EVOLUTION EVIDENCES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19435, 22 October 1925, Page 11

EVOLUTION EVIDENCES

(To the Editor.) ' Sir, —I notice that your Saturday’s j issue contains corespondenco relating I to the report of my address delivered 1 at the Mission Tent the previous Sun- ! day evening. I scarcely deserve the j title of a scientist, as it was not in ; this capacity that I came to the city, j My work is to preach the Gospel. | Carrying out my commission it is cs- ; sential that I raise my voice against j the errors which are gnawing at the vitals of Christianity. Consequently • evolution as taught to-day, theistic and ! atheistic, with their erroneous tcach-

ings, have been reviewed in the light of facts and the Bible. In regard to thy reference to Le Conte, I notice that your correspondent did not complete my quotation. The very fact that Lo Conte says the “truth” or “falseness” of “the process of evolution,” “its acceptance or rejection is no trifling matter,” admits of the possibility of the theory being proved false. And here is my claim: Evolution offers no proof whatsoever in support of its hypothesis. On the contrary the record of the creation of this planet and all species of life upon it as recorded in the Bible, which your correspondent calls “the old creation theory,” is upheld everywhere by scientific fact, and has never yet been disproved. In reference to the nebular theory as an explanation of the origin of the earth, may I state that this theory is not held universally by evolutionists. In a recent debate held in San Francisco on the question as to whether evolution is true or not true, Dr Maynard Shipley, president of the Science League of America, presented the following hypothesis as explanation of the origin of planets. I quote him: “To sum up. we may say that the earth and the members of the solar system are: (1) Either masses of matter thrown off by the sun as a result of tidal forces, set up by a passing star; or (2) they are masses of matter captured by the sun’s gravitational field as they came under our monarch’s influence in passing through the region of space occupied at the time by our ‘lord of day’; or (3) these bodies may all be the children of a vast nebula, derived from the parent body in a manner not yet fully understood in every detail.” Here are three conflicting ideas and opinions, advanced as proof as to the origin of the material which composes our solar system. And this is a typical specimen of the ‘proof’ offered by evolutionists. Note the uncertainty of a definite satement. He makes three guesses and then, with consummate egotism and self-satisfaction, he concludes his argument by saying, “that is all that need be said about the origin of the earth.”

Let me cite another illustration of such reasoning, this time from a group of Yale university professors in a recent book entitled “The Evolution of Mau.” On pages 76-78 are to be found the following words or phrases indicative of uncertainty: “May be,” “may perhaps,” “is possible,” “more likely,” “presumably,” “much puzzled,” “one theory is,” “a secondarv theory is,” “a third explanation is,” “we believe,” “some authorities hold,” “indicates the possible,” “believed to be,” “seems to be,” “strongly suggested,” “is indicated,” ‘pretty well agreed,’ “some believe,” “others say,” “must likewise assume,” “no one knows.” This kind of phraseology can bo duplicated in almost any book on evolution. All these men acquired the habit from their father Darwin. Here are a group of phrases from a characteristic page of his principal work: “Perhaps,” reasonably suppose,” “can not be supposed,” “has probably,” “perhaps,” “seems impossible to decide,” “which apparently,” “almost implies,” “in all probability,” “would perhaps,” “difficult to say,” “possible.”—“Origin of Species” Part 1, pages 320-321 (P. F. Collie and Son ed). It has been estimated that he used such phrases something like eight hundred times in this book. A “may be” “is laid upon” “a might bo” and a “supposition” “upon a presumption,” and so on, until the edifice of theory reaches a dizzy height, and the last block laid down is considered as firm as the first. Such a proceedurc is a violation of the rule of circumstantial evidence, which declares that “one presumption of fact can not be based upon another”—l6 Corpus Juris, 765. You have the same kind of reasoning in your correspondent’s letter when ho quotes the great Swedish chemist and astronomer, Svante Arrhenius. Notice again the terms of uncertainty: “His belief,” “he thinks,” and “may have come.” And after all what someone “thinks” concerning such matters is of little consequence unless he can offer definite proof. While pointing out the gross uncertainty contained in the above statements let me state right here that I am in no way opposed to the investigations of the professors. And I am well aware, as is your correspondent, that any scientific investigation must needs involve hypothesis in its commencement, but it remains a hypothesis until proved. What I object to in the theory of evolution is that thinking men are asked to accept such philosophical speculations as proof when as yet the whole theory is one of pure hypothesis. Recent investigation rules out the Darwinian theory of such things as “natural selection,” “survival of the fittest.” etc. Dr Scott said in Edinburgh before the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1921: “For the moment, at all events, the Darwinian period is past; we can no longer enjoy the comfortable assurance, which so long satisfied so many of us —all is again in the melting pot. By now, in fact, a new generation has grown up that knows not Darwin.”

