EVOLUTION UNSCIENTIFIC AND UNPHILOSOPHICAL.
Before making so serious a charge against a scientific theory as
that it is both unscientific and unphilosophical, we will show
that others have held a similar view and that among these are many
scholars. We have already seen Prof. Paulsen's remark that Haeckel's
reasonings are a "disgrace to the philosophy of Germany." Prof.
George Frederick Wright calls Evolution a "fad," "the cast-off
clothing of the evolutionary philosophy of fifty years ago." The
Duke of Argyle says, "It is such a violation of and departure from
all that we know of the existing order of things as to deprive it of
all scientific base."
EVOLUTION FAILS IN ALL THE STEPS OF SCIENTIFIC PROOF.
There are four stages of proof necessary for a full demonstration.
1. Observation of facts.
2. Classification of these facts.
3. Inferences legitimately drawn therefrom.
4. Verification of these conclusions.
1. It fails in its facts. That this is true is evident from the
reticence of the exact scientists to commit themselves to the
theory. If the facts were all that they say, these laborious and
faithful laborers in the laboratory and field would acknowledge the
case. In the presentation of facts, the theoretical evolutionist
culls out and magnifies those looking his way and passes in silence
or minifies those antagonistic to the theory. It makes much of the
change of a low salt water animal into its fresh water form, and
passes over the immutability of all the great species. Evolution
dwells upon the splints in the leg of the horse and passes over
lightly the vast unbridged gaps between organic and inorganic
matter, the origin of the vertebrates, the countless missing links
between the species. It rests its argument on the "gill-slits"
in the necks of embryonic fish, puppies and infants, and passes
airily over the origin of matter, of life, of consciousness and of
Christian experience. It presents ex-parte evidence.
2. Evolution fails in classification. We have seen the testimony of
Evolution itself on this point. Nor is there any agreed definition
of species. Not a single species has been traced to its origin.
The species defy chronological classification. The most primitive
species exist to-day and the most advanced were in existence almost
at the first. Nor can the classifications which are attempted
be advanced as proof of evolution. They are as evidential of
manufacture or of creation or of any other process of intelligent
mind.
3. Evolution rests on inferences. As its great philosopher, Spencer,
has said, no inference is warranted unless it accounts for all the
facts. Not only does no inference of Evolution do this, but it
admits again and again that it is beset with countless difficulties.
Nor are these inferences the only ones that might be drawn. It is
not only necessary to draw an inference but to show that no other
inference is possible. Some of these are the wildest possible
deductions from the facts,--as for example, the theories as to the
origins, already cited, as to whales and giraffes. Sir J. William
Dawson, the eminent geologist, says of Evolution's deductions as
follows: "It seems to indicate that the accumulated facts of our age
have gone altogether beyond its capacity for generalization, and but
for the vigor which one sees everywhere, it might be taken as an
indication that the human mind has fallen into a state of senility
and in its dotage mistakes for science the imaginations which are
the dreams of its youth." (_Story of the Earth and Man_, p. 317.)
The works of writers on Evolution abound in such phrases as "seems
to be--I infer--it is conceivable--it might have been--it is
probable--I think--apparently--must have been--no one can say--not
difficult to conceive,"--and other unscientific terms, and on such
deductions they project other inferences, and so leap skilfully from
one supposition to another across the quagmire of Evolution.
Evolution is undertaking a philosophical impossibility--the proving
of a negative, that there could be no other method than derivation.
This is the philosophical basis of the whole theory.
4. Finally Evolution fails in the fourth step. It admits again
and again that it has not demonstrated its case. Not a single
instance of evolution of species has been shown or produced, and
no law of the change is given. The gaps it does not bridge are
many. We specially need to notice that it gives no account of the
origin of matter or force. It can give no account of the origin
of life. It utterly fails to account for man's self-consciousness
or intellectual, moral or spiritual nature. It takes no account
whatever of the other world or life and entirely disregards the
facts of Christian experience. In short, so far from being a great
universal philosophy, it is simply a disjointed combination of
unproven theories.
