Evolution and creation

by Herbert Junius Hardwicke

It is quite evident that both these stories were not written by one author, and that both cannot be true, for they totally contradict each other, and are written in quite different styles, the deity himself being differently designated in each. We are told by certain parties that if we do not believe these stories we shall most certainly be roasted for all eternity; and indeed the New Testament distinctly bears out this fearful fiat. According to this, every man in the whole world who has been unfortunate enough to hear these two accounts read, and who is endowed with sufficient intelligence to discriminate between a pop-gun and an elephant, will inevitably perish; for it is impossible for any sane man to believe two such contradictory statements. It is not within the power of any man to do so. You might just as well demand of a man that he must believe that a brick and a pan-cake are identical articles. He could not do so, no matter how hard he tried.

Compared with these fables, how ennobling, grand and sublime is the theory of evolution. We behold the great and mysterious energy of universe operating in a manner calculated to inspire our minds with wonder, awe and admiration. The truly marvellous development of ourselves from a chaotic nebula of attenuated matter, through all the varied and manifold stages of existence, with their beautiful and useful properties, is indeed an overwhelmingly convincing evidence of the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent, although absolutely inscrutable author; and I doubt much whether anyone ever approached this subject with an honest desire to be guided by reason in his search for truth, who did not experience this profound reverence for the unknown author. Can we believe that these two narratives in Genesis are also calculated to inspire such a sentiment in the minds of those who are fairly well educated and amenable to reason? What kind of a deity, think you, is this god of Genesis? The concluding portion of the 2nd narrative will at once inform us.

This story is well known to all of us, and is a very remarkable one, for we learn from it the startling fact that the serpent, or devil, was the greatest benefactor to the human race, and, moreover, truthful; while god was the greatest enemy the race ever had, and was guilty of falsehood and treachery. God placed this man and woman in the garden, in front of a very strong temptation, pointed out the temptation to them, and threatened them with instant death if they yielded to it. This god is supposed to be omniscient, and therefore knew well enough before he placed them there that the poor creatures would fall on the very first temptation. Can we conceive more glaring injustice and diabolical cruelty than this? Now the serpent knew very well that they would not die if they ate the fruit, but that, instead, they would become wise; and eventually he persuaded them to eat. Who spoke the truth, god or the devil? Did the man and woman die on the day they ate the fruit? Far from it. That day, were there any truth at all in the narrative, would have been the grandest day ever known to man; for by the eating of that fruit was made known to him the difference between good and evil, that he might be able to seek the one and avoid the other; his benefactor being the serpent, or devil, the circumventor and conqueror of god.

But notice further on how impotent this so-called almighty deity really was. He exclaimed in fear, “Behold, the man is become as one of us [which was precisely what the devil predicted] to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and live for ever, therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden.” Now how easy it would have been for an omnipotent creator to have annihilated his own work, and thus cleared the way for a fresh start. It would be interesting to know who the “we” were that the writer refers to, if not an androgynous deity or a multitude of gods or goddesses.

What was the consequence of this sin of Adam and Eve? Every man and every woman ever born upon this earth is guilty of this sin, and will eternally burn in hell fire, says the Christian church, unless they believe that this circumvented god became a man, lived on this earth, and died the death of a criminal, in order to give satisfaction to himself for the outrage committed on his divine majesty by three of his creatures. The countless myriads of human beings who have inhabited this earth during the six thousand years (according to Bible chronology) that the world has existed, are all and each under this fearful curse, although they had no more to do with Adam’s sin than the man in the moon, and had no power to prevent it. These people have been brought into the world, whether they liked it or not, and are subject to this penalty, the enormous majority of them being inevitably doomed to eternal torment; for there have lived many millions of people who never even heard of the Bible, its gods or its scheme of redemption. We may go farther and declare that all are inevitably doomed, for we cannot conceive that anyone can believe such a story as that of the fall. No one will venture to assert that infants and idiots can believe anything, therefore there is no hope for these unfortunates, whatever chances there may be for others.

As the expression of the infantile imagination of primitive man, after emerging from his brute ancestry, and commencing to exercise more fully his reasoning faculties, these fables are easily understood; but as the writings of men who had been inspired by the almighty power to record a true account of the origin of nature and man for the use of others, they must be at once rejected by all reasonable and thoughtful people as gross absurdities. We can easily understand how the mind of primitive man pondered over the strange mixture of good and evil in the world, just as the awakening mind of a child would do to day; how the mystery would be explained by the analogy of the celestial movements; and how, as the result of the infantile reasoning, the good principle became associated with the mental conception of a venerable old gentleman, who planted a garden, and performed the principle part in the drama just described from the third chapter of Genesis.

