Creation and Its Records / A Brief Statement of Christian Belief with Reference to Modern Facts and Ancient Scripture

by B. H. Baden-Powell

It seems to me that this—the only answer that can he given—is necessarily a modified form or mode of creation. How can natural causes know anything about a polity of nature and a vacant place, here and there, so that the creature must develop in one way or another to fill it?

Another set of cases is the production of similar functional results by most diverse means, as in the case of flying animals, birds, pterodactyles, and bats; here there is a widely different modification of the fore-arm and other bones, all for the same purpose. The reader will do well to refer to Mr. Mivart's book on this subject.

Again, the question of types seems to be pointed to in the curious fact of what I may call the double development of birds from reptiles. Mr. Mivart says, "If one set of birds sprang from one set of reptiles and another set from another set of reptiles, the two sets could never by 'natural selection' only have grown into such perfect similarity." Yet we can trace the Struthious birds (those that, like ostriches, do not fly) through the Dinosaurs and Dinornis, and the flying Carinate birds though pterodactyles, Archaeopteryx, and Icthyornis, &c.

It might well be added to this part of the subject, that granted that developmental changes were often small, that progress was attained little by little, this does not appear to have been always the case.

The discoveries of the fossil species of horse,[^[28]] Eohippus, Hipparion, and so forth, clearly establish a developmental series, and the ancient forms are claimed as the ancestor of the modern horse; but these (Professor Owen tells us) differed more from one another than the ass and the zebra (for instance) differ from the horse. Still, of course it may be that there are still undiscovered intermediate forms; and in any case there need be no desire to detract from the value of the series, as really pointing towards a gradual perfection of the horse from a ruder ancestor up to the latest type. But having reached the type, and though that type exhibits such (considerable) variations as occur between the Shetland pony, the Arab, and the dray-horse, we have still no difficulty in recognizing the essential identity; nor is there any evidence or any probability that the horse will ever change into anything essentially different. All the fossil bats, again, were true bats: and so with the rhinoceroses and the elephants. Granting the fullest use that may be made of the imperfection of the geological record, it is difficult to account for this, and still more for the absence of intermediate forms (particularly suitable for preservation) of the Cetaceae. The Zeuglodons from Eocene down to Pliocene, the Dolphins in the Pliocene, and the Ziphoids Catodontidae, and Balaenidae in the Pliocene, are all fully developed forms, with no intermediate species.

Mr. Mivart remarks, "There are abundant instances to prove that considerable modifications may suddenly develop themselves, either due to external conditions or to obscure internal causes in the organisms which exhibit them.[^[29]]" If it is not so, granted to the full the imperfection of the Geologic record, but remembering the cases where we do find intermediate forms; we ask why should they not be preserved in other cases? If they ever existed we should surely see more changing forms; not only such as are more or less uncertainly divided species, but whole orders running one into another. No evidence exists to show that any bird has gradually passed into an animal, nor a carnivorous beast become ruminant, or vice versâ.

The analogy of changes that are known will not bear extension enough to prove, even probably, any such change.

Surely if our conclusion in favour of a Divine Design to be attained, and a Providential Intelligence directing the laws of development, is no more than a belief, it is a probable and reasonable belief: it certainly meets facts and allows place for difficulties in a way far more satisfactory than the opposite belief which rejects all but "secondary" and purely "natural" causes.

So clear does this seem to me, that I cannot help surmising that we should never have heard of any objection to Divine creation and providential direction, if it had not been for a prevalent fixed idea, that by "creation" must be meant a final, one-act production (per saltum) of a completely developed form, where previously there had been nothing. Such a "creation" would of course militate against any evolution, however cautiously stated or clearly established. And no doubt such an idea of "creation" was and still is prevalent, and would naturally and almost inevitably arise, while nothing to the contrary in the modus operandi of Creative Power was known. What is more strange is that the current objection should not now be, "Your idea of creation is all wrong," rather than the one which has been strongly put forward (and against which I am contending), "There is no place for a Creator."

(5) This is the only other general point that remains to be taken up in connection with the theory that all living forms are due to the gradual accumulation of small favourable changes without creative intervention. The objection is that we cannot obtain the inconceivably long time required for the process of uncontrolled and unaided evolution.