Skip to content

The strong appearance of design [in nature] allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.

— Michael Behe

Another quote →

Topics

Religion

More quotes by Michael Behe

Many people, including many important and well-respected scientists, just don’t want there to be anything beyond nature. They don’t want a supernatural being to affect nature.

Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996)

As the number of unexplained, irreducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin’s criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that science allows.

Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996)

If a theory claims to be able to explain some phenomenon, but does not generate even an attempt at an explanation, then it should be banished.

Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996)

If you search the scientific literature on evolution, and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines—the basis of life—developed, you find an eerie and complete silence. The complexity of life’s foundation has paralyzed science’s attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet-impenetrable barrier to Darwinism’s universal reach.

Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996)

In private many scientists admit that science has no explanation for the beginning of life. . . . Darwin never imagined the exquisitely profound complexity that exists even at the most basic levels of life.

Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996)

All Michael Behe quotes →

You may also like

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michael Behe (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.