Are there any people who accept general evolutionary theory but think the universe and/or the earth is significantly younger than usually thought?
What kind of evolutionary theory? Stellar Evolution and Biological Evolution are very different theories and don’t really have much to do with each other.
OTOH, it may not make much difference for this question. A young Earth or Universe wouldn’t leave much time for evolutionary processes to take place, so a young Earth/Universe is almost certainly contradictory to evolution of either type. You might be able to find one or two contrarians or eccentrics who would hold both viewpoints, but you won’t find any respectable YE evolutionary biologists and I strongly doubt you’ll find any YU cosmologists.
For the purposes of this post, I’ve assumed that Young Earth/Universe means no older than 10s or 100s of thousands of years, similar to the longer estimates of the YECs.
I can pretty much guarantee there’s certainly nobody who accepts and understands evolutionary theory, but believes in a young Earth. The preponderance of evidence for an ancient Earth was really the key piece of information that made evolution not only possible, but almost seem like common sense. The theory is inextricable from the ancient Earth.
Not to discount Darwin’s significance, but once the age of the Earth had been determined to be at least in the hundreds of millions, it only took someone to take those (primarily) geologic conclusions and apply them to the observed taxonomic relations seen in biology. Darwin was in a position to create his theory mostly because he was both a biologist and geologist at just the right time, not necessarily because he was some uber-genius.
These days there are so many lines of evidence for an ancient Earth and basically zero evidence that could suggest a young one. It remains the key to an intuitive understanding of evolution, which why denying it is the main tactic of creationists. Unless you’re specifically trying to deny evolution, there’s no real reason to believe in a young earth.
Erasmus Darwin, perhaps? One of the issues with evolution in the 19th century was that no one knew a mechanism for the Sun to burn very long, and it was unclear if there was enough time for the current biota to evolve. Once we understood how the Sun works that problem went away.
Cite?
As someone who has taught about the 19th century history of evolutionary theory for quite a few years, I have never come across the suggestion that the age of the sun was a significant issue. In the 19th century, they did not know what made the sun shine, but by the same token, they had no particular reason to expect it ever to stop doing so (or certainly not within any particular time period). People did not know much about the source of the sun’s power until quite late in the 20th century, long after evolution by natural selection had become well established science. As has already been pointed out, the case for a very ancient Earth had already been made (particularly by Charles Lyell) before Darwin developed his evolutionary theory, and Darwin’s knowledge and acceptance of Lyell’s arguments were a major factor in making his own discovery possible.
I think GreasyJack is very much exaggerating, however, in suggesting that an old Earth virtually entails evolution. Darwin’s knowledge of this was one factor in his synthesis, but there were several others, the most important probably being his extensive experience of the ecology of isolated oceanic island groups, an experience he shared with the co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection, Alfred Russell Wallace.
It is true that, in the late 19th century, objections were raised to the idea of a very ancient Earth (and thus to evolution by natural selection) on the grounds that, according to Newton’s Law of Cooling, if the Earth were as old as post-Lyellian geologists and Darwinian evolutionists envisaged it to be, it would long ago have completely lost all its internal heat, and would have completely solidified internally. This objection did not lead to any scientific rejection of evolution, for which the evidence was already overwhelming at this time, but it did lead even Darwin himself to question whether natural selection was a sufficiently fast-acting mechanism to account for evolution. The problem we dispelled in the early 20th century, however, by the discovery of radioactivity, and the realization that radioactive decay of minerals generates plenty enough heat to keep the Earth internally molten. The age of the sun was not at issue, however.
It is true that Erasmus Darwin was an evolutionist of a sort, and although I am not sure what his actual views on the age of the Earth were (if he had any), he lived well before the evidence for it being many millions of years old had become known. Also, Erasmus had no very clear ideas about the mechanism of evolution, so he would not have had any very clear expectations about how long it would take. Lamark, another pre-Lyellian evolutionist, did have ideas a bout a mechanism, but it was one that (if it could work at all) could be expected to work considerably faster than natural selection. Thus, pre-Lyellian evolutionists such as Erasmus Darwin and Lamark, may well have believed both in evolution and in a relatively young Earth. However, this certainly had nothing to do with accepting Biblically based arguments for a young Earth.
In fact, there was no very general acceptance, even before Lyell’s and Darwin’s time, and even amongst the most devout Christians, of the view that the Earth was created in 4,004 B.C. (or thereabouts). The Bible does not say any such thing. That date was inferred, very indirectly, (at a time when better evidence about the age of the Earth was not available) by piecing together a lot of statements from the Old Testament about the lives of the ancient patriarchs and at what age they had their children. It depends not only on the Biblical text, but also on a lot of questionable interpretation and guesswork, and was never part of the dogma of any mainstream church. (In the 19th century, probably not even of any fringy Christian sects.) Opponents of Lyell’s geology, although many of them were ordained Christian ministers, did not oppose him on the grounds that his claims contradicted the Bible, but on grounds of how the geological evidence should be interpreted (many of them were excellent geologists), and although they did not think the Earth was as old as he did, they still thought it to be a lot older than 6,000 years.
Biblical Literalism, of the sort that rejects evolution and the evidence of geology on the grounds that they contradict the Bible, is not deeply rooted in Christian tradition, and is essentially a 20th century American invention (and perhaps, from a traditionally Christian viewpoint, even a heresy). I would venture to say that people do not object to evolution and an ancient Earth because those facts are contradicted by the Bible; rather, they become extreme Biblical literalists because that gives them an excuse for rejecting evolutionary theory and other aspects of modern science. Presumably the real motivation for their rejection of evolution is that they are made uncomfortable by modernity and the rapid pace of change in the modern world (for which evolution is sometimes seen, rightly or wrongly, as providing some sort of justification). In other words, conservatism causes anti-evolutionism, which causes Biblical literalism, not the other way about.
