A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Thomas Nagel Web
I am talking about something much deeper – namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is not God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous over use of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind, Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental feature of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the nonteleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. There might still be thought to be a religious threat in the existence of the laws of physics themselves, and indeed the existence of anything at all – but it seems to be less alarming to most atheists. The Last Word (1997) pp. 130-131
Kenneth Nealson (b. 1943?) Wrigley Professor of Geobiology at USC College Web AV
Nobody understands the origin of life. If they say they do, they are probably trying to fool you. The Search for the Scum of the Universe May 21 2002
Paul Nelson (b.1958) Fellow of the Discovery Institute Web AV
It will be useful to formalize
Gould's argument:
1. If p is an instance of organic design, then p was produced
either by a wise creator, or by descent with modification (evolution).
2. If organic design p was produced by a wise creator, then p
should be perfect (or exhibit no imperfections).
3. Organic design p is not perfect (or exhibits imperfections).
The conclusion follows that
\
Organic design p was not produced by a
wise creator, but by descent with modification.
Premises 1 and 2 are theological. Gould's terms for the creator, in the passages cited above and in other instances of this argument, include "a perfect engineer" (1977, p.91), "a sensible God" (1980, pp.20-21), "a rational agent" (1983, p.164) and "a wise creator" (1983, p.258). Premises 2 and 3 refer also to "perfection," and we may infer that Gould holds that humans can readily discern the presences or absence of perfection when they examine organic designs. Biology and Philosophy October 1996 p.499
Suppose one argues contra Darwin, that we have every reason for thinking a creator would have designed each species of orchid to show homologies with ordinary flowers. How, by everyday scientific methods, would one go about settling this dispute? One may assume or deny the truth of Darwin's particular theological aesthetic, but it is hard to see how that assumption is binding on other observers (or why we should take it as intelligible). Biology and Philosophy October 1996 p.512
But the arguments for evolution that we shall consider are formulated in theological terms, usually explicitly so -- a practice plainly inconsistent with methodological naturalism. We aren't supposed to be able to say anything, scientifically speaking, about God. Whatever we claim to know about God may be true or false, considered theologically or philosophically, but that knowledge isn't the stuff of scientific explanation. How, then, do so many evolutionary biologists speak with confidence about what God would or would not have done? Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics (2002) p.679-80
Given the conventional conception of the creator, there seem to be no limits on what is possible, nor any reason (short perhaps of logical contradiction) why one hypothetically possible panda should be preferred, as a counterfactual ideal, to another. If "perfection" is limited only by one's imagination, then specifying an ideal phenotype, for the panda or any other organism, quickly becomes a fanciful exercise. Why couldn't the creator have given pandas the ability to fly? Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics (2002) p.689
The thumb may have some primary function for which it was designed, and the panda has co-opted it secondarily to strip bamboo. One may have failed to identify the correct reference situation by which to judge the design, perhaps by observing too little of the panda's life-history. The flippers of marine turtles, for example, strike us as a badly designed for digging holes in beach sand to place eggs. The same flippers, however, perform efficiently in the water, where the turtles spend most of their time. Which reference situation do we employ? Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics (2002) p.690
Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) Web GBS
The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.
