FALLACIES OF SCIENTISTS.
IGNORANCE OF SKEPTICS--ERRORS IN ASTRONOMY GEOLOGY NOT
RELIABLE--SCIENTISTS DISAGREE--TESTIMONIES OF HUGH MILLER--HUMBOLDT
--LYELL--SECOND-HAND KNOWLEDGE--OUR NEED OF FAITH.
"A little or superficial knowledge may incline a man's mind to atheism;
but depth in philosophy bringeth him back to religion." So said Francis
Bacon, one of the world's greatest philosophers, and history has proved
his saying to be true. The {37} great lights of the scientific world,
such as Columbus, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Herschel,
Agassiz, Rosse or Proctor, all have cherished a reverence for religion.
On the other hand, it is generally third or fourth rate men of
learning, or those whose impetuosity is greater than their judgment,
who ever attempt to achieve distinction as infidel lecturers. Men who
have failed in their business for want of capacity, frequently turn
misanthropes and denounce truths and men that they have not brains
enough to comprehend. True, apostate Christianity has been "weighed in
the balances and found wanting," but does that prove that there is no
vital, no divine religion that will satisfy the intellect of man with
its truths, and touch the heart with its love--a Christianity which,
bearing the full impress of its Author's image, shall take its place
among the various forces at work in society and eventually subordinate
them all? Nay, verily! As well might we say that because there are
counterfeit bank bills in existence, therefore, none are genuine.
One cannot help being amazed at the cool impudence with which infidels
take for granted the very points to be proved, and set aside, as
unworthy of serious examination, the most authentic records of history
and facts of science. When skeptics, who are determined not to believe
in the Bible, find the historical evidences of its genuineness,
authority and inspiration impossible to be overthrown by ridicule or
sophistry, they turn their attention to some other mode of attack;
and, of {38} late years, they have ransacked the whole circle of
sciences hoping to find a more powerful weapon. Especially has every
new discovery been hailed by skeptics as an ally to their cause, until
further acquaintance has proved that it was not so. Thus, when geology
began to upheave its titanic form it was eagerly greeted by skeptics;
but now that they have discovered the proofs it gives of a Creator they
are getting shy of its acquaintance.
It is, therefore, worth while to enquire, is science really so positive
as these persons pretend? Or, is it true that the students of the
physical sciences have no certain knowledge of their theories? We need
not here speak of the disputes between Herschel and Ferguson, Newton
and Brewster, La Place and Lionville. Rather let us begin with the most
positive of all sciences. _Mathematics_--the science of magnitude and
numbers--and note a few things concerning it. Upon reflection, it is
surprising how few subjects are capable of a mathematical demonstration.
The mathematician may demonstrate the size and properties of a
triangle, but he cannot demonstrate the continuance of any actual
triangle for one hour, or one minute after his demonstration.
A mathematical proof admits of no doubts or contingencies. A man may
calculate the force of the wind, but he cannot tell how long it will
continue to blow in that direction, whether it will increase to a
hurricane or subside to a calm. He may count the revolutions of an
engine, but he cannot test its extreme power, or prove its continued
{39} existence for a single hour. How many of the most important
affairs of life can be demonstrated by means of the multiplication
table? It would be safe to say not one in ten. Again, mathematics
frequently deal with purely ideal figures, which never did or never can
exist. There is not a mathematical line--length without breadth--in
all the universe. On careful examination, we find that there are no
mathematical figures in nature. We speak of the earth as a sphere,
but it is a sphere pitted with hollows as deep as the ocean, and
crested with protuberances as high as the Andes or Himalayas, in every
conceivable irregularity of form. There is not an acre of absolutely
level ground on the face of the earth; even its waters pile themselves
up in waves, or dash into breakers, rather than remain perfectly level
for a single hour. The microscope reveals the fact that the pearl is
proportionally rougher than the surface of the earth, and the dew-drop
is no nearer round than a pear. When we speak of the orbits of the
planets as elliptical or circular, it is only in a general way; just as
we speak of a circular saw, the outline of its teeth being regularity
itself, as compared with the motions of the planets in their orbits.
