General Evolution of Life

Introduction

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General Evolution Quotes

Mutations and Natural Selection

Homologies, Molecular, and Genetic Evolution

Speciation--patterns, mechanisms

Functional intermediates

Antibiotic resistance

Vestigial Organs

General Evolution:

"Mr. Bird is concerned with origins and the evidence relevant thereto. He is basically correct that evidence, or proof, of origins-of the universe, of life, of all of the major groups of life, of all of the minor groups of life, indeed of all of the species-is weak or nonexistent when measured on an absolute scale, as it always was and will always be." (Gareth Nelson [Chairman and Curator of the Department of Herpetology and Ichthyology, American Museum of Natural History, New York], "Preface," in W. R. Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited, page xii (Vol. 1, Nashville, TN: Regency, 1991).)

"Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." (Richard Dawkins [Atheist, Zoologist, and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University], The Blind Watchmaker, page 1 (1991, London: Penguin Books, 1986).)

"Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." (F.H.C. Crick [Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, Nobel laureate 1962, Professor at the Salk Institute, USA], What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, page 138 (1990, London: Penguin Books, 1988).)

"Natural selection is not the only process that changes organisms over time. But it is the only process that seemingly designs organisms over time." (Stephen Pinker, How The Mind Works, (W.W. Norton & Company, 1997).)

“To invent from nothing an animal that can exist (I mean to say that can physiologically grow, nourish itself, resist the environment and predators, and reproduce itself) is an almost impossible feat. It is a project that by far exceeds our rational abilities and also that of our best computers: we still know too little about existing vital mechanisms to create others, even only on paper. In other words, evolution has proven itself to be enormously more intelligent than the best evolutionists. Every year that passes confirms the fact that the mechanisms of life are not exceptions to the laws of chemistry and physics, but at the same time the furrow which separates us from the ultimate comprehension of vital phenomena grows ever wider. It is not that problems are not solved and questions not answered, but every solved problem generates dozens of new ones and the process gives no sign of ending.” (Primo Levi, "Inventing an Animal", Other People’s Trades (1989, Summit Books, 1985).)

"It is now possible, however, to redescribe the evolutionary process in the language of modern genetics. Evolution can be broadly defined as a change in the heredity of a population. Population genetics permits an even more precise definition: evolution is any change in gene frequency in a population." (Edward O. Wilson [Honorary Curator in Entomology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University], Life on Earth, page 772 (1975, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 1973).)

"No amount of argument, or clever epigram, can disguise the inherent improbability of orthodox [Darwinian] theory; but most biologists feel it is better to think in terms of improbable events than not to think at all; there will always be a few who feel in their bones a sneaking sympathy with Samuel Butler's skepticism." (Sir James Gray, "The Case for Natural Selection," Nature, Vol. 173: 227 (February 6, 1954).)
"The theory of the transmutation of species is a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, and mischievous in its tendency." (Louis Agassiz)

"The immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought of as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called neo-Darwinian theory ... These objections to current neo-Darwinian theory are very widely held among biologists generally; and we must on no account, I think, make light of them. The very fact that we are having this conference is evidence that we are not making light of them." (Sir Peter Medawar [National Institute for Medical Research in London] at the "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution," conference at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia (April 25-26, 1962).)

"The existence of design and nature is a fact which must certainly be taken seriously ... [because] in every main branch of science- physics, geophysics, astronomy, chemistry, biology- we are faced by the same surprising fact.... Nearly everywhere it [nature] shows the signs.... of something that we can only think of in terms of ingenuity and deliberate design." (Robert E.D. Clark [PhD in Organic Chemistry, Cambridge University], The Universe: Plan or Accident?, pages 151, 181 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1972).)

"I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution because of its ability to account for any property of living beings (the long neck of the giraffe, for example). I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin's theory.... I do not think that they do. To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all." (H.S. Lipson, A Physicist Looks at Evolution, Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31: 138 (1980).)

"Evolution is baseless and quite incredible." (Dr. Ambrose Fleming [President, British Assoc. Advancement of Science], "The Unleashing of Evolutionary Thought".)

"Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from preexisting species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence." (Douglas J. Futuyma, Science on Trial, page 197 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983).)

"The only competing explanation for the order we all see in the biological world is the notion of Special Creation." (Niles Eldridge [PhD., Palaeontologist and evolutionist, American Museum of Natural History].)

"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed." (N.H. Nilson, [famous botanist and evolutionist].)

"[T]he origin of no innovation of large evolutionary significance is known." (R. Wesson, Beyond Natural Selection, page 45 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).)

"I have often thought how little I should like to prove organic evolution in a court of law." (E. White, in his presidential address to the Linnean Society, 1966.)

"A chicken is really the chicken genes' way of making more copies of themselves." (E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975).)

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." (Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution," American Biology Teacher, Vol. 35: 125-129.)

"The subject of evolution occupies a special, and paradoxical, place within biology as a whole. While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky's dictum that 'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution', most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. 'Evolution' would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one." (Introduction in a special issue on evolution, BioEssays (December 2000).)

"It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To try to figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary arguments can usefully be used as hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust them too much. It is all too easy to make mistaken inferences unless the process involved is already very well understood." (Francis H.C. Crick [Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, Nobel laureate 1962, Professor, Salk Institute, USA], What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, pages 138-139 (1990, London: Penguin Books, 1988).)

"At the moment, I can't find any rational argument to knock down the view which argues for conversion to God. We used to have an open mind; now we realize that the only logical answer to life is creation--and not accidental random shuffling." (C. Wickramasinghe [Professor of Applied Math & Astronomy, University College, Cardiff], Interview in London Daily Express (August 14, 1981).)

"Curious about why the museum would go so far, and no further, I talked with Roger Miles, an authority on pollen who is also head of the department of public services. Many of the troublesome questions that have emerged about evolution turned out to be beyond the scope of this exhibition:
Does it have anything to say about the gaps in the fossil record?
No.
Does it present any examples of gradual evolution of a series of fossils?
No.
Does it tackle the problem caused by the scarcity of transitional forms?
No.
Does it explain how life emerged from inorganic chemicals?
No.
Does it offer an explanation for the explosion of complex life forms at the beginning of the Cambrian?
No.
Nor the origin of the genetic code?
No.
Does it concern itself with the problems faced by breeders that there is a genetic limit to change?
Breeding is mentioned in the way that Darwin saw it, as an analogy to evolution.
What does it say about the origin of flight?
Nothing.
Does it touch common patterns of form, such as segmentation?
No.
What about Goldschmidt's hopeful monsters-embryonic restructuring?
Nothing.
Anything about punctuated equilibria?
No."
(Roger Niles, "The Neck of the Giraffe", Interview by Francis Hitching.)
"On reading The Origin of Species, I found that Darwin was much less sure himself than he is often represented to be; the chapter entitled "Difficulties of the Theory" for example, shows considerable self-doubt. As a physicist, I was particularly intrigued by his comments on how the eye would have arisen." (H. S. Lipson, "A Physicist's View of Darwin's Theory", Evolution Trends in Plants, Vol. 2 (1): 6 (1988).)

