RELIGION AND GEOLOGY, PHILOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
_The human race has suffered three grave humiliations: when Copernicus
showed that the earth was not the center of the universe; when Darwin
proved that man's origin was not the result of direct creation; when
Freud explained that man was not the master of his own thoughts or
actions_.
LLEWELYN POWYS.
In the writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers are found the
germinal concepts of geological truths. But as Christianity took control
of the world instead of a steady progression of knowledge in this field
there was a distinct retrogression. According to the prevailing belief
the earth was soon to be destroyed and the collecting of knowledge was
futile and any study of its nature was vain.
St. Jerome stated that the broken and twisted crust of the earth
exhibited the wrath of God against sin. Tertullian asserted that fossils
resulted from the flood of Noah. A scientific explanation of fossil
remains was attempted by De Clave, Bitaud, and De Villon in the
seventeenth century. The theological faculty of Paris protested against
the scientific doctrine as unscriptural, destroyed their treatises, and
banished their authors from Paris.
In the middle of the eighteenth century Buffon, in France, produced a
thesis attempting to state simple geological truths. The theological
faculty of the Sorbonne dismissed him from his high position and forced
him to print a recantation stating, "I declare that I had no intention
to contradict the text of the Scripture; that I believe most firmly all
therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and matter
of fact. I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the
earth and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of
Moses!"
The doctrine which Buffon abandoned is now as firmly established as that
of the earth's rotation upon its axis. Yet, in his day, it was heatedly
asserted by ecclesiastics that the scientific doctrine that fossils
represent animals which died before Adam contradicts the theological
doctrine of Adam's fall, and the statement that death entered the world
by sin--and this objection was further strengthened when the
ecclesiastics became cognizant that geology had proved that the earth
was vastly older than the 6000 years determined by Archbishop Ussher's
interpretation of the Old Testament.
About 1580, there was published by authority of Pope Gregory XIII, the
Roman Martyrology, revised in 1640 under Pope Urban VIII, which declared
that the creation of man took place 5199 years before Christ. In 1650,
Archbishop Ussher announced after careful study that man was created
4004 years before the Christian era. But, this proving too vague, Dr.
John Lightfoot, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, assured
the world that, "Heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were
created together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water ... and
this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on the 23d of
October, 4004 B.C. at nine o'clock in the morning."
When the Egyptologists, Assyriologists, archeologists, and
anthropologists showed that man had reached a far advanced stage of
civilization long before the 6000 years given as the age of the earth,
their efforts were ridiculed by the clergy, and these scientists were
forced to bring their findings before the world in the face of the well
known methods of ecclesiastical opposition.
At a very early period in the evolution of civilization men began to ask
questions regarding language, and the answers to these questions were
naturally embodied in the myths, legends, and chronicles of their sacred
books. Language was considered God-given and complete. The diversity of
language was firmly held to be explained by the story of the Tower of
Babel; and since the writers of the Bible were merely pens in the hand
of God the conclusion was reached that not only the sense, but the
words, letters, and even the punctuation proceeded from the Holy Spirit.
At the end of the seventeenth century, the ecclesiastical contention
that the Hebrew punctuation was divinely inspired seemed to be generally
disproven. The great orthodox body of "religiosa dementia" fell back
upon the remainder of the theory that the Hebrew language was the first
of all languages which was spoken by the Almighty, given by Him to Adam,
transmitted through Noah to the world after the deluge, and that the
confusion of tongues was the origin of all other tongues.
It has only been in comparatively recent time, and in spite of the
opposition of the clergy, that language has been accepted as the result
of evolutionary processes in obedience to laws more or less clearly
ascertained. Babel thus takes its place quietly among the other myths of
the Bible.
In a purely civil matter, the infallible Church from its inception had
displayed a marked hostility to loans at interest. From the earliest
period the whole weight of the Church was brought to bear against the
taking of interest for money. Pope Leo the Great solemnly adjudged it a
sin worthy of severe punishment. In the thirteenth century, Pope Gregory
IX dealt an especially severe blow at commerce by his declaration that
even to advance on interest the money necessary in maritime trade was
damnable usury. The whole evolution of European civilization was greatly
hindered by this policy.
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION
Darwinism, which at first was declared by the clergy to be brutal,
degrading, atheistic, and anti-Christian, is now included as part of the
Bible teaching.
In a similar manner, the Copernican theory, the theory of gravitation,
the nebular hypothesis, the theory of uniformity in geology, and every
scientific advance has been opposed on the same grounds; that is, that
these are against the teachings of the Christian Church. And how many
Galileos, Brunos, and Darwins, and other would-be benefactors to the
human race have died mute because of this opposition and fear of
persecution by the Church?
In 1877, an eminent French Catholic physician, Dr. Constantin James,
published an elaborate answer to Darwin's book. He called it, "On
Darwinism, or the Ape Man." A copy was sent to Pope Pius IX, who was so
pleased with it that he sent the author a reply in which he stated that
it "refutes so well the aberrations of Darwinism, a system which is
repugnant at once to history, to the traditions of all peoples, to exact
science, to observed facts, and even to reason itself, would seem to
need no refutation did not alienation from God and the leaning toward
materialism, due to depravity, eagerly seek support in all this tissue
of fables."
The Protestant clergy were no less vigorous in their opposition. In our
own country it was opposed by Dr. Noah Porter, president of Yale
College, and most bitterly by the Rev. Dr. Hodge and the Rev. Dr.
Duffield, both leading authorities at Princeton University.
Fundamentalism in the United States furnished the spectacle of the
trial, in 1925, of a school teacher named Scopes, for teaching the
theory of evolution. Dayton, Tennessee, became the laughingstock of the
educated world, and the derision with which this effort to obstruct
knowledge at this late date was met with by the comments of the press in
this country and abroad is at least encouraging. But it is an excellent
example of what effect religious obscurantism may exert in backward
sections of our country.
Dr. Max Carl Otto, considering the implications of evolution, calls
attention to the following: "Take the evolution of living forms. The
more we learn about biological history the clearer it becomes that the
process has been, from the human point of view, incredibly bungling and
wasteful. There have been futile experiments without number; highly
successful achievements have been thrown aside; one type of life after
another has arisen and has pushed up a blind alley to extinction. If
there is a God whose method has been Evolution, then seemingly his
slogan was 'We'll fight it out along this line if it takes a billennium'
but, unlike Grant, he has always surrendered. In this maelstrom, the
human species, as Thomas Huxley said--'plashed and floundered amid the
general stream of evolution, keeping its head above water as best it
might, and thinking neither of whence nor whither.' Many volumes have
been written to give a purposive interpretation of the rise and
evolutionary ramifications of living forms. The course of evolution
itself is their refutation."
When the Churches could no longer ignore the rising tide of secular
opinion, they resorted to compromise and called to their aid a certain
number of intellectually dishonest scientists. The attempt to harmonize
Christianity and Evolution can only be accounted for in terms of either
dishonesty or stupidity.
"And that is true of the whole range of science. Science is, in fact,
atheistic or nothing. It knows nothing of God, it does not bother about
God, its triumphs are achieved by leaving God out of account." (_C.
Cohen_.)
What has heretofore been mentioned is but a mere trifle when one
considers the vast number of similar incidents in which religion has
played the role of barrier to progress. These examples, though few, are
sufficient to impress the mind of any clear-minded, intelligent
individual with the conviction, in spite of all the sophistry and
casuistry of the ecclesiastical apologies, that progress in this world
has taken place in direct proportion to the degree that the mind of man
has liberated itself from the control of theology and the myth of
religion.