THE EVOLUTION ISSUE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19437, 24 October 1925, Page 10

THE EVOLUTION ISSUE

(To the Editor). Sir,—ln a previous letter I pointed out the totally false impression that must bo given to many of your readers by the unending controversy between Rationalists and the Fundamentalists, to which you have given so much space. The impression given by this correspondence is that evolution is a question at issue between the whole body of Christians on the one hand and the Rationalists on the other. Now that, clearly, is not a fact. I know many Rationalists have accepted that view; but who can blame them? It so happens that the only Christians who write to the local press are of the crude “fundamentalist” variety; and when all the others are silent, there is every excuse for the Rationalists and the public at large to suppose that these “fundamentalists” do actually represent the whole of the Christian churches. I believe it to be a fact that m the Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist churches the “fundamentalists are in a ‘small and dwindling minority and, for the greater part, arc either very old or very ’uneducated. I number among my friends and acquaintances a large number of the ministers of these three churches, and very few indeed of them adopt the “literalist” or American “fundamentalist” position. In England there is even less of it than in New Zealand, the greater number of fundamentalsits hero being due, presumably, to the influence of propagandists from the United States. To pretend, therefore, that modern Christianity and modern science are necessarily in conflict, and that every Christian is bound to deny scientific knowledge (c.g., evolution), is absurd. Long ago Erasmus pointed out that “to identify the new learning with heresy is to make orthodoxy synomymous with ignorance”; and it would be disastrous for the Christian churches if they made that mistake again to-day. Fortunately many of them are alive to the necessity of continually re-stating their beliefs in terms of advancing knowledge: it is only a noisy few who adhere now to the “literalist” position. Unfortunately these noisy few are the ones who writ© to tho press and scream and rave against the advancement of human thought, while tho educated ma-

jority stand by and allow the position of 4he modern churches to be thus misrepresented.

I have just been reading an essay, “Confessio Fidci,’' by W. E. Ingle, Dean of St. Paul's, from which you will perhaps allow me to quote a few lines in conclusion:—“As I write these lines I have before me a row of mountains he Alps). . . They were in existence before even our sub-human ancestors hunted the mammoth and disputed their cavern with the cave-bears. They will stand when tho next ice-age has de-populated this part of Europe and perhaps brought about the extinction of what arc now the most advanced races of mankind. And yet tho mountains arc not everlasting. ‘ ‘The hills are shadows, and they flow “From form to form, and nothing stands; “They melt like mist; the solid lands, “Like clouds, they shape themselves and go."

“The period of organic evolution is but a moment when compared with the tremendous duration of inorganic evolution. Ten thousand million years may have been required to reduce a star from tho temperature of Alnilam to that of our sun. A thousand million years may elapse from now before the extinction of light and heat from our sun, which now make life and consciousness possible, for a little while, on one or two of the planets which revolve about it. And then who can measure the duration of the sleep of dead worlds, in cold and darkness till a new cyclo begins for them?’' Do not misunderstand my present purpose. I am not now bringing forward any evidence or argument in support of evolution: anybody who wants that has only to purchase an elementary text-book on geology or biology. I quote this passage simply because it seems to be fairly representative of the thought, on these matters, of the great majority of non-Roman and non-litcral-ist Christians at the present day. My point is that educated Christians have definitely accepted the “ evolutionary " interpretation of facts; only the Roman Catholics and the Fundamentalists refuse—or are unable—to keep abreast of modern knowledge. This particular issue is between Rationalists and one or two of the Christian sects, not between Rationalists and the Christian churches as a whole. —I am, etc., _______ A.E.M.