The lie of evolution, part II

I don't have a whole lot of time right now, and I have not read this thread in it's entirety. However, I would like to insert some of my favorite quotes on the evolution "theory."

"...the theory of evolution, a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly unthinkable."

"I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it has been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has."

"We conclude-unexpectedly-that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak."

"Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have an iota of fact."

All of these quotes (I think) are from evolutionists; the context and the viewpoint of the quote shows this.

 

Wait a second, you're posting a series of quotations completely without source and speaker given and you expect us to just wilt away at this convincing proof? I could whip up a quote by someone purporting to be an Illuminati member talking about how their organization wrote the Bible just for kicks, but that doesn't mean it's true!

Unless it can be confirmed in the primary source itself, it's worthless.

 

MC1171611

I know that these are not quotes that you dug up but are quotes supplied to you by someone else. So let me ask you something.

What do you think that chances are that you will find quotes from people who accept evolution, who are experts in the subject, which says that evolution is not true? So what do you make of these quotes? Do you think that one can conclude that it is likely that something must be amiss?

Perhaps the person does not really accept evolution. Perhaps the person does but is not an expert in evolution and therefore unqualified to offer an informed opinion. Perhaps, and most often the case, without the context of the quote provided, the meaning of the quoted phrase has changed from what the author intended.

Now I have seen enough supposed YE quotes of supposed "evolutionists" to have observed that one of these problems usually exists in most such quotes and that often it is the lask of context that dooms the quote from being honest.

For these reason, it is important to be able to go read the whole article from which the quote was lifted to check for accuracy and context when on the surface it seems that there could be doubt as to the veracity of the quote. It is also a good idea to know the credentials of the one being quoted.

In this case, we do not even have names and publications supplied. That makes the quotes very difficult to make sense of.

Let's just take a closer look at your first quote.

First let's cite where it came from.

Watson, D.M.S.,"Adaptation," Nature, August 10, 1929.

First off, notice the date. You do not often get quote mines from the last few years. Most often, they are decades old which all by itself cast great doubt on the relevence of the quote. For example, when you have the opportunity to have your doctor treat you for a major illness, why don't you bring along some medical texts from the 1920's and inssit that he use those methods to treat you rather than what has been learned in the interim.

Next, the quote is incorrect. Let's provide the paragraph from which the quote was taken to show how.

You will notice right off that your source left off the fifth word altogether and changed the last word to something different. This is a bad start.

Now if you go back and look at the entire article, you will see that Watson is discussing how difficult it will be to establish that some feature of some long dead organisms really was the product of natural selection.

So he makes a comparison of natural selection with evolution. Earlier he makes a parallel statement regarding evolution.

"Evolution itself is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or is supported by logically coherent arguments, but because it does fit all the facts of taxonomy, of palæontology, and geographical distribution, and because no alternative explanation is credible."

Notice what he is saying. He says that evolution happens too slowly to be directly observed and concluded, but that the reason it is so widely accepted is because that it explains the data from taxonomy, paleontology and biogeography very well and because there is no competing theory which can explain these things at all.

(Of course the quote is so old that we can now safely point to examples where evolution has been observed to occur even across very short periods of time. One of the problems of relying on ancient sources.)

Likewise, it the quote provided, he is saying the natural selection will likely be accpeted largely because there will not be found to be a credible alternative. This is indicate by the use of the word "incredible" to describe special creation. Now we know why your source changed the wording.

Finally, from the context you will see something else. The exact words chosen by your source for his quote mine were carefully done to change the subject of the sentence. In the original, the subject was natural selection and it was being compared to evolution. The quote cut away words such that the subject appeared to be changed to evolution itself. I cannot help but this that the cutting was deliberate.

---------------------------------------------

Note to JWI: Yet again, another example of why I will doubt quote mines until you pick one at a time and provide a link to where I can read it in context. These quotes just never seem to stand up to scrutiny.

