Reader. This is openly false. All enlightened intellects acknowledge that He who declared his intention of desolating Sodom by fire and the world by the Deluge must have had a hand in the fulfilment of his menace.
Büchner. This is your Bible history, which we reject.
Reader. But can you refute it?
Büchner. “How curious and whimsical is not the conception of a creative power, which conducts the earth and its inhabitants through various transitions and immense periods of time to a more developed form, in order to make it finally a fit dwelling-place for the most organized animal—man! Can an arbitrary and almighty power require such efforts to attain its object? Can it not immediately and without delay do and create what seems good to it? Why these roundabouts? The natural difficulties [pg 839] alone which matter meets with in the gradual combinations and formations of its parts can explain to us the peculiarity of the origin of the organic and inorganic world” (p. 60).
Reader. It is ridiculous to speak of “efforts” of the Almighty; for no one but a fool could dream of such an absurdity. Moreover, you confound creation with formation. By creation matter received existence immediately, without “roundabouts”; for creation is not movement, and therefore needs no time. This creation of matter was the work of God alone; but the formation of the earth was successively brought about, according to God's plan, through the exertion of the natural powers, which were not created to remain idle, but to carry on the objects intended by their Creator. Now, the exertion of natural powers could not give rise to a perfect order of things “immediately and without roundabouts.” Hence your argument is worthless; and it is worthless precisely on account of the “difficulties which matter meets with in the gradual combinations and formations” of complex things. But matter meets with a much greater difficulty, which you omit to mention. The difficulty is that matter does not know how to form a molecule of hydrogen; and yet there is hydrogen.
Büchner. It chanced to be formed by nature.
Reader. Indeed? Chance might form one molecule, or two, but could not form millions of millions of them all perfectly equal to one another, for chance excludes uniformity. Nor does it avail to say that their formation is the work of nature; for nature, according to you, is only matter, and consequently it cannot do more than matter itself is capable of doing.
Büchner. Science is still imperfect; we cannot as yet explain everything. But geologists refute the Bible as to the six days of creation. “The so-called coal formation alone required, according to Bischof, 1,004,177; according to Chevandier's calculation, 672,788 years. The tertiary strata, about 1,000 feet in thickness, required for their development about 350,000 years; and before the originally incandescent earth could cool down from a temperature of 2,000 degrees to 200, there must, according to Bischof's calculation, have elapsed a period of 350 millions of years. Volger finally calculates that the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us must at least have amounted to 648 millions of years! From these numbers we may form some notion as to the extent of these periods of time. They give us, moreover, another hint. The enormous distances in the universe which stagger our imagination, in combination with these almost unlimited periods of time, lead us to acknowledge that both time and space are infinite and eternal” (p. 61).
Reader. You are always the same. Your conclusion that time is infinite is pinned on the statement that the periods of geology are almost unlimited—that is, not altogether without limit. I need not show that such a rash conclusion is contradicted by your very calculations. And again, as to the geological periods themselves, their length does not clash with the six days of creation as described by the Bible. The word “day” is often used in the Bible to express a great interval of time, and may be interpreted as an “epoch,” or, as you say, a “period.” This is, in fact, the interpretation of the [pg 840] word now accepted by our writers when explaining the days of creation. Only our writers, more prudent than you, do not pretend to determine the length of those epochs or periods; for they do not indulge in wild calculations or imaginary data. When we see a difference of 331,389 years between the results of two calculations regarding the period of the coal formation, we may well suspend our judgment, and not commit ourselves by the premature choice of either opinion. But we admit the periods, nor are we afraid of identifying them with the days of creation. The Bible has nothing to fear from geology or any other science. We might, on the contrary, prove from geology the truth and divine inspiration of the Mosaic narrative. Moses was no geologist, and could not know the order of the events which took place before the creation of man, except by supernatural revelation. Now, in his cosmogony we observe not only the description of an order of events like that deduced from modern geology, but “a system in the arrangement, and a far-reaching prophecy,” as Prof. Dana well remarks,[189] “to which philosophy could not have attained, however instructed.” You see, doctor, that your geological periods, instead of refuting the Bible, furnish us with a new argument in support of its divine origin. Have you anything to reply?
Büchner. Your explanation of the Bible is quite new.