"I have quoted some voices of dissent coming from biologists in eminent academic positions. There have been many others, just as critical of the orthodox doctrine, though not always as outspoken--and their number is steadily growing. Although these criticisms have made numerous breaches in the walls, the citadel stills stands--mainly as said before, because nobody has a satisfactory alternative to offer. The history of science shows that a well-established theory can take a lot of battering and get itself into a tangle of contradictions--the fourth phase of 'Crisis and Doubt' in the historic cycle and yet still be upheld by the establishment until a breakthrough occurs, initiating a new departure, and the start of a new cycle."
"But that event is not yet in sight. In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of mutation plus natural selection--quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology." (Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up, pages 184-185 (New York: Random House, 1978).)

"We have repeatedly emphasized the fundamental problems posed for the biologist by the fact of life's complex organization. We have seen that organization requires work for its maintenance and that the universal quest for food is in part to provide the energy needed for this work. But the simple expenditure of energy is not sufficient to develop and maintain order. A bull in a china shop performs work, but he neither creates nor maintains organization. The work needed is particular work; it must follow specifications; it requires information on how to proceed." (George Gaylord Simpson [Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University] and William S. Beck [Harvard University], Life: An Introduction To Biology, page 466 (2nd ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957).)

"Neo-Darwinism is an attempt to reconcile Mendelian genetics, which says that organisms do not change with time, with Darwinism, which claims they do." (Lynn Margulis, in John Brockman, The Third Culture, page 133 (Simon and Schuster, 1995).)

"The neo-Darwinist is now reaching the point of dignity in the history of science that the Ptolemaic system in astronomy, the epicycle system, reached long ago. We know that it does not work. And that is interesting. Because from the actual structure of the chromosome we can demonstrate that the human species did not come from a progressive humanisation of a pre-human." (Quoted from Conference Paper dated October 1975, Professor Jerome Lejeune [Chair of Fundamental Genetics, University of Paris, France], The Beginning of Life.)

"Any living being possesses an enormous amount of "intelligence," very much more than is necessary to build the most magnificent of cathedrals. Today, this "intelligence" is called "information," but it is still the same thing. It is not programmed as in a computer, but rather it is condensed on a molecular scale in the chromosomal DNA or in that of any other organelle in each cell. This "intelligence" is the sine qua non of life. If absent, no living being is imaginable. Where does it come from? This is a problem which concerns both biologists and philosophers and, at present, science seems incapable of solving it."
"When we consider a human work, we believe we know where the `intelligence' which fashioned it comes from; but when a living being is concerned, no one knows or ever knew, neither Darwin nor Epicurus, neither Leibniz nor Aristotle, neither Einstein nor Parmenides. An act of faith is necessary to make us adopt one hypothesis rather than another. Science, which does not accept any credo, or in any case should not, acknowledges its ignorance, its inability to solve this problem which, we are certain, exists and has reality. If to determine the origin of information in a computer is not a false problem, why should the search for the information contained in cellular nuclei be one?"
"Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false problems."
"Today, our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the weaknesses of the interpretations and extrapolations that theoreticians put forward or lay down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs." (Pierre-Paul Grasse [Editor of the 28-volume "Traite de Zoologie," former Chair of Evolution, Sorbonne University, ex-president of the French Academie des Sciences], Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation, pages 2, 7, 8 (1977, New York, NY: Academic Press, 1973).)

"There is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged with the current conception of biology." (M. Schutzenberger [Mathematician], "Algorithms and the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution," at P.S. Moorehead and M. M. Kaplan, eds., "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution" symposium, page 75 (Philadelphia: Wistar Institute Press, 1967).)

"The concept of organic evolution is very highly prized by biologists, for many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle. This is probably the reason why severe methodological criticism employed in other departments of biology has not yet been brought to bear on evolutionary speculation." (Edwin G. Conklin,[Professor of Biology, Princeton University, USA], Man Real and Ideal, , page 147 (Scribner, 1943), in N. Macbeth, Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason, pages 126-127 (Boston, MA: Gambit, 1971).)

"'IT IS TOTALLY WRONG. It's wrong like infectious medicine was wrong before Pasteur. It's wrong like phrenology is wrong. Every major tenet of it is wrong,' said the outspoken biologist Lynn Margulis about her latest target: the dogma of Darwinian evolution.... Margulis was now denouncing the modern framework of the century-old theory of Darwinism, which holds that new species build up from an unbroken line of gradual, independent, random variations. Margulis is not alone in challenging the stronghold of Darwinian theory, but few have been so blunt. Disagreeing with Darwin resembles creationism to the uninformed; therefore the stigma that any taint of creationism can bring to a scientific reputation, coupled with the intimidating genius of Darwin, have kept all but the boldest iconoclasts from doubting Darwinian theory in public. What excites Margulis is the remarkable incompleteness of general Darwinian theory. Darwinism is wrong by what it omits and by what it incorrectly emphasizes. A number of microbiologists, geneticists, theoretical biologists, mathematicians, and computer scientists are saying there is more to life than Darwinism. They do not reject Darwin's contribution; they simply want to move beyond it. I call them the `postdarwinians.'" (Kevin Kelly [Executive Editor of Wired], "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines," pages 470-471 (1995, London: Fourth Estate, 1994).)

"In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and coadaptation which justly excites our admiration." (Charles R. Darwin [English naturalist and founder of the modern theory of evolution], The Origin of Species, page 18 (6th ed., London: Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1872).)

"During the period of nearly universal rejection, direct evidence for continental drift-that is, the data gathered from rocks exposed on our continents-was every bit as good as it is today..... In the absence of a plausible mechanism, the idea of continental drift was rejected as absurd. The data that seemed to support it could always be explained away.... The old data from continental rocks, once soundly rejected, have been exhumed and exalted as conclusive proof of drift. In short, we now accept continental drift because it is the expectation of a new orthodoxy. I regard this tale as typical of scientific progress. New facts, collected in old ways under the guidance of old theories, rarely lead to any substantial revision of thought. Facts do not 'speak for themselves', they are read in the light of theory." (Stephen Jay Gould [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University], "The Validation of Continental Drift," in Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History, page 161 (1991, London: Penguin Books, 1978).)

"Darwin's book-On the Origin of Species-I find quite unsatisfactory: it says nothing about the origin of species; it is written very tentatively; with a special chapter on "Difficulties on theory"; and it includes a great deal of discussion on why evidence for natural selection does not exist in the fossil record. Darwin, I think, has been ill-served by the strength of his supporters." (H.S. Lipson [Professor of Physics, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK], "Origin of species," in "Letters," New Scientist, page 452 (May 14, 1981).)

"Most observers see the current situation in evolutionary theory--where the object is to explain how, not if, life evolves--as bordering on total chaos." (Niles Eldredge, "An Ode to Adaptive Transformation", Nature, Vol. 296: 508 (1982).)

