The Other Side of Evolution: Its Effects and Fallacy

by Alexander Patterson

EVOLUTION IS NOT ACCEPTED BY ALL SCIENTISTS AND SCHOLARS.

The statement is often made that Evolution has "the Consensus of Scholarship." This carries force to the non-scientific, indeed to all, for we must rest our faith, for facts at least, on the opinion of scientists. But while many have followed it, there remain many scholars who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Prof. Haeckel, its greatest living advocate, complains bitterly of the opposition of many of the scientists of Europe, and that many once with him have deserted him.

The late Dr. Virchow, the great pathologist and the discoverer of the germ theory, was an active opponent of Evolution. He says: "The reserve which most naturalists impose on themselves is supported by the small actual proofs of Darwin's theory. Facts seem to teach the invariability of the human and the animal species." (Popular Science, pp. 50, 52.) Dr. Groette, in his inaugural address as rector of the University of Strasburg, rejected Evolution.

Dr. D. S. Gregory of New York, editor of the Homiletic Review and in a position to know the facts, vouches for the statement, that, "It is a strange fact that no great scientific authority in Great Britain in exact science, science that reduces its conclusions to mathematical formulae, has endorsed Evolution."

The late Dr. J. H. W. Stuckenberg, of Cambridge, wrote me, that many of the scientists of Germany reject the extreme views of Evolution, and the inferences which men like Prof. Haeckel, of Jena, have drawn from Darwinism. He quotes Dr. W. Haecke, a zoologist of Jena, the home of Prof. Haeckel, as saying: "We the younger men must free ourselves from the Darwinian dogma, in which respect quite a number of us have been quite successful." Prof. Paulsen, of Berlin, has exposed some of Haeckel's fallacies and regards his reasoning as "a disgrace to Germany." He said the mechanical theory for which Darwinism was held to stand, is rejected by such scientists as Naegeli, Koelliker, M. Wagner, Snell, Fovel, Bunge, the physiological chemist, A. Brown, Hoffman and Askernazy, botanists; Oswald Heer, the geologist, and Otto Hamann, the zoologist. Of Carl Ernst von Baer, the eminent zoologist and anthropologist, Haecke affirms, that in early years he came near adopting the hypothesis of Evolution into his system, but that at a later date he utterly rejected it. The same change occurred in the late Du Bois Reymond and Prof. Virchow, the eminent scientist of the University of Berlin. (See also articles of Dr. Stuckenberg in Homiletic Review, January, 1901, May, 1902.)

Sir J. William Dawson, the great geologist of Canada, utterly rejected it and says: "It is one of the strangest phenomena of humanity; it is utterly destitute of proof." (Story of the Earth and Man, p. 317.) Dr. Etheridge, examiner of the British Museum, said to Dr. George E. Post, in answer to a question, "In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of these views." Thomas Carlyle called Evolution "the gospel of dirt." Ruskin said of it, "I have never yet heard one logical argument in its favor. I have heard and read many that are beneath contempt." (The Eagles Nest, p. 256.)

Prof. Zöckler writes: "It must be stated that the supremacy of this philosophy has not been such as was predicted by its defenders at the outset. A mere glance at the history of the theory during the four decades that it has been before the public shows that the beginning of the end is at hand."

Such utterances are now very common in the periodicals of Germany, it is said. It seems plain the reaction has commenced and that the pendulum that has swung so strongly in the direction of Evolution, is now oscillating the other way. It required twenty years for Evolution to reach us from abroad. Is it necessary for us to wait twenty years more to reverse our opinions? Why may we not pass upon facts for ourselves without awaiting the "Consensus of European Scholarship," which is after all so subject to perplexing reversals? It makes plain people dizzy to attempt to follow leaders of opinion who change with every wind that blows across the ocean.

Many citations will appear in the following pages which show the strong exceptions taken by leading scholars against the theory in whole or in part. Indeed, as said already, the arguments to be given herein against Evolution are drawn from the statements of leading evolutionists themselves. Some of these are earlier opinions and some their latest utterances. In every case the state of the discussion will be shown to be far from that "Consensus of Scholarship" so airily claimed by the writers on the subject and so unhesitatingly accepted by their followers.

It may be objected that some of these authorities are dead and that later scholars differ from them. Not to mention the names of still living writers named above, let us remark that all wisdom is not left to our day. Socrates and Bacon are dead, yet their opinions are still of value. Moses is dead, yet the Ten Commandments are still believed if not obeyed. Our present evolutionary writers will also one day be dead, yet they hope even then to be given some credit for sense and science. The "consensus of scholarship" ought to include wisdom past as well as present.

It is also to be remembered that there are thousands of quiet thinkers who have never given in their adhesion to this startling theory, and more, that the great masses of the church at least, have no confidence in it. Those preparing to launch their ships upon this current had better, as a matter of common prudence at least, wait a while at least till the mists have rolled away.