Science and Creation

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 26, 25 June 1903, Page 18

Science and Creation

To airy sciolists of the popgun calibre of Mr Clogg and Mr. Grant Allen the making of a universe presents no more mysteries than the making of an apple-dump-ling. Even the origin of life is no puzzle to thobe unscientific amateuis . they enveloped it in wild speculations and high-sounding nonsense that are no more credible than the fairy-tale of the adventurous voyage of a Colorado beetle to our planet. To Darwin, Huxley, Tynidall, Virchow, "Wilson, and other non-Christian scientists the origin of life is an insoluble mystery. They ' give it up.' Dv Bois-Reymond, the distinguished Grerman scientist, ranks it among the seven riddles which defy the utmost efforts of experimental science. Science has, indeed, led the foremost scientists of the day to the great central fact of the universe, the ultimate solution of all its puzzles — the supreme First Cause, God Himself. ' All our desperate attempts,' says the Puke of Argyle in the ' Nineteenth Century ' for March, 1897, ' to get rid of creation as distinguished from mere procreation are self-condemned as futile.' It points, says Dr. Wallace in his * Darwinism ' (p. 476) 'clearly to an unseen universe — a world of spirit, to which the world of matter is altogether subordinate.' 'No system of the universe,' says Sir Joseph Dawson in his ' Modern Ideas of Evolution,' ' can dispense with a First Cause, eternal and self-existent ; and this First Cause must necessarily be the Living God, Whose will is the ultimate foice and the origin of natural law.' * A somewhat similar message was g'ven to the world in London on May 2by one of the greatest scientists of our age, Lord Kelvin In moving a a ote of thanks to Professor Henslow for his lectuie befoie the University College Christian Association,' sins an exchange, 'ho demurred to the professor's assertion that, with regard to the origin of life, science neither affirmed nor denied the creatn c power. On the contraiy (he said) science positively affirmed the ciealixe power Science made everyone feel that he was a miracle m himself. Modern biologists were once nioie coming to the firm acceptance of a \ital principle They had been absolutely forced by science to admit and belie\e m a directive power. ' Was there,' he asked, ' anything so absurd as to believe that a number of atoms falling together of their own accord could make ;i crystal spi ig of moss, the microbe of a lmng animal 9 Nobody could think that anything like that c\ en in millions and millions of years could, unaided, gi\e us a beautnul wot Id like ours Let nobody be afiaid of true fieedom of thought. Let us be free m thought and criticism, but with freedom we are behind to come to the conclusion that science is not antagonistic, but is a help, to reli-