The Church The Schools and Evolution/The Theory of Evolution is Unproven

by Judson Eber Conant

I. The Theory of Evolution is Unproven.

The reason we reflect on this for a few moments lies in what has already been said. If evolution is a fact, iben for the Church to refuse it and fight against it would be to fight against God, which ought to bring her to swift judgment for her mad folly. But if it is onl y an unproven theory, then she is justified if she has good reasons for fighting its propagation. We will therefore note what the scientists themselves have to say regarding the theory.

 

1. Testimony for Evolution.

There are teachers of science who do not hesitate to assure us that the doctrine of evolution is now no longer a theory but an assured fact. A few representative quotations from that class will suffice.

Dr. P. C. Mitchell says, in a late edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica":

The vast bulk of botanical and biological work on living and extinct forms published during the last quarter of the nineteenth century increased almost beyond all expectation the evidence for the fact of evolution.

Prof. S. C. Schmucker, of the West Chester, Pennsylvania, State Normal School, in his book, "The Meaning of Evolution," says:

Among students of animals and plants there is no longer any question as to the truth of evolution. That the animals of the present are the altered animals of the past, that the plants of today are the modified plants of yesterday, that civilized man of today is the savage of yesterday and the tree dweller of the day before, is no longer debatable to the mass of biologists.

Professor Fish, then of Denison University, Granville, Ohio, not long ago dictated to his class, of which the writer's daughter was a member, the following statement:

Organic evolution is the key to all biological thinking of today. It is not a theory but a fact, because the main facts are true. Man is the off-spring of the lower animals, and the ancestry can be traced back to the simplest forms of animals known. All medical research takes that fact into account.

Prof. S. W. Williston, department of paleontology, University of Chicago, says:

I know of no biologist, whether of high or low degree, master or tyro, who ventures to suggest a doubt as to the fundamental truths of organic evolution.

Prof. William Patten, department of biology and zoology, Dartmouth College, says:

Evolution is the accepted doctrine of the natural sciences to the extent that it has long ceased to be a subject of debate in standard scientific journals or in organized conferences of men of science.

Prof. Charles B. Davenport, department of experimental evolution, Carnegie Institute, Washington, D. C., says:

I do not know of a single modern scientifie man who does not believe in evolution.

And Prof. Frank R. Lillie, department of embryology, University of Chicago, says:

I feel pretty impatient over the statements of certain religious teachers that evolution has collapsed.

These statements are sufficiently representative to indicate the attitude toward the theory of evolution of a great section of the scientific world today, ineluding many science teachers in schools founded and endowed by the Church for the giving of Christian education.

But it is not true that the theory is universally accepted or even scientifically proved to be a fact. Let a few scientists of at least equal eminence with those quoted above bear their testimony.

2. Testimony Against Evolution.

But before we quote this testimony it may be well to pause a moment for a little information that may make it more intelligible to us.

The so-called proofs of evolution are derived from both the biological and the geological realms of natural science.

a. We will consider, first, the so-called proofs taken from the biological realm.

Darwin's theory was arrived at from data taken from the biological realm, and consists of two doctrines. One is the doctrine of natural selection, which was his own personal contribution to the discussion, and the other is that of the inheritance of acquired characters, which he borrowed from Lamarck. The former is the doctrine meant when pure Darwinism is referred to.

(i) The Doctrine of Natural Selection.

Darwin himself said:

We cannot prove that a single species has changed,

and, also,

Many of the objections to the hypothesis of evolution are so serious I can hardly reflect on them without being staggered.

Dr. N. S. Shaler, department of geology, Harvard, says:

It begins to be evident that the Darwinian hypothesis is still essentially unverified. * * * It is not yet proven that a single species of the two or three million now inhabiting the earth had been established solely or mainly by the operation of natural selection.

Professor Fleischmann, of Erlangen, has said:

The Darwinian theory of descent 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.

And John Burroughs, although an evolutionist up to his recent death, said of Darwin, in the August, 1920, Atlantic Monthly:

He has already been as completely shorn of his selection doctrines as Samson was shorn of his locks.

If these statements from scientific men mean anything at all, they mean, at least, that pure Darwinism is altogether unproven, if not that it is dead.

(ii). The Doctrine of Acquired Characters.

