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Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16876, 25 October 1920, Page 2

The newspaper man who furnished the message in to-day’s issue that Canon Barnes, in an address to the English Church Congress, had stated that scientific observation had practically proved that man was not created by God,' was evidently not a competent exponent of either science or theology. So far as science is concerned it has definitely established by means of careful observation that man and other animals have been developed from lower forms of life. This is what is known as evolution, a fact which is accepted by all people of average education, whether clerical or lay. How the process has been accomplished is a matter which is still under discussion, though Darwin more than half a century ago suggested a theory that evolution was duo to thei survival of the fittest among plants and animals. The fittest in this case means those organisms most suited to the environment in which they have to live. Changes in climate or the supplies of food would have to be met by changes in the forms of life to suit the new conditions. The old theology was founded on the science which was appropriate to the knowledge of those days, when the story of creation as found in the book of Genesis appeared to explain the facts. To-day theology has progressed with the advance of science and in the future it will doubtless continue to do so. Scientific men to-day consider it established that man was developed and not created at one step in his present form, but this simply puts the directing power a stage further back and does not remote the necessity for some first cause. There is no novelty about these facts and the only cause of complaint against theologians is that in their public utterances they often retain the old modes of expression which have now lost their meaning.