2. Embryonic Development. Because the young of all animals resemble one another while in the embryo stage, and since such resemblances are found in man, it is concluded that the evolution of man from some related animal form must be accepted as the most reasonable explanation.
3. Some diseases are common to animals and man (tuberculosis, cholera, hydrophobia, etc.).
4. The similarity in structure of man and the apes.
5. The fossil remains of man. Certain skulls and leg bones have been found which are said to represent forms higher than the ape and lower than man. On the strength of such finds it is said that the "missing link" has now been supplied.
The Nebular Hypothesis.
The Frenchman de La Place (1827) first promulgated in modern terminology the theory once held by Greek philosophers, that the earth and the system in which it is a member originated from a primitive cosmic-vapor or universal fire-mist filling all space with infinitely small atoms. In this homogeneous mass motion originated, resulting in a concentration at one point. This condensation resulted in heat and light. The planetary system at first consisted of a huge gas-ball which gradually cooled, contracting into a molten mass which under the influence of centrifugal force began to rotate. This rotation became more rapid as the mass condensed, throwing off the planets, in which the process was repeated (the moons being cast off), until the earth became sufficiently cool to sustain life.
The Origin of Life.
When asked about the origin of life on earth, the evolutionists generally reply that this is not a question for science but for philosophy to answer. However, the question comes with such insistent force that the biologist finds himself constrained to offer some explanation of the origin of the simplest plant and animal life after the globe had, according to the hypothesis, sufficiently cooled to present areas in which life might arise. Necessarily, the assumption must be that life was generated out of lifeless matter. Huxley says: "If the hypothesis of evolution be true, living matter must have arisen from not-living matter, for by the hypothesis, the condition of the globe was at one time such that living matter could not have existed on it, life being entirely incompatible with a gaseous state." (The earth having been a ball of gases at the time.) Tyndall is a little more specific; he says that the combination of electrical and chemical forces acting on the primal ooze caused germs of life to originate in small bubble-like forms, (vesicles). His words are: "The first step in the creation of life upon this planet was a chemico-electric operation by which simple germinal vesicles were produced." The vesicles consisted of protoplasm, the simple substance (white-of-egg) which exists in the cells of animal and vegetable tissues, and which is composed of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and traces of other elements. From this original protoplasm the great variety of living things has been developed.
The Bearing of Evolution on Christianity.
It is evident that the evolutionary theory not only contradicts the Bible story of creation but, if true, deprives Christianity of every claim of being the true religion. If all things have come into being through the action of forces residing in matter then the world did not come into being through a divine fiat or command. As Haeckel says: "Every supernatural creation is completely excluded." (Quoted by John Fiske in "A Century of Science," 1899, p. 51.) Thomas Huxley is quite as definite: "Not only do I hold it to be proven that the story of the Deluge is a pure fiction; but I have no hesitation in affirming the same thing of the story of the Creation." ("Science and Hebrew Tradition," 1896, p. 230.) Furthermore, the theory, by its implications, disposes summarily of the immortality of the soul. The belief in an immortal soul is termed by Haeckel as "quite excluded" by the bearing of evolution on the origin of man. The fall of man becomes a myth, since man has not fallen from a high estate but has through many ages of slow development arrived at the use of reason and the dominion over nature; not a perfect man, made in the image of God, but a cousin to the tail-less apes, newly accustomed to walking on two feet, is the ancestor of our race. Without a fall of man there is no possibility nor even a necessity of redemption; our entire Christian theology would be dealing with shadowy abstractions, unreasonable fears and hopes, and purposeless strivings. The belief of the Christian is to the evolutionist of some value as a phenomenon in the history of the mind, but not the slightest intrinsic value is recognized in any of the doctrines of Christian faith, not even in the belief in a personal God. God is, according to Spencer, the Unknowable. Naturally, there can not be miracles, since all processes in nature are conceived as governed by laws not directed by a Divine Intelligence but by forces resident in nature. Hence, too, there can be no inspired revelation of God, since that would presume not only the existence of a personal God but an intervention in natural processes of thought (miracle). John Fiske wrote: The hypothesis of inspiration "conveys most certainly a conception of Divine action as local, special, and transitory; and in so far as it does this, it bears the marks of that heathen mode of philosophy which was current when Christian monotheism arose." ("Darwinism and Other Essays," 1895.) Evolution says: If there is a God we have no means of knowing Him; and what we know of nature certainly precludes the idea that God, if He exists, will concern Himself about man or break down the laws of nature even for an instant in his behalf. The conclusion is, that there is no inspired Bible. Nor indeed an absolute religion. All religious truths are considered relative, with no such distinction as true religion and false religion, since there is no criterion revealed (according to the theory) by which we can test a religion whether it be true or false. Finally, there is no absolute standard of morals. Moral truths, like the religious, are relative only. In other words, the teaching that "Christ has atoned for sin," is as little to be accepted as an absolute truth, as the command: "Thou shalt not steal" must be accepted as embodying an absolute rule of conduct. Clodd says in "The Story of Creation": "Man by himself is not only unprogressive, he is also not so much immoral as unmoral. For where there is no society there is no sin! Therefore the bases of right and wrong lie in conduct towards one's fellow; the moral sense or conscience is the outcome of social relations, themselves the outcome of the need of living….. While the lower instincts, as hunger, passion, and thirst for vengeance, are strong, they are not so enduring or satisfying as the higher feelings which crave for society and sympathy. And the yielding to the lower, however gratifying for the moment, would be followed by the feeling of regret that he had thus given way, and by resolve to act differently for the future. Thus at last man comes to feel, through acquired and perhaps inherited habit, that it is best for him to obey his more persistent impulses….. Morals are relative, not absolute; there is no fixed standard of right and wrong by which the actions of all men throughout all time are measured….. That which man calls sin is shown to be more often due to his imperfect sense of the true proportion of things, and to his lack of imagination, than to his willfulness." Clodd adds that if conduct has been made to rest on "supposed divine commands (!) as to what man shall and shall not do," that is an assumption which at best serves to restrain the "brutal and ignorant."