Eugenie Scott Quotes

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.

The critiques of evolution offered in such ID literature, however, is recognizable as a proper subset of the critiques offered by creation science literature, and they are no more valid.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Three of intelligent design’s most damaging constitutional problems: its singling out of evolution education for reform, its explicitly religious background, and it status as unsuccessful science.

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