So also with _Astronomy_, it is far from being an exact science. From
the comparative simplicity of the forces with which it has to deal,
and the approximate regularity of the paths of the heavenly bodies,
it may be regarded as the science in which the greatest possible
certainty is attainable. {40} It opens, at once, the widest field to
the imagination, and the noblest range to the reason; it has attracted
the most exalted intellects to its pursuit, and has rewarded their
toils with the grandest discoveries. Lest we should ascribe to the
discoverers of the laws of the universe, the glory due to their
Creator, let us glance at some of the errors of astronomy.
Sir John Herschel, than whom none has a better right to speak on this
subject, devotes a chapter to the "Errors of Astronomy."
"No philosophical observation or experiment is absolutely accurate. The
error of a thousandth part of an inch in an instrument, will multiply
itself into thousands and millions of miles according to the distance
of the object."
To begin at our own little globe, where exactness is more easily
attained, than among distant planets, we find that two of the greatest
astronomers, Bessel and Newton, differ from each other in the
measurement of the diameter of the earth fully eleven miles. So also
the diameter of the earth's orbit is uncertain by 360,000 miles. Now
the diameter of the earth, and the diameter of its orbit are the very
foot rule and yard stick, as it were, by which astronomers measure the
heavens. (_See Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol, I. page 7, and Vol. IV. page
477._)
"Let us then be candid," says Loomis, "and claim no more for astronomy
than is reasonably due. When in 1846 the great astronomer Le Verrier
announced the existence of a planet hitherto unseen, and when he
assigned to it its exact position {41} in the heavens, and declared
that it shone like a star of the eighth magnitude, not an astronomer
of France, and scarcely one in Europe had sufficient faith in the
prediction to prompt him to point his telescope to the heavens."
So also geology, one of the most recent of the sciences, and in the
hands of infidel nurses one of the most noisy, has been found to be
unreliable in many particulars. True a wonderful outcry has been
raised about the antagonism between the records of the rocks, and the
records of the Bible. But no one has yet succeeded in proving such an
antagonism; for the plain reason that neither the Bible nor geology
says how old the earth is. They both say it is very old. The Bible
says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The
term here translated "in the beginning" signifies, as every Hebrew
scholar knows, a period of such remote antiquity, that in Bible
language it stands next to eternity. Now if the geologist could prove
that the earth is a thousand million years older than the time when
Adam appeared upon it, this would contradict no statement of the Bible.
So when infidels come to us with their geological theories about the
manner in which God made the earth, or in which the earth is said to
have made itself, and how long it took to do it, and tell us that
they have scientific demonstration from the rocks that the Bible is
false, we surely have a right to enquire into the foundation of these
theories upon which they have built such startling conclusions. Now it
is remarkable that every infidel {42} argument is based not upon the
_facts_, but upon the _theories_ of geology. But how does our infidel
geologist set about his work of proving that the earth has any given
age, say a thousand million years? Why he simply commences with a
theory or supposition. Yet a demonstration must rest upon facts, it
admits of no suppositions. In examining the crust of the earth we find
a great many layers of rocks, one above the other, evidently formed
below the water, some of them out of the fragments of former rocks
containing bones, shells and casts of fishes and tracks of the feet
of birds, made when these rocks were in the state of soft mud. These
layers form what is termed the crust of the earth, and are altogether
several miles in thickness. Yet not one of these layers gives us the
element of time. They announce to us successive generations of animals
and plants; but they do not tell us how long these generations lived.
