The Deniable Darwin Quotes

“No doubt, the theory of evolution will continue to play the singular role in the life of our secular culture that it has always played. The theory is unique among scientific instruments in being cherished not for what it contains, but for what it lacks. There are in Darwin's scheme no biotic laws, no Bauplan as in German natural philosophy, no special creation, no elan vital, no divine guidance or transcendental forces. The theory functions simply as a description of matter in one of its modes, and living creatures are said to be something that the gods of law indifferently sanction and allow.”
― David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin

“My own view, repeated in virtually all of my essays, is that the sense of skepticism engendered by the sciences would be far more appropriately directed toward the sciences than toward anything else.”
― David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin

“Like Darwin’s theory of evolution, Big Bang cosmology has undergone that curious social process in which a scientific theory is promoted to a secular myth. The two theories serve as points of certainty in an intellectual culture that is otherwise disposed to give the benefit of the doubt to doubt itself.”
― David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin

“The image of the fundamental laws of physics zestfully wrestling with the void to bring the universe into being is one that suggests very little improvement over the accounts given by the ancient Norse in which the world is revealed to be balanced on the back of a gigantic ox.”
― David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin

“The speckled moth changes its wing coloring; bacteria develop drug resistance. Why should this count in favor of the thesis that whales are derived from ungulates, or men from fish?”
― David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin

“The rational alternative to Darwin’s theory is intelligent uncertainty.”
― David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin

“But an innocent conviction of grace, once lost, cannot easily be regained.”
― David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin