Creation scientists

[Alan]

The flat earth thing turns into a conspiracy theory the deeper you dive into it. For example, no one is permitted into or over Antarctica, it has heavy military presence and planes would be shot down if unauthorized flyovers were attempted. They believe it is the only landmass that sits on the fringe of the earth. No one has EVER gone beyond the fringes of the earth according to the flat earthers, every airline, space agency, in EVERY country is in cahoots on the conspiracy. Add to that, NASA, Roscosmos, CNSA, ISA, et al, are all liars and publishers of perpetual lies.

[Amo]

Amo, for every video that you post that you think presents your warped view of the history of the universe there are hundreds or even thousands presenting a better view. 

But the more interesting thing is that the video you just posted proclaimed the existence of Precambrian predatory life forms, i.e., predatory life forms existing before about 540 million years ago.  Did you even bother to pay attention to what the video was saying?  Nothing in that video would support anything you believe about the history of the universe.

Again you simply display your nearly complete ignorance of science and all things scientific.  You really need to stick to your own analytics of scripture and stay completely away from the science that you know nothing about.

The whole point of the post 4WD, was that this obvious evolutionist, was not going to change their narrative or mind because of their blind faith in their totally unproven theory. Or should I say religion. So, yes, I did and do know this person most certainly is not a Creationist or in agreement with me. As should be obvious from what I posted. Perhaps a little reader comprehension on your part could go a long way. Maybe you should step down from your high horse now and then, and reconsider just what it is that you think you know so well. What you think you know so well, seems just as foolish to me, as you suggest I am for believing as I do. Or perhaps I should say as ignorant to me, as you think and continually suggest I am.

You consider a literal interpretation of the biblical creation account to be a fairy tale. I consider the theory of evolution to be a fairy tale. Make no mistake about it, I think what you believe, to be every bit as foolish as you think of what I believe. You think I am ignorant, and I think you are willingly ignorant of some of the truths of God's word. As expressed by the Apostle Peter himself. So be it.

[4WD]

The whole point of the post 4WD, was that this obvious evolutionist, was not going to change their narrative or mind because of their blind faith in their totally unproven theory.

No Amo.  The whole point of the post was to add specific data and information in order to refine or modify certain ideas that previously existed.  That is how science works.  That is the scientific method. You would do well to familiarize yourself with the concept.  Nothing in the video repudiated or rejected the concept of biological evolution. There was nothing in the video that you should point to as confirming your denial of the concept. Quite the opposite.

[Rella]

The flat earth thing turns into a conspiracy theory the deeper you dive into it. For example, no one is permitted into or over Antarctica, it has heavy military presence and planes would be shot down if unauthorized flyovers were attempted. They believe it is the only landmass that sits on the fringe of the earth. No one has EVER gone beyond the fringes of the earth according to the flat earthers, every airline, space agency, in EVERY country is in cahoots on the conspiracy. Add to that, NASA, Roscosmos, CNSA, ISA, et al, are all liars and publishers of perpetual lies.

Do these flat earth people say if it is water that is at the eastern edge or western edge?

The whole concept is pure lunacy.

I want to see their map.

[Rella]

No Amo.  The whole point of the post was to add specific data and information in order to refine or modify certain ideas that previously existed.  That is how science works.  That is the scientific method. You would do well to familiarize yourself with the concept.  Nothing in the video repudiated or rejected the concept of biological evolution. There was nothing in the video that you should point to as confirming your denial of the concept. Quite the opposite.

Biological Evolution?

From the Britannica:  theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations. The theory of evolution is one of the fundamental keystones of modern biological theory.

This is in blatant opposition to Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 2:7.

[4WD]

Biological Evolution?

From the Britannica:  theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations. The theory of evolution is one of the fundamental keystones of modern biological theory.

This is in blatant opposition to Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 2:7.

I can understand why you might think that.  I don't.

Rella, were you personally made or created?  Do you perceive a difference?  I believe that I was both.  I was made in my flesh through procreation by my parents and I was created in my spirit directly by God.  The Bible says that I am made, formed, of the dust of the earth; science basically acknowledges the truth of that.

[Texas Conservative]

The wife of some good friends of ours has now adopted the flat earth theory. This is an intelligent woman, but it shows how easily some people can be deceived by watching an 8 hour video and joining in with like-minded people. There is literally no evidence to suggest the earth is flat, but there are millions of bits of evidence to show that the earth is a sphere, as well as eye witness testimony. The same applies to a 6000 year old universe, no genuine evidence supports that nonsense, but a plethora of evidence points toward a 13.8 billion year old universe, if you can't accept that you're simply entwined in ignorance.

You can believe the priest that says the earth is 6,000 years old or the priest of science that says it is 13.8 billion.  Either way you are trusting someone else.  Most people aren't smart enough to wade through the calculations and evidence to come up with the numbers themselves.

[Jaime]

That's a good point TC. And why woild trusting numbers and calculations be the way to go if it was a miracle of God? God would not necessarily limit himself to the boundaries of common sense or known science. I can't think of any other big miracle where that was the case.

[DaveW]

****** OFF TOPIC ALERT  *****

That is one of the most stupid things I have ever seen.  If you drop the mic and the channel is on, you not only destroy the mic ($200-300), you could also blow out your speakers and pop an output transistor or 2, costing another $1000 or so. 

[/off topic alert]

[Rella]

I can understand why you might think that.  I don't.

Rella, were you personally made or created?  Do you perceive a difference?  I believe that I was both.  I was made in my flesh through procreation by my parents and I was created in my spirit directly by God.  The Bible says that I am made, formed, of the dust of the earth; science basically acknowledges the truth of that.

Interesting question to ponder... and by that  I mean that most likely you are correct in both. Certainly my soul was created by God and in me that has been an ongoing creation and if I can use the word evolve, I have been a prime example of God working in me from a younger age into an evolving growth to him. If that makes sense.

Was I personally made?  Let us just say that I was accidentally made, for i have every reason to believe that I came into being to my very married parents as an accident. (I shall leave it at that) UNLESS my accidental conception was from God for a purpose    The later is possible for my life has never been my own, nor my choices.

[mommydi]

Was I personally made?  Let us just say that I was accidentally made, for i have every reason to believe that I came into being to my very married parents as an accident. (I shall leave it at that) UNLESS my accidental conception was from God for a purpose    The later is possible for my life has never been my own, nor my choices.

My mother told me I was their only planned child. ugh

[Texas Conservative]

How do you accidentally have sex?

No one is an accident even if they weren't planned

[4WD]

God would not necessarily limit himself to the boundaries of common sense or known science.

There was no known science.  God created the natural law when He created the heaven and earth with the initiation of the big bang.  Man doesn't create natural law or the science of it; he discovers natural law through science.  Science is the study and formulation of God's natural law.

Also as just an aside, God doesn't work signs, wonders and miracles.  God gives power through the Holy Spirit to individuals to work signs, wonders and miracles. Usually, but not always such individuals are men or women.  But that is probably best as left for a discussion as another topic.

[Rella]

How do you accidentally have sex?

No one is an accident even if they weren't planned

Protection that breaks will do it

[Alan]

Do these flat earth people say if it is water that is at the eastern edge or western edge?

The whole concept is pure lunacy.

I want to see their map.

From what I gather, the only fringe land mass is Antarctica, everything else is water.

[Alan]

****** OFF TOPIC ALERT  *****

That is one of the most stupid things I have ever seen.  If you drop the mic and the channel is on, you not only destroy the mic ($200-300), you could also blow out your speakers and pop an output transistor or 2, costing another $1000 or so. 

[/off topic alert]

Epic mic drops spare no expense 

[Amo]

No Amo.  The whole point of the post was to add specific data and information in order to refine or modify certain ideas that previously existed.  That is how science works.  That is the scientific method. You would do well to familiarize yourself with the concept.  Nothing in the video repudiated or rejected the concept of biological evolution. There was nothing in the video that you should point to as confirming your denial of the concept. Quite the opposite.

No 4WD. The whole point of the post, my post, was what I stated. You are speaking of the point of the video, not my post.

[4WD]

No 4WD. The whole point of the post, my post, was what I stated. You are speaking of the point of the video, not my post.

But since you fail to understand much of anything about science or the scientific method, the point of your post is very weak if not completely off base. There was nothing in the post that indicated anything about "a blind faith in a totally unproven theory".  All the video did was present some interesting data which had been discovered and offer thoughts about the resulting implications. You are free to disagree, but in doing so you really need to offer your own countering data.