Spencer made this doctrine the fundamental one in his evolutionary philosophy. Its importance was so vital to him that he said:

Close contemplation of the facts impresses me more strongly than ever with the two alternatives —either there has been inheritance of acquired characters, or there has been no evolution.

It is of great interest, therefore, to note what competent scientists have said about this doctrine.

Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan, department of science, Columbia University, says:

Today the theory has few followers among trained investigators, but it still has a popular vogue that is wide-spread and vociferous.

Alfred Russell Wallace, in his "Autobiography," said:

All the available evidence is opposed to the doctrine of acquired characters.

Prof. William Bateson, in his 1914 Presidential Address before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, said:

We have done with the notion that Darwin came latterly to favor, that large differences can arise by the accumulation of small differences.

He also remarks that the new knowledge of heredity shows that whatever evolution there is occurs by loss of factors and not by gain, and that in this way the progress of science is

destroying much that till lately passed for gospel.

And commenting on these remarks of Bateson, Prof. S. C. Holmes, of the University of California, says they are

an illustration of the bankruptey of the present evolutionary theory.

Then Prof. George McCready Price, department of geology, Pacific Union College, Helena, California, has said very recently:

It has long since been definitely settled that acquired characters are not transmitted in heredity.

And in another place he exelaims:

If cells did not maintain their ancestral character in a very remarkable way, what would be the use of grafting a good kind of fruit on to a stock of poorer quality? The very permanency of the graft thus produced is proof of the persistency with which the cells reproduce only " after their kind."

Then in speaking of Mendel's discoveries in the realm of heredity, and which have now become scientifically demonstrated laws, he says that

the whole foundation of biological evolution has been completely undermined by these new discoveries.

And he sums up the conclusions to which present-day scientists are coming, in the words:

The principles of heredity, as now understood, have brought us back to that great truth which is given in the first chapter of our Bible, that each form of plant or animal was designed by the Creator to reproduce only "after its kind."

The one who accepts this testimony, therefore, is compelled to conclude that the doctrine of acquired characters is also dead.

(iii). The Biogenetic "Law."

In addition to the two forms of the theory above noted, Haeckel added emphasis to these so-called biological proofs by putting forth a doctrine that came to be called the biogenetic "law," even though it was nothing but a hypothesis. It was called the recapitulation theory, because it was imagined that the developing human embryo recapitulates or passes through successive stages of the more mature forms of some of the lower animals.

Concerning this theory Dr. A. Weber, University of Geneva, Switzerland, said in the "Scientific American Monthly" for February, 1921:

The critical comments of such men as O. Hertwig, Kiebel, and Vialleton, indeed, have practically torn to shreds the aforesaid fundamental biogenetic law. Its almost universal abandonment has left considerably at a loss those investigators who sought in the structures of organisms the key to their remote origins or to their relationships.

So it would seem that if this form of the theory is utterly destitute of proof, the whole biological foundation of the theory is gone.

It is perfectly in harmony with scientific testimony, therefore, that Professor Price says concerning this phase of the theory:

The science of twenty or thirty years ago was in high glee at the thought of having almost proved the theory of biological evolution. Today, for every careful, candid inquirer, these hopes are crushed; and with weary, reluctant sadness does modern biology now confess that the Church has probably been right all the time.

If these men have borne faithful testimony to the situation as it now exists in the biological realm, the only conclusion possible is that the borrowed portion of Darwin's theory has also utterly collapsed.

It is passing strange, in view of these facts, that competent and scholarly men of science should still cling to a theory so utterly discredited by eminent scientists. Is it because they are determined to believe in evolution in spite of such evidence to the contrary, or is it because there is still left a foundation for the doctrine lying back of all this which has not yet been disturbed, even though "the biological clues have all run out," as Professor Price says they have?

The supposed evidence of geology, with its theories of uniformity and successive ages, forms precisely such a foundation.

b. We will consider, therefore, in the next place, the so-called proofs taken from the geological realm.

Dr. T. II. Morgan, who was quoted above as against the theory of the inheritance of acquired characters, rests his faith in the theory of evolution on a geological foundation. He says:

The direct evidence furnished by fossil remains is by all odds the strongest evidence we have in favor of organic evolution.

Has present-day science anything to say about this? In spite of the collapse of the supposed biological proofs, are there any tangible and scientifically established proofs in the geological realm?

