EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY by Geo. McCready Price

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 14, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 49.

EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY

By Geo. McCready Price

BY GEO. MCREADY PRICE

A SURE GUIDE TO TRUTH.

In trying to choose between the conflicting claims of Evolution and Christianity, we must first settle upon what is to be our authority to decide these questions. None of us saw the world made. None of us have ever come back from beyond the grave. None of us know, except upon outside evidence of some kind, either from the Scriptures or science, how the world originated; how we ourselves came to be here; or what our relationship is or ought to be to the universe or to its Author. Hence, the first thing to settle upon is what kind of evidence we are to accept.

Ancient Theories of Cosmogony.

During successive centuries the Greeks had many a brilliant theory concerning the origin and make-up of the universe. Some of these became quite generally received; and soon, like those of Plato and Aristotle, had a moulding influence on “science” and philosophic thought for centuries afterward. But the crude scientific guesses of those days we have long since outgrown; and, like the astronomical theory of Ptolemy, which said that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun and stars all circled about it, we have long since consigned them to the limbo of literary curiosities. With them also have gone the numerous chemical and geological theories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And what assurance have we that this now popular theory of evolution will not also be outgrown and discarded for something more in harmony with the better known facts of science? It may be in one form or another almost universally accepted by scientific men; but was not the Ptolemaic system of astronomy absolutely universal for over a thousand years?

We must not forget the ages during which “the follies of Alchemy” were regarded as science; and the paramount influence of the planets over human destiny exalted into a kind of religion. Already the discoveries of recent years have proved many of the foundation principles of Geology and Evolution as hard for us of the twentieth century to continue swallowing as the “deferents” and “epicycles” of Ptolemy were to Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton. How long ere it will be seen that we have outgrown the geological absurdities about the successive forms of life that have peopled the globe, as we have the infant lispings of all the other sciences; and who will then care for the brilliant theories of evolution?

To be a little more definite I may here anticipate a little, and say that it has recently been discovered that nothing in geology can prove one kind or “set” of fossils to be intrinsically older than any other kind; and, moreover, that the earlier founders of the science, Hutton, William Smith, and Cuvier, did not even try to prove this most important major premise of the science, but simply assumed it. These relative “ages” of the fossils being now exploded as mere fancies, what is to become of those towering structures built upon them as the bed-rock of science by Darwin, Spencer, Haeckel, and others? and how long will it be ere these much-admired temples of human fame and cunning are heard tumbling about our heads?

Not Proved.

I trust this outline is sufficient to show that the theories of modern science are, to put it as mildly as possible, not proved beyond the possibility of a doubt. In fact, I think we will all acknowledge, on a little reflection, that all human experience and wisdom, prolonged over millenniums of time, could only give us crude guesses, more or less probable, concerning man’s origin and his relationship to the great Father of all. In fact the only way that our poor, limited faculties can really be sure of anything at all is through a revelation from some Being possessed of absolute knowledge. Reason is the highest and noblest of our faculties, but, like all the others, is subject to the limitations and imperfections of mortality and sin; and, apart from divine guidance, will trick us at every turn, just as our senses do until trained to see and feel and hear. It needs the illumination of divine light to keep us from incorporating our own secret wishes and predilections with our explanations of the mysteries of nature. The shores of time are strewn with the sad wrecks of human speculations, built with the greatest care by giant minds, who thought they could traverse the channels of the great unknown without a pilot.

The One Book.

Is there then nothing on this subject to which we can turn with unreserved confidence as an absolutely safe and unerring guide in all matters relating to man’s origin, duty, and destiny?—Ah, yes, the Bible.

Hast thou never heard Of such a book? The author, God Himself, The subject, God and man, salvation, life And death—eternal life, eternal death— Dread words! whose meaning has no end, no bound. Most wondrous Book! bright candle of the Lord! —Pollok’s “Course of Time,” p. 56.

And yet the claims of the Bible to be an all-sufficient guide concerning all these subjects of human origin and destiny, are not without their proper evidences. For there are moral facts and evidences far more weighty and certain than anything to be drawn from the natural world. No fact is more certain, none comes home to the individual human soul with more insistence, than, at some time in our lives, there rolls upon you and me the sense of utter sinfulness. And the highest and most conclusive evidence of the divine origin of our Bible is its adaptation to this need of the sin-sick soul, and the marvelous transformations it produces in the lives of those who accept and believe its teachings.

The Bible is indeed the message of God to us; and were the evidences of evolution a thousand times as strong as they are supposed to be, we would still be justified in smiling at their seeming probability, and in putting our implicit faith in the literal teachings of Jehovah, knowing that, when He undertook to give us a revelation, He meant what He said, and said all that was necessary to be said.

I shall not attempt to give here the various evidences of the inspiration of the Bible, tho, as I have said, there are such evidences, and amply sufficient. But in these investigations I shall treat the Bible as of supreme authority, and shall insist that where the teachings of Evolution and Geology contradict those of the Scriptures the former must be at fault somewhere.

Our business may then be to find out as best we can just where, and how, the scientific argument is faulty, and to present the true teachings of science on these points; because, having the same Author, it must follow that “the book of nature and the written Word shed light upon each other.” This, I protest, must be indeed the only truly scientific method of arriving at absolute truth. It is the only common-sense method. We must always let the more easily understood and the more certain explain the less easily understood and the less certain. Hence, I repeat, the only common-sense way is always to take God’s written Word to guide our treacherous senses and frail reason in spelling out the lessons from God’s larger and more difficult book written in tree and rock, mountain and meadow. And so the Bible is the only safe guide in science, as in history or morals.