontology – the study of fossils, said to be the only ‘evidence' of what had actually occurred. Everything else is only theory. Thus the study of the fossil evidence is criticial. In chapter 10 of The Origin of Species, Darwin wrestled with the problems of the poorness of our palaeontological collections, of the absence of intermediate varieties in any one formation, of the sudden appearance of groups of species, and of the sudden appearance in the lowest known fossiliferous strata. He had no set answers and had to resort to speculation and metaphor, both highly unsatisfactory. Since then the record has increased dramatically but the questions still remain.

 

2. Quotes

 

Survival of the Fittest

 

“It has long been pointed out that it (‘survival of the fittest') leans heavily on circular reasoning: certain life-forms survive because they are the fittest, and they are the fittest because they survive.”

Blanchard

  

“Michael Denton writes, ‘It was not only his general theory that was almost entirely lacking in any direct empirical support, but his special theory was also largely dependent on circumstantial evidence. A striking witness to this is the fact that nowhere was Darwin able to point to one bona fide case of natural selection having actually generated evolutionary change in nature, let alone having been responsible for the creation of a new species. Even in the case of trivial adaptations Darwin was forced to use conditional language”

         Blanchard quoting Michael Denton from his book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis .

 

“Neither Darwin nor anyone else has ever actually witnessed (macro) evolution occurring.”

         Colson

 

“Centuries of experiment show that the change produced by breeding does not continue at a steady rate from generation to generation. Instead, change is rapid at first, then levels off, and eventually reaches a limit that breeders cannot cross….. What's more, as breeders keep up the selection pressure, the organism grows weaker until it finally becomes sterile and dies out…. There is a natural barrier that no amount of breeding is able to cross. Moreover, when an organism is no longer subject to selective pressure, it tends to revert to its original type.”

                  Colson

 

Mutations

 

“Yet for all the passion with which it is promoted, the theory runs into massive obstacles.

Firstly, natural mutations (as opposed to those introduced in a laboratory) are extremely rare….

Secondly, far from contributing to the viability of the organisms in which they occur, mutations are almost universally harmful, if not lethal…

The third problem (is that) … as all observed mutations are infinitesimally small, millions of such micro mutations would be needed to change one kind of plant or animal into another….

The fourth difficulty faced by the mutation theory is that by their very nature mutations are completely random whereas, if evolution were to succeed, should we not expect it to follow an ordered design or plan?”

        Blanchard (to see his supporting quotes, read the book!)

 

“To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me to be a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of fact, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest.”

         Ernest Chain, Nobel prize holder, quoted by Blanchard.

 

“In Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Marcel Schutzenberger of the University of Paris, working with other scientists, calculated the probability of evolution based on mutation and natural selection and came to this conclusion: ‘There is no chance to see this mechanism appear spontaneously… We believe there is a considerable gap in the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution and we believe this to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged with the current conception of biology”

                   Blanchard

 

 

The Fossil Record

 

“The overwhelming pattern is that organisms appear fully formed with variations clustered around a mean, and without transitional stages leading up to them.”

        Colson

 

“The situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we now have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin 's time.”

       David Raup, Curator of Geology at Chicago 's Field Museum of Natural History quoted by

Blanchard.

 

(the following are all from Blanchard)

 

“The framework for palaeontology is provided by geology, the study of the earth…. Everything changed when Charles Lyell popularized the idea of uniformitarianism which claims that processes now operating to modify the earth's surface have always done so in the same way and at the same rate over an immense period of time…..”

 

“When Lyell's assumption was applied it produced a geologic column in which the units of rock were neatly stacked, with the oldest at the bottom and the youngest at the top. However it is important to note that these strata were arranged on the basis of another critical assumption, namely that organic evolution was an established fact, with complex chemicals leading to primitive living material, and in turn to simple and eventually increasingly complex creatures.

 

“Closer examination reveals serious flaws. The first is fundamental… namely that the geological column was put together on the assumption of evolutionary biology … Encyclopaedia Britannica agrees: ‘It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle'…. This fact alone means that the geological column cannot properly be used as conclusive evidence of evolution, any more than it can be used to prove a vast age for the earth.”

