Famous Quotes: Evolution and Creationism

The following quotations are excerpts debating the pro's and con's of evolution and creationism. Since i agree with all of the evolution quotes, I will only make small comments under each creationism quote.

Evolution
1.Evolution is both fact and theory. Creationism is neither. [Anonymous]

2.The fundamentalists deny that evolution has taken place; they deny that the earth and the universe as a whole are more than a few thousand years old, and so on. There is ample scientific evidence that the fundamentalists are wrong in these matters, and that their notions of cosmogony have about as much basis in fact as the Tooth Fairy has. [Isaac Asimov, quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]

3.The proper place for the study of religious beliefs is in a church or temple, at home, or in a course on comparative religions, but not in a biology class. There is no place in our world for an ideology that seeks to close minds, force obedience, and return the world to a paradise that never was. Students should learn that the universe can be confronted and understood, that ideas and authority should be questioned, that an open mind is a good thing. Education does not exist to confirm people's superstitions, and children do not learn to think when they are fed only dogma." [Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism]

4.Fundamentalists long for the return of a more moral America, an America that may never have been. All around them they see what they perceive as declining morality and spirituality. They reason that if humans share ancestry with the other animals, we have no reason to behave as anything other than animals. This view neglects the fact that humans are the only known animals with the ability to contemplate the consequences of their own actions. It also fails to recognize that there is a great deal of good in the world, the nightly news notwithstanding. Crime existed long before the theory of evolution, even before the writing of the Bible, and biologists do not like crime any more than the creationists do. Evolutionary theory is not a license to run amok, and neither is a belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible a guarantor of moral behavior. [Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism]

5.No myth of miraculous creation is so marvelous as the face of man's evolution. [Robert Briffault (1876-1948) Rational Education,1930]

6.U.S. Adults (Gallup): humans didn't evolve, 46 percent; evolution guided by God, 40; evolution occurred by itself, 10 percent. [Quoted by Adam L. Carley, Free Inquiry, Fall 1994]

7.Religious fundamentalists alone are a huge popular grouping in the United States, which resembles pre-industrial societies in that regard. This is a culture in which three-fourths of the population believe in religious miracles, half believe in the devil, 83 percent believe that the Bible is the 'actual' or the inspired word of God, 39 percent believe in the Biblical prediction of Armageddon and 'accept it with a certain fatalism,' a mere 9 percent accept Darwinian evolution while 44 percent believe that 'God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years,' and so on. The 'God and Country rally' that opened the national Republican convention is one remarkable illustration, which aroused no little amazement in conservative circles in Europe. [Noam Chomsky, "'Mandate for Change,' or Business as Usual," Z Magazine, February 1993, pp. 32-33]

8.If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers... Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. [Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925]

9.I suspect the reason is that most people [...] have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution.
I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things." [Richard Dawkins, from the New Humanist, the Journal of the Rationalist Press Association, Vol 107 No 2]


10.The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. [Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), p. 317]

11.Telegraph: For God to create the universe he would have to be hyper- intelligent. But intelligence only evolves over time. Is that about the strength of it?
Dawkins: It's worse than that, the argument for God starts by assuming what it is attempting to explain -- intelligence, complexity, it comes to the same thing -- and so it explains nothing. God is a non-explanation. Whereas evolution by natural selection /is/ an explanation. It really does start simply and become complex.[Sunday Telegraph (UK) interview with Richard Dawkins, Sept. 26, 1999]


12.Evolution should be one of the first things you learn at school... and what do they [children] get instead? Sacred hearts and incense. Shallow, empty religion. [Sunday Telegraph (UK) interview with Richard Dawkins, Sept. 26, 1999]

Creationism
1.In a GQ profile of Pat Buchanan, journalist John Judis asks the presidential candidate his views about teaching creationism in school. 'Look, my view is, I believe God created heaven and earth,' said Buchanan. 'I think this: What ought to be taught as fact is what is known as fact. I don't believe it is demonstrably true that we have descended from apes. I don't believe it. I do not believe all that. [Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 27 November 1995]

'theory' as a scientific term is fact mister Buchanan, you snake. Oh and nice evidence...looks like a blatant opinion to me.