A Heavenly Master governs all the world as Sovereign of the universe. We are astonished at Him by reason of His perfection, we honor Him and fall down before Him because of His unlimited power. From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same, no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God. Principia
We are therefore to acknowledge one God, infinite, eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, the Creator of all things, most wise, most just, most good, most holy. "A Short Scheme on the True Religion"
Where natural causes are at hand God uses them as instruments in his works, but I do not think them alone sufficient for the Creation. Letter to Thomas Burnett
Jane Oppenheimer Professor of Biology and History of Science
It was a failing of Haeckel as a would-be scientist that his hand as an artist altered what he saw with what should have been the eye of a more accurate beholder. He was more than once, often justifiably, accused of scientific falsification, by Wilhelm His and by many others. For only two examples, in "Anthropogenie" he drew the developing brain of a fish as curved, because that of reptiles, birds, and mammals is bent. But the vesicles of a fish brain always form in a straight line. He drew the embryonic membranes of man as including a small sac-like allantois, an embryonic organ characteristic of and larger in reptiles, birds, and some nonhuman mammals. The human embryo has no sac-like allantois at all. Only its narrow solid stock remains to conduct the umbilical blood vessels between embryo and placenta. Examples could be multiplied significantly. "Haeckel's Variations on Darwin"
The blind adoption of Haeckel's doctrines by such workers in bordering fields, and their infection with his faith that "Development is now the magic word by means of which we shall solve the riddles by which we are surrounded", is less reprehensible than their uncritical acceptance by the professional embryologists who swallowed them with as much gullibility, and who remained utterly unperturbed by the fact that Haeckel himself was never in any sense a professional embryologist. The seduction of embryology by a fanatic who expresses himself even metaphorically in terms of magic represents a darker chapter in its history. Essays in the history of Embryology and Biology (1967) pp. 153-154
Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857 – 1935) Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Princeton President of the American Museum of Natural History President of the Second International Congress of Eugenics 1921 Web GBS
If there is a Providence hanging over the affairs of prehistoric men, it certainly manifested itself in this case, because the three minute fragments of this second Piltdown man found by Dawson are exactly those which we should have selected to confirm the comparison with the original type. Natural History November 1921 p.581
Seeing is believing, and the writer eagerly looked forward to a return to the British Museum after so many years of absence and to the opportunity of examining these precious documents, an opportunity which was most cordially extended to him by Doctor Woodward. After attending on Sunday morning, July 24,1921, a most memorable service in Westminster Abbey, a building which enshrines many of the great of all time, the writer repaired to the British Museum in the afternoon to see the remains of the now thoroughly vindicated 'dawn man' of Great Britain. Natural History November 1921 pp.581-582
In conclusion, the writer desires not only to recant his former doubts as to the association of the jaw with the skull, but to express his admiration of the great achievement of his life-long friend, Arthur Smith Woodward, in making the discovery and in finally establishing beyond question the authenticity of the 'Dawn Man' of Piltdown. Natural History November 1921 p.590
Nearer to us is the Piltdown man, found not far from seventy-five miles to the southwest of Ipswitch, England; still nearer in geologic time is Heidelberg man, found on the Neckar River; still nearer is the Neanderthal man, whom we now know all about -- his frame, his head form, his industries, his ceremonial burial of the dead, also evidence of his belief in a future existence; nearer still is the Cro-Magnon man, who lived about 30,000 years ago, our equal if not our superior in intelligence. This chain of human ancestors was totally unknown to Darwin . He could not have even dreamed of such a flood of proof and truth. Evolution and Religion March 5 1922 VII p.14
But the voice of anatomy. like the voice of all nature, never reaches the mental ear of the Great Commoner. It is the novel province of anatomy to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the structure, the origin and the history of man. New York Times July 12 1925 VIII p.1
The third, or Piltdown race of the close of the age of mammals or beginning of the age of man, after a long period of most animated dispute about the character of the jaw and as to whether or not it belonged with the skull, is now definitely determined as a very important side branch of the Hominidae. The veteran paleontologist of England, Arthur Smith Woodward, spent no less than nine years in searching thought the Piltdown gravels on the spot where the Piltdown man was found, in order to further establish the characters of the type which he named Eoanthropus dawsoni. I visited this locality myself in company with my fiend Smith Woodward, and on looking over the ground felt absolutely assured for the first time that the jaw did belong with the skull, although it looks far more like that of a chimpanzee than that of a human being, as indicated on our restoration above. New York Times July 12 1925 VIII p.1
Nearer to us is the Piltdown man ... This chain of human ancestors was totally unknown to Darwin. He could not have even dreamed of such a flood of proof and truth. Evolution and Religion in Education (1926) p.41
Care for the race, even if the individual must suffer -- this must be the keynote of our future. This was the guiding principle which underlay all the discussions of the Second International Congress of Eugenics in 1921. Not quantity but quality must be the aim in the development of each nation, to make men fit to maintain their places in the struggle for existence. We must be concerned above all with racial values; every race must seek out and develop and improve its own racial characteristics. Racial consciousness is not pride of race, but proper respect for the Purity of race is today found in but one nation -- the Scandinavian. Man Rises to Parnassus (1928) p.220-1
Complete objectivity in science is an illusion. Because so much of one's analysis depends upon metaphysical assumptions, it should be acknowledged by this writer, and by all readers, that the answer one gives to a question depends to a great extent on the metaphysical position one has previously adopted. This is certainly true for theists and it is equally true for materialists. Frequently, the metaphysical conclusion is given as the rationale for a tortured interpretation of evidence. Theists and naturalists frequently refuse to follow evidence where it leads on the basis that to do so would result in a contradiction of their previous metaphysical conclusions. A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (2001) p.3
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