#because he loves speculative zoology

[tinteduse]

the warvel comic (og)

[art-of-wackylurker]

Images You Can Hear feat. Smasher and a made-up relative of strills they adopted during the events of my fic

It's just time for annual doggie flu shots and the creature is being dramatic about it XP

[empress-violetlight]

My Speculative Biology Library

Got talking on Discord about biology (it started with laughing about a pic of a bacteriophage my husband freaked out about) and because we're all sci-fi loving nerds, the topic of speculative biology came up. I'm no biologist (unlike two very talented other discord members), but I love science, and love reading and writing about animal life, evolution, and figuring out how to make my own aliens as "realistic" as possible (i.e. at least scientifically plausible).

One of my fellow discord members (Discordians? Discordees?) asked if I would post my collection of speculative biology "research material", so @admiral-arelami, this one's for you!

In no particular order, with some entries being more scientific than others:

Extraterrestrials: A Field Guide for Earthlings

by Terence Dickinson and Adolf Schaller c 1994

A kid's book, this little volume actually gives a great introduction to the idea of looking at aliens from a more scientific perspective. It starts with looking at some popular sci-fi aliens, then moves on to discussing theoretical planetary environments, and the aliens that might evolve to live there. The cutie on the cover is a creature that might live in the atmosphere of a gas giant!

Speaking of which:

Cosmos by Carl Sagan. c 1980 Both the mini-series and the book. Wish I could find my beautifully illustrated hardcover edition, but oh well.

This absolute classic features an unforgettable chapter where Carl Sagan speaks about the possibility of life in the atmosphere of Jupiter, imagining "sinkers", "floaters" and "hunters", as a small example. I was absolutely blown away and I'm not the only one! Notable sci fi writers like Robert L. Forward and Timothy Zahn (I'm a huge fan, if you couldn't tell by my blog) have both written novels about the same topic. If you're a fan of Classic Doctor Who, the Cosmos mini-series won't disappoint in the aesthetics department either!

After Man: A Zoology of the Future by Dougal Dixon c 1981

Considered one of the most influential texts of the speculative biology sub-genre, and probably one of the first to treat the topic with genuine scientific curiosity. It looks at a world 50 million years in the future, and theorizes about how modern day animals might have evolved during that time, assuming that humanity has gone extinct. Beautiful artwork accompanies intriguing looks at possible animals, all sorted by biome.

After Man is part of a loose "series" along with The New Dinosaurs (a speculative Earth where non-avian dinosaurs never went extinct)and Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future (what might have happened to humans in the After Man universe, who aren't so extinct after all). I don't have the other two (yet), but the whole "trilogy" is available to borrow (for free, and legally!) on the Internet Archive, so I've read them. Man After Man is messed up.

The Future is Wild c 2002

Basically a spiritual successor to After Man, this 13 part mini series has the same premise -- looking at how modern day animals might evolve in the future -- though it examines different time periods: 5 million years, 100 million years, and 200 million years in the future. I love this series for its creativity, pretty decent CGI (especially for its time) and some absolutely unforgettable animals, like the giant Toratons -- tortoises the size of sauropod dinosaurs! Some of its premises are a little questionable as Science has Marched On, but it's still a really fun watch, and puts as much thought into its wildlife as its predecessor.

Future Evolution by Peter Ward c 2001

This book also looks at possible future life on Earth, but takes a much more pessimistic view of things, and the author honestly doesn't sound like he enjoys the topic at all, which makes me wonder why he wrote about it in the first place. Unlike the previous two examples, he assumes humanity will still be around in the future, and our presence alone basically prevents any cool megafauna from evolving in the first place, and he assumes we'll never make any headway into space either. Kind of a downer, actually.

HG Wells Science Fiction Treasury c circa 1895-1901

The previous entry compared his work to Wells' The Time Machine, and honestly, he shouldn't have. Wells was a visionary. In his novels, long before anyone else even considered doing so, Wells thought about the effects of lower gravity on his Martians and their susceptibility to Earth bacteria in War of the Worlds, the possible future evolution of humanity in The Time Machine, and more on alien life in The First Men in the Moon, to name a few in this collection. The Island of Doctor Moreau is a borderline case, since the "beast men" there were made and didn't evolve naturally, but is still an interesting look at humans' relationship with other animals. Basically, anyone interested in spec bio would be doing themselves a disservice if they didn't read Wells' novels.

The Resurrectionist by E.B. Hudspeth c 2013

Part guidebook, part novel, this work looks at popular creatures from mythology and actually tries to examine them from a scientific perspective, looking at how their anatomy might possibly work, and their relation to humans, if any. Definitely an interesting look at creatures that are usually brushed off as pure fiction, like mermaids, harpies, centaurs, etc.

Speaking of mythical creatures ...

The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson c 1979

The original "Dragonology", this book, which partly inspired the animated film of the same name (which was made by the same studio as The Last Unicorn). Its ideas on how dragons scientifically may fly and breathe fire have been "borrowed" by many other speculative works afterwards, and most theories seem pretty solid. However, I can't ever read this book again after it proposed wildly unfair sexual dimorphism for dragons. It said the cool, fire-breathing giant lizards we all know and love are the males, while things like Medusa or Grendel's Mother, mostly humanoid mythical monsters with barely any connection to dragons, are the females. Yeah ... that killed it for me, I'm sad to say.

The Wildlife of Star Wars: A Field Guide

by Terryl Whitlatch and Bob CVarrau c 2001

This book looks at the animal life of various on-screen Star Wars planets, with specific chapters on Tattooine, Dagobah, Yavin IV, the Forest Moon of Endor, Bespin Hoth, Coruscant (yes, Coruscant apparently has some wildlife!) and 3 separate chapters on Naboo, with a little bit at the end showing off other notable Legends animals (such as fan-favourite Ysalamiris!) Not the most scientific on in-depth book in this collection by any means, but the artwork is beautiful, and at least it tries. I'm really glad I saw it on Ebay!

To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek

by Athena Andreadis c 1998

There's a couple Star Trek biology books out there, but I enjoyed this one the most. It doesn't really talk about animal life, but instead focuses on Star Trek's sapient (mostly humanoid) alien species, and tackles some philosophical questions, such as whether artificial lifeforms like androids or holograms count as life -- a topic the shows themselves have wondered about.

The Teeming Universe: An Extraterrestrial Field Guide

By Christine Cline c 2021

The newest book in my collection, the author and illustrator really puts a lot of thought into what alien life might actually be like, using the newly-discovered planet types of reality as opposed to science fiction, like a tidally-locked planet around a red dwarf star. He also assumes humans will be able to go out and explore these worlds ourselves, and that we can make peaceful contact with sapient aliens we may encounter (who will NOT be humanoid!). A refreshingly optimistic and fun look, and very up-to-date.

The Zoologist's Guide the the Galaxy by Arik Kershenbaum c 2021

I had actually completely forgotten that I picked up this book! Once I read it, I'll give a proper review, but considering it's just as new as The Teeming Universe, I'm hoping it will be just as accurate and fun!

[petitelepus]

Hi! I'd love a yandere TFP matchup (preferably a con but bots are fine too!) ✨

I don't talk much, unless there's a topic I'm knowledgeable or interested in. But I do like listening to people who are willing to share their passions with me. I'm mostly introverted and half the time I'll have my headphones with me. I'm kind of all over the place with my interests and how I spend my time - but I'm mostly interest in drawing and world building, so learning and exchanging things about cultures (both those on Earth and on Cybertron would be every exciting to me!). My main love language is physical touch and I will cling to the people I love. I like engrossing myself in strategy or RPG games like Heroes of Might and Magic (3 and 5) or the Elder Scrolls. I will devour all of the lore in high-fantasy books and games and I can talk for hours about them.

I also like speculative biology and zoology in general. I'm transmasc and use he/him or they/them pronouns. I'm also a witch who works with fire and someone who values conversations on deep, often emotional or philosophical topics. If I trust a person, I will not hide my emotions and speak openly about them. My favourite colour is black and I have many pets - mostly lizards along with a bunny and a dog. I also like to explore a lot, even if I don't get to go outdoors much. I can not resist the siren call of the horizon.

My biggest flaw is that I'm a bit lazy and erratic along with the tendency to isolate myself as an excuse for "not being a burden". I worry a lot about being abandoned.

P.S: Your writing is lovely, whether it be for transformers or not! <3

Vehicons are Yandere for you!

These loyal Decepticon warriors are infatuated with you. You're cute for a human and they are Cons and Cons take what rightfully belongs to them. Megatron will conquer Earth, it's just a matter of time so why not save that one single thing they like on Earth? You!

They aren't allowed to have many pleasures so when they ask Megatron or Starscream if they could have you, the Decepticon leader or commander give you up easily, mainly because they don't see what the Vehicons see. That's their loss.

They are interested in anything and everything you do and when you show interest in their culture, they are eager to share it with you.

It's up to you to teach them about these games you like and once they get a hang of them they are eager to play with you.

They have only one mission, to obey their ruler so if you start building your own fantasy world and tell them that they can be anything they want to be then you have earned their love. You can with simple actions separate them from each other so they aren't simple copies of each other.

The Vehicons aren't from Earth so if you showed them the creatures from speculative biology or zoology, they wouldn't question you, they would honestly believe that these interesting creatures existed.

They honor your pronounces because they are important to you and they want you to be happy. If you're happy, you have no reason to try and leave them!

You aren't and never will be a burden to them and they will never abandon you. Pit, Starscream brings them much more trouble than you could ever bring them.

You can be as lazy as you want because these Cons will bring you anything you desire, was it food, drinks, treats, books, games, or even your animals (Yes, they will kidnap them for you). You can have it all, except freedom.

[thygoddessouijathicc]

Running Theories and Rationals for Dave’s Species

I decided to list out all the main possibilities of Dave’s species and why these could work, and why they couldn’t.

As always spoilers:

Magical creature that just sort of exists: So this one is complicated. Dave is very much a sort of magical creature, or at least one that defies physics, so this theory is that he’s just a Cryptid that exists for no reason with no set origin. Kinda like a SCP, he just appeared and no one knows why. It kind of removes the need to explain things for him so I don’t like it as much.

Crab/worm: This is a theory that doesn’t fully work on its own. It’s more just dependant on the fact he has purple blood and those things sometimes do. But it doesn’t explain why or how he exists and why he’s so humanlike.

Lizard: Like the crab/worm theory this one doesn’t work entirely on its own, although it does make quite a deal of sense to me that Dave is a lizard. It’s based on the fact he has scales, although it doesn’t explain much else. He just gives off reptile vibes. Maybe it’s his neck being reminiscent of a snake, maybe it’s his scales, or maybe it’s something else entirely, regardless Dave is at least probably something vaguely resembling a reptile.

Experiment: This is not originally my theory, user @autumnclove brought it up in a RB of my original Dave species post, and in my opinion it makes probably the most sense of anything. Why? Because it means he doesn’t have to be even related to a human. My theory if Dave were some kind of experiment he’s a manmade creature made up of an amalgam of parts of many creatures made to look human with a reptilian base and purple blood.

Alien: This is my second favourite theory after the experiment theory. Dave has been compared to an alien ingame and if he were some sort of reptile esque extraterrestrial humanoid with purple blood who just crashed on to earth Superman (or more accurately in his case Megamind) style it would explain a lot. In fact the only thing it doesn’t explain is his presumably humanoid organs and how he manages to survive so well on earth. It especially explains why no one has ever seen anything else like him.

Deformed Human: To get this out of the way, Dave is not a deformed human. There is no way he could be. Sure a few physical differences are excusable, however Dave is purple, has scales, seems to have some sort of retractable goblin shark type teeth, has no nose nor ears, purple blood, and an extending neck that can only be explained by magic or a very weird very messed up skeletal structure. None of these are really things a human with some deformations could have, the bones maybe but the rest of it are features a human couldn’t possibly have because we ourselves don’t have anything like any of those features. Dave is not a human, that much is clear.

Overall this is just my list but if you have any other theories about Dave’s possible species I’d love for you to tell me and I might add them in the future if you like <:

Dave’s species is one of my favourite topics of DSAF and I want to come up with a couple possible concrete answers if not figure out what he probably would be.

I love speculative zoology and evolution so a character with largely inhuman features who’s species is left unknown and a lot of very particular traits that actually can exist brings me like a moth to a flame.

[the-strength-of-the-wolffe]

Wolffe’s Story

Intro

Part 1: Before the War

Cadet Wolffe shares many traits with his brothers, being brave, confident, loyal, resilient, and steady. As an individual, he’s known as the serious and conscientious one.

He has a mild-mannered personality in “Rising Malevolence,” so I used that as his default.

He performs well in most exercises, but his leadership skills prove to be underwhelming. This is a disappointment considering he’s in the commander line. He’s aware of this shortcoming and does his best to correct it, but, being so young and lacking guidance, his efforts are ineffective.

I noticed a lack of rapport between him and Sinker/Boost in “RM.” He may outrank them but he doesn’t act like their leader, and they don’t seem to expect that from him. I speculated that he may not have been strong in that area (at first).

As part of his studies, he takes a cursory zoology course and becomes enthralled by predators, especially wolves. His batchmates collectively think it’s uncool to like animals, but that doesn’t bother him.