We have every reason to believe that the condition of the world was
very different then, from what it is now; not only as regards its
temperature, of which we have many proofs that it was much higher than
at present; but likewise in regard to the density of the atmosphere
and the distribution of water on the surface of the globe. All these
conditions indicate that both animal and vegetable life were then
far different from what they are now, as the fossil remains of those
animals and plants abundantly and unquestionably prove. But in all this
we have no means of determining the duration of those species. The
various species of plants and animals may have flourished during a
period of a thousand, a million, or a thousand million years for all we
know.
{43}
[ILLUSTRATION: SECTION OF THE CRUST OF THE EARTH]
RECENT DEPOSITS--Showing remains of animals still existing.
QUATERNARY--Showing remains of some extinct and some living species.
First appearance of deciduous trees, (those that drop their leaves in
autumn) showing alternations of heat and cold.
Remains of vertebrates (animals having back bones) of the more perfect
species.
Mammals, (milk-giving animals); carnivora, (flesh-eating animals),
monkeys, etc.
First appearance of birds and land monsters, megatheriums, mammoths,
etc.
CRETACIOUS ROCKS--Age of reptiles and amphibious monsters, as
iguanodons, saurians and crocodiles.
CARBONIFEROUS ROCKS--Age of coal formation; first indications of
reptiles, numerous amphibious animals--supposed uniform climate.
SUB-CARBONIFEROUS--First traces of amphibious animals.
First traces of cone-bearing trees, pines, ferns, etc.
First fishes; first vertebrates; numerous shell fish; limestone strata.
Chalk measures; sandstone strata,
SILURIAN ROCKS--Few traces of life; old red sandstone.
HURONIAN ROCKS--No traces of life; gneiss, quartz, felspar, mica.
LAURENTIAN Rocks--Granite.
{44} Here is a problem exactly similar. On examination we find
that a certain house is built on a foundation of well-cemented concrete
three feet deep, that it has ten courses of stone in the basement,
forty courses of brick in the first story, thirty-six courses in the
second, thirty-two in the third; with a roof of nine inch rafters,
covered with inch boards, and an inch and a half layer of coal-tar and
gravel; now tell us how long was the house in building? Why the very
school-boy would laugh at the absurdity of such a question. He would
say, "How can I tell unless I know where the materials were obtained,
how they were conveyed, how many workmen were employed, and how much
they could do in a day? If the rock had been brought from a distance,
the brick to be made by hand, the lumber all dressed with a handsaw and
jackplane, and all the work done by a slowgoing jobbing contractor who
employed only three or four men--why, they would not get through in a
year. But if the rock was found in excavating the cellar, if the brick
were made by machinery and near at hand, the lumber dressed by steam
saw and planing mills, and thirty or forty workmen employed, it might
be all finished in a month."
So the geologist ought to say, "I do not know either the source of the
materials of the earth's strata nor the distance from which they were
conveyed to their present position, nor the forces which were employed
in changing them from their {45} primitive elements to the forms in
which we now see them; therefore I cannot tell the time required for
their formation. If the crust of the earth was originally fused into
granite by intense heat, and this granite has been thrown up into
vast mountains by the internal heat of the earth; and in turn, these
mountains have been slowly worn away, by the action of wind, rain and
frost, and conveyed down to the shores of the primeval ocean, by the
still slower agency of mountain torrents and rivers; and if these
deposits having first been the home of various species of animals and
plants have hardened into rock which in turn has been heaved up by
volcanic forces--if this was the mode of creation, hundreds of millions
of years may have been required to produce the effects we now see upon
the surface of the globe.
"But if the crust of the earth originally consisted of the various
elements of which granite and other rocks are composed, if (as is
generally conceded, granite is the lowest in the scale of all the rocks
with which man is acquainted,) the granite was fused into its present
condition by the intense heat generated by the chemical action of these
elements upon each other, and if the overlying strata were consolidated
by the vast pressure of a universal ocean, as is generally conceded to
have covered the earth at a certain geologic period, and if these rocks
were baked by their own chemical heat or by the continuous heat of the
underlying granite, while the cooler temperature of the water above
prevented the upper strata from becoming {46} so solid--then, under
such circumstances, a very few centuries might suffice." (_See Lyell's
Principles of Geology, chapters_ 12 _and_ 32.)
