“Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?”

— Richard Dawkins , book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Source: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Richard Dawkins 322

English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941

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“The conscience is a dilemma for the believer in evolution. He doesn't know why it exists. Neither do the experts. Why would evolution create something that tells us that it's wrong to lie, to steal, to kill, and to commit adultery? Was primitive man committing these sins before he evolved a conscience? If he wasn't, why didn't his conscience evolve? If he was, why did the conscience evolve?”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

“Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, "Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution." For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female. No one even goes near explaining how and why each species managed to reproduce (during the millions of years the female was supposedly evolving to maturity) without the right reproductive machinery.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Referring to title of an essay by Theodosius Dobzhansky

“It was objected to Hooke, that his doctrine of the extinction of species derogated from the wisdom and power of the Omnipotent Creator; but he answered, that as individuals die, there may be some termination to the duration of a species; and his opinions, he declared, were not repugnant to Holy Writ: for the Scriptures taught that our system was degenerating, and tending to its final dissolution; 'and as, when that shall happen, all the species will be lost, why not some at one time and some at another?”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 38
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

“There is only the pattern; the pattern is all the universe, creator and created.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Old Hundredth” p. 162 (originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction #100, November 1960)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)
Context: When the first flint, the first shell, was shaped into a weapon, that action shaped man. As he molded and complicated his tools, so they molded and complicated him. He became the first scientific animal. And at last, via information theory and great computers, he gained knowledge of all his parts. He formed the Laws of Integration, which reveal all beings as part of a pattern and show them their part in the pattern. There is only the pattern; the pattern is all the universe, creator and created.

“The principle being accepted that all Species of one Genus have arisen from one mother through different fathers, it must be assumed
# That in the beginning the Creator created of each natural Order only one plant with reproductive power.
# That by their various mixings different plants have arisen which belong to the mother's natural order as they are similar to the mother with regard to their fructifications, and are, as it were, species of the order, i. e., genera.
# We may assume that plants have arisen within the orders, i. e. by genera of one order, may mix with each other. In this was there will arise species that should be referred to the mother's genus as her daughters.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

Praelectiones (Lectures, 1744) quoted in Larson (1967:317)

“Voltaire, who was both the flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took another line. His force lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions which priest-craft, united with state-craft, had interwoven with governments. It was not from the purity of his principles, or his love of mankind (for satire and philanthropy are not naturally concordant), but from his strong capacity of seeing folly in its true shape, and his irresistible propensity to expose it, that he made those attacks. They were, however, as formidable as if the motive had been virtuous; and he merits the thanks rather than the esteem of mankind.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“For already the myth is being carefully built up. Hitler is to be the Messiah of organic evolution—the anti-Christ of the will to power, which is not a will to national power but a will to power per se, the liberation of the lustfully destructive from any inhibitions whatsoever.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, p. 358 (newspaper column: “The Revolution of Nihilism,” May 8, 1939)

“You would think that pot had some kind of power; I mean come on, it’s a plant, not a reason for living. Controlled by a plant, how hilarious. A plant! A fucking plant!”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Get In The Van

“If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature
Essays (1625)

“Yes, [I spent] two long years, traveling all over the United States, all over Europe, interviewing many, many, many people who had been thrown out of their academic jobs because they taught that there was a possibility of life coming from something other than Darwinism, who thought that possibly random selection and mutations didn't account for the universe, didn't account for gravity, didn't account for why nobody had ever seen an individual species evolve -- no one's ever seen an individual species evolve!”

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

YouTube -- Ben Stein discusses the "Expelled" documentary, Fox News: Intelligent Journey -- Stein's New Documentary, 14 April 2008, 2008-04-23 http://youtube.com/watch?v=ck3AgSAXIgo,

“Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?”

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Richard Dawkins 322

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