“Much of the controversy and anxiety that has enveloped Darwin's idea … can be understood as a series of failed campaigns to contain Darwin; s idea within some acceptably "safe" and merely partial revolution. Cede some or all of modern biology to Darwin, perhaps, but hold the line there! Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion! In these campaigns, many battles have been won by the forces of containment: flawed applications of Darwin's idea have been exposed and discredited, beaten back by the champions of the pre-Darwinian tradition. But new waves of Darwinian thinking keep coming.”

— Daniel Dennett, book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

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American philosopher 1942

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“Darwin believed that the crossing of two types generally led to a blend, and that consequently bisexual reproduction tended to make a species uniform. He therefore had to postulate some cause constantly at work to keep up the inheritable variation within a species. He very naturally looked to the effects of differences of environment. …It was shown that Darwin had been wrong in supposing that variations due to environment were inheritable. Selection merely picked out the best available line from a given population, and would not, as Darwin had believed, give rise to an unlimited amount of change.”

J. B. S. Haldane book The Causes of Evolution

Introduction, pp.14-20.
The Causes of Evolution (1932)

“In the next five years, molecular Darwinism—the idea that Darwinian processes can produce complex molecular structures at the subcellular level—will be dead. When that happens, evolutionary biology will experience a crisis of confidence because evolutionary biology hinges on the evolution of the right molecules. I therefore foresee a Taliban-style collapse of Darwinism in the next ten years. Intelligent design will of course profit greatly from this.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

" Measure of Design: A Conversation About the Past, Present & Future of Darwinism & Design http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=17-06-060-i#ixzz2elFILC9O|The" Touchstone, volume 17, issue 6, pages 60-65, at page 64 (July/August 2004). <br class="br">2000s

“Darwin seems to lose out with the public primarily when his supporters force him into a mano-a-mano Thunderdome death match against the Almighty. Most people seem willing to accept Darwinism as long as they don't have to believe in nothing but Darwinism. Thus, the strident tub-thumping for absolute atheism by evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins, whom the new issue of Discover Magazine rightly criticizes as "Darwin's Rottweiler," is self-defeating.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

The Left Doesn’t Like Darwin Either https://archive.is/20130630132900/www.vdare.com/sailer/050807_darwin.htm, VDARE, August 7, 2005

“Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology?, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, 31 October 2007, 2008-02-26 http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/page/3/,

“Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. […] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Double Trouble", pp. 38–40
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

“Science follows the evidence wherever it leads, but Darwinism does not. So the present controversy over evolution is not a war between science and religion. It is primarily a war between Darwinism and evidence--and the evidence will win.”

Jonathan Wells (1942) American intelligent design advocate

The Problem Of Evidence http://www.discovery.org/a/9061, 2009.

“The most important political task facing the out-of-power party— the Democrats for now— is creating a villain to run against. It's certainly easier than developing some grand new ideas or policies on which to campaign.”

Pat Sajak (1946) American television host

" Searching for the Next GOP Villain http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0405/sajak041805.php3," in Jewish World Review, April 18, 2005. <br class="br">2000s

“My feeling is that Darwinism is only at best a partial solution, and an extremely dangerous partial solution. I would say, based on the little I know, Darwinism explains microevolution within species quite well. As to its broader consequence and implications, I don't think it explains individual species evolution at all well.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Science and Society: March 2008, ABC Science and Society: Ben Stein Holds Court, 31 March 2008, 2008-04-18 http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2008/03/index.html,

“The idea that certain races (or species) are ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ was not Darwin’s idea but the universal language of all prior naturalists since forever. Darwin acknowledges this, but does not contribute to it, other than to suggest that Caucasians are not the ultimate form of mankind.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"Darwin’s view of the ‘races’ of men" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/01/01/darwins-view-of-the-races-of-men/, Patheos (January 1, 2015) <br class="br">Patheos

“I think it is not helpful to apply Darwinian language too widely. Conquest of nation by nation is too distant for Darwinian explanations to be helpful. Darwinism is the differential survival of self-replicating genes in a gene pool, usually as manifested by individual behaviour, morphology, and phenotypes. Group selection of any kind is not Darwinism as Darwin understood it nor as I understand it. There is a very vague analogy between group selection and conquest of a nation by another nation, but I don't think it's a very helpful analogy. So I would prefer not to invoke Darwinian language for that kind of historical interpretation.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Darwin's Dangerous Disciple: An Interview by Frank Miele (1995)

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