Yup, he’s a wolf kid. This is a nod to Filoni’s (and my own childhood) obsession. 

We all know he likes to stand out. I think he has a rather strong sense of individualism.

In the barracks during downtime, he hears about another quiet cadet who enjoyed the course and is also being teased for it. Wolffe isn’t the most sociable boy, but he seeks out the other and befriends him over their mutual interest. This cadet is Fox.

I love the fandom’s idea that the two of them are pals and had to include it!

I didn’t really picture any other known commanders in their batch.

In my mind, the commanders don’t have squads. The only permanent groups are barracks assignments.

Fox is a hardcore introvert and naturally wary, so it takes him a while to lower his guard, but the two brothers grow close over time. They pick up a reputation for being somewhat of the oddballs of the batch, but that only strengthens their bond. Gradually, without any conscious intention, Wolffe steps into the older brother role. He doesn’t let the other cadets pick on Fox, and he’s always there to defend his brother when their trainers give him a hard time.

Fox attracts trouble because he’s cleverer and more independent than a clone should be (according to the Kaminoans).

At some point, Wolffe decides to give himself a name. Only one will do. He figures other cadets might’ve had the same brainwave, though, so he changes the spelling to make it more unique. It’s a testament to their friendship that Fox even considers a similarly themed name, being just as individualistic. Needless to say, he picks one that fits him perfectly.

So far, the commanders have received generalized training. Once they reach adolescence, they, along with all other of-age clones, are divided into two tracks to undergo further specialized training. The army is where most cadets are funneled; these are the troopers that wear armor, wield weapons, and (will later) fight on the front lines. Those chosen for the navy are trained to operate all manner of vessels and stations; they (will) rarely set foot on a battlefield. After placement, a cadet isn’t allowed to switch tracks.

This is all probably wildly inaccurate, but that’s how I made sense of it!

The cadets have been obsessing over this day for months. Wolffe’s leadership skills have improved slightly thanks to his dedication, and his overall performance has been excellent, so he trusts he’ll be put in the army. In the minority as always, Fox hopes to be placed in the navy, preferably in an intelligence or strategist position.

They both receive blows. The progress Wolffe made wasn’t enough to impress the Kaminoans, and he’s deemed a better candidate for the navy where his "deficiency” will be less of a liability. Conversely, Fox’s strengths are ignored out of spite—he had frustrated their trainers one too many times—and he is shunted to the army.

It’s a dark day for the two brothers. Wolffe is furious about the injustice done to Fox, and shaken by his own personal failure. Their parting is an unhappy one, but they vow to stay in touch.

[great-and-small]

My friends, please allow me to be a monumental buzzkill for just a moment. I’m really bothered by seeing animal-lovers unknowingly sharing staged, abusive, wildlife photography. Abusive photographers exploit people’s passion for these animals, and cause irreparable harm in doing so. You have definitely seen these photos: cute frogs and lizards pictured in sweet scenes with butterflies and garden snails. Lots of times they’re doing something silly like holding a leaf as an umbrella or “dancing” upright. Unfortunately, many people do not have the zoology background to recognize this behavior as unnatural and staged. Let’s take a look at three really popular ones from one photographer that you’ve probably seen around on the internet.

1- Frog with Snails. This image doesn’t raise any huge red flags aside from the “Too Good to be True” feeling that you get here. Those snails are perfectly placed and the frog is perfectly in focus staring at the camera. In an interview with DailyMail, the photographer stated that the frog is his pet and the encounter happened organically when “the snails appeared to want to play with the frog”. What a crazy coincidence- he has an almost identical shot of a Red-Eyed Crocodile Skink in his portfolio (worth noting: these skinks are notoriously elusive and distressed by human handling)

So yeah, no signs of overt abuse with the Princess Leia Frog, but almost certainly not the random whimsical encounter described by the artist

2- Big Froggy Grin. This is a Javan gliding tree frog and I have a few concerns about the way the animal in this image appears. Firstly, the way this frog is holding its mouth open appears very unnatural. Although frogs will sometimes open their mouths wide when shedding their skin, it’s usually only for a few moments and they can be seen actively using their limbs to help with the shed. It’s possible that the frog had JUST swallowed a large prey item but in that scenario you would expect the eyes to be closed or retracted inward, as anurans use their eyes to help push prey down their throat. Frogs breathe by a mechanism called “buccal pumping”, requires their mouth to be closed. A frog cannot breathe with its mouth open, which is why these “smiling” pictures always make me a little nervous! There is speculation that some photos like this are made by propping the frog’s mouth open with string, or even putting the animal in the refrigerator to slow it down, then posing it like a doll.

On top of that unnatural gaping mouth, this frog appears to have slight anisocoria, meaning one of his pupils is more dilated than the other. This can be a sign of serious neurological disease, inflammation, or head trauma. We can’t know if this is the case here, or even if this frog is unwell but it does worry me a little. 

3- Crocodile Taxi. This one has been ALL over the internet in meme form and I just cringe a little bit every time I see it. The photographer said the frogs inexplicably all climbed aboard the juvenile crocodile at once and he just “had to wait a long time to see the frogs climb on to the crocodile's back. The key was to stay still and remain patient.” I am not buying this one either. These are Australian White’s tree frogs and nothing in their behavior patterns makes this make sense. The frogs are not in an amplexus position and the odds of all five of these frogs coincidentally climbing aboard is so unlikely. Not to mention this appears to be a juvenile Saltwater crocodile, whose habitat doesn’t really overlap with White’s tree frogs. The photographer risked these animals lives by placing them on top of a predator, all for a cute photo that he insists was not staged. It’s interesting though that what appears to be the very same crocodile seems to feature in many other images in his portfolio:

This is NOT normal frog behavior and to present it as such, while also endangering the frogs in question is pretty terrible.

Why does this matter? It isn’t just the fact that presenting these photos as organic encounters is dishonest (of course that’s bad enough) but the real issue is that this kind of photography harms animals. These images anthropomorphize wildlife in a way that promotes serious misunderstanding of animal behavior. It is incredibly unethical to manipulate animals like this just for the perfect shot. When we see photos like this, we MUST consider if any abuse or cruelty could have been involved in the creation of the scene. As any biologist can tell you- when humans anthropomorphize animals too much, it’s the animals that suffer for it. These pictures spread like wildfire across the internet because we love animals SO much, but it isn’t fair for us to only love a version of them that does not, in truth, exist. Here is a great article for a more in-depth investigation into the troubling phenomenon of staged wildlife photography: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/whimsical-wildlife-photography-isnt-seems

I would love to hear from other biologists, vets, herpetologists, etc about this matter. I am a veterinary student with a particular interest in reptiles and amphibians but I still have so much to learn, please weigh in if you think my assessment of these photos is missing something! What do you guys think about this? How can we better educate our friends online to see these seemingly cute images with a critical eye?

[spnfanficpond]

Pond Diving - emilyshurley

Welcome to today’s Pond Diving Spotlight! We hope that you enjoy this little insight to our members and perhaps even find some useful tips for your own writing. Happy reading!

Want to volunteer, send us an ask! We’re looking forward to learning more about all of you! Not sure what PD is, you can learn more here.

Name: Emily

Age: 21

Location: India

URL: @emilyshurley​

Why did you choose your URL: Okay this is embarrassing. I was trying to sign up for AO3, so I did a quick Google search for two things, what's the name of Dean's daughter? Emma, and Chuck's last name, Shurley

I accidentally typed Emma as Emily and that's it. 

There was a very real chance that my url would have been emmashurley. Thoughts on that one? Maybe I'll change it someday. 

What inspired you to become a writer: Being an only child who wasn't allowed to watch tv for more than 2 hours. And not having friends, that also had something to do with it. 

How long have you been writing: Fanfiction? 4 years (was on Wattpad before this). In general? 12 years, I guess... I remember showing my first short story to my english teacher in 6th class. 

What do you do when you are not writing i.e. Job/Hobbies etc? Cooking, eating what I made. I don't get to cook often so I enjoy it when I can. Other than that, college takes up most of my time. Currently getting my bachelor's degree in science. It's my last year, will probably get master's in zoology next. 

How long have you been in the SPN Fandom? 4 years

Are you in any other fandoms and do you write for them? Way too freaking many. But I write for marvel and I'm thinking of re-posting the very first vampire diaries fanfic I wrote. But are people still into vampires?

Do you do any writing outside of fanfiction? If so, tell us about it? Mostly journalling, but I occasionally take part in writing competitions and things.

Favorite published author: Amish Tripathi (He mainly writes Hindu mythological fantasy? If that's anyone's jam here)

Have you ever read a book that made an impact on your life? Which one and why?: Leap of faith by Danielle Steel. Not for any reason other than the fact that it was the first novel I ever read. My grandfather was reading it, and I told him I wanted to read something too so he gave it to me. 

Favorite genre of fanfic (smut, angst, fluff, crack, rpf, etc):Platonic fluff!!!! Give me all the fics of best friends being adorable. 

Favorite piece of your own writing: Once upon a Winchester. But I gave myself so little canon to work with that I think I'll continue it after the show ends. I have to know the ending to continue it. 

Most underrated fic you have written: Letters to no one. For any marvel fans, it's a two part fic in Natasha's POV, just some letters she thought no one will ever read. 

Story of yours that you’d most like to see turned into a movie/tv show: Project Latrodectus, again marvel. I kinda feel bad for mentioning my marvel fics so much but I'm pulling influences from the story of Eklavya in Mahabharata, which is a Hindu epic so complex that I won't attempt to explain it here. 

Favorite Tumblr Writer(s): Ahh that's a tough one. I love so many people. At this point, mentioning Myin ( @myinconnelly1 ) feels like cheating because another who has ever looked at my posts can tell she's my favourite human. So I'll try not to mention her further. 

Otherwise, Beka ( @impala-dreamer), Kate ( @katehuntington​ ), @katymacsupernatural and other hoomans I can't remember because I have been away from Tumblr for a while. 

Favorite Fic from another writer: Blood and Honey by @kittenofdoomage. And the proposal by @katymacsupernatural

Favorite character to write: Marvel: Natasha Romanoff, Supernatural: I have never written Charlie but I'd love to. 

Favorite Pairing to write: So they are platonic ships but Dean and Charlie, the boys and Garth and Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff. 

Least favorite character to write (and why): Easily John Winchester. I don't know, my brain just can't process his character. Like no matter how many times I try, John just sounds off. 

Do you have anyone you consider a mentor? Irl, my grandfather. On tumblr, Myin. I know, I know I said I won't mention her but Myin is my support system here. No matter what goes on in my brain, no idea is too crazy for her. 

Do you have any aspirations involving your writing? To make people feel less alone because I think that feels like shit. My goal moving forward is to write more Indian reader and LGBTQ reader fics because I think not many people in the fandom (that I know of) are writing those fics. 

How many work-in-progress stories do you have: Four, all of them are series. Technically 2 are my ongoing ones. And one is an MCU x SPN crossover that's taking a while to plan. 

What are you currently working on? Nothing focusing on college these days. But will write random one shots here and there.

“Pond Diving” - All About The Writing

What/who has had the biggest influence on your writing? My inability to write romance. No joke, I don't feel like I write it well. So I tend to write general fics and crack fics.

Best writing advice you've been given: Someone recommended the book, writing down the bones, to me a while ago. In the very first chapter it says, use a cheap notebook (so you don't feel guilty about 'bad writing') and a fast writing pen. 

Since most of my non fanfic writings are done by hand I like that advice.

Biggest obstacle you’ve faced in your writing: Procrastination. I'm the creator of my one misery here. I push stuff till the last moment then complain about being too busy to do anything. 

What aspects of writing do you find difficult when you write fanfiction?Smut. I can't. I don't know I like to say I don't feel comfortable writing it but the truth is I just think I'd put people off. Which is not the intended outcome. 

Is there anything you want to write but are afraid to (and why): More LGBTQ+ characters/reader inserts. Why? Say for example, even though I'm bi, but my version of bisexual Dean might not be something other people would relate to and I'm scared of accidentally offending someone. 

What inspires/motivates you to write: What if scenarios. I love speculating and coming up with the context behind what we see on screen. Like an idea that I'll one day use is, what was Sam going when Dean was in hell or purgatory. Sure in one case he hit a dog and met a girl but how? 

So I want to write more general fics or like filler between the scenes we see on the screen. 

How do you deal with self doubt: By talking to people, knowing I'm not alone in this helps. And sending fics to friends before I post them. 

How do you deal with writer's block: Play the sims. What I mean is take a break, do something completely different for a while. 

Do you plan/outline your story before you start: I don't, for one shots. For series I have to have an ending or else I'll lose interest very quickly. 

Do you have any weird writing habits: Would you consider writing/planning things on paper before writing it on the computer weird? 

Have you ever received hateful comments on your fic and how do you deal with it? I did. My very first fic on Tumblr. It was a Tony Stark x Indian!Reader fic and someone messaged me saying most content media is written for an American/Western audience. And that Tony Stark would never actually do for someone who's Indian because well Indian characters aren't primarily present in the MUC. So no one wants to read it. 

What I did about it? I deleted the fic and every backup I had of it. Because in my head they were right. All Indian get is Bruce Banner doing charity work for "all the poor Indians".

It wasn't until recently that I started talking to @desisamslut that I realised that people actually want to read about reader inserts that are like them. I mean it's called a reader insert for a reason how could I not see it?

Conversely: what’s been some of your favorite feedback on your fanfic?When someone made a mood board for my Black Widow fanfiction. 

If you could give one piece of advice to a new and/or struggling writer, what would it be? Hang in there, no matter how uncommon you think what you want to write about is, you'll find an audience. I mentioned @desisamslut in another answer, the first thing she told me was she has never seen an indian reader fic, so she felt happy when she read the one I wrote recently. 

[stressedspidergirlsfandomblog]

So. With the prevalence of zoom meetings and what kind of teacher ..

Yennefer has turned her personal office into an imitation of her lecture hall room. She has all sorts of ambience as she's teaching her history of botany and historical medicine lectures etc. Plants, candles, the works.

Geralt uses the garage because it's safe from his pestering boyfriend and girlfriend. Plus when Jaskier is being Professor Julian he gets his loud lecture voice on and it drives Geralt crazy with his sensitive hearing. He lectures all about weird zoology and medieval history. He has more fun with it in some ways because he's able to show them some things he's made using traditional methodology.

Professor Lettenhoove, who they all call Julian or Professor Julian (friends call him by his stage name.) lectures nice and loud. He's very dramatic and plays all sorts of music for them. He manages to rope Professor Rivia in to talk about medieval music and instruments and even shows something he made that for Professor Julian.

Students speculate about how he got Rivia to show up in his house during social distancing.

They also wonder what the hell Madam Yennefer is doing making coffee in the background of one of his sessions, too. They knew their professor is married. But they hadn't expected his home to be filled with so many plants. All sorts of plants, big small, and it looks cozy. He's told them about his sound proofed garage that his partner made him so he could practice without disrupting him. He never once genders his partner ever.

But they love that he has so much energy and he's telling them about all this stuff.

The students enjoy when Professor Rivia shows them his tiny forge he built himself, and the small armory he's made. Then he teaches them how to make things using old methods and they have a test over it. Geralt had no idea how many students screencapped or giffed him making a sword.

Jaskier is delighted by the little videos of his hot hubby smelting steel. Yennefer loves it, too. Geralt has no idea why anyone finds it all that interesting. He just gets embarrassed when Yennefer explains it's his abs. And his ass. And his arms. She pulls him from the kitchen to show him her appreciation for his musculature in their bedroom.

Jaskier is stuck teaching his class or he would be joining them.

[empress-penguin]

Do you have any thoughts or speculations on the Bros' college days?

Well, I have this little fic.  ;D  (takes place when Martin is in college and Chris still in high school)

As far as other thoughts go…

Speculating about the brothers’ college years is interesting, because we have more information about what the real-life Kratts did during that time.  I generally accept those experiences as canon except where they conflict with the existing canon (I’ve tweaked the details slightly so that it makes sense for their present-day selves to be creature adventuring WK-style rather than creating educational wildlife programs).

So we have Martin at Duke University (which should effectively quash the ridiculous notion that he’s not exceptionally smart, or that he didn’t do well in school) and Chris attending Carleton College, a small liberal-arts school in Minnesota.  Both knew that they wanted to do something to promote wildlife conservation, but they started off with some different ideas for how to go about it.  Martin initially planned to be a conservation veterinarian, with a focus on reproduction among endangered species, while Chris had some interest in conservation policy and advocacy.  Eventually, however, both brothers came to feel that they could have a greater impact by learning about endangered and threatened species in a more in-depth way than had been done before, then using that knowledge both to find new ways to help them survive and to educate and inspire others.  This career path also had the advantage of providing sufficient scope for their boundless energy and curiosity, as well as allowing them to forge amazing connections with the creatures that they love so much.

After graduating with a degree in zoology, Martin took a job as an assistant to one of his professors, who was conducting a research study in Costa Rica.  He decided to stay for a few months after the project was completed and do some creature studies of his own, and Chris, perhaps surprising himself more than anyone, decided to take the fall semester off and join him.  

It was during the Arribada, amid those long hours of waiting on the beach for the turtles to arrive, that the idea began to take shape. You know… we could do this.  You and me.  Travel around and study different animals, really get into their world… learn what it’s like to really BE the creature. … We could get a whole new level of understanding. … We could figure out how to really help them. … And if people understand more about them, they’ll want to help them, too…  

Chris went back to school with renewed enthusiasm and determination.  He’d always had the desire to learn everything he could about animals and their habitats, but now that he had a definite vision, it all seemed more real.  He founded an on-campus organization for biodiversity to bring together like-minded students and start spreading awareness, and took every opportunity to get out in the field.  He was even able to join Martin on two more of his research trips – trips that they’d both started to think of as apprenticeships for when they would be out conducting research of their own.  Martin, meanwhile, could not wait for Chris to graduate so they could get started.  It felt just like when he was 6 or 7 and begging his mom to let Chris come exploring with him, only to be told that he was still a little too young.  Finally, the day came, and Chris’s “graduation present” to them both was a fellowship that provided promising graduates with funding for a year of independent foreign research and travel.  The brothers headed to Peru… then Brazil… then Australia.  They were on their way!

And here are a few little tidbits that are purely my own invention:

1. The decision to go to a school five hundred miles away from home was more difficult for Martin than he let on.  He wasn’t particularly nervous about being on his own – in fact, he viewed college as an exciting new adventure – but he’d always been close to his family, and he knew he would miss them.  And then there was Chris, of course.  He knew his brother would be all right – he had friends, family, sports, and other things to help see him through – but he couldn’t help but feel as though he were abandoning him.  In the end, though, he felt that it was the right place for him, and that he owed it to both of them to get the absolute best creature education he could, and so off he went (vowing to call home often).

Chris, being only 14, was less sure that he would be fine, but it turned out to be true, and the realization provided a valuable boost to his confidence.  And as much as he loved and looked up to his brother, he also found that it was easier to carve out his own identity – something that had been a bit of a struggle for him – with him slightly removed from the picture.  That same desire later influenced his choice to attend a small northern college rather than a large southern university, but not his course of study – their shared passion for creatures was something that he cherished, and he never considered studying anything else.

2. Sometime during his sophomore or junior year, Martin bought himself a beat-up little blue hatchback for a couple hundred dollars.  It only worked about every other week, but when it was running, he’d use it to give his friends rides or to go out hiking or exploring, and also for the occasional trip home over a holiday weekend or semester break.  The car made some of his family members a little nervous, especially on those long drives, but somehow Martin always made it in one piece.  Asked about it now, Chris just shakes his head.  “That car ran on pure optimism,” he says, laughing.  He can’t deny, though, that some of the auto repair skills his brother learned from that old bucket of bolts have come in pretty handy during their field work, especially in the pre-Tortuga days.

3. Chris had an absolutely terrible roommate his freshman year, but he didn’t really tell Martin about it until much later, partly because he didn’t want him to worry, and partly because he couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that Martin might drive up there and take him out.  Big brothers can be unpredictable like that.  XD  

[frederickthegreatrules]

Sorry to butt in this post but the Beast of the Gévaudan is my all time favorite historical mystery and I love discussing theories about it!😅

The most plausible for me is the one developped by Michel Louis in his book La bête du Gévaudan (Perrin, 2013). I don't know if it's translated in English (or any other language)... But it's a reaaally interesting read because Michel Louis is a zoologist specialized in the big cats (lions, panthers, etc.) and he also tried to study the case by adopting the methods of an historian (he looked up a lot of first and secondary sources, in the departemental archives for example).

One of the most crucial pieces of "evidence" he studied is the rapport written by a notary, Mr Martin, the 19th june 1767, after the Beast was killed by Jean Chastel. Martin examined precisely the animal and noted down many details about its aspects (size, shape, number of teeth, claws, etc.). Michel Louis studied this rapport and cross-examined it with the several testimonies given by witnesses. The description written by Martin matches those tesimonies. He also wrote that the Beast "looks like a wolf, but its figure and proportions are extraordinary and much different that those of the wolves we see in this country. As it is remarked upon by several hunters and knowledgeable people, only its tail and hindquarters really look like those of a wolf."

Michel Louis' s conclusion is that the Beast couldn't have been neither a lion, or a hyena, panther, etc., because the shape of its jaw and the number of teeth doesn't match. For him it was a canid. Most probably a hybrid between a wolf and a dog.

His full theory is that the Beast was raised by the Chastel family, following the orders of the dissolute son of a local noble, the Marquis de Morangiès. It was trained to attack and kill humans and was protected with a kind of armour made of boar skin. I'm not entirely convinced by this theory, since there's no real proof, just speculations (even if there ARE some weird and suspicious events surrounding those people). But I'm entirely convinced about his demonstration about the Beast being a wolf/dog hybrid. He isn't a trained historian but zoology is his job so...

for real tho the true identity of the Beast of Gévaudan is one of those things that keep me up at night. also the theory that it was a lion? man. I can buy that. some rich aristocrat had a cub escape from his exotic animal menagerie, didn’t think much of it and it grows up to terrorise the countryside, and this being rural 18th century France, most people weren’t expecting to run into a fucking lion

[sadspleen]

my rant about the cats movie because I’m angy now

I like the movie’s CGI a little but that’s only because I like speculative zoology. The more I look at the CGI the more I begin to get used to it actually. I know a lot of people have talked about how they shouldn’t have had a main character and other points alike to that but I am going to focus on the characters because they fucked up so many characters. First, Jennyanydots isn’t supposed to be that clumsy and goofy. Yes in the musical she is somewhat goofy, but not to the extent that the movie changes it to. Next, the Rum Tum Tugger is supposed to be a little more feminine than how he is in the movie. They also should've givin him more head fluff considering he’s canonically a maine coon. OH GOD, Bustopher Jones. He is also not supposed to be that funny. He’s more serious in the musical. He does have humor in his character but at the same time, he isn’t supposed to be as clumsy and goofy as the movie portrays him. He’s respected by the other cats and he knows it, but he also has some funny parts in the musical as-well. The movie just completely over did it though. They did a good job on Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer’s personality but their designs are too calico when they should also have added some tabby markings. Also, They completely changed their song. It has this whole different vibe to it that gives off a less playful and more organized vibe, which it isn’t supposed to do. They’re supposed to be more playful and sly than organized. They changed Gus A LOT. Gus in the musical was way less “grumpy” than he was in the movie. I personally don’t like what they did there because he was such a good character and there was really no need to change him. He was supposed to be similar to Grizabella in how they both wish they could go back to their past, but he was accepted as a Jellicle still. They both were sad and missed their past and they showed that on stage. But Gus in the movie doesn’t show as similar of a connection to Grizabella. Ok, Skimbleshanks is amazing in both the musical and the movie even though in the movie he has less of a whimsical personality than in the musical. He acts a little more serious but is still definitely Skimbleshanks. Ok, I love his whole musical number. That whole scene was amazing. One last thing: why does the CGI on Mr. Mistoffelees just look way worse? His face just looks even more human than the other ones. Anyways, that was my little rant.

[christopherscorner-blog1]

Evolution Quotes by Scientists

"Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species."(Dr. Etheridge, Paleontologist of the British Museum) 

"I reject evolution because I deem it obsolete; because the knowledge, hard won since 1830, of anatomy, histology, cytology, and embryology, cannot be made to accord with its basic idea. The foundationless, fantastic edifice of the evolution doctrine would long ago have met with its long- deserved fate were it not that the love of fairy tales is so deep-rooted in the hearts of man." (Dr. Albert Fleischmann, University of Erlangen) 

"By the late 1970s, debates on university campuses throughout the free world were being held on the subject of origins with increasing frequency. Hundreds of scientists, who once accepted the theory of evolution as fact, were abandoning ship and claiming that the scientific evidence was in total support of the theory of creation. Well-known evolutionists, such as Isaac Asimov and Stephen Jay Gould, were stating that, since the creationist scientists had won all of the more than one hundred debates, the evolutionists should not debate them." (Luther Sunderland, "Darwin's Enigma", p.10) 

"The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion... The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but is irrational." (Dr. L.T. More)

"I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program... (Dr. Karl Popper, German-born philosopher of science, called by Nobel Prize-winner Peter Medawar, "incomparably the greatest philosopher of science who has ever lived.") 

"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory -- is it then a science or faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation..." (Dr. L. Harrison Matthews, in the introduction to the 1971 edition of Darwin's "Origin of Species") 

"What is so frustrating for our present purpose is that it seems almost impossible to give any numerical value to the probability of what seems a rather unlikely sequence of events... An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle... (Dr. Francis Crick, Nobel Prize-winner, codiscoverer of DNA) 

"Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics, on which life depends, are in every respect DELIBERATE... It is therefore, almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect higher intelligences.. even to the limit of God."  "The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein... I am at a loss to understand biologists' widespread compulsion to deny what seems to me to be obvious." "I don't know how long it is going to be before astronomers generally recognize that the combinatorial arrangement of not even one among the many thousands of biopolymers on which life depends could have been arrived at by natural processes here on the earth. Astronomers will have a little difficulty in understanding this because they will be assured by biologists that it is not so, the biologists having been assured in their turn by others that it is not so. The 'others' are a group of persons who believe, quite openly, in mathematical miracles. They advocate the belief that tucked away in nature, outside of normal physics, there is a law which performs miracles (provided the miracles are in the aid of biology). This curious situation sits oddly on a profession that for long has been dedicated to coming up with logical explanations of biblical miracles... It is quite otherwise, however, with the modern miracle workers, who are always to be found living in the twilight fringes of thermodynamics." (Sir Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, co-authors of "Evolution from Space," after acknowledging that they had been atheists all their lives)

"The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change..."  "The extreme rarity of transitional forms (missing links) in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,...we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study". Natural History, Vol. 86. "The fundamental reason why a lot of paleontologists don't care much for gradualism is because the fossil record doesn't show gradual change and every paleontologist has know that ever since Cuvier. If you want to get around that you have to invoke the imperfection of the fossil record. Every paleontologist knows that most species, most species, don't change. That's bothersome if you are trained to believe that evolution ought to be gradual. In fact it virtually precludes your studying the very process you went into the school to study. Again, because you don't see it, that brings terrible distress." Gould is still an evolutionist, he just rejects much of Darwin's theory. (Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, famous Harvard Professor of Paleontology) 

"I admit that an awful lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs (in the American Museum) is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly because the people who propose these kinds of stories themselves may be aware of the speculative nature of some of the stuff. But by the time it filters down to the textbooks, we've got science as truth and we've got a problem." (Dr. Niles Eldridge, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum) 

"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over-simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without murmur of protest." Ernst Chain, who helped develop penicillin, in 1972, has called the theory of evolution, "a very feeble attempt to understand the development of life." He is also on record as saying "I would rather believe in fairies than in such wild speculation (as Darwinian evolution)". Ernst Chain. Quoted in  Ronald W. Clark, "The Life of Ernst Chain: Penicillin and Beyond", Weidenfeld & Nicholson: London, 1985 p:147-148 (Sir Ernest Chain, Nobel Prize winner) 

"Evolution is a theory universally accepted, not because it can be proved to be true, but because the only alternative, 'special creation,' is clearly impossible." (D.M.S. Watson, Professor of Zoology, London University)   Mark Ridley, another evolutionist from Oxford University said in The New Scientist magazine in June 1981 p 831, "a lot of people just do not know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the fossil record. ...In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationalist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." Because the fossils simply do not support many small changes between kinds over a long period of time, many evolutionists have at least been honest enough to admit this and have come up with a new theory called, "punctuated equilibrium" or the "hopeful monster theory". From the fossil record, they know that change didn't take place in small gradual steps, so they assume that the change took place in quick "quantum leaps" over long periods of time. In Darwin's theory, the changes were so slow and gradual that science cannot observe the evolution. The new theory says the change takes place so quickly it that too cannot be observed. Unobservable science? What a contradiction!  “Darwin's strongest critics were scientists, and the theologians who criticized him objected mainly to his philosophical insistence on natural causes and his denial of design--which Princeton's Charles Hodge regarded as ‘tantamount to atheism.’ Even today, many critics of Darwinism are not religious fundamentalists, and a growing number of critics are credentialed scientists” (Jonathan Wells, “The Problem of Evidence,” Forbes, Feb. 5, 2009). 

“A growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp ... moreover, for the most part these ‘experts’ have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical persuasions, but on strictly scientific grounds, and in some instances, regretfully” (Wolfgang Smith, cited from Ian Taylor, Origins Answer Book, p. 107). 

“Scientists at the forefront of inquiry have put the knife to classical Darwinism, They have not gone public with this news, but have kept it in their technical papers and inner counsels” (William Fix, The Bone Peddlers, p. 180). Michael Behe, Ph.D. in biology from the University of Pennsylvania, is a theistic evolutionist who does not believe that Darwinian evolution can explain the origin of life. In Darwin’s Black Box and Signature of the Cell, Behe presents the case that at the micro level life is “irreducibly complex” and thus points to “intelligent design.”  Behe delves into the amazing mysteries of DNA and the other biological machinery of the living cell and refutes naturalistic explanations for the origin of life. He deals with current origin of life theories, including RNA first. “It was once expected that the basis of life would be exceedingly simple. That expectation has been smashed. ... the elegance and complexity of biological systems at the molecular level have paralyzed science’s attempt to explain their origins. ... Many scientists have gamely asserted that explanations are already in hand, or will be sooner or later, but no support for such assertions can be found in the professional science literature. ... “Over the past four decades modern biochemistry has uncovered the secrets of the cell. The progress has been hard won. It has required tens of thousands of people to dedicate the better parts of their lives to the tedious work of the laboratory. ... The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell--to investigate life at the molecular level--is a loud, clear, piercing cry of ‘design!’ The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. ... “This triumph of science should evoke cries of ‘Eureka!’ from ten thousands of throats, should occasion much hand-slapping and high-fiving, and perhaps even ben an excuse to take a day off. But no bottles have been uncorked, no hands slapped. Instead, a curious, embarrassed silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell. When the subject comes up in public, feet start to shuffle, and breathing gets a bit labored. In private people are a bit more relaxed; many explicitly admit the obvious but then stare at the ground, shake their heads, and let it go at that” (Darwin’s Black Box, preface, chapter 11). Behe concludes that “just as biology had to be reinterpreted after the complexity of microscopic life was discovered, neo-Darwinism must be reconsidered in light of advances in biochemistry.” He documents the fact that “over the past 130 years Darwinism, although secularly entrenched, has met a steady stream of dissent both from within the scientific community and from without it.” He makes this bold statement: “Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority. There is no publication in the scientific literature--in prestigious journals, specialty journals, or books--that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred.” Behe sites “a raft of evolutionary biologists [who] examining whole organisms wonder just how Darwinism can account for their observations.” For example, he quotes Paleontologist Niles Eldredge: “No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seems to happen. ... Evolution cannot forever be going on somewhere else.” He quotes biologists Mae-Wan Ho and Peter Saunders: “... the success of the [neo-Darwinian synthesis] are limited to the minutiae of evolution, such as the adaptive change in coloration of moths; while it has remarkably little to say on the questions which interest us most, such as how there came to be moths in the first place.” He quotes biologist Jerry Coyne: “We conclude--unexpectedly--that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak.” He quotes geneticist John Endler: “Although much is known about mutation, it is still largely a ‘black box’ relative to evolution. Novel biochemical functions seem to be rare in evolution, and the basis for their origin is virtually unknown.” He quotes Klaus Dose: “More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.” Behe examines biology textbooks and how they deal with evolution and concludes: “Many students learn from their textbooks how to view the world through an evolutionary lens. However, they do not learn how Darwinian evolution might have produced any of the remarkably intricate biochemical systems that those texts describe.” Behe gives six reasons why he believes that intelligent design is science: (1) The case for ID is based on empirical evidence. (2) Advocates of ID use established scientific methods. (3) ID is a testable theory. (4) The case for ID exemplifies historical scientific reasoning. (5) ID addresses a specific question in evolutionary biology (e.g., origin of life theories). (6) ID is supported by peer-reviewed scientific literature. Behe is not a biblical creationist. He believes that the earth is billions of years old and accepts some form of evolutionary common descent. “For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary framework, and I think that evolutionary biologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world” (Darwin’s Black Box, chapter 1, “Lilliputian Biology”).

In spite of this deep sympathy and personal identity with evolutionary thinking, Behe has been treated like a moron and an apostate by the evolutionary establishment because he has had the audacity to suggest that Darwinism can’t explain life itself. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, a scientist who worked at the Max-Planck Institute until his retirement. Though he has written four books on the subject of evolution, he has infuriated evolutionists everywhere by daring to challenge Neo-Darwinism on scientific grounds. He told the Diplomacy Post in March 2014: ‘A scientific hypothesis should be potentially falsifiable.... However,’ he added, ‘the idea of slow evolution by 'infinitesimally small inherited variations' etc. has been falsified by the findings of palaeontology... as well [as] genetics. Yet its adherents principally reject any scientific proof against Neo-Darwinism,’ he said, ‘so that, in fact, their theory has become a non-falsifiable worldview, to which people stick in spite of all contrary evidence.’ Scientists continue to support evolution despite the evidence that actually falsified evolution because ‘without Darwinism, philosophic materialism has lost its battle against an intelligent origin of the world.’ But Wolf had more to say. ‘According to Neo-Darwinism, all important problems of the origin of species are, at least in principle, solved. Further questions on the validity of evolutionary theory are thus basically superfluous. However, such a dogmatic attitude stops further investigations and hinders fruitful research in science.’ Though Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig has stopped short of giving recognition to God as the Intelligent Designer, we applaud his work for showing that evolution doesn't even deserve to be called scientific” (CreationMoments.com, Mar. 25, 2015). 

David Berlinski (b. 1942) has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University and was a post-doctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia University. He has authored works on systems analysis, differential topology, theoretical biology, analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics and has taught philosophy, mathematics, and English at Stanford, Rutgers, the University of Paris, and elsewhere. He is a “secular Jew and an agnostic.” In The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Scientific Pretensions, Berlinski exposes the weakness of Darwinism and reproves the dogmatism and censorship of the Darwinian establishment. One reviewer says:“This book is so well written that superlatives seem inadequate. Berlinski begins by stating that he is not religious and has no particular religious axe to grind. He is a mathematician and scientist. Yet he skewers science in general, and Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris in particular with well-reasoned argument, simple yet cogent analysis, and more humor than I would have thought possible for this subject. Berlinksi makes it clear that he in no way means to disparage or belittle Science. He is only trying to show how Science has been twisted by The Four Horsemen in an attempt to prove an anti-religious point of view, and how that twisting promises so much and delivers so little.” Following are some quotes: “If science stands opposed to religion, it is not because of anything contained in either the premises or the conclusions of the great scientific theories. ... We know better than we did what we do not know and have not grasped. We do not know how the universe began. We do not know why it is there. Charles Darwin talked speculatively of life emerging form a ‘warm little pond.’ The pond is gone. We have little idea how life emerged, and cannot with assurance say that it did. We cannot reconcile our understanding of the human mind with any trivial theory about the manner in which the brain functions. Beyond the trivial, we have no other theories. We can say nothing of interest about the human soul. We do not know what impels us to right conduct or where the form of the good is found” (David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, pp. xiv, xv). 

“The hypothesis that we are nothing more than cosmic accidents has been widely accepted by the scientific community. Figures as diverse as Bertrand Russell, Jacques Monod, Steven Weinberg, and Richard Dawkins have said it is so. It is an article of their faith, one advanced with the confidence of men convinced that nature has equipped them to face realities the rest of us cannot bear to contemplate. There is not the slightest reason to think this is so” (Berlinski, p. xvi). “The Landscape has, after all, been brought into existence by assumption. It cannot be observed. It embodies an article of faith ... There are by now thousands of professional papers about the Landscape, and reading even a handful makes for the uneasy conviction that were physicists to stop writing about the place, the Landscape, like Atlantis, would stop existing--just like that. This cannot be said of the sun” (David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, pp. 119, 128) “[The string theory] was an idea that possessed every advantage except clarity, elegance, and a demonstrated connection to reality” (David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 119). “After all, the theologian need only appeal to a single God lording over it all and a single universe--our own. Dawkins must appeal to an infinitely many universes crammed into creation, with laws of nature wriggling indiscreetly and fundamental physical parameters changing as one travels from one corner of the cosmos to the next, the whole entire gargantuan structure scientifically unobservable and devoid of any connection to experience” (The Devil’s Delusion, p. 153). “After years of punishing trials, a few of them have been taught the rudiments of various primitive symbol systems. Having been given the gift of language, they have nothing to say. When two simian prodigies meet, they fling their signs at one another. ... Simian social structures are often intricate. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas reason; they form plans; they have preferences; they are cunning; they have passions and desires; and they suffer. The same is true of cats, I might add. In much of this, we see ourselves. But beyond what we have in common with the apes, we have nothing in common, and while the similarities are interesting, the differences are profound” (The Devil’s Delusion, p. 156). “Mind is like no other property of physical systems. It is not just that we don’t know the mechanisms that give rise to it. We have difficulty in seeing how any mechanism can give rise to it” (Erich Harth, physicist, cited by David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 175) “Within the English-speaking world, Darwin’s theory of evolution remains the only scientific theory to be widely championed by the scientific community and widely disbelieved by everyone else. No matter the effort made by biologists, the thing continues to elicit the same reaction it has always elicited: You’ve got to be kidding, right?” (Berlinski, p. 186). “Suspicions about Darwin’s theory arise for two reasons. The first: the theory makes little sense. The second: it is supported by little evidence” (David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 187). “This is the conclusion suggested by more than six thousand years of artificial selection, the practice of barnyard and backyard alike. Nothing can induce a chicken to lay a square egg or to persuade a pig to develop wheels mounted on ball bearings. It would be a violation, as chickens and pigs are prompt to observe and often with indignation, of their essential nature. If species have an essential nature that beyond limits cannot change, then random variations and natural selection cannot change them. We must look elsewhere for an account that does justice to their nature or to the facts” (David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 189). “Computer simulations of Darwinian evolution fail when they are honest and succeed only when they are not” (Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 190). “The [Darwinian] theory is what it always was: It is unpersuasive. Among evolutionary biologists, these matters are well known. In the privacy of the Susan B. Anthony faculty lounge, they often tell one another with relief that it is a very good thing the public has no idea what the research literature really suggests. ‘Darwin?’ a Nobel laureate in biology once remarked to me over his bifocals. ‘That’s just the party line’” (David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 192). “By what means accessible to the imagination does a sterile and utterly insensate physical world become the garrulous, never-ending, infinitely varied, boisterous human world? ... The world of the physical sciences is not our world, and if our world has things that cannot be explained in their terms, then we must search elsewhere for their explanation” (David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, pp. 205, 207).

