Discovery Institute fellow Jonathan Wells is a major purveyor of misleading, inaccurate, and incorrect statements about evolution. His book Icons of Evolution (2000) is notorious for its distortions and false claims about evolution.
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,National Center for Science Education.Jonathan Wells
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Wells's book rests entirely on a flawed syllogism: hence, textbooks illustrate evolution with examples; these examples are sometimes presented in incorrect or misleading ways; therefore evolution is a fiction. The second premise is not generally true, and even if it were, the conclusion would not follow. To compound the absurdity, Wells concludes that a cabal of evil scientists, "the Darwinian establishment", uses fraud and distortion to buttress the crumbling edifice of evolution. Wells' final chapter urges his readers to lobby the US government to eliminate research funding for evolutionary biology.
Jonathan Wells
I would give Wells' book a grade of an "F", because he distorts and mis-quotes scientists and does not write to encourage people to build upon a logical foundation, but rather to blindly accept his "proofs" that evolution is wrong. Wells offers no alternative scientific theory to explain the fossil record. If not by Darwinian evolution, then HOW did life gradually change from single-celled simple bacteria 3.5 billion years ago (which Wells says he accepts), to the present explosion of life in all of its complexity all around us? In short he fails to convincingly demonstrate to me, as a fellow molecular biologist, that most of the "Icons" are really the essential foundations of evolution he claims, and he offers no compelling evidence to me that these are indeed 'frauds'. However, I am seriously concerned that Wells claims himself to be a "molecular biologist", and yet questions the very foundations of molecular biology (DNA makes RNA makes protein) as some sort of Darwinist conspiracy.
Jonathan Wells
Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority. . . . There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations. Since no one knows molecular evolution by direct experience, and since there is no authority on which to base claims of knowledge, it can truly be said that . . . the assertion of Darwinian molecular evolution is merely bluster.
Michael Behe
In speaking of evolution it is necessary to understand from the outset that no mechanical evolution is possible. The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness.
G. I. Gurdjieff
Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.
Herbert Spencer
Wells, Jonathan
Welsh, Irvine
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