 

The second quote is by Malcolm Muggeridge, who was not an evolutionist nor a scientist (he was an apparently quite unconventional British journalist who converted to Catholicism).

The third quote was originally either quote mined deceptively by Michael Behe himself or he copied it off someone else without checking its validity--I'm ashamed of him! The original quote:

So this is not an attack on evolution at all.

The final quote is once again quite old--from 1959. Let's recall that the DNA double helix was only proposed in 1953 and our knowledge of genetics and mechanisms of genome change has exponentially advanced since then. The source is Dr. Tahmisian, who is a physiologist and a Christian, and is quite anti-evolution.

So, once again, no real evolutionists are attacking evolution--only two anti-evolutionists.

Now can we please please please have a cessation of this time-wasting and duplicitous quote mining?!

 

UTEOTW & Petrel

Well, if there is anything that has been shown, it is that evolution is not an ESTABLISHED fact or science. For everyone who believes in evolution as you do, there are many who do not agree. And many of these people are highly educated and in the very fields relating to evolution.

Here is a very interesting and fair article between an evolutionist and someone who disagrees. Many of the arguments you two have made are included in this article. You might be interested in the responses.

http://www.trueorigin.org/spetner1.asp

When I said there are no transitional fossils, the answer I got was 'puncuated equilibrium", a truly laughable theory that itself proves that no transitional fossils are found. It actually argues that lack of evidence is proof of evolution. But you are ok with this silly theory.

When I argued that mutations cannot account for evolution, all I hear is the "B Cell". I would hope you have more proof than a cell mutating. It is adapting to it's enviornment, not transforming into a new and different type of cell. But yes, there is change in the DNA, so you can claim a beneficial mutation.

What a weak argument. Even evolutionists claim that bacteria is the most stable form of life and stopped evolving millions of years ago.

Else we wouldn't have any simple one celled forms around, would we??

The Cambrian Explosion doesn't bother you folks. According to you, it doesn't really even exist. You have explained it away. But it does exist and can be found in textbooks in universities all over the world. Many famous evolutionists have had tremendous problems with this.

But not you.

The sudden appearence of many thousands of life-forms agrees with the creation account in Genesis perfectly. Creationists do not have to come up with fantastic and unbelieveable theories to explain away REAL EVIDENCE.

But you do. Real doozies too.

No, no matter what evidence anyone presents, you roll merrily along, ignoring anyone who disagrees.
The evidence is never good enough, the writer wasn't qualified enough, on and on......

 

I do not believe in evolution. But . . .

To make this statement, you must really not understand the theory of evolution at all.

 

Yes, we've been over this stuff a bazillion times and it doesn't seem to make a difference.

 

Yep.....

A.F.

 

Well, lets just contemplate the biblical story and describe the epochs of the earth as they should be found according to it.

We will take it that the first six days will be a sudden start in the geological record. There will be a clear beginning of all life including birds, mammals, reptiles, bacteria, everything, in the foundational strata of the earth. Below that strata will be nothing but mineral, basic planetary composition stuff. Among the plants will be grasses, flowers, oaks, and so forth.

There will be a short paradisical period in which there are no predators or thorns. Instead, we will see the plants preserved with clear adaptions to providing food for animals and animals all adapted to eating plants. Presumably, even the larger sea animals will be eaters of seaweed and plankton exclusively. This period, being such a short time in the history of the earth, will be difficult to locate, relatively small number of fossils will be involved, but since its only about 10,000 years ago there is good hope to find the fossils fairly well preserved.

Then there will be a sudden appearance in the fossil record of flesh tearing teeth, thorns on plants, claws, various things of that sort associated with the curse and the fall of man.

There will be a several thousand year fossil record in the preflood period. During this time there should be an earlier period with all mankind found in only one part of the globe and then a spread of mankind to larger areas, but one is unable to say how far this spreading would have occurred. Farming and crops would be present in every era.


Then we would have the flood boundary, which would be discernable around all the earth.

