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Wallace, Alfred Russell

The British natural historian Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913) is known for the idea that species emerged through natural selection. In a paper he wrote in 1855 titled “On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species,” Wallace maintained that all species were extensions of other species to which they were closely related.

Despite developing his thesis at approximately the same time as Darwin, Wallace held different views on a number of points. As a believer in the human soul, Wallace believed that Allah had created by means of evolution, and maintained that human mental capacities could not be explained in terms of natural selection and similar naturalistic mechanisms. In contrast to Darwin, he believed that non-biological factors outside natural selection were responsible for the emergence of human physical traits and mental capabilities.274

Watson, James

The famous American biologist James Watson is best known for his work in the field of molecular biology. He and Francis Crick revealed the extraordinarily complex structure in DNA as a result of their joint work in 1955.

Watson and Crick’s discovery of nucleic acids—DNA and RNA, for short—gave birth to new problems for the theory of evolution. With their discovery of the structure of DNA, they also revealed that life was far more complex than had previously been imagined.

The theory of evolution seeks to account for the origin of life in terms of coincidences, but cannot provide any consistent explanation regarding the existence of the most basic molecules. And these advances in genetic science represented a major impasse facing evolutionists.