THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19692, 20 January 1926, Page 8

THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

ORGANISATION TO COMBAT

NOT NEEDED IN NEW ZEALAND,

{Feom Oce Own Cobbespondent.) CHRISTCHURCH, January 19. A New York message published to-day stating that bureaux will be established in England, Canada, and Australia by an international organisation tto combat the teaching of the theory of evolution in schools does not seem to affect New Zealand. No effort anparently has been made to raise the antievohitionary banner in Christchurch, at least if the views of a prominent Christchurch, clergyman are held generally. The movement, if started here, will not be warmly supported. He said that it would he better if the Americans restricted their agitation to America. . - T “Wo have sufficient controversy in New Zealand at present, without hung led into more" the Kev. S. Lawry, a veteran of the New Zealand Methodist Church, said when discussing the same subject. ‘‘My opinion is that we must hold ourselves free, accept ing whatever light may come along. It is not the Darwinian theo-y that is the trouble because the Darwinian theory has been modified by later investigators than Uarwin. The official bodies of the Methodist Church, as far as I know, have taken fairly advanced views on the question. It was discussed at the Ecumenical Conference in 1911, and the conclusion was: ‘Let us have liberty —we do not wish to compel people to think as we think.’ Our Church advises us to consult Hastings’s Bible Dictionary, which certainly takes a liberal view. , 1 .“If.. , ie " cently read ‘A Modern View of the Bible bv Dr Harry Emerson Fosdisk, an eminent American Baptist and a professor of practical theology, and the autboi of the Assurance of Immortality- . 1 Prayer,’ ‘The Meaning ot Faith, and the Challenge of the Present Crisis.’ He also deals with the question liberally. 1 SU P' pose there is not an English college of any standing that takes up, the old theory, but there are some easy-going people who ike to take eevrything as it stands, and dislike any effort to unravel the mysteries there are no mysteries for >, ln , fac K . A scientific man in Christchurch said that he felt that those who were behind the American agitation were ill-advised. ihe tone and attitude they were taking up would force scientific men to enter the controversy with less restraint than they had shown up to the present, and some o them would take up the diffusion wholeheartedly The present attitude of scientific n : cn was to allow anti-evolutionists to express thier views in the churches or in other places, while investigators said nothing _ in reply but simply went on with their atuaies and inquiries. They felt that at present evolution was the only feasible explanation of scientific facts, because there was evidence of evolution in every branch of, science