Is evolution theory universally accepted?
[views of some prominent scientists against it]

People generally think that evolution is not merely a theory but a proved fact. They believe that ‘evolution theory’ has longed since passed out of the field of scientific controversy and is now universally accepted fact. The main reason for this is that the news media present evolution as an accomplished fact of science. In almost all course books of biology, geology or history, Darwin’s theory is now explained in such words that the students come to believe that the theory has finally and definitely been established. The prejudice is so strong that views opposing Darwin’s theory are not given any space at all and, if these are given, then these are not explained adequately. The result of all this is that anyone who now tries to present the opposite view is labelled as ignorant, fanatic or dogmatic even before he is given proper hearing. In fact, most people are not aware that there are well-qualified and competent scientists who hold views against the theory and who give scientific reasoning in support of their views. Here we will quote some well-known scientists who do not accept the theory of evolution.

• Let us start with Darwin himself. Charles Darwin himself made this statement in ‘the origin of species’: "Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them are so serious that to this day, I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered…" Towards the end of his life, Darwin confessed: "Not one change of species into another is on record…we cannot prove that a single species has changed (into another )".

• Opinion of Thomas Huxley: Thomas Huxley, who was perhaps, the most vigorous supporter of Darwin, admitted that "evolution was not an established theory but a tentative hypothesis, an extremely valuable and even probable hypothesis but an hypothesis nonetheless. It is not universally accepted."

• Professor Theodosius dobzhansky, a leading evolutionary spokesman, has admitted that "it would be wrong to say that the biological theory of evolution has gained universal acceptance among biologists or even among geneticists".

• Dr. Austin H. Clark, noted biologist of the Smithsonian Institution, states bluntly: "There is no evidence which would show man developing step by step from lower forms of life. There is nothing to show that man was in any way connected with monkeys… he appeared suddenly and in substantially the same form as he is today …there is no such things as missing links. There is not the slightest evidence that any one of the major groups arose from any other, each is a special animal complex, related more or less closely to all the rest, and appearing therefore as a special and distinct creation".

• Professor J. Doyle, president of the Botany section of the British Association for the advancement of science, said : "since we cannot prove the evolution of a single organism, it is intellectual presumption to talk of the universe in a thousand million years."

• Dr. D’Arcy Thompson says," In the study of evolution and in our attempts to trace the decent of the animal kingdom, 80 years of study of the origin of species, has had a disappointing result. It has not taught us how birds descended from reptiles, mammals from other quadrupeds, quadrupeds from fishes, nor vertebrates from the invertebrate stock. We do not know the origin of the echinoderms, of the molluscs, of the coelenterates, nor one group of protozoa from another… this failure to solve the cardinal problems of evolutionary biology is a very curious thing."

• Professor G.A. Kerkut, an evolutionist, states, "…there is the theory that all 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’ and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis."

• When John T. Bonner reviewed Kerkut’s book, he said: "this is a book with a disturbing message: it points to some unseemly cracks in the foundations. One is disturbed because what is said gives us the uneasy feeling that we knew it for a long time deep down but were never willing to admit this even to ourselves. It is another one of those cold and uncompromising situations where the naked truth and human nature travel in different directions. The particular truth is simply that we have no reliable evidence as to the evolutionary sequence of invertebrate phyla. We do not know what group arose from what group or whether, for instance, the transition from protozoa occurred once or twice, or many times…; we have all been telling our students for years not to accept any statement on its face value but to examine the evidence; and therefore, it is rather a shock to discover that we have failed to follow our sound advice."

• Professor Albert Fleishman, professor of comparative anatomy at Earlangan university, said: "the theory of evolution suffers from grave defects, which are becoming more and more apparent as time advances. It can no longer square with practical scientific knowledge, nor does it suffice for our theoretical grasp of the facts. The Darwinian theory of decent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific re-search, but purely the product of imagination."

• The late Sir William Dawsaon, Canada’s great geologist, said of evolution: "it is one of the strangest phenomena of humanity; yet it is utterly destitute of proof ".

• Dr. Robert A. Millikan, famous physicist and Nobel prize-winner, said in an address, a few years ago, to the American chemical society, "The pathetic thing about it is that many scientists are trying to prove the doctrine of evolution, which no scientists can do." Dr. Millikan is an evolutionist; but he is honest enough to admit it as a theory that cannot be proved.

• Loren Eisley, a leading evolutionist, says: "with the failure of these many efforts, science was left in the somewhat embarrassing position of having to postulate theories of living origins what it could not demonstrate. After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its own."

• Dr. D.M.S. Watson writes "…the theory of evolution itself is a theory universally accepted not because it can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true but because the only alternative is "special creation", which is clearly incredible."