"There is absolutely no disagreement among professional biologists on the fact that evolution has occurred .... But the theory of how evolution occurs is quite another matter, and is the subject of intense dispute." (Douglas Futuyma, "Evolution as Fact and Theory", Bios, Vol. 56: 3, 8 (1985).)

"Since we hardly know anything about the major types of organization, suggestions, and suggestions only, can be made. How can one confidently assert that one mechanism rather than another was at the origin of the creation of the plans of organization, if one relies entirely upon imagination to find a solution? Our ignorance is so great that we dare not even assign with any accuracy an ancestral stock to the phyla Protozoa, Arthropoda, Mollusca, and Vertebrata. The lack of concrete evidence relative to the "heyday" of evolution seriously impairs any transformist theory. In any case, a shadow is cast over the genesis of the fundamental structural plans and we are unable to eliminate it."
"The united efforts of paleontology and molecular biology, the latter stripped of its dogmas, should lead to the discovery of the exact mechanism of evolution, possibly without revealing to us the causes of the orientations of lineages, of the finalities of structures, of living functions, and of cycles. Perhaps in this area biology can go no farther: the rest is metaphysics." (Pierre-Paul Grasse [Editor of the 28-volume "Traite de Zoologie," former Chair of Evolution, Sorbonne University and ex-president of the French Academie des Sciences], Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation, page 17, 246 (New York, NY: Academic Press, 1977).)

"I mean the stories, the narratives about change over time. How the dinosaures became extinct, how the mammals evolved, where man came from. These seem to me to be little more than story-telling. And this is the result about cladistics because as it turns out, as it seems to me, all one can learn about the history of life is learned from systematics, from groupings one finds in nature. The rest of it is story-telling of one sort or another. We have access to the tips of a tree, the tree itself is a theory and people who pretend to know about the tree and to describe what went on with it, how the branches came off and the twigs came off are, I think, telling stories." (Dr. Colin Patterson [Senior Palaeontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London], in an interview on the BBC television (March 4, 1982).)

"Those searching for specific information useful in constructing phylogenies of mammalian taxa will be disappointed." (R. Eric Lombard, "Review of Evolutionary Principles of the Mammalian Middle Ear, Gerald Fleischer," Evolution, Vol. 33: 1230 (December 1979).)

Mutations and Natural Selection

“It remains a mystery how the undirected process of mutation, combined with natural selection, has resulted in the creation of thousands of new proteins with extraordinarily diverse and well optimized functions. This problem is particularly acute for tightly integrated molecular systems that consist of many interacting parts…” (Joseph W. Thornton and Rob DeSalle, "Gene Family Evolution and Homology: Genomics Meets Phylogenetics," Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Vol. 1: 41–73 (2000).)

“It is indeed true that natural selection cannot build any feature in which intermediate steps do not confer a net benefit on the organism. As Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species, ‘If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.’ A century and a half later, there is still no such case. Behe certainly fails to make one.” (Jerry Coyne, "The Great Mutator,"
The New Republic (June 14, 2007).)

“Just explaining the advantage of a structure does not, however, tell us how it might have evolved.” (Jon Greenberg [Revision Editor], BSCS Biology: A Molecular Approach, page 452 (Glencoe-McGraw Hill, 2001).)

"Micromutations do occur, but the theory that these alone can account for evolutionary change is either falsified, or else it is an unfalsifiable, hence metaphysical theory. I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But this is what has happened in biology ... I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science. When this happens many people will pose the question: How did this ever happen?" (S. Lovtrup, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, page 422 (London: Croom Helm).)

"It is difficult to imagine how competition between organisms that have been disabled by one, or several, mutations(s), such as exemplified by genetic diseases [references deleted] could possibly be the mechanism of evolution. Disabling mutations can lead to only degernation of organisms less well-equipped to survive than the nonmutated parents. The whole concept that variation per se, together with competitive selection, is sufficient to generate evolution is a hypothesis that is simply not based on facts." (H.R. Lerner, "Introduction to the Response of Plants to Environmental Stresses," in Plant Responses to Environmental Stresses: From Phytohormones to Genome Reorganization, page 17 (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1999).)

"It is true that it is not the opinion of the majority of authors, but science is not a matter of majority, but rather, what is a better approximation of reality." (H.R. Lerner, "Introduction to the Response of Plants to Environmental Stresses," in Plant Responses to Environmental Stresses: From Phytohormones to Genome Reorganization, page 18 (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1999).)

"...It is true that nobody thus far has produced a new species or genus, etc., by macromutations. It is equally true that nobody has produced even a species by the selection of micromutations.... Neither has anyone witnessed the production of a new specimen of a higher taxonomic category by selection of micromutants." (Richard B. Goldschmidt, American Scientist, Vol. 40: 97 (1952).)

"Generation after generation, through countless cell divisions, the genetic heritage of living things is scrupulously preserved in DNA ... All of life depends on the accurate transmission of information. As genetic messages are passed through generations of dividing cells, even small mistakes can be life-threatening... if mistakes were as rare as one in a million, 3000 mistakes would be made during each duplication of the human genome. Since the genome replicates about a million billion times in the course of building a human being from a single fertilised egg, it is unlikely that the human organism could tolerate such a high rate of error. In fact, the actual rate of mistakes is more like one in 10 billion." (Miroslav Radman and Robert Wagner, "The High Fidelity of DNA Duplication", Scientific American, Vol. 299 (2): 24, 40-44 (August 1988).)

"It is good to keep in mind ... that nobody has ever succeeded in producing even one new species by the accumulation of micromutations. Darwin's theory of natural selection has never had any proof, yet it has been universally accepted." (R. Goldschmidt [PhD, DSc Professor of Zoology, University of California], Material Basis of Evolution (Yale Univ. Press).)

"It is fashionable in modern evolutionary genetics to state: "The raw materials of evolution arise by mutation and recombination" and then to proceed to discuss how alleles may change frequencies under directional or nondirectional forces." (Max Levitan, "Proof of an Adaptive Linkage Association", Science, Vol. 134 (3490): 1617-1619 (November 17, 1961).)

"[w]hether the slightly deleterious hypothesis can explain the patterns of molecular polymorphism and evolution is subject of debate." (Wen Hsuing Li, Molecular Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc., 1997).)

"Viable mutations with major morphological or physiological effects are exceedingly rare and usually infertile; the chance of two identical rare mutant individuals arising in sufficient propinquity to produce offspring seems too small to consider as a significant evolutionary event. These problems of viable "hopeful monsters" are exacerbated when considering evolution near the Precambrian - Cambrian boundary, when new higher taxa appeared at such a rate that we have estimated that 1 in 40 or so species represented a new class. This figure is arguable, but it is clear that the process causing evolutionary novelty could not have depended on exceedingly rare events. Explanations of the Cambrian radiation of invertebrate marine phyla and classes have focused on species selection or traditional microevolutonary processes. The rapidity of and low species numbers during the radiation render these explanations untenable." (D.H. Erwin and J.W. Valentine, "Hopeful monsters, Transposons, and the Metazoan Radiation", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 81: 5482-5483 (September 1984).)

"When speaking here of Darwinism, I shall speak always of today's theory that is Darwin's own theory of natural selection supported by the Mendelian theory of heredity, by the theory of the mutation and recombination of genes in a gene pool, and by the decoded genetic code. This is an immensely impressive and powerful theory. The claim that it completely explains evolution is of course a bold claim, and very far from being established." (Karl R. Popper [Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of London], "Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind," Dialectica, Vol. 32 (3-4): 339-355 (1978).)

"The primary problem with the [modern evolutionary] synthesis is that its makers established natural selection as the director of adaptive evolution by eliminating competing explanations, not by providing evidence that natural selection among 'random' mutations could, or did, account for observed adaptation (Box 2). Mayr remarked, 'As these non-Darwinian explanations were refuted during the synthesis ... natural selection automatically became the universal explanation of evolutionary change (together with chance factors).' Depriving the synthesis of plausible alternatives, which seemed such a triumph, in fact sowed the seeds of its faults."
"The 'modern evolutionary synthesis' convinced most biologists that natural selection was the only directive influence on adaptive evolution. Today, however, dissatisfaction with the synthesis is widespread, and creationists and antidarwinians are multiplying. The central problem with the synthesis is its failure to show (or to provide distinct signs) that natural selection of random mutations could account for observed levels of adaptation." (Egbert G. Leigh Jr. [Biologist, Smithsonian Institution, USA], "The Modern Synthesis, Ronald Fisher and Creationism," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 14 (12): 495-498 (December 1999).)

"If I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish.... I would give nothing for the theory of natural selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent." (F. Darwin, ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin", page 210 (London: John Murray, 1888).)

"The [peppered-moth] experiments show the effects of predation on the survival of the dark and of the normal forms of the Peppered Moth in a clean environment and in one polluted by smoke. The experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection--or survival of the fittest--in action, but they do not show evolution in progress, for however the population may alter in their content of light, intermediate or dark forms, all the moths remain from beginning to end Biston Betularia." (L. Harrison Matthews [FRS], in the introduction to Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, page xi (1971 ed., London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1859).)

"Gene duplication has generally been viewed as a necessary source of material for the origin of evolutionary novelties, but it is unclear how often gene duplications arise and how frequently they evolve new functions."
"The vast majority of gene duplicates are silenced within a few million years, with the survivors subsequently experiencing a strong purifying selection."
"It is unclear how duplicate genes successfully navigate an evolutionary trajectory from an initial state of complete redundancy, wherein one copy is likely to be expendable, to a stable situation in which both copies are maintained by natural selection. Nor is it clear how often these events occur."
"Because the vast majority of mutations affecting fitness are deleterious and because gene duplicates are generally assumed to be functionally redundant at the time of origin, virtually all models predict that the usual fate of a duplicate-gene pair is the nonfunctionalization of one copy."
"[there is a] rather narrow window of opportunity for evolutionary exploration by gene duplicates." (M. Lynch and J. S. Conery, "The Evolutionary Fate and Consequence of Duplicate Genes," Science, Vol. 290: 1151-1155 (Nov 10, 2000).)

"We can here consider an oxymoron commonly used by evolutionists -- "selection for this or that trait". Aside from the fact that selection pressure is modeled negatively in mathematical models (see (7), above), we can now see, in this quite reasonable soft selection model, that no phenotypic trait could be isolated as showing a character state that is favored by natural selection (any more than any other one evolving simultaneously). Selection for something can only be modeled in cases like artificial selection, where human agency repeatedly applies truncation selection on a given trait. Using the monkey at keyboards analogy again (see (7), above), we could model selection for something by having the inspection of the random letters be informed by a pre-given text. There is one other possibility where selection for could be used, but neoDarwinians are not likely to embrace it. It would be possible to have a single-gene Darwinism in which traits are viewed as evolving one at a time, sequentially, with the information from each new allele being assimilated into a developmental system which oversees the construction of the phenotype. The problem with this for Darwinians is that this privileges the ontogenetic system as the site of all the action, with selection just providing tokens or memory bench marks cuing that system into modulating some developmental processes. This view would also go against the current enthusiasm for genetic reductionism shown in phrases like "this trait is coded for by gene X", and would make nonsense of the popular Dawkins / Dennett genic reductionism." (Stanley N. Salthe [Ph.D. Zoology, Columbia University, also former Professor Emeritus, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and visiting scientist in Biological Sciences, Binghamton University], in the essay "Analysis and Critique of the Concept of Natural Selection (and of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution) in Respect to its Suitability as part of Modernism's Origination Myth, as Well as of its Ability to Explain Organic Evolution".)

"In other words, natural selection over the long run does not seem to improve a species' chance of survival but simply enables it to "track," or keep up with, the constantly changing environment." (Richard C. Lewontin [Professor of Zoology, University of Chicago, and co-editor of the American Naturalist], "Adaptation," Scientific American, Vol. 239 (3): 159 (September 1978).)

"The conventional explanation, that random changes accumulate one locus at a time, is unconvincing on both functional and probabilistic grounds..." (James Shapiro [The University of Chicago], Molecular Strategies in Biological Evolution: Papers Presented at a Conference Held on June 27-29, 1998 in New York (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences) (Rockefeller University, New York, NY: New York Academy of Sciences, 1999).)

"To get the actual mosaic you need a designer. The designer corresponds to natural selection."
"Language learning is not programming: parents provide their children with sentences of English, not rules of English. We suggest that natural selection was the programmer." (S. Pinker and P. Bloom, "Natural Language and Natural Selection", Behavior and Brain Sciences, Vol. 13 (4) (December 1990).)

"A peculiarity of Darwinism, both in biology and in other fields, is that it explains too much. It is very hard to imagine a condition of things which could not be explained in terms of natural selections. If the state of various elements at a given moment is such and such then these elements have displayed their survival value under the existing circumstances, and that is that. Natural selection explains why things are as they are: It does not enable us, in general, to say how they will change and vary. It is in a sense rather a historical than a predictive principle and, as is well known, it is rather a necessary than a sufficient principle for modern biology." (D.G. MacRae, "Darwinism and the Social Sciences," in S.A. Barnett, ed., A Century of Darwin, page 304 (1962, London: Mercury Books, 1958).)

"Finally, there is the question of natural selection. In one sense, the influence of the theory of natural selection on sociology was enormous. It created for a while, in fact, a branch of sociology. It seems now to be felt that the influence on sociology of the doctrine of 'survival of the fittest' was theoretically speaking, unfortunate, chiefly because it seemed to offer an explanatory short cut, and encouraged social theorists to aspire to be Darwin's when probably they should have been trying to be Linnaeuses or Cuviers. As Professor MacRae points out, in sociology the principle explains too much. Any state of affairs known to exist or to have existed can be explained by the operation of natural selection. Like Hegel's dialectic and Dr. Chasuble's sermon on The Meaning of Manna in the Wilderness, it can be made to suit any situation." (J.W. Burrow, Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory, page 115 (1968, London: Cambridge University Press, 1966).)

