Thu 5 Mar 98 7:28

The Revised Quote Book

Hello, gang.

Just yesterday in the mail, I received from the Australian bunch the "Creation Research Foundation" a copy of Laurlie's favorite OOC pamphlet. I thought that in order to cut down on wasted bandwidth, I'd post the whole thing and that way Laurlie can just quote which number of which reference he's taking out of context; although he'd probably cite #130 as #1 0.

This is copied exactly from the original (it was scanned in), so all typos, error and such are noted as the appear in the original. The "book" is by one A. A. Snelling, a schizophrenic Aussie geologist (about more later) and is a pinnacle of "Creation Science". (Note: there's no note about copyright and permission is granted for electronic disemmination. So there.)

Without further ado...the Revised Quote Book:

1. "Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus' earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer that died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing."

G. Richard Bozarth, "The Meaning of Evolution", American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 30

2. "I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme. Every institution that does not unceasingly pursue the study of God's word becomes corrupt. Because of this we can see what kind of people they become in the universities and what they are like now. Nobody is to blame for this except the pope, the bishops, and the prelates, who are all charged with training young people. The universities only ought to turn out men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and stand in the front line against heretics, the devil, and all the world. But where do you find that? I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach the Holy Scriptures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide gates to hell."

Martin Luther, "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate, 1520," trans. Charles M. Jacobs, rev. James Atkinson, The Christian in Society, I (Luther's Works, ed. James Atkinson, vol. 44), p. 207 (196 6)

3. "Now that the tide has turned, I hope you will be with us once again as we seize the opportunity in Washington, D.C., while Battling the reemergence of the grassroots forces of darkness."

Ira Glasser, executive director of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), "Internal memorandum"

4. "I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. Thess [sic] teachers must embody the same selfless dedicationas the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level -- preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism."

John Dunphy, A Religion for a New Age, Humanist, Jan.-Feb. 1983, p. 26

5. "The atheist realizes that there must not only be an acceptance of his right to hold his opinion, but that ultimately his is the job to turn his culture from religion, to eliminate those irrational ideas which have held the human race in intellectual slavery."

"The atheist must abandon his defensive positions, take up the cudgels and go forward, rather than into the retreat of apathy."

Madalyn Murray O'Hair, founder of the American Atheists Organization. Quotes from her speech at their annual convention in Sacramento, California, on April 10, 1993 (from C-SPAN)

6. "Despite many claims to the contrary, life does not begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain that stretches back nearly to the origin of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago. Nor does human life begin at conception: it is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species, tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. Every human sperm and egg is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alive. They are not human beings of course. However it could be argued that neither is a fertilized egg."

Carl Sagan, "Is It Possible To Be Pro-Life and Pro-Choice". Parade Magazine, 22 April 1990, p. 5

7. "Every one of us began from a dot. A fertilized egg is roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence . The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. One cell becomes two, two becomes four, and by the sixth day the fertilized egg has become a kind of hollow sphere wandering off to another realm: the womb. It destroys tissue in its path. It sucks blood from the capillaries. It establishes itself as a kind of parasite on the walls of the uterus."

Carl Sagan, "Is It Possible To Be Pro-Life and Pro-Choice". Parade Magazine, 22 April 1990, p. 6

8. "* By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. But it looks a little like a segmented worm."

"* By the end of the fourth week, it's approximately 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It's recognizable as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill-arches of a fish or an amphibian have become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks something like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception."

Carl Sagan, "Is It Possible To Be Pro-Life and Pro-Choice". Parade Magazine, 22 April 1990, p. 6

9. "* By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes is apparent, and little buds appear --on their way to becoming arms and legs."

"* By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeters (about 1/2 inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be."

10. "* By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian, but somewhat pig-like."

"* By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles a primate, but is still not quite human."

