Only a Theory Quotes

“ARE WE REALLY JUST ANIMALS? Of all the questions a skeptical person might ask about Darwin, I’ve come to believe that this is the most important one. Does evolution mean that we are nothing more than beasts? Unlike questions about the age of the earth or the transitional fossils that link mammals to their reptilian ancestors, this is not the kind of question that scientists can easily answer, and there’s a good reason for that. It’s simply not a scientific question. To many of my scientific colleagues, that means that it’s not a question worth answering. But they’re wrong. In some ways, it’s the only question about Darwin’s work that really matters.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“Dr. Behe failed to convince the judge, or for that matter anyone else in the courtroom, that ID had been unfairly maligned or inaccurately presented to the court.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“If I or other witnesses actually had misrepresented ID or the ideas of its proponents, those misrepresentations would have been easy to correct.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“Attorneys for the board, as part of their defense, had promised they would show that ID met the legitimate standards for a scientific theory.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The antievolution movement consistently identifies evolution as politically leftist (or even communist) and sees Darwin’s theory as the cutting edge of dangerous social trends that act against the traditional, conservative foundations of American law and society.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“This allowed ID proponents to claim, persuasively but inaccurately, that the new education law required the examination of scientific alternatives to evolution such as intelligent design.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum even managed to get ID-friendly language inserted into the Senate version of a bill that implemented President Bush’s groundbreaking efforts at education reform.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“Quite consciously Johnson then set about developing a strategy that would subject science to the same relativistic critique that had already affected the rest of academia. That strategy would become known as the Wedge, and its great irony was that it borrowed the language and tactical brilliance of the academic left—except that this time these rhetorical weapons would be wielded on behalf of the academic right. Turnabout is, after all, fair play. And “fairness” was at the heart of Johnson’s new idea.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“To Bloom the great tragedy of modern intellectual life is that the “openness” found in America’s universities is actually an unwillingness to apply reason to solve human problems.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“To do so would be to reveal that one is not “open” to other ideas, and that would be an academic sin of the first order.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“In a very direct and personal way, I have written this book to confront some of the troubling questions that surround our understandings of human origins. My goal is to explore both our ancestries and our anxieties, to probe our connections with the natural world, and finally to see if we can make sense of them. Darwin’s story of evolution speaks to all of us, and tells us something profound, welcome or unwelcome, about human nature. What we all must ask, ultimately, is whether the true story of human origins is to be feared and hidden, or embraced and celebrated.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The reason that irreducibly complex biochemical machines are unevolvable is that their parts, all their bits and pieces, should have no function until they are fully assembled into the final, carefully designed machine for which they are intended.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The mousetrap, ID’s favorite real-world example of an irreducibly complex machine, has been chosen to make this rather complex biochemical point comprehensible to the general public.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The inescapable conclusion that comes from honestly applying the idea of design to the fossil record is that the great intelligence behind ID is a serial creator. He brings into being new species again and again, inexplicably fashioning each one so that it bears a striking resemblance to a species just lost to extinction. In other words, intelligent design is actually a hypothesis of progressive creationism.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The second conclusion is that the designer is never satisfied—or perhaps can never get it quite right.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The second point is that, while they acknowledge that small evolutionary changes—“microevolutionary” ones—are possible in the normal course of development, major changes—of the sort they call “macroevolutionary”—are not.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“Although all the data are not yet in, many of the key events in the equine fossil record seem to be associated with climate-linked shifts in the types of grasses available for grazing in the tropical and temperate regions inhabited by these animals.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“As he explains: “Macroevolution is the study of higher level (species, genera, and above) evolutionary patterns that occur on time scales ranging from thousands to millions of years. The speciation, diversification, adaptations, rates of change, trends, and extinction evidenced by fossil horses exemplify macroevolution.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The earliest reptiles look remarkably amphibian-like, and the earliest mammals are actually known informally as the “reptile-like mammals.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The second pattern in the fossil record is unmistakable to anyone who examines its individual species in detail.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The earliest organisms to appear in the fossil record are single-celled bacteria and algae, and the story of their existence actually occupies most of the history of life on earth.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“These changes have also occurred in patterns, and since the effort to explain them has driven and shaped evolutionary theory, it should also shape design.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The flagellum has been used so often as an example of intelligent design that one might almost call it the poster child of the movement.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“The overall pathway of clotting is complex enough to torture college biochemistry majors, and some of my colleagues use it (intentionally or not) for exactly that purpose.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“But what Paley should have added to his argument, the argument from design, was that their complexity is “irreducible.” Take a part away, and useful function disappears.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“In the language of intelligent design, a mousetrap is “irreducibly complex,” and there you have it—that’s the argument that Paley missed, that’s the cornerstone of the new, scientific, intelligent design movement.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“Mousetraps are machines, simple ones, but machines nonetheless, and they are composed of multiple parts, just like the more complex machines inside the living cell.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“Taking what is unknown, unexplained, or undiscovered today and claiming that it will remain forever beyond our understanding isn’t just poor logic—it’s a lousy bet, considering the rate at which science continues to advance.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“That principle is “irreducible complexity, ” the claim that complex biological systems are composed of multiple parts, and that the removal of just one part would effectively cause the system to stop functioning.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

“If that definition seems a bit ordinary, consider that the parts of any living cell (proteins, sugars, even nucleic acids) are just molecules—complicated molecules, to be sure, but just inanimate, dead molecules.”
― Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul