UP FROM THE SLIME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 802, 3 December 1954, Page 5

UP FROM THE SLIME

Sir,-When I challenged J.D.McD.’s statement that "the fact of evolution has not been sensibly disputed for half a century," I hardly expected him to take up the challenge, because the statement is indefensible. Now Mr. Malton Murray, feeling that the honour of Evolution, his Dulcinea, has been impugned, has charged in to her defence, laying about him to right and left, and creating more confusion with every blow. In the circumstances, argument is difficult, but it may help to clarify things for your feaders if I comment on some of the issues raised by Mr. Murray. An atheist is almost compelled by his philosophy to postulate evolution as a fact, whereas a theist can approach the ptoblem with an open mind, for it makes little difference to his philosophy whether living forms were separately created or evolved from one or a few ancestors. The problem must be solved a posteriori, as a question of fact, and proof is a matter of evidence. Many theists, including a number of Catholic thinkers, accept the evolutionary theory. Others-and I share their view-con-sider that the weight of evidence favours the contrary hypothesis. It is not a question of "hand-picking authorities" or of choosing "scientists of whom one

approves," but of estimating the worth of scientific arguments, It is a point of interest, too, that most of the facts that tell against the evolutionary theory are to be found in the text-books written by professed evolutionists, though naturally they are not emphasised. If Mr. Murray has another, and more careful, look at Human Destiny, he will find that Lecomte du Nouy was not a Catholic, and almost certainly not even a Christian.

G.H.

D.

(Palmerston North).