UP FROM THE SLIME
Sir,-Mr. Malton Murray’s latest contribution is even further off-the point than his previous one. (The point, it may be rememberéd, is: Has the theory of evolution been sensibly criticised since 1904?) . However, it presents so many tempting targets, that it would be a pity to let it go without comment. I said that if we judge du Noily on the basis of Hurtan Destiny, he was probably not a Christian. Mr. Murray omits the "probably" and then proceeds to refute my contention by quoting a passage from’ Human Destiny which shows that I was right. No Christian would write, as du Noiiy wrote: "The so-called Christian virtues are really the consequence of the laws of evolution." If Mr. Murray will renew his acquaintance with the New Testament, he will find that the Christian virtues are received by men from God as a free gift. They include, for example, faith, which is "the gift of God" (Eph., II, 8), and charity, which is "poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost" (Rom, V, 5). The du Noiiy who wrote Human Destiny may well come within Mr. Murray’s "category of religious scientists," but that does not make him a Christian. Mr. Murray sets up a man of straw: "Those who accept the imaginative story in Genesis as proof that God then created all things as we now know them," and then proceeds to batter him with many questions. The critics to whom I was referring rejected the theory of evolution on purely scientific grounds, and they included such people as a Professor of Anatomy at Montpellier and the Director of the National Museum of Natural History at Paris. If Mr. Murray will read a little anatomy and geology for himself, he will find that science and the scientists don’t say all the things that are attributed to them in popular works on evolution.
G.H.
D.
(Palmerston North).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19550121.2.12.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 808, 21 January 1955, Page 5
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320UP FROM THE SLIME New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 808, 21 January 1955, Page 5
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