The Other Side of Evolution: Its Effects and Fallacy

The Other Side of Evolution Its Effects and Fallacy BY REV. ALEXANDER PATTERSON Director, Presbyterian Training School of Chicago Author of The Greater Life and Work of Christ, The Bible As It Is, Bird's-Eye Bible Study and The Bible Manual. CHICAGO The Bible Institute Colportage Association 826 North la Salle Street
COPYRIGHT, 1903 BY THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORTAGE ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO


Evolution is claimed by its advocates to be the greatest intellectual discovery of the past century, and, by some, the greatest thought that ever entered the mind of man. In the words of its greatest philosopher, Herbert Spencer, It spans the universe and solves the widest range of its problems, which reach outward through boundless space, and back through illimitable time, resolving the deepest problems of life, mind, society, history and civilization. It has woven into one great philosophy the history of the material universe, the entire organic creation, man and all his faculties, the whole course of human history and the origin and progress of all religion.
It also undertakes to account for the Bible, for what is popularly called higher criticism represents the biblical branch of Evolution. It has reconstructed the Bible and remanded its miraculous narratives to the realm of myth. It has formulated a theology in which the most sacred doctrines of evangelical belief are discarded. In its central theory of the origin of man, it vitally affects the doctrines of the nature of man, of sin and penalty, man's need and the work of Christ. It even touches the person of Christ, for many of its advocates say that He too comes within its scope. In its radical and most consistent form, it utterly discards belief in God. Most of the great teachers of Evolution, such as Ernst Haeckel of Jena, are and have been atheists.
It is true that many evolutionists are theistic. But it is not enough to be theistic. The devil is theistic, so was Thomas Paine. Christianity is far more than theism. It is the grossest sophistry to teach that because a belief has some truth in it we must therefore tolerate it. All false doctrine is sugarcoated with truth. That we are not overstating the dangerous nature of the theory will appear from the following opinions of competent scholars and observers.