Kyk ook:
As daar nie ’n letterlike sondeval was nie, was Jesus se kruisiging oorbodig.
Richard Bozarth (ateïs)
Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’s life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer that died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.
Die Christendom het die wetenskap beveg, veg dit nogsteeds, en sal dit tot aan die desperate einde oor evolusie beveg, want evolusie vernietig uiteindelik geheel en al die rede waarom Jesus se lewe kwansuis nodig was. Vernietig Adam en Eva en die erfsonde, en in die puin sal jy die jammerlike oorblyfsels van die Seun van God vind. Dit neem die betekenis van Sy dood weg. As Jesus nie die verlosser was wat vir ons sondes gesterf het nie, en dit is wat evolusie beteken, dan beteken die Christendom niks.
[Uit The atheists know why Christianity has to fight evolution.]
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Frank Zindler (ateïs)
“The most devastating thing though that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.”
Die mees vernietigende ding wat die biologie aan die Christendom gedoen het was die ontdekking van biologiese evolusie. Die wete dat Adam en Eva nooit regte mense was nie, het die sentrale mite van die Christendom vernietig. As daar nooit ’n Adam en Eva was nie, was daar nooit erfsonde nie. As daar nog nooit erfsonde was nie, is daar geen behoefte aan verlossing nie. As daar geen behoefte aan verlossing is nie, dan is daar geen behoefte aan ’n Verlosser nie. En ek stel dit dat dit Jesus, histories of andersins, in die geledere van die werkloses plaas. Ek dink dat evolusie absoluut die doodsklok van die Christendom is.
[Frank Zindler, in a debate with William Lane Craig, Atheism vs Christianity video, Zondervan, 1996, Enemy Revealed]
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John Shelby Spong (liberale Christen)
“And Charles Darwin not only made us Christians face the fact that the literal creation story cannot be quite so literal, but he also destroyed the primary myth by which we had told the Jesus story for centuries. That myth suggested that there was a finished creation from which we human beings had fallen into sin, and therefore needed a rescuing divine presence to lift us back to what God had originally created us to be. … And so the story of Jesus who comes to rescue us from the Fall becomes a nonsensical story. So how can we tell the Jesus story with integrity and with power, against the background of a humanity that is not fallen but is simply unfinished?”
“En Charles Darwin het nie net ons Christene laat besef dat die letterlike skeppingsverhaal nie so letterlik verstaan kan word nie, maar hy het ook die primêre mite, waardeur ons die Jesusstorie vir eeue vertel het, vernietig. Daardie mite veronderstel dat daar ’n afgehandelde skepping was vanwaar die mens in sonde geval het, en daarom ’n reddende goddelike teenwoordigheid nodig gehad het om ons weer op te hef na dit waarvoor God ons oorspronklik geskep het. … En so het die storie van Jesus wat ons moes kom red het van die sondeval, ’n sinnelose storie geword. So, hoe kan ons die Jesusstorie met integriteit en met krag vertel, teen die agtergrond van ’n mensdom wat nie geval het nie, maar bloot onvoltooid is?”
[Uit Spong is wrong]
[Kyk ook What’s wrong with Bishop Spong?]
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HG Wells (skrywer)
Herbert George Wells (1866–1946), mostly known as simply ‘H.G. Wells’, was a well-known pioneer of science fiction novels (The Time Machine, War of the Worlds), a prominent Fabian Socialist, historian and eugenicist. He wrote:
‘If all the animals and man had been evolved in this ascendant manner, then there had been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no fall, then the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for an atonement, upon which the current teaching based Christian emotion and morality, collapsed like a house of cards.’
Wells, H.G., The outline of history — being a plain history of life and mankind, Cassell & Company Ltd, London, UK, (the fourth revision), Vol. 2, p. 616, 1925.
[Uit HG Wells: Evolution and the gospel]
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Thomas H Huxley (ateïs)
I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of ‘Wolf’ when there is no wolf.
Ek waag om te vra watter waarde, as voorbeeld van God se metodes van die hantering van die sonde, ’n verhaal van ’n gebeurtenis het wat nooit gebeur het nie? Indien geen vloed die agterlosige mense weggevee het nie, hoe is die waarskuwing van meer waarde as die geskreeu van ‘wolf’ wanneer daar geen wolf is nie.
