EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY by Geo. McCready Price

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 8, 1905

EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY

By Geo. McCready Price

BY GEO. McCREADY PRICE

X. GEOLOGY THE MOTHER OF DARWINISM.

Assumptions of Darwinism.

I TAKE up the subject of Darwinism where it was left in my last article. I was there considering three assumptions involved in the theory:

(1) That species are variable without limit. (2) That the time involved is "long enough" to develop in this way all the life forms now in existence. (3) That the general tendency of the unlimited variations is toward development, not degeneration.

We have examined the first of these assumptions, and it has been found to be utterly false, utterly contrary to nature as we know it. To repeat the recent words of a high scientific authority:

The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of the imagination.

I must, however, confess that it is somewhat difficult to understand some of these recent sweeping condemnations of Darwinism; for after learning that a certain learned man has repudiated the theory, we often find that he still believes in evolution somehow—perhaps has invented a theory of his own to account for what they all believe to be the great general fact, viz., that in some unknown way the higher forms of life (man perhaps excepted) have been produced naturally out of the lower. But why is this? Why will intelligent, educated men, many of them undoubtedly lovers of the Bible, thus cling to some intricate, unproved and unprovable theory of the origin of organic forms contrary to all the known facts?

Geology a Groundwork of Error.

There can be but one answer. It lies in the second of the assumptions mentioned above—an assumption which they all take as an axiomatic fact. They all believe in Geology as currently taught. Geology is one of the youngest of the sciences, and, as it seems, is about the last to be regenerated by common sense—a long-desired but long-deferred result. But all modern scientists take for granted that Geology has demonstrated that life has been on our globe for millions of years, and that there has certainly been a succession of life here from the low to the high; and they think some form of connected, genetic development much more reasonable than separate, successive creations—on the instalment plan as I have elsewhere called it. Darwin could never have found a half-dozen school boys to listen to him, if Lyell and Hutton, Smith and Cuvier, had not for several generations got the educated public to accept as "science" the absurd pretentions of the Geology.

Behold the sad but natural results of trusting to human reason and science for a hundred years in plain contradiction to the Word of the Infinite God! The humble child of faith may well say with David, "I have more understanding than all my teachers; for Thy testimonies are my meditation." Ps. 119:99.

The Tendency of Variations.

Before touching on the second of the above mentioned assumptions about geological time, I wish to notice very briefly the third, viz., that the general results of variation must tend always in an upward direction. For a fuller treatment of this part of the subject I would direct the reader to what I have elsewhere ("Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science," pp. 213–220) said on this subject. Here I can only say in brief, that all our experience tends to show that degeneration has marked the history of every living form since their ancestors were embalmed in the rocks at the time of the Deluge; and that even considered abstractly, the variations induced or perpetuated by an unsuitable environment such as of food, climate, etc., must inevitably tend toward the degeneration of every organic type thus affected. Natural selection or the survival of the fittest may tend to delay or partly to neutralize this tendency of a hard environment to bring about degeneration of the type, but the invariable tendency of an unfavorable environment in either plants or animals is not to develop, but to degrade.

Geology and Evolution.

Coming back now to the subject of geological time, my purpose in this article is to make plain, if possible, the connection and logical relation between Geology and Evolution. The merits of the former as a science, and the facts of the true Geology—for there must be a true science of the rocks—it will be the object of future papers to discuss. The work here is simply to show that without the baseless assumptions of Geology there could not possibly be any theory of Evolution—science would as never before stand face to face with the sublime yet awful fact of Creation by the direct act of the Infinite God.

For what is the use of talking about the origin of species if Geology can not prove that there has actually been a succession and general progress in the life upon the globe? What if no single fossil form can be proved to be intrinsically older than any other form, and thus these buried plants and animals be only the "classification series" in the life of the Antediluvian world? Is it worth while talking about the development of superior types by natural selection during the paltry six thousand years of Biblical time? Or, even granting unlimited time, what sort of a scheme of Evolution can we construct, if Geology can not furnish us ready-made the succession of life from the low to the high, as the skeleton or framework on which to build it! No one would dream of attempting such a feat.

Remembering, then, that the geological succession of life is merely the framework or skeleton of the Evolution theory, but utterly without a shred of evidence in its support, and that, from the Biblical standpoint, this same succession of life-forms from the low to the high is just the "taxonomic" or "classification series" in the life of the Antediluvian world, we begin to see about how the case stands. If no one kind of fossil can be proved to be intrinsically older than any other kind, then we may well smile at the curious feat in logic of attempting to bring in this geological succession as evidence in favor of Darwinism.

Surely some strange things passed for scientific proof during the nineteenth century.

Rules of Evidence.

It is a maxim of the law of evidence, as stated by an eminent jurist of New York, that every fact in a chain of proofs "must be proved independently by direct evidence, and must not be itself a deduction from some other fact." In other words, you can not draw an inference from an inference. Another equally important rule of evidence is that "the collection of facts from which an inference is to be drawn must not only be consistent with the probable truth of that inference, but they must exclude the probable truth of any other inference."

But far from conforming to these and other rules when "proving" the doctrine of Evolution, its advocates manifest such utter contempt for the rules of logic, that we might well call it conspiracy or collusion between the witnesses. For the earlier geologists assumed the succession of life bodily, and Agassiz and the other geologists of the early nineteenth century arranged the details and the exact order of these successive forms by comparison with the embryonic life of the individual; and now in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, the evolutionists, led by such men as Spencer and Haeckel "prove" their theory of Evolution by showing that the embryonic life of the individual is only "a brief recapitulation, as it were, from memory," of the geological succession in time. But what a foul slander against science, to palm off this upon a credulous world as an example of her methods of research!

The Only True Key.

And so, with "Darwinism at its last gasp," and its "numbered," days and with even the mirage of geology, its supposed foundation, fading from our vision, it is surely with renewed courage and faith that we turn to the dear old Book which has told the one story all these years. They only are truly scientific who take God’s written Word as the key in studying His larger book of nature.

And how appropriate that, at such an intellectual crisis as this, the Lord is sending a special message to the world about His created works!

"Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come; and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters." Rev. 14:7.

And above all, how appropriate that the Creator is now giving to the world anew His Sabbath as the souvenir or reminder of a creation brought about, not on the instalment plan, as the geologists have taught, but in six literal days!—a reminder also of His power to re-create or redeem us from sin and its consequences!

[The next article in this series is entitled "Some Geological Definitions."]