Evolutionists on the lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution

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Quotes by famous evolutionists who admit evolution has no evidence

 

 

Lack of Identifiable Phylogeny

 

"It is, however, very difficult to establish the precise lines of descent,

termed phylogenies, for most organisms." (Ayala, F. J. and Valentine J. W.,

Evolving: The Theory and Process of Organic Evolution, 1978, p. 230)

 

 

"Undeniably, the fossil record has provided disappointingly few gradual

series. The origins of many groups are still not documented at all."

(Futuyma, D., Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, 1983, p. 190-191)

 

 

"There is still a tremendous problem with the sudden diversification of

multi-cellular life. There is no question about that. That's a real

phenomenon." (Niles Eldredge, quoted in Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other

Problems by Luther D. Sunderland, Master Book Publishers, Santee,

California, 1988, p. 45)

 

 

"Whatever ideas authorities may have on the subject, the lungfishes, like

every other major group of fishes that I know, have their origins firmly

based in nothing." (Quoted in W. R. Bird, _The Origin of Species Revisited_

[Nashville: Regency, 1991; originally published by Philosophical Library,

1987], 1:62-63)

 

 

"The main problem with such phyletic gradualism is that the fossil record

provides so little evidence for it. Very rarely can we trace the gradual

transformation of one entire species into another through a finely graded

sequence of intermediary forms." (Gould, S.J. Luria, S.E. & Singer, S., A

View of Life, 1981, p. 641)

 

 

"It should come as no surprise that it would be extremely difficult to find

a specific fossil species that is both intermediate in morphology between

two other taxa and is also in the appropriate stratigraphic position."

(Cracraft, J., "Systematics, Comparative Biology, and the Case Against

Creationism," 1983, p. 180)

 

 

"Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the

fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly

interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed

ancestors." (Eldredge, N., 1989, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species,

Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, p. 22)

 

 

"Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found

to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil

record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species

to another." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes,

and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95)

 

 

"Many fossils have been collected since 1859, tons of them, yet the impact

they have had on our understanding of the relationships between living

organisms is barely perceptible. ...In fact, I do not think it unfair to say

that fossils, or at least the traditional interpretation of fossils, have

clouded rather than clarified our attempts to reconstruct phylogeny."

(Fortey, P. L., "Neontological Analysis Versus Palaeontological Stores,"

1982, p. 120-121)

 

 

"Indeed, it is the chief frustration of the fossil record that we do not

have empirical evidence for sustained trends in the evolution of most

complex morphological adaptations." (Gould, Stephen J. and Eldredge, Niles,

"Species Selection: Its Range and Power," 1988, p. 19)

 

 

"The paleontological data is consistent with the view that all of the

currently recognized phyla had evolved by about 525 million years ago.

Despite half a billion years of evolutionary exploration generated in

Cambrian time, no new phylum level designs have appeared since then."

("Developmental Evolution of Metazoan Body plans: The Fossil Evidence,"

Valentine, Erwin, and Jablonski, Developmental Biology 173, Article No.

0033, 1996, p. 376)

 

 

"Many 'trends' singled out by evolutionary biologists are ex post facto

rendering of phylogenetic history: biologists may simply pick out species at

different points in geological time that seem to fit on some line of

directional modification through time. Many trends, in other words, may

exist more in the minds of the analysts than in phylogenetic history. This

is particularly so in situations, especially common prior to about 1970, in

which analysis of the phylogenetic relationships among species was

incompletely or poorly done." (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics:

Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p. 134)

 

 

"The Eldredge-Gould concept of punctuated equilibria has gained wide

acceptance among paleontologists. It attempts to account for the following

paradox: Within continuously sampled lineages, one rarely finds the gradual

morphological trends predicted by Darwinian evolution; rather, change occurs

with the sudden appearance of new, well-differentiated species. Eldredge and

Gould equate such appearances with speciation, although the details of these

events are not preserved. ...The punctuated equilibrium model has been

widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but

because it appears to resolve a dilemma. Apart from the obvious sampling

problems inherent to the observations that stimulated the model, and apart

from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur

only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad

hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky

ground." (Ricklefs, Robert E., "Paleontologists Confronting Macroevolution,"

Science, vol. 199, 1978, p. 59)

 

 

"Few paleontologists have, I think ever supposed that fossils, by

themselves, provide grounds for the conclusion that evolution has occurred.