[Uit Darwin’s bulldog—Thomas H. Huxley]
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William Jennings Bryan (Christen)
‘Theistic evolution may be defined as an anesthetic which deadens the patient’s pain while atheism removes his religion.’
Teïstiese evolusie kan gedefinieer word as ’n narkotiseur wat die pasiënt se pyn stil terwyl ateïsme sy geloof verwyder.
[Uit Bryan on theistic evolution]
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William Provine (ateïs)
‘…belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.’
[—in ‘No free will’. In Catching up with the Vision, ed. Margaret W Rossiter, Chicago University Press, 1999, p. S123.]
[Uit A very tired Christian]
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Richard Dawkins (ateïs)
‘Oh but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn’t it? Symbolic?! Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual. Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than barking mad!’
‘The moderates’ [liberals’] position seems to me to be fence-sitting. They half-believe in the Bible but how do they decide which parts to believe literally and which parts are just allegorical?’
‘It seems to me an odd proposition that we should adhere to some parts of the Bible story but not to others. After all, when it comes to important moral questions, by what standards do we cherry-pick the Bible? Why bother with the Bible at all if we have the ability to pick and choose from it, what is right and what is wrong?’
O, maar natuurlik was die verhaal van Adam en Eva altyd net simbolies, is dit nie? Simbolies?! Jesus het hom laat martel en is tereggestel vir ’n simboliese sonde deur ’n nie-bestaande individu. Niemand wat nie opgevoed in die geloof is nie kan enige uitspraak maak anders as dat dit belaglik is.
Die gematigdes [liberales] se posisie lyk vir my na draadsittery. Hulle half-glo in die Bybel, maar hoe besluit hulle watter dele hulle letterlik glo en watter dele net allegories is?
Dit lyk vir my na ’n vreemde stelling dat ons moet voldoen aan sekere dele van die Bybel-verhaal, maar nie aan ander dele nie. Na alles, wanneer dit kom by die belangrike morele vrae, volgens watter standaarde gebruik ons die Bybel so selektief? Waarom moeite doen met die Bybel as ons die vermoë het om selektief daaruit te kies wat reg is en wat verkeerd is?
[Uit Dawkins on compromising churchians.]
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Richard Dawkins (ateïs)
Howard Condor: “And was there a particular point, or something you read, or an experience you had that said, ‘Yes this is it, God does not exist’?”
Dawkins: “Oh well, by far the most important was understanding evolution. I think the evangelical Christians have really sort of got it right in a way, in seeing evolution as the enemy. Whereas the more, what shall we say, sophisticated theologians are quite happy to live with evolution, I think they are deluded. I think the evangelicals have got it right, in that there is a deep incompatibility between evolution and Christianity, and I think I realized that about the age of sixteen.”
Howard Condor: “Was daar ’n sekere punt of iets wat jy gelees het of ’n ondervinding wat hy gehad het wat jou laat sê het: ‘Ja, dit is dit. God bestaan nie.’?”
O wel, by verre die belangrikste was toe ek evolusie verstaan het. Ek dink die evangeliese Christene is eintlik soortvan reg in ’n sin om evolusie as die vyand te sien teenoor die, wat sal ons sê, gesofistikeerde teoloë wat heel gemaklik is daarmee om met evolusie saam te leef. Ek dink hulle is mislei. Ek dink die evangeliese Christene is reg dat evolusie en Christendom onversoenbaar is en ek dink ek het dit besef toe ek ongeveer 16 jaar oud was.
Kyk Richard Dawkins: “Theistic evolutionists are deluded”(youtube.com) (of hier (2.8MB)) en Atheist Richard Dawkins: “Evangelical Christians have really sort of got it right”.
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Carl Sagan (ateïs)
‘If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn’t he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why is he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there’s one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He’s not good at design, he’s not good at execution. He’d be out of business if there was any competition.’
As God almagtig en alwetend is, hoekom het hy nie die heelal aanvanklik begin sodat dit uit sou kom op die manier waarop hy wil nie? Waarom is hy voortdurend besig om te herstel en te kla? Nee, daar is een ding wat die Bybel duidelik maak: Die Bybelse God is ’n slordige vervaardiger. Hy is nie goed met ontwerp nie en hy is nie goed in uitvoering nie. Hy sou uit besigheid geraak het as daar enige kompetisie was.
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Irven DeVore
Harvard anthropologist
‘I personally cannot discern a shred of evidence for a benign cosmic presence … I see indifference and capriciousness. What kind of God works with a 99.9 percent extinction rate?’
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Hugh Ross (Christen)
Could it be that God’s purposes are somehow fulfilled through our experiencing the “random, wasteful, inefficiencies” of the natural realm He created?
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John Shelby Spong (liberale Christen)
‘…The Bible began with the assumption that God had created a finished and perfect world from which human beings had fallen away in an act of cosmic rebellion. Original sin was the reality in which all life was presumed to live. Darwin postulated instead an unfinished and thus imperfect creation … Human beings did not fall from perfection into sin as the Church had taught for centuries … Thus the basic myth of Christianity that interpreted Jesus as a divine emissary who came to rescue the victims of the fall from the results of their original sin became inoperative.’
‘The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.’
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Ian Barbour
(professor emeritus at Carleton College)
‘You simply can’t any longer say as traditional Christians that death was God’s punishment for sin. Death was around long before human beings … .’
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Tom Ambrose, an Anglican Priest, in an article in The Church of England Newspaper
‘…Fossils are the remains of creatures that lived and died for over a billion years before Homo Sapiens evolved. Death is as old as life itself by all but a split second. Can it therefore be God’s punishment for Sin? The fossil record demonstrates that some form of evil has existed throughout time. On the large scale it is evident in natural disasters. The destruction of creatures by flood, ice age, desert and earthquakes has happened countless times. On the individual scale there is ample evidence of painful, crippling disease and the activity of parasites. We see that living things have suffered in dying, with arthritis, a tumor, or simply being eaten by other creatures. From the dawn of time, the possibility of life and death, good and evil, have always existed. At no point is there any discontinuity; there was never a time when death appeared, or a moment when the evil changed the nature of the universe. God made the world as it is … evolution as the instrument of change and diversity. People try to tell us that Adam had a perfect relationship with God until he sinned, and all we need to do is repent and accept Jesus in order to restore that original relationship. But perfection like this never existed. There never was such a world. Trying to return to it, either in reality or spiritually, is a delusion. Unfortunately it is still central to much evangelical preaching.’
[Uit The god of an old earth en Did God create over billions of years?]
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Jacques Monod (ateïs)
(Hy was ’n ateïs. Hy het onder andere gesê: “The ancient covenant is in pieces; man at last knows that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.”)
Interviewer: …one could conceive of God using randomness just so long as there was the pattern which he was imposing upon the results of the chance mutations.
Jacques Monod: If you want to assume that, then I have no dispute with it, except one (which is not a scientific dispute, but a moral one). Namely, selection is the blindest, and most cruel way of evolving new species, and more and more complex and refined organisms… . The struggle for life and elimination of the weakest is a horrible process, against which our whole modern ethics revolts. An ideal society is a non-selective society, is one where the weak is protected; which is exactly the reverse of the so-called natural law. I am surprised that a Christian would defend the idea that this is the process which God more or less set up in order to have evolution.
Onderhoudvoerder: … ’n mens kan begryp dat God ewekansigheid gebruik het, net solank daar die patroon was wat Hy ingestel het as die resultate van toevallige mutasies.
Jacques Monod: As jy dit wil aanvaar, het ek geen probleem daarmee nie, behalwe een (wat nie ’n wetenskaplike geskil is nie, maar ’n morele een). Naamlik, seleksie is die blindste, en wreedste manier om nuwe spesies in meer en meer kompleks en verfynde organismes te ontwikkel … Die stryd vir die lewe en die uitskakeling van die swakstes is ’n verskriklike proses waarteen ons hele moderne etiek in opstand is. ’n Ideale samelewing is ’n nie-selektiewe samelewing, is een waar die swakke beskerm word, wat presies die teenoorgestelde van die sogenaamde natuurlike wet is. Ek is verbaas dat ’n Christen hierdie idee sou verdedig dat dit die proses is wat God min of meer opgestel het om evolusie te hê.
[Uit Jacques Monod and theistic evolution]
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Charles Templeton
Charles Templeting het sy geloof verloof agv evolusie.
“Why does God’s grand design require creature with teeth designed to crush spines or rend flesh, claws fashioned to seize and tear, venom to paralyze, mouths to suck blood, coils to constrict and smother – even expandable jaws that prey may be swallowed whole and alive?”
“Nature is, in Tennyson’s vivid phrase, ‘red in tooth and claw,’ and life is a carnival of blood.”
“How could a loving and omnipotent God create such horrors as we have been contemplating?”
“Waarom vereis God se groot ontwerp wesens met tande wat ontwerp is om rugwerwels pap te druk of vlees te skeur, kloue gevorm om te gryp en te skeur, gif om te verlam, bekke om bloed te suig, kronkels om te wurg en versmoor – selfs kake wat kan uithaak om prooi heel en lewendig in te sluk?”
“Die natuur is, in Tennyson se aanskoulike frase, ‘rooi in tand en klou’, en die lewe is ’n karnaval van bloed.”
“Hoe kan ’n liefdevolle en almagtige God sulke gruwels skep?”
[Uit The slippery slide to unbelief.]
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David Hull (ongelowige)
“…process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror… the God implied by evolutionary theory and the data of natural history… is not a loving God who cares about this productions… He is… careless, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the God whom anyone would be inclined to pray.”
[Uit “The God of the Galapagos”, Nature Vol. 325 1992, p 486.]
[Creation Magazine Live, Episode 9: Progressive creation, preposterous compromise, 43:55]
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Hugh Ross (progressiewe Christen)
Verbonde aan “Reasons to believe”.
“…The battle line has been drawn over a peripheral point – the age of the universe and our earth.” (p8) “…misidentifying the timing of God’s past words in the cosmos has little or no bearing on that relationship [to God]. Nor does it bear on the Bible’s authority. It appears ill advised, then, to make an issue out of such a trivial point.” (p11)
[Hugh Ross is ’n Christen wat in progressiewe skepping glo) – Creation and Time: A Biblical and scientific perspective on the creation date controversy
Creation Magazine Live, Episode 9: Progressive creation, preposterous compromise, 45:20]
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Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey
“God is good, and the original creation was good [Genesis 1:31 actually says ‘very good’]. God is not the author of evil. This is a crucial element of Christian teaching…there would also be no basis for fighting against injustice and oppression, against cruelty and corruption, for these, too, would be reflections of God’s own nature, and, therefore, inherent in the world as he created it.”
God is goed, en die oorspronklike skepping was goed [Genesis 1:31 sê eintlik ‘baie goed’]. God is nie die outeur van die bose nie. Dit is ’n belangrike element van die Christelike leer … daar sou ook geen basis wees om teen onreg en onderdrukking te veg nie, teen wreedheid en korrupsie nie, want dit sou ook ’n weerspieëling wees van God se eie karakter, en daarom inherent in die wêreld soos hy dit geskep het.
[Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey – How Now Shall We Live? P 194. (Die ironie is dat hulle in miljoene jare glo.), Creation Magazine Live, Episode 9: Progressive creation, preposterous compromise, 47:15]
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David Attenborough (ateïs)
“When people want to give God the credit, they nearly always take the example of butterflies or humming-birds or orchids or something lovely. But I think of a little boy on the bank of a river in West Africa with a worm that is boring through his eyeball and which would certainly turn him blind within a few years. Now this God whom you say created every single species must presumably have created that worm … . I don’t find that compatible with the notion of God being a merciful creator God.
If you are a creationist you actually believe that this worm along with tape worms and everything else actually was created at the same time as Adam, and that God said, ‘Okay, I’ll make Adam, and I’ll kick him out with every one of those little animal parasites. … ’ And if He didn’t do that, what has happened presumably is that these worms were related to other worms in the Garden of Eden … in which case they have changed so they couldn’t live anywhere else than where they do now.”
Comment: This is a theological argument rather than a scientific one—it is about what God supposedly would or would not do rather than about the scientific evidence. It’s ironic that Attenborough claims that evolution is about science, yet his main anti-creationism argument is theological rather than scientific!
[Uit Sir David Attenborough: so much to live for; nothing to die for!. Kyk ook Justifying apostasy.]
