Professor Knockout Quotes!

The only official collection of quotes by Dr. Don Patton on the internet.

An important message from Dr. Patton regarding these quotes:
I use most of these quotes as handouts to provide documentation for my lecture series. They were not intended to stand alone as arguments by themselves. However this web site (www.bible.ca) convinced me that they could be useful as a reference tool, especially for those who attend the lectures, and I agreed. I commented at the time that some of the quotes would not make sense without the lecture. A few (two) have charged that a small number of these quotes misrepresent the intent of the context. When the charges were investigated, it was discovered, sure enough, if they had heard them used in the context of the lecture, they would have seen that the use was appropriate. It should be remembered that we are not quoting these individuals to imply that they are creationists. Rather, just the opposite. We are using them as antagonistic witnesses. When such individuals acknowledge facts contrary to their own interest, the credibility of their testimony increases dramatically. We want you to know that these individuals are devout evolutionists. It should also be remembered that the quotes are used as graphics in a lecture. It is easy to defeat the purpose of effective communication by too much detail in the graphic. A longer excerpt might be desirable but ineffective. This practical challenge is one of the reasons documentation is provided in the form of a handout, which allows one to check the entire book or article referenced. If you feel that any of the quotes are used in a "deceptive and misleading" way, please contact the webmaster a formal inquiry will be made of your concerns. We are not afraid to admit error and make changes.

Dr. Don R. Patton

Quotes used by Dr. Don Patton in video lecture.

LAWS OF SCIENCE

Chief Justice Rienquist & Justice Scalla, "We have no basis on the record to conclude that creation-science need be anything other than a collection of scientific data supporting the theory that life abruptly appeared on the earth." Edwards vs. Aguillard, Dissent

Niles Eldridge, American Museum of Natural History, "Indeed, the only competing explanation for the order we all see in the biological world is the notion of Special Creation." Time Frames, 1985, p.240 D. J. Futuyma, "Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin of living things. Organisms either appeared on earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from preexisting species from some process of modifications. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must have been created by some omnipotent intelligence." Science On Trial, 1983, p.169

Richard Dawkins, Oxford, "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." The Blind Watchmaker, p.1 Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved." What Mad Pursuit, 1988, p.

Edward L. Ericson "The core of the humanistic philosophy is naturalism-the proposition that the natural world proceeds according to its own internal dynamics, without divine or supernatural control or guidance, and that we human beings are creations of that process." The Humanist, 9-10/2000, p.30 Richard Lewontin, Harvard: "It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." The New York Review Of Books, p.6, 1/9/1997 Steven Pinker, M.I.T. "No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it." How The Mind Works, p.162 Isaac Asimov, "I have faith and belief myself... I believe that nothing beyond those natural laws is needed. I have no evidence for this. It is simply what I have faith in and what I believe." Counting The Eons, p.10 Michael Ruse, "Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion-a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with its meaning and morality...Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and is true of evolution still today." National Post, 5/13/2000, p.B-3.

American Biology Teacher "To deny or eliminate the teaching of evolution as fact destroys the essential content of the discipline (biology) and threatens the principles of academic freedom upon which our educational system--and indeed our larger society-- is based." 4/1996, p.58. Biology, Prentice Hall, 1998, "There is no doubt that if you jump up into the air, you will end up on the ground. It makes no difference whether you understand or even believe in gravity. What goes up must come down. Just as definitely, life on Earth has evolved and is continuing to evolve all around us all the time." p.233. Richard Dawkins, Oxford "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked...)" Blind Watchmaker.

SUPREME COURT Justice Brennan, LA Balanced Treatment Act, "The Act does not grant teachers a flexibility that they did not already possess, to supplant the present science curriculum with the presentation of theories, besides evolution, about the origin of life. ...Teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science education.", Supreme Court of the United States. No. 85-1513. Edwin W. Edwards, et al. Apellants v. Don Aguillard, et al. (June 19, 1987).

Texas Textbook Mandates, "1.4 scientific theories and laws based on existing evidence as well as new evidence... under process skills:... 6.3 examining alternative scientific evidence and ideas to test, modify, verify or refute scientific theories. ... 9.2 scientific theories of evolution and other reliable scientific theories, if any;...", Texas State Board of Education, Proclamation 66, March 11, 1989 (Amended in 1993 to include "strengths and weaknesses of evolution.")