[Amo]

But since you fail to understand much of anything about science or the scientific method, the point of your post is very weak if not completely off base. There was nothing in the post that indicated anything about "a blind faith in a totally unproven theory".  All the video did was present some interesting data which had been discovered and offer thoughts about the resulting implications. You are free to disagree, but in doing so you really need to offer your own countering data.

Yes, we both think the other is seriously scientifically deficient. As our faiths are in different authorities. The data is the same for all observers. The world view is the difference. You think continuously having to readjust presumptions concerning a theory, has no implications regarding the validity of such. I think it does. I think the obvious implications of having to move ones presumptions regarding time in development and complexity further and further back, is obvious evidence of created development and complexity from the beginning. Just as the creation account of scripture plainly states and testifies. A global flood explains the data, or evidence if you will, better than deep time evolutionary slow development of complexity. And or the relation of the strata of this earth, and the fossil evidence of life forms within them. We will not agree about this, as our world views and faith are in different authorities. So be it.

[Alan]

Yes, we both think the other is seriously scientifically deficient. As our faiths are in different authorities.

God or God? 

[4WD]

Alan,   

But I would modify that somewhat.

God or Ellen G. White? 

[4WD]

Yes, we both think the other is seriously scientifically deficient.

I don't think you are seriously scientifically deficient.  You demonstrate that deficiency over and over again.  And you did it one more time in that post. If you are going to attack something, you should at least know enough about it to be at least a tiny bit credible.

[Amo]

God or God? 

God according to the dictates of plain, simple, and repeated testimony of the holy scriptures, or God according to the speculative and ever changing imaginations of fallen humanity. Your deficiency being according to the latter apparently.

[Amo]

Alan,   

But I would modify that somewhat.

God or Ellen G. White? 

An ignorant statement to be sure. Did EGW write the scriptures or creation account of Genesis, or any of the many other scriptures which back that account up? What of all the Creationists before her, who believed that account as it simply states? Where have any of her writings been brought forth on thee boards or this thread to promote or defend Creationism? Ignorance is, as ignorance does, I suppose.

[Amo]

I don't think you are seriously scientifically deficient.  You demonstrate that deficiency over and over again.  And you did it one more time in that post. If you are going to attack something, you should at least know enough about it to be at least a tiny bit credible.

Yes, you are very proficient at making that accusation. You simply lack any motivation or ability apparently, to get into the details of such. Disagreement with you or other fairy tale evolutionists, scientifically deficient does not equal. Accepting perhaps in the minds of fairy tale evolutionists themselves. Especially fairy tale evolutionists who insist they believe the scriptures, but cannot explain at all, how the scriptures preach or teach what their fairy tale evolution espouses. Though they have been asked to do so many times over. 

[Alan]

God according to the dictates of plain, simple, and repeated testimony of the holy scriptures, or God according to the speculative and ever changing imaginations of fallen humanity. Your deficiency being according to the latter apparently.

That is entirely your own fallacy, which cannot be substantiated by evidence or faith.

[Amo]

That is entirely your own fallacy, which cannot be substantiated by evidence or faith.

No that is entirely the truth, as scripture itself plainly states the truth. Which can be seen by anyone opening a bible and looking at what it plainly states. Which plain statements of scripture millions of people do rightly place their faith in.

[Amo]

https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/ants-and-the-catholic-reception-of-evolution/

Quotes below, taken from article at above link. Emphasis is mine.

Ants, a Priest-Scientist, and the Catholic Reception of Evolution

by Berta M. Moritz
December 06, 2021

Double Vocation: Priest and Scientist

Erich Wasmann, a Jesuit priest and accomplished scientist, was one of the leading voices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century championing the compatibility of the theory of evolution with the Christian faith. There can be little doubt that his influence helped obtain for the theory of evolution the acceptance in the Catholic world that it has now enjoyed for many decades.

He was born in Tyrol, Austria, in 1859, the very year Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species. Erich's father, the painter Friedrich Wasmann, encouraged his son's interest in living things at an early age. Already, when he was a student at the Jesuit College (a secondary school in Feldkirch, Austria), his classmates gave him the nickname "Carabus," meaning "ground beetle." It was while at that school that he made the decision to join the Jesuit order. The Jesuits, however, had been expelled from Germany in 1872 as part of the Kulturkampf. Wasmann thus began his novitiate in the Netherlands, in 1875. Unfortunately, he contracted a bad cold a few years later that resulted in severe lung hemorrhaging, which weakened him. Therefore, he could not continue his theological studies in England, as planned, but pursued them in private and was ordained a priest in 1888.

The book Ants, Bees, and Wasps, written by the polymath John Lubbock in 1874 and translated into German in 1883, sparked new interest in eusocial insects, and Wasmann was asked to contribute some articles on the subject for a Jesuit periodical. In 1884, he started to study ants, first in their natural habitat and later by building artificial ant colonies. He would build up a unique collection that ultimately comprised more than 1,000 ant species, 200 termite species and 2,000 species of myrmecophiles. During his lifetime, Wasmann described 933 new species.

He studied the interaction between ants of the same species, as well as between ants of different species, and between ants and their inquilines, the so-called "myrmecophiles," most importantly the beetles of the order Staphylinidae. He first described the phenomenon that is still known today as "Wasmannian mimicry," noting that the myrmecophiles resemble their hosts by sending olfactory signals, or by imitating them in size, figure, color or surface microstructure. Through adaptation over time they became similar to their hosts but different from their closest relatives. Wasmann's scientific work convinced him of the explanatory power of Darwin's theory of evolution. He defined "amical selection" as a specific form of natural selection between ants and their guests.

Wasmann's compatibilist views on the theory of evolution and the Christian faith remained known only to his fellow entomologists and to a readership of educated Catholic lay people. This would dramatically change in 1904, however, when his book Die moderne Biologie und die Entwicklungstheorie came to the attention of the well-known biologist Ernst Haeckel.

Reception of Darwin's Theory in German-Speaking Countries

.............................................................

The second was the influential Ernst Haeckel. In 1864, Haeckel read Darwin's Origin of Species and soon was an outspoken advocate. He immediately ventured into metaphysical realms, declaring that evolution does away with any dualism (Creator and creation, matter and spirit, etc.) and brings everything together into what he called a "monism". During his lifetime he went from materialism to pantheism, from one monistic position to another. This may be puzzling to some people, but Wasmann explained it: "If we subtract everything we call 'the world' from what monism calls 'God,' the result is zero." Haeckel placed greater emphasis on the common origin of all living things than on the mechanism on natural selection and sometimes even took a Lamarckian view.

In Origin of Species, Darwin discussed the "Laws of Embryology," which had been proposed in 1828 by Karl Ernst von Baer. Baer had shown that animal embryos started from one, or a few, shared basic forms and then developed in a branching pattern into increasingly different-looking organisms. Much to von Baer's chagrin, Haeckel used this insight and proposed the biogenetic law "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," which states that the embryological development (= ontogenesis) of an individual represents a shortened form of the evolutionary history (=phylogenesis) that leads from earlier and simpler kinds of organisms to later more complicated ones. In the twenty-first century, Haeckel's proposition is no longer considered a law, but rather a rule with limited application.

Haeckel was a gifted artist, and his 1904 book Kunstformen der Natur ("Art forms of nature") still today evokes a sense of awe and wonder. But for illustrating his "biogenetic law", he used drawings of embryos of different species that could not be replicated by other scientists and that bordered on fraud. In today's terms, this would require retraction of the publication; but the latter half of the nineteenth century was more liberal about such things, although this question led to a major discussion with leading experts, a discussion in which Wasmann also was involved in later years............................................

Erich Wasmann and "Theistic Evolution"

In lectures that he delivered in 1907 in Berlin, Wasmann was the first to use the term "theistic evolution." In German, he used the term "theistische Entwicklungslehre," which was translated in the 1910 English version as "theistic doctrine of evolution," but, "theistic evolution," is a more accurate translation.

In his lectures, Wasmann set forth a set of "postulates" that defined theistic evolution. The first three postulates described God as Creator, as personal God who is the fullness of being and who is intrinsically "participating in the actions of all creatures, through His interior presence." The universe, created "out of nothing," is finite and bound to time. Once matter was created, the cosmic evolution and the evolution in the inorganic world could take place over millions of years, governed by laws. Wasmann emphasized that "a God who could create a living world capable of evolution is immeasurably greater and higher in His wisdom and power than a God who could only set all living creatures in the world as fixed, unalterable automata."...............................................

