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Evolution At The Bar by Philip Mauro
Chapter VI
Theistic Evolution
A "theist" is one who believes in a God, "theism" being simply the opposite of "atheism." A Mohammedan is a theist. Hence "Theistic Evolution" signifies the acceptance of the theory in a form which does not deny the existence of God. As a matter of fact, the term "Theistic Evolution" is little more than a name. Those who have brought forward and have popularized the doctrine of Evolution are not in the least concerned about "Theism." Their aim has ever been to abolish God altogether, or at least (since a "First Cause" is essential to the theory) to deprive Him of all personality and attributes, and to banish Him to the remotest confines of time and space.
Much less are evolutionists concerned about Christianity, except to antagonize its vital truths. Evolution was put forth as an anti- christian and infidel doctrine; and for fifty years it has supplied the platform from which, and the weapons with which, Christianity has been assailed. Haeckel, the infidel naturalist, termed Darwin?s Origin of Species the "Anti-Genesis," and exultingly proclaimed that "With a single stroke Darwin has annihilated the dogma of creation." This antagonism between Evolution and Christianity is a fact which, we suppose, no sincere evolutionist would deny.
Nevertheless, there has arisen in recent years a large class of theologians who, while choosing to call themselves "Christians," nevertheless accept and advocate the doctrine of Evolution. These have attempted to effect a compromise between the two irreconcilable systems, and to that compromise they have been pleased to give the name "Theistic Evolution."
They would hold to Evolution as a general cosmic process, but would put it under the control and supervision of God, and would allow of Divine intervention by direct action at those stages which evolutionists find it particularly hard to get over. They would allow just so much "Theism" as seems necessary to help Evolution over the hard places. But inasmuch as this compromise permits enough Divine action in the affairs of the universe to destroy the theory of Evolution, as set forth by the responsible exponents thereof, we may dismiss "Theistic Evolution" as a mere verbal expression to which there is, and can be, no corresponding reality. True evolutionists would not recognize such a self- contradiction as "Theistic Evolution."
In this connection we quote further from Prof. Fairhurst:
"The first great evolutionists, beginning with Darwin, and including Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall and others, based the theory of evolution on matter, motion, and force. It was purely a system of naturalism, that did not recognize God, nor the Bible, nor what the Christian regards specially as the supernatural."
"No cosmic evolutionist can accept a miracle at any point of the natural process. To him a miracle as a part of Evolution would be unthinkable."
Thomas Huxley speaks quite as plainly as Haeckel, saying: "Not only do I hold it to be proven that the story of the Deluge is a pure fiction; but I have no hesitation in affirming the same thing of the story of the Creation."
According to Herbert Spencer nothing is known of God except that He is "unknowable." If this is not practically the same as denying the existence of God, it would not be easy to say wherein the difference lies.
If there be a Supreme Being, and He is "unknowable," then it must be either because He has not the power to make Himself known, or because He has not given to the highest of His creatures the capacity to know Him. The first supposition is disposed of by the consideration that, if God did not have the power to reveal Himself and to create beings capable of knowing Him, He would not be God. And the alternative is disposed of by the fact that Man actually possesses the faculty of reflecting upon God, that he has a consciousness of God, and that he has the ability to understand communications from others equal or superior to himself in the scale of being.
Mr. Spencer dogmatically asserts that "the deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts" is this, namely, "that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable" (First Principles, p. 46). This is, for all practical purposes, pure atheism. It asserts that there is no revelation from God, and can be none. It is, however, an assertion of the most reckless sort, which has absolutely nothing to back it up except Mr. Spencer?s spiritual blindness and deadness. It has no more weight or authority than would attach to the assertion of a blind man that the deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts is that total darkness is the universal and perpetual state of nature. That a man may be in complete ignorance of God is evident enough; but that one should make his own ignorance the ground of denying the possibility of knowing God is simply to add colossal presumption to total ignorance.
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