Tho whole story bears the strongest marks of being the production of an infantile intellect. The simple manner in which the writer tells us that the man and woman sewed fig leaves together and made aprons for themselves is sufficient evidence of this. We cannot believe that Adam and Eve went through the many processes necessary for the production of the needles and thread, with which to sew their leaves together. Then the conversation between god, as he took his stroll in the garden in the cool of the evening, and Adam and Eve, is just what we should expect from the crude imaginations of our early ancestors; as also is the manner in which the man placed the blame on the woman, and she in her turn upon the serpent. The curse, too, is precisely in the same style; first the serpent, then the woman, afterwards the man, and lastly the earth itself being brought under the divine anathema. No less apparent is the absurdity of the writer stating that Adam called his wife Eve “because she was the mother of all living,” when there were then no other human beings in existence; and declaring that god made coats and breeches (see “Breeches Bible”) of skins, when as yet death had not entered into the world. Such fables cannot be accepted as true history by the intellect of the nineteenth century.

That we suffer for the sins of our fathers is unfortunately too true; but that we shall eternally frizzle for them I declare, without the least hesitation, to be a vile falsehood and an insult to our intellects. The vices and diseases of our ancestors are undoubtedly reproduced in ourselves, as are their good deeds and lofty sentiments; and we again transmit these properties to our offspring. We have, in fact, the power of rendering happy or miserable those who follow us, and making the general state of society somewhat better or worse. Our great mental attributes were not surely evolved within us for no purpose, and to lie dormant, but that we should exercise them and use them for the moral and social improvement of ourselves and our fellows. But to imagine that we shall suffer again in some other condition of existence, because of our fathers’ sins, is the height of insanity.

Respecting the authorship of these fables, we are told that the book which contains them, as well as the other four books of the Pentateuch, were written by Moses, under the inspiration of what is called the holy ghost; but when we examine these books we find that this is without doubt false, for it is not possible for any man to record his own death and burial, and the lives of a succession of prophets who lived after him, as is done in the last chapter of Deuteronomy. Then, again, in the seventh chapter of Genesis clean and unclean beasts are mentioned in connexion with the ark fable, whereas, according to the Bible, clean and unclean beasts were not declared such until 600 years after Moses is said to have died; which proves that Genesis was not written before that late period. The town of Dan is also mentioned in the fourteenth chapter, which town had no existence until 331 years after the recorded death of Moses. In chap. XXXVI. a list is given of all the kings that reigned over Edom “before there reigned any king over the children of Israel,” proving once more that this book was not written until long after kings had reigned over Israel. Numerous other passages might be quoted to show that Moses could not have written the books that are ascribed to him. To cut the matter short, however, we are told in the 2nd apocryphal book of Ezra that he and his clerks wrote all the books of Moses; and in Chronicles and Kings that Shaphan discovered the writings in an old chest.

We find, therefore, not only that these fables of the creation and fall are not true records, but that it is not known who wrote them, although suspicion attaches to one Ezra; and yet we are expected to hang our chances of salvation upon them. We are handed these books and told by a priest that they were originally derived from god. Now instead of believing the man, and taking no pains to find out what the volume really contains, as is unfortunately the habit of most people, our duty is clearly to investigate the matter, and try to find out whether that priest speaks the truth or not, whether he has any sort of interest in making us believe the volume to be the word of god, or, assuming that he himself honestly believes it to be so, whether he is a sufficient authority on the point. Let us, for instance, take the case of a stranger to the Christian faith, one who never heard of the Bible or its gods, and who meets a Christian priest in the backwoods of America. The holy one informs the stranger that he possesses a book which has been written by god, through the medium of the inspired minds of a number of holy men. Would you consider the stranger to be a man of sound mental faculties if he at once accepted the word of the parasite, and shaped his whole career according to the teaching of that book? Most assuredly not. The most natural thing for the stranger to do would be to stare in amazement at the saint, and wonder whether he was quite right in his mind. Observing that the priest was really in earnest, and apparently of sane mind, he would parley with him, asking where he procured his book from; who were the very holy parties who had been inspired to write it; when and where they lived; and who knew anything about them: in short he would demand from the unctions one his credentials before believing such an astounding assertion as that god wrote a book. The replies would be after this fashion. The book was derived in the first instance from a publisher’s shop, where it had been printed with lead type and black ink, from another printed copy, which had been printed from another copy, and so on back to the first printed edition, which was copied from a translation of various Hebrew and Greek ‘originals.’ It was about two thousand years, he would say, since some of these ‘originals’ were written, and the remainder were supposed to be of much earlier date; but who the actual writers were he could not tell, although it was beyond doubt they were guided by god’s inspiration, for it was so declared in the writings themselves, which had never yet been doubted, except by a few naughty men who were now in hell. Do you think this would be good enough for the stranger? Of course not. Then, in the name of common sense, why should we accept these Bible books without enquiry? To accept any anonymous writings in blind faith as being the production of particular individuals, without corroborative evidence, is the act of a fool, not of a wise man. A sensible person will make some enquiry about them before accepting them.