Wasmann on Human Origins

Wasmann returned to the question of the descent of man later in his lectures. "Investigating the descent and origin of man, the chief question is: 'Whence comes his higher part?' not: 'Whence comes his lower part?'" Therefore, also theology and psychology have a say in the discussion about humanity: "In short, the question that we have to discuss . . . is not a purely zoological one, and we must do our best, as far as possible, to do justice to all the various aspects of it, and not to confuse them with one another."

Wasmann saw experimental animal psychology on his side in affirming a gap, a divide between the faculties of animals and the spiritual dimension in humans. Only humans have the ability to go beyond the sensible. "What characterizes human thought is the fact that man possesses the power to form concepts, and to deduce from them general conclusions, and to raise himself by the aid of his reason above all particular phenomena." Wasmann emphasized the essential difference between animal and human in a mental and spiritual area that cannot be bridged by mere evolution.

With regard to the corporeal dimension of human origins, Wasmann's main point was that neither paleontology, nor morphology, nor embryonal development provided evidence of the origin of mankind from animal precursors. His main emphasis was on paleontology. At the time, there were only two fossils known that could be part of human ancestry: Pithecanthropus and the Neanderthals. Pithecanthropus, found in Java in 1895, was considered by eminent scientists like Virchow not to belong to human ancestry, but to ape ancestry.

Only later findings in China led to the reclassification of "Java Man" in 1950 to the species Homo erectus, placing them directly in the human evolutionary lineage. Whether the Neanderthals belonged to a separate species or were part of an older human race was a disputed question among experts at the time. Wasmann claimed that the Neanderthals belonged to the species Homo sapiens, heavily relying on the concept of "natural species," referring to the Austrian paleontologist Melchior Neumayr who used the term "paleontological species."

As Wasmann noted, Haeckel built a tree of human ancestry based mainly on "imagination", inventing missing links that simply did not exist; in addition, Haeckel described human races (what we would also call ethnicities) as branching out from different parts of this tree, thus implying that not all humans today have a common human ancestry. Haeckel's view was thus in strong contrast to the concept of monophyletic ancestry of all human beings alive today, as affirmed both by Darwin and by today's science. While our present picture of human origins may present itself as a tangled tree, scientists are convinced that all human beings share common human ancestors. Wasmann accepted the monophyletic origin of humans, but remained skeptical of human descent from non-humans, waiting for additional data. In his words:

Every atom in the human body had its primary origin in a creative act of God at the first formation of matter, although millions of years of cosmic development were to elapse before it became a living part of a human body; and, in just the same way, we might imagine a hypothetical history of humanity, governed by the laws of natural development, which God impressed upon the first cells at the moment when life originated. In accordance with this purely speculative supposition, man would have become man completely only when the organized matter had so far developed through natural causes, as to be capable of being animated with a human soul.

He concludes:

The creation of the first human soul marks the real creation of the human race, although we might assume that a natural development lasting millions of years had preceded it . . . If ever science is able to demonstrate to us the natural development of man from an ancestry resembling beasts, the divine origin and the divine end of humanity will nevertheless remain unassailed and firmly established as before.

Wasmanm's Silence and His Legacy

In 1910, Father Wasmann gave another series on lectures on evolution and the Catholic faith in Innsbruck, and said in an even more forceful way:

Evolutionary theory does not stand in hostile opposition to the Christian doctrine of creation, but it complements it in the most beautiful way. A God who was able to create a living world capable of development is immeasurably greater and more sublime in his power and wisdom than a God who could only put all creatures into the world as rigid, unchangeable automatons. This has already been presciently expressed by great minds of the Christian Middle Ages and antiquity, such as Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. We may therefore remain calm and firm in our sublime Christian words of creation: In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.

In later years, he would return to the danger he saw in Haeckel's monism, and he continued his entomological research. He became silent on the topic of evolution, however. In 1908, he had received a letter from the Jesuit Superior General, Fr. Franz Xaver Wrenz, asking him to refrain from the question of human evolution. Wrenz, being involved in two cases brought before Congregation of the Index, knew of negative views on this question by several cardinals and reviewers at that time. In 1909, the Pontifical Biblical Commission on Genesis published a decree on the first three chapters of Genesis. Wasmann's personal notes to this decree reveal that his silence was a self-imposed silence, out of filial obedience to the teaching authority of the Church.

Nonetheless, Wasmann's influence was already going beyond the borders of the German-speaking world: he carefully supervised the Italian translation of his 1904 book, a translation initiated and promoted by the scientist and Franciscan priest Giovanni Agostini. In 1906, the Belgian zoologist, psychologist, and Jesuit priest Robert Sinety provided a thorough examination of Wasmann's work. In Spain, the Jesuit Jaime Pujiula Dilmé, an expert in embryology and histology who had studied in Germany and Austria, took a similar stance, although he excluded the possibility of an origin of life without divine intervention.

Wasmann was invited to write an article for the Catholic Encyclopedia, bringing his work to attention in the English-speaking world. The Question Box, a book widely read by American lay people, cites Wasmann in several places. In his article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, which appeared in 1909, Wasmann first described the basics of biological evolution and then said, "This is the gist of the theory of evolution as a scientific hypothesis. It is in perfect agreement with the Christian conception of the universe."

Wasmann was appreciated as a scientist, and as a friend and teacher. He died peacefully in 1931. Franz Heikertinger, an agnostic and fellow entomologist, summarized his life in these words:

With Father Wasmann one of the most famous representatives of the entomological world—and not only of the entomological one—has passed away. A man who found in investigating the relations of ants to their guests the main task of his life, who turned the results of his work into attempts to solve the most extensive biological problems, who undertook to interest wide circles, who tried to build a scientific bridge between the Bible and Darwin, a man who did not shy away from the fight, and even sometimes promoted it. That was Wasmann.

Conclusions

In the first explicit statement of the Church about evolution, Pope Pius XII said in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis,

The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

And in 2004, the document Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God produced by the Vatican's International Theological Commission confirmed:

Acting indirectly through causal chains [i.e. of cosmic evolution and biological evolution] operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called "an ontological leap . . . the moment of transition to the spiritual." While science can study these causal chains, it falls to theology to locate this account of the special creation of the human soul within the overarching plan of the triune God to share the communion of trinitarian life with human persons who are created out of nothing in the image and likeness of God, and who, in his name and according to his plan, exercise a creative stewardship and sovereignty over the physical universe.

Pope Francis addresses our uniqueness as humans being in his encyclical Laudato Sí in these words:

Human beings, even if we postulate a process of evolution, also possess a uniqueness which cannot be fully explained by the evolution of other open systems. Each of us has his or her own personal identity and is capable of entering into dialogue with others and with God himself. Our capacity to reason, to develop arguments, to be inventive, to interpret reality and to create art, along with other not yet discovered capacities, are signs of a uniqueness which transcends the spheres of physics and biology.

He continues:

The sheer novelty involved in the emergence of a personal being within a material universe presupposes a direct action of God and a particular call to life and to relationship on the part of a "Thou" who addresses himself to another "thou". The biblical accounts of creation invite us to see each human being as a subject who can never be reduced to the status of an object.

Wasmann carefully accepted the theory of evolution within certain boundaries, specifically in the context of human origins: the human body may be the subject of evolution, but the soul, as "divine spark," created directly by God, is constitutive to our nature. Seen from the perspective of today, we can see a unifying thread from Wasmann, to Pope Pius XII, right up to Pope Francis.

[Amo]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/07/16/piltdown-hoax-said-to-involve-jesuit-scholar/badaebe9-20b5-46c6-9d03-afe85d5d3da2/

Quoted article below from link above. Emphasis is mine.

Piltdown Hoax Said to Involve Jesuit Scholar

By Thomas O'Toole
July 16, 1980

The Piltdown Man Hoax, the most spectacular scientific fraud of the 20th century, was cooked up in part by the well-known French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Harvard historian of science has concluded.

Writing in the August issue of National History, magazine published by New York's American Museum of National History, Dr. Stephen Jay Gould lays out a solid though circumstantial case that Teilhard was an active and willing accomplice of Charles Dawson, the British naturalist who has long been accused as the lone culprit in the hoax.

"I have found a pattern that seems hard to reconcile with his [Teilhard's] innocence," Gould writes after more than a year of scientific detective work in unearthing the French priest's role in the hoax. "My case is, to be sure, circumstantial, but I believe that the burden of proof must now rest with those who would hold Father Teilhard blameless."

The hoax began in 1912 when a skull was unearthed from a gravel pit at the village of Piltdown, near Hastings on the southeast coast of England. Reconstructed from fragments found buried side by side, the skull seemed to consist of the cranium of a man and the jaw of an ape-like creature whose teeth appeared both ancient and human.

