"I am not satisfied that Darwin proved his point or that his influence in scientific and public thinking has been beneficial . . the success of Darwinism was accomplished by a decline in scientific integrity." —*W. R. Thompson, Introduction to *Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species.

"In essence, we contend that neo-Darwinism is a theory of differential survival and not one of origin . .

"We are certainly not arguing here that differential survival of whole organisms does not occur. This must inevitably happen [i.e. some species become extinct]. The question that we must ask is, does this represent the controlling dynamic of organic evolution? Cannot a similar argument be equally well constructed to `explain' any frequency distribution? For example, consider rocks which vary in s and also persist through time. Clearly the harder rocks are better `adapted' to survive harsh climatic conditions. As Lewontin points out, a similar story can be told about political parties, rumours, jokes, stars and discarded soft drink containers. "—*A. J. Hughes and *D. Lambert, "Functionalism, Structuralism, and `Ways of Seeing', " Journal of Theoretical Biology 787 (1984), pp. 79797.

"The particular truth is simply that we have no reliable evidence as to the evolutionary sequence . . One can find qualified, professional arguments for any group being the descendant of almost any other. "—*J. Bonner, "Book Review," American Scientist 49:1961, p. 240.

In this chapter you will find (1) fairy tales of evolution and (2) definitions thereof; (3) the objectives of the evolutionists and (4) why it is time urgently worm people about the theory; (5) the best evidences of evolution as well as (6) fantastic statements that the theory is something akin to a "law"; (7) statements by conscientious scientists ridiculing the theory and (8) others disclosing its flaws; (9) statements by scientists about how it has damaged scientific endeavor and (10) their condemnation of its principle author; (11) the truth that evolution is one of only two alternatives and (12) the fact that it is a religion; (13) evolutionists speak about creationists, and (14) scientists speak about life; (15) the conclusion of the matter.

"Rudyard Kipling, in addition to his journalism, adventure stories and chronicling of the British Raj in India, is remembered for a series of charming children's tales about the origins of animals. The Just-So Stories (1902) are fanciful explanations of how . . the camel got his hump . Modeled on the folktales of tribal peoples, they express humor, morality or whimsy in 'explaining' how various animals gained their special characteristics.

"'Not long ago,' writes silence historian Michael Ghiselin, 'Biological literature was full of 'just-so' stories and pseudo-explanations about structures that had developed "for the good of the species." ' Armchair biologists would construct logical, plausible explanations of why a structure benefited a species a how it had been of value in earlier stages." —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 245.

Times have not changed; in fact things are getting worse. *Darwin's book was full of Just-So explanations, and modern theorists continue in the tradition of ignoring facts and laws as they search for still more implausible theories about where stars, planets, and living organisms came from.

"In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country. I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale." —Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859; 1984 edition ), p. 184.

We have slipped one story in here that was written for children, not for adults. But, really now, there isn't much difference.

Once a baby elephant was not staying close to his mama as he was supposed to. Wandering away, he saw the bright, shiny river and stepped closer to investigate. There was a bump sticking out of the water, and, wondering what it was, he leaned forward to get a closer look. Suddenly that bump—with all that was attached to it jumped up and grabbed the nose of the little elephant. Kipling continues the story:

" 'Then the elephant's child sat back on his little haunches and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose began to stretch. And the crocodile floundered toward the bank, making the water all creamy with great sweeps of his tail, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled.' " —*Rudyard Kipling, children's story, quoted in Wayne Freir and Percival Davis, Case for Creation (f 983), p. 130

And that is how the elephant got its long nose.

3 - HOW THE GIRAFFE GOT ITS LONG NECK

The giraffe used to look just like other grazing animals in Africa, but while the other animals were content to eat the grasses growing in the field and the leaves on the lower branches, the giraffe felt that the survival of his fittest depended on reaching up and plucking leaves from still higher branches. This went on for a time, as he and his brothers and sisters kept reaching ever higher. Only those that reached the highest branches of leaves survived. All the other giraffes in the meadow died from starvation; all because they were too proud to bend down and eat the lush vegetation that all the other animals were eating. So only the longest-necked giraffes had enough food to eat. All the other giraffes starved to death. Sad story; don't you think? But that is the story of how the giraffe grew its long neck.

