These facts are not cited to discredit science. No one in his senses would fail to acknowledge our great debt to the earnest and laborious workers in these varying fields. But these instances of many such are cited to show that there is need for caution in accepting proposed theories.
CHAPTER II.
EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE AND EARTH.
In undertaking to account for the universe, Evolution faces four problems. 1. The origin of matter. 2. The origin of force. 3. The formation and orderly arrangement of the universe. 4. The origin of life. In all of these it fails; it confesses its failure in the first two and last, and makes ludicrous attempts to explain the third. We will consider each in turn.
1. Evolution fails to account for the origin of matter. Spencer says this is the Unknowable. So that Spencer's great philosophy rests on what he doesn't know and cannot find out. Darwin said as to the origin of things, "I am in a hopeless muddle." Prof. Edward Clodd wrote: "Of the beginning of what was before the present state of things, we know nothing and speculation is futile, but since everything points to the finite duration of the present creation, we must make a start somewhere." (Story of Creation, p. 137.) Science is what we know. Therefore Evolution rests upon an unscientific foundation. Nor is there any other account conceivable than that the Bible gives. As long as this first and fundamental fact is not solved, the theory must be content to be at most a limited one, and far from being that sweeping discovery which its advocates assert it to be.
2. Evolution fails to account for the origin of Force. The great forces which animate the universe, such as gravity, heat, motion and light, must be accounted for by this theory to give it the standing it demands. It makes no attempt to do this. Evolution is silent when we ask, Whence came these mighty forces? Calling them Laws of Nature does not answer the question. Laws need law makers and enforcers also. Laws do not enforce themselves. As forces, they show the ceaseless giving out of energy. Where is the dynamo from which this perpetual energy originated and still proceeds?
In this connection, let us notice the reticence and limitations of really great scientists as to the nature of these energies. Lord Kelvin, the greatest living scientist, said at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he was president: "One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly for fifty-five years. That word is failure. I know no more of electric and magnetic force, or of the relation between ether, electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew and tried to teach to my students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in my first session as professor."
Haeckel himself, the greatest living evolutionist, admits: "We grant at once that the innermost character of nature is just as little understood by us as it was by Anaximander and Empedocles 2,400 years ago.... We grant that the essence of substance becomes more mysterious and enigmatic the more deeply we penetrate into the knowledge of its attributes." (Riddle of the Universe.)