Biology versus Theology. The Bible: irreconcilable with Science, Experience, and even its own statements

Transcribed from the 1871 George P. Bacon edition by David Price.
BIOLOGY VERSUS THEOLOGY .
By JULIAN.
“Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum— Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.” Virgil. “Know, then, thyself—Presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man.” Pope’s Essay on Man. “If it be possible to perfect mankind, the means of doing so will be found in the Medical Sciences.” Descartes.
Lewes : GEORGE P. BACON, STEAM PRINTING OFFICES.
1871.
“In this 19th century, as at the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth . . . whose lives have been embittered and good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of bibliolaters? Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonise impossibilities,—whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottle of Judaism? It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought: it learns not, neither can it forget; and though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science, and to visit with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl those who refuse to degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism.”
We purpose, in this pamphlet, with all possible brevity, to show that Scripture is irreconcilable with science, experience, and even with its own statements.