The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays (2010) features 32 essays spanning 15 years, including his award winning essays “What Brings a World into Being?” and “On the Origins of Mind” (Best American Science Writing 2002, 2005). Berlinski states in the title essay:“The facts in favor of evolution are often held to be incontrovertible; prominent biologists shake their heads at the obduracy of those who would dispute them. Those facts, however, have been rather less forthcoming than evolutionary biologists might have hoped. If life progressed by an accumulation of small changes, as they say it has, the fossil record should reflect its flow, the dead stacked up in barely separated strata. But for well over 150 years, the dead have been remarkably diffident about confirming Darwin’s theory. Their bones lie suspended in the sands of time-theromorphs and therapsids and things that must have gibbered and then squeaked; but there are gaps in the graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms but where there is nothing whatsoever instead ... “The structures of life are complex, and complex structures get made in this, the purely human world, only by a process of deliberate design. An act of intelligence is required to bring even a thimble into being; why should the artifacts of life be different? ... “For many years, biologists have succeeded in keeping skepticism on the circumference of evolutionary thought, where paleontologists, taxonomists, and philosophers linger. But the burning fringe of criticism is now contracting, coming ever closer to the heart of Darwin's doctrine.” I.L. Cohen is a mathematician and researcher, a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, and an officer of the Archaeological Institute of America. “Micro mutations do occur, but the theory that these alone can account for evolutionary change is either falsified or else it is an unfalsifiable, hence metaphysical, theory. I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But this is what happened in biology ... I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science” (cited in Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, 1987, p. 422). “... it is not the duty of science to defend the theory of evolution, and stick by it to the bitter end -- no matter what illogical and unsupported conclusions it offers. ... if in the process of impartial scientific logic, they find that creation by outside superintelligence is the solution to our quandary, then let’s cut the umbilical cord that tied us down to Darwin for such a long time. It is choking us and holding us back” (Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities, 1984, pp. 214, 215). “… every single concept advanced by the theory of evolution (and amended thereafter) is imaginary and it is not supported by the scientifically established facts of microbiology, fossils, and mathematical probability concepts. Darwin was wrong” (Darwin Was Wrong, p. 209). “The theory of evolution may be the worst mistake made in science” (Darwin Was Wrong, p. 210). Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize as the co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix shape and its properties of containing and transferring information. Though he was an atheist and an evolutionist who once said Christianity should not be taught to children, the complexity of the living cell convinced him that the evolution of life from inanimate matter would require a miracle. In his 1981 book Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature he wrote:“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going” (p. 88). Crick rejected Darwinism by concluding that there is no scientific evidence of a “primordial soup” in which life could have risen. He also stated that the beginning of the fossil record does not show evolution. Instead, it witnesses the sudden appearance of complex creatures. Crick theorized that life began somewhere in outer space and was transported to earth by alien life forms using space travel technology. He called this “Directed Panspermia.” “Directed Panspermia -- postulates that the roots of our form of life go back to another place in the universe, almost certainly another planet; that it had reached a very advanced form there before anything much had started here; and that life here was seeded by microorganisms sent on some form of spaceship by an advanced civilization” (Life Itself, p. 141). Paul Davies (b. 1946) has a Ph.D. in physics from the University College London and did post-doctoral studies under Fred Hoyle at the University of Cambridge. His research has focused on cosmology, theoretical physics, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He has taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of Adelaide and currently is a professor at Arizona State University. He is the recipient of the Templeton Prize (1995), Kelvin Medal (2001), and the Faraday Prize (2002). He doesn’t believe in biblical creation, but he does believe that life is too complicated and perfectly arranged to have happened by chance. “There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. ... It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe. ... The impression of design is overwhelming” (Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability To Order the Universe, 1988, p. 203). “Had this exceedingly delicate tuning of values been even slightly upset, the subsequent structure of the universe would have been totally different. ... Extraordinary physical coincidences and apparently accidental cooperation ... offer compelling evidence that something is 'going on.' . . . A hidden principle seems to be at work” (Davies, The Accidental Universe, pp. 90, 110). Marek Demianski is a Polish cosmologist and astrophysicist. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Warsaw and is a professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Warsaw. He is Co-Principal Investigator in two European consortia preparing the Planck Surveyor mission. “Somebody had to tune [the universe] very precisely” (Science News, Sept. 3, 1983, p. 152). Michael Denton (b. 1943) has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from King’s College London. He is Senior Research Fellow in molecular biology at the University of Otago, New Zealand. In Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Denton argued that natural selection and mutations cannot explain life. “It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance. Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced artifacts appear clumsy. ... It would be an illusion to think that what we are aware of at present is any more than a fraction of the full extent of biological design. In practically every field of fundamental biological research ever-increasing levels of design and complexity are being revealed at an ever-accelerating rate” (Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1986, p. 32). “Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small ... each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis). “The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle” (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 264). It is alleged by evolutionary propagandists that Denton changed his views after the publication of Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, yet the fact is that he has always been an evolutionist and anti-creationist, but he still believes that Darwinianism is faulty and that an unidentified intelligence guided the process of evolution.   In a 1995 interview, Denton made the following statement:“I think the current Darwinian picture is insufficient. I don’t think it gives a credible and comprehensive explanation of how the pattern of life on earth emerged. ... The theory of evolution permeates much of our thinking now in the Western world. I think there are problems with the current Darwinian world, and they should be discussed. ... My fundamental problem with the theory is that there are so many highly complicated organs, systems and structures, from the nature of the lung of a bird, to the eye of the rock lobster, for which I cannot conceive of how these things have come about in terms of a gradual accumulation of random changes. It strikes me as being a flagrant denial of common sense to swallow that all these things were built up by accumulative small random changes. This is simply a nonsensical claim, especially for the great majority of cases, where nobody can think of any credible explanation of how it came about. And this is a very profound question which everybody skirts, everybody brushes over, everybody tries to sweep under the carpet” (An interview with Michael Denton, Access Research Network, Vol. 15. No. 2, 1995; the interview was produced in conjunction with the University of California and was the first in a series of interviews with noted scientists and educators entitled Focus on Darwinism). Answers in Genesis contacted Dr. Denton in 1999 and he assured them that the quotes from the 1995 interview represented his current view (“Blown Away by Design,” Creation, September 1999).   His 2002 book Nature’s Destiny continues to argue for intelligent design. The subtitle is “How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe.” The following quote should leave no doubt about this:“All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology--that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact” (p. 389). Freeman Dyson (b. 1923) is a renowned theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for work in nuclear engineering and solid-state physics. He is the recipient of the Heineman Prize (1965), the Wolf Prize (1981), the Templeton Prize (2000), and the Pomeranchuk Prize (2003). He worked on the Orion Project, which studied the possibility of space-flight using nuclear pulse propulsion, and led the design team for TRIGA, a small, safe nuclear reactor that produces isotopes and medical and research use. “The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming” (Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, 1979, p. 250). “As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together for our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we are coming” (Freeman Dyson, “Energy in the Universe,” Scientific American, 1971, p. 59).  Antony Flew (1923-2010) was a British philosopher and a famous atheist who converted to “Deism” in 2004. In 2004 he published There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.“It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design” (Dr. Antony Flew, “Atheist Becomes Theist,” interview with Former Atheist Antony Flew by Gary Habermas, Philosophia Christi, Winter 2005). In What Darwin Got Wrong (2010), Jerry Fodor and Massimo Platelli-Palmarini critique neo-Darwinism from the perspective of atheism. Publishers Weekly says:“The authors of this scattershot treatise believe in evolution, but think that the Darwinian model of adaptationism—that random genetic mutations, filtered by natural selection, produce traits that enhance fitness for a particular biological niche—is fatally flawed. Philosopher Fodor and molecular-biologist-turned-cognitive-scientist Piattelli-Palmarini, at the University of Arizona, launch a three-pronged attack (which drew fire when Fodor presented their ideas in the London Review of Books in 2007). ... Their most persuasive, and engaging, criticism is that evolutionary theory is just tautological truisms and historical narratives of how creatures came to be.” A Booklist review by Ray Olson says:“Remaining staunchly atheist all the while, philosopher Fodor and cognitive scientist Piattelli-Palmarini challenge Darwinism more effectively than the entire creationist/intelligent-design movement has. Their short, deliberate, and—for readers consulting (and reconsulting) their dictionaries about the philosophical and scientific vocabulary the authors decline to dumb down—slow-reading tract lays out biological and conceptual arguments against natural selection. Natural selection as the driver of speciation has become decreasingly explanatory as research continues to appreciate the complexity of internal and external processes impinging on development. For one thing, inherent physical limitations of developing organisms nullify blind selection; adapt as they may, pigs will never grow wings. Conceptually, natural selection is faulty because it necessarily implies intentionality (selection is made by something), never mind that how something with adaptive effect is chosen is utterly elusive logically. There is a great deal more to Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini’s arguments, which ordinary general readers won’t be able to articulate afterward but will gratefully refer others—and themselves—to again and again. Many may find this the hardest, absolutely essential reading they’ve ever done.”

Richard Goldschmidt (1878-1958), Ph.D. in zoology, was a pioneer geneticist. He described the nervous system of the nematode and the sex determination of the gypsy moth and experimented for decades with mutations in moths and fruit flies. Through his research, Goldschidt came to the conclusion that Darwinian evolution by natural selection and the accumulation of gene mutations is unable to account for the origin of species.  He wrote: "In the best-known organisms, like Drosophila, innumerable mutants are known. If we were able to combine a thousand or more of such mutants in a single individual, this still would have no resemblance whatsoever to any type known as a [new] species in nature” ("Evolution, As Viewed by One Geneticist, "American Scientist, January 1952, p. 94). In his 1940 book The Material Basis of Evolution, he wrote:“This statement of the problem already indicates that I cannot agree with the viewpoint of the textbooks that the problem of evolution has been solved as far as the genetic basis is concerned. ... At this point in our discussion I may challenge the adherents of the strictly Darwinian view, which we are discussing here, to try to explain the evolution of the following features by accumulation and selection of small mutants: hair in mammals, feathers in birds, segmentation of arthropods and vertebrates, the translation of the gill arches in phylogeny including the aortic arches, muscles, nerves, etc.; further, teeth, shells of mollusks, ectoskeletons, compound eyes, blood circulation, alternation of generations, statocysts, ambulacral system of echinoderms, pedicellaria of the same, enidocysts, poison apparatus of snakes, whalebone, and finally, primary chemical differences like hemoglobin vs. hemocyanin, etc. Corresponding examples from plants could be given” (pp. 6, 7). Refusing to give up on evolution, Goldschmidt invented “the hopeful monster” theory, hypothesizing that evolution takes place in giant leaps that are invisible in the fossil record and non-reproducible in the mutation laboratory. But even though Goldschmidt never gave up on evolution, he was counted a traitor and a heretic by the evolutionary establishment because he questioned Darwinism publicly.  Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was the director of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. He was the recipient of the Royal Medal (1974), the Klumpke-Roberts Award (1977), the Crafoord Prize (1997), among others. He was snubbed for the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 when his co-worker was awarded while his original contribution was overlooked. Hoyle rejected Darwinism but believed in evolution driven by alien intelligence. Hoyle came to the conclusion that Darwinian evolution could not be true, because the universe is too complicated and orderly and the Darwinian theories aren’t supported by the evidence. “If one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that BIOMATERIALS WITH THEIR AMAZING MEASURE OR ORDER MUST BE THE OUTCOME OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN. No other possibility I have been able to think of” (“Evolution from Space,” Omni Lecture, Royal Institution, London, January 12, 1982). “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question” (Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Engineering and Science, November 1981). “The fossil record is highly imperfect from a Darwinian point of view, not because of the inadequacies of geologists, but because the slow evolutionary connections required by the theory did not happen. Although paleontologists have recognized this truth for a century or more, they have not been able, in spite of their status as the acknowledged experts in the field, to make much of an impression on consensus opinion. ... Darwinian evolution is most unlikely to get even one polypeptide right, let alone the thousands on which living cells depend for their survival. This situation is well-known to geneticists and yet nobody seems prepared to blow the whistle decisively on the theory” (Hoyle and Wickramasinghem, Evolution from Space, 1981, pp. 147, 148). “... we hit a difficulty that knocked the stuffing out of us. No matter how large the environment one considers, the life cannot have had a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare ... The same is true for living material. As our ideas developed, a monstrous spectre kept beckoning. Just as the brain of Shakespeare was necessary to produce the famous plays, so prior information was necessary to produce a living cell” (Evolution from Space, p. 148). “It is understandable that the biologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not appreciate the extreme chemical complexity of living systems. Without doing serious violence to the evidence it was then possible to think in terms of processes leading to the origin of life that were not much more subtle than those which take place naturally in the Earth’s crust, as for instance the geochemical processes which led to the formation of metallic ores. ... This was the situation in 1924 at the time of the work of A.I. Oparin, work that was widely acclaimed as putting the final nail in the coffin of the older religions. All of life (and death) could be seen, it was claimed, to spring from natural causes. With the development of microbiology in the second half of the twentieth century it became overwhelmingly clear that the truth is quite otherwise. Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance of their being formed through random shufflings of simple organic molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed WHERE IT IS INSENSIBLY DIFFERENT FROM ZERO” (Evolution from Space, p. 3). “Anyone with even a noodling acquaintance with the Rubik cube will concede the near impossibility of a solution being obtained by a blind person moving the cube faces at random. Now imagine 10 to the fiftieth power blind persons (standing shoulder to shoulder, these would more than fill our entire planetary system) each with a scrambled Rubik cube and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have the chance of arriving by random shuffling (random variation) of just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial soup here on Earth is evidence of nonsense of a high order. Life must plainly be a cosmic phenomenon” (Hoyle, “The Big Bang in Astronomy,” New Scientist, November 19, 1981, p. 527). For these views, Hoyle was persecuted and ridiculed by the Darwinian establishment and is still treated as a nutcase. His intelligent design statistics, showing that the possibility of life evolving from nothing is comparable to a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747, has even labeled “Hoyle’s Fallacy.” The Wikipedia article on “Hoyle’s Fallacy” claims that Hoyle failed to “grasp how powerful a force natural selection can be.” Indeed, it must be exceedingly powerful to create everything out of nothing. Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895-1985) was a distinguished French zoologist, editor of the influential 28-volume Traite de zoologie, ex-president of the French Academy of Sciences; Thomas Dobzhansky, in his book Evolution, said, “Grassé’s knowledge of the living world is encyclopedic.” Grassé was an evolutionist but he debunked Darwinian evolution as contrary to the facts of nature. “Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the weaknesses and extrapolations that theoreticians put forward or lay down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and falsity of their beliefs” (Evolution of Living Organisms, 1977, p. 8). “Our ignorance is so great that we dare not even assign with any accuracy an ancestral stock to the phyla Protozoa, Arthopoda, Mollusca and Vertebrata. ... From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origins of the phyla, it follows that an explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental plans is heavily burdened with hypothesis. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution” (pp. 17, 31). Robert Jastrow (1925-2008) was an astronomer, physicist, and cosmologist. He had a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Columbia University and joined NASA at its formation in 1958. He was the first chairman of the Lunar Exploration Committee and the founding director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He was a self-professed agnostic, but he did not believe that science can answer the mysteries of life. “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries” (God and the Astronomers, 1978, p. 116). Vera Kistiakowsky (b. 1928) has a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California. She was a professor at MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science until her retirement in 1994. She is the daughter of renowned physicist George Kistiakowsky (d. 1982), who worked on the Manhattan Project and developed a trigger for the first hydrogen bomb. “The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine” (Vera Kistiakowsky, cited by H. Margenau and R. A. Varghese, Cosmos, Bios, and Theos, 1992, p. 52). Søren Løvtrup is a Swedish biologist. He authored Epigenetics: A Treatise on Theoretical Biology (1974) and The Phylogeny of Vertebrata (1977). Løvtrup is an evolutionist but he does not believe that natural selection and mutations can explain life. He presented his refutation of Darwinianism in his 1987 book Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth. “I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science” (Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, 1987). “... the reasons for rejecting Darwin's proposal were many, but first of all that many innovations cannot possibly come into existence through accumulation of many small steps, and even if they can, natural selection cannot accomplish it, because incipient and intermediate stages are not advantageous” (Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, p. 275).Norman Macbeth (J.D., Harvard Law School), published Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason (1971) after making the study of Darwinism his avocation for many years. He attended private monthly meetings of experts at the American Museum of Natural History, where evolutionists freely acknowledged the problems of evolution (http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ435.html). Macbeth says that “any fool can see that evolution died years ago.” One reviewer described the book as follows:“He does not appeal to any religious authority to contradict Darwinism, nor does he reject the idea of evolution in toto. Rather, he finds the evidence and arguments for Darwinism to be deeply flawed. Questions are begged, evidence is fudged, and extrapolations are unwarranted. This is a thoughtful and fair critique well worth reading. Let me end with a quote from the author: ‘Any profession [he has biology in mind] that does not supply its own criticism and iconoclasm will discover that someone else will do the job, and usually in a way it does not like.’” Macbeth also published Darwinism: A Time for Funerals (1982), which is a booklet of interviews about the weakness of the Darwinian theory. Macbeth exposes the censorship of anti-Darwinian thought in the evolutionary establishment. In A Time for Funerals, he gives the example of a department head in an “Ivy League College” cutting out an article containing a critical analysis of Selection Theory from a book in the college library. After admitting responsibility, the professor said: “Well, of course, I don’t believe in censorship in any form, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of my students reading that article.” Richard Milton (b. 1943) is a science journalist and design engineer and a member of Mensa, the high-IQ organization. He has been a member of the Geologists’ Association for over 30 years. He is not a creationist and in fact claims to have no religious faith, believing rather in the evolution of life by some process over millions of years. He has debunked Darwinian evolution, though, in the strongest terms. In Shattering the Myths of Darwinism (1992), Milton claims that the evidence supporting the Darwinian theory of evolution is mythical. He calls the British Museum of Natural History “a kind of headquarters for Darwinism” and says that he has “been unable to see with my own eyes the decisive evidence for the general theory of evolution” (p. 3). He calls Darwinism “the urban myth” with many faces and says there is “the myth of radiometric dating; the myth of uniformitarian geology; the myth of gradualist fossil record; the myth of beneficial mutations, the myth of natural selection; the myth that evolution is blind; the myth of the beak of the finch; the myth of the biogenetic law; the myth of vestigial organs; the myth of homology; the myth of the ‘missing link’” (p. 272). He charges Darwinism with promoting speculation and faulty data. “I am seriously concerned, on purely rational grounds, that generations of school and university teachers have been led to accept speculation as scientific theory and faulty data as scientific fact; that this process has accumulated a mountainous catalog of mingled fact and fiction that can no longer be contained by the sparsely elegant theory; and that it is high time that the theory was taken out of its ornate Victorian glass cabinet and examined with a fresh and skeptical eye” (p. 4). He begins by exposing the lack of absolute science supporting the evolutionary dating methods and the doctrine of geological uniformitarianism. He observes, “... it was the imperative need for great antiquity that deposed catastrophism, rather than any new scientific discoveries or observations; it was a new way of looking at things, not a new piece of knowledge. ... Darwinists needed time, and lots of it: uniformitarians had the geological theory that demonstrated great antiquity. ... Thus an unusual academic interdependence sprang up between the two sciences that continues to this day. A geologist wishing to date a rock stratum would ask an evolutionist’s opinion on the fossils it contained. An evolutionist having difficulty dating a fossil species would turn to the geologist for help. Fossils were used to date rocks: rocks were used to date fossils” (p. 28). Milton observes that “if even one hundredth part of the evidence presented in this book is correct, then it will be obvious to any thinking person that there is a huge question mark hanging over the central issues of the life science” (p. 273). Milton has been attacked fiercely by Darwinists. In his review of Milton’s Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, Oxford University atheist Richard Dawkins devoted two-thirds of the review to attacking the publisher for daring to print a book criticizing Darwinism and the other third to assassinating Milton’s character. Dawkins said the book is “loony,” “stupid,” “drivel,” and referred to Milton as a “harmless fruitcake” who “needs psychiatric help” (Shattering the Myths, pp. ix, x). Dawkins has tried to have Milton blacklisted so that his scientific writings cannot be published. He has lied about him, calling him a “secret creationist.” He was effective in having the Times Higher Educational Supplement stop publication of one of Milton’s articles. Milton describes one group of Darwinist vigilantes who use the Internet to attack those they find guilty of promoting the heresy of intelligent design. They call themselves “howler monkeys.” Milton says, “The effects of the howler monkeys of the Internet are profoundly damaging to academic freedom of expression, whoever their current victim happens to be” (p. 270). Because of the Darwinist gestapo led by the likes of Richard Dawkins, the field of biology has been likened to “working in Russia under Brehznev.” “Many biologists have one set of beliefs at work, their official beliefs, and another set, their real beliefs, which they can speak openly about only among friends” (Rupert Sheldrake, cited by Milton, p 274).John O’Keefe (1916-2000) was a planetary scientist with NASA from 1958-95.  He was a leader in the development of the lunar space program. “We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in” (John O’Keefe, cited by F. Heeren, Show Me God, 1995, p. 200). Arno Penzias (b. 1933) has a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University. He worked for Bell Laboratories and won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1978 for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, which is used as evidence for the Big Bang. “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan” (Penzias, The New York Times, Jan. 2, 1979). Michael Pitman was a chemistry professor at Cambridge. In his book Adam and Evolution, he documents his critique of and rejection of Darwinian evolution. He says:“I started as devil’s advocate for the creationist view and came, in principle, though not to any particular creed, to prefer it. ... the direction of the argument is clear -- there has been neither chemical evolution nor macro-evolution” (p. 254). Pitman takes doctrinaire evolutionists to task for pretending that their theories are based on proven science. “But I hope I have shown that apparently convincing arguments in support of a belief can often be seen to be either based on insufficient data or open to more than one interpretation; and that much of what passes for science is no more and no less emotional, illogical and idiosyncratic than many of the opposing arguments. Science, useful as it is, does not explain a host of things; nor is all that it does not explain false. ... A man’s gospel is his business: that he teaches evolution as holy writ in television series or in schools and colleges--with no alternatives properly considered--is a more serious matter” (Adam and Evolution, p. 254). Pitman also condemns the evolutionary establishment for suppressing debate on this subject. “Presenting one viewpoint exclusively is faulty teaching. Our descendants will marvel at the attempts of the neo-Darwinian lobby to suppress alternative inquiry, as we today marvel at the power of churchmen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (Adam and Evolution, p. 255). The book begins with an overview of Darwin’s teaching and of the neo-Darwinian theory developed in the 20th century, which added chemical evolution, mutations, and genetic relationships to Darwinian natural selection as mechanisms of evolution. The book critiques the major evidences that are put forth as support for evolution: the fossil record, natural selection, the doctrine of species, homology, cladistics, genetic mutations. For example, Pitman describes the fruit fly experiments and shows that they actually disprove evolution:“Morgan, Goldschmidt, Muller and other geneticists have subjected generations of fruit flies to extreme conditions of heat, cold, light, dark and treatment by chemicals and radiation. All sorts of mutations, practically all trivial or positively deleterious, have been produced. Man-made evolution? Not really: few of the geneticists’ monsters could have survived outside the bottles they were bred in. In practice, mutants die, are sterile or tend to revert to the wild-type” (Adam and Evolution, p. 70). Pitman brilliantly develops the argument from design:“‘We do not believe in the theory of special creation because it is incredible.’ In this way Sir Arthur Keith, a distinguished anatomist of the 1930s, echoed the rationalist feeling. But life itself is incredible, starting with every cell of every organ of every organism that Sir Arthur investigated. ... there is no evidence that, left to itself with whatever start it had over man, chance could evolve machines for work like men do, even the soft biological machinery of life. The creationist stops haggling over terms and looks for the designer. Through any but blinkered eyes the biological world shows clear signs of planning and order. It is not the order that constitutes a crystal, but a more complex order--the kind revealed in a developing seed or a growing embryo--the kind that, in any other context, we would unhesitatingly think of in terms of ingenuity and deliberate design” (Adam and Evolution, pp. 26, 27). Pitman examines the living cell and its machinery, the human eye, the bird, the flying insect, metamorphosis, the bat’s radar. For example, he asks how evolution could possibly explain metamorphosis:“Within this dry shell the organs of the caterpillar are dissolved and reduced to pulp. Breathing tubes, muscles and nerves disappear as such; the creature seems to have died. But processes are in operation which remould that pulp into different, coordinating parts, and in due course the insect, which has not grown up or developed in any normal sense, re-emerges as a beautiful, adult butterfly. It is a kind of resurrection. Certainly it demonstrates the absurdity of invoking natural selection by successive mutation to explain such an obviously, yet subtly programmed, process. Why, on that basis, should the ancestral insect have survived the mutations that projected it into the chrysalid stage, from which it could not yet develop into an adult? Where was natural selection then? How could pre-programmed metamorphosis, in insect, amphibian or crustacean, ever have evolved by chance? Indeed, how could development have evolved piece-meal? The ball is in the evolutionist’s court, tangled in a net of inexplicability” (Adam and Evolution, p. 71). Holmes Rolston (b. 1932) earned a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. He is professor of philosophy at Colorado State University. He received the Templeton Prize in 2003.“The physical world is--shades of Bishop Paley!--looking like a fine-tuned watch again, and this time many quantitative calculations support the argument. The forms that matter and energy take seem strangely suited to their destiny” (“Shaken Atheism: A Look at the Fine-Tuned University,” The Christian Century, Dec. 3, 1986). Allan Sandage (1926-2010) earned a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. He was a graduate student assistant to Edwin Hubble, of Hubble Telescope fame. He has received the National Medal of Science (1970), the Crafoord Prize in astronomy (1991), among many other prestigious awards. “I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing” (Alan Sandage, cited by J. N. Willford, “Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomer’s Quest,” New York Times, March 12, 1991, p. B9). “The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle--an architect” (“A Scientist Reflects on Religious Belief,” Truth, vol. 1, 1985, p. 54). Henry Schaefer, III (b. 1944) has a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Stanford University. He is Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia. He is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute and a signer of A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.“The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, ‘So that’s how God did it.’ My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan” (Henry Schaefer, cited by J. Sheler and J. Schrof, “The Creation,” U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 23, 1991). Arthur Schawlow (1921-1999) had a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Toronto. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981 and was one of the creators of the laser. He was a professor at Stanford University from 1961-96:“It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. ... I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life” (Arthur Schawlow, cited by Henry Margenau and Roy Varghese, Cosmos, Bios, and Theos, 1992). Richard Shapiro, an atheist and an evolutionist, is Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Chemistry at New York University. He has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Harvard and postdoctoral training in DNA chemistry at Cambridge. In Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth (1986), Shapiro argues that life is too complex to have evolved through any known evolutionary process. He criticizes the major origin of life icons used by evolutionists, such as the Miller Experiment and the RNA-first theory. The Washington Monthly review says:“To the skeptical eye of Shapiro, explanations that have been offered look more like mythology than like science. ... The debate, as Shapiro presents it, is rife with speculations presented too forcefully, with inconclusive data put forward as definitive evidence and with explanations that look very much like Creation myths.” The New Yorker says:“He shifts through the various hypotheses about the origin of life and demonstrates that most are scientifically implausible or are simply forms of creation myth, sometimes in the guise of science.” Shapiro writes:“The improbability involved in generating even one bacterium is so large that it reduces all considerations of time and space to nothingness. Given such odds, the time until the black holes evaporate and the space to the ends of the universe would make no difference at all. If we were to wait, we would truly be waiting for a miracle” (Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide). In spite of 150 years of evidence that Darwinian evolution is not true and Shapiro’s acknowledgement that it has failed to be proven scientifically, he holds steadfastly to evolutionary and naturalistic explanations of life. In fact, he says that even if evolution is totally disproven, he will not look to religion for answers. He writes:“Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to discover a probable origin for life have failed unequivocally. Further, new geological evidence may indicate a sudden appearance of life on the earth. Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or process leading to life, elsewhere. In such a case, some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the remainder” (Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide). This is not a scientific approach; it is willful blindness. There is no scientific reason whatsoever to rule out God from the universe. In fact, many top notch scientists have believed that the universe is evidence for God. Wolfgang Smith (b. 1930) has a Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia University. He researched the problem of atmospheric reentry for Bell Laboratories. He has been a mathematics professor at MIT, UCLA, and Oregon State University.“The point, however, is that the doctrine of evolution has swept the world, not on the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic myth. It affirms, in effect, that living beings created themselves, which is, in essence, a metaphysical claim. ... Thus, in the final analysis, evolutionism is in truth a metaphysical doctrine decked out in scientific garb” (Teilhardism and the New Religion, p. 24). Lee Spetner received a Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1950. He worked with the Applied Physics Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University from 1951-70. His book Not By Chance: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution was published in 1997.“Despite the insistence of evolutionists that evolution is a fact, it is really no more than an improbable story. No one has ever shown that macroevolution can work. Most evolutionists assume that macroevolution is just a long sequence of microevolutionary events, but no one has ever shown it to be so” (“Lee Spetner/Edward Max Dialogue,” 2001, The True Origin Archive). “But in all the reading I’ve done in the life-sciences literature, I’ve never found a mutation that added information. All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it. ... Information cannot be built up by mutations that lose it. A business can’t make money by losing it a little at a time. The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of them. But if these events all lose information they can’t be the steps in the kind of evolution the NDT is supposed to explain, no matter how many mutations there are. Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up in volume. ... Not even one mutation has been observed that adds a little information to the genome. That surely shows that there are not the millions upon millions of potential mutations the theory demands. There may well not be any. The failure to observe even one mutation that adds information is more than just a failure to find support for the theory. It is evidence against the theory” (Not By Chance, 1997, pp. 131, 132, 159 160). David Stove (1927-94) was an Australian philosopher, educator, and author. He taught philosophy at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. He claimed to be “of no religion” and believed in evolution in general, but he rejected Darwin’s teaching on the evolution of man. In Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution, Stove showed that Darwin’s principle of natural selection, which is a foundational part of his theory, is not applicable to human society. He called Darwinism “a mere festering mass of errors” and “ridiculous slanders on our species.” In his review of the book, Martin Gardner says, “Whatever your opinion of ‘Intelligent Design,’ you’ll find Stove’s criticism of what he calls ‘Darwinism’ difficult to stop reading. Stove’s blistering attack on Richard Dawkins’ ‘selfish genes’ and ‘memes’ is unparalleled and unrelenting. A discussion of spiders who mimic bird droppings is alone worth the price of the book.” Consider the following sharp refutation of the Darwinian survival of the fittest doctrine: “But no tribe of humans could possibly exist on those terms [natural selection, survival of the fittest]. Such a tribe could not even raise a second generation: the helplessness of the human young is too extreme and prolonged” (p. 5). “Huxley should not have needed Darwinism to tell him--since any intelligent child of about eight could have told him--that in a ‘continual free fight of each other against all’ there would soon be no children, no women, and hence, no men. In other words, that the human race could not possibly exist now, unless cooperation had always been stronger than competition, both between women and their children, and between men and the children and women whom they protect and provide for” (p. 9). Stove had no patience for doctrinaire Darwinists, as the following quote illustrates:“Such cases, I need hardly say, never bother armor-plated neo-Darwinians. But then no cases, possible or even actual, ever do bother them. ... In neo-Darwinism’s house there are many mansions: so many, indeed, that if a certain awkward fact will not fit into one mansion, there is sure to be another one into which it will fit to admiration” (p. 39). William Thompson (1887-1972) was Entomologist and Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, Ottawa, Canada“... it does appear to me, in the first place, that Darwin in the Origin was not able to produce paleontological evidence sufficient to prove his views but that the evidence he did produce was adverse to them; and I may note that the position is not notably different today. The modern Darwinian paleontologists are obliged, just like their predecessors and like Darwin, to water down the facts with subsidiary hypotheses which, however plausible, are in the nature of things unverifiable” (Introduction to The Origin of Species 6th Edition, 1956, pp. xvii-xix). “A long-enduring and regrettable effect of the success of the Origin was the addiction of biologists to unverifiable speculations. 'Explanations' of the origin of structures, instincts, and mental aptitudes of all kinds, in terms of Darwinian principles, marked with Darwinian possibility but hopelessly unverifiable poured out from every research centre” (Introduction to The Origin of Species 6th Edition, 1956, p. xxi). “As we know, there is a great divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the causes of evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists because the evidence is unsatisfactory and does not permit any certain conclusion. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution. But some recent remarks of evolutionists show that they think this unreasonable. This situation, where scientific men rally to the defence of a doctrine they are unable to define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigour, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by the suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science” (Introduction to The Origin of Species 6th Edition, 1956, p. xxii). “To establish the continuity required by the theory, historical arguments are invoked even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypotheses based on hypotheses, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion” (Introduction to The Origin of Species 6th Edition, 1956, p. xxiv). Charles Townes (b. 1915) has a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 and has been a professor at Columbia University, MIT, and the University of California, Berkeley.“Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it's remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren't just the way they are, we couldn't be here at all. The sun couldn't be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here. Some scientists argue that ‘well, there's an enormous number of universes and each one is a little different. This one just happened to turn out right.’ Well, that's a postulate, and it's a pretty fantastic postulate--it assumes there really are an enormous number of universes and that the laws could be different for each of them. The other possibility is that ours was planned, and that’s why it has come out so specially” (Charles Townes, “Explore as Much as We Can,” UCBerkeley News, June 17, 2005). Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979) had an M.D. from the University of Moscow. He was a founder of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1950 Velikovsky published Worlds in Collision, providing evidence for his view that an event in earth history caused a global geological catastrophe. He theorized that this event was a near collision from the earth and other planets. Velikovsky was an evolutionist, but what he challenged was the uniformitarian view of geology that has dominated science since Darwin’s day. He was treated shabbily by Darwinian Inquisition. “What must be called the scientific establishment rose in arms, not only against the new Velikovsky theories but against the man himself. Efforts were made to block the dissemination of Dr. Velikovsky’s ideas, and even to punish supporters of his investigations. Universities, scientific societies, publishing houses, the popular press were approached and threatened; social pressures and professional sanctions were invoked to control public opinion. There can be little doubt that in a totalitarian society, not only would Dr. Velikovsky’s reputation have been at stake, but also his right to pursue his enquiry, and perhaps his personal safety. As it was, the ‘establishment’ succeeded in building a wall of unfavorable sentiment around him: to thousands of scholars the name Velikovsky bears the taint of fantasy, science-fiction and publicity” (Alfred De Grazia, The Velikovsky Affair, 1966). In his second book, Earth in Upheaval, the persistent Velikovsky provided evidence for a worldwide catastrophe. These included the existence of beds of fossilized terrestrial animals thousands of feet deep, the young age and rapid building of the mountain chains, and the global sedimentary rock formations. Velikovsky was not a Bible believer, but not only did he debunk Darwinian uniformitarianism, he inadvertently provided evidence for a global Flood. No wonder he was excommunicated by the scientific community. Wernher von Braun (1912-77), a German rocket scientist, was the leading force behind the American Apollo moon mission. Though he didn’t believe in a literal Genesis account of creation, von Braun did believe that God created the world and that it did not arise by a purely naturalistic process. He argued that the design of the world implies and requires a Designer, and he considered it unscientific to rule out a Creator just because we can’t “test” him scientifically. Von Braun published an article entitled “My Faith: A Space-age Scientist Tells Why He Must Believe in God.” This appeared in the American Weekly, February 10, 1963, and was republished in many other newspapers. “Through science man strives to learn more of the mysteries of creation. Through religion he seeks to know the creator. Neither operates independently.  It is as difficult for me to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science. ... As we learn more and more about nature, we become more deeply impressed and humbled by its orderliness and unerring perfection.” In 1972, von Braun made the following statement in a letter to the California State Board of Education. This was written to encourage the inclusion of intelligent design theories into the public school classrooms. Because of Darwinism’s elitist mentality and fear of challenge, von Braun’s wise counsel was ignored. “For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without evoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. In the world round us, we can behold the obvious manifestations of an ordered, structured plan or design.  We can see the will of the species to live and propagate. And we are humbled by the powerful forces at work on a galactic scale, and the purposeful orderliness of nature that endows a tiny and ungainly seed with the ability to develop into a beautiful flower. The better we understand the intricacies of the universe and all harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based. ... While the admission of a design for the universe ultimately raises the question of a Designer (a subject outside of science), the scientific method does not allow us to exclude data which lead to the conclusion that the universe, life and man are based on design.  To be forced to believe only one conclusion--that everything in the universe happened by chance--would violate the very objectivity of science itself. Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system or the human eye? Some people say that science has been unable to prove the existence of a Designer.  They admit that many of the miracles in the world around us are hard to understand, and they do not deny that the universe, as modern science sees it, is indeed a far more wondrous thing than the creation medieval man could perceive.  But they still maintain that since science has provided us with so many answers the day will soon arrive when we will be able to understand even the creation of the fundamental laws of nature without a Divine intent.  They challenge science to prove the existence of God.  But must we really light a candle to see the sun? Many men who are intelligent and of good faith say they cannot visualize a Designer.  Well, can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements.  What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electrons as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him? I am afraid that, although they really do not understand the electron either, they are ready to accept it because they managed to produce a rather clumsy mechanical model of it borrowed from rather limited experience in other fields, but they would not know how to begin building a model of God. I have discussed the aspect of a Designer at some length because it might be that the primary resistance to acknowledging the “Case for Design” as a viable scientific alternative to the current “Case for Chance” lies in the inconceivability, in some scientists’ minds, of a Designer.  The inconceivability of some ultimate issue (which will always lie outside scientific resolution) should not be allowed to rule out any theory that explains the interrelationship of observed data and is useful for prediction. We in NASA were often asked what the real reason was for the amazing string of successes we had with our Apollo flights to the Moon.  I think the only honest answer we could give was that we tried to never overlook anything.  It is in that same sense of scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom.  It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happened by chance (http://www.creationsafaris.com/wgcs_4vonbraun.htm).In 1961, von Braun said, “But I can’t help feeling at the same time that this space effort of ours is bigger even than a rivalry between the United States and Russia. The heavens beyond us are enormous beyond comprehension, and the further we penetrate them, the greater will be our human understanding of the great universal purpose, the Divine Will itself” (This Week Magazine, Jan. 1, 1961). Thus, the world’s top rocket scientist who was the leading mind behind putting men on the moon was operating from and motivated by a perspective of theism rather than that of evolutionary atheism. It proved to be no discernible drag on his impressive scientific achievements. Hubert P. Yockey(Army Pulse Radiation Facility, Maryland, USA). (8) "One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on Earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written." Hubert P. Yockey in his article "A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis by Information Theory" in Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 67, 1977 p:398 Peter T. Saundersmathematician, (University of London), and Mae-Wan Ho - biologist, (Open University). (9) "From the claims that are made for neo-Darwinism one could easily get the impression that it has made great progress towards explaining evolution, mostly leaving the details to be cleared up. In fact, quite the reverse is true. Neo-Darwinism can account for some of the details, but the major problems remain unsolved. Samuel Butler's (1911) complaint that Darwin had given us 'an origin of the species with the origin cut out' is true today as when he wrote it." Peter T. Saunders and Mae-Wan Ho in "Is Neo-Darwinism Falsifiable? And Does It Matter?", in Nature and Systems, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1982 p:191 

