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
But there are other results for which no natural laws with which
we are acquainted will thus account. Just as no mechanical laws
within our knowledge will account for the rotation of the earth,
so no physiological laws yet discovered will account for the
changes when totally new orders of being came on the stage--when
the course of life took, as it were, a new point of departure. But
it is precisely at these points that the Mosaic Record points to a
special interference on the part of the Creator. How that
interference took place we are not informed. Very possibly it may
have been the result of other laws which lie wholly out of the
reach of our powers of observation. But whatever may have been its
character, it does not in any way imply change or defect in the
original plan, unless we know, (what we do not know, and cannot
ascertain) that such interference formed no part of the original
design. Everything bears the marks of progressive development, and
there is nothing improbable, but rather the reverse, in the
supposition that such a plan should include special steps of
advance to be made when the preparation for them was completed.
The Mosaic Record tells us nothing about the method by which God
created the different varieties of plants and animals. All that we
read there is just as applicable to a process of evolution, as to
any other method which we may be able to imagine. But it is
remarkable that what Moses does say is just what is required to
make Mr. Darwin's theory possible. So far then as the lower orders
of creation are concerned, the hypothesis of development, modified
by the admission of uniform superintendence and occasional special
interferences on the part of the Creator, may be accepted as being
the most satisfactory explanation that can be given, in the
present state of physiological science, of the Scriptural
Narrative.
But we have yet to consider this hypothesis as applied to man in
Mr. Darwin's latest work. We naturally recoil from the thought
that we have sprung from some lower race of animals--that we are
only the descendants of some race of anthropoid apes. So long as
it is asserted that we are no more than this, we may well be
reluctant to admit the suggestion. But if it be admitted that to a
physical nature formed like the bodies of the lower animals, a
special spiritual gift may have been superadded, the difficulty
vanishes. All Mr. Darwin's arguments with reference to physical
resemblances may then be admitted, and we may allow that he has
given a probable explanation of the method by which "the Lord God
formed the Adam, dust from the ground" while we maintain that the
intellectual and moral faculties of man are derived from a source
which lies beyond the investigations of science.
The conclusions to be drawn from this investigation may be briefly
summed up as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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