I'm going to regret this, as I am sure this will be called spam, but here is a refutation of those quotes:
1) "There are only two possibilities as to how life arose; one is spontaneous generation arising to evolution..."
Dr. George Wald
and
""Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.""
Also George Wald.
The first quote is a fabrication. The second is out of context. To see what Wald actually said, read
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-4.html#quote57 quote #57
2) "Evolution [is] a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible."
(Professor D.M.S. Watson)
From 1929. From a nobody. And, out of context. He was saying that the alternatives to evolution had been discarded because they were found faulty, not that they had been rejected a priori.
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie031.html
3) Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson's quote. I can't find anything on him, other than that he's a creationist.
4) Dr. Newton Tahmisian, Atomic Energy Commission. Enough said.
5) John Polkinghorne is a theistic evolutionist. While the quote is correct, he did not have a problem with evolution.
6) The Charles Townes quote:
Here is a better understanding of this member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science:
"Townes said that things are not so clear-cut. Even processes that appear random, he said, can have an underlying logic.
“The idea that calling something ‘random’ means that it’s without direction is a mistake,” Townes said. “In a gas, for example, random interaction among particles ensures uniform distribution and temperature. In other words, an unplanned process produces an orderly outcome.”
“Evolution,” Townes said, “is like that. It’s a random process that produces spectacular things.”
I can't find the rest of this online. It goes without saying that Raup is not saying evolution is wrong. He is arguing for PE. He is also wrong about Darwin, who understood that evolution could work in spurts.
8) "The pathetic thing about it is that many scientists are trying to prove the doctrine of evolution, which no science can do."
Written in 1925. By a physicist who had no training in biology.
9) Dr. Richard Bliss is a big time creationist, not an acceptor of evolution. Why is he on a list of evolutionists?
10) Dr. William Fix. Same thing; he is in no way an evolutionist. What he does believe in is something called "psychogenesis—that is, that there are psychic powers that have been shaping humanity". A real nutjob. I believe he also has no formal training in biology. Not sure if the *Dr.* is accurate.
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/book_browsing/
11) "In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection---quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology"
Dr. Arthur Koestler is a neo-lamarckian; he doesn't represent anything about the ToE as it has been for over 100 years.
12) "The only competing explanation for the order we all see in the biological world is the notion of special creation"
Not sure this is even Patterson. I get multiple people as the author when I google this. Usually a sign of a made-up qoute.
13) Dr. Wolfgang Smith. A mathematician specializing in aerodynamics. Also, not at all an evolutionist. This list sure is getting padded with creationists. :)
14) Dr. Hubert P. Yockey. Information theorist and non-biologist.
15) "Darwin's evolutionary explanation of the origins of man has been transformed into a modern myth, to the detriment of scientific and social progress.....The secular myths of evolution have had a damaging effect on scientific research, leading to distortion, to needless controversy, and to gross misuse of science....I mean the stories, the narratives about change over time. How the dinosaurs became extinct, how the mammals evolved, where man came from. These seem to me to be little more than story-telling"
Nice use of elipses. Where's this from? How many pages separate the cut pieces?
16) "The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop"
The musings of a man who died before the modern work in abiogensis was even started. BTW, this has nothing to do with evolution anyway.
Edwin Grant Conklin (1863-1952)
17) Dr. Pierre-Paul Grasse was an evolutionist, but a neo-lamarkian. Your quote is from a crank who is pushing ideas disproved 100 years ago. Nice going!
18) Dr. Alfred Rehwinkel, a theologian. Not a scientist, or an evolutionist. More creationist padding.
19) Dean H. Kenyon, a biophysicist creationist. More padding. I thought this list was supposed to be from evolutionists.
20) ""I suppose the reason we leaped at the origin of species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores."
A complete fabrication. Julian Huxley never said this.