"The point of my letter (Science's Compass, 30 July, p. 663), which perhaps was not well articulated, is that there is one hypothesis, central to evolution, that remains barely tested-that evolution proceeds through the process of survival and reproduction of the fittest." (David W. Hogg [Cosmologist, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, USA], Science, Vol. 286 (26): 167 (November 1999).)

"Although the importance of speciation is clear and convincing, the processes involved are, for the most part, unknown." (Guy L. Bush, "What Do We Really Know About Speciation?" in R. Milkman, Ed., Perspectives on Evolution, page 119 (Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer, 1976).)

"In all the thousands of fly-breeding experiments carried out all over the world for more than fifty years, a distinct new species has never been seen to emerge ... or even a new enzyme." (Gordon Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery, pages 34, 38 (New York: Harper and Row, 1983).)

"The best clincher is extinction. For every species now in existence, roughly ninety-nine have become extinct. The question of why they have become extinct is of enormous importance to evolutionists. It has been studied by many men, but a convincing answer has not been found. It remains unclear why any given species has disappeared. The discussion of survival of the fittest showed that the phrase led to circular reasoning; you survive because you are fit, and you are fit because you survive. Discussion of extinction is beset by a similar danger. It is all too easy to say that a species becomes extinct because it fails to adapt, while establishing its failure to adapt only by its becoming extinct: in other words, you die because you are unfit and you are unfit because you die." (David Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol. 50 (1): 22-29 (January 1979).)

"At the present time the way in which mutation and selection (survival of the fittest) has worked over evolutionary time no longer seems to apply to Homo sapiens." (Daniel E. Koshland Jr. [Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley], "The Seven Pillars of Life," Science, Vol. 295 (5563): 2215-2216 (March 22, 2002).)

"...[natural selection] states that the fittest individuals survive in a population (defined as those which leave the most offspring) will leave the most offspring." (C.H. Waddington, "Evolutionary Adaptation" (1960).)

"After this step-wise elimination, only one possibility remains: the Darwinian theory of natural selection, whether or not coupled with Mendelism, is false. I have already shown that the arguments advanced by the early champions were not very compelling, and that there are now considerable numbers of empirical facts which do not fit with the theory. Hence, to all intents and purposes, the theory has been falsified, so why has it not been abandoned? ...I think the answer to this question is that current evolutionists follow Darwin's example - they refuse to accept falsifying evidence." (Soren Lovtrup [Professor of Zoo-Physiology, University of Umea in Sweden], Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (University of California: Croom Helm, 1987).)

"Consider the well-known example of industrial melanism in the British peppered moth, Biston Betularia. Few high school biology texts fail to mention this study yet few students (and almost no Creationists) seem to understand what it is that this example demonstrates.... Clearly, environmental pressures, through natural selection, can effect rapid shifts in the genotype of a population. In this case the spontaneously produced variation that proved to be advantageous to the species' survival was a genetic mutation. This is evolution in action, under observation. What it is not (nor was it ever claimed to be despite what one may find in Creationist literature) is an example of the evolution of a new species." (M. Archer, "The Reality of Organic Evolution," in D.R. Selkirk and F.J. Burrows, eds., Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin, pages 30-31 (Kensington, NSW, Australia: New South Wales University Press, 1988).)

"[the probability of the coincidental formation of Cytochrome-C, an essential protein for survival] is as unlikely as the possibility of a monkey writing the history of humanity on a typewriter without making any mistakes."
"In essence, the probability of the formation of a Cytochrome-C sequence is as likely as zero. That is, if life requires a certain sequence, it can be said that this has a probability likely to be realised once in the whole universe. Otherwise some metaphysical powers beyond our definition must have acted in its formation. To accept the latter is not appropriate for the scientific goal. We thus have to look into the first hypothesis." (Ali Demirsoy, Kalitim ve Evrim (Inheritance and Evolution), page 61 (Ankara: Meteksan Publishing Co., 1984).)

"In light of what we know about evolution, it seems most likely that our extraordinary cognitive capacity was somehow acquired as a unit, rather than in a gradual process of modular accretion, for it is plainly wrong to regard natural selection as a long-term fine-tuning of specific characteristics, however much we like the resulting stories. And it's important to remember that even today we are still testing the limits of this generalized capacity that makes so much possible..." (Ian Tattersall, in the Letters, Scientific American, page 12 (April 2002), Reply to letter by Dudley Miles, concerning Tattersall's article "How We Came to Be Human," Scientific American, pages 56-63 (December 2001).)

"There is no doubt that natural selection is a mechanism, that it works. It has been repeatedly demonstrated by experiment. There is no doubt at all that it works. But the question of whether it produces new species is quite another matter. No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever gotten near it and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question: how a species originates and it is there that natural selection seems to be fading out and chance mechanisms of one sort or another are being invoked." (Colin Patterson, on the subject of 'Cladistics' in an interview with Peter Franz on the British Broadcasting Corporation (March 4, 1982).)

"Mutations have a very limited 'constructive capacity'; this is why the formation of hair by mutation of reptilian scales seems to be a phenomenon of infinitesimal probability; the formation of mammae by mutation of reptilian integumentary glands is hardly more likely."
"Mutations, in time, occur incoherently. They are not complementary to one another, nor are they cumulative in successive generations toward a given direction. They modify what preexists, but they do so in disorder, no matter how. ... As soon as some disorder, even slight, appears in an organized being, sickness, then death follow. There is no possible compromise between the phenomenon of life and anarchy."
"Directed by all-powerful selection, chance becomes a sort of providence, which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshiped." (Pierre-Paul Grasse [former President of the French Academie des Sciences and editor of the 35 volume "Traite de Zoologie"], Evolution of Living Organisms (New York, NY: Academic Press, 1977).)

"One of the most important questions in evolution is: How can new adaptations originate? This is a difficult question, because most evolutionary novelties, such as the eye or the wing, involve the orchestrated expression of many different loci, a number of which act in the expression of multiple phenotypes. Conventional explanations that randomly generated advantageous changes in complex characters accumulate one locus at a time are unconvincing on both functional and probabilistic grounds, because there is too much interconnectivity and too many degrees of mutational freedom. (James A. Shapiro, "Genome System Architecture and Natural Genetic Engineering in Evolution," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 870: 23-25 (May 18, 1999).)

"...the reasons for rejecting Darwin's proposal were many, but first of all that many innovations cannot possibly come into existence through accumulation of many small steps, and even if they can, natural selection cannot accomplish it, because incipient and intermediate stages are not advantageous." (S. Lovtrup, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, page 275 (Beckenham, Kent, U.K.: Croom Helm Ltd., 1987).)

"One escape hatch yet exists for spontaneous generation. Why need the event have been probable? We can just stare at the odds, shrug, and note with thanks how lucky we were... After all, improbable events occur all the time." (Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to Creation of Life on Earth.)