Until these indispensable preliminaries are settled, geology can make
no calculations of the length of time occupied by the formation of the
strata.
Again, all geological computations of time are made upon the
supposition that only the same agents were then at work which we now
see, that they wrought with the same degree of force and produced the
same results though working under widely different conditions. For
example, suppose it now takes a year to deposit mud enough at the
bottom of the sea, to make an inch of rocks, and _if mud was deposited
no faster_ in those remote ages, then the rocks would be as old as
there are inches in the eight or nine miles depth to which the strata
extends. But how can we prove that mud was deposited at the same rate
then as now? And so the whole fabric of geological chronology vanishes
into a mere unproved notion, based upon an _if_.
It is truly astonishing that any sober-minded person should allow
himself to be shaken in his religious convictions by the alleged
results of a science so unformed and imperfect, as geologists
themselves acknowledge their favorite science to be. Thus Hugh Miller
admits, "There are no calculations more doubtful than those of the
geologist;" and again, "It furnishes us with no certain clue by which
to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of {47} creation." (_See
Footprints of the Creator, page_ 313.)
These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to Him only. Men
attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law; but all
nature rises up against them in their presumptuous rebellion. A stray
splinter of cone-bearing wood, a fish's skull, the skeleton of a
reptile, the tooth or jaw of a quadruped, all or any of these things--
weak and insignificant as they may seem--when found imbedded in the
strata of the rocks, become evidence too strong for man and all his
theories. These puny fragments in the grasp of truth become weapons as
irresistible as the dry bone in the hand of Sampson of old; and our
slaughtered theories lie piled up heaps upon heaps before them.
Then, again, they are quarreling about the leading principles of the
science. Hopkins attempts to prove that the crust of the earth is
eight hundred miles thick, while Humboldt asserts that it is less
than twenty-four. As the temperature increases one degree for every
forty-five feet we descend into the earth, so, at that rate, in less
than twenty-four miles the heat would be so great as to melt iron and
almost any known substance. But here, again, they differ. Wedgewood
declares that iron melts at 21,000 degrees Fahrenheit; while Professor
Daniels is positive that it melts at 2,786 degrees, Fahrenheit. Only a
slight difference of 18,214 degrees.
But then comes the great question: if granite is the lowest layer in
the strata, what is below the {48} granite? De Beaumont affirms that
"the whole globe, with the exception of a thin envelope--much thinner
in proportion than the shell of an egg--is a melted mass kept fluid
by heat, but constantly cooling and contracting its dimensions and
occasionally cracking and falling in, and squeezing upwards large
portions of the mass, thus producing those folds or wrinkles which we
call mountain chains." On the other hand, Davy and Lyell think that "we
may perhaps refer the heat of the interior to chemical changes going on
in the earth's crust." So much for the uncertainties of geology.
If space permitted, it would be easy to go over other sciences and show
similar uncertainties in them all. It is worthy of notice that the
uncertainties of science increase just in proportion to our interest
in it. About what does not concern us, it is very positive; but very
uncertain about our dearest interests. The astronomer may calculate
with considerable certainty the movements of distant planets with which
we have no intercourse; but he cannot predict the heat or cold, clouds
or sunshine, and other phenomena continually occurring on our earth.
The forces of heat may be measured, to some extent, but what physician
can measure the strength of the malignant fever that is destroying the
life of his patient. The chemist can thoroughly analyze any foreign
substance, but the disease of his own body, which is bringing him to
the grave, he can neither weigh, measure nor remove. Science is very
positive about distant {49} stars and remote ages, but stammers and
hesitates about the very lives of its professors.