Ludwig von Bertalanffybiologist. (10) "The fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in 'hard' science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociological grounds." Ludwig von Bertalanffy, as quoted by Huston Smith in his book "Beyond the Post-Modern Mind", Crossroads: New York, 1982 p:173 George Kocanscience writer and biologist. (11) "Unfortunately, many scientists and non-scientists have made Evolution into a religion, something to be defended against infidels. In my experience, many students of biology - professors and textbook writers included - have been so carried away with the arguments for Evolution that they neglect to question it. They preach it ..... College students, having gone through such a closed system of education, themselves become teachers, entering high schools to continue the process, using textbooks written by former classmates or professors. High standards of scholarship and teaching break down. Propaganda and the pursuit of power replace the pursuit of knowledge. Education becomes a fraud." George Kocan in his article "Evolution Isn't Faith But Theory", in the Chicago Tribune, Monday, April 21, 1980 

Dr T.N. Tahmisianphysiologist (The Atomic Energy Commission, USA). (12) "Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact." T.N. Tahmisian. Quoted by N.J. Mitchell in the book "Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes", Roydon Pub: UK, 1983 (title page) Dr George Waldwinner of the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize for Science. (17) "When it comes to the origin of life on this earth, there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation (evolution). There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved 100 years ago, but that leads us only to one other conclusion: that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds (personal reasons); therefore we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance." Dr George Wald. Quoted in Scott M. Huse, "The Collapse of Evolution", Baker Book House: Grand Rapids (USA), 1983 p:3 

Professor J. Keosian.(13) "All present approaches to a solution of the problem of the origin of life are either irrelevant or lead into a blind alley. Therein lies the crisis." J. Keosian summarizing the then current evidence for chemical evolution, in his article "The Origin of Life" in the Proceedings of the 2nd ISSOL Meeting, 5th ICOL Meeting, (H. Noda ed.), Japan Scientific Society Press: Japan, 1978 p:569-574 

Malcolm Muggeridgefamous philosopher and journalist. (18) "I, myself, am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially to the extent to which it's been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has." Statement made by the famous philosopher and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge at the Pascal Lectures, University of Waterloo: Ontario (Canada) 

Professor Louis Bounoureformer president of the Biological Society of Strasbourg, Director (Strasbourg Zoological Museum), Director of Research (French National Centre of Scientific Research). (19) "Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless." Louis Bounoure, quoted in The Advocate, Thursday March 8, 1984 p:17 

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Reading “How I Left the Left” is a solid reminder that there’s not much intellectual heft remaining on that side of the fence. If an ideology sets out to isolate the locus of evil in people’s very identity, it is pretty well spent. This, in addition to the failure of the socialist model everywhere it has tried, explains why the Left has suffered so much at the polls and now faces a serious backlash in campus and public life.

With the failure of action comes reaction, and now the Western world is dealing with something far less familiar to most people: the rise of the alt-right as the alternative. It is attractive to some young people due to its taboo-breaking, rebel ethos that so easily inflames teachers and protectors of civic conventions.

The movement is more than that, however. It has a real philosophical and political history, one that stands in violent opposition to the idea of individual liberty. It has been largely suppressed since World War II and, because of that, most people assumed fascism (and its offshoots) was gone from the earth.

As a result, this generation has not been philosophically prepared to recognize the tradition, the signs, the implications, and the political application of the ideology so many are stumbling to embrace.

Here is a prehistory of what we call the alt-right today, which is probably better described as a 21st-century incarnation of what in the 19th century would have been called right-Hegelianism. I’m skipping over many political movements (in Spain, France, and Italy), and clownish leaders like George Lincoln Rockwell, Oswald Mosley, and Fr. Coughlin, to get right to the core ideas that form something like a school of thought which developed over a century.

Here we have a lineage of non-Marxist, non-leftist brand of rightist but still totalitarian thinking, developed in fanatical opposition to bourgeois freedom.

1820: Georg Friedrich Hegel published Elements of the Philosophy of Right, which spelled out the political implications of his “dialectical idealism,” an outlook that departed dramatically from the liberal tradition by completely abstracting from human experience to posit warring life forces operating beyond anyone’s control to shape history. It turns out that the politics of this view amounted to “the state is the march of God through the world.” He looked forward to some age in the future that would realize the apotheosis of State control. The Hegelian view, according to a 1952 lecture by Ludwig von Mises, broke into Left and Right branches, depending on the attitude toward nationalism and religion (the right supported the Prussian state and church, whereas the left did not), and thereby “destroyed German thinking and German philosophy for more than a century, at least.”

1841: Thomas Carlyle published On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History, which popularized the “great man” theory of history. History is not about marginal improvements in living standards by using better tools, but rather about huge episodic shifts brought about through power. A champion of slavery and opponent of liberalism, Carlyle took aim at the rise of commercial society, praising Cromwell, Napoleon, and Rousseau, and rhapsodizing about the glories of power. “The Commander over Men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of Great Men.” Carlyle's target was Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment generally. Hitler’s biographers agree that the words of Carlyle were the last he requested to be read to him before he died.

1841: On the continent, meanwhile, Friedrich List published The National System of Political Economy, celebrating protectionism, infrastructure spending, and government control and support of industry. Again, it was a direct attack on laissez faire and a celebration of the national unit as the only truly productive force in economic life. Steven Davies comments: “The most serious result of List’s ideas was a change in people’s thinking and perception. Instead of seeing trade as a cooperative process of mutual benefit, politicians and businessmen came to regard it as a struggle with winners and losers.” Today's economic nationalists have nothing new to add to the edifice already constructive by List.

1871: Charles Darwin left the realm of science briefly to enter sociological analysis with his book The Descent of Man. It is a fascinating work but tended to treat human society as a zoological rather than sociological and economic enterprise. It included an explosive paragraph (qualified and widely misread) that regretted how “we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment… Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.” At the very least, he suggested, we should stop the weak from marrying. This is the “one check” we have to keep society from being taken over by inferiors. Tragically, this passing comment fired up the eugenicists who immediately began to plot demographic planning schemes to avoid a terrifying biological slide to universal human degeneracy.

1896: The American Economic Association published Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro by Frederick Hoffman. This monograph, one of many of the type, described blacks as intractable criminals who are both lazy and promiscuous, the influence of whom in national biology can only lead to a decline of the race. Their mere presence was considered an existential threat to “uncompromising virtues of the Aryan race.” Such views were embraced by Richard T. Ely, the founder of the American Economic Association, and came to dominate the academic journals of this period, providing academic cover for Jim Crow laws, state segregation, business regulation, and far worse.

1904: The founder of the American eugenics society, Charles Davenport, established the Station for Experimental Evolution and worked to propagate eugenics from his perch as Professor of Zoology at Harvard University. He was hugely influential on an entire generation of scientists, political figures, economists, and public bureaucrats, and it was due largely to this influence that eugenics became such a central concern of American policies from this period until World War II, influencing the passage of wage legislation, immigration, marriage law, working hours legislation, and, of course, mandatory sterilizations.

At this point in history, all five pillars of fascist theory (historicist, nationalist, racist, protectionist, statist) were in place. It had a theory of history. It had a picture of hell, which is liberalism and uncontrolled commercial society. It had a picture of heaven, which was national societies run by great men inhabiting all-powerful States focused on heavy industry. It had a scientific rationale.

Above all, it had an agenda: to control society from the top down with the aim of managing every aspect of the demographic path of human society, which meant controlling human beings from cradle to grave to produce the most superior product, as well as industrial planning to replace the wiles of the market process. The idea of freedom itself, to this emergent school of thought, was a disaster for everyone everywhere.

All that was really necessary was popularization of its most incendiary ideas.

1916: Madison Grant, scholar of enormous prestige and elite connections, published The Passing of the Great Race. It was never a bestseller but it exercised enormous influence among the ruling elites, and made a famous appearance in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Grant, an early environmentalist, recommended mass sterilization of people as a “practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem” that should be “applied to an ever-widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.” Hitler loved the book and sent Grant a note praising the book as his personal bible.

1919: Following World War I, German historian Oswald Spengler published The Decline of the West, which met with huge popular acclaim for capturing the sense of the moment: the cash economy and liberalism were dead and could only be replaced by the rise of monolithic cultural forms that rally around blood and race as the source of meaning. Blood beats money all over the world, he argued. The interminable and foggy text broods with right-Hegelian speculations about the status of man and predicts the complete downfall of all lovely things unless the civilization of the West dispenses with its attachment to commercial norms and individualism and instead rallies to the cause of group identity. The book kicked off a decade of similar works and movements that declared freedom and democracy to be dead ideas: the only relevant battle was between the communist and fascist forms of state planning.

1932: Carl Schmitt published The Concept of the Political, a brutal attack on liberalism as the negation of the political. For Schmitt, the political was the essence of life, and the friend/enemy distinction is its most salient feature. Friends and enemies were to be defined by the State, and enemy-ness can only be fully instantiated in bloodshed, which should be real and present. Mises called him “the Nazi Jurist” for a reason: he was a party member and his ideas contributed mightily to the perception that mass death was not only moral, but essential to the preservation of the meaning of life itself.

1944: Allied troops discovered thousands of death camps strewn throughout Nazi-captured territories in Europe, created beginning in 1933 and continuing through the duration of the war, responsible for the imprisonment and death of upwards of 15 million people. The discovery shocked an entire generation at the most fundamental level, and the scramble was on to discover all sources of evil–political and ideological–that had led to such a gruesome reality. With the Nazi forces defeated and the Nuremberg trials underscoring the point, the advance of fascist dogma in all of its brooding, racist, statist, and historicist timbres, came to a screeching halt. Suppression of the ideas therein began in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, creating the impression that right-Hegelianism was a mere flash in the pan that had been permanently doused by state power.

The same year as the death-camp discovery began, F.A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, which emphasized that it was not enough to reject the labels, songs, slogans, and regimes of Nazism and fascism. Also necessary, said Hayek, was the rejection of the ideas of planning themselves, which even in a democracy necessarily led to the end of freedom and the rise of dictatorship. His book was met with critical acclaim among a small group of remaining classical liberals (many of whom were involved in the founding of FEE two years later) but was otherwise denounced and derided as paranoid and reactionary by many others.

For the duration of the ensuing Cold War, it was the fear of communism and not fascism/Nazism that would captivate the public mind. After all, the latter had been defeated on the battlefield, right? The genesis and development of rightest totalitarianism, despite the earnest pleadings of Hannah Arendt, fell away from public consciousness.

Liberalism Not Yet

The Cold War ended 25 years ago and the rise of digital technology has given liberal forms of political economy a gigantic presence in the world. Trade has never been more integrated. Human rights are on the march. Commercial life, and its underlying ideology of harmony and peace, is the prevailing aspiration of billions of people around the world. The failures of government planning are ever more obvious. And yet these trends alone do not seal the deal for the cause of liberty.

With left-Hegelianism now in disgrace, political movements around the world are rooting around in the pre-war history of totalitarian ideas to find alternatives. The suppression of these ideas did not work; in fact, they had the opposite effect of making them more popular to the point where they boiled up from below. The result is what we call the Alt-right in the US and goes by many other names in Europe and the UK. (The transition from the 1990s to the present will be the subject of another essay.)

Let us not be deceived. Whatever the flavor – whichever branch of Hegel we choose to follow – the cost of government control is human liberty, prosperity, and dignity. We choose mega-states, strongmen, national planning, or religious and racial homogeneity at our deep peril.

For the most part, the meme-posting trolls who favor stormfront-style profile pics on their social accounts, and the mass movements calling for strongmen to take control and cast the other from their midst, are clueless about the history and path they are following.

If you are feeling tempted toward the Alt-right, look at your progenitors: do you like what you see?

What is the alternative to right and left Hegelianism? It is found in the liberal tradition, summed up by Frederic Bastiat's phrase "the harmony of interests." Peace, prosperity, liberty, and community are possible. It is this tradition, and not one that posits intractable war between groups, that protects and expands human rights and human dignity, and creates the conditions that allow for the universal ennoblement of the human person. (For more on the history of despotic ideas in the 20th century, I suggest Mises's epic 1947 book Planned Chaos, now available in epub.)

The last word on the correct (freedom-loving) path forward was framed by the great English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1830, a statement that would be loathed by every fascist in history:

“It is not by the intermeddling of an omniscient and omnipotent State, but by the prudence and energy of the people, that England has hitherto been carried forward in civilization; and it is to the same prudence and the same energy that we now look with comfort and good hope. Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.”