Picture the tragic tale: Dead giraffes lying about in the grass, while the short-necked grazers, such as the antelope and gazelle, walked by them, having plenty to eat. So there is a lesson for us: Do not be too proud to bend your neck down and eat. Oh, you say, but their necks were by that time too long to bend down to eat grass! Not so; every giraffe has to bend its neck down to get water to drink. Darwin's giraffes died of starvation, not thirst.

So that is how the giraffe acquired its long neck, according to the pioneer thinkers of a century ago; the men who gave us our basic evolutionary theories.

"We know that this animal, the tallest of mammals, dwells in the interior of Africa, in places where the soil, almost always arid and without herbage [not true] , obliges it to browse on trees and to strain itself continuously to reach them. This habit sustained for long, has had the result in all members of its race that the forelegs have grown longer than the hind legs and that its neck has become so stretched, that the giraffe, without standing on its hind legs, lifts its head to a height of six meters." —*Jean-Baptist de Monet (1744-1829). quoted in Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, p. 87.

"So under nature with the nascent giraffe, the individuals which were the highest browsers, and were able during dearths to reach even an inch or two above the others, will often have been preserved.. By this process long-continued . . combined no doubt in a most important manner with the inherited effects of increased use of parts, it seems to me almost certain that any ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a giraffe." —*Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species (1859), p. 202.

Gather around and listen; we're not finished with giraffes yet. The story goes something like this: "Once long ago, the giraffe kept reaching up into the higher branches to obtain enough food to keep it from perishing. But, because only those giraffes with the longest necks were fittest, only the males survived—because none of the females were as tall! That is why there are no female giraffes in Africa today." End of tale. You don't believe it? Well, read on:

"This issue [of how the giraffe got its long neck] came up on one occasion in a pre-med class in the University of Toronto. The lecturer did not lack enthusiasm for his subject and I'm sure the students were duly impressed with this illustration of how the giraffe got its long neck and of the power of natural selection.

"But I asked the lecturer if there was any difference in height between the males and the females. He paused for a minute as the possible significance of the question seemed to sink in. After a while he said, 'I don't know. l shall look into it.' Then he explained to the class that if the difference [in male and female giraffe neck lengths] was substantial, it could put a crimp in the illustration unless the males were uncommonly gentlemanly and stood back to allow the females 'to survive as well.'

"He never did come back with an answer to my question; but in due course I found it for myself. According to Jones the female giraffe is 24 inches shorter than the male. The observation is confirmed by Cannon. Interestingly, the Reader's Digest publication, The Living World of Animals, extends the potential difference to 3 feet!

"Yet Life magazine a while ago, presented the giraffe stay as a most convincing example of natural selection at work." —Arthur C. Custance, "Equal Rights Amendment for Giraffes?" in Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1980, p. 230. [References cited: *F. Wood Jones, Trends of Life (1953), p. 93; *H. Graham Cannon, Evolution of Living Things (1958), p. 139; *Reader's Digest World of Animals (1970), p. 102.1

Sunderland compares the tall tale with scientific information:

"It is speculated by neo-Darwinists that some ancestor of the giraffe gradually got longer and longer bones in the neck and legs over millions of years. If this were true, one might predict that there would either be fossils showing some of the intermediate forms a perhaps some living forms today with medium-sized necks. Absolutely no such intermediates have been found either among the fossil or living even-toed ungulates that would connect the giraffe with any other creature.

"Evolutionists cannot explain why the giraffe is the only four-legged creature with a really long neck and yet everything else in the world [without that long neck] survived. Many short-necked animals of course existed side-by-side in the same locale as the giraffe. Darwin even mentioned this possible criticism in The Origin but tried to explain it away and ignore it.

"Furthermore it is not possible for evolutionists to make up a plausible scenario for the origination of either the giraffe's long neck or its complicated blood pressure regulating system. This amazing feature generates extremely high pressure to pump the blood up to the 20-foot-high brain and then quickly reduces the pressure to prevent brain damage when the animal bends down to take a drink. After over a century of the most intensive exploration for fossils, the world' museums cannot display a single intermediate form that would connect the giraffe with any other creature." —Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma (1988), pp. 83-84.

4 - HOW THE CATFISH LEARNED TO WALK

There is a fish or two known to walk on land for a short distance, and then jump back into the water. But there are none that stay there and change into reptiles) In an appendix section at the back of chapter 17 (Fossils and Strata), several interviews with leading fossil experts are discussed. In these interviews, each paleontologist is asked about that great evolutionary "fish story:" the first fish that began walking on land—which then became the grandpa of all the land animals! Although this is a basic teaching of evolutionary theory, none of the interviewed experts knew of any fossil evidence proving that any fish had ever grown legs and feet and begun walking on land!