Following the flood boundary, there would be a widespread reduction in the number of species around the world, to a number compatible with the carrying capacity of the ark. We then would see a new speciation of the earth, as basic kinds that were allowed to survive the flood even again population the earth with a fresh differentiation. This means, of course, we will see one set of cow varieties before the flood and a second set of cow varieties after the flood, for example. Because the clean animals in the ark had seven representatives and the unclean animals did not, we would expect the clean varieties of animals today to have about seven times the amount of genetic diversity compared to the genetic diverstiy within the unclean animals.

The initial patterns of animal life following the flood layer should show a spreading of migration over time from the point source of Mt. Ararat, and human migration again would follow that same pattern.

Following the world wide flood layer, we would expect to see evidence of a single era of mountain building, and we can expect to see Antarctica and Greenland accumulate a few thousand years of ice layers. The mountains that are freshly created after the flood will also show evidence of a few thousand years of erosion at the most.

In the heavens above, we would expect to now be able to see as far as, perhaps, 10,000 light years out. The pattern of the milky way in the sky would be starting to form and we would be able to judge that the stars are appearing to orbit something we cannot yet see. There would be no light from galaxies or even the relatively nearby Megallenic clouds. This means that most of our supernova studies would have never been done.

Perhaps this scenario could be further fleshed out by others. I leave it to the ICR and others to point to how these predicted findings are vindicated by scientific investigations.

 

"Well, if there is anything that has been shown, it is that evolution is not an ESTABLISHED fact or science. For everyone who believes in evolution as you do, there are many who do not agree. And many of these people are highly educated and in the very fields relating to evolution."

Not really.

If you look at the opinions of scientists, you will find that about 95% of all scientists accept evolution. About half of those are considered to be theistic evolutionists you should know before you claim that they are just a bunch of atheists out to destroy God. The percentages of acceptance are even higher in fileds specifically related to evolution.

So you should say that for every hundred biologists that I can find that accept evolution, you can find 1 or 2 who reject it. Even better, can you find me ANY biologists who reject evolution with there being an associated component of their interpretation of some book considered holy to them? [Before you get all up in arms about my phrasing, there are creationists who are not Christian. Just being inclusive so that you don't find me a creationist Muslim if I make the question too narrow.]

"Here is a very interesting and fair article between an evolutionist and someone who disagrees. Many of the arguments you two have made are included in this article. You might be interested in the responses. "

For completion, here is the entire article to which he is responding.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/

And here is a summary of both positions collated from emails between the two gentlemen.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness/spetner.html

"When I said there are no transitional fossils, the answer I got was 'puncuated equilibrium", a truly laughable theory that itself proves that no transitional fossils are found. It actually argues that lack of evidence is proof of evolution. But you are ok with this silly theory."

NOPE.

I have presented you with examples of transitionals. Here is a link to where I made a very long post detailing the transition from reptiles to mammals in a rich set of transistional fossils.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3155/4.html#000056

Should I dig out other examples or is the witness considered impeached?

This post list some transitional whales.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3155/3.html#000041

Here is a post where I direct you to an article on transitional birds.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3178/12.html#000177

Is THAT enough? Do I need to point to more ignored posts? Do I need to just start listing transitional series for you?

And as far as PE goes, I don't know if you just don't get it or if you are just ignoring what you have been told, but you are misrepresenting PE. I'll let Gould speak.

"When I argued that mutations cannot account for evolution, all I hear is the "B Cell". I would hope you have more proof than a cell mutating. It is adapting to it's enviornment, not transforming into a new and different type of cell. But yes, there is change in the DNA, so you can claim a beneficial mutation."

NOPE.

I have impeached your claims that we have never presented you with transitional fossils. Do I need to do the same for mutations?

I have presented you with several mechanisms that are capable for generating the new genetic material needed by evolution. I have provided you with examples of these mechanisms at work. And I have provided you with data that shows how these mechanisms operated in the past to give us specific sets of genes.

