Eugenie Scott Quotes

In special creationism, living things do not share common ancestry….common ancestry is the fundamental difference between special creationism and evolution.

In the creationist concept of created kind—and the creationist demand to “Show me macroevolution”—we have a classic example of the movable-goalposts strategy for winning. Any amount of evolution that can be demonstrated to the creationists’ satisfaction is effectively by definition microevolution within a kind. No matter how extensive the documented change is, the macroevolution goalposts are always out of reach. The inviolable biblical kind is protected with strategic vagueness.

Dogma doesn’t build better medical devices; good science does.

The objections to evolution are not serious scientific arguments; they are superficially investigated and poorly reasoned talking points.

Significantly, the first publication to use the phrase intelligent design was not a theoretical paper but a high school textbook, Of Pandas and People! Ordinarily, one does the research first and then produces the textbook.

By now it should be clear that “teaching the controversy” is not about the concern for good pedagogy but about advancing the antievolution agenda.

To a biologist, the “it’s just microevolution” argument is painfully obtuse.

The proponents of the latest tactical assault on evolution simply invent a new spin to describe their position or find new legal attacks. The rhetoric is designed to cover up the unquestionably religious motivation they have.

Thus, it seems clear that intelligent design should be considered a religion for First Amendment purposes.

The first problem with this argument (“teach the controversy”) is that there is no scientific controversy about evolution, and the second problem is that intelligent design doesn’t qualify as a scientific theory.

ID advocates complain that their views are rejected out of hand by the scientific establishment, yet they do not play by normal rules of presenting their views first through scientific conferences and then to peer-reviewed journals and then in textbooks.

Important to note is that Johnson is not trained as either a scientist or a theologian, nor has he ever practiced either discipline. His analysis of evolution is therefore based upon his own reading of the lay literature to which he has access and the interpretation on the scientific literature by popularizers. As a result, neither this book (Darwin on Trial) nor his subsequent ones provide a satisfactory scientific critique of biological evolution. Nor does it break new ground theologically. Nonetheless, its publication led to a large following, and he has had an active career on the lecture circuit as a result.

To anyone familiar with the history of the antievolution movement, the attacks on evolution are perhaps the most obvious link between ID and earlier forms of creationism.

The actual point of the peppered moth example—that it illustrates how camouflage, a common adaptation that appears designed, can evolve through a simple natural process—is always completely ignored.

To be scientific in our era is to search for solely natural explanations.