If such are the uncertainties of science to the actual investigators,
what shall we say to him who has learned his science at school? When
we meet with such an infidel, who denounces religion while he extols
the certainties of science, would it not be well to ask a few questions
such as the following? Have you personally measured the diameter of the
earth, observed the transit of Venus, or calculated the distance of the
moon? Or, further, would you feel yourself competent to perform such
labor; or is it possible that, after all your boasting, you have taken
your science at second-hand, and on the testimony of another? Again,
perhaps you are a student of the stone book (as scientists sometimes
call the strata of the earth's crust), with its enduring records graven
in the rock forever; and perhaps you profess to believe that under
these ponderous strata the Bible has found an everlasting tomb! But how
many of the volumes of this stone book have you perused personally!
Have you ever visited the many localities in our own country, to say
nothing of the instructive lessons to be learned from the strata of
England, Scotland, Wales, the Himalayas, the Andes and the Lauretian
rocks of Canada, where the different formations are to be seen? Have
you personally excavated from their beds, the various fossils that
form, as it were, the very alphabet of the science; or, is it possible
that all you know of geology is from the specimens of collectors, and
the statements {50} of lecturers aided by maps of ideal stratification
in rose-pink, brimstone-yellow and indigo-blue?
But perhaps you are a chemist, and proud, as most chemists are, of
the accuracy attainable in that most demonstrative science. But how
much of it is really science to you? Of the nine hundred and forty-two
substances mentioned in Turner's Chemistry, how many have you analyzed?
Could you truthfully say one-half, one-fourth, or even one-tenth? Much
less, would you face the laughter of a college class, to-morrow, upon
the experiment of taking nine out of the nine hundred, reducing them
to their primitive elements, and giving an accurate analysis of their
component parts?
In fact, do you know anything worth mentioning of the facts of science
upon your own knowledge, except those of the trade by which you make
your living? Or, after all your boasting about scientific certainty, is
it true that you have been obliged to receive your science upon faith,
at second-hand, and on the word of another, and to save your life you
could not tell who that other is, or even name the discoverers of half
the scientific truths you believe? Therefore, whatever precision may be
attained by scientific men--and we have seen that it is not much--it
is very certain you have none of it. The very best you can have to
wrap yourself in is a second-hand assurance, grievously torn by rival
schools, and needing to be patched every month by later discoveries.
{51} But this is not all. Most sciences are not only uncertain, but
also insufficient. We demand the knowledge of truths of which science
is profoundly ignorant. Of all the great problems and precious
interests which belong to me as a mortal or immortal being, science
knows nothing. I ask her whence I came. She points to her pinions
stretched over the abyss of primeval fire, her eyes blinded by its
awful glare, and remains silent. I inquire what I am; but the strange
and questioning _I_ is a mystery which she can neither analyze nor
measure. I tell her of the voice of conscience within--she never heard
it and does not pretend to understand it. I tell her of my anxieties
about the future--she is learned only in the past. I inquire how I may
be happy hereafter--but happiness is not a scientific term, and she
cannot even tell me how to be happy here! Poor, blind science!
Further still, all our dearest interests lie beyond the domains
of physical science, in the regions of faith. Science treats of
things--faith is confidence in persons. Take away the persons and of
what value are the things? The world becomes at once a vast desert, a
dreary solitude. I can live, and love, and be happy without science;
but not without companionship whose bond is faith. In its sunshine
alone can happiness grow. It is faith sends man out in the morning to
his work, nerves his arms through the toils of the day, brings him
home in the evening, gathers the children around the table, inspires
the oft-repeated efforts of the little prattler to ascend his parent's
knee, clasps the chubby arms {52} around his neck, looks with the most
confiding innocence into his eye and puts forth the little hand to
catch his bread and share his cup. Undoubting faith is happiness even
here below. Need we marvel, then, that man must be converted from his
pride of empty, barren science, and casting himself with all his powers
into the arms of faith, become as a little child before he can enter
into the kingdom of heaven?
* * * * *