The arc of evolutionary genetics is long

Evolutionary ideas have been around a long time, at least since the Greeks, and likely longer. I accept the arguments of researchers who suggest that humans are predisposed to Creationist thinking; after all, cross-cultural data shows the dominance of this model before the rise of modern evolutionary biology. But this does not mean that the possibility of evolution would be totally mystifying to the human race before Charles Darwin's time. After all, it may be that humans as a species have a predisposition toward theism as well, and yet all complex societies produce atheistic movements as counter-cultures, the Epicureans* among the Greeks, Carvaka among the Indians and the Dahrites among the Muslims. Rather, what made Charles Darwin so important was the theoretical heft he brought to the idea of evolution, which was in the air at the time. In the early 20th century Darwin's verbal insights were given more formal ...