An examination of the work of those paleontologists who have been

particularly concerned with the relationship between paleontology and

evolutionary theory, for example that of G. G. Simpson and S. J. Gould,

reveals a mindfulness of the fact that the record of evolution, like any

other historical record, must be construed within a complex of particular

and general preconceptions not the least of which is the hypothesis that

evolution has occurred. ...The fossil record doesn't even provide any

evidence in support of Darwinian theory except in the weak sense that the

fossil record is compatible with it, just as it is compatible with other

evolutionary theories, and revolutionary theories and special creationist

theories and even historical theories." (Kitts, David B., "Search for the

Holy Transformation," review of Evolution of Living Organisms, by Pierre-P.

Grassé, Paleobiology, vol. 5, 1979, p. 353-354)

 

 

 

 

 

Stasis and Sudden Appearance

 

"Paleontologists have paid an enormous price for Darwin's argument. We fancy

ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our

favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad

that we almost never see the very process we profess to study. ...The

history of most fossil species includes tow features particularly

inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no

directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil

record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change I

usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area,

a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its

ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed.'" (Gould, Stephen J.

The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 181-182)

 

 

"Paleontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing

whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat. ...If any event

in life's history resembles man's creation myths, it is this sudden

diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the

dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to

Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological

revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of

the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists

with most of the attributes of their modern descendants." (Bengtson,

Stefan, "The Solution to a Jigsaw Puzzle," Nature, vol. 345 (June 28, 1990),

p. 765-766)

 

 

"Modern multicellular animals make their first uncontested appearance in the

fossil record some 570 million years ago - and with a bang, not a protracted

crescendo. This 'Cambrian explosion' marks the advent (at least into direct

evidence) of virtually all major groups of modern animals - and all within

the minuscule span, geologically speaking, of a few million years." (Gould,

Stephen J., Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History,

1989, p. 23-24)

 

 

"The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed

him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost

all complex organic designs..." (Gould, Stephen J., The Panda's Thumb,

1980, p. 238-239)

 

 

"The majority of major groups appear suddenly in the rocks, with virtually

no evidence of transition from their ancestors." (Futuyma, D., Science on

Trial: The Case for Evolution, 1983, p. 82)

 

 

"Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the

fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly

interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed

ancestors." (Eldredge, (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics:

Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p. 22)

 

 

"In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows,

that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all new

categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and

are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional

sequences." (Simpson, George Gaylord, The Major Features of Evolution,

1953, p. 360)

 

 

"The gaps in the record are real, however. The absence of any record of any

important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or

nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution

into new species or genera but replacement or one by another, and change is

more or less abrupt." (Wesson, R., Beyond Natural Selection, 1991, p. 45)

 

 

"All through the fossil record, groups - both large and small - abruptly

appear and disappear. ...The earliest phase of rapid change usually is

undiscovered, and must be inferred by comparison with its probable

relatives." (Newell, N. D., Creation and Evolution: Myth or Reality, 1984,

p. 10)

 

 

"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between

Darwin's postulate of gradualism...and the actual findings of paleontology.

Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual

changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different

genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly

novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record." (Mayr,

E., Our Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary

Thought, 1991, p. 138)

 

 

"The record certainly did not reveal gradual transformations of structure in

the course of time. On the contrary, it showed that species generally

remained constant throughout their history and were replaced quite suddenly

by significantly different forms. New types or classes seemed to appear

fully formed, with no sign of an evolutionary trend by which they could have

emerged from an earlier type." (Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea,

1984, p. 187)

 

 

"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of

Darwin's time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly

uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very

suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record,

then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it's

rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their

predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find."

(Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin,

Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23)

 

 

"A major problem in proving the theory (of evolution) has been the fossil

record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological

formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical

intermediate variants instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and

this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was

created by God." (Czarnecki, Mark, "The Revival of the Creationist Crusade",

MacLean's, January 19, 1981, p. 56)

 

 

"Eldredge and Gould, by contrast, decided to take the record at face value.

