Evolution by Sel.

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jan 24, 1884

Evolution.

By Sel.

An eminent writer thus speaks of the advocates of evolution who have been making such a stir during the last few years, after the following fashion:—

It is amusing, perhaps more so than folly ought to be, to see an ignoramus stand up and prate over evolution. It does not disturb him to be reminded that nature seems to have gone out of the business of evolution. That is nothing. He can trace anything backward, the horse to the time when he was five-toed, and the five-toed back to when he was web-footed, and the web-foot back to fins. But it is a sad thought that all upward progress has ceased. Evolution has ceased to evolve. Engravings of wheat and cattle and men found on the pyramids prove to us that none of these have changed. Four thousand years have gone by, and the first specimen of a better man does not appear. There is no sixth sense, or third eye, or winged shoulders, or telescopic eye—nothing to show that we are links in the progression upwards.

‘Nature has no longer a laboratory or pattern shop, in which she is evolving better forms of anything. There is no such thing as a plant or a grain or a tree leaving off some of its habits and taking on new ones, so as to become a different order of things. Strawberries are not approaching the size of watermelons. The fox, unmolested by traps and chains, is free to develop into something better, but he does not incline. ‘The fact is, that which was built a ferry-boat remains a ferry-boat, and what was built Great Eastern will always be a great Eastern; and it is just as true that elephants never lose their trunks, nor essay to carry more than one; the wild horse never affects a horn, nor do wild cattle abandon the fashion of two. The schools of mackerel never graduate whales. Catastrophies have occurred in which the lives of thousands of species have suddenly been arrested, and the bodies of many have been preserved in stone. The surprise never yet overtook a creature that was on its way up higher into a new and unknown species, nor do existing forms give any signs that they tend to invent new and untried organs. Neither is there any such thing conceivable that we can trace backward through the successive links of the progress of a species, without coming, at last, to the first link, which had no predecessor, and which could not have created itself. The whole system of evolution is without facts or even analogies to support it. Its wisest supporters are cautious not to make assertions. They say, May it not be so? It is reasonable to suppose, etc. All true science is based on facts; evolution is not so based, and it has no claims to be a science.—Sel.