What mechanism can it be that results in the production of homologous organs, the same ‘patterns,’ in spite of their not being controlled by the same genes? I asked this question in 1938, and it has not been answered.

Evolutionary biologist Gavin de Beer, Homology: An Unsolved Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).

Common ancestry is not in dispute, not because of fossils, but because of features we share thanks to our common evolutionary birthright.

Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time (New York: The Free Press, 1999):35.

The greater the differences in the DNA, … the longer the time since two organisms shared a common ancestor. This DNA evidence for evolution has confirmed evolutionary relationships derived from other observations.

U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Teaching About Evolution and The Nature of Science (1998).

For mutations to provide the raw materials on which natural selection can operate, two things need to happen. First, the “mutants” must be viable (that is, able to survive, and capable of reproducing). Second, the mutation must be heritable.

Explore Evolution, pg. 101.

A mechanism that requires a discerning human agent cannot be Darwinian. The Darwinian mechanism neither anticipates nor remembers. It gives no directions and makes no choices. What is unacceptable in evolutionary theory, what is strictly forbidden, is the appearance of a force with the power to survey time, a force that conserves a point or a property because it will be useful. Such a force is no longer Darwinian. How would a blind force know such a thing?

David Berlinski, “Deniable Darwin,” Commentary 101 (June 1, 1996).