#darwin

Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly miniscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate ... . It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect ... higher intelligences ... even to the limit of God ... such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific. ↗

— Fred Hoyle

#intelligence

As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates; so that we need feel no surprise at the inhabitants of any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been specially created and adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#darwin #evolution #nature

Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence. ↗

— Michael Denton

#biology #chemical-evolution #darwinism #evolution #naturalism

I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks ↗

— Charles Darwin

#ottoman-empire #turkey #nature

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#darwinism #evolution #macro-evolution #macroevolution #science

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin. ↗

— Henry Adams

#darwin #evidence #evolution #grant #president

Although Darwin was able to persuade much of the world that a modern eye could be produced gradually from a much simpler structure, he did not even attempt to explain how the simple light sensitive spot that was his starting point actually worked. ↗

— Michael Behe

#actually #although #attempt #could #darwin

My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life's major transformations can be explained by adding up, through the immensity of geological time, the successive tiny changes produced generation after generation by natural selection. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#after #challenged #changes #darwinian #explained

Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#capitalist #creativity #darwinian #only

Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances. ↗

— George C. Williams

#capable #circumstances #darwin #empirical #every