"What a weak argument. Even evolutionists claim that bacteria is the most stable form of life and stopped evolving millions of years ago."

Please tell me of a single biologists who says that bacteria have stopped evolving. PLEASE!

One of the first things that will be pointed out in many cases are examples of bacterial evolution today. Such concepts are enormously important in the medical field.

"Else we wouldn't have any simple one celled forms around, would we??"

Please do not take this the wrong way but...

This statement shows a clear lack of understanding about what evolution is and is not. You seem to think that it is some process of upward movement or progress. It is not. There are still bacteria around because bacteria are wonderfully adept at adapting to new and greatly varied niches. That they should all eventually evolve away from their single celled existance is a clear misunderstanding of the theory.

"The Cambrian Explosion doesn't bother you folks. According to you, it doesn't really even exist. You have explained it away. But it does exist and can be found in textbooks in universities all over the world. Many famous evolutionists have had tremendous problems with this. "

The Cambrian exists. Who said that it did not?

What was challenged was your assertion that "Evolutionists do not like to talk about the Cambrian Explosion. This is when many thousands of complicated life forms suddenly appeared, many exactly the same as they appear today. This supports creationism, but is a huge problem for evolution. There are no transitional forms whatsoever. "

What was pointed out to you was that what "exploded" in the Cambrian was an increase in the number of phyla or general, emphasis on general, body plans in the Cambrian. What was also pointed out was that at this point in time that the differences between many of the phyla was only very tiny details and that there even existed transitional forms between phyla. It was also pointed out that you will not find any land animals of any kind in the Cambrian nor will you find any ray finned fish or lobe finned fish or much of anything else you'd recognize. About the closest thing to a fish you'll fing is something along the lines of a lamprey and their relatives.

To continue the impeachment of the witness, here is a post where the Cambrian is introduced and transitions between phyla are discussed.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3178/12.html#000177

Here is another response to you on the Cambrian.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3178/12.html#000166

Should I continue?

"The sudden appearence of many thousands of life-forms agrees with the creation account in Genesis perfectly."

Please document for us where this happened.

"Creationists do not have to come up with fantastic and unbelieveable theories to explain away REAL EVIDENCE."

YEers seem to be unable to come up with ANY testible theories according to the response, or lack thereof, to posts of real information on this and other threads.

"No, no matter what evidence anyone presents, you roll merrily along, ignoring anyone who disagrees.
The evidence is never good enough, the writer wasn't qualified enough, on and on......"

You're right. Thus far the evidence for a young earth is still missing, so it is not good enough.

 

History explains all of this...

Not really.

History show us how man has utterly failed in HIS endeavors--and he continues to do so.

i.e. History repeats itself.

"In the beginning, God created...

Gen. 1:1-- we are still having difficulty interpreting the first message from God. What is there to interprete? We have a very plain who, what, how--we get all hung up in when.

Selah

Bro. James

 

And "whence".

The Scripture emphatically says :

Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Man (Adam) was created from the lifeless "dust of the ground" and not taken from a glorified chimpanzee.

HankD

 

UTEOTW

I am not sure of the exact author of this statement, but it came from the Access Excellence-The National Health Museum.

"Bacteria do not "evolve" (mutate) antibiotic resistance schemes. That is one of the "popular myths" that people like to cling to in order to convince themselves that what the government wants them to believe about antibiotics is actually true, which is a comforting thought to most people.

Antibiotic resistance schemes in bacteria have been around for millions of years. Why some bacteria carry genetic code that is not only useless to them, but slows them down in the struggle for survival, but is useful when in the presence of antibiotics is not fully understood, but that's what they do. The only thing that the presence of antibiotics changes is the percentage of incidence of antibiotic resistance in the bacterial population. This occurs in two ways.

First, when antibiotics are introduced, if there are any bacteria around that happen to have the resistance code for that antibiotic, they will survive and be able to pass it on to their daughter cells.