 

“A second weakness in uniformitarianism is its unquestionable faith in Hutton's dictum that ‘The present is the key to the past', when the fact is that scientists are unable to subject to the rigorous examination and experimentation which true science demands of events which happened millions of years ago. Instead the evolutionist relies on extrapolation…”

 

“The idea that the fossil record proves gradual development from simple to complex organisms is contradicted by evidence in strata said to be about 600 million years old. Nearly all the animal phyla suddenly ‘appear' in the rocks of this period, with no evolutionary ancestors to back up the theory of gradual development….”

 

“A fourth and critical weakness in palaeontology's claim to prove evolution is the fact that, even when they are arranged in the most ingenious way, the fossils stubbornly fail to produce what evolutionists so desperately need, the smooth transition from one species to another, with a stream of intermediate organisms to ‘cement' the index species together. Instead, as Henry Morris shows, ‘All of the present orders, classes and phyla appear quite suddenly in the fossil record, without indications of evolving lines from which they presumably developed.'

 

“Evolutionists tell us that in the course of thirty million years fish evolved into amphibians – but nobody has been able to find a ‘fishibian'….. The next major gap to be bridged is that between amphibians and reptiles, but here again evolutionists draw a disconcerting blank in the fossil record….

 

 

The ‘Missing Link' to Man

 

(I cover this separately as it highlights the fiasco that so often appears in scientific circles and then in the media.)

 

“Neanderthal Man – partial skeleton … in Germany .. Ian Taylor says, ‘It should be borne in mind that only bones had been found; all the rest of the reconstruction was speculation based on preconception.' ….. the unusual features in the skull and elsewhere resulting from ‘pathological changes' caused by deforming diseases such as rickets and arthritis…” ( read more of the details yourself why this was not a missing link )

 

“Java Man – 1912… skull fragment, a thigh bone and three molar teeth in Trinil, Java, …. Dutch physician (and fervent evolutionist) Eugene Dubois…. they were lying at least fifty feet from each other and unearthed over a year span …. Dubois admitted that he had also found genuinely human skulls in the same geological stratum…. Java Man is arguably the best-known human fossil…..”

 

“Piltdown Man – a collection of bones, teeth and primitive implements… in a gravel pit in Piltdown, Sussex… over 500 doctoral dissertations were written on the discovery, and ‘A whole generation grew up with Piltdown Man in their textbooks, and home encyclopaedias.' …. in 1953 the whole thing was exposed a a gigantic hoax. Piltdown Man was shown to be made up from a human skull and the jawbone of an orang-utan which had died about fifty years earlier and whose teeth had been filed to give them a more human look…”

 

“Nebraska Man – 1922… Harold Cook …. a single tooth … Experts enthusiastically claimed it as belonging to an early type of Pithecanthropoid (ape-like man)… When the prestigious Illustrated London News published a double-page feature of the find on 24 June 1922 , complete with an artists impression of the ‘ape-man' and his mate, Nebraska Man was trumpeted as a vital link in the history of humanity… Six years later it was discovered that the tooth unearthed by Cook belonged to a type of peccary, a wild pig believed to have become extinct at the end of the Pleistocene ear about 10,000 years ago….”

 

“Peking Man – 1927… Davidson Black unearthed a single took which he believed had characteristics intermediate between ape and man… two years later.... an almost complete brain case… However, later excavations… produced a number of clearly human skeletons … The size of the original brain case, and of similar fragmented specimens found later on the same site, pointed to the distinct possibility that they belonged to large monkeys and were broken open by real men in order to extract the brains for food…”

 

( Blanchard records other similar frantic attempts to prop up human evolution – read them yourself )

 

 

Flying from Religion

 

“Writing in Nature as long ago as 1929, biologist D.M.S.Watson brazenly conceded, ‘The theory of evolution itself [is] a theory universally accepted, not because it can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative is special creation, which is clearly incredible.'”

 

“L.T.Moore, from the university of Chicago, has said much the same thing: ‘Our faith in the idea of evolution depends upon our reluctance to accept the antagonistic doctrine of special creation.'”

 

“So has the eminent British anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith: ‘Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the alternative is special creation, which is unthinkable.'”

 

 

The Consequences

 

Both Blanchard and Colson go on to list the negative outworkings of Darwinian thinking in modern society. Rather than add even further pages of quotations we recommend you read these men for yourself.

   

  

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