Illogical Geology Part 13

But they all started from one original germ cell, hence they all ought to have the same memory pictures. Or have they entered into a mutual-benefit arrangement, like the members of a community, as Haeckel would have us believe, each contributing by actual desire and effort, I suppose, an individual share to the general progress of the whole?--No; they have all the appearance of being mere automata working at the direct bidding of a Master Mind. Every step of the process needs a Creator, just as much as the first cell division. In the words of one of the highest of scientific authorities, 'We still do not know why a certain cell becomes a gland-cell, another a ganglion-cell; why one cell gives rise to a smooth muscle-fibre, while a neighbor forms voluntary muscle;' and this also 'at certain, usually predestined, times in particular places.'[96] And in the same way the idea of a Creator would not be disposed of, even if we could possibly hit upon the probable process of world-formation. We would not, by understanding the process, really get at the cause of the phenomena, any more than we do now at the real cause of life. From the scientific method the real mystery remains as much behind the veil as ever before." (pp. 111, 112.)

Again I quote from this same work:

"The origin of organic nature could not well have been otherwise than by natural process. Do we understand all natural processes? At some time life was not in existence on our globe. All agree that it had a beginning. Even if created by the great Creator, the living was at some time formed from the not-living or the not-material. It does not take even Huxley's famous 'act of philosophic faith' to believe that. So that, in spite of all the haze that has been thrown about this question, the Biblical creation of the organic from the inorganic is no more contrary to, or even outside of, natural law than is evolution....

"But see what we avoid. According to the Bible, death in even the lower animals (and consequently all misery and suffering: the less is included in the greater) is only the result of sin on the part of man, the head of animated nature, a reflex or sympathetic result, if you will. But with evolution we have countless millions of years of creature suffering, cruelty, and death before man appeared at all, cruelty and death that ... have no moral meaning at all, save as the work of a fiend creator, or a bungling or incompetent one."[97]

The author then gives a quotation from LeConte, ill.u.s.trating the extremely various ways in which matter and energy act on the different planes of their existence, while "The pa.s.sage from one plane upward to another is not a gradual pa.s.sage by sliding scale, but at one bound.

When the necessary conditions are present, a new and higher form of force at once appears, like birth into a higher sphere.... It is no gradual process, but sudden, like birth into a higher sphere."[98]

The argument then proceeds as follows:

"The living at some time originated from the not-living. =We call it creation.= Can any one find a better name? It is preposterous to call it a process of development or evolution due to the inherent properties of the atoms, and effected by them alone. And yet it is doubtless as much according to 'natural law' as are the invariable and exact combinations of chemistry. We do not understand the ultimate reasons for chemical affinity any more than we do for gravitation. They are only expressions of the methodical, order-loving mind of Deity. Creation was only another action of the same mind, and we are not really finding any new difficulty when we say that the processes or the reasons for creative action are beyond our comprehension. When we can really solve some of the myriad problems right before our eyes, it will be time enough to complain about creation being incomprehensible or contrary to 'natural law.'

"Well, then, remembering that, even according to Huxley's 'act of philosophic faith,' the origin of the living from the not-living must at some time have taken place according to natural law, =why should we suppose that such a process was confined to one example=? If, when the young planet 'was pa.s.sing through physical and chemical conditions which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy,' the 'necessary conditions' were favorable for one such creation of life, =why not a few billion=? Would the production of a few billion such beginnings of protoplasm be any less 'natural' than of one alone?

Remember, however, that both the arrangement of these 'necessary conditions,' as well as the endowing of matter with these 'properties,'

not only requires a cause, but this cause must be intelligent, for there is indisputable design in this first origin of life.... The food for a developing embryo might, for aught that we know, be conveyed to it direct from the ultimate laboratories of nature, and it thus be built up by protoplasm in the usual way, without the medium of a parent form--other than the great Father of all. Or would it be any less according to natural law to believe that a bird pa.s.sed through all the usual stages of embryonic development from the not-living up to the full-fledged songster of the skies =in one day=--the fifth day of creation? And =if one example, why not a million=? For, remember that the youthful earth was then pa.s.sing through strange conditions, 'which,'

as Huxley says, 'it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy.'"[99]

Omitting some remarks about embryology, I continue this quotation as follows:

"But what 'law' would be violated in this springtime of the world if, instead of twenty years or so for full development, the first man pa.s.sed through all these stages =in one day=--the sixth of creation week? He might as well have originated from the not-living as the evolutionist's first speck of protoplasm, for he certainly now starts from a ma.s.s of this same protoplasm, identical, as we have seen, in all plants and animals.

"And by originating thus, he would escape that horrible heritage of b.e.s.t.i.a.l and savage propensities which he would get through evolution, a heritage that would make it not his fault, but his misfortune, that sin and evil are in the world, and which would also shift the responsibility for the evidently abnormal condition of 'this present evil world' off from the creature to the Creator, and change to us His character from that of a loving Father, fettered by no conditions in His creation, to that of either a bungling, incompetent workman or a heartless fiend; for, though I am almost ashamed to write the words, the G.o.d of the evolutionist must be either the one or the other." (p. 121.)

=With an appreciation nurtured by centuries of study of G.o.d's larger book, baffled often though she has been, and disappointed many times in the words she has endeavored to spell out, Science to-day proclaims its subject, its t.i.tle page, which she has now at last deciphered, "In the beginning G.o.d created the heaven and the earth."

FOOTNOTES:

[95] "Modern Ideas of Evolution," p. 12.

[96] "_Nature_," May 23, 1901, pp. 75, 76.

[97] "Outlines," etc., p. 116.

[98] "Evolution and Religious Thought," pp. 314-316.

[99] "Outlines," etc., p. 119, 120.