Now let me give your correspondent some facts which disprove the theory of evolution. The major portion of the argument for evolution depends upon the assumed geological evidence. , But the current clasification of the rocks is not according to the natural conditions in which they are found, but acording to the demands of the evolution theory, and the supposed order of the fossils from the lowest rocks to the highest could never be worked out without the theoretical “succesion of life” as a guide. And so the very evidence that is used as the strongest proof of the theory depends upon the theory to make it toll the 1 true story, making a plain case of “tampered witness.” In the report which appeared in your columns evidence was given which showed that over vast tracts of country many thousands of miles in extent, the strata is completely “upside down” according to the theory. The falsity of the licory is also proved by fossil evidence. In March 1922 John T. Reid, member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers and mining director of the Nevada United Mining Companybrought to New York, where it was exhibited at the Herald Square Hotel, the “fossil sole” of a shoe, or sandal, which according to orthodox methods of estimating age by geological process, must be set down as between 36 and 360 million years old. The particular rock in which this fossil is seen is admittedly Triassic and is marked with veinlets of calc-spar characteristic of the blue limestone of the Triassic stratum, and is set down by Dr William D. Matthews, palaeontologist of the American Museum of Natural History, as ‘ ‘ 300,000,000 years old. ’ ’ But careful examination of the fossil shows it to correspond with the sole of a child’s shoe No. 13, and the marking of triie stitches being so wonderfully clear, experts declare that it is identical with the styles manufactured in Europe about. 300 years ago. Further "evidence of tlw falsity of

the theory is available from the report of the Doheny Scientific Expedition, which explored the vicinity of the Hava Supia Canon, a tributory of the Grand Canon in Northern -Arizona, during the months of October and November, 1924. Associated with the party, which was led by Mr Samuel Hubbard, Curator of Archeology in the Oakland Museum, was Mr Charles W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology, United States National Museum. The report of the findings therefore has high scientific authority behind it. Among other pictographs found by the expedition was one of an animal that has been pronounced a dinosaur by its discoverers. Now Dr Roy Chapman Andrews, a noted authority on dinosaurs, declares positively that “Dinosaurs wero extinct 12,000,000 years before man emerged.” (This is, of course, according to the evolution theory). But if that were correct then reptiles of some sort or other low form of life must have made this pictograph, which has every evidence of being made from life. No wonder, then, that the official report of the expedition contains the following:—“The fact that some prehistoric man made a pictograph of a dinosaur on the walls of this canon upsets completely all of our theories regarding the antiquity of man.— ” “Report of Doheny Scientific Expedition,” p. 5. During my address I showed photos of these and other fossils on the screen. To wave them aside and call them “silly things” does not meet the issue. They arc some of the many evidences which disprove the theory of life succession. Fossil forms the world over are certainly the evidence of a former life, and that this life was destroyed by some tremendous catastrophy. But to the question as to how such destruction took place evolution must remain silent. The Bible gives the answer. The deluge is the explanation. The honest inquirer can find an answer to all his- questions through divine revelation. Thanking you, sir, for your space, —I am, etc., R. ALLAN ANDERSON.