The "discovery" was followed almost immediately by an almost identical find in another gravel pit, identical find in another gravel pit, indicating that this was a real creature and not just a chance collection of bones.

Believed to be as much as a million years old, Piltdown Man became an overnight sensation. It was hailed as a "missing link" in man's ancestry, older than both Neanderthal and CroMagnon man.

Both Piltdown fossils were unearthed by Dawson, assisted in his digs by the young Teilhard, just ordained and then studying poleontology. Smith Woodward, curator of the British Museum, visited the digs on occasion but served mainly as the man who verified the discoveries.

Though not without doubters, the hoax remained intact from 1912 to 1952, when three British scientists proved not only that the Piltdown Man's teeth had been artificially filed and stained to suggest age but that ancient animal bones from faraway lands had been placed in the gravel pits to hint more strongly of age. Radioactive dating proved also that the cranium came from the skull of a modern man.

For the last 28 years, Teilhard was held blameless in the fraud because of his inexperience. At 31 and a fledgling naturalist at the time, he was said to have duped by Dawson. So, too, was Woodward, who was described as "too dedicated and too gullible" to see through the fraud. Dawson alone was blamed by the world's scientists as the culpit.

The first part of Gould's case against Teilhard consists of the elephant and hippo bones found in the Piltdown pits. The bones were found to have come from Malta and Tunisia, where Teilhard collected specimens on trips between Egypt and France in the years 1905 and 1908.

The second part of the case is stronger, involving an exchange of letters between Teilhard and Kenneth Oakley, one of the three-British scientist who uncovered the hoax 40 years later. Gould carefully reconstructs what happened at the digs and says that Teilhard lied to cover up what he could no longer remember.

In what Gould calls Teilhard's "fatal error," Teilhard said that on his first visit to the second site Dawson showed him where he'd found the second Piltdown skull.

"This cannot be," Gould writes. "Dawson 'discovered' the skull bones at Piltdown 2 in January, 1915 and the tooth in July, 1915. Teilhard was mustered into the French Army in December, 1914 and was shipped to the front, where he remained until the war ended. He could not have seen the remains of Piltdown 2 with Dawson, unless they manufactured them together before he left and before Dawson died in 1916."

Teilhard's slips go on, writes Gould. He told Oakley he visited the second site in 1913 but forgot whether the skull had been found or not. In another letter, he wrote that he could no longer remember when he visited the site. How, Gould suggests, could Teilhard have forgotten what he had called "one of my brightest and earliest paleontological memories."

Gould strengthens his case by following the career of Teilhard. He became a brilliant naturalist and philosopher, wrote 23 books and at his death in 1955 was a cult figure. His "Phenomenon of Man" is a worldwide best seller. He mentioned his role in Piltdown only six times in all his work, then only as footnotes. Gould suggests Teilhard was so embarrassed he could not bring himself to mention it.

Why did Teilhard do it? Gould suggests Dawson and Teilhard did it as a joke, then watched helplessly as the joke got out of hand. Gould also suggests Teilhard did it because of his religious belief in the evolution of the human spirit.

"Teilhard believed that evolution moved in an intrinsic direction representing the increasing domination of spirit over matter," Gould writes. "Piltdown provided proof, the only available proof" that this had happened early on in time.

Hmmmm. Jesuit involvement in the development of evolutionary theory, during the early 1900's, as the previous post suggests as well.

[Amo]

I'm wondering 4WD, how does your take on evolution, differ from that of the Jesuit Erich Wasmann quoted in one of my previous posts?

Erich Wasmann, a Jesuit priest and accomplished scientist, was one of the leading voices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century championing the compatibility of the theory of evolution with the Christian faith. There can be little doubt that his influence helped obtain for the theory of evolution the acceptance in the Catholic world that it has now enjoyed for many decades.................

Once matter was created, the cosmic evolution and the evolution in the inorganic world could take place over millions of years, governed by laws. Wasmann emphasized that "a God who could create a living world capable of evolution is immeasurably greater and higher in His wisdom and power than a God who could only set all living creatures in the world as fixed, unalterable automata."...............................................

Wasmann saw experimental animal psychology on his side in affirming a gap, a divide between the faculties of animals and the spiritual dimension in humans. Only humans have the ability to go beyond the sensible. "What characterizes human thought is the fact that man possesses the power to form concepts, and to deduce from them general conclusions, and to raise himself by the aid of his reason above all particular phenomena." Wasmann emphasized the essential difference between animal and human in a mental and spiritual area that cannot be bridged by mere evolution.............................

Evolutionary theory does not stand in hostile opposition to the Christian doctrine of creation, but it complements it in the most beautiful way. A God who was able to create a living world capable of development is immeasurably greater and more sublime in his power and wisdom than a God who could only put all creatures into the world as rigid, unchangeable automatons. This has already been presciently expressed by great minds of the Christian Middle Ages and antiquity, such as Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. We may therefore remain calm and firm in our sublime Christian words of creation: In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.......................

Wasmann was invited to write an article for the Catholic Encyclopedia, bringing his work to attention in the English-speaking world. The Question Box, a book widely read by American lay people, cites Wasmann in several places. In his article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, which appeared in 1909, Wasmann first described the basics of biological evolution and then said, "This is the gist of the theory of evolution as a scientific hypothesis. It is in perfect agreement with the Christian conception of the universe."

Are you in agreement with, or do your views differ from the following quotes of Popes from same article?

In the first explicit statement of the Church about evolution, Pope Pius XII said in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis,

The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

And in 2004, the document Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God produced by the Vatican's International Theological Commission confirmed:

Acting indirectly through causal chains [i.e. of cosmic evolution and biological evolution] operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called "an ontological leap . . . the moment of transition to the spiritual." While science can study these causal chains, it falls to theology to locate this account of the special creation of the human soul within the overarching plan of the triune God to share the communion of trinitarian life with human persons who are created out of nothing in the image and likeness of God, and who, in his name and according to his plan, exercise a creative stewardship and sovereignty over the physical universe.

Pope Francis addresses our uniqueness as humans being in his encyclical Laudato Sí in these words:

Human beings, even if we postulate a process of evolution, also possess a uniqueness which cannot be fully explained by the evolution of other open systems. Each of us has his or her own personal identity and is capable of entering into dialogue with others and with God himself. Our capacity to reason, to develop arguments, to be inventive, to interpret reality and to create art, along with other not yet discovered capacities, are signs of a uniqueness which transcends the spheres of physics and biology.

He continues:

The sheer novelty involved in the emergence of a personal being within a material universe presupposes a direct action of God and a particular call to life and to relationship on the part of a "Thou" who addresses himself to another "thou". The biblical accounts of creation invite us to see each human being as a subject who can never be reduced to the status of an object.

Wasmann carefully accepted the theory of evolution within certain boundaries, specifically in the context of human origins: the human body may be the subject of evolution, but the soul, as "divine spark," created directly by God, is constitutive to our nature. Seen from the perspective of today, we can see a unifying thread from Wasmann, to Pope Pius XII, right up to Pope Francis.

[Rella]

I have one simple question.

If all those who have espouse the idea of evolution to get us to the point we are today.... what was the purpose of Genesis 1 and 2 being written as it was ?

Maybe some Jesuit can come on board with an explanation.

[Amo]

I have one simple question.

If all those who have espouse the idea of evolution to get us to the point we are today.... what was the purpose of Genesis 1 and 2 being written as it was ?

Maybe some Jesuit can come on board with an explanation.

https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/561/article/evolution-and-christian-faith

Article below from America-THE JESUIT REVIEW.

Evolution and Christian Faith

On July 7, 2005, The New York Times published on its Op Ed page an essay by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, O.P., the archbishop of Vienna, entitled: Finding Design in Nature. In it the cardinal stated:

...ever since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was more than just a hypothesis, defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance or at least acquiescence of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.... But this is not true. The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.

Cardinal Schönborn then dismissed the pope's 1996 statement as rather vague and unimportant and turned instead to an analysis of other statements by John Paul II on evolution and by Pope Benedict XVI. I believe that the cardinal's analysis of John Paul II's views on evolution and Christian faith deserves a careful and detailed response from all who are concerned with the constructive dialogue between science and theology that John Paul II so strongly supported for decades. I offer here an introductory analysis and will leave for another occasion a response to the cardinal's comments on the position of Pope Benedict XVI.

