Full Text for Has Our Church a Quarrel with Science? (Text)
reflects at all believes in one way or another in God. . .. It seems
to me as obvious as breathing that every man who is sufficiently in
his senses to recognize his own inability to comprehend the problem
of existence, to understand whence he himself came and whither he is.
going, must in the very admission of that ignorance and finiteness
recognize the existence of a Something, a Power, a Being, in whom
and because of whom he himself lives and moves and has his being.
That Power, that Something, that Existence, we call God." (Science'
and Life, 56 f.) Similarly we are pleased to note that Shepardson>"
a university professor of electrical engineering of international fame,"
does not hesitate to state, in his The Religion of an Electrical Engi-
neer: "The evidence obtainable from study of material phenomena
gives us confidence in concluding that a Supreme Being exists, that
He is profoundly intelligent, that He designed and constructed and
governs the universe, and that He encourages those who seek to learu
of His works and ways" (p.63). And on another page: "The scien-
ticulist with a smattering of second·hand knowledge may presume to
ridicule the simple statements of remarkable events; but the real
scientist recognizes that what he does not know is far more than what
he does know, and his mind is on the alert for additional knowledge"
(p.91). And on still another page: "Jesus, Ohrist was either the Son
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of God or else a deceiver, and the evidence all points to His being
genuine" (p.131).
We have the highest regard also for the science of chemistry, and
that in all its departments and subdivisions, geochemistry, organic
chemistry, inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, sanitary chem-
istry, agricultural chemistry, and particularly biochemistry as it cor-
relates with medicine. The advance of the last thirty years in the
conquest of dietary diseases, in the study of the internal secretions, in
the progress in the field of anesthesia, in the combat against various
germ diseases, is greater than that of the previous three hundred
years. But here again we are glad to find that some of the foremost
scholars in the field, like Doctor Kelly of Baltimore, have retained
their simple faith in the one absolute truth, the revelation of the
Bible.
Our interest in the field of archeology is great and abiding. We
follow not only the popular, but also the scientific accounts of the
American School at Athens, of the American Academy in Rome, of
the American Schools of Oriental Research (Jerusalem and Bagdad),
of the School of American Research at Santa Fe, with its recent work
in Ohaco Oanyon and Jemez Oanyon, N. Mex., and even of the Amer-
ican School of Prehistoric Research; we read the accounts of the
work done in the valley of the Euphrates, especially at TIl', of that
carried on in and near Jerusalem and in various parts of the Holy
Land, at Ephesus, at Oorinth, in various parts of Italy, in the ancient
Mayan cities of Oentral America, and other centers of prehistoric
civilization. Much outstanding work is being done and much of it
has been made accessible in sets like TV onders of the Past, edited by
J. A. Hammerton. And we are happy to find that the first article of
this set, by Prof. A. H. Sayee, contains a passage which certainly is
of great interest to all those who have consistently maintained the
truth of the Bible. He writes: "If we turn from the world of prac-
tical politics tCl that of science, there is another question relating to
mankind upon which archeological discovery throws light. Ever since
the establishment of the doctrine of evolution it has been assumed
that man started like a child and slowly grew into what he is to-day.
Our primitive ancestor has been seen again in the modern savage,
whose nearest representative he has been held to be. The brain and
mentality of civilized man, it has been assumed, have developed out
of small beginnings; he started almost on the level with the brute
beasts and has become a Newton or a Napoleon. But here again
archeology stands in the way. The men who carved the hardest of
stones into living portraitures in the Egypt of six thousand years ago
or, at a later epoch, erected the Parthenon at Athens were in no way
inferior to the most gifted of ourselves. We have accumulated more
Has Our Church a Quarrel with Science? 837
knowledge, it is true, but we can claim no superiority in the powers
of mind. And if we go back to a still earlier age, the record is the
same. The marvelous drawings of paleolithic man of the Aurignacian
age prove that on the artistic side there has been little, if any, develop-
ment. Indeed, when we consider the conditions under which his work
was done, in a climate like that of Greenland and amid the darkness
of subterranean caverns, we are inclined to regard him as the greatest
artist humanity has produced. But long before the Aurignacian ar-
tist had drawn his bisons or carved his reindeer, language had been
invented, and the use of fire had been discovered. And the invention
of language was the highest mental feat ever accomplished by man-
kind. The brains that evolved it were fully comparable with our own.
