The Truth of Christianity: Being an Examination of the More Important Arguments For and Against Believing in That Religion — John Shaqi
The Truth of Christianity: Being an Examination of the More Important Arguments For and Against Believing in That ReligionTurton, W. H. (William Harry)
Religion
The Truth of Christianity: Being an Examination of the More Important Arguments For and Against Believing in That Religion
Turton, W. H. (William Harry)
Apologetics
It will, of course, be noticed that Evolution is thus a _process_,
and not a _cause_. It is the method in which certain changes have
been brought about, and not the cause which brings them about. Every
slight modification must have been caused somehow. When such
modifications were caused, then Natural Selection can explain how
the useful ones alone were perpetuated, but it cannot explain how
the modifications themselves arose. On the contrary, it supposes
them as already existing, otherwise there would be nothing to select
from. Natural Selection, then, rather weeds than plants, and would
be better described as Natural _Rejection_. It merely shows how, as
a rule, among the various modifications in an organism, some good
and some bad, the useless ones would disappear, and the useful ones
would remain; in other words, how the fittest would survive. But
this survival of the fittest does not explain in the slightest
degree how the fitness arose. If, as an extreme example, out of a
hundred animals, fifty had eyes and fifty had not, it is easy to
understand how those that had eyes would be more likely to have
descendants; but this does not explain how they first got eyes. And
the same applies in other cases.
How, then, did the variations in each organism first arise? In
common language they may be ascribed to chance; but, strictly
speaking, such a thing is impossible. The word _chance_ is merely a
convenient term for the results of certain forces of nature when we
are unable to calculate them. Chance, then, must be excluded; and
there seem to be only two alternatives. Either the organisms in
nature possessed free will, and acted as they did _voluntarily_; or
else they did not possess free will, and acted as they did
_necessarily_. The former theory will be examined later on; the
latter is the one we are now considering.
(2.) _The effect of Evolution._
How then would this theory affect our previous conclusion that the
Creator designed all the organs of nature, such as the eye, and
hence presumably the whole of the universe? As we shall see, it only
confirms it. For to put it plainly, if all free will on the part of
the organisms is excluded, so that they were all bound to act
exactly as they did, it is clear that the earth and all it contains
is like a vast mass of machinery. And however complicated its parts,
and however much they may act on one another, and however long they
may take in doing so, yet if in the end they produce an organ
showing design, this must have been foreseen and intended by the
Maker of the machinery. In the same way if a mass of machinery after
working for a long time eventually turned out a watch, we should
have no hesitation in saying that whoever made the machinery, and
set it going, intended it to do so. And is the inference less clear,
if it not only turned out a watch, but a watchmaker as well, and
everything else that exists on this planet?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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