Note.--The following objections to evolution with replies thereto are
taken from a debate which the writer and several anti-evolutionists
conducted some time ago through the columns of a popular weekly.
An opponent says: “The evolutionists are trying to rob God of the honor
of creation by substituting certain natural laws for his omnipotent
power. This world and all therein didn’t ‘just happen’; it was created
on purpose. We oppose this Darwin heresy because it conflicts with the
divinely-inspired word of God.... My opponent should be more positive
in some of his statements and not say, ‘So-and-so is the opinion of
scientists, if he would have us forsake our old beliefs and adopt
his...’. In regard to that crust of conservatism of ours which he says
is so thick and hard that the truth cannot percolate through it--I, for
one, would rather have a defensive armor so tough that lightning could
not ‘faze’ it than be so spongy as to absorb every _ism_ I came in
contact with.”
Is it a reflection upon the power, the glory, and the dignity of the
Almighty to say that the creative act was by the operation of natural
law--a slow, gradual, long-continued act--rather than a short, quick,
mechanical, or supernatural, process? Before the dawn of science even
the brightest minds, knowing little or nothing of the law of cause
and effect, could not conceive of God as performing his mighty works
save in some manlike manner. It seems that they had the idea--and a
great many still have it--that during those six days of twenty-four
hours each the Creator went about his work at his little old mud-mill,
mixing and grinding the material, and shaping and moulding it into all
sorts of animal forms on his potter wheel. It is time for the world
to rid itself of the primitive idea that man originated as a sort of
hand-made, table-turned piece of pottery.
Others say that God merely “spoke” all things into existence. If that
view be correct, then according to the rest of the Genesis story of
creation God became so tired from this lingual feat of six days’
duration that he was compelled to take a rest at the week’s end. Is
it possible that a God of infinite power and endurance should become
so weary with a week’s work, either of hand or tongue, that he would
require a rest?
There is not the slightest evidence that God ever did an hour’s work
save through natural law.
Between the scientists and the literal interpreters of the Bible the
war has been long and fierce, and has raged on many a battle front;
but so far, the scientists have won in every contest. There was once
a battle between the scientists and those who believed the earth to
be flat--for did not John, the Revelator, see four angels standing on
the four corners of the earth? The literalists were defeated. There
was once a contest between the astronomers and those who believed the
sun and moon revolved around the earth--“And he said in the sight of
all Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the
valley of Ajelon.... So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven,
and hasted not to go down about a whole day.” (Joshua, 10:12, 13).
The literalists were defeated. There was once a clash between the
geologists and those who believed the world to have been created in six
twenty-four-hour days. Again the literalists were defeated. There is
a combat between those who hold the view that all organisms including
man were created by natural laws--operating just as they do today--and
those who hold to either the potter or the vocal process of creation.
The latter--well, they occupy the same position as those did who said
the earth is flat, and that it was made between the blink o’ morn on
that great First Monday 6,000 years ago and the evening twilight the
following Saturday.
Scientists do not claim that life on this earth began by accident, or
that anything “just happens.” On the contrary, it is owing to science
that a belief in accidents and chance in the material world has been
banished from thinking minds. It is true that a great majority of the
people still believe in chance in the psychic world; such as, a certain
individual prompted by certain motives, and acting in accord with his
nature under certain conditions, did a certain thing, when the same
individual prompted by the same motives could have done otherwise--that
is to say, the same causes acting under the same conditions can produce
effects of various kinds, either good acts or bad acts. But science
will finally force the world to accept the whole truth--that mind is as
much subject to law as is matter; that the thoughts, desires, deeds of
men are shaped by law.
Scientists are trying to teach us to exercise our powers of reason,
to form our own opinions from the evidence, not passively to accept
opinions on authority. Their method is the direct opposite of that
of the orthodox theologians. The latter wish us to regard authority,
in matters of religion especially, as superior to reason. No, Mr.
Opponent, I don’t wish anyone to forsake his old belief and accept mine
on my authority--or that of anyone else. Let reason and evidence be the
only authority.
To win converts to evolution is not my only object in discussing the
subject. What is quite as important (and, frankly, to me as enjoyable)
is to make use of the opportunities the discussion affords me of
giving a sort of fifth-rib dig o’ the thumb to those complacent ones
who (judging by the manner they acquired, and still retain, their
beliefs) seem to think that the mere accident of one’s birth and
parentage in a certain time and place, thus bringing him in contact
with certain prevailing opinions, is proof that those opinions are true.
This writer is speaking largely from his own mental experience. He,
like his opponent, absorbed orthodox theology along with political
standpattism and a few other “safe and sane” _isms_ from his early
environment. My opponent, like most others, never thought of
questioning the truth of those beliefs, but left them undisturbed until
they fossilized. On the other hand some of us, perhaps because of a
radical twist in our mental make-up, set ourselves to examining those
hand-me-down beliefs and found some of them lacking in some important
essentials. Having changed sides on one or more important questions we
naturally lost faith in the more-or-less popular theory that because an
idea is old, or is held by a majority of the people, it must therefore
necessarily be true. That is the extent of this writer’s “sponginess.”
As a rule when we have learned that we have absorbed most of our
political, religious and other early opinions from our environment
through the pores of our skin we become less cock-sure we have a
monopoly on truth.