The evolutionist, Prof. Conn, admitting the missing factors, says
candidly, "It is therefore impossible to make Evolution a complete
theory." (_Evolution of To-day_, p. 6.)
Sir J. William Dawson thus sums up the evidence: "The simplicity
and completeness of the evolutionary theory entirely disappear when
we consider the unproved assumptions on which it is based and its
failure to connect with each other some of the most important facts
in nature; that in short, it is not in any true sense a philosophy,
but a mere arbitrary arrangement of facts in accordance with a
number of unproved hypotheses. Such philosophies, falsely so-called,
have existed ever since man began to reason on nature, and this last
of all is one of the weakest and most pernicious of all. Let the
reader take up either Darwin's great book or Spencer's Biology and
merely ask, as he reads each paragraph, What is here assumed and
what is proved? and he will find the fabric melt away like a vision.
Spencer often exaggerates or extenuates with reference to facts and
uses the art of the dialectician where argument fails." (_Story of
the Earth and Man_, p. 330.)
Prof. William Jones tells us Evolution is "a metaphysical creed
and nothing else; an emotional attitude rather than a system of
thought." (_Homiletic Review_, August, 1900.)
EVOLUTION RESTS ON IMAGINATION.
The evolutionist not only uses his imagination but claims the right
to do so. Tyndall has written an essay on the Scientific Use of the
Imagination. Now when the pictures of an evolutionist's imagination
are held up as facts, as in the description of man's development
from the brute, he leaves the realm of science and enters that
of fiction. Mr. Gladstone has said of this: "To the eyes of an
onlooker their pace and method seem to be like a steeple-chase. They
are armed with a weapon always sufficient if not always an arm of
precision, 'the scientific imagination.' They are impatient of that
most wholesome state a Suspended Judgment." (_Homiletic Review_,
October, 1900, quoted by Dr. Jesse B. Thomas.)
EVOLUTION IS THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCE.
The language used by the evolutionist is peculiar for persons
claiming to believe in law as the great agency of nature and to
base their conclusions on the operation of fixed causes. The
changes which together make up the birth of a new species are
occasioned they say by "chance happenings," "undesigned variations,"
"accidental variations," "utterly undetermined antecedents,"
"unintentional variations," and other like expressions. The synonyms
of this idea are exhausted by them in describing the way in which
the changes first occurred, by which one species began the journey
up to another stage of existence. It is simply a revival and
revamping of the old doctrine of chance.
Prof. Frank Ballard says of this: "Chance manufactured protoplasm
out of nebulosity.... To accept this after rejecting faith on the
ground of its difficulty, is to quibble and cavil."
An illustration of the appeal to chance and its use is found in the
following account as given by Prof. Ernst Haeckel, the greatest
living teacher of Evolution, of how tree-frogs became green: "Once
upon a time there were among the offspring of ancestral tree-frogs
some which among other colors exhibited green, not much, perhaps
not even perceptible to our eyes. The occurrence of this color was
spontaneous, a freak. The descendants of these greenish creatures,
provided they did not pair with frogs of the ordinary set, became
still greener and so on, until the green was pronounced enough to
be of advantage when competition set in." (_Last Link_, p. 176.)
Here the origin of greenness in the tree-frog begins with a chance
happening and is promoted by a chance union of the greenish frog
with one not in "the ordinary set," but of the more select circle
of the green, and the favoring chances continued in this same
remarkable way until the color became of use in protecting them.
It was with similar chance happenings, Evolution tells us, that all
the great kingdoms, classes, orders, families, genera and species
originated. It was by chance happenings that the present beautiful
and infinite variety of nature came. It was by unintended accidents
that the wonderful adjustments in the universe came. It has been
calculated that the possibility of the letters of the alphabet, if
thrown promiscuously, coming together in the present order is once
in five hundred million million million times. What would be the
chances of the innumerable combinations of nature coming together
in the order in which they are by the chance happenings to which
Evolution attributes them?