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.
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Jerry Coyne.Jonathan Wells
» Jonathan Wells - all quotes »
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
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.
Jonathan Wells
Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, "Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution." For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female. No one even goes near explaining how and why each species managed to reproduce (during the millions of years the female was supposedly evolving to maturity) without the right reproductive machinery.
Ray Comfort
I judge things from an evolutionary perspective — "How does this serve and contribute to the process of our own evolution?" — rather than think of good and evil in moral terms. I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution.
Jonas Salk
I was at the job of reading it for days and days, endlessly daunted and halted by its laborious dullness, its flatulent fatuity, its almost fabulous inconsequentiality. (On H. G. Wells' Joan and Peter) Ch. 2, "The Late Mr. Wells"
H. L. Mencken
Wells, Jonathan
Welsh, Irvine
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