"Michael Behe has done a top notch job of explaining and illuminating one of the most vexing problems in biology: the origin of the complexity that permeates all of life on this planet. Professor Behe selects an answer that falls outside of science: the original creation of life by an intelligent designer. Many scientists, myself included, will prefer to continue the search for an answer within science. Nonetheless, this book should be on the essential reading list of all those who are interested in the question of where we came from, as it presents the most thorough and clever presentation of the design argument that I have seen." (Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptics Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth.)

"There are six major gaps in our knowledge and understanding of natural selection: (1) Why does natural selection occur? What are the biological reasons for the process, and what conditions favor natural selection? (2) How does it occur? What are the mechanisms of natural selection? What is the form of the separation line or selection function? (3) What kinds of traits are most likely to be affected by natural selection? (4) What is the effect of simultaneous natural selection on many traits, some of them intercorrelated with each other? What is the effect of genetic interactions among traits? What is the effect of phenotypic (selective) interactions among traits? Is there any limit to the number of traits that affect fitness, and does this vary with habitat? (5) Given that there is known fitness variation, what are the evolutionary dynamics and equilibrium configurations (if any) of the traits? (6) Is there a relationship between the presence of demonstrable natural selection and genera that are currently radiating rapidly?" (J.A. Endler, Natural Selection in the Wild, page 247 ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).)

"Professor Eiseley presents a detailed argument designed to show that Darwin probably derived the idea of natural selection from two articles written by his acquaintance Edward Blyth and published in The Magazine of Natural History in 1835 and 1837. If these articles were in fact the source of Darwin's theory, Darwin was guilty of grave intellectual dishonesty. In the present writer's opinion, Professor Eiseley fails to establish his case beyond reasonable doubt, although the evidence he presents is sufficiently disturbing to merit further investigation aimed at establishing or disproving his thesis." (J.C. Greene, The Death of Adam: Evolution and its Impact on Western Thought, page 366 (1961, New York, NY: Mentor, 1959).)

"To suppose that the evolution of the wonderfully adapted biological mechanisms has depended only on a selection out of a haphazard set of variations, each produced by blind chance, is like suggesting that if we went on throwing bricks together into heaps, we should eventually be able to choose ourselves the most desirable house." (Conrad H. Waddington [Professor of Animal Genetics, University of Edinburgh], "The Listener," (London, November 13, 1952), in A. Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine, page 127 (1989, London: Arkana, 1967).)

"But what kind of mutations could bring about the major changes I have described? Could cause a tube to roll up into a helix? Could cause other tubes to form semi-circular canals accurately set at right angles to each other? Could grade sensory hairs according to length? Could cause the convenient deposit of a crystal in the one place it will register gravity?...It just doesn't make sense." (Gordon Rattray Taylor [former Chief Science Adviser, BBC Television], The Great Evolution Mystery, page 106 (London: Abacus, 1983).)

"I am convinced it is this almost trivial simplicity that explains why the Darwinian theory is so widely accepted, why it has penetrated through the educational system so completely. As one student text puts it, `The theory is a two-step process. First variation must exist in a population. Second, the fittest members of the population have a selective advantage and are more likely to transmit their genes to the next generation.' What of the situation that bad mutations must enormously exceed good ones in number? ... The essential problem for the Darwinian theory in its twentieth century form is how to cope with this continuing flood of adverse mutations ... Supposing a favourable mutation to occur among the avalanche of unfavourable ones, how is the favourable mutation to advance against the downward pressure of the others?" (Fred Hoyle [former Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge University], Mathematics of Evolution, pages 8-9, (1999, Memphis, TN: Acorn Enterprises, 1987).)

"Some contemporary biologists, as soon as they observe a mutation, talk about evolution. They are implicitly supporting the following syllogism: mutations are the only evolutionary variations, all living beings undergo mutations, therefore all living beings evolve. This logical scheme is, however, unacceptable: first, because its major premise is neither obvious nor general; second, because its conclusion does not agree with the facts. No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution."
"Panchronic species, which like other species are subject to the assaults of mutations remain unchanged. Their variants are eliminated except possibly for neutral mutants. In any event, their stability is an observed fact and not a theoretical concept.... What is the use of their unceasing mutations, if they do not change? In sum, the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect.... It is important to note that relict species mutate as much as others do, but do not evolve, not even when they live in conditions favorable to change (diversity of environments, cosmopolitanism, large populations)."
"Bacteria, the study of which has formed a great part of the foundation of genetics and molecular biology, are the organisms which, because of their huge numbers, produce the most mutants. This is why they gave rise to an infinite variety of species, called strains, which can be revealed by breeding or tests. Like Erophila verna, bacteria, despite their great production of intraspecific varieties, exhibit a great fidelity to their species. The bacillus Escherichia coli, whose mutants have been studied very carefully, is the best example. The reader will agree that it is surprising, to say the least, to want to prove evolution and to discover its mechanisms and then to choose as a material for this study a being which practically stabilized a billion years ago!" (Pierre-Paul Grasse [Editor of the 28-volume "Traite de Zoologie," former Chair of Evolution, Sorbonne University, and ex-President of the French Academie des Sciences], Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation, pages 87-88 (New York, NY: Academic Press, 1977).)

"Some of the underlying emotional reasons for rejecting natural selection were later vividly expressed by the playwright George Bernard Shaw: `[T]he Darwinian process may be described as a chapter of accidents. As such, it seems simple, because you do not at first realize all that it involves.... if this sort of selection could turn an antelope into a giraffe, it could conceivably turn a pond full of amoebas into the French academy.' [George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methusaleh: A Metabiological Pentateuch," page xlvi (New York: Brentano's, 1921)] The last sentence is in fact the modern evolutionary point of view." (C. Sagan and A. Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are, pages 63-64, 428 (1993, London: Arrow, 1992).)

"What gambler would be crazy enough to play roulette with random evolution? The probability of dust carried by the wind reproducing Durer's 'Melancholia' is less infinitesimal than the probability of copy errors in the DNA molecule leading to the formation of the eye; besides, these errors had no relationship whatsoever with the function that the eye would have to perform or was starting to perform. There is no law against daydreaming, but science must not indulge in it." (Pierre-Paul Grasse [French Zoologist], Evolution of Living Organisms, page 104 (New York: Academic Press, 1977).)

"The problem was, as so often, that adaptive explanations were just too powerful. They could explain anything. If they are, in Daniel Dennett's phrase, 'a universal acid', capable of eating through everything, they will eventually consume even the subjects we want them to illuminate. It's not much use having a magic substance that will unblock your intellectual drains if it eats out the bottom of the sink as well." (A. Brown, The Darwin Wars: How Stupid Genes Became Selfish Gods, page 119 (London: Simon & Schuster, 1999).)

