POPULAR OBJECTIONS ANSWERED
Note.—The following objections to evolution with replies thereto are taken from a debate which the writer and several anti-evolutionists conducted some time ago through the columns of a popular weekly.
An opponent says: “The evolutionists are trying to rob God of the honor of creation by substituting certain natural laws for his omnipotent power. This world and all therein didn’t ‘just happen’; it was created on purpose. We oppose this Darwin heresy because it conflicts with the divinely-inspired word of God.... My opponent should be more positive in some of his statements and not say, ‘So-and-so is the opinion of scientists, if he would have us forsake our old beliefs and adopt his...’. In regard to that crust of conservatism of ours which he says is so thick and hard that the truth cannot percolate through it—I, for one, would rather have a defensive armor so tough that lightning could not ‘faze’ it than be so spongy as to absorb every _ism_ I came in contact with.”
Is it a reflection upon the power, the glory, and the dignity of the Almighty to say that the creative act was by the operation of natural law—a slow, gradual, long-continued act—rather than a short, quick, mechanical, or supernatural, process? Before the dawn of science even the brightest minds, knowing little or nothing of the law of cause and effect, could not conceive of God as performing his mighty works save in some manlike manner. It seems that they had the idea—and a great many still have it—that during those six days of twenty-four hours each the Creator went about his work at his little old mud-mill, mixing and grinding the material, and shaping and moulding it into all sorts of animal forms on his potter wheel. It is time for the world to rid itself of the primitive idea that man originated as a sort of hand-made, table-turned piece of pottery.
Others say that God merely “spoke” all things into existence. If that view be correct, then according to the rest of the Genesis story of creation God became so tired from this lingual feat of six days’ duration that he was compelled to take a rest at the week’s end. Is it possible that a God of infinite power and endurance should become so weary with a week’s work, either of hand or tongue, that he would require a rest?
There is not the slightest evidence that God ever did an hour’s work save through natural law.
Between the scientists and the literal interpreters of the Bible the war has been long and fierce, and has raged on many a battle front; but so far, the scientists have won in every contest. There was once a battle between the scientists and those who believed the earth to be flat—for did not John, the Revelator, see four angels standing on the four corners of the earth? The literalists were defeated. There was once a contest between the astronomers and those who believed the sun and moon revolved around the earth—“And he said in the sight of all Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajelon.... So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.” (Joshua, 10:12, 13). The literalists were defeated. There was once a clash between the geologists and those who believed the world to have been created in six twenty-four-hour days. Again the literalists were defeated. There is a combat between those who hold the view that all organisms including man were created by natural laws—operating just as they do today—and those who hold to either the potter or the vocal process of creation. The latter—well, they occupy the same position as those did who said the earth is flat, and that it was made between the blink o’ morn on that great First Monday 6,000 years ago and the evening twilight the following Saturday.
Scientists do not claim that life on this earth began by accident, or that anything “just happens.” On the contrary, it is owing to science that a belief in accidents and chance in the material world has been banished from thinking minds. It is true that a great majority of the people still believe in chance in the psychic world; such as, a certain individual prompted by certain motives, and acting in accord with his nature under certain conditions, did a certain thing, when the same individual prompted by the same motives could have done otherwise—that is to say, the same causes acting under the same conditions can produce effects of various kinds, either good acts or bad acts. But science will finally force the world to accept the whole truth—that mind is as much subject to law as is matter; that the thoughts, desires, deeds of men are shaped by law.
Scientists are trying to teach us to exercise our powers of reason, to form our own opinions from the evidence, not passively to accept opinions on authority. Their method is the direct opposite of that of the orthodox theologians. The latter wish us to regard authority, in matters of religion especially, as superior to reason. No, Mr. Opponent, I don’t wish anyone to forsake his old belief and accept mine on my authority—or that of anyone else. Let reason and evidence be the only authority.
To win converts to evolution is not my only object in discussing the subject. What is quite as important (and, frankly, to me as enjoyable) is to make use of the opportunities the discussion affords me of giving a sort of fifth-rib dig o’ the thumb to those complacent ones who (judging by the manner they acquired, and still retain, their beliefs) seem to think that the mere accident of one’s birth and parentage in a certain time and place, thus bringing him in contact with certain prevailing opinions, is proof that those opinions are true.
This writer is speaking largely from his own mental experience. He, like his opponent, absorbed orthodox theology along with political standpattism and a few other “safe and sane” _isms_ from his early environment. My opponent, like most others, never thought of questioning the truth of those beliefs, but left them undisturbed until they fossilized. On the other hand some of us, perhaps because of a radical twist in our mental make-up, set ourselves to examining those hand-me-down beliefs and found some of them lacking in some important essentials. Having changed sides on one or more important questions we naturally lost faith in the more-or-less popular theory that because an idea is old, or is held by a majority of the people, it must therefore necessarily be true. That is the extent of this writer’s “sponginess.” As a rule when we have learned that we have absorbed most of our political, religious and other early opinions from our environment through the pores of our skin we become less cock-sure we have a monopoly on truth.
