2. All is based on Natural Selection, which evolutionists have themselves discarded; yet for want of any other theory they are constantly obliged to fall back upon it.
3. Such acquired traits are not transmitted, as Prof. Thomson of Edinborough, tells us. Only characteristics inherited, or congenital in the fertilized egg cell, are so transmitted. (Outlines of Zoology, p. 66.) The "sports" such as the white robins and crows occasionally seen, disappear as individuals and do not propagate as distinct types.
Let us pause here to contemplate the spectacle of a theory, which its own advocates admit is unproven, and which has been opposed by some of the greatest minds, a theory which has not a single direct fact of evidence, and has no way of accounting for the changes which it declares have taken place; such a theory accepted as the basis of every science, the foundation of a universal philosophy, taught in educational institutions to youth as if demonstrated, demanding immediate and universal submission, undertaking to revise Scripture, to revolutionize theology, and to prescribe what we must do to be saved and to save others! Surely it is safe to hesitate before such demands.
We will not discount the great service done humanity in the patient research in the realms of nature by laborious students. All this should be given weight. We also admit the value of a theory as a means to the ascertaining of truth. But we cannot consent that the vast interests affected by Evolution shall be decided by "the balancings of probabilities," or the mooted value of a theory. This is no place for theories, which must be held tentatively, if at all. This is a matter which affects the belief and lives and hopes of millions, their welfare here and hereafter. Religion is too sacred to be made a shuttlecock tossed about in the arena of intellectual amusement.
Sir J. William Dawson said of some writers and their theories: "To launch a clever and startling fallacy, which will float a week and stir up a hard fight, seems as great a triumph as the discovery of an important fact or law; and the honest student is distracted with the multitude of doctrines and hustled aside by the crowd of ambitious groundlings." (Story of the Earth and Man, 313.)
Evolution has much to say for itself, but, as we see, it is all of the nature of circumstantial evidence. This seems to the non-scientific mind as strange for anything called science, which we have been accustomed to think means something known or proven. We have been accustomed to see cases thrown out of court when presenting no evidence and to fare badly in general on mere circumstantial evidence. However, as Evolution is so persistent for a hearing, we must examine what it has to advance for our consideration. Its arguments are drawn from Geology, Classification, Distribution of Plants and Animals, Morphology and Embryology.
THE ARGUMENT FROM GEOLOGY.
The argument from this science is that the fossils appear in the strata of the earth in advancing order, the simplest first, and more complex afterwards. The assumption is that the higher came from the lower, by a chain of infinitesimal changes, through a long series of ages. Now the facts are not as claimed. We will show this later. But admitting that they are, the argument is wanting.
1. All this is pure assumption. No such changes are known in existing species to have ever taken place, and the assumption that these changes took place in geologic ages is wholly unwarranted. If it cannot be predicated of the animals we see and know, how can it be asserted of a period millenniums ago?