On this view, there is little evidence of modification within species, or of

forms intermediate between species because neither generally occurred. A

species forms and evolves almost instantaneously (on the geological

timescale) and then remains virtually unchanged until it disappears,

yielding its habitat to a new species." (Smith, Peter J., "Evolution's Most

Worrisome Questions," Review of Life Pulse by Niles Eldredge, New Scientist,

1987, p. 59)

 

 

"The principle problem is morphological stasis. A theory is only as good as

its predictions, and conventional neo-Darwinism, which claims to be a

comprehensive explanation of evolutionary process, has failed to predict the

widespread long-term morphological stasis now recognized as one of the most

striking aspects of the fossil record." (Williamson, Peter G.,

"Morphological Stasis and Developmental Constraint: Real Problems for

Neo-Darwinism," Nature, Vol. 294, 19 November 1981, p. 214)

 

 

"It is a simple ineluctable truth that virtually all members of a biota

remain basically stable, with minor fluctuations, throughout their

duration..." (Eldredge, Niles, The Pattern of Evolution, 1998, p. 157)

 

 

"But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and

the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition."

(Woodroff, D.S., Science, vol. 208, 1980, p. 716)

 

 

"We have long known about stasis and abrupt appearance, but have chosen to

fob it off upon an imperfect fossil record." (Gould, Stephen J., "The

Paradox of the First Tier: An Agenda for Paleobiology," Paleobiology, 1985,

p. 7)

 

 

"Paleontologists ever since Darwin have been searching (largely in vain) for

the sequences of insensibly graded series of fossils that would stand as

examples of the sort of wholesale transformation of species that Darwin

envisioned as the natural product of the evolutionary process. Few saw any

reason to demur - though it is a startling fact that ...most species remain

recognizably themselves, virtually unchanged throughout their occurrence in

geological sediments of various ages." (Eldredge, Niles, "Progress in

Evolution?" New Scientist, vol. 110, 1986, p. 55)

 

 

"In other words, when the assumed evolutionary processes did not match the

pattern of fossils that they were supposed to have generated, the pattern

was judged to be 'wrong.' A circular argument arises: interpret the fossil

record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the

interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would,

wouldn't it? ...As is now well known, most fossil species appear

instantaneously in the record, persist for some millions of years virtually

unchanged, only to disappear abruptly - the 'punctuated equilibrium' pattern

of Eldredge and Gould." (Kemp, Tom S., "A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record,"

New Scientist, vol. 108, 1985, p. 66-67)

 

 

"The old Darwinian view of evolution as a ladder of more and more efficient

forms leading up to the present is not borne out by the evidence. Most

changes are random rather than systematic modifications, until species drop

out. There is no sign of directed order here. Trends do occur in many lines,

but they are not the rule." (Newell, N. D., "Systematics and Evolution,"

1984, p. 10)

 

 

"Well-represented species are usually stable throughout their temporal

range, or alter so little and in such superficial ways (usually in size

alone), that an extrapolation of observed change into longer periods of

geological time could not possibly yield the extensive modifications that

mark general pathways of evolution in larger groups. Most of the time, when

the evidence is best, nothing much happens to most species." (Gould Stephen

J., "Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness," Natural History, 1988, p. 14)

 

 

"Stasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy

geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but

almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as

uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. ...The overwhelming prevalence

of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left

ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution). (Gould,

Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15)

 

 

"Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils

as they pursued them up through the rock record. ...That individual kinds of

fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their

occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long

before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, ...prophesied that

future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent

search ...One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it

has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this

part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record.

The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong. ...The

observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities

throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new

clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced

with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted

pattern, simply looked the other way." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I.,

The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 45-46)

 

 

 

 

Large Gaps

 

"We have so many gaps in the evolutionary history of life, gaps in such key

areas as the origin of the multi-cellular organisms, the origin of the

vertebrates, not to mention the origins of most invertebrate groups."

(McGowan, C., In the Beginning... A Scientist Shows Why the Creationists are

Wrong, Prometheus Books, 1984, p. 95)

 

 

"There are all sorts of gaps: absence of gradationally intermediate

'transitional' forms between species, but also between larger groups -

between, say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact,

the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms

there seem to be."

(Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism,

1982, p. 65)

 

 

"It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any

evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting

has delighted creationists. ...Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and

Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both

agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the

fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of

so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and (we)

both reject this alternative." (Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker,

W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996, p. 229-230)

 

 

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in

the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are

characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this

dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record." (Gould,

Stephen J., The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 189)

 

 

"One of the most surprising negative results of paleontological research in

the last century is that such transitional forms seem to be inordinately

scarce. In Darwin's time this could perhaps be ascribed with some

justification to the incompleteness of the paleontological record and to

lack of knowledge, but with the enormous number of fossil species which have

been discovered since then, other causes must be found for the almost

complete absence of transitional forms." (Brouwer, A., "General

Paleontology," [1959], Transl. Kaye R.H., Oliver

& Boyd: Edinburgh & London, 1967, p. 162-163)

 

 

"There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil

record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery

is out-pacing integration. The fossil record nevertheless continues to be

composed mainly of gaps." (Neville, George, T., "Fossils in Evolutionary

Perspective," Science Progress, vol. 48 January 1960, p. 1-3)

 

 

"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the

gaps we see reflect real events in life's history not the artifact of a poor

fossil record...The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this

expectation of finely graded change." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The

Myths of Human Evolution Columbia University Press, 1982, p. 59, 163)

 

 

"Gaps between families and taxa of even higher rank could not be so easily

explained as the mere artifacts of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, Niles,

Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p.

