"So what did he mean by "the theory of evolution?" Presumably the standard textbook "NeoDarwinian" explanation of the *fact* of evolution by gradual mechanical/ecological/statistical processes to the explicit exclusion of any factors implying consciousness or teleology. "
Right, and that is not "Neo-Darwinism" but is the modern evolutionary synthesis. It's also the act of accepting that for which there is evidence (evolution as we understand it) and rejecting that for which there is no evidence at all (consciousness or teleology playing a role in evolution).
"He rejects that theory, he says, because he believes that there was a Creator of the universe"
No, he said he "know(s)" that there is a Creator, and that's different.
" (and surely belief in a Big Banger is at least as reasonable a belief as belief in the Big Bang),"
Not even close. Not even within the same intellectual Universe. The belief in a Big Bang jibes with observed physics down to many decimal places. The belief in a Creator requires you reject essentially all of science.
"with the argument implicit that such a Creator would continue to exert a meaningful influence over its Creation."
"Implicit"??? On what planet?
"So Ron Paul is--who'd a thunk it-- a theist."
But of course belief in the Christian God is scarcely necessary to reject NeoDarwinism as a general model of evolution."
"No," "it helps" and "no" as there are plenty of theists who are willing as a scientific matter to suspend their belief in their theory of God in view of the total lack of evidence, and there are even some Christians who are willing to do the same. Ron Paul is expressly a Judeo-Christian monotheist who holds on to discredited notions in the face of science, as the Bible teaches him to do. NeoDarwinism - the actual neo-Darwinism and not the modern evolutionary synthesis - has already been rejected by science.
"NeoLamarckian approaches are powerful alternative explanations for the rapidity of evolutionary change under radically catastrophic stresses."
At their absolute best, neo-Lamarckian theories are things for which there is no proposed mechanisms. Neo-Lamarckianism is simply a slippery intellectual slope down which one slides if one forgets that there are actual nucleic acids and actual proteins that actually create new life and that these proteins are not magic or philosophical but are as real and common as dirt.
"Exchanges" between the parent and germ cells are no doubt influenced by many things, but we know to what chemicals MUST be influenced to create change in an organism and there has never, ever, ever, ever been any observation which suggests that those chemicals can be altered by anything remotely resembling teleology.
So please.....huh?