Professor Price, who, as noted above, is a geologist, and therefore speaks according to first-hand knowledge, shows that fossil remains are deposited over many thousands of square miles in widely separated sections of the earth, not only in the opposite order from that required to prove the theory of evolution, but in a great variety of orders, demonstrating, as he says, that they cannot be arranged off into ages, but that they simply indicate different forms of life that existed side by side. He then exclaims:

How much of the earth's crust would we have to find in this upside down order of the fossils, before we would be convinced that there must be something hopelessly wrong with the theory of Successive Ages which drives otherwise competent observers to throw away their common sense and cling desperately to a fantastic theory in the very teeth of such facts?

Then he tells us that

the theory of Successive Ages, with the forms of life appearing on earth in a precise and invariable order, is dead for all coming time for every man who has had a chance to examine the evidence and has enough training in logic and scientific methods to know when a thing is really proved.

And he concludes that the work of strict inductive science has destroyed this "fantastic scheme" forever,

and thus leaves the way open to say that life must have originated by just such a literal creation as is recorded in the first chapters of the Bible. If these statements have any meaning at all, they can mean only that the geological foundation for the theory of evolution has also collapsed.

c. It remains for us to listen to the testimony of a few more men of science concerning the whole theory of evolution in general.

Professor Virchow, the greatest German authority on physiology, and once a strong advocate of the theory, has said:

It is all nonsense. It cannot be proved by science that man descends from the ape or from any other animal. Since the announcement of the theory, all real seientific knowledge has proceeded in the opposite direction.

Professor Tyndall, in an article in the "Fortnightly Review," said:

There ought to be a clear distinction made between science in a state of hypothesis and science in a state of fact. And inasmuch as it is still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of exclusion ought to fall upon the theory of evolution. I agree with Virchow that the proofs of it are still wanting, that the failures have been lamentable, and that the doctrine has been utterly discredited.

Prof. L. S. Real, physiologist and professor of anatomy in King's College, London, says:

The idea of any relation having been established between the non-living and the living by a gradual advance from lifeless matter to the lowest forms of life, and so onward to the higher and more complex, has not the slightest evidence from the facts of any section of living nature of which anything is known.

Professor Zoeckler, of the University of Greifswald, says:

The claim that the hypothesis of descent is scientifically secured must most decidedly be denied.

DeCyon, the Russian scientist, says:

Evolution is pure assumption.

Prof. George McCready Price says:

In almost every one of the separate sciences the arguments upon which the theory of evolution gained its popularity a generation or so ago are now known by the various specialists to have been blunders, or mistakes, or hasty conclusions of one kind or another.

And Sir J. William Dawson says:

"The evolution doctrine itself is one of the strangest phenomena of humanity." It is "a system destitute of any shadow of proof, and supported merely by vague analogies and figures of speech, and by the arbitrary and artificial coherence of its parts." And he concludes that it is "surpassingly strange" that such a theory should find adherents.

To this list might be added such names as those of Professor Henslow, former President of the British Association; Prof. C. C. Everett, of Harvard; Dr. E. Dennert; Dr. Goette; Prof. Edward Hoppe, the "Hamburg Savant"; Professor Paulson, of Berlin; Professor Rutemeyer, of Basel; and Prof. Max Wundt, of Leipsic.

After all this contrary testimony on the part of such unquestioned authorities, we are forced to conclude not only that the testimony for evolution is far from unanimous, but also that the theory is altogether unproven, and that it is therefore utterly unscientific to teach it as a fact, especially when those who do so furnish us with no direct evidence whatever.

So long, therefore, as there is an unbridged gulf in the sub-organic realm between nothing and matter, in the organic realm between the non-living and the living, and in the super-organic realm between animals and man, the Church cannot be blamed for being scientific enough to refuse to accept such an unproven and discredited theory, at least until a few facts are forthcoming. Until then we must conclude that all the proofs the scientists can furnish rest altogether on inferences and assumptions.

When evolutionists can produce matter from nothing or increase energy by any natural means known to man, or bring forth the living from the nonliving, or bring into existence even one new and distinct species, then they will be in a position to compel the Church to listen to proofs; but until then the Church is forced to reject evolution.

The most serious aspect of the controversy, however, lies in the second objection mentioned above.