22)

 

 

"The fossil record is much less incomplete than is generally accepted."

(Paul, C.R.C, "The Adequacy of the Fossil Record," 1982, p. 75)

 

 

"Links are missing just where we most fervently desire them, and it is all

too probable that many 'links' will continue to be missing." (Jepsen, L.

Glenn; Mayr, Ernst; Simpson George Gaylord. Genetics, Paleontology, and

Evolution, New York, Athenaeum, 1963, p. 114)

 

 

"For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number

of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a

deep, dark secret of paleontology..." (Cracraft, in Awbrey & Thwaites,

Evolutionists Confront Creationists", 1984)

 

 

"In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist,

uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as

opposed to special creation." (Ridley, Mark, "Who doubts evolution?New

Scientist", vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831)

 

 

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major

transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our

imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a

persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution."

(Gould, Stephen J., 'Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?'

Paleobiology, vol 6(1), January 1980, p. 127)

 

 

"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps; the

fossils are missing in all the important places." (Hitching, Francis, The

Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong, Penguin Books, 1982, p.19)

 

 

"If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by

little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of

transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit

like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such

transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the

fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the

proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have

found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no

transitional forms were contained in them." (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov

1978, vol 119, no 22, p. 1)

 

 

"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of

motion...it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with

examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved.

....Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing

links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which

there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of

transformational intermediates between documented fossil species."

(Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden

Origins, 1999, p. 89)

 

 

"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing"

evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the

most notorious of which is the presence of "gaps" in the fossil record.

Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does

not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the

record." (Kitts, David B., "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory,"

Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467)

 

 

"A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of

intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations

of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or

trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive

ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and

unconnected by intermediates." (Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological

Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin, 1982,

p. 163)

 

 

 

 

 

Miscellaneous

 

 

"All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it,

the more we feel that it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We

believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this

planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to

imagine that it did." (Urey, Harold C., quoted in Christian Science Monitor,

January 4, 1962, p. 4)

 

 

"If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural

forces and radiation, how has it come into being? I think, however, that we

must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is

creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to

me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental

evidence supports it." (H.J. Lipson, F.R.S. Professor of Physics, University

of Manchester, UK, "A physicist looks at evolution" Physics Bulletin, 1980,

vol 31, p. 138)

 

 

"To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special

creation. Can you imagine how an orchid, a duck weed, and a palm have come

from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The

evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would

break down before an inquisition." (E.J.H. Corner "Evolution" in A.M.

MacLeod and L.S. Cobley, eds., Evolution in Contemporary Botanical Thought,

Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1961, at 95, 97 from Bird, I, p. 234)

 

 

"The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that

evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it

is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion."

(More, Louis T., "The Dogma of Evolution," Princeton University Press:

Princeton NJ, 1925, Second Printing, p.160)

 

 

"At the present stage of geological research, we have to admit that there is

nothing in the geological records that runs contrary to the view of

conservative creationists, that God created each species separately,

presumably from the dust of the earth." (Dr. Edmund J. Ambrose, The Nature

and Origin of the Biological World, John Wiley & Sons, 1982, p. 164)

 

 

"One of its (evolutions) weak points is that it does not have any

recognizable way in which conscious life could have emerged." (Sir John

Eccles, "A Divine Design: Some Questions on Origins" in Margenau and

Varghese (eds.), Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p. 203)

 

 

"I am convinced, moreover, that Darwinism, in whatever form, is not in fact

a scientific theory, but a pseudo-metaphysical hypothesis decked out in

scientific garb. In reality the theory derives its support not from

empirical data or logical deductions of a scientific kind but from the

circumstance that it happens to be the only doctrine of biological origins

that can be conceived with the constricted worldview to which a majority of

scientists no doubt ."