"The Kingston Whig-Standard for 7 October 1976, on pie 24, had a brief account, from Jonesboro, Tennessee, of the U.S. National Storytelling Festival held there. One particular tall story was as follows:

"'The storyteller, as a boy, while fishing one day caught a catfish; but he threw it back. The following day he caught it again. This time he kept it out of the water for a little longer, and then threw it back. And so it continued all summer; the fish staying out of the water for longer and longer periods, until it became accustomed to living on land.

" 'At the end of the summer, as the boy was walking to school, the fish jumped out of the water and began following him like a dog. All went well until they started across an old bridge with a plank missing. Then the catfish, alas, fell through the hole in the bridge into the water below, and drowned.'’' —Harold L Anrisbong, news note, Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1977, p. 230.

"Long ago and far away, there was a pile of sand by the seashore. It looked just like regular sand, and so it was. Water was lapping at the shore. It looked just like regular water, and so it was Then a storm arose and lightning flashed. Nothing ran for cover, for nothing was alive. Then the bolt of lightning hit the water—and a living creature came into existence. It swam around for a time, had children, and later descendents, thousands of years later, gradually figured out how to invent organs necessary for survival and they learned how to reproduce their own, and bear young. And that's how we began. "

That story would only work for children below the age of six. Above that, they would reply, "Come on, now, you're just fibbing!" A competent geneticist would die laughing.

Here is another story of life arising out of the soil, where no life had been before. This tale was originally told not to young moderns, but to ancient ones. It is a pagan myth:

"Phoenix was a fabulous, eagle-like bird which existed in the folklore of ancient Egypt. It is said that no more than one of these great birds ever lived at any one time. The solitary nature of Phoenix naturally presented a problem from the standpoint of procreation. Reproduction, however, was solved in a rather unique way. At the end of its life span of no less than 500 years, the bird would construct a nest of combustible materials and spices, set the nest on ire, and be consumed in the flames.

"Then, lo and behold, from the inert ashes would spring a new Phoenix!

"In the history of mythology, the story of Phoenix is one of the few instances, if not the only one, in which something complex is constructed from lifeless matter, completely unaided." —Lester J. McCann, Blowing the Whistle on Darwinism (1988), P. 101.

Concern not yourself with foolish prattle by men of silence about DNA and amino add codes, concentrated chemical compounds, continuing need for energy, food requirements, necessity for complex male and female reproduction systems, cell contents, bone construction, hormones, gastrointestinal system, brain, heart, nerves, circulatory system, lymphatics, and all the rest. Be content with the tale as it reads: "Lightning hit some sea water and changed it into a living organism, and then that organism had enough brains to continually redo its DNA coding so it could gradually change into transitional forms and make itself into ever-new species." Ignore the fact that it never happens today, and no evidence is available that it has ever occurred in the past. Those enamored with the story give no thought to scientific facts which forbid it.

"The fish has assumed its present shape through many millions of years of natural selection. That is, the individuals of each species best suited for their particular environment had a better chance to survive long enough to reproduce and pass on their genetic material to their offspring, who then did the same. Those less suited either moved to more suitable environments or died before reproducing and pawing their genes to offspring." —*Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau: Vol 5 - The Art of Motion, p. 22.

In the above book, a wide variety of fish shapes are described. But the reader is told that each fish shape was, in effect, the result of Lamarckian inheritance. Each fish subtly changed its DNA code, passed these changes on to its offspring, and by environmental effects, one species changed Itself into another. That Is Lamarckian evolution. The book tells of fast fish and slow fish, all doing well in the water. But the claim is essentially made that the fast fish made themselves fast or they would have perished, and the slow fish made themselves slow or they would have perished. The changes were made by each fish, with genetic alterations passed on to its immediate children.

We know that gene shuffling can produce some changes within species, but none across species, and not the kind of radical changes suggested here. This fish story is akin to the giraffe's long neck. Just as a giraffe cannot grow a longer neck, so a fish cannot change its shape. Such dramatic changes would be equivalent to a change in species.

Adapting 'Darwin's theory that a land animal, the bear, changed Itself into a whale, evolutionists went ahead and made it an even more complex fish story: With serious face, they declare that after that fish got out of water and began walking, and then changed itself into a land animal, at a later time another land animal, but this one stepped back into the water and became a whale!