As a rule latitude and longitude instead of reason shapes our opinions
on the most important issues. We are generally Protestants, Catholics,
Mohammedans, Confucians, Monarchists, democrats or republicans,
according to whether we happened to be born and reared in Spain,
Turkey, China, Mississippi or Vermont.
An old English Philosopher says: “Men have always thought and believed
in masses. Throughout the whole earth you may observe opinions and
ideas, like swarms of bees, clustering together upon particular spots,
or as if, like certain trees and plants, they were indigenous to the
soil.” Another writer says, “Men think in packs as jackals hunt.”
A young minister exclaims: “There is a gulf between man and the
inferior animals which no amount of sophistry, alias science, can
ever bridge. There is more than a missing link--a thousand links.
Man differs from animals in mental faculties. Lower animals cannot
originate an idea.... If man was evolved from a beast, where did he get
his soul? You cannot say it evolved, too. There was a definite hour
when man, possessing an immortal spirit, walked this earth, or else man
is yet a beast.
“If the soul was slowly evolved, and if that long-tailed monkey who
squatted upon the lower branches of your ancestral tree had a piece of
a soul, and you should meet that poor little piece of a soul in the
future land of spirits, wouldn’t you be ‘sorter’ ashamed on the morning
after the Resurrection to walk up to it and say, ‘Howdy, Grandpa?’
“You may boast that your grandfather was a monkey, your
great-grandfather a bullfrog, and your great-great-grandfather a
wiggletail but I claim for mine no such illustrious ancestry.”
Well, that settles it! To save our pride--or our vanity rather--I
suppose we’ll have to shut our eyes to the evidences and reject
evolution. After all, perhaps the world’s greatest thinkers have been
following the wrong trail in the pursuit of truth; instead of weighing
the evidence for and against a theory they should have adopted the
infinitely simpler plan of deciding it according to whether or not
we like it! All anti-evolutionists find it necessary to appeal to
our pride of ancestry to hold us to an ancient dogma. Even Mr. Bryan
regards this appeal to petty personal vanity as legitimate argument
against evolution. How they hate to give up the ennobling idea that we
are the degraded descendants of a perfect, god-like pair!
Are the lower animals so very inferior to man because, as my friend
says, they cannot originate an idea? Lots of us higher animals could
plead guilty to the same charge; and, what is worse, two or three
generations must pass before the majority of us will even seriously
consider an idea some one else originated--even when all the facts are
for, and none against it.
It is not necessary to bridge every gulf between man and amoeba
to prove evolution. If all gaps between species were filled with
“links” as thick as down on a goose’s feather then all creatures from
Shakespeare to angle worms would belong to the same species. In that
case all animals would be either poets or fishbait.
I know of no reason why man evolved from a lower mammal could not
have acquired a soul just as easily as if he were fashioned directly
from a batch of mud. And I infer from that sublime paragraph of my
reverend friend’s closing with the touching salutation, “Howdy,
Grandpa,”--whoop-ee!--that his idea of heaven is that it is just about
as stagnant a place as he believes this world to be. May not poor
little stunted souls--if there are such there--be permitted to unfold
and develop in the genial environment of the realm of the blest?
My opponent seems to be perturbed in regard to the exact period in
the development of the race, “the definite hour,” when man came into
possession of a soul. To this question let us apply cold, merciless
logic. The biologic history of the human race is recapitulated in the
embryonic life of each individual. There are no difficulties in the
way of determining at what precise period the soul was injected into
the race-man that are not also met with in regard to the individual.
My reverend friend, can you point out the “definite hour”--why not
definite minute, or second?--when in your embryonic development you
became possessed of a soul? And just three seconds before that event
were you not in as woeful a plight as any soulless monkey that ever
cooled himself by swinging to and fro, suspended from a leafy bough by
means of his prehensile caudal appendage?
Is it not possible that a little bit of envy of that large-souled race
of the future does not mingle with your shame of an animal ancestry
when you rise and exclaim, “Away with the theory of the upward trend
in God’s works; I will none of it?”--for it is a fact that whatever
sense of shame one may feel for our lowly ancestors it is more than
compensated for by the pride one may feel for the noble race that is
to be; because if the path along which we have travelled in past ages
points downward in the rear, it just as surely points upward in front.
Our destiny will be as high as our origin was low. And as man drops
his foolish prejudices and grows more intelligent, as he learns more
about the laws of his development, the more rapidly will he advance
physically, mentally, spiritually.
Ah! Parson, far better to be the tadpole ancestor of an
ever-progressive angel breed than be the degraded descendant of a
race of gods; yet a race without hope of ever again reaching the
much-lauded, pristine purity and perfection of Adam--a creature really
whose moral status was so low, and who was so weak, that he fell at the
first temptation.
Civilization, culture, the moral nature of man, have been developed;
they are not the remains of something that has been lost. Human nature
is not ruined, but is unfinished. The god-like race is not of the past,
but belongs to the future. Man entered the zone of sin not from above,
but from below. Probably no man who ever walked this earth save Jesus
Christ has ever breathed the pure moral atmosphere above the zone of
sin. Through this zone, from the pre-human to the man of Galilee, from
the sinless state of the lower animals and of the child-man to the
sinless perfection of the divine, the whole race, ’mid struggles and
trials and sorrows and anguish, must pass, is passing.