Some Favorite Darwin Quotes

As I attempt to re-familiarize myself with Charles Darwin by skipping and skimming through “Fat Book #1” mentioned in the last entry, I find myself quite impressed with the man, in spite of the fact that we believe that he came to totally false conclusions, for which we may excuse him because he was working with inadequate data and was reacting to the straw man* creationism of his day. But he was a keen observer of nature and a careful documenter of his findings.

Always the gentleman, his writings present a sharp contrast with some of his followers currently in print—no Dawkins-like derogatory characterizations or the simplistic and cynical outbursts of newspaper and science journal editorial writers (See 11/11 and 11/24 posts.)

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from “Origins.”

“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.”

“A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”

Of course, the first quote was followed by, “But I can find out no such case.” An examination of the fossil record that has been developed since his writing, and a brief talk to Michael Behe or other Intelligent Design theorists would surely offer him some “cases.” Would some irrefutable examples of "Irreducible Complexity" grab his attention?

If Mr. Darwin were alive today and had access to a mere handful of electron micrographs of cell structure, or had the opportunity to discuss probability and information theory with some of today’s specialists in those fields, perhaps, just perhaps, he would reconsider some of his far reaching—and disastrous—conclusions.

As for Professor Dawkins, mentioned above, a short quote will demonstrate the contrast between the objective Darwin and one of his current disciples:

“If you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that.)” –Richard Dawkins, Oxford University

Well, thank you, Professor, for not wishing to consider us wicked. Thank God WE DO recognize our wickedness and our need of our Great Savior!

By the way, I recently included that quote in a letter to the editor of The Record on the subject of Intelligent Design. The editorial staff published the letter—with the Dawkins quote deleted. Hmmm.

*Perhaps "straw man" is not quite the appropriate term for the creationism of the 19th century. Its advocates were sincere in their beliefs, but they had a fixation on fixity of species. Darwin saw too much variability in living things to believe that every species had been created separately. Today's creationists believe in rapid speciation of created kinds, which could correspond to anything from species, to genera or families in the Linnaean system of classification. The field of baraminology deals with this subject.