Page 262 - Darwin's Dilemma: The Soul

Darwin’s Dilemma: The Soul

Lamarck believed
that giraffes evolved
from animals resem-
bling antelopes. In
his view, these crea-
tures’ necks grew as
they stretched up to
eat the leaves on
trees, and they grad-
ually turned into gi-
raffes. The laws of
inheritance discov-
ered by Mendel in
1865 proved that it
was impossible for
characteristics ac-
quired during the
course of life to be
handed on to later
generations. Thus
Lamarck’s just-so
story was consigned
to the wastebasket
of history.

However, the laws of inheritance dis-
covered by Gregor Mendel (1822-84) and
verified by the science of genetics, which
flourished in the twentieth century, utterly de-
molished the legend that acquired traits were
passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection fell
out of favor as an evolutionary mechanism.

o
i
s
n
i
w
r
s
i
n
o
e
N Neo-Darwinism and Mutations
a
D
-
u
M

t
a
t

m
a
d
n
In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the "Modern
Synthetic Theory," or as it is more commonly known, Neo-
Darwinism, at the end of the 1930s. Neo-Darwinism added muta-
tions, which are distortions formed in the genes of living beings
260