WG-15-16. THE TRUTH ABOUT "EVOLUTION"
16. THE TRUTH ABOUT "EVOLUTION" IN the foregoing chapters we have taken the collapse of the Darwinian theory of the origin of species as a starting point for a fresh examination of the account of the fall of man given in the third chapter of Genesis. It has been pointed out that the facts of human history and human nature, which the Darwinian theory failed utterly to explain, and in presence of which it could not stand as a philosophical theory, are fully and satisfactorily explained by the Genesis narrative. In pursuing further the inquiry into what gave to the Darwinian hypothesis its ready and wide acceptance among the learned, the writer has been greatly impressed by the fact that there is undoubtedly a sphere within which the process of evolution, as broadly stated by Herbert Spencer, does operate. Certain conclusions follow from this fact, which it is my present purpose to set forth. The rise and spread of the doctrine of Evolution, In the form given to it by Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer, is one of the striking events of the last half of the nineteenth century. As an explanation of the process whereby every object and thing, animate and inanimate, in all the visible universe came to be what it is, the doctrine of Evolution received well-nigh universal acceptance among the wise and learned of the earth.
It is true that here and there a voice was raised, protesting that the sweeping generalizations of this teaching were wholly unsupported by evidence; but these voices were drowned in the general chorus with which the teaching was acclaimed.
It is likewise true that a few simple souls, uninfluenced even by skepticism displayed and taught in the pulpit, clung to the narrative of creation given in the first chapter of Genesis. But those who refused to accept the new teaching were in the main hopelessly “unscientific” and “behind the times.” In that first chapter of Genesis, containing only 31 verses, the Author quietly states nine times over (a three-fold emphasis multiplied by three) that living creatures were commanded to reproduce each "after his kind” This remarkable but unobtrusive iteration seems now like a challenge to the evolutionist, and to indicate a prevision of a time to come in the old age of the world when a doctrine should be put forth and should be accepted by all whose faith was not firmly anchored in the accuracy of Scripture, according to which doctrine every living thing is a link in a long chain connecting it with ancestry of another kind, and according to which every living thing has the tendency to produce offspring of another kind than its own.
We say that the spread of this doctrine of Evolution was a remarkable phenomenon: the astonishing feature of it being that there has never been produced in support of it so much as a single instance of the reproduction by one living thing of offspring of a different species; and that there never has been produced a single fact tending in the slightest degree to prove that such a thing ever happened anywhere in the universe. In view of this state of the evidence, how is the almost universal acceptance of Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Species, and particularly the theory of the descent of man, to be accounted for? Its wide acceptance is unquestionably a fact, and hence is susceptible of an explanation.
One reason for the rapid spread of the doctrine undoubtedly is that it afforded a platform from which the unbeliever could, in the name of science, contradict the Bible account of creation, and thus discredit the Bible as a whole. Haeckel very aptly termed Darwin’s Origin of Species an “Anti- Genesis,” saying: "With a single stroke Darwin has annihilated the dogma of creation.” We know in a general way how it has fared since that time with Genesis. How has it fared with the “Anti- Genesis”? The unregenerate man, whether a professing Christian or not, is always seeking to justify his unbelief. Hence the ready acceptance of Darwin’s theory. But there is a more profound reason than this for the fact we are seeking to explain, and our present object is to set forth this deeper reason.