As the Church-Christians regard the foundation of their church as the
only origin of true knowledge of God, and only out of a kind of courtesy
admit that former believers may also be regarded as having formed a
church; so in precisely the same manner does Positive science, according
to its own statement, place its origin in Comte: and its
representatives, also only out of courtesy, admit the existence of
previous science, and that only as regarding certain thinkers, as, for
instance, Aristotle. Both the Church and Positive science altogether
exclude the ideas of all the rest of mankind, and regard all knowledge
outside their own as _erroneous_. The similarity persists. Just as to
the support of the first advental theological dogmas of the Trinity and
of the divinity of Christ comes the old--but newly-interpreted--dogmas
of man's fall and of his redemption by the death of Christ, and out of
these dogmas is developed popular Church teaching: so in our time, the
old dogma of Evolution comes in with new importance to help the
fundamental dogma of Comte concerning the organism of mankind; and from
these two elements the popular scientific doctrine has been formed. As
in one teaching, so in the other: the new dogma is necessary for the
support of the old one, and becomes comprehensible only in connection
with it. If to a believer in the Divinity of Christ, it is not clearly
comprehensible why God should come down to earth, the doctrine of
atonement explains it. If it is not quite clear to a believer in the
Organism of Mankind why a collection of individuals may be counted as an
organism, the dogma of Evolution is charged with the explanation. This
dogma is needed to reconcile the contradictions and certainties of the
first: mankind is an organism, and we see that it does not contain the
chief characteristic of an organism; how must we account for it?
Here the dogma of evolution comes in, and explains, Mankind is an
organism in a state of development. If you accept this, you may then
consider mankind as such.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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