21) "Evolution is unproved and improvable, we believe it because the only alternative is special creation, which is unthinkabl"
Attributed to Sir Arthur Keith, it's a fabrication.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-4.html#quote81
22) "If I knew of any Evolutionary transitional's, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them in my book, 'Evolution'"
Patterson quote mined, yet again. Grossly out of context. He did, in fact, know of transitionals.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html
23) "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree possible."
Except, right afterwords he describes why evolution solves the problem. Classic quote mine showing how creationists will try to even show that Darwin didn't accept Darwin. Creationists should be ashamed.
24) Professor Enoch. Creationist. More padding.
25) "It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual completely continuous transitional sequences." (Dr. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard)
Out of context quote.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-2.html#quote20
25) "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."
Perfectly good point by Darwin. No such demonstration has happened.
26) "I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know."
Perfectly good quote by Gould, showing why evolution is falsifiable. Why is this supposed to be a problem for evolutionists?
27) Dr. R. Kirk, "The Rediscovery of Creation," . Another creationist padding this list of evolutionists.
28) Dr. I.L. Cohen, another creationist, non-biologist. Has also written about the *Secret of Stonehenge*.
29) "If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile."
Disgusting use of Hitler as an evolutionary scientist. Of course, it also excludes the many quotes from this book where Hitler calls the Aryan Race the most perfect special creation of God. He was a creationist in that respect. Pathetic that you included this.
30) "The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than the woman. Whether deep thought, reason, or imagination or merely the use of the senses and hands.....We may also infer.....The average mental power in man must be above that of woman."
Yes, Darwin was a typical Victorian man. So?
32) "No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man.....it is simply incredible to think that.....he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites."
Lovely creationist use of ellipses. Here's what the recently deceased Henry Morris thought about race(he didn't have the excuse of being a 19th century Victorian. I know of no major thinker in the 19th century who argued for the equality of the races in ability):
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/racism.html
33) "Recapitulation provided a convenient focus for the persuasive racism of white scientists; they looked to the activities of their own children for comparison with normal adult behavior in lower races."
Of course, as Gould and modern science in general has rejected the recapitulation theories he is talking about, this quote is moot.
34.) "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups."
(Dr. Duane Gish, Biochemist.) Why is he on this list? Shameless, yet again.
35) "The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research but purely the product of the imagination."
(Albert Fleishman, professor of zoology & comparative anatomy at Erlangen University) He was last main holdout against evolution, and died in 1942. He was always a creationist. Yet MORE padding.
36) "We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It is time we cry, "The emperor has no clothes."
(Dr. Hsu, geologist at the Geological Institute in Zurich.)
Yet more *misspeaking* from the creationists. He was attacking social darwinism, not evolution.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part4.html#quote4.6
37) "The great cosmologic myth of the twentieth century."
(Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.)
Actually, he has come to accept most aspects of evolution. Bad choice for the creationists (He was never a YEC'er anyway)
38) "9/10 of the talk of evolution is sheer nonsense not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by fact. This Museum is full of proof of the utter falsity of their view."
(Dr. Ethredge, British Museum of Science.)
Sorry, Dr. Ethredge was really Robert Etheridge, Jr., who was Assistant Keeper of Geology in this Museum from 1881 to 1891. I have seent his quote also attributed to Dr Niles Etheredge, which is a (deliberate?) mix-up with the present day scientist Niles Eldredge. Robert Etheridge, Jr. was a creationist nobody.
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie029.html
39) "The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based upon faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion....The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but irrational."
(Dr. Louis T. More, professor of paleontology at Princeton University)
"Evolution is faith, a religion."
(Dr. Louist T. More, professor of paleontology at Princeton University)
Sorry, he was a phsyicist at the University of Cincinnati. And he was writing in 1925. Again, more padding.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-4.html#quote61
40) "Darwin's theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I'm quite sure that Freud, Marx and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather."
(Dr. David Berlinski) from the Discovery institute. More padding with creationists.
Ok, there's 40 quotes that are *veracity-challenged*. I didn;t do them all; some I couldn't find anything on, other than re-quoting at creationist websites. I am sure you will go through this and point out where I am wrong, in detail.