LAW OF THE LAND: Court rules atheism a religion: "A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion. "Atheism is [the inmate's] religion...even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said." August 20, 2005, WorldNetDaily.com

STEPHEN GOULD, "But no statute exists in any state to bar instruction in 'creation science.' It could be taught before and it can be taught now." New York Times Magazine, 7/19/1987, p.34. MICHAEL ZIMMERMAN, "' Creation science" can still be brought into the science classroom if and when teachers and administrators feel that it is appropriate. Numerous surveys have shown that teachers and administrators favor just this route. And, in fact, 'creation science' is currently being taught in science courses throughout the country." Bioscience, 17 (9):635, 1987. WILLIAM B. PROVINE, Cornell, "Teachers and school boards in public schools are already free under the Constitution of the USA to teach about supernatural origins if they wish in their science classes." Biology And Philosophy, V.8, p.123, 1993

FEW DOMINATE, Carl Sagan, "Only 9% of Americans accept the central findings of modern Biology that human beings (and all the other species) have slowly evolved by natural processes from a succession of more ancient beings with no divine intervention needed along the way." The Demon Haunted World, p.327, 1996

SCIENTIFIC DISSENT FROM DARWINISM (Signed by over 700 scientists all with doctorates in natural sciences)."We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

DECEITFUL PROPAGANDA, Ernst Mayr Harvard, "...no educated person any longer questions the validity of the so-called theory of evolution, which we now know to be a simple fact." What Evolution Is, 2001, p. 141

USA TODAY/GALLUP POLL, June 1-3, 2007: "...God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" Results Nationwide: Probably True, 66; Probably False, 31%

Creation-Evolution Debates, Niles Eldridge, Curator, American Museum of Natural History, "Creationist travel all over the United States, visiting college campuses and staging 'debates' with biologist, geologist, and anthropologist. The creationists nearly always win. ...Thinking the creationists are uneducated, Bible-thumping clods, they are soon routed by a steady onslaught of direct attacks on a wide variety of scientific topics. ...Creationists today - at least the majority of their spokesmen - are highly educated, intelligent people. Skilled debaters, they have always done their homework. And they nearly always seem better informed than their opponents, who are reduced too often to a bewildered state of incoherence. ...Creationists have been very successful of late in converting student followers, having favorable rulings adopted by local school boards, even getting legislation passed by state legislatures..." Monkey Business, p.17 Eugenie C. Scott, National Center for Science Education (Berkeley Watchdog Group) "Scientists should refuse formal debates because they do more harm than good, but scientists still need to counter the creationist message." New Scientist, 22/04/2000, p.46 DARWIN'S VIEW, Origin Of The Species, Introduction, "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question."

IMPORTANT DISTINCTION, G. A. KERKUT, "There is a theory which states that many living animals can be observed over the course of time to undergo changes so that new species are formed. This can be called the 'Special Theory of Evolution': and can be demonstrated in certain cases by experiments. On the other hand there is a theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the 'General Theory of Evolution'". Implications of Evolution, p.155.

General EVOLUTION, Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Evolution comprises all the stages of the development of the universe; the cosmic, biological, and human or cultural developments...Life is a product of the evolution of inorganic nature, and man is a product of the evolution of life." Science, Vol.155, p.409. "evolution from primordial life, through unicellular and multicellular organisms, invertebrate, and vertebrate animals, to man..." Encyclopedia Americana

NOT EVOLUTION, L. HARRISON MATTHEWS, "The (peppered moth) experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection or survival of the fittest-in action, but they do not show evolution in progress, for however the populations may alter...all the moths remain from beginning to end, Biston betularia." Introduction to Centennial Edition, Origin of Species, p.xi, 1971, J.M. Dent & Sons, London

OBSERVE EVOLUTION? (In Living World) Bill Moyers & Richard Dawkins: Moyers: "Is evolution a theory, not a fact?" Dawkins: "Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." Moyers: "What do you mean it's been observed." Dawkins: "The consequences of. It is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene. And you... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course." PBS, NOW, 12/03/04 G. Ledyard Stebbins "The reason that the major steps of evolution have never been observed is that they required millions of years to be completed. Processes Of Organic Evolution, p.1. Stephen Gould "Major evolutionary change requires too much time for direct observation on the scale of human history. "Discover, 5/1981, p.36.

OBSERVE EVOLUTION? (In Fossil Record) Stephen J. Gould, Harvard, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,...we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study." Natural History, V.86. David B. Kitts, Univ of Okl., "Despite the promise that paleontology provides a means of 'seeing' evolution it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists,..." Evolution, V.28, p.467.

Experimental? Repeatable? Theodosius Dobzhansky, "These evolutionary happenings are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible. ....the applicability of the experimental method to the study of such unique historical processes is severely restricted before all else by the time intervals involved, which far exceed the lifetime of any human experimenter." American Scientist, Vol.45, p.388.

FALSIFIABILITY, Colin Patterson, British Museum of Natural History "...unique and unrepeatable, like the history of England. This part of the theory [evolution has occurred] is therefore a historical theory, about unique events, and unique events are, by definition, not a part of science, for they are unrepeatable and not subject to test." Evolution, p.45 Paul Ehrlich, "Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus 'outside empirical science', but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. ...become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as a part of our training" Nature, Vol. 214, p. 352.