Carl Sagan, "Is It Possible To Be Pro-Life and Pro-Choice". Parade Magazine, 22 April 1990, p. 6

11. "Why has it taken 100 years to learn that one of the largest of all dinosaurs Apatosaurus (Brontosaurus of the school book) has been wearing the wrong head? That seems rather basic. How did this mix-up occur; and where has the old fellow's head been all of this time? The answer to the last question is, of course, that its true head has been in the museum's research collection for all these many years, patiently waiting for research to catch up to reality."

Taken from the display notebook at Dinosaur National Park Museum, Vernal Utah.

12. "At any rate, almost everything in Hawking's book is based on his fertile imagination and logical speculation, with almost no visible evidence or proof. This appears to differentiate his work from fiction, which is almost always based on obvious, demonstrable fact. In another way, however, physics is a lot like fiction or income tax calculating, in that when there is a conflict between the world and an intellectual construct, the author adjusts the world to fit an imagined plot."

Roger L. Welsch, "Astrophys Ed", Natural History, February 1994, pp. 24, 25

13. "Take black matter, for example. As fate would have it, the most recent and popular theories in physics just don't work. It's not as if there are some loose threads around the edges; the theories don't work at all. If they did, the universe would instantaneously fall in on itself or fly apart. Now those of us who are not astrophysicists would probably do something like discard the theories. Not astrophysicists. They readjust the uncooperative universe to fit their theories, postulating a gig antic quantity of invisible gravity-producing stuff they call black matter, even though it's not black and maybe not even matter. And there you are. Just like that, the modern, popular theories are back in business.

I can imagine that readers new to physics and its way of doing things might be skeptical, but those of us who are higher up in the world of science feel nothing but anticipation in all this theorizing. It could, after all, be a step toward a newer and even sillier putty."

Roger L. Welsch, "Astrophys Ed", Natural History, February 1994, p. 25

14. "The secrets of evolution are time and death. Time for the slow accumulations of favorable mutations, and death to make room for new species."

Carl Sagan, "Cosmos", program entitled "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue."

14. "Atheism is the philosophy, both moral and ethical, most perfectly suited for a scientific civilization. If we work for the American Atheists today, Atheism will be ready to fill the void of Christianity's demise when science and evolution triumph.

Without a doubt, humans and civilization are in sore need of the intellectual cleanness and mental health of Atheism."

G. Richard Bozarth, "The Meaning of Evolution", American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 30

15. "These "creation-science" textbooks, if allowed in our schools, can only serve to increase that mental anguish by teaching that the Genesis gibberish is a legitimate scientific theory."

G. Richard Bozarth, "The Meaning of Evolution", American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 19

16. "Christianity is - must be! totally committed to the special creation as described in Genesis, and Christianity must fight with its full might, fair or foul against the theory of evolution."

G. Richard Bozarth, "The Meaning of Evolution", American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 19

17. "The day will come when the evidence constantly accumulating around the evolutionary theory becomes so massively persuasive that even the last and most fundamental Christian warriors will have to lay down their arms and surrender unconditionally. I believe that day will be the end of Christianity."

G. Richard Bozarth, "The Meaning of Evolution", American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 30

18. "It becomes clear now that the whole justification of Jesus' life and death is predicated on the existence of Adam and the forbidden fruit he and Eve ate. Without the original sin, who needs to be redeemed? Without Adam's fall into a life of constant sin terminated by death, what purpose is there to Christianity? None."

G. Richard Bozarth, "The Meaning of Evolution", American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 30

19. " That's why the present "religious war" isn't between any forces of "Good" and "Evil." It is being waged between Media (the State) vs. Churches (Catholic and otherwise) who are tying up millions of dollars of valuable property and assets. As Satanists, we have the advantage of realizing this early in the game. It has never been enough for us to be atheistic -- we have learned how to smash religious ignorance by beating them at their own game, using the Christian's own manufactured fears to destroy them."

Anton Szandor LaVey, "The Devil's Notebook", p. 85

20. "We can use TV as a potent propaganda machine. The stage is set for the infusion of true Satanic philosophy and potent (emotionally inspiring) music to accompany the inverted crosses and pentagrams. Instead of holding our rituals in chambers designed for a few dozen people, we are moving into auditoriums crowded with ecstatic Satanists thrusting their fists forward in the sign of the horns."

