SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 29, 1877

SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM.

The world has been filled with outcries against theological dogmatism, and for a religion of reason. This is well enough. If the religion of the Bible is not a rational religion it should be abandoned. Those who profess it, claim that it is not only a rational system, but the only one which has existed, or asks the confidence of men at this time. It would be a good thing, however, if some of these gentlemen who are so anxious that Christians should avoid placing assertion instead of evidence, would direct at least part of their attention to the fashionable, scientific dogmatism of to-day. As an example of this loud talk, take the following account of a whale’s rib which was found in Maryland 200 feet below the level of the surrounding country. The rib being sent to Baltimore, Dr. John F. King, of that city, thus discourses concerning it:—

“This skeleton was deposited when the continent was submerged, at a period when the Alleghany Mountains were hidden by the sea, and ages before the eastern shore of Maryland became dry land; in fact, when the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans mingled their waters and rolled uninterruptedly across the American continent. It was deposited there long before any quadrupedal animal, or men, appeared upon the earth—ages before Adam lived.”

It is of course to be supposed that this gentleman stood by and saw the whale covered up, as he could hardly speak so authoritatively unless such was the case.—Sel.