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?