Anton Szandor LaVey, "The Devil's Notebook", p. 85

41. "It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes."

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), p. 205

42. "Forget bubbles, comets or ocean vents. Scientists should be looking at pizza for the answer. I can remember when my college roommates and I routinely created life every week in our refrigerator. My theory is that around 4.5 billion years ago, the earth was bombarded by intergalactic pizzas. These then provided the ideal breeding ground in which early organisms could thrive and later evolve."

Mark D. Greene, "How Life Began," Time, 142:8, November 1, 1993

43. "It cannot be accidental, one is tempted to conclude, that the percentage of salt in our bloodstreams is roughly the same as the percentage of salt in the oceans of the world. The long and intricate process by which evolution helped to shape the complex interrelationship of all living and nonliving things may be explicable in purely scientific terms, but the simple fact of the living world and our place on it evokes awe, wonder, a sense of mystery--a spiritual response when one reflects on its deeper meaning."

Al Gore, "Earth in the Balance", p. 264

44. "Human beings are made up mostly of water, in roughly the same percentage as water is to the surface of the earth. Our tissues and membranes, our brains and hearts, our sweat and tears--all reflect the same recipe for life, in which efficient use is made of those ingredients available on the surface of the earth..."

"But above all we are oxygen (61 percent) and hydrogen (10 percent), fused together in the unique molecular combination known as water, which makes up 71 percent of the human body.

So when environmentalists assert that we are, after all, part of the earth, it is no mere rhetorical flourish. Our blood even contains roughly the same percentage of salt as the ocean, where the first life forms evolved. They eventually brought onto the land a self-contained store of the sea water to which we are still connected chemically and biologically. Little wonder, then, that water carries such great spiritual significance in most religions, from the water of Christian baptism to Hinduism 's sacred water of life."

Al Gore, "Earth in the Balance", pp. 99-100

45. "The major global cooling period that gradually took place more than 5 million years ago corresponds with the appearance of the first hominids, called australopithecines. It happened because--in the view of many scientists--at least one species o f tree-dwelling ape was able to adapt to the disappearance of its forest habitat by learning to forage on the ground and walk on two legs, leaving hands--which had evolved to grasp tree limbs- -free to hold and carry food and objects, some of which later became tools."

"The new discoveries relating the emergence of Homo sapiens to global climate changes have solved one of the mysteries in the human story by providing, at least in ecological terms, the missing link in the history of evolution."

Al Gore, "Earth in the Balance", p. 63

46. "Human evolution, of course, is responsible for our very long period of childhood, during much of which we are almost completely dependent on our parents. As Ashley Montagu first pointed out decades ago, evolution encouraged the development of larger and larger human brains, but our origins in the primate family placed a limit on the ability of the birth canal to accommodate babies with ever-larger heads. Nature's solution was to encourage an extremely long period of dependence on the nurturing parent during infancy and childhood, allowing both mind and body to continue developing in an almost gestational way long after birth."

Al Gore, "Earth in the Balance", p. 229

47. "I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."

Isaac Asimov, "Free Inquiry", Spring 1982, vol. 2 no. 2, p. 9

48. "Everybody knows fossils are fickle; bones will sing any song you want to hear." J. Shreeve, "Argument over a woman", 1990, Discover, Vol. 11 (8), p. 58

49. "Imaginations run riot in conjuring up an image of our most ancient ancestor--the creature that gave rise to both apes and humans. This ancestor is not apparent in ape or human anatomy nor in the fossil record."

"...anatomy and the fossil record cannot be relied upon for evolutionary lineages. Yet palaeontologists persist in doing just this."