In my view, the cardinal's concern over evolution is unnecessary. What scientists view as chance in nature, Christians can see as God's ongoing and purposeful action in the creation of life and humanity. The cardinal's concern is also misplaced. When evolutionary theory is co-opted by atheists to serve their agenda, the cardinal should challenge the atheists, not the science they falsely claim proves their views.

Writing as a theologian and physicist, though not a Catholic, I support the Roman Catholic Church for the way it has welcomed the discoveries of science in the decades following the Second Vatican Council. There is simply no reason to change now the fruitful relationships that have been built up between the church and science. John Paul II, long before he became pope, enjoyed the friendship of many distinguished scientists, with whom he could discuss such topics as the origins of the universe in light of Big Bang cosmology and the beauty of God's intimate handicraft in creating life through the tapestry of biological processes.

In 1987, I had an opportunity to meet the pope during a ground-breaking international research conference sponsored by the Holy See and held at the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo. The conference publication, Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, began with a now famous statement written specifically for the conference. The pope urged theologians to call on the findings of science to one degree or another as it pursues its primary concern for the human person.... The vitality and significance of theology for humanity will in a profound way be reflected in its ability to incorporate these findings. In so writing, the pope characterized theology as fides quaerens intellectum, an effort of faith to achieve understanding. By using this method, theology must incorporate science into its teachings. Finally, he voiced his now famous rallying call: Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

Following the conference, the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences entered into a decade-long series of research conferences and published their results in a five-volume series distributed by the University of Notre Dame Press. In 1996 I served as one of the editors of the third volume in the series, Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. The volume included scholarly articles by such distinguished scientists as the biologists Francisco Ayala and Charles Birch, the cosmologists William Stoeger, S.J., and George Ellis, the Catholic theologians Anne Clifford, Denis Edwards and John Haught and leading scholars in the area of theology and science, including Arthur Peacocke, Nancey Murphy, Philip Hefner and Ian Barbour. These scholars offered a variety of Christian interpretations of neo-Darwinian evolution, widely referred to in general as theistic evolution. None of them thought that evolution is intrinsically atheistic or that the role of chance in evolution precludes the ongoing action of God as the creator of life and humanity through the processes of evolution. In short, for all of them evolution is the way God creates life.

That same year John Paul II addressed the plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In the 1996 volume we published that address both in its original French text and in English translation (page numbers below refer to this edition). In his address the pope recalled the position taken by Pope Pius XII in his 1950 encyclical, Humani Generisnamely, that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation (pg. 4). He then made the following crucial points: First, based on the state of scientific research in 1950, Pius XII went only so far as to consider evolution a serious hypothesis. But given the enormous scientific progress since then, John Paul II concluded that today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led us to realize that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis. Instead it is progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. Even this convergence of support provides a significant argument in favor of this theory. Second, he made a pivotal distinction between evolution as an established scientific theory and materialist, reductionist, and spiritualist interpretations of evolution, interpretations that the church must critically assess (pg. 6). Third, after assessing and rejecting these interpretations, John Paul II endorsed the body-soul dualism found in Humani Generis: if the human body takes its origin from preexistent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God. Fourth, while granting that humanity represents an ontological difference from the rest of nature, the pope concluded that this truth does not contradict the physical continuity pointed to by evolution since the moment of transition to the spiritual is not observable by science.

With these highly nuanced and scholarly words from Pope John Paul II fresh in my mind, I was stunned to read the New York Times article by Cardinal Schönborn, in which he refers to John Paul II's address cited above as rather vague and unimportant. Having known the history of this address and, more important, having personally known both the unwavering commitment John Paul II had to the responsible dialogue between the church and science and the intellectual rigor he brought to it and demanded of all of us as participants in the dialogue, I strongly disagree with the cardinal's dismissive judgment. I am also surprised that Cardinal Schönborn apparently overlooked a crucial distinction John Paul II made between the way Darwinian science views design in nature as the result of chance events and the way Christians understand that same design in nature through reason and revelationas the result of God's action in, with and through the processes of nature. A key example of this distinction is John Paul II's claim that while there is an ontological difference between humanity and the rest of life on earth, namely the human soul, this difference is not observable by scientific methods. The difference may well be obtained by reason, based on scientific evidence, but it is not to be treated as part of a scientific explanation of nature.

I agree with the cardinal that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things. The question is whether the cardinal's statement is what John Paul II calls a philosophical interpretation based on the accepted, Darwinian theory of evolution, or whether the cardinal's statement hints at something quite different, namely a rejection of Darwinian theory of evolution and its replacement with a different theorysomething John Paul II would never have sanctioned.

Actually the cardinal gives us much more than a hint. He goes on to say that evolution in the neo-Darwinian sensean unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selectionis not [true]. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science. The problem with that statement is that evolutionary biology does not deny or explain away design in biology; instead it discovers and affirms it at all levels of life. This means that evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense is not an ideology by the cardinal's own criteria! The real question is whether evolution as a scientific theory should account for the way design arises in evolution by appealing to God, or whether it must limit its account to natural processes, such as random variation and natural selection, and leave it to Christian philosophy and theology to give these natural processes a broader explanation in terms of divine agency. It is clear that John Paul II took the latter approach. He insisted that the methods of science are strictly limited to natural, secondary causes; science cannot go beyond this and remain science. To force a theological explanation of evolution into biology would be to create a pseudo-science, and this is precisely what John Paul II rejected in his 1988 address cited above.

In fact, Cardinal Schönborn's words are reminiscent of some of the writings found within the so-called intelligent design movement. I hope this is not the cardinal's intention. Intelligent design cannot be a competitor to neo-Darwinian evolution because it cannot, in principle, be an alternative scientific theory. Instead it is a misguided attempt by some conservative Protestants to include a divine designer God in disguise into science. That, by the cardinal's own criteria, makes it an ideology, not a science, one that the cardinal would therefore reject.

The cardinal then turns to what he considers the real teaching of John Paul II given in his 1985 address. Here the pope writes: The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator. In this instance John Paul II is offering a philosophical conclusion based on reason and scientific evidencenamely, that a Mind is responsible for the internal finality in living beingsbut he is not suggesting that this conclusion should be forced back into science itself, that biology should somehow include the idea of a creator Mind in its scientific account of life.

What John Paul II rejected is not neo-Darwinian evolution as a scientific theory but neo-Darwinian evolution co-opted to serve as the basis for a materialistic worldview, and all of us in the theology and science discussions would agree with him. Quoting John Paul II again: It is clear that the truth of faith about creation is radically opposed to the theories of materialistic philosophy. These view the cosmos as the result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure chance and necessity. It is this reductionistic and materialistic philosophy as an interpretation of evolution that Christians must oppose. In its place Christians must offer an alternative interpretation of neo-Darwinian evolution that recognizes it as ultimately the work of God.

Finally, the cardinal quotes from the 2004 documents of the International Theological Commission that state that the 1996 article of John Paul II ...cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe. Once again the suggestion is that the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution itself somehow denies divine providence since, as a scientific theory, it does not refer to it. Once again the same category mistake is being made: the lack of reference to God within a scientific theory does not mean that the scientific theory claims there is no God. The fact that science does not refer to providenceas indeed it should notdoes not mean that science claims providence is not at work in nature. The existence of God and the workings of providence are simply beyond the competence of science to adjudicate.

In the end it is not scientific theories that enforce a materialistic worldview but atheists who co-opt science for their own purposes. John Paul II knew this, perhaps better than any other pontiff in recent history, having battled against atheistic interpretations of history in his own cherished Poland under the dominion of the Soviet Union and its ideology of dialectical materialism. He knew history could be given a different interpretation, a Christian interpretation, which truly supports human dignityand he led Poland to victory over Communism. When Cardinal Schönborn attacks scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of chance and necessity, he is not attacking a scientific theory such as neo-Darwinian evolution but its ideological interpretation by materialists and atheists. This ideology must be resisted with all the power of the Catholic Church, but the church will do a tragic injustice if it attacks neo-Darwinian science instead of attacking atheism.

Indeed, John Paul II has pointed the way forward, which we all must follow: the liberation of neo-Darwinian science from its atheistic interpretation and the celebration of evolution by the church through a truly Christian interpretation of God acting in and with the processes of evolution.

It is my hope that the new pontiff and his cardinals will build on, and not tear down, the astonishing accomplishments of Pope John Paul II, who never made the inexcusable mistake of confusing the victim of injustice with the perpetrator of injustice let alone doing so in the name of the church.

