EVOLUTION.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19481, 30 November 1928, Page 11

EVOLUTION.

DEAN INGE'S VIEWS. RECONCILING DOGMA AND SCIENCE. (FEOU OIH owx CORRESrOKDSTT.) . LONDON. October 16. • "Evolution is only the method by which the eternal God carries out most of His purposes in the world,''declared the Very Rev. W. E. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, at the close o£ an address on "Evolution and the Idea of God/' at the Church .Congress. "Belief in gradual change," lie said, "is'taking the place-of the older belief in catastrophic Divine intervention. It is a question about God's method of working. I do not think that the existence or attributes of God arc invoh ed in it at all."

We must not-deify the principle ot evolution, said ,thc Dean. It was a mere assumption, though it had been made even by writers of such repute as Herbert Spencer, that the more complex was necessarily the higher or better. There were blind alleys in Nature, which had led many specic3 to lmal extinction. There was such a thing as progress in the direction of evil, as when a disease was said to be progressing. The German war-machinc was as much a product of evolution as -the Church Congress. To those who thought that the mere lapse of time must eventually bring about the Golden Age, the Devil.replied, "You forget that 1 am evolving .too." It was not even certain that we toulcl assert evolution in spiritual values. Kodin, great sculptor, had said,' "Progress exists in the world, but not in- art. Phidias will remain for ever . without a ij iva '- Jesus of Nazareth would remain for ever without a rival.. For the last three hundred years. the cosmology or view of the universe derived from the natural sciences had dominated the minds of educated Europeans at the expense of other points of view from religion, morality, and art. We ntust not forget that.other constructions .might be equally legitimate, and" that, no abstract view, such as that of physical science must be,; could convey . the whole truth. T* llß was becoming easier for our generation to understand, because the old prosuppositions of scientific thought,which had been almost unchallenged since Newton- and Descartes, were being , assailed from all sides. Instead of a dogmatic scientific creed, such as the Victorian ago wished to impose upon us, we were confronted witlN a series. 01 notes of interrogation. . " 'Ever since the creation ot tno world,' says St., Paul ,: |the invisible attributes ot God —His eternal pbwer ana majesty—have been : visible .to ■ the mind's eve through His works. never before have they been'so visible as thev may be to us if we will consent to learn from the great men consecrated their lives and abilities to studying.them. Whether we follow them in their investigations of.the unimaginably great "or of the unimnginiibly small, the picture rises beiore us of a.'simple and mainly unifornv structure, composed of a very, limited number of primary ingredients, obeying a small number of universal laws, linked together by a' web'of sympathies ami affinities, and operative over .■inconceivable] vistas of space and time."

■ An Unchanging Background. ;, Did the picture which modern science presented point most reasonablj to materialism,-pantheism, or theism? His argument iiv reply had the following four heads - ]. Evolution •is not a -metaphysical principle, but a process within Nature It is' a mere variety of change,, and there! is nothing in its working which can explain ; h,ow change ■ is. Evolution cannot explain itself. ; 2. Change cannot exist,, and cannot to thought of, except in relation to, •th,e 'unchanging. Tliis is argued by• ;KantV and his proof has neVter beuut 'shaken. The. idea of evolution implies an. unchanging -background which is not itself evolving. 3. That which is not itself evolving must be a real being not subject to spaced and time! : «, 4. We ourselves could not be conscious. of; time: and .'change; unless we; were, in aur inmost nature, ill contact with- • the super-temporal and superspatial. Evolution canuot- have created our awareness of itself. i If. this argumen.t were valid, God ,could in no.sensc.be a product of-evo-lution, nor could His Being be-involved in it. "We lieed a transcendent- &od,Who created the world,. Who.gives it all the being that it .has.- but Who is not bound up t\'itli iti Tlie hypothesis of a limited, militant God, which, has appealed to minds so different as, John Stuart Mill, Hastings Jlashdal], and H. G.- Wells, may seem to 9 absolve the Deity from complicity in-the sin aiid suffering of the world,; but only, at the price of introducing an intractable dualism. If the-good and evil principles are matched against each other in the. arena, w,ho:is the umpire? And :if I aril right .in. holding that' a. world of change implies a timeless, eternal, unchanging background, we should then have to believe. in,a super-God behind • the finite and v non-omipotent Deity whom ;we . are to accept. ,

Religion Evolving. ' '.'l wish' to emphasise this necessity of setting . th(? - object of our worship aboye the flux of phenomena, just because it runs counter to so much current thought, i "Religion itself, no doubt is evolving witli those .who possess. itThere is nothing absolute within the world of becoming. Hut the object or faith is not within the world of timeand change, and it : is absolute. Religion always believes, that there is an absolute reality and truth, and finds them .in God. .. . " And so," concluded the Dean,•"whatever some of my philosophical friends may think of me, I see nothing m what science tells us about evolution to prevent me from accepting the lat: est' dogmatic definition of the attributes of God. drawn up at Rome m JS7(i, though the scholastic, phraseology is not quite in accordance with modern ways of thinking: 'There is one living and true God, Creator, and Lord of Heaven and earth, omnipotent, eternalimmense, incomprehensible, infinite in intellect and in will and in a" perfection; who being one, singular, absolutely simple and unchangeable spiritual substance is* to be regarded ns distinct really and in essence from the wftrld, most blessed in and from Himself, and unspeakably elevated above all things that exist or can be conceived, except Himself.' "