The following are a few of my favorite quotes on Intelligent Design, dedicated to the geniuses who cannot find any “evidence” of it in nature.
“This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” —Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), The Principia
“Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us.” —Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
“The more I study nature, the more I am amazed at the work of the Creator.” —Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
“The Darwinian theory has become an all-purpose obstacle to thought rather than an enabler of scientific advance.” —Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel-laureate physicist
“So if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design. ... The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.” —Sir Fred Hoyle, British astonomer (and self-professed atheist), from a lecture in 1982
The following quote is attributed to Isaac Newton on a creationist website, but no reference was cited, and I have not confirmed its authenticity. Does anyone know the original source of this quote?
“Can it be by accident that all birds beasts & men have their right side & left side alike shaped (except in their bowells) & just two eyes & no more on either side the face & just two ears on either side the head & a nose with two holes & no more between the eyes & one mouth under the nose & either two fore leggs or two wings or two arms on the sholders & two leggs on the hipps one on either side & no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel & contrivance of an Author? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom & the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, & within transparent juyces with a crystalline Lens in the middle & a pupil before the Lens all of them so truly shaped & fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light & what was its refraction & fit the eys of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These & such like considerations always have & ever will prevail with man kind to beleive that there is a being who made all things & has all things in his power & who is therfore to be feared?” —Sir Isaac Newton?
No biologists in your list, except for Louis Pasteur who simply agreed with the majority of scientists in Europe and America.
The fact is that just a few Biblical literalists in the United States and fundamentalist Moslems have trouble understanding how evolution fits in, and seem to be emotionally wedded to refusing honest inquiry into the subject.
Isaac Newton was brilliant about some things and a real kook about others. He spent a ridiculous amount of his time on alchemy.
The problem with the ID people is that they have yet to set forth a falsifiable hypothesis, collect data to test it, analyze the data and publish their findings in a peer-reviewed journal. IOW, they talk (almost nonstop) but they don’t deliver what is expected of people who want to be taken seriously as scientists. Until they do, they are going to remain a fringe element.