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So to the book's provocation, the statement that nearly half the people in the United States don't believe in evolution. Not just any people but powerful people, people who should know better, people with too much influence over educational policy. We are not talking about Darwin's particular theory of natural selection. It is still (just) possible for a biologist to doubt its importance, and a few claim to. No, we are here talking about the fact of evolution itself, a fact that is proved utterly beyond reasonable doubt. To claim equal time for creation science in biology classes is about as sensible as to claim equal time for the flat-earth theory in astronomy classes. Or, as someone has pointed out, you might as well claim equal time in sex education classes for the stork theory. It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).
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"Put Your Money on Evolution". The New York Times Review of Books: p. 35. 1989-04-09. 
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Reviewing Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution (1989) by Maitland A. Edey and Donald C. Johanson
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Last sentence expanded upon in "Ignorance is No Crime" (2001) (see below)

 

Richard Dawkins

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Charles Darwin's evolution theory states that the strong eat the weak. According to Darwin's evolution theory we are the worst people. But it is actually not so. It is a natural universal law. If we take Darwin's evolution theory literally then God is the worst kind of being. Because God planned creation in a certain way. When love is involved there is no evil. Even mother birds sacrifice their own lives for the sake of their babies.

 

Sun Myung Moon

 

There can be no question that Darwin had nothing like sufficient evidence to establish his theory of evolution. ... Darwin’s model of evolution ... , being basically a theory of historical reconstruction, ... is impossible to verify by experiment or direct observation as is normal in science ... Moreover, the theory of evolution deals with a series of unique events, the origin of life, the origin of intelligence and so on. Unique events are unrepeatable and cannot be subjected to any sort of experimental investigation. ... His general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin’s time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe. ... One might have expected that a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth.

 

Charles Darwin

 

Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. And human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered. [...] Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

 

Stephen Jay Gould

 

The progress of human knowledge depends on maintaining that touch of scepticism even about the most "unquestionable" truths. A century ago, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was regarded as scientifically unshakeable; today, most biologists have their reservations about it. Fifty years ago, Freud's sexual theory of neurosis was accepted by most psychiatrists; today, it is widely recognized that his methods were highly questionable. At the turn of this century, a scientist who questioned Newton's theory of gravity would have been regarded as insane; twenty years later, it had been supplanted by Einstein's theory, although, significantly, few people actually understood it. It seems perfectly conceivable that our descendants of the twenty-second century will wonder how any of us could have been stupid enough to have been taken in by Darwin, Freud or Einstein.

 

Colin Wilson

 

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