It seems the views of Alan and 4WD have much in common with Jesuit and or Roman Catholic views. Correct me if I am wrong Alan or 4WD. The plain biblical account of creation is not as authoritative as that of a mix of humanities scientific observations so called, theologically corrected and directed by papal oversight. Not that Alan or 4WD submit to papal oversight, but something else of a similar nature apparently. Which is more authoritative to them, than the plain testimony of scripture.

[Amo]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution

Article quoted below is from link above. Emphasis is mine.

Do we need a new theory of evolution?

A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of biology
by Stephen Buranyi

Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly? The usual explanation of how we got these stupendously complex organs rests upon the theory of natural selection.

You may recall the gist from school biology lessons. If a creature with poor eyesight happens to produce offspring with slightly better eyesight, thanks to random mutations, then that tiny bit more vision gives them more chance of survival. The longer they survive, the more chance they have to reproduce and pass on the genes that equipped them with slightly better eyesight. Some of their offspring might, in turn, have better eyesight than their parents, making it likelier that they, too, will reproduce. And so on. Generation by generation, over unfathomably long periods of time, tiny advantages add up. Eventually, after a few hundred million years, you have creatures who can see as well as humans, or cats, or owls.

This is the basic story of evolution, as recounted in countless textbooks and pop-science bestsellers. The problem, according to a growing number of scientists, is that it is absurdly crude and misleading.

For one thing, it starts midway through the story, taking for granted the existence of light-sensitive cells, lenses and irises, without explaining where they came from in the first place. Nor does it adequately explain how such delicate and easily disrupted components meshed together to form a single organ. And it isn't just eyes that the traditional theory struggles with. "The first eye, the first wing, the first placenta. How they emerge. Explaining these is the foundational motivation of evolutionary biology," says Armin Moczek, a biologist at Indiana University. "And yet, we still do not have a good answer. This classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time, has so far fallen flat."

There are certain core evolutionary principles that no scientist seriously questions. Everyone agrees that natural selection plays a role, as does mutation and random chance. But how exactly these processes interact – and whether other forces might also be at work – has become the subject of bitter dispute. "If we cannot explain things with the tools we have right now," the Yale University biologist Günter Wagner told me, "we must find new ways of explaining."

In 2014, eight scientists took up this challenge, publishing an article in the leading journal Nature that asked "Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?" Their answer was: "Yes, urgently." Each of the authors came from cutting-edge scientific subfields, from the study of the way organisms alter their environment in order to reduce the normal pressure of natural selection – think of beavers building dams – to new research showing that chemical modifications added to DNA during our lifetimes can be passed on to our offspring. The authors called for a new understanding of evolution that could make room for such discoveries. The name they gave this new framework was rather bland – the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) – but their proposals were, to many fellow scientists, incendiary.

In 2015, the Royal Society in London agreed to host New Trends in Evolution, a conference at which some of the article's authors would speak alongside a distinguished lineup of scientists. The aim was to discuss "new interpretations, new questions, a whole new causal structure for biology", one of the organisers told me. But when the conference was announced, 23 fellows of the Royal Society, Britain's oldest and most prestigious scientific organisation, wrote a letter of protest to its then president, the Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse. "The fact that the society would hold a meeting that gave the public the idea that this stuff is mainstream is disgraceful," one of the signatories told me. Nurse was surprised by the reaction. "They thought I was giving it too much credibility," he told me. But, he said: "There's no harm in discussing things."

Traditional evolutionary theorists were invited, but few showed up. Nick Barton, recipient of the 2008 Darwin-Wallace medal, evolutionary biology's highest honour, told me he "decided not to go because it would add more fuel to the strange enterprise". The influential biologists Brian and Deborah Charlesworth of the University of Edinburgh told me they didn't attend because they found the premise "irritating". The evolutionary theorist Jerry Coyne later wrote that the scientists behind the EES were playing "revolutionaries" to advance their own careers. One 2017 paper even suggested some of the theorists behind the EES were part of an "increasing post-truth tendency" within science. The personal attacks and insinuations against the scientists involved were "shocking" and "ugly", said one scientist, who is nonetheless sceptical of the EES.

What accounts for the ferocity of this backlash? For one thing, this is a battle of ideas over the fate of one of the grand theories that shaped the modern age. But it is also a struggle for professional recognition and status, about who gets to decide what is core and what is peripheral to the discipline. "The issue at stake," says Arlin Stoltzfus, an evolutionary theorist at the IBBR research institute in Maryland, "is who is going to write the grand narrative of biology." And underneath all this lurks another, deeper question: whether the idea of a grand story of biology is a fairytale we need to finally give up.

Behind the current battle over evolution lies a broken dream. In the early 20th century, many biologists longed for a unifying theory that would enable their field to join physics and chemistry in the club of austere, mechanistic sciences that stripped the universe down to a set of elemental rules. Without such a theory, they feared that biology would remain a bundle of fractious sub-fields, from zoology to biochemistry, in which answering any question might require input and argument from scores of warring specialists.

From today's vantage point, it seems obvious that Darwin's theory of evolution – a simple, elegant theory that explains how one force, natural selection, came to shape the entire development of life on Earth – would play the role of the great unifier. But at the turn of the 20th century, four decades after the publication of On the Origin of Species and two after his death, Darwin's ideas were in decline. Scientific collections at the time carried titles such as The Death-bed of Darwinism. Scientists had not lost interest in evolution, but many found Darwin's account of it unsatisfying. One major problem was that it lacked an explanation of heredity. Darwin had observed that, over time, living things seemed to change to better fit their environment. But he did not understand how these minute changes were passed from one generation to the next.

At the start of the 20th century, the rediscovery of the work of the 19th-century friar and father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, started to provide the answers. Scientists working in the new field of genetics discovered rules that governed the quirks of heredity. But rather than confirm Darwin's theory, they complicated it. Reproduction appeared to remix genes – the mysterious units that programme the physical traits we end up seeing – in surprising ways. Think of the way a grandfather's red hair, absent in his son, might reappear in his granddaughter. How was natural selection meant to function when its tiny variations might not even reliably pass from parent to offspring every time?

Even more ominous for Darwinists was the emergence of the "mutationists" in the 1910s, a school of geneticists whose star exponent, Thomas Hunt Morgan, showed that by breeding millions of fruit flies – and sometimes spiking their food with the radioactive element radium – he could produce mutated traits, such as new eye colours or additional limbs. These were not the tiny random variations on which Darwin's theory was built, but sudden, dramatic changes. And these mutations, it turned out, were heritable. The mutationists believed that they had identified life's true creative force. Sure, natural selection helped to remove unsuitable changes, but it was simply a humdrum editor for the flamboyant poetry of mutation. "Natura non facit saltum," Darwin had once written: "Nature does not make jumps." The mutationists begged to differ.

These disputes over evolution had the weight of a theological schism. At stake were the forces governing all creation. For Darwinists especially, their theory was all-or-nothing. If another force, apart from natural selection, could also explain the differences we see between living things, Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species, his whole theory of life would "utterly break down". If the mutationists were right, instead of a single force governing all biological change, scientists would have to dig deep into the logic of mutation. Did it work differently on legs and lungs? Did mutations in frogs work differently to mutations in owls or elephants?

In 1920, the philosopher Joseph Henry Woodger wrote that biology suffered from "fragmentation" and "cleavages" that would be "unknown in such a well-unified science as, for example, chemistry". The divergent groups often feuded, he noted, and it seemed to be getting worse. It began to seem inevitable that the life sciences would grow more and more fractured, and the possibility of a common language would slip away.

Just as it seemed that Darwinism might be buried, a curious collection of statisticians and animal breeders came along to revitalise it. In the 1920s and 30s, working separately but in loose correspondence, thinkers such as the British father of scientific statistics, Ronald Fisher, and the American geneticist Sewall Wright, proposed a revised theory of evolution that accounted for scientific advances since Darwin's death but still promised to explain all of life's mysteries with a few simple rules. In 1942, the English biologist Julian Huxley coined the name for this theory: the modern synthesis. Eighty years on, it still provides the basic framework for evolutionary biology as it is taught to millions of schoolchildren and undergraduates every year. Insofar as a biologist works in the tradition of the modern synthesis, they are considered "mainstream"; insofar as they reject it, they are considered marginal.

Despite the name, it was not actually a synthesis of two fields, but a vindication of one in light of the other. By building statistical models of animal populations that accounted for the laws of genetics and mutation, the modern synthesists showed that, over long periods of time, natural selection still functioned much as Darwin had predicted. It was still the boss. In the fullness of time, mutations were too rare to matter, and the rules of heredity didn't affect the overall power of natural selection. Through a gradual process, genes with advantages were preserved over time, while others that didn't confer advantages disappeared.

