Dinosaur experts launch online university course

Darwin and Wallace's Theory - let's give old Alfie his due!

"Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, a pioneer of evolutionary theory. Born in 1823, Wallace travelled extensively, charting the distribution of animal species throughout the world. This fieldwork in the Amazon and later the Malay Archipelago led him to formulate a theory of evolution through natural selection. In 1858 he sent the paper he wrote on the subject to Charles Darwin, who was spurred into the writing and publication of his own masterpiece."

Really interesting podcast - www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r9rxr

Interesting also that not all religious authorities were upset with the scientific views - quite a number thought it was not an issue as it did nothing to threaten the Church's teachings on God. I think a few fundamentalists were upset though.

It has always been interesting that Hebrew scholars have always typically held that the Torah, which is the Old Testament in the Christian Bible, were the writings of men about the Hebrew religion and that it contained human errors, parables and stories that were never to be taken literally. It was the Christians that invented the belief that it was the "Word of God" as opposed the the "Works of Men" which contracted what the Torah (Old Testament) has always been.

We need to remember that the Torah wasn't written until after either: a) the prophecies were already fulfilled, or b) they remain unfulfilled. Remember that the Jews don't accept Jesus as being the fulfillment of a prophecy.  

It's rather easy for a writer to look at a historical fact and then write down that a "prophet" foresaw the event or to later take an event that occurs and claim that it fulfilled a prophecy.