Evolution: An Investigation and a CritiqueGraebner, Theodore
Religion
Evolution: An Investigation and a Critique
Graebner, Theodore
Evolution; Religion and science
The "theistic" evolutionist, who believes that God at various times
"helped out" the forces residing in matter, by creating something new,
is inclined to say that at each of these points,--the origin of the
first sentient animal, the origin of the first vertebrate, and of the
first mammal,--God by his omnipotence caused a new type to originate.
Aside from the fact that "forces resident in matter," the basic idea of
the evolutionistic theory, here begins to become somewhat faint as a
background even for a "theistic" conception of development, it is
evident that we have already reached a point far down the scale of
organic evolution in which the admission must be made that no possible
working of forces within matter can account for the change. Again we
say, if we already admit that the various great types of animal life
could not originate without a special creative act of God, then why
should we not accept the record of Genesis which says that the various
species of plants and the various species of animals were created, each
a separate species, in the beginning? Once admit special creative acts,
and there is no longer any need for a hypothesis of evolution.
Man.
The difficulty which stands in the way of accepting, on purely
scientific grounds, the descent of man from a brute ancestor, is, first
of all a biological (physiological) difficulty. Among all the mammalia
(to accept the classification of man with that group), man alone has a
perfect brain. By this we mean the physiologically and structurally
perfect brain. It is present even in the lowest man--present in the
negro or the Australian Bushman as in the civilized American; and absent
in all living beings below man--absent in the ape or the elephant as
truly as in the lowest mammals, the kangaroo or the duckbill. Its sign
is _language,_ capacity of _progress, culture_. All healthy human
brains are structurally perfect; the highest brute brains are
structurally imperfect. The least cultivated human being is susceptible
of culture; a savage not only possesses the endowment of language but
may be educated to appreciate the art of a Raphael or a Shakespeare. The
brains of all other living beings are circumscribed by instinct, which
never progresses. The perfect brain thus introduces another impassable
biological barrier dividing the world of life.
However, the derivation of man from brute ancestry is attended by
another and even greater difficulty. The brain, after all, is but an
organ, it is the organ of _Mind_. Man possesses faculties of intellect
(reason, imagination, the artistic faculties, etc.) and, above all, a
moral nature, which raises him far above the brute. These faculties
could not possibly have been developed by means of forces resident in
matter or by means of the laws which are made to account for the
physical universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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