(Wolfgang, Smith, "The Universe is Ultimately to be Explained in Terms of a

Metacosmic Reality" in Margenau and Varghese (eds.), Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p.

113)

 

 

"The origin of life is still a mystery. As long as it has not been

demonstrated by experimental realization, I cannot conceive of any physical

or chemical condition [allowing evolution]...I cannot be satisfied by the

idea that fortuitous mutation...can explain the complex and rational

organization of the brain, but also of lungs, heart, kidneys, and even

joints and muscles. How is it possible to escape the idea of some

intelligent and organizing force?" (d'Aubigne, Merle, "How Is It Possible to

Escape the Idea of Some Intelligent and Organizing Force?" in Margenau and

Varghese (eds.), Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p. 158)

 

 

"Life, even in bacteria, is too complex to have occurred by chance."

(Rubin, Harry, "Life, Even in Bacteria, Is Too Complex to Have Occurred by

Chance" in Margenau and Varghese (eds.), Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p. 203)

 

 

"The third assumption was the Viruses, Bacteria, Protozoa and the higher

animals were all interrelated...We have as yet no definite evidence about

the way in which the Viruses, Bacteria or Protozoa are interrelated."

(Kerkut, G.A., Implications of Evolution, Pergammon Press, 1960, p. 151)

 

 

"Scientists have no proof that life was not the result of an act of

creation, but they are driven by the nature of their profession to seek

explanations for the origin of life that lie within the boundaries of

natural law. They ask themselves, "How did life arise out of inanimate

matter? And what is the probability of that happening?" And to their

chagrin they have no clear-cut answer, because chemists have never succeeded

in reproducing nature's experiments on the creation of life out of nonliving

matter. Scientists do not know how that happened, and furthermore, they do

not know the chance of its happening. Perhaps the chance is very small, and

the appearance of life on a planet is an event of miraculously low

probability. Perhaps life on the earth is unique in this Universe. No

scientific evidence precludes that possibility."

(Jastrow, Robert, The Enchanted Loom: Mind In the Universe, 1981, p. 19)

 

 

"...we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual

adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched

as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history

of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it

does not." (Eldredge, Niles "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian

Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New

York NY, 1985, p. 44)

 

 

"With the benefit of hindsight, it is amazing that paleontologists could

have accepted gradual evolution as a universal pattern on the basis of a

handful of supposedly well-documented lineages (e.g. Gryphaea, Micraster,

Zaphrentis) none of which actually withstands close scrutiny." (Paul, C. R.

C., 1989, "Patterns of Evolution and Extinction in Invertebrates", Allen, K.

C. and Briggs, D. E. G. (editors), Evolution and the Fossil Record,

Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D. C., 1989, p. 105)

 

 

"The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants

within recent geological times is an abominable mystery." (Darwin, Charles

R., letter to J.D. Hooker, July 22nd 1879, in Darwin F. & Seward A.C., eds.,

"More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work in a Series of

Hitherto Unpublished Papers," John Murray: London, 1903, Vol. II, p. 20-21)

 

 

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only

state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be

almost a miracle. So many are the conditions which would have had to have

been satisfied to get it going. But this should not be taken to imply that

there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the

earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical

reactions. The plain fact is that the time available was too long, the many

microenvironments on the earth's surface too diverse, the various chemical

possibilities too numerous and our own knowledge and imagination too feeble

to allow us to be able to unravel exactly how it might or might not have

happened such a long time ago, especially as we have no experimental

evidence from that era to check our ideas against." (Francis Crick, Life

Itself, Its Origin and Nature, 1981, p. 88)

 

 

"The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed must be

truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum

full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such

finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and

serious objection which can be urged against the theory." (Darwin, Charles,

Origin of Species, 6th edition, 1902 p. 341-342)

 

 

"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I

may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." (Charles Darwin, The Life and

Letters of Charles Darwin, 1887, Vol. 2, p. 229)

 

 

"The geological record has provided no evidence as to the origin of the

fishes."

(Norman, J., A History of Fishes, 1963, p. 298)

 

 

"None of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the

earliest land vertebrates." (Stahl, B., Vertebrate History: Problems in

Evolution, Dover Publications, Inc., NY, 1985, p. 148)

 

 

"The pathetic thing is that we have scientists who are trying to prove

evolution, which no scientist can ever prove." (Millikan, Robert A.,

Nashville Banner, August 7, 1925, quoted in Brewer's lecture)

 

 

 

.. . . .

 

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot

see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

II Corinthians 4:4

 

 

(from anointedone.com)