EVOLUTION.
WHAT DO EVOLUTIONISTS TEACH?
DEDICATED TO C.F., DANVILLE, IND.
Many scientists who reject religion put on an air of superiority that is repulsive. If you call their speculations in question you at once receive credit for being an uneducated fool, a worshiper of the Bible.
Mr. Huxley advises theologians to let science alone. Wonderful advice! Do such men let religion alone? They can't agree among themselves, not even in their advice to theologians. And they ask more of religionists than they are willing to give. Dr. Lionel Beale, an English physiologist has written a volume of three hundred and eighty pages to prove that the phenomena of life, instinct and intellect, are not referable to the blind forces of nature. He avows his belief that mind governs matter; that a "never-changing, all-seeing, power-directing and matter-guiding Omnipotence" presides over all things. He also avows faith in the miracles underlying Christianity. But Prof. Huxley says, there is overwhelming and crushing evidence that no event has ever occurred on this earth which was not the effect of natural causes, meaning thereby physical causes. The factor of a divine intelligence he sets aside as of no consequence. His words are, "the doctrine that belief in a personal God is necessary to any religion, worthy of the name, is a mere matter of opinion."
Tyndall, Carpenter and Henry Thompson teach that "prayer is superstitious absurdity." Herbert Spencer is regarded by infidels as the "great philosopher," and he labors to prove that there can not be a personal God, or human spirit or self; that moral laws are simply "generalizations of utility," or, as Carl Vogt would have us believe, that self-respect, and not the will of God, is the basis and law of moral obligation. And Mr. Haeckel would have us believe that a few "monistic materialists" are the only men entitled to a hearing upon the question of "Evolution." So he excludes all true and intelligent Christians, for they are not and can not be "monistic materialists."
His words are, "It is only a select few, therefore, of learned and philosophical monistic materialists who are entitled to be heard on questions of the highest moment to every individual man, and to human society." But just what the man means by the "highest moment" we are anxious to know, as he is the most blank negative of religion that we can conceive. When he attempts to answer the religious objections to evolution, or, as he terms it, the descendence theory, he unceremoniously dismisses them as beneath his notice, giving his only argument, viz.: "All faith is superstition." He disposes of the objections drawn from first, or intuitive truths, by a simple denial of their existence, asserting that all our knowledge is from our senses. The objection that so many noted naturalists reject evolution, as it is advocated by himself and others, he considers at some length. He says, first, "Many have grown old in another way of thinking and can not be expected to change." Second, "Many are collectors of facts, without studying their relations, or, they are destitute of the genius for generalization, and so, can not rear the building. Others, again, are specialists." He says "It is not enough that a man should be versed in one department, he must be at home in all, in Botany, Zoology, Comparative Anatomy, Biology, Geology and Paleontology. He must be able to survey the whole field." His next, and mainly, is the statement that naturalists are generally lamentably deficient in philosophical culture and spirit. He says "The immovable edifice of the true monistic science, or what is the same thing, natural science, can only arise through the most intimate interaction and mutual interpretation of philosophy and observation." (See Philosophie and Empirie, pp. 638–641.)
This statement alone should stir up all Deists to a consideration of their teaching touching the sufficiency of the "Book of Nature;" for if it be true, then we must expect some other revelation, or be left to the conclusion that the Great Father has left his creatures in a great measure in a state of helplessness, unless Mr. Haeckel, or some other man like himself, can show us that the "Great Spirit" intended that he, and others like him, should do our thinking for us, seeing that we are incapable through mental deficiency, of raising the edifice, and seeing that, Mr. Huxley advises us poor (?) theologians to "let it alone." And Mr. Haeckel himself would not allow that any man is entitled to a hearing until he comprehends Biology, Botany, Comparative Anatomy, Zoology, Geology and Paleontology. Ho! evolutionists, ninety-nine out of every hundred of you, get out! You have no right to speak on the subject; otherwise, Haeckel is one of the foolish men, and talks without understanding himself. You must be at home in all those sciences, and emancipate yourselves from all religious beliefs before you have a right to be heard upon the grave question of evolution from an ancestral moneron; for you are incapable of comprehending your own monistic—materialistic origin. For, according to Haeckel, before a man is entitled to be heard he must renounce all faith in God, in the Bible, in the human spirit, and in the future life. Mr. Haeckel knows a great deal? Well, there are some very weighty men in this world? But, when they are in the east, our planet does not tip up in the west? We Christians have no right to be heard? Mr. Huxley advises us to keep our mouths shut (?). Well, that is grand? It correllates so beautifully with "free thought" and "free speech."
One evolutionist is all the time spreading himself about the preachers of religion knowing nothing in science, and another is saying to them, let science alone, and another says you can't rear the building if you try; you don't know enough. What a grand harmony there is just here? We theologians would advise "natural selection to be present with such instructors as thus advise us, and continue with them long enough, at least, to reject the worst from the school and give us a blessing in the survival of the fittest, for we would like to know our duty." So much for liberalism and broad principles.