Biology versus Theology. The Bible: irreconcilable with Science, Experience, and even its own statements

by Julian

The Flood came and swept away the whole race of man except the arkites; but the grandsons of Noah were Mizraim, Cush, and Canaan, sons of Ham; Asshur, Elam, Lud, Madai, Javan, and Tiras, the founders of the Egyptians, Cushites, and Canaanites, the Assyrians, Elamites or Persians, Lydians, Medes, Ionians, and Thracians; while Canaan and Cush gave birth to Sidon, founder of the Sidonians, and Nimrod the despot, who founded a vast empire, “the beginning of which was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calah the great city.”

Here we are introduced to agriculture from the very beginning: Adam tilled the garden of Eden; Cain, the first earth-born man, was a farmer; and Noah, the representative of the new race, was the planter of a vineyard. While Adam still lived we have tents invented, musical instruments, and “every artifice in brass and iron;” while Noah was still alive we have the fathers born of all the great empires, which have to the present day perpetuated their names. Is this credible? Is it not rather of a piece with the old system of taking the names of places, cities, and empires, and concocting personages to account for them? We all know that the ancient Greeks and Romans did so; we all know that Geoffrey of Monmouth has done as much for our own country. Thus Britain, Cornwall, Devon, and so on, suggested the mythical heroes, Bryt, Corin, and Debon. The people or place suggest the name, and the founder is a mere myth. It is wholly irreconcilable with all the experience of geology and history, that the very first families of the earth should be founders of empires, inventors of brass and iron works, tents and musical instruments, tillage and vine dressing; in fact, the men immediately following Adam and Noah were like those which Moses had seen in Egypt, and he never dreamt of a more primitive race. [22]

Now, what says science and history of prehistoric man? The earliest traces of which we have authentic record prove that men lived in caves, not cities like that of Enoch; they lived by hunting and fishing, not by agriculture and breeding sheep, like Cain and Abel; far less by vine-dressing, like Noah. They had small hands, for the implements found give room for only three fingers of an ordinary man; their skulls were long, and their legs more nearly allied to the monkey type.

There is no trace in the palæolithic period of any such human beings as Moses describes; none even in the next period, styled by Sir John Lubbock the later or “polished stone age,” like Tubal-Cain, a “worker in brass and iron,” none like Jubal, who could “handle the harp and organ.” Long, long before the “age of bronze” dawned upon the earth, ages upon ages of a ruder and still ruder race lived and passed away; a race whose instruments were stone, first rough and subsequently smooth and polished.

It is impossible in the present state of human knowledge to determine what length of time elapsed before the palæolithic age glided into the neolithic, but it must have been very great, and even then the rude life which presents its records to observation shows that man was far removed from the Mosaic description of the immediate children of Cain and grandsons of Noah. There were no builders of cities, no founders of empires; but as we ascend higher and higher from the drift, we trace a certain knowledge in pottery and a goodly skill in working up stone into warlike and other implements. The gallery graves of the earth, even in the latest age of the neolithic period, resemble Eskimo huts more than regular cities and palaces, and it is not till we arrive at the evening of this long day that we discover any trace of herdsmen and tillers of the soil.

All this vast history of man finds no place in the Book of Genesis. As the writer of that book knew nothing of the rocks and their mighty revelations, he knew nothing of man but in the state of civilised society. The one and the other are wholly irreconcilable with the logic of facts, and deserve no higher place than the wild legends of India and China, Greece, Rome, and our own Britain. What would Sir John Lubbock say to the legend: that Noah the first man, so to speak, was a vinedresser; that within a century his offspring were building a tower, the top of which was to reach the skies, a tower described as a most finished and extraordinary work of art? What would he say to the statement that primitive man, long before the neolithic or even palæolithic period produced the founders of such grand empires as Babylon, Assyria, Persia, and old Greece? It is an insult to our understanding, a contradiction to our eyes, a gainsaying of the infallible records of the rocks, to place credence in such legends. They are palpably untrue, wholly impossible, and as wholly irreconcilable with history and the experience of facts. [23]

(2.) The Scripture accounts of the increase of man wholly irreconcilable with experience and history.

We shall confine our remarks under this head to three instances—the builders of Babel, the age of Abraham, and the Exodus from Egypt. Other instances will doubtless recur to the reader, but the scope of argument would be much the same in every example.

The builders of Babel are placed about 100 years after the flood. The general impression left by the Bible account is, that the race of man was pretty numerous. “The whole earth,” says the writer, “was of one language and one speech.” This would not be said of a clan or a nation, but must refer to several nations. It would be absurd to call Sussex or Kent “the whole earth,” nor less so to say it was all of “one language and one speech.” It would be scarcely less impertinent to say all England, or all France, spoke one and the same language. But to say that all Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, England, and Sweden, spoke one language and used one speech would be far otherwise. When, therefore, the historian makes the statement that “the whole earth was of one language and one speech,” he virtually says there were several different nations, and a good round number of peoples. The writer continues—“And it came to pass as they (?) journeyed from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar and dwelt there,” and they “made bricks” (!) and used “slime for mortar,” and said one to another, “Let us build a city, and a tower whose top may reach to heaven;” but the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth. [Gen. xi., 1–9.]

Now, at the abatement of the flood the earth contained just four men and four women. According “to experience,” a population under the most favourable circumstances possible may double itself in 25 years; [24] but let us take the increase of the prolific race of Abraham, which, according to Scripture authority, doubled itself in 20 years [Gen. xlvi., 27]. This would make the entire population of the earth at the dispersion 256 souls. Suppose half males and half females, we get 128 of each sex, and supposing one-third to be adults and two-thirds children, we have somewhat less than 43 adult males, and this was the entire population of grown men in “the whole earth.” These 43 men “were all of one language and one speech.” These 43 men “made bricks,” and said one to another, “let us build a city and a tower whose top shall reach to heaven,” and the speech of these 43 was confounded, and the two score and three were “scattered over the whole earth.” Nothing of comment need be added.