The Thing That Hath Been, It Is That Which Shall Be

You can’t have a scientific debate with a conclusion that isn’t allowed to change.

As the old line goes, you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into - which is why I rarely engage in debates about evolution anymore.

Not because I think it can’t… pic.twitter.com/wew6IBO4vP

— Alex Boge (@alexboge) March 29, 2026

Snip:

In practice, almost everyone I encounter arguing against evolution is coming from a creationist framework - typically rooted in literal interpretations found in traditions like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. And that matters, because it’s not just disagreement over data - it’s a commitment to a conclusion that can’t be revised, grounded in faith rather than evidence - a framework that holds the conclusion in place.

At most, you’ll get limited acceptance of “microevolution,” while rejecting the broader framework regardless of the evidence.

And critically, no new evidence is ever brought forward.

Instead, the pattern is always the same:
- arguing definitions,
- setting arbitrary or impossible standards,
- or demanding that evolution occur within a timeframe of their choosing, incompatible with the theory.

So the discussion never progresses. It just cycles...

Reminded me of venerable Jorge:

[T]he work of our order and in particular the work of this monastery, a part—indeed, the substance—is study, and the preservation of knowledge. Preservation of, I say, not search for, because the property of knowledge, as a divine thing, is that it is complete and has been defined since the beginning, in the perfection of the Word which expresses itself to itself. 

Preservation, I say, and not search, because it is a property of knowledge, as a human thing, that it has been defined and completed over the course of the centuries, from the preaching of the prophets to the interpretation of the fathers of the church. There is no progress, no revolution of ages, in the history of knowledge, but at most a continuous and sublime recapitulation.

Human history proceeds with a motion that cannot be arrested, from the creation through the redemption, toward the return of Christ triumphant, who will appear seated on a cloud to judge the quick and the dead; but human and divine knowledge does not follow this path: steady as a fort that does not cede, it allows us, when we are humble and alert to its voice, to follow, to predict this path, but it is not touched by the path. 

I am He who is, said the God of the Jews. I am the way, the truth, and the life, said our Lord. There you have it: knowledge is nothing but the awed comment on these two truths. Everything else that has been said was uttered by the prophets, by the evangelists, by the fathers and the doctors, to make these two sayings clearer.

Nothing to add, I guess.  And there is no new thing under the sun...