Having given Darwin's conclusions as to man's ancestry, I shall quote him to prove that his hypothesis is not only groundless, but absurd and harmful to society. It is groundless because there is not a single fact in the universe that can be cited to prove that man is descended from the lower animals. Darwin does not use facts; he uses conclusions drawn from similarities. He builds upon presumptions, probabilities and inferences, and asks the acceptance of his hypothesis "notwithstanding the fact that connecting links have not hitherto been discovered" (page 162). He advances an hypothesis which, if true, would find support on every foot of the earth's surface, but which, as a matter of fact, finds support nowhere. There are myriads of living creatures about us, from insects too small to be seen with the naked eye to the largest mammals, and, yet, not one is in transition from one species to another; every one is perfect. It is strange that slight similarities could make him ignore gigantic differences. The remains of nearly one hundred species of vertebrate life have been found in the rocks, of which more than one-half are found living to-day, and none of the survivors show material change. The word hypothesis is a synonym used by scientists for the word guess; it is more dignified in sound and more imposing to the sight, but it has the same meaning as the old-fashioned, every-day word, guess. If Darwin had described his doctrine as a guess instead of calling it an hypothesis, it would not have lived a year.[1]
[Footnote 1: Dr. Etheridge, Fossiologist of the British Museum, says: "Nine-tenths of the talk of Evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views."
Prof. Beale, of King's College, London, says: "In support of all naturalistic conjectures concerning man's origin, there is not at this time a shadow of scientific evidence."
Prof. Fleischmann, of Erlangen, says: "The Darwinian theory has in the realms of Nature not a single fact to confirm it. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of the imagination."
The January issue of "Science," 1922, contains a speech delivered at
Toronto last December by Prof. William Bateson of London before the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. He says that
science has faith in evolution but doubts as to the origin of species.]
Probably nothing impresses Darwin more than the fact that at an early stage the foetus of a child cannot be distinguished from the foetus of an ape, but why should such a similarity in the beginning impress him more than the difference at birth and the immeasurable gulf between the two at forty? If science cannot detect a difference, known to exist, between the foetus of an ape and the foetus of a child, it should not ask us to substitute the inferences, the presumptions and the probabilities of science for the word of God.
Science has rendered invaluable service to society; her achievements are innumerable—and the hypotheses of scientists should be considered with an open mind. Their theories should be carefully examined and their arguments fairly weighed, but the scientist cannot compel acceptance of any argument he advances, except as, judged upon its merits, it is convincing. Man is infinitely more than science; science, as well as the Sabbath, was made for man. It must be remembered, also, that all sciences are not of equal importance. Tolstoy insists that the science of "How to Live" is more important than any other science, and is this not true? It is better to trust in the Rock of Ages, than to know the age of the rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the Heavenly Father, than to know how far the stars in the heavens are apart. And is it not just as important that the scientists who deal with matter should respect the scientists who deal with spiritual things, as that the latter should respect the former? If it be true, as Paul declares, that "the things that are seen are temporal" while "the things that are unseen are eternal," why should those who deal with temporal things think themselves superior to those who deal with the things that are eternal? Why should the Bible, which the centuries have not been able to shake, be discarded for scientific works that have to be revised and corrected every few years? The preference should be given to the Bible.
The two lines of work are parallel. There should be no conflict between the discoverers of real truths, because real truths do not conflict. Every truth harmonizes with every other truth, but why should an hypothesis, suggested by a scientist, be accepted as true until its truth is established? Science should be the last to make such a demand because science to be truly science is classified knowledge; it is the explanation of facts. Tested by this definition, Darwinism is not science at all; it is guesses strung together. There is more science in the twenty-fourth verse of the first chapter of Genesis (And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so.) than in all that Darwin wrote.
It is no light matter to impeach the veracity of the Scriptures in order to accept, not a truth—not even a theory—but a mere hypothesis. Professor Huxley says, "There is no fault to be found with Darwin's method, but it is another thing whether he has fulfilled all the conditions imposed by that method. Is it satisfactorily proved that species may be originated by selection? That none of the phenomena exhibited by the species are inconsistent with the origin of the species in this way? If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, Mr. Darwin's view steps out of the ranks of hypothesis into that of theories; but so long as the evidence adduced falls short of enforcing that affirmative, so long, to our minds, the new doctrine must be content to remain among the former—an extremely valuable, and in the highest degree probable, doctrine; indeed the only extant hypothesis which is worth anything in a scientific point of view; but still a hypothesis, and not a theory of species." "After much consideration," he adds, "and assuredly with no bias against Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence now stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural."
But Darwin is absurd as well as groundless. He announces two laws, which, in his judgment, explain the development of man from the lowest form of animal life, viz., natural selection and sexual selection. The latter has been abandoned by the modern believers in evolution, but two illustrations, taken from Darwin's "Descent of Man," will show his unreliability as a guide to the young. On page 587 of the 1874 edition, he tries to explain man's superior mental strength (a proposition more difficult to defend to-day than in Darwin's time). His theory is that, "the struggle between the males for the possession of the females" helped to develop the male mind and that this superior strength was transmitted by males to their male offspring.