"It is thus hardly surprising that the vast majority of biologists have accepted it [the theory of natural selection] as the theory of evolution. Yet there have always been those who are dissatisfied with the theory. The issue is not whether natural selection does occur; the question is whether the basic framework of neo-Darwinism-the natural selection of random mutations-is sufficient to account for most, if not all evolutionary change; for such is the claim of the modern "synthetic" theory.." (M.W. Ho and P.T. Saunders, "Beyond neo-Darwinism - An Epigenetic Approach to Evolution", Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 78: 573-591 (1979).)

"It is our contention that if 'random' [chance] is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws, physical, chemical and biological." (Murray Eden [then Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT] in his paper, "Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,"Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, page 109).)

"Morgan, Goldschmidt, Muller, and other geneticists have subjected generations of fruit flies to extreme conditions of heat, cold, light, dark, and treatment by chemicals and radiation. All sorts of mutations, practically all trivial or positively deleterious, have been produced. Man-made evolution? Not really: Few of the geneticists' monsters could have survived outside the bottles they were bred in. In practice mutants die, are sterile, or tend to revert to the wild type." (Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution, page 70 (London: River Publishing, 1984).)

"We add that it would be all too easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary effect because they are eliminated by natural selection. Lethal mutations (the worst kind) are effectively eliminated, but others persist as alleles. ...Mutants are present within every population, from bacteria to man. There can be no doubt about it. But for the evolutionist, the essential lies elsewhere: in the fact that mutations do not coincide with evolution." (Pierre-Paul Grassé [University of Paris, past-President, French Academie des Sciences], Evolution of Living Organisms, page 88 (New York: Academic Press, 1977).)

"In the midst of his outpouring of anger at and dismissal of Goldschmidt, Dobzhansky neglected to consider the fact that while Goldschmidt's systemic mutations may not have been observed, neither had the mechanisms of speciation that he, or anyone else, for the matter, had proposed. Rather, Dobzhansky, as others did and would do, took for granted that, with enough time, the kinds of small mutations and changes that were observed in laboratory experiments on fruit-fly population genetics were also capable of producing the degrees of differences that seem to characterize species in the wild. To be sure, there was a certain logic in the belief that it was unnecessary to postulate another mechanism for evolutionary change when one already appeared to exist. This logic also seemed to benefit from the assertion that not only had no other mechanism been observed but that no other mechanism had yet produced species. Nevertheless, it was and still is the case that, with the exception of Dobzhansky's claim about a new species of fruit fly, the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed." (J.H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, pages 299-300 (New York, NY: John, Wiley & Sons, 1999).)

"Mutation does not introduce new levels of complexity, and it cannot be shown that it is a step in the right direction. Most observed mutations are harmful, and there is no experimental evidence to show that a new animal organism or even a novel structural features has ever been produced from the raw material produced by mutation." (P. Davis and D. Kenyon, Of Pandas and People (Dallas, TX: Haughton Publishing Company,1993).)

"... it is a considerable strain on one's credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs (the eye of vertebrates, or the bird's feather) could be improved by random mutations. This is even more true of some ecological chain relationships (the famous Yucca moth case, and so forth). However, the objectors to random mutations have so far been unable to advance any alternative explanation that was supported by substantial evidence." (Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species, p. 296 (1942).)

"It is entirely in line with the accidental nature of natural mutations that extensive tests have agreed in showing the vast majority of them to be detrimental to the organism in its job of surviving and reproducing, just as changes accidentally introduced into any artificial mechanism are predominantly harmful to its useful operation." (H. J. Muller [Nobel Laureate and radiation and mutation expert], "How Radiation Changes the Genetic Constitution," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 11 (9): 331 (November 1955). Important note on this quote: Some have in the past stated that this article by Muller also contains the phrase, "good ones [mutations] are so rare that we can consider them all bad." THAT STATEMENT DOES NOT EXIST IN THIS ARTICLE. IDEA Staff have checked the original article and found that is not there. The quoted section above this tagline is the correct reference for this quote.)

"What's in a word? Several nucleotides, some researchers might say. By applying statistical methods developed by linguists, investigators have found that 'junk' parts of the genomes of many organisms may be expressing a language. These regions have traditionally been regarded as useless accumulations of material from millions of years of evolution. 'The feeling is,' says Boston University physicist H. Eugene Stanley, 'that there's something going on in the noncoding region.' Junk DNA got its name because the nucleotides there (the fundamental pieces of DNA, combined into so-called base pairs) do not encode instructions for making proteins, the basis for life. In fact, the vast majority of genetic material in organisms from bacteria to mammals consists of noncoding DNA segments, which are interspersed with the coding parts. In humans, about 97 percent of the genome is junk. Over the past 10 years, biologists began to suspect that this feature is not entirely trivial." (Philip Yam, "Talking Trash," Scientific American, Vol. 272 (March 1995).)

"`Mount Improbable' is a metaphor for adaptation occurring gradually, in increments. The metaphor is that of a mountain which has an absolutely sheer cliff face. If we relate this cliff to adaptation, to the most complicated piece of biological machinery you can think of, which for many people is an eye, then you say to yourself that it's impossible to leap from the bottom of this mountain to the top, which indeed it is. Leaping from the bottom of the cliff to the top would correspond to having the sheer luck to get that eye coming into place in one fell swoop. Many people wrongly think that Darwinism is a theory of chance, that it means that eyes and other complex organs come about by sheer luck. So no wonder these people don't believe natural selection. Of course an eye couldn't possibly come about like that. But on the other side of the mountain, you've got a slow, gradual slope and it is very easy to get to the top of the mountain if you go around the other side and just walk up the slope. Relating this to adaptation, you have gradual, incremental improvement. You begin with hardly any eye at all and then each step of the way up the mountain gradual improvement. It may not be much but it's enough to be better than your predecessors, who didn't have even that improvement. Climbing Mount Improbable emphasizes that evolution of complex adaptations has got to be gradual." (R. Dawkins, "Interview," in N.A. Campbell, J.B. Reece, and L.G. Mitchell, Biology, page 412 (5th ed., Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/ Cummings, 1987).)

"On one point all biologists are agreed: the basic concept of organic evolution has, for a century, stood unrivalled as a contribution to biological thought. As a working hypothesis it opened up and exploited vast new fields of paleontological, anatomical, and embryological inquiry. The status of natural selection is not quite so high. True, it is the only theory we have; but when judged as a working hypothesis it is disappointing to find so little advance in a hundred years." (Sir James Gray [late Professor of Zoology, Cambridge University], "The Case for Natural Selection," Nature, Vol. 173 (4397): 227 (February 6, 1954), in which he reviewed Julian Huxley, Evolution in Action (London: Chatto & Windus, 1953).)

"The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that natural selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well." (Stephen Jay Gould [Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University], "The Return of Hopeful Monsters," Natural History, Vol. 86 (6): 28 (June/July 1977).)

"No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution." (Pierre-Paul Grasse, Evolutionist)
"The Darwinian theory is wrong because random variations tend to worsen performance, as indeed common sense suggests they must do." (Sir Fred Hoyle [British Mathematician, Astronomer and Cosmologist], The Intelligent Universe.)

