The Story of Creation as Told By Theology and By ScienceAckland, T. S. (Thomas Suter)
Religion
The Story of Creation as Told By Theology and By Science
Ackland, T. S. (Thomas Suter)
Bible and science; Creation; Religion and science
The theory of development assumes that for the care of man other
forces might be substituted, which in a long course of ages might
result in changes of far greater extent than those produced by
human agency. The forces assigned are natural selection and sexual
selection. The difficulties in the way of this hypothesis have
been already considered, and only require to be briefly re-stated.
1. As regards modifications of organs already existing, the two
alleged causes are insufficient to account for the results which
we witness, since in each individual case the concurrence of many
contingent causes, continued through a long series of ages, is
required to produce the result. But the probabilities against
such, a concurrence in any one case are enormous, and against
their concurrence in a large number of cases the chances are
practically infinite.
2. That such causes do not at all account for cases in which an
entirely new organ is developed, such as mammary glands--or for
the case of man, in which intellectual superiority is accompanied
by a loss of physical power.
3. That from the nature of the case it is impossible for us to
ascertain that natural or sexual selection has ever acted to
produce a single modification, however small, and that the results
of man's superintendence have not as yet passed beyond certain
narrow limits, so that there is no justification for the
assumption that such modifications are capable of being carried to
an unlimited extent.
We see that in the only case in which change is known to have been
brought about, it has been the result of choice and design. If
then there is a probability that choice and design may have been
exercised by a power higher than man, there is no longer any
reason to doubt but that results much greater than any to which
man can attain may have been brought about by the same means. And
in fact the advocates of the theory of development do virtually
admit the existence and action of such a power, whenever they have
recourse to assumed "laws" to account for phenomena for which
their naked theory can give no reason. For, as has been shown,
law, if it is to be assigned as an efficient cause, and not merely
as the statement of observed facts, can only be regarded as the
expressed and enforced will of a higher power. And there was no
reason why those minute variations themselves, which are the basis
of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, should be considered casual. Instead
then of natural selection, or sexual selection, let us suppose
that the selection took place under the superintending care of the
Creator, and was directed towards the carrying out of His designs,
and then we shall have no reason to doubt but that all results
which consisted only in the modification of existing organs may
have been obtained by the operation of those laws which we term
natural, because they express modes of operation with which we are
so familiar that we look upon them as automatic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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