DARWIN’S THEORY

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 95, 16 January 1935, Page 9

DARWIN’S THEORY

Vigorous Challenge By Sir J. A. Fleming EVOLUTION OF MAN •‘Facts More Consistent With Biblical Version” By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received January 15,11.50 p.m.) Loudoi., January 15. Sir John Ambrose Fleming, in his presidential address to the Victoria Institute and Philosophical Society, vigorously challenged the whole Darwinian theory of evolution, declaring that the hypothesis that man evolved over a vast period of time from a common parent with the anthropoid ape, was a product of the imagination not based on indisputable evidence. If prehistoric man was anything like what might lie expected, the increase of a single pair of humans in 9000 years would become a thousand millions. They would thus have filled the whole known world, yet the only discoveries were a few dozen skeletons isolated in separate places. All the facts are much more consistent with the Biblical version of a post-glacial creation of mankind. Adherence to the doctrine of evolution was entirely inconsistent with belief in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. It was deplorable that so many clergymen accepted as proof mere unconfirmed speculations of materialistic anthropology or denied miracles. Those who had examined the evidence of miracles most closely agreed that the bodily resurrection of Christ was one of the most certainly attested, facts in human history. This certified all previous Biblical miracles. EDITORIAL COMMENT Process of Continuous Change (Received January 15, 11.50 p.m.) London, January 15. The “Daily Telegraph” in an editorial pays tribute to Sir J. A. Fleming’s service to science, but argues that the fundamental meaning of the evolutionary principle is that living organisms and the universe itself have come to be what they are by a process of continuous change which is still progressing. In this there is no denial of Divine creation.