J. Lowenstein and A. Zihlman, "The invisible ape", New Scientist, Vol. 120 (1641), pp. 56, 57, 1988

50. "Hind limbs of Basilosaurus appear to have been too small relative to body size...to have assisted in swimming, and they could not possibly have supported the body on land. However, maintenance of some function is likely...The pelvis of modern whales serves to anchor reproductive organs, even though functional hind limbs are lacking. Thus hind limbs of Basilosaurus are most plausibly interpreted as accessories facilitating reproduction."

Philip D. Gingerich, B. Holly Smith, Elwyn L. Simons, "Hind limbs of Eocene Basilosaurus: evidence of feet in whales", Science, Vol. 249, 13 July 1990, p. 156

61. "Actually, there is superabundant evidence for animals evolving under our eyes: British moths becoming darker since the Industrial Revolution (industrial melanization [sic]), insects evolving DDT resistance since World War II, malaria parasites evolving chloroquine resistance in the last two decades, and new strains of flu virus evolving every few years to infect us."

Jared Diamond, "Who Are the Jews?", Natural History Vol. 102, No. 11, November 1993. p. 19,

62. "According to one recent estimate, nearly 80 percent of all four-legged land animals disappeared at the end of the Permian."

"Fading slowly, the amphibians were then almost knocked out of the evolutionary race: Only one out of the four existing orders of these animals survived through the end of the Permian to see the dawn of the next geologic period, the Triassic."

"...the mammal-like reptiles, fared no better. Of the 50 genera of these creatures that lived during the Permian period, only one, the genus, Dicynodon made it into the Triassic."

Joseph Alper, "Earth's Near-Death Experience", Earth Vol. 3, No. 1, January 1994, p. 44

63. "...it was even worse for life in the sea."

"An estimated 96 percent of all marine species disappeared forever."

"The Permian crisis was so overwhelming it struck down entire groups of sea creatures. For example, all of the many species of tabulate and rugose corals went extinct. Also gone for good were the three existing orders of crinoids, or sea lilies-- flowerlike invertebrate animals that attached themselves to the seafloor with slender stalks and gathered food with outstretched tentacles. The ammonoids, elegant spiral-shelled creatures whose bodies resembled those of modern-day squid, nearly disappeared forever. And the brachiopods, a phylum of marine invertebrates comprising numerous species of creatures with clamlike shells, similarly came within a hair's breadth of oblivion."

Joseph Alper, "Earth's Near-Death Experience", Earth Vol. 3, No. 1, January 1994, p. 44

64. ""When paleontologists see Archaeopteryx, they see an earth-bound dinosaur that somehow mysteriously sprouted feathers for swatting insects or some other purpose, and they say flight originated from the ground up." Feduccia says. "However, when most ornithologists see Archaeopteryx, they see a flying bird because everything about feathers says flight to them. The conclusion we have drawn is that flight originated from trees down, which makes a lot more sense.""

Alan Feduccia, Professor of biology at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "News Notes". Geotimes. April 1993: p. 6

65. "Many animals which are well-known and accepted were once controversial -- or at least "unexpected." Some of the more interesting of these cryptozoological precedents are:

* The gorilla, largest of all the primates, discovered in Central Africa in 1847;

* Baird's tapir, discovered in Central America in 1863;

* The giant panda, discovered in China in 1869, but not collected alive until 1936;

* Przewalski's horse, discovered in Mongolia in 1881;

* The mountain gorilla, a subspecies, discovered in East Africa in 1902;

* The okapi, a fossil giraffid, discovered in Zaire in 1901;

* The pygmy chimpanzee, described in 1929, but not brought back to Europe from Zaire until the late 1930's;

* The coelacanth, a 6-foot Mesozoic fish (a true "living fossil"), discovered in South Africa in 1938;

* The Chacoan peccary, a Pleistocene fossil form, discovered alive in Paraguay in 1975;

* Megamouth, a 15-foot shark, representing a completely new species, genus, and family, discovered in 1976."

