EVOLUTION THEORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20249, 8 May 1929, Page 14

EVOLUTION THEORY.

TEACHING IN THE SCHOOLS.

STRONG PROTEST VOICED.

LARGE TOWN HALL MEETING

THREE VIGOROUS SPEECHES

A meeting organised by some who fear that the new primary school syllabus leaves tho door open for tho introduction of teaching subversive of tho doctrines of Christianity took place in tho Town Ilall last evening. The subject matter of the meeting was summed up by its promoters with the use of the phrase " Apeinanism in tho Schools.'^ Speeches of protest against the teaching of evolution were made by tho Rev. P. B. Eraser, of Dunedin, and Dr. W. 11. I'ettit and tho Rev. A. A. Murray, of Auckland. Tho audience that gathered was largo enough to fill the ground floor and tho lower gallery. Before tho timo of starting those present were entertained with a panatropo recital of religious music. Propaganda pamphlets were freely distributed at the doors.

Prayer was offered by Dr. McLean for the deliverance of the nation, of tho " socalled Christian churches," and ol the boys and girls from "the snare of the fowler and the noisome pestilence." At the close of the meeting a resolution . protesting against the introduction of evolutionary teaching into the schools and requesting its elimination was carried on the motion of tho Rev. J. W. Kemp. Several voices were raised against the motion.

Clutching at a Straw. The chairman, Mr. R. A. Laidlaw, said he took it that the great gathering was proof of tho wide interest taken in, and ho trusted the strong public opposition to, the policy of the Education Department in tho schools. Ho asked how it came about that the theory of evolution came to be accepted almost universally as a fact. He believed that it was because if man was evolving upwards then there was no need for redemption. Men clutched at this straw to save them from the day of judgment. How dreadful itwas when men accepted human judgment as against divine revelation.

'llia subject of " Evolulion and tlio Schools" was. dealt with by the Rev. P. I>. Eraser. He said that the meeting was organised to draw public attention to the radical change made by the Education Department in introducing evolutionary teaching in the schools. Without any authority or knowledge of the people a revolutionary change had been made secretly, silently and surreptitiously. Official, national and compulsory recognition had been given to the most disputable, barren and devastating theory of human life ever promulgated. Evolution was now to be taught to immature ' minds without regard to consequences to religion and Christianity, without regard to the soul of man. Was the soul of man a development from the ape or a rational self-conscious soul made in the image of its Creator? This was answered in the negative by the form of evolutionary biology taught by Van Loon. Gravity of Present Crisis. Let parents know everywhere that by an act of the Education Department a changed value.had been given to human life. Biological evolution denied the soul. The syllabus stated that pupils were to be given increasing instruction in evolution, and that term was used to cover everything within the scope of human knowledge. The Biblo was ignored and set aside. This course was calculated to wreck both the usefulness of the teachers who followed it and the lives of the children committed to their care. Tho question was " What were they going to do with it?"

It was appalling that so few lovers of tho Bible and of Christ had any idea of the gravity of the present crisis. "Civilisation was sinking, not in five or ten years, but now, said IT. G. Wells. Tho real cause was the removal of the Scriptures from the supremo commanding place in human life.

Briefly surveying the situation, Mr. Frnser quoted Professor J. A\ Fleming as saying that there were three closely-con-nected problems that constantly pressed themselves on human intelligence.

The first was tho origin of the universe, tho second tho origin and destiny of man, and thirdly, tho origin and source of power of the literature known as the Bible, with its profound influence over the human race. An ordered universe presupposed man's capacity to understand, obey and love a beneficent Creator. Professor Fleming placed the origin of tho scriptures as a problem on a par with the origin of man or of the universe. Even A. P. Wallace bad said that there was reason to believe that our earth was the centre of sidereal influence. Evolution dismissed the Bible as a fairy tale. Everyone except evolutionist must stand somewhere. Tho Christian stood on the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture and asked, "Can time undo what once was true?"

