Stats/Quotes

An August 31, 2005 New York Times article reported the results of a July 7-17 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. In all, 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism.  Apparently, once again the ACLU is on the other side of the issue than the majority of Americans!

In addition more than 400 scientists have signed onto the growing list of skeptics to claims that random mutation and natural selection can account for the complexity of life.  Two prominent Russian biologists from Moscow State University, Lev V. Beloussov, professor of embryology, and Vladimir L. Voeikov, professor of bioorganic chemistry, are recent signers.

Other biologists who have signed the list include evolutionary biologist and textbook author Stanley Salthe; Richard von Sternberg an evolutionary biologist at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Biotechnology Information; and Giuseppe Sermonti, Editor of Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum.  The list also includes scientists from Princeton, Cornell, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Ohio State University, Purdue and the University of Washington.

First part of August 2005 President Bush and Senator Arlen Specter both say evolution and intelligent design should be taught.  No Child Left Behind says both sides of controversial subject should be taught.

http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html

‘Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless. —  Prof. Louis Bounoure (Former President of the Biological Society of and Director of the Strasbourg Zoo­logical Museum, later Director of Research at the French National Centre of Scientific Research), as quoted in The Advocate, Thursday 8 March 1984, p. 17.

‘Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact. ‘ — Dr T. N. Tahmisian (Atomic Energy Commission, USA) in ‘The Fresno Bee’, August 20,1959. As quoted by N. J. Mitchell, Evolution and the Emperor”s New Clothes, Roydon publications, UK, 1983, title page.

This from the ‘final authority’ on Evolution in the US: ‘All paleontologists know that the fossil record con­tains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; tran­sitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. ‘ — Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontol­ogy, Harvard University), ‘The return of hopeful mon­sters’. Natural History, )101. LXXXVI (6), June-July 1977, p.24.

‘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 gradualistic accounts of evolution. ‘ — Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontol­ogy, Harvard University), ‘Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?’ Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127.

‘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.’ . . .

‘As a scientist, I am not happy with these ideas. But 1 find it distasteful for scientists to reject a theory because it does not fit in with their preconceived ideas. ‘ — H. Lipson, FRS (Professor of Physics, University of Man­chester, UK), ‘Origin of species’, in ‘Letters’, New Scien­tist, 14 May 1981, p. 452.

Aristotle wrote in his “Physics”: “Since everything that is in motion must be moved by something, let us suppose there is a thing in motion which was moved by something else in motion, and that by something else, and so on. But this series cannot go on to infinity, so there must be some First Mover.”

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