Scientific Accuracy o f tne Bible All Settled Science Comes Toward the Bible The Scriptures and the Evolution Theory By HUGH R. MUNRO (Continued from the'May Number)
Sir John Herschell, Lord Kelvin, Sir Oliver Lodge, Prof. Dana, Sir J. W. Dawson and G. F. Wright, the order of creation and development there out lined is in accord with the consensus of highest modern scientific opinion. The question has often been asked, “How could Moses have accurate knowl edge of those matters which have for ages been the subject of conflicting opinion?” The answer can be found alone in the conclusion that he wrote under Divine guidance. Man’s Antiquity Again, the subject of Man’s antiquity has long been one of puzzling problems of science. Scripture and science agree in placing man as last in the order of creation, but among men of science there has been wide divergence as to the remoteness of the period when man first came upon the scene. It is well to remember at the outset that the chronology which appears on the mar gins of our reference Bibles is not a part of the inspired record, but was prepared in recent times by reverent scholars, to assist the student in the general location as to time of historic events. These dates are based mainly on internal evidence afforded by the Scriptures and, in» a large number of cases, their correctness can be actually demonstrated. Neither Scripture \nor the Biblical chronology attempts to as sign a date for the beginning of crea tion, or the advent of man, but the Genesis narrative implies for the latter a comparatively close contact with his toric times and the period can, under no circumstances, be reconciled with the
£ find accumulating evidence of the scientific accuracy of the Bible. It is recognized, of course, that the Bible is not
a scientific treatise and it would be ab surd to expect that Bible allusions to scientific matters should be couched in modern scientific termsrAs an inspired record, however, it is not unreason able to require that statements relat ing to science as to any other matter shall be truthful and accurate. One of the first and most remarkable facte which enter into the consideration of Bible science is that the conceptions presented in the sacred record are not the conceptions which prevailed at the time the record was written. In other words, we have the singular phenome non of a record upward of three thou sand years old which not only runs' counter to the prevailing view of the time in which it was written, but ac tually anticipates some of the most im portant results of modern scientific dis covery. Take, for example, what are known as the Cosmogonies of Genesis. Such cosmogonies exist in the literature of nearly all of the nations of antiquity, though generally in terms of the con ceptions prevailing at the time the record had its origin. For ages the ground has been constantly shifting as to these matters and there are instances even where the literature of a people has been altered to conform with tte scientific concepts of a later period. The Genesis record, however, has stood through all the storms and, according to the opinion of great leaders of mod ern science, such as Sir Isaac Newton,
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