As a rule latitude and longitude instead of reason shapes our opinions on the most important issues. We are generally Protestants, Catholics, Mohammedans, Confucians, Monarchists, democrats or republicans, according to whether we happened to be born and reared in Spain, Turkey, China, Mississippi or Vermont.
An old English Philosopher says: “Men have always thought and believed in masses. Throughout the whole earth you may observe opinions and ideas, like swarms of bees, clustering together upon particular spots, or as if, like certain trees and plants, they were indigenous to the soil.” Another writer says, “Men think in packs as jackals hunt.”
A young minister exclaims: “There is a gulf between man and the inferior animals which no amount of sophistry, alias science, can ever bridge. There is more than a missing link—a thousand links. Man differs from animals in mental faculties. Lower animals cannot originate an idea.... If man was evolved from a beast, where did he get his soul? You cannot say it evolved, too. There was a definite hour when man, possessing an immortal spirit, walked this earth, or else man is yet a beast.
“If the soul was slowly evolved, and if that long-tailed monkey who squatted upon the lower branches of your ancestral tree had a piece of a soul, and you should meet that poor little piece of a soul in the future land of spirits, wouldn’t you be ‘sorter’ ashamed on the morning after the Resurrection to walk up to it and say, ‘Howdy, Grandpa?’
“You may boast that your grandfather was a monkey, your great-grandfather a bullfrog, and your great-great-grandfather a wiggletail but I claim for mine no such illustrious ancestry.”
Well, that settles it! To save our pride—or our vanity rather—I suppose we’ll have to shut our eyes to the evidences and reject evolution. After all, perhaps the world’s greatest thinkers have been following the wrong trail in the pursuit of truth; instead of weighing the evidence for and against a theory they should have adopted the infinitely simpler plan of deciding it according to whether or not we like it! All anti-evolutionists find it necessary to appeal to our pride of ancestry to hold us to an ancient dogma. Even Mr. Bryan regards this appeal to petty personal vanity as legitimate argument against evolution. How they hate to give up the ennobling idea that we are the degraded descendants of a perfect, god-like pair!
Are the lower animals so very inferior to man because, as my friend says, they cannot originate an idea? Lots of us higher animals could plead guilty to the same charge; and, what is worse, two or three generations must pass before the majority of us will even seriously consider an idea some one else originated—even when all the facts are for, and none against it.
It is not necessary to bridge every gulf between man and amoeba to prove evolution. If all gaps between species were filled with “links” as thick as down on a goose’s feather then all creatures from Shakespeare to angle worms would belong to the same species. In that case all animals would be either poets or fishbait.
I know of no reason why man evolved from a lower mammal could not have acquired a soul just as easily as if he were fashioned directly from a batch of mud. And I infer from that sublime paragraph of my reverend friend’s closing with the touching salutation, “Howdy, Grandpa,”—whoop-ee!—that his idea of heaven is that it is just about as stagnant a place as he believes this world to be. May not poor little stunted souls—if there are such there—be permitted to unfold and develop in the genial environment of the realm of the blest?
My opponent seems to be perturbed in regard to the exact period in the development of the race, “the definite hour,” when man came into possession of a soul. To this question let us apply cold, merciless logic. The biologic history of the human race is recapitulated in the embryonic life of each individual. There are no difficulties in the way of determining at what precise period the soul was injected into the race-man that are not also met with in regard to the individual. My reverend friend, can you point out the “definite hour”—why not definite minute, or second?—when in your embryonic development you became possessed of a soul? And just three seconds before that event were you not in as woeful a plight as any soulless monkey that ever cooled himself by swinging to and fro, suspended from a leafy bough by means of his prehensile caudal appendage?
Is it not possible that a little bit of envy of that large-souled race of the future does not mingle with your shame of an animal ancestry when you rise and exclaim, “Away with the theory of the upward trend in God’s works; I will none of it?”—for it is a fact that whatever sense of shame one may feel for our lowly ancestors it is more than compensated for by the pride one may feel for the noble race that is to be; because if the path along which we have travelled in past ages points downward in the rear, it just as surely points upward in front. Our destiny will be as high as our origin was low. And as man drops his foolish prejudices and grows more intelligent, as he learns more about the laws of his development, the more rapidly will he advance physically, mentally, spiritually.
Ah! Parson, far better to be the tadpole ancestor of an ever-progressive angel breed than be the degraded descendant of a race of gods; yet a race without hope of ever again reaching the much-lauded, pristine purity and perfection of Adam—a creature really whose moral status was so low, and who was so weak, that he fell at the first temptation.
Civilization, culture, the moral nature of man, have been developed; they are not the remains of something that has been lost. Human nature is not ruined, but is unfinished. The god-like race is not of the past, but belongs to the future. Man entered the zone of sin not from above, but from below. Probably no man who ever walked this earth save Jesus Christ has ever breathed the pure moral atmosphere above the zone of sin. Through this zone, from the pre-human to the man of Galilee, from the sinless state of the lower animals and of the child-man to the sinless perfection of the divine, the whole race, ’mid struggles and trials and sorrows and anguish, must pass, is passing.