A Fourfold Kevelation. They recognised a fourfold revelation of God in nature, in man, in the Bible and in Christian experience. They joyfully found a lamp to their feet and a light to their path which triumphantly satisfied their deepest longings. They found in the scriptures One who satisfied all their needs. In tho absence of a continued revelation they must stand on the dominating evidence. The Bible was their only authoritative, safe and infallible guide. It was available, suitable, and satisfying to the needs of all mankind. These were marks both of its philanthropy and of its deity. Would they permit teachers in their schools to wreck faith in that Book ? He had received from an Auckland country teacher an account of a storm that had been raised by a lesson given on evolution. How could they hope to retain tho teaching given in tho Sunday schools in face of this ? Tho evolutionist turned his back on the "Light of the World" and followed speculations of his own. As he advanced further into the wilderness of his own thinking ho denied purpose and disregarded the light of revelation. He began to attack the goodness and veracity of God revealed in man, nature and human experience. He attacked the veracity of human life by alleging that he was the normal product of evolution. He attacked the veracity of God in calling the divino Scripture the product of human reason. He was preparing for himself a headlong collision, for the divine veracity was the axis of tho universe. Evolution Not Science. Evolution was not science. Science could have nothing to do with origins and least of, all with human origin. No wonder the atheist declared that evolution had taken God to tho back door of the universe and bowed him out. Let it be considered that study of the method of creation was futile. What could be made of the miracles of Christ on water, on nature distorted, on nature dead ? Who could explain these wonders ? "We cannot form," said Lord Balfour, "even any tolerable idea of the mode in which God is related to, or reacts upon, the world. How He created it or how Ho sustains it is impossible for us to imagine."

Wisdom was more than knowledge. The claim of evolutionism to be science could not bo sustained. It was impossible for any scientist to force open the secrets of God. Science was a veracious interpretation of nature founded upon organised and verified knowledge There were to-day abundant declarations of scientists that evolution was an act of scientific, "faith," railed so in compliment to Christian faith. As a matter of fact, all was again

in the melting-pot. Professor Bateson had said that people would be wise to base their faith on the impregnable rock of superstition. Evolutionism or agnosticism investigated God. It dismissed divine revelation. It called its ignorance its omniscience. It tended to uproot out of the soul that peculiar mark of the divine image on the soul, reverence. Tho scientist of this cult formed an unfavourable contrast to the negro, who still had capacity for God. Evolution undertook to account for the origin of everything, but failed to account for benevolence or malignity, neither of which was found among the apes. There was nothing true and nothing false according to evolutionism, ft was the devastating effect of it that had increasingly led parents to seek to protect their children from this dogmatism. They had established Church schools to attain this end.

Although neutral, the State should not bo hostile to tho religious connections of the people. With public school education tho problem was more difficult, from inherent difficulties of finding a modus vivendi for supernatural revelation. Mr. Eraser appealed to parents and particularly mothers to take heed to tho danger of their children exposed to this devastating teaching. Only those blindly hostile to the Christian religion could contemplate the use of Van Loon's books as text-books. 110 had confidence in the common sense of the people, of Government and Parliament that they would remove this blunder, this blot, this token of national apostacy from the public schools. Dogamatism Challenged. Dr. I'ettit quoted the following passage from a New Zealand University student's lecture notes in Advanced Education. " The fact of evolution has been so indubitably established by scientific investigation that it should require no defence. The ascent of man from a uuicetiuiar organism to that most complex, multicellular organism, the human form, is a. fact no less true than awe-inspiring. Evolution is more than a doctrine, it is .a known fact." The amazing dogmatism of this attitude stood in striking contrast with the attitude of many eminent scientists.

Dr. Bell Dawson, D.Sc., recently declared: "Several branches of science have stated outspokenly that there is no evolution discernible in their realm, notably physics and botany. The evolutionary theory is accordingly left without a beginning or basis to start from. Then there are eminent men who deal with tho next stage from animal life to man, who admit frauklv that they find no proof of evolution, they still hold to evolution, but state that they do so ' simply as a matter of faith' (see Bateson and others)." Lord Kelvin, the greatest scientist of last century, viewing the sweeping triumph of Darwin's theories, said: "I marvel at the undue haste with which teachers in our universities and preachers in our pulpits are restating truth in the terms of evolution, while evolution itself remains an unproved hypothesis in the laboratories of science." Destitute of Proof.