"There is no chance (< 10^-1000) to see this mechanism [mutation-selection] appear spontaneously and, if it did, even less for it to remain...Thus, to conclude, we believe there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology." (Marcel P. Schutzenberger [formerly with University of Paris], "Algorithms and the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution," in Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation, pg. 75.)

"The facts of microevolution do not suffice for an understanding of macroevolution." (Richard B. Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution, page 8 (New Haven Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1940).)

"The basic framework of the theory is that evolution is a two-stage phenomenon the production of variation and the sorting of the variants by natural selection. Yet agreement on this basic thesis does not mean that the work of the evolutionist is completed. The basic theory is in many instances hardly more than a postulate and its application raises numerous questions in almost every concrete case." (Ernst Mayr [Emeritus Professor of Zoology, Harvard University], Populations, Species and Evolution, page 6 (1974, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963).)

"Because there are no alternatives, we would almost *have* to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it. Thankfully, the evidence is overwhelming. I don't just mean evidence that life evolved (which is way beyond reasonable doubt, creationists notwithstanding), but that it evolved by natural selection. Darwin himself pointed to the power of selective breeding, a direct analogue of natural selection, in shaping organisms.... Natural selection is also readily observable in the wild. In a classic example, the white peppered moth gave way in nineteenth-century Manchester to a dark mutant form after industrial soot covered the lichen on which the moth rested, making the white form conspicuous to birds. When air pollution laws lightened the lichen in the 1950s, the then-rare white form reasserted itself. There are many other examples, perhaps the most pleasing coming from the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant.... The Grants painstakingly measured the size and toughness of the seeds in different parts of the Galapagos at different times of the year, the length of the finches' beaks, the time they took to crack the seeds, the numbers and ages of the finches in different parts of the islands, and so on-every variable relevant to natural selection.... Selection in action is even more dramatic among faster breeding organisms, as the world is discovering to its peril in the case of pesticide-resistant insects, drug-resistant bacteria, and the AIDS virus in a single patient." (S. Pinker, How the Mind Works, pages 162-163 (1997, London: Penguin, 1998).)

"Two shafts of criticism struck Darwin more directly than the outside world was allowed to know. They touched his particular theory that evolution took place by natural selection, a process analogous to the artificial selection which plant and animal breeders were practicing with such great success at that time. The first criticism asserted that Darwin's thesis was not true; the second, that it was not new. Such criticisms are raised against all revolutionary hypotheses, but both of these were serious and well informed." (Cyril D. Darlington [late Professor of Botany, Oxford University], "The Origin of Darwinism," Scientific American, Vol. 201: 60 (May 1959).)

"We conclude-unexpectedly-that there is little evidence for the neo- Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that mutations of large effect are sometimes important in adaptation." (H. Allen Orr [Center for Population Biology, University of California, Davis] and Jerry A. Coyne [Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago], "The Genetics of Adaptation: A Reassessment," The American Naturalist, Vol. 140 (5): 726 (November 1992).)

"The role assigned to natural selection in establishing adaptation, while speciously probable, is based on not one single sure datum. Paleontology (cf. the case of the transformation of the mandibular skeleton of theriodont reptiles) does not support it; direct observations here and now of the genesis of a hereditary adaptation is nonexistent, except, as we have stated, in the case of bacteria and insects preadapted to resist viruses or drugs. The formation of the eye, the inner ear, of cestodes and the whale, etc., does not seem possible by way of preadaptation."
"We are in the dark concerning the origin of insects." (Pierre-Paul Grasse [University of Paris, and past-President, French Acadamie des Sciences], Evolution of Living Organisms, pages 30, 170 (New York: Academic Press, 1977).)

"Panchronic species [i.e. `living fossils'], which like other species are subject to the assaults of mutations remain unchanged. Their variants are eliminated except possibly for neutral mutants. In any event, their stability is an observed fact and not a theoretical concept.... What is the use of their unceasing mutations, if they do not change? In sum, the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect. ... It is important to note that relict species mutate as much as others do, but do not evolve, not even when they live in conditions favorable to change (diversity of environments, cosmopolitanism, large populations)." (Pierre-Paul Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation, page 87 (1977, New York, NY: Academic Press, 1973).)

"'Survival of the fittest' and 'natural selection.' No matter what phraseology one generates, the basic fact remains the same: any physical change of any size, shape or form is strictly the result of purposeful alignment of billions of nucleotides (in the DNA). Nature or species do not have the capacity for rearranging them, nor adding to them. Consequently no leap (saltation) can occur from one species to another. The only way we know for a DNA to be altered is through a meaningful intervention from an outside source of intelligence: one who knows what it is doing, such as our genetic engineers are now performing in their laboratories." (I.L. Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities, page 209 (New York: NW Research Publications, Inc., 1984).)

"The occurrence of genetic monstrosities by mutation... is well substantiated, but they are such evident freaks that these monsters can be designated only as 'hopeless.' They are so utterly unbalanced that they would not have the slightest chance of escaping elimination through stabilizing selection.... the more drastically a mutation affects the phenotype, the more likely it is to reduce fitness. To believe that such a drastic mutation would produce a viable new type, capable of occupying a new adaptive zone, is equivalent to believing in miracles .... The finding of a suitable mate for the 'hopeless monster' and the establishment of reproductive isolation from the normal members of the parental population seem to me insurmountable difficulties." (Ernst Mayr, Populations, Species, and Evolution, page 235 (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1970).)

"The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory is even more demanding: a single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur .... There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not indulge in it." (Pierre-Paul Grasse, Evolution of Living Organism, page 103 (New York, NY: Academic Press, 1977).)

"To have any hope of success the neo-Darwinian theory must therefore appeal to a reproductive model quite different from the model mostly adopted by single-celled organisms. This is already an immense climb down from what is usually claimed for the theory. Gone is its "obvious" status. Only if a model can be found that contrives to uncouple the selective properties of one gene from another, permitting the occasional good mutation to survive and prosper in a sea of bad mutations, can evolution be made to work at all. How exquisitely complex the model needs to be to achieve such a remarkable result will be discussed in the next chapter." (Fred Hoyle [former Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge University], Mathematics of Evolution, page 10 (1999, Memphis, TN: Acorn Enterprises, 1987).)

"And as Darwinists and neo-Darwinists have become ever more adept at finding possible selective advantages for any trait one cares to mention, explanation in terms of the all-powerful force of natural selection has come more and more to resemble explanation in terms of the conscious design of the omnipotent Creator." (Mae-Wan Ho [Biologist, The Open University, UK] and Peter T. Saunders [Mathematician, University of London], eds., Beyond Neo- Darwinism: An Introduction to the New Evolutionary Paradigm, pages ix-x (London: Academic Press, 1984).)

"To propose and argue that mutations even in tandem with 'natural selection' are the root-causes for 6,000,000 viable, enormously complex species, is to mock logic, deny the weight of evidence, and reject the fundamentals of mathematical probability." (I.L. Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities, page 81 (New York: New Research Publications, Inc., 1984).)