Secular
[Evolution]“…a full-fledged alternative to Christianity…Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.” Michael Ruse. Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians. National Post (May 13, 2000). pB-3. “As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.” Will Provine, No Free Will. Catching Up with the Vision, Ed. By Margaret W. Rossiter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) pS123. “…evolution is the backbone of biology and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on unproven theory. Is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation. Both are concepts which the believers know to be true, but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.” L.H. Matthews, "Introduction to Origin of the Species, by Charles Darwin (1971 edition), pp. x, xi. [The theory of evolution] "forms a satisfactory faith on which to base our interpretation of nature." Harrison Matthews. Introduction to Origin of Species (1977 edition) p. xxii. "In fact [subsequent to the publication of Darwin's book, Origin of Species], evolution became, in a sense, a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to `bend' their observations to fit with it. . To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all . . 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.S. Lipson, "A Physicist Looks at Evolution," Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, p. 138 (1980) [emphasis his]. “The theory of evolution is impossible. At base, in spite of appearances, no one any longer believes in it….Evolution is a kind of dogma which the priests no longer believe, but which they maintain for their people.” Paul Lemoine. Encyclopedie Francaise 1937 edition. (President of the Geological Society of France and director of the Natural History Museum in Paris.) [The Big Bang] “…represents the instantaneous suspension of physical laws, the sudden, abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to come out of nothing. It represents a true miracle---transcending physical principles….” Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), p161. “We have all heard of The Origin of Species, although few of us have had time to read it…A casual perusal of the classic made me understand the rage of Paul Feyerabend…I agree with him that Darwinism contains ‘wicked lies’; it is not a ‘natural law’ formulated on the basis of factual evidence, but a dogma, reflecting the dominating social philosophy of the last century.” Kenneth J. Hsu, "Sedimentary Petrology and Biologic Evolution," Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 56 (September 1986): p730. “I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.” Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun as quoted by James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard (Arlington, Massachusetts: Refuge Books, 1999), p. 253. [The Big Bang] “…is only a myth that attempts to say how the universe came into being….” Hannes Alfvén “The Big Bang Never Happened,” Discover 9 (June 1988), p. 78. “This evolutionist doctrine is itself one of the strangest phenomena of humanity…a system destitute of any shadow of proof, and supported merely by vague analogies and figures of speech….Now no one pretends that they rest on facts actually observed, for no one has ever observed the production of even one species….Let the reader take up either of Darwin's great books, or Spencer's ‘Biology,’ and merely ask himself as he reads each paragraph, ‘What is assumed here and what is proved?’ and he will find the whole fabric melt away like a vision….We thus see that evolution as an hypothesis has no basis in experience or in scientific fact, and that its imagined series of transmutations has breaks which cannot be filled.” Sir William Dawson, The Story of Earth and Man. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1887, pp. 317, 322, 330, 339. [Darwin, speaking about Huxley:] "My good and kind agent for the propagation of the Gospel, the devil's gospel." Robert T. Clark and James D. Bales, "Why Scientists Accept Evolution", 1988, p. 45. "Darwin wrote in his autobiography: `I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true ..." M. Grano, "The Faith of Darwinism", Encounter, November 1959, p. 48 "The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or faith?" L.N. Matthews, "Introduction" to Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species, pp. x, xi (1971 edition) "... post-Darwinian biology is being carried out by people whose faith is in, almost, the deity of Darwin. Colin Patterson, The Listener (Senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, London.) "[Karl] Popper warns of a danger: 'A theory, even a scientific theory, may become an intellectual fashion, a substitute for religion, an entrenched dogma.' This has certainly been true of evolutionary theory." Colin Patterson, "Evolution", 1977, p. 150. "The irony is devastating. The main purpose of Darwinism was to drive every last trace of an incredible God from biology. But the theory replaces God with an even more incredible deity - omnipotent chance." T. Rosazak, "Unfinished Animal", 1975, p. 101-102. "Evolution is sometimes the key mythological element in a philosophy that functions as a virtual religion." E. Harrison, "Origin and Evolution of the Universe", Encyclopaedia Britannica Macropaedia (1974) p1007. A Belief in Evolution is a basal doctrine in the Rationalists Liturgy." Sir Arthur Keith. Darwinism and its Critics. (1935), p53 "It is therefore a matter of faith on the part of the biologist that biogenesis did occur and he can choose whatever method of biogenesis happens to suit him personally; the evidence of what did happen is not available." G.A. Kerkut. Implications of Evolution (1960), p150. "... evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit with it ... H.S. Lipson. A Physicist Looks at Evolution. Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, p138 (1980) "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." Louis Trenchard More, quoted in "Science and the Two-tailed Dinosaur", p33 "The doctrine of evolution is a newly invented system, a newly concerted doctrine, a newly formed dogma, a new rising belief, which places itself over against the Christian faith, and can only found its temple on the ruins of our Christian confession." Dr. Abraham Kuyper, "Evolution" speech delivered in 1899. "It is a religion of science that Darwinism chiefly held, and holds over men's minds." Encounter, November 1959, p48 . "Given the facts, our existence seems quite improbable—more miraculous, perhaps, than the seven-day wonder of Genesis." Judith Hooper, "Perfect Timing," New Age Journal, Vol. 11, (1985), p18 "The hypothesis that life has developed from inorganic matter is, at present, still an article of faith." J.W.N. Sullivan, Limitations of Science (1933), p95. "Today the tables are turned. The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy, preached by its adherents with religious fervor, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers imperfect in scientific faith." M. Grene, Faith of Darwinism," Encounter, November (1959), p49. "Evolution requires plenty of faith; a faith in L-proteins that defy chance formation; a faith in the formation of DNA codes which, if generated spontaneously, would spell only pandemonium; a faith in a primitive environment that, in reality, would fiendishly devour any chemical precursors to life; a faith in experiments that prove nothing but the need for intelligence in the beginning; a faith in a primitive ocean that would not thicken, but would only haplessly dilute chemicals; a faith in natural laws of thermodynamics and biogenesis that actually deny the possibility for the spontaneous generation of life; a faith in future scientific revelations that, when realized, always seem to present more dilemmas to the evolutionists; faith in improbabilities that treasonously tell two stories—one denying evolution, the other confirming the Creator; faith in transformations that remain fixed; faith in mutations and natural selection that add to a double negative for evolution; faith in fossils that embarrassingly show fixity through time, regular absence of transitional forms and striking testimony to a worldwide water deluge; a faith in time which proves to only promote degradation in the absence of mind; and faith in reductionism that ends up reducing the materialist's arguments to zero and forcing the need to invoke a supernatural Creator." R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy (1981), p. 455. "The facts must mold the theories, not the theories the facts . . I am most critical of my biologist friends in this matter. Try telling a biologist that, impartially judged among other accepted theories of science, such as the theory of relativity, it seems to you that the theory of natural selection has a very uncertain, hypothetical status, and watch his reaction. I'll bet you that he gets red in the face. This is `religion,' not `science,' with him." Burton, "The Human Side of the Physiologist: Prejudice and Poetry," Physiologist 2 (1957). "Darwinism is a creed not only with scientists committed to document the all-purpose role of natural selection. It is a creed with masses of people who have at best a vague notion of the mechanism of evolution as proposed by Darwin, let alone as further complicated by his successors." S. Jaki, Cosmos and Creator (1982). "By calling evolution fact, the process of evolution is removed from dispute; it is no longer merely a scientific construct, but now stands apart from humankind and its perceptual frailties. Sagan apparently wishes to accomplish what Peter Berger calls `objectification,' the attribution of objective reality to a humanly produced concept . . With evolution no longer regarded as a mere human construct, but now as a part of the natural order of the cosmos, evolution becomes a sacred archetype against which human actions can be weighed. Evolution is a sacred object or process in that it becomes endowed with mysterious and awesome power." T. Lessl, Science and the Sacred Cosmos: The Ideological Rhetoric of Carl Sagan," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 71:178 (1985).
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