2.All the ills from which America suffers can be traced to the teaching of evolution. [William Jennings Bryan]

All countries go through "ills". Look at the time period in which the bible you so religiously follow was scribed. This was a period when humans were treated like animals, and death dominated the war-torn landscapes.

3.Take a hard look at the Grand Canyon. Try to explain that through evolution. [Freddie Cash, net.fundie.idiot]

WOW. Glaciers. ice Age. years of water erosion.

4.i don't think evolution should be taught as a fact but as a theory that some people believe in. i don't really know about this though, i haven't thought about it really but there's no way it should be taught as the truth. [Mark Goodwin, on talk.origins, 10/17/1994]

Good evidence. As most religious people can vow for, evidence is not necessary to differentiate fact from fable.

5.[as for evolution]....cutting out the sections [on the subject] is preferrable if the portions are not thick enough to cause damage to the spine of the book as it is opened and closed in normal use. When the sections needing correction are too thick, paste the pages together being careful not to smear portions of the book not intended for correction. [R.E. Martin, American creationist, in Reviewing and Correcting Encyclopaedias (1983: 205-7), instructing followers to censor books that don't follow creation dogma]

This pretty much sums up creationists. They want to guard human beings from understanding the world. they want the world to return to a more moral time period. morality was prescribed by humans, not god. What is deemed as moral? ANSWER: what humans have written as normal!

6.CEE is opposed to censoring such things as the true Christian history of our nation and the scientific evidence that renders macro-evolution impossible. Both of these have been extensively censored. We do support rejection or removal of obscene, morbid and unhealthy materials. [David Muralt, Texas Director of Citizens for Excellence in Education, from Feb. 7, 1994 Austin American-Statesman]

macro-evolution in itself is a culmination of underlying micro-evolution. Your idea about god creating the earth from nothing is the opitimy of macro-evolution. Censorship...a common theme in creationist thought. I would rather live in a world of full exposure to human tendencies than be sequestered in an existence with a predetermined belief in an unproven dogma.

7.Your sweet little book is a bizarre collection of out-of-context quotations, misquotations, misleading quotations, non sequiturs, errors of fact and just about every other dirty intellectual trick known to man. [Tim O'Neill, on the JW's anti-evolution book]

In this he is talking about scientific writing. Well Tim O'Neill you dumbass, read the bible or any religous text. It appears as if they were written by chimps. Also read any quotes from creationists. Not too eloquent or well-written in my opinion.

8.Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory. [Rev. Jimmy Swaggart]

Satanic? Really? So the need to understand things and try and make sense of things is satanic? religion itself stems from the desire to explain the earth, you hypocrite. The world would be way better off if it were spiritually bankrupt.

9.Section 49-6-1012. No teacher or administrator in a local education agency shall teach the theory of evolution except as a scientific theory. Any teacher or administrator teaching such theory as fact commits insubordination, as defined in Section 49-5-5 01(s)(6), and shall be dismissed or suspended as provided in Section 49-5-511. [Tennessee Bill HB2972 (House), SB 3229 (Senate), introducted by Tennesse Rep. Zene Whitson, considered by the House Education Committee, and the K-12 Subcommittee of the Senate Education Committee, on February 21, 1996]

Tennessee, statistically the third lowest literacy rate, and the fifth highest number of high school dropouts amongst 15-18 year olds. ENOUGH SAID.

10.A second possible thing that creationists might look for is some kind of instrument that will detect darkness. It is my conclusion, based on [scripture] that darkness is a positive thing. [Richard Niessen, Professor, Christian Heritage College]

What? I do not even understand how this supports creationism. Isn't darkness the ominous sign of the devil.