The great geologist, Sir William Dawson, said of the widespread acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis: "It is one of the strangest phenomena of humanity; it is utterly destitute of proof." Professor .William Bateson, of Cambridge University, was one of the most famous of modern biologists and an evolutionist. Addressing the British Association in 1922 be showed that recent researches had produced no proof of evolution. No facts liavo been brought to light, to invalidate, or even to modify, the weighty judgment of Lord Kelvin and Sir William Dawson.

Professor Bateson said: "Variation of many kinds we daily witness, but no origin of species. . . That pai'ticular and essential bit of the theory of evolution which is concerned with the origin of species remains utterly mysterious." Regarding Mendel's experiments Professor Bateson said: "The essence of the Mendelian principle is . , that the parent cannot pass on to the offspring an element . . which it does not itself possess." It was strange that the great scientist failed to realise that this fundamental fact established by experiment sounded the death-knell of the theory of evolution. An amoeba possessed no bones, no digestive apparatus, no circulatory system, no brain, no intelligence, no moral sense. If, then, the parent could not pass on to the offspring an element which it did not itself possess how could the amoeba produce a man ?

The Missing Links. Dr. Pettit said that tho university lectures quoted above stated there were four missing links between man and tho apes. In tho caso of tho Heidelberg man nothing had been found but the lower jaw, a jaw which presented exactly the same features as those of a modern Eskimo exhibited by Professor Birkner, of Munich. The second link, Pithecanthropus, was reconstructed from a piece of skull so small that when it was examined by tho leading German anthropologists in 1895 one group declared that the skull was that of a man, another that of an ape, and a third that of a missing link. The third link, Neanderthal man, was reconstructed from a, piece of skull which Professor Virchow, the greatest anthropologist of modern times, declared to bo a recent human skull modified by disease. Regarding the fourth missing link, the Piltdown man, Professor Waterston, of London University, and Professor MacCurdy, of Yale University, declared that tho skull was undoubtedly human, while the lower jaw was that of a chimpanzee.

In 1922 Professor Eliot Smith reconstructed another missing link from a single tooth found in Nebraska. Five years later the cables announced that this tooth had been positively identified as that ot an extinct wild pig. Regarding these ape-men, Professor Virchow declared: "This so-called proanthropus, which is supposed to represent this connecting link, has not appeared. No true scientist claims to have seen him." Sir J. W. Dawson had well said: " I know nothing of the origin of man except what I am told in the Scriptures—that God created him. I do not know •anything more than that, and I do not know of anyone who does." Evolution Purely Heathen.

Mr. Murray said that evolution had passed like an epidemic through university colleges and schools and left nothing but wreckage. Evolution and Christianity were irreconcilable. Evolution was of purely heathen origin, having been formulated by the philosophers of ancient Greece. As Christian parents, they had a perfect right to say what was to be taught, their children in the schools. They were not the children of the State, and they should not tolerato their children being taught doctrines contrary to the Word of God.

"I tell you Uiat evolution is not a doctrine from above," Mr. Murray said. "It is a doctrine from beneath; it is one of the 'doctrines of demons.' It is antiChristian, and if it had its way it would sweep every vestige of Christianity from tho earth."

"I marvel that intelligent men and women should nose around cages at the zoo for their ancestors," Mr. Murray said. "Wo will go to the Garden of Eden for our ancestors."

Man did not resomble the ape; he bore the physical, moral and mental attributes of God, with whom he was capable of holding communion. They should turn their faces steadfastly against evolution, for it denied an incrrant Bible and man's divine origin. God's method was not evolution, but creation. Man could not believe in evolution and creation as well. Huxley had said that evolution made it impossible to believe the Bible. "If your minister preaches evolution do not sit in your pew another Sunday. (Applause.) Hit him in the pocket-book, and do not sit in his church for one moro Sunday." The evolutionist could not deny the terrible reality of sin, and ho could only account for it by saying that man was created with sin. The evolutionists made God the author of sin instead of man, and they took away man's accountability to God.