In this post I examine the quotes DarkStar provided in
Message 135. I'll put each one in one of these categories:
- Quote is accurate but misleading
- Quote is false, scientist did not say this
- Quote is actually by a Creationist
- Quoted scientist is not an evolutionist
- Quote is legitimate and in context
- Information unavailable
- Quote is not by a scientist
- Quote is not anti-evolution
- Quote is accurate but misleading
"It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anythingor at least they are not science."
George G. Simpson
Geogre G. Simpon was a scientist and evolutionist, and I think all scientists would agree with this statement. So why is it here? Because Creationists know this will be interpreted as "events that weren't observed taking place at the time they happened can't be established scientifically."
- Quote is actually by a Creationist
"The fact is that the evidence was so patchy one hundred years ago that even Darwin himself had increasing doubts as to the validity of his views, and the only aspect of his theory which has received any support over the past century is where it applies to microevolutionary phenomena. His general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe."
Michael Denton
Michael Denton is a Creationist. He wrote
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
- Quote is accurate but misleading
As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of being, as we see them, well-defined species?
Charles Darwin
Darwin wrote this, but his question is intended rhetorically because he explains in the following paragraphs about the rarity of fossilization and the likelihood that the record will always be spotty. Nonetheless, he expresses optimism that many missing details will be filled in by future fossil finds, which is precisely what happens.
- Quote is accurate but misleading
"The theories of evolution, with which our studious youth have been deceived, constitute actually a dogma that all the world continues to teach; but each, in his specialty, the zoologist or the botanist, ascertains that none of the explanations furnished is adequate . . It results from this summary, that the theory of evolution is impossible."
P. Lemoine
The quote is from a 1950's copy of the Encyclopedie Francaise. Paul Lemoine was famous French scientist who served as the director of the French National Centre of Scientific Research and was at one time director of the Natural History Museum in Paris. He was a geologist, not a biologist, who accepted that evolution had occurred but rejected the explanations advanced by the theory of evolution. The quote is misleading because, though a scientist, evolution is not his field. You can find more about his quote at
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/3/part12.html.
"The problem of the origin of species has not advanced in the last 150 years. One hundred and fifty years have already passed during which it has been said that the evolution of the species is a fact but, without giving real proofs of it and without even a principle of explaining it.
During the last one hundred and fifty years of research that has been carried out along this line [in order to prove the theory], there has been no discovery of anything. It is simply a repetition in different ways of what Darwin said in 1859. This lack of results is unforgivable in a day when molecular biology has really opened the veil covering the mystery of reproduction and heredity.....
Finally, there is only one attitude which is possible as I have just shown: It consists in affirming that intelligence comes before life. Many people will say this is not science, it is philosophy. The only thing I am interested in is fact, and this conclusion comes out of an analysis and observation of the facts."
G. Salet
I can find no information about G. Salet.
- Quote is accurate but misleading
"Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant 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."
Steven Jay Gould
Stephen (not Steven) Jay Gould has complained loud and often about Creationist misquotes. In this case, the original writing goes on to argue that it is gradualism that should be discarded, not evolution (see
Quote Mine Project: Gould, Eldredge and Punctuated
Equilibria Quotes). He was, of course, arguing for his theory of punctuated equilibrium.
"The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of imagination."
Dr. Fleischman
One can imagine a scientist not accepting the evidence for evolution, but to not even be aware of the evidence is hard to believe. Mentioned only at Creationist websites and nowhere else, Dr. Albert Fleischman is supposedly a professor of zoology at Erlengen in Germany. I could find no confirming information.
- Quote is actually by a Creationist
- Quote is not by a scientist
The evolutionary establishment fears creation science, because evolution itself crumbles when challenged by evidence. In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of public debates were arranged between evolutionary scientists and creation scientists. The latter scored resounding victories, with the result that, today, few evolutionists will debate. Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, and the late Carl Sagan, while highly critical of creationism, all declined to debate.James Perloff
James Perloff is a Creationist author, not an evolutionary scientist.
