António Lima-de-Faria

Fool's Gold This article is an assay of a nugget from a creationist quote-mine.

António Lima-de-Faria is a geneticist and professor emeritus at the university of Lund, Sweden (the home of Nils Heribert Nilsson).

In Evolution without Selection (1988) Lima-de-Faria proposed that evolution is "ordered" by physico-chemical processes (see orthogenesis). Thus, while he accepts the theory of evolution, Lima-de-Faria is a non-Darwinian who rejects the doctrine of natural selection.

Lima-de-Faria is often quote-mined by advocates of creationism. One passage he wrote ("...there has never been a theory of evolution...") seems to indicate that he is rejecting the concept of evolution. However, the passage as quoted is meaningless outside of its full context, making it completely unclear what Lima-De-Faria was saying. Given that Lima-de-Faria also wrote that "evolution starts when the universe is born", it's obvious that his views on the topic are more complicated than creationists wish them to be.