On the contrary, the problem that the age of the sun was thought to be far shorter than the obvious age of the earth was a major, if not the major problem of the 19th century.
Here’s the short version, from Wikipedia:
This Jet Propulsion Labs page has a fuller version, starting with this:
Note that it was not “late in the 20th century” that scientists figured it out, but in the 1920s, after quantum mechanics and relativity gave answers to the remaining issues.
This goes to the OP’s question as well. The understanding of the age of the universe, star generations, and the origins of the earth are all of a piece and all foundations of modern science. I’m sure that as with every issue, a loner here and there might have doubts, but I don’t know of any alternative theory that has even enough credence to be mentioned in a serious discussion.
I think the Earth is one week old.
Ah… A Last Thursdayist by chance?
There are some young earth creationsists who grudgingly agree that micro-evolution happens, but not speciation. I also vaguely recall that some Bible literalists when confronted with how the great variety of species fit on Noah’s ark, claim that a smaller number of species was on the ark but these have since diversified into the larger number we see today.
Some young-Earth creationists believe that evolution is real as a scientific principle, but that G-d created the world 6,000 (give or take) years ago as an “aged” world.
Actually, the Earth was created in China, in 1943
I’ve heard the YECers who talk about The Flood and Noah’s Ark, say that Noah just took along kinds on the ark, not every species. Like he took two of one kind of bear, and the different species have come about since then. I guess all 500,000 (off the top of my head) species of beetles have evolved since then too.
They don’t even think enough to realize that they’re always saying that evolution can’t happen, but they’ve got polar bears and brown bears speciating (is that a word?) in just 4000 years, which is rocket-propelled evolution on steroids.
Also, if brown bears and polar bears are the same “kind,” wouldn’t humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans be all the same kind as well?
Those people are just ignorant. They have seriously misunderestimated the size of the Ark.
Sure they made guesses back then about then about the source of the sun’s energy, based on the physics they knew; and they could not come with a reasonable account to explain how it could have been shining so long! They knew well enough that the explanations were speculative and that any “predictions” from it were not worth much. Geology was much more solid science at this time than the science of the mechanism of sunshine. Lyellian geology (or, frankly, even pre-Lyellian, catrastrophist geology, which still made the Earth out to be much older than the allegedly Biblical 6,000 years) was a problem for the speculative solar science of the 19th and early 20th centuries, not vice versa. (And that, in fact, is what your sources are saying.)
The problem of the cooling of the Earth that I mentioned was quite different, because it was based on well established physics, discovered long before by Newton himself. But that was solved by the discovery of radioactivity, quite early in the 20th century.
Yes, Relativity and much of QM were there by the late 1920s, but that does not mean that nuclear fusion and the fact that it powers the stars were understood right away. The basics of that were not in place until the late 1930s. Maybe that is not “late” in the century, but it isn’t early either, and is still well after evolution by natural selection had become solid, established science. The early 20th century biologists (and geologists) were not bothered by the fact that the astronomers and physicists had not yet figured out what powers the sun.
They fit together very satisfyingly now, but the understanding, first, of the fundamentals of geology, and then of the fundamentals of biological evolution, and the associated time-scale, were well in place long before the fundamentals of solar physics were.
As a child, I thought it was the TARDIS, back when its chameleon circuits still worked.
I think you get people believing all sorts of flavours of things. If you believe evolution is directed by the hand of god, then it’s not difficult to reconcile the idea that the Earth is young, and everything evolved on it. It’s based on a false premise of course, but I’m fairly certain I’ve met people that believe that kind of thing. They tend to go on about macro and microevolution a lot too, without knowing what those terms mean.
I was certainly not suggesting anyone in this group believed in a 6,000 year old earth, but I’m reading a collection of scientific papers on various subject from the 16th to late 18th centuries, and the age seemed to be in the millions of years - clearly not enough time for evolution. I’ve never seen any evidence that anyone was worried about the sun going out, but theories that the Sun shone due to gravitational collapse clearly put a relatively low upper limit on its age. Here is the Wiki page on it. So, there was a problem given what they knew back then. Of course, as is often the case, those sticking with the geological and biological evidence of a much older earth were proven correct when physics caught up. So I think many of these people could be classified as young earth evolutionists if you agree that a 20 million year old earth is relatively young.
One of the funny things that young earth creationist believe is that there was a massive spurt of high speed evolution after the Flood, at a rate far faster than anyone has ever seen. They’ll call it microevolution, (and therefore allowed) but it is as absurd as no evolution at all.
ETA: Damn, Exano Mapcase said it first!
There is ‘evidence’, such as the Nasca lines that suggest that the earth was star seeded with life, which would not require evolution, or a old earth.
People understood that the earth was much older than what the Bible said in the 18th century, thus my reference to Erasmus Darwin. The OP asked about the earth being thought “significantly younger” than now thought, and a 20 million year old earth qualifies.
Sure the geologists and biologists turned out to be correct, but if we found that the Sun couldn’t be more than 100 million years old, say, they’d have to find some new answers. It wasn’t totally unreasonable for an expert on the Sun to doubt the numbers from fields he was not that familiar with. Sure the physicists were wrong, but not irrational.
Huh? I thought the Nasca lines were taken as evidence for alien visitors, not for star seeding, whatever that means.