Modern Skepticism: A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society — John Shaqi
Modern Skepticism: A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society
Religion
Modern Skepticism: A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society
Church of England; Skepticism; Skepticism -- Controversial literature
each germ-cell with an individual intelligence which works with divine
power, on a definite and most miraculous plan, and towards a distinct
goal of perfection. To call such various powers and processes, such
diverse and generically different operations, in every sphere of life,
by the same term, appears to me to be unscientific; to speak of them
all alike as processes of unfolding or development, when results the
most infinitely unlike and separate are obtained from beginnings
which are identically alike, appears to be not only unscientific but
altogether misleading.
I do not think it arrogant or unwarranted to conclude from such
considerations as I have been trying to set forth, that evolution,
or development, apart from the power and guidance of the Living God,
is an unphilosophical, an unscientific idea, an empty, an unmeaning
word. It is a thing of naught, utterly impotent to solve the mysteries
of the universe, even when expounded and reinforced by Mr. Darwin's
"Natural Selection." I have not a word to say here against the views of
Mr. Darwin, as defined and modified by the requirements of scientific
modesty and precision. If I had any pretensions to be called a student
of natural science, I should sit at the feet of Mr. Darwin when he
speaks, not as a philosophic theorist, but as a scientific observer
and a truly inductive naturalist. But I must say here in respect to
Natural Selection, regarded as, according to Mr. Darwin's hypothesis,
the handmaid of development, that, like development, it is but a
name, and not a power. It describes the order and mode according to
which Providence works; it is not itself a force--a working energy.
Mr. Darwin himself indeed often speaks as if Natural Selection were
itself a power and a providence. I find to my hand in Mr. Kingsley's
fine, suggestive paper on _The Natural Theology of the Future_,
recently published in _Macmillan's Magazine_, a sentence of Mr.
Darwin's in regard to Natural Selection which I will quote. "It may
be metaphorically said," writes Mr. Darwin, "that natural selection
is daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world every variation
even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding
up that which is good, silently and necessarily working whenever and
wherever opportunity offers at the improvement of every organic being."
"It may be metaphorically said," are Mr. Darwin's words. But in fact
he is using, not a metaphor, but a personification. The distinction
Mr. Darwin does not see. He repeatedly speaks of his personifications
as metaphors. But the distinction notwithstanding is most important.
By personifying Natural Selection Mr. Darwin makes it appear to be a
cause, attributes to it a real power, nay, wisdom and providence, as
well as power. He speaks in one place of "Nature's power of selection;"
contrasting this with the "powers of artificial selection exercised
by feeble man," by which, however, man can do so much; and arguing
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