International Society of Cryptozoology Invitation For Membership

66. "Today we are confronted with a wide variety of reports of such "unexpected" animals -- often appearing under the popular label of "monster." Some of those which the Society is concerned with are:

* Reports of unusual felids, such as "big cats" in Britain, continental Europe, and Australia, and large, unknown cats reported in Africa and South America:

* Reports of living thylacines in Tasmania ("Tasmanian tigers") and mainland Australian, and possibly other thought-extinct marsupials, such as Thylacoleo ;

* Reports of giant individuals of known species, such as giant great white sharks and giant anaconda snakes in South America;

* Reports of giant octopuses spanning 50-100 feet or more;

* Reports of "sea serpents" in many global marine environments, which may represent unknown species of large seals or supposedly extinct primitive whales known as archaeocetes;

* Reports of northern latitude "lake monsters" in Loch Ness, and several other Scottish lochs, and in Irish, Swedish, Soviet, Canadian and U.S.A. lakes;

* Reports of large, long-necked animals in the swamps of Central Africa (Mokele-Mbembe) said to resemble Mesozoic sauropod dinosaurs, and flying animals resembling Mesozoic pterosaurs;

* Reports of surviving Pleistocene megafauna, such as mammoths in Siberia and giant ground sloths in South America;

* Reports of large hominoids in the Himalayan region (Yeti), Soviet Union and Mongolia (Almas), China (Wildman), and North America (Sasquatch)."

International Society of Cryptozoology Invitation For Membership

67. "Insect resistance to a pesticide was first reported in 1947 for the Housefly (Musca domestica) with respect to DDT. Since then resistance to one or more pesticides has been reported in at least 225 species of insects and other arthropods. The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds."

Francisco J. Ayala. "The Mechanisms of Evolution", Scientific American, Sept. 1978, p. 65

68. "Scientists at the University of Alberta have revived bacteria from members of the historic Franklin expedition who mysteriously perished in the Arctic nearly 150 years ago. Not only are the six strains of bacteria almost certainly the oldest eve r revived, says medical microbiologist Dr. Kinga Kowalewska-Grochowska, Three of them also happen to be resistant to antibiotics,'...

"In this case, the antibiotics clindamycin and cefoxitin, both of which developed more than a century after the men died, were among those used."

Ed Struzik, Dr. Kinga Kowalewska-Grochowska, "Ancient bacteria revived", Sunday Herald, 16 Sept. 1990

69. "Darwin calculated that at the rate of one baby elephant per breeding couple every 10 years, starting with a single pair, there would be 15 million elephants in only 500 years."

Niles Eldredge, "Speculations: Is Evolution Progress?", Science Digest, Sept. 1983, p. 40

70. "But the reports of Eve's death may have been greatly exaggerated. Indeed, no one argues with the idea that all modern humans inherited their mitochondrial DNA from one common female ancestor. But what is in dispute is the hypothesis first put forth in 1987 by molecular anthropologist Allan Wilson of University of California, Berkeley who claimed to know Eve's age and whereabouts-that she lived about 200,000 years ago in Africa."

Ann Gibbons, "Mitochondrial Eve: Wounded, But Not Dead Yet", Science, Vol. 257, 14 August 1992, p. 873

91. "But it was the chief object of the lecturer to the congregation gathered in St. Mary's, Oxford, thirty-one years ago, to prove to them, by evidence gathered with no little labour and marshalled with much skill, that one group of historical works was exempt from the general rule; and that the narratives contained in the canonical Scriptures are free from any admixture of error. With justice and candour [sic], the lecturer impresses upon his hearers that the special distinction of Christianity, among the religions of the world, lies in its claim to be historical; to be surely rounded upon events which have happened, exactly as they are declared to have happened in its sacred books; which are true, that is, in the sense that the statement about the execution of Charles the First is true."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", 1897, p. 206

92. "Further, it is affirmed that the New Testament presupposes the historical exactness of the Old Testament; that the points of contact of "sacred" and "profane" history are innumerable; and that the demonstrations of the falsity of the Hebrew records, especially in regard to those narratives which are assumed to be true in the New Testament, would be fatal to Christian theology."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", 1897, pp. 206, 207

