• as scientists gather more evidence about the different plants and animal fossils found in different layers of the earth what challenges do they find
  
• different plants and animals existed in the past than exist today
• some seem more closely related than others
• you don't see transitions
• but you do see progressive change--plants and animals get more complex over time
• they asked what is God's role in what seemed to be the history of the earth
• if scientists accepted that strata show change over time, from simpler animals to more complex ones
• what do they do about the account of creation in the Bible? interpret it to give God a role in science or say the Bible is a persuasive or allegorical account of history rather than a scientific account of history
• development of animals over time suggested that human society could also develop over time and that traditional monarchy should be replaced by newer and better political systems--that was threatening to scientists like Cuvier
  
• there is so much that isn't yet known that it isn't possible to come up with a scientific theory that doesn't have huge holes in it

If you take fossils seriously why not just describe this as a stepwise creation?

• the idea that God creates step by step gets away from a God who is perfect and unchanging
• the idea of God as a watchmaker means natural processes should explain what happens, you don't need God to intervene
• scientists want to explain as much as they can by natural processes, saying God intervened seems like cheating
  

• William Smith showed strata could be identified by fossils--and this was useful for finding places for new coal mines
  
• the layers (strata) can be identified by the fossils and have clear boundaries, not gradual change.  Today scientists explain this as because the conditions for sedimentation are relatively rare

• a mososaurus skull was collected in 1766 and thought to be a whale.  A second skull and some other bones were found in the 1770s and it was re-identified as a crocodile.  The first skull was taken to France in 1794 when the city of Maastricht (where it was in a museum) was captured by the French revolutionary army. Adriaan Camper argued that it was a giant lizard, a conclusion confirmed by Cuvier in 1808
  
• Dinosaurs began to be clearly identified in the 1820s and were recognized as an order in 1841
• dinosaur bones had been discovered before that, but they were though to be the bones of giants or unknown but still existing animals or were not seen as interesting at all
• once scientists become interested and fossils are classified it becomes harder and harder to argue that no new species have appeared since the creation described in the bible
  
• William Buckland (1784-1856) argued that as the earth cooled, God created a new suitable set of plants and animals after each catastrophe (not taking the bible literally but trying to keep the basic principles)
  
• this was a rational Christian approach, God provided a rational design for the development of life on earth
• catastrophes explained the gaps between strata
  
• Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) saw progressive development organized by God
• note that the theory of plate tectonics was not accepted in geology until the 1960s
  

Once you see progressive development, the idea of evolution is tempting but seen as dangerous

• Dangerous because most of the people who argued for it were more interested in politics (arguing that the old political system of kings should change to something new and radical) than in scientific detail.  Believing in evolution was associated with believing in political change
• two scientific problems
• what is the mechanism?
• mechanism by which animals change to get more food, etc.
• mechanism by which changes are passed down to their descendants--we are missing a theory of genetics (Mendelian genetics) and a mechanism for that theory (DNA)
  
• how can it happen fast enough to fit what geologists think is the age of the earth

• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) had published in 1802 a more careful scientific account of evolution
• but in order to solve the problem of how new better traits appeared he proposed as a mechanism the inheritance of acquired characteristics
• there is some kind of organizing principle to life that he called nervous fluid
  
• that giraffes developed long necks by stretching to reach the upper branches of trees wasn't a reasonable idea even then--that changes to the bodies of adults would be inherited by their offspring
  
• but the problem is if not that, what is the mechanism by which longer necks appear?
  
• He was discredited by the followers of Cuvier
  
• Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) believed species were fixed in the mind of God and there can't be evolution because we don't see intermediate forms
  
• Richard Owen (1804-1892)
• when he tried to organize plants and animals it looked like some species were related or descended from others, but he wasn't willing to accept evolution
  
• he saw these as common forms--homologies--and saw a branching pattern of progress
• explained the progression of life as ideas in God's mind and argued against evolution
  

• Charles Lyell (1787-1875)
• argued against the theory that the earth was much more geologically active in the past, leading to catastrophes. 
  
• Instead, the forces of geology must remain constant over time: uniformitarianism (you don't have faster change that we no longer see today like Noah's flood)
• the only explanatory tools we can use are natural forces we can see in operation today
  
• he even denied a progressive pattern in the fossil record
  
• The fossil record shows jumps because it is very incomplete--fossils are only laid down in very specialized conditions. 
  
• Lyell opposed evolution
• but his idea of slow gradual change was important to Darwin
  

• mechanism--what causes a species to change and how is that passed down
• a much older age of the earth
  
• explanation for the gaps in the fossil record