Secondly, bacteria are able to arrange their own genetic code, and when antibiotics are around they will manufacture extra copies of the antibiotic-resistance scheme gene code and pass it on to other bacteria in a process called transformation, that is somewhat a cross between eating and sexual reproduction, and may be the precursor to both our digestive and reproductive systems.

When the presence of antibiotics is removed, the reverse process kicks in and bacteria will either get rid of the resistance gene code, or the antibiotic-resistance bacteria will die out because they are overwhelmed by the stronger non-antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Again, a small section of the bacteria population will hold onto the "blueprint" for antibiotic resistance, even though it's not needed, for reasons we don't know. "

Here is the site from which this statement was taken.

http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Transformation_and_DNA.html

Bacteria DO mutate. Bacteria DO NOT evolve. These are two different subjects altogether. The same bacteria we find today can be found in the past. They have not evolved into altogether new forms. To argue so is to be dishonest.

What bacteria has EVOLVED (not mutated) into another type of form??

You are confusing the subject. When people speak of evolution, most think of forms changing, as a reptile evolving into a bird, or a bird evolving into a mammal.

To me, all the evidence I see is that certain bacteria have the ability to mutate to certain conditions. But these bacteria have always had this ability and always will. This is not evolution. It is really no different than tanning in the sun. It is adaptation.

But these cells remain the same cells. They do not become something new.

This is not evolution at all.

 

Please, quote for me the text on the page to which you linked that leads you to the conclusions that you posted. I see nothing there to support your assertions that bacteria do not evolve.

Perhaps it would be instructive to look at a particular case. Let's look specifically at the evolution of resistance to the antibiotic vancomycin.

Vancomycin works by attacking the D-alanyl-D-alanine in the cell wall of the bacterium. There are two genes, VanR and VanS, whose job is to make proteins to detect the presence of vancomycin. When detected, a cascade of other enzymes are created to protect the cell. VanH starts by converting precursor materials into D-lactate. VanA then joins the D-lactate with D-alanyl to make D-alanyl-D-lactate, instead of D-alanyl-D-alanine which is usually used in the cell wall. VanX hydrolyzes the D-alanyl-D-alanine that is still being made before it can be used in the cell wall.

This is the usual process, but there are variations. Some bacteria have VanB instead of VanA to make D-alanyl-D-lactate. Some bacteria replace the D-alanyl instead and make D-serine-D-alanine component instead of D-alanyl-D-lactate.

Once the resistance evolved, it was spread through plasmids. Let's also look a little at the exact changes that occurred.

E. DEMERTZI, M-F.I. PALEPOU, M.E. KAUFMANN, A. AVLAMIS and N. WOODFORD, Characterisation of VanA and VanB elements from glycopeptide-resistant Enterococcus faecium from Greece, J. Med. Microbiol. -- Vol. 50 (2001), 682-687.

So their VanA elements were different from the original gene by a new insert, a point mutation, and a deletion.

So we can look at what genetic changes happened to enable vancomycin resistance to evolve. So please explain to us how a new set of genes that form a complex pathway for dealing with a new threat does not constitute evolution?

 

As much as you argue that evolution is a scientific fact, rooted in real evidence, it is not so.

All of these many statements are from evolutionists themselves.

How can you be so sure of a theory that the very experts in this field have so many difficult problems to explain away??

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 subscribe." (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)

 

"But these cells remain the same cells. They do not become something new."

Let's quote from your link.

If you really want to know about bacteria evolving into something truely new, you only need to check out your own eucaryotic cells.

Eucaryotes are organisms like plants and animals and other organisms which have realtively complex internal structures when compared to the procaryotes (bacteria, archea). Part of the complexity of eucaryotes comes from the fact that they have organelles contained within them that do different cellular functions.

Some of the more important are the mitochondria and chloroplasts. These you may be familar with. Well, as it turns out, the organelles are actually symbiotic bacteria that have been gathered together into one cooperative organism. They have also lost their individuality over the years and now only function as part of the larger eucaryotic cell.