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Bart Ehrman (Christen na ateïs)
Bart Ehrman was voorheen ‘n Christen
Finally, because I became dissatisfied with all the conventional answers, I decided that I couldn’t believe in a God who was in any way intervening in this world, given the state of things. So that’s why I ended up losing my faith.’
[Uit Losing faith: how secular scholarship affects scholars]
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Douglas Kelly (gereformeerde teoloog)
I would simply suggest that to interpret ‘very good’ as including pre-Fall pain, death, etc. is simply inadmissible in terms of proper Hebrew exegesis. If one can turn a word (or two words— tobh me’od) upside down on its head to mean the exact opposite of what it clearly says, the authority of Scripture is a nose of wax to be shaped by the changing culture.
Ek wil eenvoudig sê dat om “baie goed” te interpreteer met pre-sondeval pyn, dood, ens ingesluit is eenvoudig ontoelaatbaar in terme van behoorlike Hebreeuse eksegese. As ’n mens ’n woord (of twee woorde – “tobh” en “me’od”) onderstebo op sy kop kan draai om presies die teenoorgestelde te beteken van wat dit duidelik sê, dan is die gesag van die Skrif ’n bol klei (“nose of wax”) om gevorm te word deur die veranderende kultuur.
[Uit Ross–Hovind Debate, John Ankerberg Show, October 2000]
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Bruce Willis (bekende akteur)
“…They used to hang the whole thing on one hook. If you don’t do these things, if you don’t act morally, you’re going to burn in hell. Unfortunately with what we know about science, anyone who thinks at all probably doesn’t believe in fire and brimstone anymore, so organised religion has lost its voice to hold up their moral hand…”
[Uit The slippery slide to unbelief]
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Calvin Smith (ateïs na Christen)
Calvin Smith was ‘n ateïs, maar het ‘n Christen geword.
“Compromise doesn’t win people over. I was never impressed with the Christian who … you want me to believe this part [of the Bible], but what about this part over here. They would try to talk to me about Jesus, and I wanted to talk about Moses.”
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Martin Luther
“The days of Creation were ordinary days in length. We must understand that these days were actually days, contrary to the opinion of the Holy Fathers. Whenever we observe that the opinions of the Fathers…” (Nav vroeë teoloë wat gesê het dat God in ’n oomblik geskep het.)
“When Moses writes that God created Heaven and Earth and whatever is in them in six day, then let this period continue to have been six days, and do not venture to devise any comment according to which six days were one day. But, if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are.” (Nav vroeë teoloë wat gesê het dat God in ’n oomblik geskep het.)
[Uit Could God Really Have Created Everything in Six Days?]
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John Calvin
“…albeit the duration of the world, now declining to it’s ultimate end, has not yet attained six thousand years… God’s work was completed not in moment but in six days.” (Nav vroeë teoloë wat gesê het dat God in ’n oomblik geskep het.)
[Uit Could God Really Have Created Everything in Six Days?]
The major criticism of theistic evolution by non-theistic evolutionists focuses on its essential belief in a supernatural creator. These proponents argue that by the application of Occam’s razor, sufficient explanation of the phenomena of evolution is provided by the processes of evolution, such as natural selection, and the intervention or direction of a supernatural entity is not required, simply adding another variable or assumption to the theory of evolution. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins considers theistic evolution as a superfluous attempt to “smuggle God in by the back door”.
[Uit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution]
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Jerry Bergman (skeppingsleerder)
“The common claim that no conflict exists between modern neo-Darwinism and orthodox biblical Christianity is contradicted by the conclusions of many of the most eminent biologists living today. Furthermore, a survey by Griffin of leading biologists found that they strongly disagree with the claim that evolutionism and Christian theism involving a personal God are compatible. Further, they can articulate valid reasons for their conclusion.”
[Uit Why Orthodox Darwinism Demands Atheism.]
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David Oldroyd
‘People seem to think that Christianity and evolution do or can go together. But I suggest this is only possible for the intellectually schizophrenic. Biological theory does not require or allow any sort of divine guidance for the evolutionary process …’.
David Oldroyd, The (Australian) Weekend Review, 20–21 March 1993, p. 5. (David Oldroyd was associate professor in the School of Science and Technology Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia.)