93. "My utmost ingenuity does not enable me to discover a flaw in the argument thus briefly summarised. I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scripture s which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", 1897, pp. 207, 208

94. "Thus, in view, not, I repeat, of the recondite speculations of infidel philosophers, but in the face of the plainest and most commonplace of ascertained physical facts, the story of the Noachian Deluge has no more claim to credit than has that of Deucalion; and whether it was, or was not, suggested by the familiar acquaintance of its originators with the effects of unusually great overflows of the Tigris and Euphrates, it is utterly devoid of historical truth."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", 1897, p. 226

95. "The only way of escape, if it be a way of escape, from the conclusions which I have just indicated, is the supposition that all these different equine forms have been created separately at separate epochs of time; and, I repeat, that of such an hypothesis as this there neither is, for can be, any scientific evidence; and, assuredly, so far as I know, there is none which is supported, or pretends to be supported, by evidence or authority of any other kind."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", 1897, p. 133

96. "I can but think that the time will come when such suggestions as these, such obvious attempts to escape the force of demonstration, will be put upon the same footing as the supposition made by some writers, who are I believe not completely extinct at present, that fossils are mere simulacra, are not indications of the former existence of the animals to which they seem to belong; but that they are either sports of Nature, or special creations, intended--as I heard suggested the other day--to test our faith."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", 1897

97. "If the Gospels truly report that which an incarnation of the God of Truth communicated to the world, then it surely is absurd to attend to any other evidence touching matters about which he made any clear statement, or the truth of which is distinctly implied by his words. If the exact historical truth of the Gospels is an axiom of Christianity, it is as just and right for a Christian to say, Let us "close our ears against suggestions" of scientific critics, as it is for the man of science to refuse to waste his time upon circle-squarers and flat-earth fanatics."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", 1897, p. 230

98. "Now, whatever imperfections may yet obscure the full value of the Mesopotamian records, everything that has been clearly ascertained tends to the conclusion that the assignment of no more than 4000 years to the period between the time of the origin of mankind and that of Augustus Caesar, is wholly inadmissible. Therefore the Biblical chronology, which Canon Rawlinson trusted so implicitly in 1859, is relegated by all serious critics to the domain of fable."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", 1897, pp. 211, 212

99. "...I can but admire the courage and clear foresight of the Anglican divine who tells us that we must be prepared to choose between the trustworthiness of scientific method and the trustworthiness of that which the Church declares to be Divine authority. For, to my mind, this declaration of war to the knife against secular science, even in its most elementary form this rejection, without a moment's hesitation, of any and all evidence which conflicts with theological dogma--is the only position which is logically reconcilable with the axioms of orthodoxy."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", pp. 229, 230

100. " That is what I mean by demonstrative evidence of evolution. An inductive hypothesis is said to be demonstrated when the facts are shown to be in entire accordance with it. If that is not scientific proof, there are no merely inductive conclusions which can be said to be proved. And the doctrine of evolution, at the present time, rests upon exactly as secure a foundation as the Copernican theory of the motions of the heavenly bodies did at the time of its promulgation. Its logical basis is precisely of the same character--the coincidence of the observed facts with theoretical requirements."

Thomas H. Huxley , "Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays", pp. 132, 133

121. "Could it be that God's purposes are somehow fulfilled through our experiencing the "random, wasteful, inefficiencies" of the natural realm He created?

Were conditions significantly different in the past? Is the suffering and death of grasses, leaves, and protozoa that must have occurred before Adam and Eve sinned (even in Morris's system of theology) totally tragic, meaningless, and without any purpose?"

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 88

122. "Such creationists brand day-age proponents, like myself, who deny any significant biological evolution over time scales long or short, as evolutionists, while they themselves seem to concede substantial biological evolution over very short time scales."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 83

123. "Worship is the key evidence of the spiritual quality of the human race, and the universality of worship is evidenced in altars, temples, and religious relics of all kinds. Burial of dead, use of tools, or even painting do not qualify as evidence of the spirit, for non-spirit beings such as bower birds, elephants, and chimpanzees engage in such activities to a limited extent.