Rather than getting stuck into the messy world of individual organisms and their specific environments, proponents of the modern synthesis observed from the lofty perspective of population genetics. To them, the story of life was ultimately just the story of clusters of genes surviving or dying out over the grand sweep of evolutionary time.

The modern synthesis arrived at just the right time. Beyond its explanatory power, there were two further reasons – more historical, or even sociological, than scientific – why it took off. First, the mathematical rigour of the synthesis was impressive, and not seen before in biology. As the historian Betty Smocovitis points out, it brought the field closer to "examplar sciences" such as physics. At the same time, writes Smocovitis, it promised to unify the life sciences at a moment when the "enlightenment project" of scientific unification was all the rage. In 1946, the biologists Ernst Mayr and George Gaylord Simpson started the Society for the Study of Evolution, a professional organisation with its own journal, which Simpson said would bring together the sub-fields of biology on "the common ground of evolutionary studies". This was all possible, he later reflected, because "we seem at last to have a unified theory [...] capable of facing all the classic problems of the history of life and of providing a causalistic solution of each."

This was a time when biology was ascending to its status as a major science. University departments were forming, funding was flowing in, and thousands of newly accredited scientists were making thrilling discoveries. In 1944, the Canadian-American biologist Oswald Avery and his colleagues had proved that DNA was the physical substance of genes and heredity, and in 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick – leaning heavily on work from Rosalind Franklin and the American chemist Linus Pauling – mapped its double-helical structure.

While information piled up at a rate that no scientist could fully digest, the steady thrum of the modern synthesis ran through it all. The theory dictated that, ultimately, genes built everything, and natural selection scrutinised every bit of life for advantage. Whether you were looking at algae blooming in a pond or peacock mating rituals, it could all be understood as natural selection doing its work on genes. The world of life could seem suddenly simple again.

By 1959, when the University of Chicago held a conference celebrating the centennial of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the modern synthesists were triumphant. The venues were packed and national newspaper reporters followed the proceedings. (Queen Elizabeth was invited, but sent her apologies.) Huxley crowed that "this is one of the first public occasions on which it has been frankly faced that all aspects of reality are subject to evolution".

Yet soon enough, the modern synthesis would come under assault from scientists within the very departments that the theory had helped build.

From the start, there had always been dissenters. In 1959, the developmental biologist CH Waddington lamented that the modern synthesis had sidelined valuable theories in favour of "drastic simplifications which are liable to lead us to a false picture of how the evolutionary process works". Privately, he complained that anyone working outside the new evolutionary "party line" – that is, anyone who didn't embrace the modern synthesis – was ostracised.

Then came a devastating series of new findings that called into question the theory's foundations. These discoveries, which began in the late 60s, came from molecular biologists. While the modern synthesists looked at life as if through a telescope, studying the development of huge populations over immense chunks of time, the molecular biologists looked through a microscope, focusing on individual molecules. And when they looked, they found that natural selection was not the all-powerful force that many had assumed it to be.

They found that the molecules in our cells – and thus the sequences of the genes behind them – were mutating at a very high rate. This was unexpected, but not necessarily a threat to mainstream evolutionary theory. According to the modern synthesis, even if mutations turned out to be common, natural selection would, over time, still be the primary cause of change, preserving the useful mutations and junking the useless ones. But that isn't what was happening. The genes were changing – that is, evolving – but natural selection wasn't playing a part. Some genetic changes were being preserved for no reason apart from pure chance. Natural selection seemed to be asleep at the wheel.

Evolutionary biologists were stunned. In 1973, David Attenborough presented a BBC documentary that included an interview with one of the leading modern synthesists, Theodosius Dobzhansky. He was visibly distraught at the "non-Darwinian evolution" that some scientists were now proposing. "If this were so, evolution would have hardly any meaning, and would not be going anywhere in particular," he said. "This is not simply a quibble among specialists. To a man looking for the meaning of his existence, evolution by natural selection makes sense." Where once Christians had complained that Darwin's theory made life meaningless, now Darwinists levelled the same complaint at scientists who contradicted Darwin.

Other assaults on evolutionary orthodoxy followed. The influential palaeontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge argued that the fossil record showed evolution often happened in short, concentrated bursts; it didn't have to be slow and gradual. Other biologists simply found that the modern synthesis had little relevance to their work. As the study of life increased in complexity, a theory based on which genes were selected in various environments started to seem beside the point. It didn't help answer questions such as how life emerged from the seas, or how complex organs, such as the placenta, developed. Using the lens of the modern synthesis to explain the latter, says the Yale developmental biologist Günter Wagner, would be "like using thermodynamics to explain how the brain works". (The laws of thermodynamics, which explain how energy is transferred, do apply to the brain, but they aren't much help if you want to know how memories are formed or why we experience emotion.)

Just as feared, the field split. In the 70s, molecular biologists in many universities peeled off from biology departments to form their own separate departments and journals. Some in other sub-fields, such as palaeontology and developmental biology, drifted away as well. Yet the biggest field of all, mainstream evolutionary biology, continued much as before. The way the champions of the modern synthesis – who by this point dominated university biology departments – dealt with potentially destabilising new findings was by acknowledging that such processes happen sometimes (subtext: rarely), are useful to some specialists (subtext: obscure ones), but do not fundamentally alter the basic understanding of biology that descends from the modern synthesis (subtext: don't worry about it, we can continue as before). In short, new discoveries were often dismissed as little more than mildly diverting curiosities.

Today, the modern synthesis "remains, mutatis mutandis, the core of modern evolutionary biology" wrote the evolutionary theorist Douglas Futuyma in a 2017 paper defending the mainstream view. The current version of the theory allows some room for mutation and random chance, but still views evolution as the story of genes surviving in vast populations. Perhaps the biggest change from the theory's mid-century glory days is that its most ambitious claims – that simply by understanding genes and natural selection, we can understand all life on earth – have been dropped, or now come weighted with caveats and exceptions. This shift has occurred with little fanfare. The theory's ideas are still deeply embedded in the field, yet no formal reckoning with its failures or schisms has occurred. To its critics, the modern synthesis occupies a position akin to a president reneging on a campaign promise – it failed to satisfy its entire coalition, but remains in office, hands on the levers of power, despite its diminished offer.

Brian and Deborah Charlesworth are considered by many to be high priests of the tradition that descends from the modern synthesis. They are eminent thinkers, who have written extensively on the place of new theories in evolutionary biology, and they don't believe any radical revision is needed. Some argue that they are too conservative, but they insist they are simply careful – cautious about dismantling a tried-and-tested framework in favour of theories that lack evidence. They are interested in fundamental truths about evolution, not explaining every diverse result of the process.

"We're not here to explain the elephant's trunk, or the camel's hump. If such explanations could even be possible," Brian Charlesworth told me. Instead, he said, evolutionary theory should be universal, focusing on the small number of factors that apply to how every living thing develops. "It's easy to get hung up on 'you haven't explained why a particular system works the way it does'. But we don't need to know," Deborah told me. It's not that the exceptions are uninteresting; it's just that they aren't all that important.

Kevin Laland, the scientist who organised the contentious Royal Society conference, believes it is time for proponents of neglected evolutionary sub-fields to band together. Laland and his fellow proponents of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, the EES, call for a new way of thinking about evolution – one that starts not by seeking the simplest explanation, or the universal one, but what combination of approaches offers the best explanation to biology's major questions. Ultimately, they want their sub-fields – plasticity, evolutionary development, epigenetics, cultural evolution – not just recognised, but formalised in the canon of biology.

There are some firebrands among this group. The geneticist Eva Jablonka has proclaimed herself a neo-Lamarckist, after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 19th-century populariser of pre-Darwinian ideas of inheritance, who has often been seen as a punchline in the history of science. Meanwhile, the physiologist Denis Noble has called for a "revolution" against traditional evolutionary theory. But Laland, a lead author on many of the movement's papers, insists that they simply want to expand the current definition of evolution. They are reformers, not revolutionaries.

The case for EES rests on a simple claim: in the past few decades, we have learned many remarkable things about the natural world – and these things should be given space in biology's core theory. One of the most fascinating recent areas of research is known as plasticity, which has shown that some organisms have the potential to adapt more rapidly and more radically than was once thought. Descriptions of plasticity are startling, bringing to mind the kinds of wild transformations you might expect to find in comic books and science fiction movies.

