Science and Religion by Wm. M. Healey

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1874

Science and Religion.

By Wm. M. Healey

We are often told that science is opposed to religion, and that one of them must soon yield up the conflict.

We find that atheists have seized upon nearly every known science to prove that there cannot be a personal, living God, who created all things. There are many of these men now who tell us that all these ideas of God must soon give way to scientific discoveries. It is useless to talk to them from a Bible standpoint, because they say, “We deny the existence of God, and so of course do not believe in any of his revelations.”

They say, “You know of God only by faith; you have not seen him. You say he created the earth and every living thing upon it, but you do not know it. We believe only what we can demonstrate and prove by science.”

Well what can these wise men prove? Oh! they can tell us about the formation of the earth, that it must have been millions of years in coming to its present state. Then they say that animal life has been developing for many ages to bring it up toward perfection. But I ask, How do you know that these things are so? “Oh,” says one, “we know the earth has been millions of years in forming by the cooling process which we see is constantly going on. But how do you know that this process has been going on at this rate for millions of years? Might it not have been more rapid at one period than another? They think not. Yes; they think not, but they do not know it has not.”

Then in regard to man and other animals, if they have been developing from lower orders for ages, we ask, Where did the first germ of life come from? Can they tell? No; but the believer in God can. He says, “Life came from God.”

Now, reader, I ask you if there is not more reason in the religious view of this matter than in that advanced by atheists and which they attempt to prove by science. They, like us, find a limit to their research, but we can go beyond them, at least one degree.

Wm. M. Healey.