53,127. Suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place … the inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker, that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (Creationism & Intelligent Design & Evolution & Analogy) William Paley, Natural Theology, 1802
53,128. This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. (Creationism & Intelligent Design & Newton) Isaac Newton, General Scholium in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. 1687
53,129. As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency – or, rather, Agency – must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit? (Creationism & Intelligent Design) George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos
53,199. Living organisms were not independently created, but have descended and diversified over time from common ancestors. And thus, no other biological theory so elegantly explains this. Evolutionary theory has withstood the test of time – by way of vicarious experimentation, observation, analysis, and relentless criticism, though opposing viewpoints still cling to the concept of design. As a person of the biological sciences, I cannot subscribe to such misguided notions that suggest static biological states. Clearly, proper examination of the natural world reveal evolutionary trajectories – some random, others non-random – and all having observable genetic implications. It is only when we apply evolutionary explanations to living systems that it becomes ever so clear. The world was not specifically designed with us in mind, but rather we long since adapted and conformed to our surroundings, only giving it the illusionary appearance of design. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) Tommy Rodriguez, Diaries of Dissension: A Case Against the Irrational and Absurd
53,206. My sense of Intelligent Design it that it is basically incoherent, and it will implode if you push it. Professor Bob Russell, Berkeley, California
53,207. Intelligent Design is a sham: promote Darwin’s evolution, the real thing. Manfred F Schieder
53,208. It is so fundamentally against scientific principle you can think of. To put it in the same bracket is to seriously confuse thinking. David Attenborough
53,209. A theory that explains everything in fact explains nothing. And that’s the central flaw of intelligent design. Dr Kenneth Miller
53,210. One way or another, Darwinists meet the question, Is Darwinism true? with an answer that amounts to an assertion of power: ‘Well, it is science, as we define science, and you will have to be content with that’. Some of us are not content with that, because we know that the empirical evidence for the creative power of natural selection is somewhere between weak and non-existent. Artificial selection of fruit flies or domestic animals produces limited change within the species, but tells us nothing about how insects and mammals came into existence in the first place. In any case, whatever artificial selection achieves is due to the employment of human intelligence consciously pursuing a goal. The whole point of the blind watchmaker thesis, however, is to establish what material processes can do in the absence of purpose and intelligence. That Darwinist authorities continually overlook this crucial distinction gives us little confidence in their objectivity. (Intelligent Design & Creationism & Evolution) Philip E Johnson
53,177. Both sides should be taught. (Creationism & Intelligent Design & Bush) George W Bush
53,178. The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident is zero. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) Ilya Prigogine
53,138. What if it was true nonetheless ... that we all part of a grand divine design? What would that actually mean if it were to be true? Well it would mean a regime of permanent supervision and surveillance over our lives and our personalities ... Why do you want such a thing to be true? (Creationism & Intelligent Design & God) Christopher Hitchens, lecture ‘The Moral Necessity of Atheism’
53,218. It is the intolerance and rage of the Darwinists against any expression of scepticism, however cautious, scientifically based and well qualified, which actually makes me wonder whether the IDs have a point. Peter Hitchens v Christopher Hitchens, 2008
53,149. A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) David Hume
53,192. Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. (Creationism & Evolution & Adam & Eve & Knowledge & Reason & Intelligence Design) Clarence Darrow
53,211. When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists? Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. Bertrand Russell
53,212. Monument of un-ageing intellect. W B Yeats
53,213. A life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world. John Wheeler, foreword to Barrow & Tipler’s The Anthropic Cosmological Principle
53,219. It’s a mistaken attempt to try and use science to establish the what I call the implications of science ... The fundamental fault is that it steps outside scientific methodology and will not acknowledge it’s doing it. It’s a religious movement. Father George Coyne, interview Professor Richard Dawkins
53,222. Intelligent Design is a movement on behalf of religion that is going to destroy not just science but religion. Father George Coyne, interview Horizon: A War on Science
53,223. There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory. (Intelligent Design & Evolution) Kenneth Miller, Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District 2005
53,224. Intelligent design is not a testable theory in any sense and as such it is not accepted by the scientific community. (Intelligent Design & Evolution) ibid.
53,225. The intelligent-design movement is an effort to introduce creationism into the schools under a different name. (Intelligent Design & Creationism) Eric Rothschild, witness Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District 2005
53,226. The religious nature of ID would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child. Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District 2006, Judge John E Jones
53,227. ID [Intelligent Design theory] is reliant upon forces acting outside of the natural world, forces that we cannot see, replicate, control or test, which have produced changes in this world. While we take no position on whether such forces exist, they are simply not testable by scientific means and therefore cannot qualify as part of the scientific process or as a scientific theory. ibid.
53,228. Empirical claims of the contemporary American Creation Science or Intelligent Design (ID) theory, which postulates a Creator of nature, are, just as the earlier theological argument from design, based on a mistaken, ‘creationist’ view of human artifacts. Such view attributes functionality and complexity in an artifact to a singular human designer. The attribution aims at supporting an analogy between products of human designers, and the design-like adaptations found in nature, allegedly pointing to a supernatural Designer. The creationist view of artifacts, however, has been in conflict with conclusions of design history and history of technology alike: neither of them sees the functionality and complexity in artifacts as products of design but rather as results of re-design. Ironically, the evolutionary biologists, who fiercely oppose the creationist view of nature in ID proponents and defend the Darwinian understanding of the design-like adaptations as results of natural selection, tend to condone the creationist perspective on human artifacts characteristic for their opponents, and even seems to embrace it – thus forfeiting a crucial argument against the ID theory. (Intelligent Design & Creationism & Evolution) Jan Michl, Without a Godlike Designer no Designerlike God, September 2006
53,229. This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in – an interesting hole I find myself in – fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. (Intelligent Design & Creationism) Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
53,230. Scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God’s actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture. (Intelligent Design & Creationism & Scripture) Sheri S Tepper, The Fresco
53,233. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question. (Intelligent Design & Creationism & Evolution) Fred Hoyle