The savage of to-day, so far from being a representative of those
who possessed them, is either a degenerate or the descendant of races
which invented nothing."
In the same way we could look at the other sciences: at biology,
with its subdivisions of zoology, botany, and human anatomy and
physiology; at anthropology, with its fascinating field of religions
and customs; at geology, with its study of rocks and minerals; at
paleontology, with its research work in fossils and remains of previous
faunas and floras of various parts of the world. Everywhere we find
interesting and valuable material; everywhere we mark the footsteps
of the Oreator, of the all-wise and beneficent heavenly Father. There
is no quarrel with science on this ground.
No; it is only when science ceases to function in its proper
sphere that our Ohurch finds occasion to protest, when science be-
comes pseudoscience, when it leaves the domain of exact knowledge
and descends to the field of speculation, when hypotheses and theories
are promulgated on the basis of inadequate data, when the so-called
"doctrine of evolution" is regarded as an immutable law to explain
the origin of life, and when even the existence of God, the Oreator of
the universe, is denied. We resent statements like the following:
"Natural selection and the change of species by descent, the broad
principle of evolution, are now facts not controverted by those who
desire to appear intelligent." (Barton, Medicine, the Science of
Health,135.) Statements like these could be quoted by the hundreds,
and we contend that they are not scientific. We know that the prin-
ciple of organic evolution as laid down by Darwin has been modified
so that very little of his contention remains. We know that leading
men in every department of science have deeply deplored the develop-
ment of a science falsely so called, on the basis of a theory which
lacks the fundamental points of proof. George McOready Price has
well put it for the science of geology when he writes (The Geological
Ages Hoax, 21): "It is the supreme folly of all pseudoscience to begin
838 Has Our Church a Quarrel with Science?
somewhere away back at the vanishing point of the vistas of a past
eternity and to attempt by sheer cosmic dead-reckoning to work up
to the present by slow stages, and to arrive here with a sufficiently
small cargo of 'living' species unaccounted for, so as to splice on
smoothly and easily with the present on the basis of uniformity among
the rocks and transformisms among the plants and animals. This is
the supreme type of all hypothetical science, a magnificent hang-over
from the scholasticism of the Middle Ages; it has no resemblance to
the secure sciences of objective facts, after the order of Galileo and
Newton, of Bacon, Linnaeus, and Pasteur."
If people calling themselves scientists persist in bringing the
theory of evolution into their work, then we have a number of ques-
tions to ask which might help them to organize their data. As, for
instance: -
Where did the first electron come from? Where do the laws of
nature come from? How did life originate? What about religion and the
divine image in man? (Cp. Herget, Questions Evolution Does Not Answer.)
Or, to take just a few questions from the Lutheran Witness
(1927, 364):-
How did protoplasm acquire its power of growth and reproduction?
Where is a single genealogical link to show that the existences of one race
of animals derive their lineage from the existences of another? How could
instincts be transmitted when still in a rudimentary stage, hence useless?
What we expect of all human knowledge and endeavor we also
expect of science, namely, to take every thought captive under the
obedience of the Word of God. This does not cramp research, but
rather it consecrates every endeavor of the human mind; it lifts the
intellect to the highest levels of its possibilities; it will tend to bring
back, also in this respect, the perfect knowledge which belonged to
Adam in the state of innocence, when he gave names to all cattle and
to the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field, Gen. 2, 20.
We close with a word from Hitchcock, The ReZig1:on of Geology
(33): "Finally, I would throw out a caution to those friends of relig-
ion who are very fearful that the discoveries of science will prove in-
jurious to Ohristianity. Why should the enlightened Ohristian, who
has a correct idea of the firm foundation on which the Bible rests,
fear that any disclosures of the arcana of nature should shake its
authority or weaken its influence ~ Is not the God of revelation the
God of nature also? And must not His varied works tend to sustain
and elucidate, instead of weakening and darkening, one another? . . .
(Quoting from Dr. J. Pye Smith) Ohristianity is secure, and true
science will always pay homage to the divine Oreator and Sovereign,
'of whom and through whom and to whom are all things and unto
whom be glory forever.''' P. E. KRETZMANN.