"The cetaceans, which include the whales, dolphins, and porpoises, have become adapted to a totally aquatic life since their ancestors returned to the sea nearly 70 million years ago. There is little evidence of cetaceous ancestors, but most people consider them to have been omnivorous animals possibly like some hoofed animals today. .

"The most important changes were those having to do with the way the animals moved and breathed. They reassumed the fusiform [torpedo-like] shape of early fish. the bones in their necks became shorter until there was no longer any narrowing between head and body [their necks disappeared]. With water to support their weight they became rounded or cylindrical in body shape, reducing the drag irregularities. Front limbs adapted by becoming broad, flat, paddle-like organs . . The tails developed into flukes [horizontal tail fins] . .

"Another change the cetaceans underwent in adapting to their reentry to the sea was the position of their nostrils. From a position on the upper jaw as tar forward as possible, the nostrils moved upward and backward until they are today located atop the head, sometimes as a single opening, sometimes as a double opening. And these returned-to-sea mammals became voluntary breathers, breathing only upon conscious effort—unlike man and other mammals who are involuntary breathers. The development or return of a dorsal fin for lateral stability was another change that took place in some of the cetaceans upon their return to the sea." —*Op. cit., pp. 2627.

This story is even more stretched than Kipling's story about the crocodile stretching the elephant's nose! A mammal walked into the ocean and—instead of drowning—continued to live for the rest of its life as it swam around in the ocean! THAT is really a fish story! Gradually it and its offspring made changes so that they could get about easier in the ocean. But how did they survive until those changes were made?

"Particularly difficult to accept as chance processes are those prolonged changes which lead to a new lifestyle, such as the evolution of birds from reptiles or—perhaps odder—the return of mammals to a life in the sea, as in the case of dolphins and whales." —*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p 160.

"What good is half a jaw or half a wing? . . These tales, in the 'Just-So Stories' tradition of evolutionary natural history, do not prove anything . . concepts salvaged only by facile speculation do not appeal much to me." —*Stephen Jay Gould, "The Return of Hopeful Monsters," Natural History, June/July, 1977

"Extremes of adaptation—such as the whale—provoke wonder about how such a creature could have evolved. Sometimes larger than a herd of elephants, this intelligent mammal leads on tons of tiny plants and animals (plankton) it extracts from seawater. Since it is air-breathing, warm-blooded and milk-giving, it must have developed from land animals in ancient times, then gone back to the sea. But 150 years ago, who could imagine how such a transformation could come about?

"Charles Darwin could. He had noticed in a traveler's account that an American black bear was seen 'swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water.' If this new food-getting habit became well established, Darwin said in the Origin of Species (first edition, 1859): . . [Darwin's statement quoted].

"'Preposterous!' snorted zoologists. Such an exempts, they thought, sounded so wild and farfetched it would brand Darwin as a teller of tall tales. Professor Richard Owen of the British Museum prevailed on Darwin to leave out the 'whale-bear story,' or at least tone it down. Darwin cut it from later editions, but privately regretted giving in to his critics, as he saw 'no special difficulty in a bear's mouth being enlarged to any degree useful to its changing habits.' Years later he still thought the example 'quite reasonable.' " —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 483.

There is a lot more to changing a bear into a whale—than just enlarging its mouth! The fact is that Darwin was right !n giving that illustration! It exactly fitted his theory. The problem was that, as long as we airily stay with theory, it all sounds good; but when we give concrete examples of how the theory would have had to occur, reasoning men can see the folly of the whole absurdity. But there is still more: *Milner explains that it was not a bear that went swimming one day and turned into a whale—It was a cow, deer, or sheep! "No problem," someone will reply, "it didn't happen all at once; evolutionary change never does. It took thousands of years for the cow to change into a whale."

So that cow was swimming around out in the ocean all that time, till the change came?

*Milner will now explain why it was a cow, deer, or sheep—and not a bear—that went swimming that day:

"Transitional forms have been scarce, but a few suggestive fossils were recently discovered in India of a four-legged mammal whose skull and teeth resemble whales. (No creature on land has teeth like the whales which *Darwin was referring to: the Baleen whale which keeps its mouth open and strains in tiny creatures through immense bristles] And, during the 1980s, serum protein tests were made on whales' blood, to compare it with the biochemistry of other living animal groups. The results linked them not to bears or carnivores, but to hoofed animals (ungulates). Forerunners of whales were closely related to the ancestors of cattle, deer and sheep!