This is why, for example, mitochondria have their own DNA separate from the rest of the cell.

Here is a more indepth description.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?db=Books&rid=cell.section.25

 

"As much as you argue that evolution is a scientific fact, rooted in real evidence, it is not so.

All of these many statements are from evolutionists themselves.

How can you be so sure of a theory that the very experts in this field have so many difficult problems to explain away??"

How many quote mines have to be shown to be out of context before you give up on this terrible and deceitful practice? Have you not heard the proclamation against bearing false witness?

You could have been excused the first time you gave one of these dishonest quotes. Enough have been debunked now that you should know better.

If you wish for me to read a quote, give me one at a time and give me a link where I can go read the whole quote in its original context.

Quote mining is a waste of time and a dishonest waste at that.

Come on. The very page where you posted you copy and paste list contains a good half page debunking several new quotes. It is not like you could have missed.

I ask again, what are the ods, you think, that these guys are really being quoted accurately? You've even got Gould on that list. I have given you a direct response from him where is "infuriated" by being misquoted as you have done and he cannot tell if it is by "design" or "stupidity." As many times as I have run into those who practice this lying art and refuse to stop no matter how many claims are debunked, I suspect that it is more often the former.

It is also worth noting that you have been presented with numerous bits of real evidence for evolution which neither you nor any from your side seem to be able to explain outside of the light of common descent. Where are all these alternate interpretations which are always mentioned but which never seem to appear?

[ October 30, 2005, 04:26 PM: Message edited by: UTEOTW ]

 

UTEOTW

Who cares if the quotes are taken out of context??

Context of what??

All of these evolutionists are admitting tremendous problems with the theory. The fact that many continue to believe in evolution only proves that believe evolution as an act of will, not from scientific evidence. Many statements said this very thing.

"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 subscribe." (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)

There you go. At least this man is honest. He admits there is no evidence for evolution, but evolution MUST be accepted to agree with their already preconceived worldview.

And you do this too. You accept only evidence that supports what you want to believe, and reject any evidence against it.

You dislike this "quote mining". It is because you do not like the information being shared here. Most of it is from evolutionsists, scientists, chemists, geneticists, physicists, and others in the scientific community. If you want to ignore all these documented statements, fine. But that is all you are doing, ignoring evidence against evolution.

"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)


Alright, another honest man.


"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.

 

"Who cares if the quotes are taken out of context."

Anyone who cares about honesty.

If it is unimportant to you to avoid bearing false witness when forming an argument, then I guess that is between you and God.

But when you present quotes that have a different meaning than what the author intended, then you have not proved anything but your ability to butcher a quote for your own purposes.

If the author meant something different than the way you present the quote, then the quote adds nothing to the debate because it is not accurately reflecting what the person being quoted meant.

"Context of what??"

THE CONTEXT OF THE ORIGINAL STATEMENT. THE CONTEXT OF WHAT THE AUTHOR INTENDED.

If you destroy the intent by removing the context, then you have destroyed the very meaning of the quote.

"All of these evolutionists are admitting tremendous ..."

You have shown your inability to quote honesty.

So if you cannot give me a link to read your quote in its original context, then don't bother posting it because I will assume based on the evidence you have already provided that the quote is not accurate.

 

A question for you...

If you were debating an atheist and he quoted the Bible as saying "There is no God" would you just give up at that point?

Or would you go grab your Bible and show him that in context it says "The fool has said in his hearth 'There is no God.'"

Do you see the difference context makes?

Now, after that exchange, if he tried to prove another point by Bible quoting, would you at that point give in or would you then be alerted that his quotes must be checked?

Well the position that we find ourselves in here is that you have done the same as quoting the Bible to say "There is no God." You have been called for it and shown where you are wrong several times. But you now ask that we accept your additional quotes.

No way. Not without you providing the context for us.