Creation and Its Records: A Brief Statement of Christian Belief with Reference to Modern Facts and Ancient ScriptureBaden-Powell, B. H. (Baden Henry)
Religion
Creation and Its Records: A Brief Statement of Christian Belief with Reference to Modern Facts and Ancient Scripture
Baden-Powell, B. H. (Baden Henry)
Bible and science; Creation; Religion and science
This goes to prove the immense antiquity of
the story, which is not affected by the fact that the actual inscription
of it which we at present have, dates only about 670 B.C. The point
here, however, interesting in the legends, is that they contained the
idea of a special connection of one particular race with the Creator,
and of other races, or of one other race, besides.
As far as the possibility of bringing forward the history of mankind as
any aid to the theory of Evolution is concerned, I might have very well
let the subject alone, or even noticed it more briefly than I have done.
For, in truth, there is no _evidence_ whatsoever, and all that the
denier of creation can resort to is a supposed analogy and a probability
that the peculiarities of man could be accounted for in this way or in
that. But the main purpose of my brief allusion is to introduce the fact
that, as far as any evidence to the contrary goes, we have an absolutely
sudden appearance of man on the scene, and no kind of transitional form.
Not only so, but there is no trace of any gradual development of man
when he did appear. There was the first palaeolithic man; then a
considerable geologic perturbation of the earth's surface, resulting in
the upheaval of the cliffs in which the caves of remains occur, and in
the alteration of the gravel beds in which the human remains are found;
and then the neolithic age, with its evidently greater civilization (as
evidenced by pottery, &c.) connected with early and traditional, but
still with recent, history; but no trace of any development of one race
into the other.
The absence of all progressive change is forcibly indicated by the
measurements of ancient skulls, which, though not found along with the
flint tools, have been found elsewhere. It has been fully shown that
they differ in no respect from the skulls of men at the present day;
while the skulls of the apes most nearly anthropoid, or allied to the
human form, remain as widely separated in brain-capacity as ever.[1]
Thus the fact remains, that no intermediate form between the ape and the
lowest man has been discovered, and that there is nothing like any
progressive development in the races of man. These facts, taken together
with what has been brought forward in the last chapter, show how
completely the theory of the descent of man breaks down; how utterly
unproved and untenable is the idea that he should have been evolved by
natural causes and by slow steps from any lower form of animal life.
[Footnote 1: The gorilla has a brain size of 30.51 cubic inches; the
chimpanzee and ourang-outang (in the males) from 25.45 to 27.34 inches.
According to Dr. J. Barnard Davis the average of the largest class of
European skulls is 111.99, that of the Australian 99.35 cubic inches.]
CHAPTER IX.
_CONCLUDING REMARKS_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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