• Dr. W.R. Thompson, a world-renowned entomologist, was for many years the director of the commonwealth institute of Biological control at Ottawa, Canada and was selected to write the foreword to the new edition of Darwin’s origin of the species. In that foreword, he made the following very significant statement: "As we know, there is a great divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the cause of evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists because the evidence is unsatisfactory. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution. But some recent remarks of evolutionists show that they think this unreasonable. This situation, where men rally to the defence of a doctrine they are unable to define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigor, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by the suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science".

• Dr. George Wald, a noble prize winner, chooses to believe in evolution even though he regards it as a scientific impossibility. He says, "The only alternative to a spontaneous generation is a belief in supernatural creation…" He has also said, "I am convinced that the only way to prevent the total chaos that we are headed for and probably within the next ten years, is to return to God". Many others also believe in evolution for the same reasons.

• Sir Ambrose Fleming, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S., president of the British association for the advancement of science, stated, "Evolution is baseless and quite incredible".

• Nicholas Berdyaev, one of our great modern thinkers, wrote, "The naturalistic view of man as a product of evolution in the animal world is the feeblest of all anthropological theories…"

• Dr. Arthur I Brown writes: "let me assure you that evolution is not a necessary induction from known facts; it is a creed held in spite of facts. It has had the benefit of shrewd and persistent and widespread propaganda in books, magazines and newspapers. Pictures of imaginary pre-historic scenes and ‘reconstruction’ have deluded the general public and influenced the thinking of those who have been willing to take these assertions at their face value without investigation".

• Professor Leander S. Keyser made this statement, "To my mind, there are enough counts against the theory of evolution to make it impossible to accept it as a scientific truth or even as a reasonable hypothesis."

• Herbert lee williams, chairman of the department of journalism, Memphis state university, writes, "It is at this point that we pass from what might be just innocent observation of similar appearances into the fantasy sphere, for hominid is a coined word, meaning ‘manlike’. You have seen hundreds of drawings and three-dimensional reproductions of creatures which were half-man and half-ape. But you’ve never seen a hominid, because it exists only in theory. All you have seen up to this point are monkeys, apes and men- and a few hundred conjectures built about the imaginary hominid."

• "Believable? I suppose that depends on who you are. Before you accept such hypothesis as facts, you should amass as much scientific knowledge as Von Braun, the recognised technological genius of the twentieth century, who dismisses the theory with a comment: "There are those who argue that universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?" "When a man of science is a man of faith, he doesn’t become an inferior scientist. He simply becomes a superior man. The scientific method demands far more than the theory of biological evolution has been able to supply."

• Fred John Meldau wrote, "In nature, we find endless variety within the species or genus: but absolutely no change from one family to another. Summed up in four words, the laws, governing all life prove there are mutations but no transmutation, which simply means that there are many varieties within any group, but there can never be one ‘kind’ of life mutating (changing) into another family."

• Dr. Etheride, speaking of the great British museum, said, "In all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of transmutation of species."

• Professor T.H. Morgan says, "within the period of human history we do not know of a single instance of the transformation of one species into another."

• "Darwin's Theory never had any proof’: Richard Goldschmidt, ph. D.,D.Sc., professor of zoology, university of california, says, "Geographic variation as a model of species formation will not stand under thorough scientific investigation. Darwin’s theory of natural selection has never had any proof... yet it has been universally accepted. Here may be wide diversification within the species… but the gap (between species) cannot be bridged… sub-species do not merge into the species either actually or ideally. Nowhere have the limits of any Species been transgressed, and these limits are separated from the limits of the next good species by the unbridged gap, which also includes sterility."

• "There is not the slightest evidence"… Dr. Austin H. Clark, F.R.G.S., who is recognized as one of the world’s greatest biologists and, at one time, biologist of the United States national museum, bluntly stated that Darwin, Lamarck and all their followers were wrong on almost all vital points. "so far as concern the major groups of animals, the creationists seem to have the better of the argument. There is not the slightest evidence that any of the major group arose from any other. Each is a special animal-complex… appearing as a special and distinct creation--the greatest groups of animals in life do not merge into another. They are and have been fixed from the beginning… back-boned animal is always unmistakably a back-boned animal, a starfish is always a starfish, and insect is always an insect, no matter whether we find it as a fossil or catch it alive at the present day… If we are willing to accept the facts, we must believe that there were never such intermediates,… That these major group, from the very first, bore the same relation to each other that do at the present."

We have given above views of some of the scientists who do not believe in the Theory of Evolution for some reason or the other or who believe because they do not want to believe in creation. There is a large number of such scientists who give potent reasons against the Theory of evolution but this is unknown to many students of science because such scientists are not quoted in course books on history, geology, biology, psychology, etc…If one goes through the correspondence of Darwin with some of his contemporary scientists, one would find that even Darwin himself was doubtful about his theory and that was mainly due to the opposition of some scientists to the story of creation as given in the Bible, that many scientists of his day took up the theory propounded by Darwin and waged a war in his support even though they believed that the theory was not scientifically established. ------om shanti.

For views of more scientists-----please click here.

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