Emily Standen is a scientist at the University of Ottawa, who studies Polypterus senegalus, AKA the Senegal bichir, a fish that not only has gills but also primitive lungs. Regular polypterus can breathe air at the surface, but they are "much more content" living underwater, she says. But when Standen took Polypterus that had spent their first few weeks of life in water, and subsequently raised them on land, their bodies began to change immediately. The bones in their fins elongated and became sharper, able to pull them along dry land with the help of wider joint sockets and larger muscles. Their necks softened. Their primordial lungs expanded and their other organs shifted to accommodate them. Their entire appearance transformed. "They resembled the transition species you see in the fossil record, partway between sea and land," Standen told me. According to the traditional theory of evolution, this kind of change takes millions of years. But, says Armin Moczek, an extended synthesis proponent, the Senegal bichir "is adapting to land in a single generation". He sounded almost proud of the fish.

Moczek's own area of expertise is dung beetles, another remarkably plastic species. With future climate change in mind, he and his colleagues tested the beetles' response to different temperatures. Colder weather makes it harder for the beetles to take off. But the researchers found that they responded to these conditions by growing larger wings. The crucial thing about such observations, which challenge the traditional understanding of evolution, is that these sudden developments all come from the same underlying genes. The species's genes aren't being slowly honed, generation by generation. Rather, during its early development it has the potential to grow in a variety of ways, allowing it to survive in different situations.

"We believe this is ubiquitous across species," says David Pfennig of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He works on spadefoot toads, amphibians the size of a Matchbox car. Spadefoots are normally omnivorous, but spadefoot tadpoles raised solely on meat grow larger teeth, more powerful jaws, and a hardy, more complex gut. Suddenly, they resemble a powerful carnivore, feeding on hardy crustaceans, and even other tadpoles.

Plasticity doesn't invalidate the idea of gradual change through selection of small changes, but it offers another evolutionary system with its own logic working in concert. To some researchers, it may even hold the answers to the vexed question of biological novelties: the first eye, the first wing. "Plasticity is perhaps what sparks the rudimentary form of a novel trait," says Pfennig.

Plasticity is well accepted in developmental biology, and the pioneering theorist Mary Jane West-Eberhard began making the case that it was a core evolutionary force in the early 00s. And yet, to biologists in many other fields, it is virtually unknown. Undergraduates beginning their education are unlikely to hear anything about it, and it has still to make much mark in popular science writing.

Biology is full of theories like this. Other interests of the EES include extra-genetic inheritance, known as epigenetics. This is the idea that something – say a psychological injury, or a disease – experienced by a parent attaches small chemical molecules to their DNA that are repeated in their children. This has been shown to happen in some animals across multiple generations, and caused controversy when it was suggested as an explanation for intergenerational trauma in humans. Other EES proponents track the inheritance of things like culture – as when groups of dolphins develop and then teach each other new hunting techniques – or the communities of helpful microbes in animal guts or plant roots, which are tended to and passed on through generations like a tool. In both cases, researchers contend that these factors might impact evolution enough to warrant a more central role. Some of these ideas have become briefly fashionable, but remain disputed. Others have sat around for decades, offering their insights to a small audience of specialists and no one else. Just like at the turn of the 20th century, the field is split into hundreds of sub-fields, each barely aware of the rest.

To the EES group, this is a problem that urgently needs to be solved – and the only solution is a more capacious unifying theory. These scientists are keen to expand their research and gather the data to disprove their doubters. But they are also aware that logging results in the literature may not be enough. "Parts of the modern synthesis are deeply ingrained in the whole scientific community, in funding networks, positions, professorships," says Gerd B Müller, head of the Department of Theoretical Biology at the university of Vienna and a major backer of the EES. "It's a whole industry."

The modern synthesis was such a seismic event that even its flatly wrong ideas took up to half a century to correct. The mutationists were so thoroughly buried that even after decades of proof that mutation was, in fact, a key part of evolution, their ideas were still regarded with suspicion. As recently as 1990, one of the most influential university evolution textbooks could claim that "the role of new mutations is not of immediate significance" – something that very few scientists then, or now, actually believe. Wars of ideas are not won with ideas alone.

To release biology from the legacy of the modern synthesis, explains Massimo Pigliucci, a former professor of evolution at Stony Brook University in New York, you need a range of tactics to spark a reckoning: "Persuasion, students taking up these ideas, funding, professorial positions." You need hearts as well as minds. During a Q&A with Pigliucci at a conference in 2017, one audience member commented that the disagreement between EES proponents and more conservative biologists sometimes looked more like a culture war than a scientific disagreement. According to one attender, "Pigliucci basically said: 'Sure, it's a culture war, and we're going to win it,' and half the room burst out cheering."

T]o some scientists, though, the battle between traditionalists and extended synthesists is futile. Not only is it impossible to make sense of modern biology, they say, it is unnecessary. Over the past decade the influential biochemist Ford Doolittle has published essays rubbishing the idea that the life sciences need codification. "We don't need no friggin' new synthesis. We didn't even really need the old synthesis," he told me.

What Doolittle and like-minded scientists want is more radical: the death of grand theories entirely. They see such unifying projects as a mid-century – even modernist – conceit, that have no place in the postmodern era of science. The idea that there could be a coherent theory of evolution is "an artefact of how biology developed in the 20th century, probably useful at the time," says Doolittle. "But not now." Doing right by Darwin isn't about venerating all his ideas, he says, but building on his insight that we can explain how present life forms came from past ones in radical new ways.

Doolittle and his allies, such as the computational biologist Arlin Stoltzfus, are descendants of the scientists who challenged the modern synthesis from the late 60s onwards by emphasising the importance of randomness and mutation. The current superstar of this view, known as neutral evolution, is Michael Lynch, a geneticist at the University of Arizona. Lynch is soft-spoken in conversation, but unusually pugnacious in what scientists call "the literature". His books rail against scientists who accept the status quo and fail to appreciate the rigorous mathematics that undergirds his work. "For the vast majority of biologists, evolution is nothing more than natural selection," he wrote in 2007. "This blind acceptance [...] has led to a lot of sloppy thinking, and is probably the primary reason why evolution is viewed as a soft science by much of society." (Lynch is also not a fan of the EES. If it were up to him, biology would be even more reductive than the modern synthesists imagined.)

What Lynch has shown, over the past two decades, is that many of the complex ways DNA is organised in our cells probably happened at random. Natural selection has shaped the living world, he argues, but so too has a sort of formless cosmic drifting that can, from time to time, assemble order from chaos. When I spoke to Lynch, he said he would continue to extend his work to as many fields of biology as possible – looking at cells, organs, even whole organisms – to prove that these random processes were universal.

As with so many of the arguments that divide evolutionary biologists today, this comes down to a matter of emphasis. More conservative biologists do not deny that random processes occur, but believe they're much less important than Doolittle or Lynch think.

The computational biologist Eugene Koonin thinks people should get used to theories not fitting together. Unification is a mirage. "In my view there is no – can be no – single theory of evolution," he told me. "There cannot be a single theory of everything. Even physicists do not have a theory of everything."

This is true. Physicists agree that the theory of quantum mechanics applies to very tiny particles, and Einstein's theory of general relativity applies to larger ones. Yet the two theories appear incompatible. Late in life, Einstein hoped to find a way to unify them. He died unsuccessful. In the next few decades, other physicists took up the same task, but progress stalled, and many came to believe it might be impossible. If you ask a physicist today about whether we need a unifying theory, they would probably look at you with puzzlement. What's the point, they might ask. The field works, the work continues.

Problems, problems, problems. To be expected of course, among many varying groups or individuals who think they can figure it all out. Creationists have the advantage of a single authoritative source, with which to compare or judge their differing views. Nor do they have to minutely define or explain how everything operates or came about, as it is most obvious that Creation requires design, and intentional design answers so very many questions and or apparent contradictions which random chance cannot even begin to address. So be it.

[Rella]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution

Article quoted below is from link above. Emphasis is mine.

Problems, problems, problems. To be expected of course, among many varying groups or individuals who think they can figure it all out. Creationists have the advantage of a single authoritative source, with which to compare or judge their differing views. Nor do they have to minutely define or explain how everything operates or came about, as it is most obvious that Creation requires design, and intentional design answers so very many questions and or apparent contradictions which random chance cannot even begin to address. So be it.

T.Y. 

[4WD]

It seems the views of Alan and 4WD have much in common with Jesuit and or Roman Catholic views.

I suspect that my view of Jesus Christ as the Son of God is much in common with Jesuit and or Roman Catholic views also.  It seems that since Amo stands in adamant opposition to the views of Jesuits and or Roman Catholics, he thus rejects my view. Such is Amo's rationale.