Today I stumbled upon an interesting character, Professor Pierre P. Grasse, who was an eminent zoologist who served as the "Chair of Evolution" at the prestigious Sorbonne in Paris until a few decades ago.

Seems Dr. Grasse wasn't your typical Darwinist:

"Any system which purports to account for evolution must invoke a mechanism which not mutational and aleatory [determined by chance]." Evolution of Living Organisms, p 245.

More from Grasse

I thought I'd double-check the reference, and make sure that Professor Grasse did indeed seem to hold such views. And I find an entire page of disquieting Grasse quotes, many likely to send Richard Dawkins into instant apoplectic spasms of indignant outrage.

"Through use and abuse of hidden postulates, of bold, often ill-founded extrapolations, a pseudoscience has been created. It is taking root in the very heart of biology and is leading astray many biochemists and biologists, who sincerely believe that the accuracy of fundamental concepts has been demonstrated, which is not the case."

"Bacteria, the study of which has formed a great part of the foundation of genetics and molecular biology, are the organisms which, because of their huge numbers, produce the most mutants. This is why they gave rise to an infinite variety of species, called strains, which can be revealed by breeding or tests. Like Erophila verna, bacteria, despite their great production of intraspecific varieties, exhibit a great fidelity to their species. The bacillus Escherichia coli, whose mutants have been studied very carefully, is the best example. The reader will agree that it is surprising, to say the least, to want to prove evolution and to discover its mechanisms and then to choose as a material for this study a being which practically stabilized a billion years ago!"

"Some contemporary biologists, as soon as they observe a mutation, talk about evolution. They are implicitly supporting the following syllogism: mutations are the only evolutionary variations, all living beings undergo mutations, therefore all living beings evolve. This logical scheme is, however, unacceptable: first, because its major premise is neither obvious nor general; second, because its conclusion does not agree with the facts. No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution."

No doubt Dawkins and other materials would rather see have such quotes come from their "ignorant" opponents, not from the "Chair of Evolution" at the Sorbonne. ;-)

But Grasse wasn't some young-earth creationist. He apparently believed it was a "fact and not a hypothesis" that evolution -- meaning one species arising from another -- had happened in the past. But he also believed it was no longer happening, that Darwin was deeply wrong about the mechanism (see quotes above), and, as of yet, we had no satisfying materialist explanation for how it had happened.

"It is possible that in this domain biology, impotent, yields the floor to metaphysics."

Speaking of Quoting out of Context...

While checking this character out, I also chanced across this page, at talkorigins.org, which, like a bikini, is more interesting for what it conceals than what it reveals.

The authors of The Revised Quote Book lifted Grasse's phrase, "the myth of evolution," out of context, trying to deceive others into believing that Grasse was doubtful of evolution even though he stated he "agreed" with the "nearly unanimous" scientific consensus that "evolution" was an historical scientific "fact." Grasse simply disagreed with explanations of exactly "how" evolution occurred. He felt the "how" part was not a "simple, understood, and explained phenomenon."

E.T. BABINSKI

Is deception through insufficient information wrong? If so, the author above has skewered himself with his own sword. Yes, Grasse believed in evolution of some sort. But no, he apparently didn't believe it was ongoing, and apparently didn't believe we'd found the nice closed materialistic answer Dawkins and friends insist the word "evolution" must imply. Grasse agreed evolution (meaning the past production of species) had happened, but he certainly was no subscriber to "evolution", by which most today mean the allegedly cut and dried, ongoing, wholly materialistic, and Darwinian mechanism taught in the schools.

So I don't see why it's wrong to quote this scientist as having objected to the "myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us." Particularly regarding the last half of that sentence, which Babinski strangely seems to have omitted.

I also found it interesting that Babinski did not attempt to discredit Grasse, but only misled his audience into thinking it's inherently intellectually dishonest to quote him contra neo-Darwinian evolution, as it's sold to the public today.

This is not the behavior of a dispassionate seeker-after-truth.