The Other Side of Evolution: Its Effects and FallacyPatterson, Alexander
Religion
The Other Side of Evolution: Its Effects and Fallacy
Patterson, Alexander
Bible and science; Evolution
Sir J. William Dawson thus sums up the evidence: "The simplicity
and completeness of the evolutionary theory entirely disappear when
we consider the unproved assumptions on which it is based and its
failure to connect with each other some of the most important facts
in nature; that in short, it is not in any true sense a philosophy,
but a mere arbitrary arrangement of facts in accordance with a
number of unproved hypotheses. Such philosophies, falsely so-called,
have existed ever since man began to reason on nature, and this last
of all is one of the weakest and most pernicious of all. Let the
reader take up either Darwin's great book or Spencer's Biology and
merely ask, as he reads each paragraph, What is here assumed and
what is proved? and he will find the fabric melt away like a vision.
Spencer often exaggerates or extenuates with reference to facts and
uses the art of the dialectician where argument fails." (_Story of
the Earth and Man_, p. 330.)
Prof. William Jones tells us Evolution is "a metaphysical creed
and nothing else; an emotional attitude rather than a system of
thought." (_Homiletic Review_, August, 1900.)
EVOLUTION RESTS ON IMAGINATION.
The evolutionist not only uses his imagination but claims the right
to do so. Tyndall has written an essay on the Scientific Use of the
Imagination. Now when the pictures of an evolutionist's imagination
are held up as facts, as in the description of man's development
from the brute, he leaves the realm of science and enters that
of fiction. Mr. Gladstone has said of this: "To the eyes of an
onlooker their pace and method seem to be like a steeple-chase. They
are armed with a weapon always sufficient if not always an arm of
precision, 'the scientific imagination.' They are impatient of that
most wholesome state a Suspended Judgment." (_Homiletic Review_,
October, 1900, quoted by Dr. Jesse B. Thomas.)
EVOLUTION IS THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCE.
The language used by the evolutionist is peculiar for persons
claiming to believe in law as the great agency of nature and to
base their conclusions on the operation of fixed causes. The
changes which together make up the birth of a new species are
occasioned they say by "chance happenings," "undesigned variations,"
"accidental variations," "utterly undetermined antecedents,"
"unintentional variations," and other like expressions. The synonyms
of this idea are exhausted by them in describing the way in which
the changes first occurred, by which one species began the journey
up to another stage of existence. It is simply a revival and
revamping of the old doctrine of chance.
Prof. Frank Ballard says of this: "Chance manufactured protoplasm
out of nebulosity.... To accept this after rejecting faith on the
ground of its difficulty, is to quibble and cavil."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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