Bipedal, tool-using, large-brained primates (called hominids by anthropologists) may have roamed the earth as long ago as one million years, but religious relics and altars date back only 8,000 to 24,000 years. Thus, the secular archaeological date f or the first spirit creatures is in complete agreement with the biblical date.

Some differences, however, between the Bible and secular anthropology remain. By the biblical definition, these hominids may have been intelligent mammals, but they were not humans."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 141

124. "Much as circumcision divided the first-century church, I see the creation date issue dividing the church of this century. As circumcision distorted the gospel and hampered evangelism, so, too, does young-universe creationism."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 162

125. "For example, God certainly had the power to alter the laws of physics at the instant that Adam sinned against God. But we can be confident that He did not since the astronomical record shows no evidence of such an alteration."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 55

126. "Since the Bible declares that only God and His Word are truth, these creationists consider information from any source outside the Bible as inferior and suspect."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 55

127. "...we can say that carnivorous activity results from the laws of thermodynamics, not from sin."

"But even plants suffer when they are eaten. They experience bleeding, bruising, scarring, and death. Why is the suffering of plants acceptable and not that of animals? Consider, too, how little concern we feel over the death of insects. Why?"

..."we cannot realistically compare the suffering and death of animals to the suffering and death of humans."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 63

128. "Since they believe that all of today's land animals are descended from the creatures on Noah's ark, and since they recognize the ark as too small and the caretakers on board too few to preserve all the land animals on the earth today, they conclude Noah took two of every order, genus, or subgenus rather than two of every species. The many species of today are presumed to arise through biological evolution from the orders and genera on Noah's ark!"

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos"

129. "On the other hand, God's revelation through nature provides overwhelming evidence that all these aspects indeed did exist for a long time period previous to God's creating Adam."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 69

130. "The most reliable and conservative Hebrew scholarship I have read places the biblical date for the creation of Adam and Eve between about 10,000 and 35,000 years ago (with the outside limits at about 6,000 and 60,000 years)."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 140

131. "This denial of physical reality is not limited to reinterpreting astronomical bodies and phenomena. According to young-universe creationists, the fossils do not represent ancient creatures; nor are coal, oil, gas, and top soil the remains of thousand of previous generations of life; nor do the stratified layers of the earth's crust testify of rocks subjected to past pressures, erosions, and stresses; nor do tree rings, coral banding, and ice layers represent real years past; nor does the erosion of craters and mountains on the earth and on the planets and moons result from ongoing natural processes."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 123

132. "Few christians [sic] are yet aware of the anti-physical tendency within young-universe creationism. Most creationists are unaware of it themselves. As an example, young-universe creationists deny the reality of the universe astronomers observe and me asure [sic]."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 122

133. "An old-earth perspective is also depicted as a fundamental challenge to the authority of the Bible. Referring to Christians who accept "billions of years," Ham says, "They have put man in judgment of God. Man becomes the authority." He continue s with this emotional appeal: "For me to accept an old age (billions of years) for the earth is to accept that fallible man's fallible methods are in authority over God's infallible Word. I can't do that!"."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 85

134. "...a beginning not in the extreme distant past but only a few billion years ago. Thus, when I encountered the six creation days of Genesis, it seemed possible that the word day could refer to longer periods than twenty-four hours. But I wasn't sure."

Hugh Ross, "The Creator and the Cosmos", p. 145

135. "I see no reason for attributing to man a significance in kind different from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand."

Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Abortion A Rational Look At An Emotional Issue", R. C. Sproul, p. 39

30

Well, gang, there you have it. Quite a compilation, isn't it? Looks like they got all those vicious Xtian boogeymen like Satanists, atheists and even Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Maybe some day, they'll actually pen something original themselves and not have to rely on ripping others from context.

* Origin: LIVE! from the K/T Impact Point. <mrl@qatar.net.qa> (1:140/12.102)