"Such a conclusion fits with the general behavior of the great baleen whales, who move in pods or herds and strain the sea for plankton; they are, like antelopes or cattle, nodal grazers." —*Ibid.

Can a cow live on a diet of fish? How could it catch them? According to the story, after it changed into the shape of a fish, it had no way to breathe since it could only breath atmospheric air and its nose was in the front of its head with the outlet downward (such as all land mammals have). EITHER that cow made a dramatic single-generation changeover, or its descendant ALL suffocated to death for thousands of years, UNTIL they gradually moved that nose to the top of their heads and became voluntary breathers. (Perhaps the cow learned to swim upside down, so it could keep its nose out of water.)

Differences between whales and hoofed animals could be discussed at some length. (For example, the baby whale has the milk pumped into its mouth; otherwise water pressure would keep it from obtaining enough to survive. If it did not have totally voluntary breathing, it would have quickly drowned as soon as it was born.) In hundreds of thousands of ways, the whale is totally different than a cow, deer, or sheep, yet we are told that some such hoofed animal walked into the sea and, over a period of millions of years, changed into a whale. Now, that IS a tall story. It is but another in a series of myths for gullible people willing to believe what evolutionists tell them.

The Just-So Stories are still being told.

Of course, there is a way to settle this matter once and for all: Drop a cow into the ocean and see what happens to him.

Wondering how it could have any application to The Theory, a confirmed evolutionist quotes a statement by the Opposition:

"As one creationist pamphlet put it, 'A frog turning instantaneously into a prince is called a fairy tale, but if you add a few million years, it's called evolutionary science."' —*Op. cit., p. 399.

I am still worried about that cow. She had to stay out in that water, swimming, and chomping on orchard grass that might chance to float by, while her calf nursed underwater—and she and her descendants had to continue on like that for A MILLION YEARS before the cow could change into whale!

"It takes a MILLION YEARS to evolve a new species, ten million for a new genus, one hundred million for a class, a billion for a phylum and that's usually as far as your imagination goes.

"In a billion years [from now], it seems, intelligent life might be as different from humans as humans are from insects . . To change from a human being to a cloud may seem a big order, but it's the kind of change you'd expect over billions of years." —*Freemen Dyson, 1988 statement, quoted in Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, p. 93 (American mathematician; caps ours).

"The change in gene frequencies of populations over the generations in time produces new species. Darwin caged it [the change of one species to another] 'descent with modification': a slow process, usually operating over HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, and even MILLIONS, of years." —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution, (1990), p. 157 [caps ours.]

Oh, you're worried about the calf? Needn't fear. It was holding its nose shut with its hoof, while it nursed. Calves have to be persistent, you know, or they don't live very long.

"For example, we may say 'wings are to fly with,' and this seems to imply purpose, but to most evolutionists it means only that the function of wings is flight and that flight gives wings the selective advantage that results in their evolution. This implies cause but not purpose. Mast evolutionists see no purpose in evolution even when they use language that seems to imply it. I shall try not to use teleological language and (if I use it inadvertently) shall never intend to imply purpose by it." —*P.J. Darlington, Evolution for Naturalists (1980), p. 48.

"Macroevolution considers the question of whether evolution has occurred and by what pathways. It was called the theory of descent by Darwin and the fact of evolution by Julian Huxley." —*A. Riddiford and *D. Penny, "Scientific Status of Modern Evolutionary Theory," Evolutionary Theory: Paths into the Future (1984), p. 4.

"All living forms in the world have arisen from a single source that came from an inorganic beginning. So, according to the model of evolution, the first living cell 'evolved' into complex multicellular forms of life; these 'evolved' into animals with backbones. Fish evolved into amphibia, amphibia into primates, and primates into man." —*A. Thompson, Biology. Zoology, and Genetics (1983), p.1.

"The theory of evolution holds that existing plants and animals have originated by descent with modification from one or a few simple ancestral forms." —*J. Smith, The Theory of Evolution (1958), p. 152.

"Evolution is a scientific theory proposing that higher forms of life have descended from lower forms." —*W. Stansfield, The Science of Evolution (1977), p. 3.

"The millions of diverse living species we find around us in the modern world are all descended from a common ancestor that lived in the remote past. The processes that have brought this diversity about are collectively called evolution." —*F. Ayala and *J. Valentine, Evolving: The Theory and Processes of Organic Evolution (1979), p. 1.