- Quote is not anti-evolution
I doubt if there is any single individual within the scientific community who could cope with the full range of [creationist] arguments without the help of an army of consultants in special fields.David M. Raup
David M. Raup is a professor of geophysical science at the University of Chicago. I didn't attempt a check of the authenticity because I think most people on both sides would agree with it. I could use an army of consultants just to help me check this list of quotes.
- Quoted is actually by a Creationist
- Quote is not by a scientist
- Quote is not anti-evolution
No one has ever found an organism that is known not to have parents, or a parent. This is the strongest evidence on behalf of evolution.Tom Bethell
Tom Bethell is a Creationist at the Discovery Institute, but the quote (somewhat inaccurate since when a single-celled organism divides, which is the parent?) doesn't seem anti-evolution.
- Quote is not by a scientist
"It is almost invariably assumed that animals with bodies composed of a single cell represent the primitive animals from which all others derived. They are commonly supposed to have preceded all other animal types in their appearance. There is not the slightest basis for this assumption."Austin Clark
Austin Clark was a curator, not a scientist, at the Smithsonian in the first half of the 20th century.
- Quote is accurate but misleading
"I am not satisfied that Darwin proved his point or that his influence in scientific and public thinking has been beneficial . . the success of Darwinism was accomplished by a decline in scientific integrity."W.R. Thompson
Written a half century ago, this is from the introduction to the 1956 edition of
The Origin of Species, and it combines sentences commenting on different topics. The full context for the first sentence:
"I admire, as all biologists must, the immense scientific labours of Charles Darwin and his lifelong, single-hearted devotion to his theory of evolution. I agree that although, as he himself readily admitted, he did not invent the doctrine of organic evolution, or even the idea of natural selection, his arguments, and especially the arguments in The Origin of Species, convinced the world that he had discovered the true explanation of biological diversity, and had shown how the intricate adaptations of living things develop by a simple, inevitable process which even the most simple minded and unlearned can understand. But I am not satisfied that Darwin proved his point or that his influence in scientific and public thinking has been beneficial."
The full context for the second sentence:
"The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. This is already evident in the reckless statements of Haeckel and in the shifty, devious and histrionic argumentation of T. H. Huxley...
"To establish the continuity required by the theory, historical arguments are invoked even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypotheses based on hypotheses, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion [Thompson]."
It can now be seen that Thompson was not accusing Darwin of causing a decline of scientific integrity. If you look around the Internet for more of Thompson's introduction you'll actually find more scathing characterizations saying that
Origins provided only speculations and not evidence, and that the situation is much unchanged today (that would be 50 years ago, of course).
It doesn't make sense that a staunch anti-evolutionist would be recruited to write an introduction to
Origins, but I wasn't able to find out anything much about W. R. Thompson. Some websites say he was a Canadian entomologist.
- Quote is accurate but misleading
"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. Lipson
This quote was actually preceded by a critical qualifier. Here's the full context from
Quote Mine Project: "Miscellaneous":
"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)
He is merely projecting what it would mean were life not a result of matter, radiation and natural forces. Clearly this passage was misunderstood by many, because he was forced to make clear he supports evolution in a later issue:
Several people have given clear indications that they do not understand Darwin's theory. The Theory does not merely say that species have slowly evolved: that is obvious from the fossil record.
- H. J. Lipson, "A physicist looks at evolution - a rejoinder", Physics Bulletin, December 1980, pg 337.
I'm just plum out of time and will have to stop here. This is why the
Forum Guidelines requires you offer your own arguments rather than cut-n-paste. People can cut-n-paste arguments far faster than someone else can type in counter-arguments from scratch. The score at this point:
- Quote is accurate but misleading: 6
- Quote is false, scientist did not say this: 0
- Quote is actually by a Creationist: 2
- Quoted scientist is not an evolutionist: 0
- Quote is legitimate and in context: 0
- Information unavailable: 2
- Quote is not by a scientist: 3
- Quote is not anti-evolution: 2
--Percy
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