Evolution: An Investigation and a CritiqueGraebner, Theodore
Religion
Evolution: An Investigation and a Critique
Graebner, Theodore
Evolution; Religion and science
It will be noted that when we hear the specialists in anatomy and
biology, their expressions on the subject of man's ancestry are, as a
rule, characterized by a strong dissent from the development theory,
while the belief in a development of man from an ape-like ancestor,
uttered with a note of cocksureness, is found mainly among amateurs in
these sciences. Moreover, even among the believers in a rise of our race
from brute origins, many, and the most distinguished among them, assert
that the faculties of the human mind are indeed to be accounted for only
on the basis of a special creative act of God. They cling, however, to
the notion that the body of man is evolved from the lower animals--a
view which has been very ably met by Prof. Orr of Glasgow, one of the
foremost Biblical scholars of our time. He writes:
"It is well known that certain distinguished evolutionists, while
handing over man's body to be accounted for by the ordinary processes of
evolution, yet hold that man's mind cannot be wholly accounted for in a
similar manner. The rational mind of man, they urge--I agree with the
view, but am not called upon here to discuss it--has qualities and
powers which separate it, not only in degree, but in kind, from the
animal mind, and put an unbridgeable gulf, on the spiritual side,
between man and the highest of the creatures below him. In other words,
there is, in man's case, a rise on the spiritual side--the constitution
of a new order or kingdom of existence--which requires for its
explanation a distinct supernatural cause. Now the weakness of this
theory, I have always felt, lies in its assumption that, while man's
mind needs a supernatural cause to account for it, his body may be left
to the ordinary processes of development. The difficulty of such a view
is obvious. I have stated the point in this way. 'It is a corollary from
the known laws of the connection of mind and body that every mind needs
an organism fitted to it. If the mind of man is the product of a new
cause, the brain, which is the instrument of that mind, must share in
its peculiar origin. You cannot put a human mind into a Simian brain.'
In other words, if there is a sudden rise on the spiritual side, there
must be a rise on the physical--the organic--side to correspond."
(_"Virgin Birth of Christ,"_ p. 199.)
Can anything be more cogent, more conclusive?
The strongest _direct_ proof against the "ascent of man," however, has
so far only been touched upon. I refer to the evidences derived from the
history of Religion. To this I now invite the reader's close attention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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