EVOLUTION AND CREATION.

Evening Star, Issue 21719, 14 May 1934, Page 12

EVOLUTION AND CREATION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —“ 4Phi ” fails lamentably to have any clear grasp of what materialism really is, and seems bewildered because I refuse to accept the label he thinks I should accept, although he offers' no reasons why I should. He asks:-" Why jib at the attempt of the astronomer . . . and not jib at the attempt of the biologist on the same ground?” But lam not jibbing at the attempt 11 as such ” of the astronomer. It is another matter altogether that I jib against. It is the. particular “explanation ” that he gives—an explanation that is not founded on strictly scientific reasoning; an explanation that .is hailed by mystical obscurants, not because of its inherent scientific worth, but because it favours their obscuration; an explanation that those obscurantists thrust on me as authoritative, not because as an explanation it will bear testing, but because it was wiven by an astronomer. I have no objection whatsoever to anyone offering an “ explanation.” What I do object to is having that explanation paraded and hawked about as authoritative and infallible simply because a particular person uttered it, and not because it can withstand the test of scientific reasoning. In whatever fields Huxley, Haeckel, and Spencer were “ dogmatic and cocksure ” it was in adhering to the scientific and natural explanations of phenomena. Thus certain astronomers, when they leave their astronomy as such and get into philosophical “ deep waters,” also leave their scientific reasoning and outlook _ behind them. What rational reason is there, then, for accepting their philosophising because they are astronomers? No materialist has ever asked for Haeckel’s philosophy outside the latter’s scientific training to be accepted simply because Haeckel was a biologist.- Whatever “ explanations ” Huxley, Haeckel, and Spencer have given, they have been accepted only in such degree as they are inherently scientific and rational m themselves, and conform to the facts of Nature, and not because Haeckel said so. etc. I am asked: “Had the biologist any better reasons for belief in himself than the astronomer?” Certainly he had, for the reason that he did not forsake the scientific outlook upon Nature. It was because he followed the materialistic outlook and technique of science that _ he felt strength and confidence, and is on that account more acceptable than one who forsakes it.—l am. etc., Profanum Vulgus. May 14.