Mythological Objectivity, Stephen J. Gould, Harvard, "No myth deserves a more emphatic death than the idea that science is an inherently impartial and objective enterprise;...Yet it continues to thrive among working scientist because it serves us so well. ...It also provides the rational for America's scientific priesthood: The National Academy of Sciences." Science In The Twentieth Century, 1978, p.344. Maxwell Planck, Nobel Laureate, "A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

NOT EVOLUTION, L. Harrison Matthews "The [peppered moth] experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection or survival of the fittest - in action, but they do not show evolution in progress, for however the population may alter...all the moths remain from beginning to end, Biston betularia." Introduction To Centennial Edition Origin Of The Species, 1971, p.x ("...the most striking evolutionary change ever witnessed by man." International Wildlife Encyclopedia p.2706)

"Finches Evolve Before Scientists' Eyes" LiveScience.com July 13, 2006 "For the first time scientists have observed in real-time evolutionary changes in one species driven by competition for resources..." (The Truth: "Shrinkage" less than one millimeter. "Shrunken" size already existed. Only relative numbers changed.)

NO CHANGE WITH TIME, Michel Delsol, Prof. Of Biology, Univ. Of Lyons, "If mutation were a variation of value to the species, then the evolution of drosophila should have proceeded with extreme rapidity. Yet the facts entirely contradict the validity of this theoretical deduction; for we have seen that the Drosophila type has been known since the beginning of the Tertiary period, that is for about fifty million years, and it has not been modified in any way during that time." Encyclopedia Of The Life Sciences, Volume II, p. 34 .

BOUNDARIES TO VARIATION, W. Braun, "...that is the potential mutations of a given biotype are normally limited, else we should have been able to observe drastic evolutionary changes in laboratory studies with bacteria. Despite the rapid rate of propagation and the enormous size of attainable populations, changes within initially homogeneous bacterial populations apparently do not progress beyond certain boundaries under experimental conditions." Bacterial Genetics

BACTERIA TEST ASSUMPTION "But what intrigues J. William Schopf [Paleobiologist, Univ. of Cal. LA] most is a lack of change...1-billion-year-old fossils of blue-green bacteria... 'They surprisingly looked exactly like modern species.'" Science News, p.168, Vol.145, 3/12/94

ANTIBIOTIC RESISTENCE, Medical Tribune, 12/29/88 Not Evolution, "It may be time to rethink our thoughts about the mechanisms for antibiotic-resistance patterns...The anaerobic bacteria, from the bowels of three members of an 1845 Arctic expedition, have survived 140 years and are showing resistance patterns to modern antibiotics. Current theories suggest that antibiotic resistance is linked to long-term exposure to antibiotics. Needless to say, antibiotics were not developed until long after these 19th-century bacteria and their hosts had been buried in Arctic permafrost." p.23 Nature, 9/16/99 "Our results show that resistance to antibiotics is widespread in at least some wild populations, even though these have never to our knowledge been exposed to antibiotics, and they undermine the presumption that resistance will decline in the absence of antibiotic treatment." Nature, 9/16/99

PILTDOWN MOTH, "Majerus notes that the most serious problem in that B. betularia probably does not rest on tree trunks --exactly two moths have been seen in such a position in more than 40 years of intensive search. The natural resting spots, are in fact, a mystery... This alone invalidates Kettlewell's release-recapture experiments, as moths were released by placing them directly onto tree trunks, where they are highly visible to bird predators... Finally, the results of Kettlewell's behavioral experiments were not replicated in later studies: moths have no tendency to choose matching backgrounds." Jerry A. Coyne , Nature, Vol.36, 11/5/98, p.35

BENEFITS? Jerry Coyne, Prof. of Evolutionary Biology, University Of Chicago," But hasn't evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of 'like begets like'" Nature, 8/31/2006 p.984 Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate, Co-Discoverer of Structure of DNA, "It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult." What Mad Pursuit, 1988, pp.138-139

"EVOLUTIONARY THEORY UNDER FIRE", "An historic conference in Chicago challenges the four-decade long dominance of the Modern Synthesis, The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying micro-evolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No. ...Francisco Ayala, 'major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States', said: 'We would not have predicted stasis...but I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate.'" Science, V.210, Nov.21,1980 SELECTION IRREVELANT, S.M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins U. "...natural selection, long viewed as the process guiding evolutionary change, can-not play a significant role in determining the overall course of evolution. Macroevolution is decoupled from microevolution." Pro. N. A. S., v 72, p.64 MUTATIONS IRREVELANT, Stephen J. Gould, Harvard, "A mutation doesn't produce major new raw material. You don't make a new species by mutating the species. ....That's a common idea people have; that evolution is due to random mutations. A mutation is NOT the cause of evolutionary change." Lecture at Hobart and William Smith College, 14/2/1980. Pierre-Paul Grasse, "No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution." Evolution Of Living Organisms, Academic Press, 1977, p.88 TEXTBOOK EVOLUTION DEAD, STEPHEN. J. GOULD, Harvard, "I well remember how the synthetic theory beguiled me with its unifying power when I was a graduate student in the mid-1960's. Since then I have been watching it slowly unravel as a universal description of evolution.....I have been reluctant to admit it--since beguiling is often forever--but if Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory is accurate, then that theory, as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy." Paleobiology, Vol.6, 1980, p. 120.

Quotes used by Dr. Don Patton in video lecture.