"Evolution. The process by which all organisms have arisen by the descent from a common ancestor." —*S. Luria, *S. Gould and *S. Singer, A View of Life (1981), p. 767.

"The first is the general thesis that evolution has occurred—all animal and plant species are related by common ancestry." —*Colin Patterson, Evolution (1978), p. 145.

"Evolution, which is the strongest natural explanation, holds that the gross features of the universe—including galaxies, solar systems and planets; the transition from non-living matter to living organisms; and the diversity of life forms, including human beings—all erase as a consequence of the innate proclivities of matter and energy, as expressed by the laws of nature." —*Wilson, "The Origin of Life," Did The Devil Make Darwin Do It? (1983), p 86.

"By 'evolution' biologists mean that the change in gene frequencies of populations over the generations in time produces new species." —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 157.

"There are, however, seven basic assumptions that are often not mentioned during discussions of evolution. Many evolutionists ignore the first six assumptions and only consider the seventh. These are as follows:

"(1) The first assumption is that non-living things gave rise to living material, i.e., spontaneous generation occurred.

"(2) The second assumption is that spontaneous generation occurred only once.

"The other assumption all follow from the second one.

"(3) The third assumption is that viruses, bacteria, plants and animals are all interrrelated.

"(4) The fourth assumption is that the Protozoa gave rise to the Metazoa.

"(5) The fifth assumption is that the various invertebrate phyla are interrelated.

"(6) The sixth assumption is that the invertebrates gave rise to the vertebrates.

"(7) The seventh assumption is that within the vertebrates the fish gave rise to the amphibia, the amphibia to the reptiles, and the reptiles to the birds and mammals. Sometimes this is expressed in other words, ie., that the modern amphibia and reptiles had a common ancestral stock, and so on.. These assumptions form the 'General Theory of Evolution.'

"The first print that I should like to make is that these seven assumptions by their nature are not capable of experimental verification. They assume that a certain series of events has occurred in the past." —*G.A. Kerkut, quoted in *L. Duane Thurman, How to Think about Evolution (1978), pp. 44-45. [Biochemist.]

"I am quite aware that many people object to the use of the term evolution for anything but the transformations of living substance. But I think this is undesirably narrow. Some term is undoubtedly needed for the comprehensive sense comprises three main phases. . We may call these three phases the inorganic a, if you like, cosmological; the organic or biological; and the human or psycho-social." —*Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Evolution," in Encyclopedia Americana Vol. 10, (1982), p. 734.

"It is evolution, in the broad sense, that links inorganic nature with life, and the stars with earth, and matter with mind, and animals with man. " —*Julian Huxley, "At Random, " in Evolution after Darwin (1960), p. 42.

"It takes a million years to evolve a new species, ten million for a new genus, one hundred million for a class, a billion for a phylum—and that's usually as far as your imagination goes.

"In a billion years [from now], it seems, intelligent life might be as different from humans as humans are from insects . . To change from a human being to a cloud may seem a big order, but it's the kind of change you'd expect over billions of years." —*Freeman Dyson, 1986 statement, quoted in Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, p. 93 [American mathematician].

"By 'evolution,' biologists mean that the change in gene frequencies of populations over the generations in time produces new species. Darwin called it 'descent with modification': a slow process, usually operating over hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of years." —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 157.

"The great statistician who devised population genetics, Sir Ronald Fisher, once said that evolution was a device for generating improbability. That about sums it up." —*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 183.

"There are four commonly confused meanings of evolution, which should be kept separate and distinct: (1) the general process of populational and species change, which is considered an established scientific fact; (2) inevitable 'progress' from lower to higher life forms, a discredited notion; (3) the particular history of the 'branching bush' of lice and the origin of various groups, or phylogenies, which are interpreted from the fossil record and biochemical studies; and (4) the mechanism, or 'engine,' of evolution, which Darwin and Wallace proposed as 'natural selection,' but which is currently being investigated and modified by research. [In other words, they still do not know what it is.]" —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 157.

"Darwin often spoke of 'my theory' as if it were a single idea. Most historians of science agree that the core of Darwinism consists of two major ideas: the fact of evolution and the major mechanism of evolution he proposed, natural selection.

"Other features implied in Darwin's thought are often neglected. As Harvard evolutionist Ernst Mayr points out, Darwinism also includes the concepts of common descent, gradualism, and multiplication of species." —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia d Evolution (1990), p. 118. ["Common descent is the idea chat several related species trace back to a common ancestor from which they branched off. "—Ibid.

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