Is There a God? 29 Inviting us to light upon this globe, the materialist will show us how through long centuries, mounting up to millions of years, the various rocks which form the earth’s crust were deposited. Nay, if we will dive with him to the bottom of the ocean he will point out the first speck of dead matter that sprang into life, protoplasm, though he cannot tell when or how. Having startled us with this, he will lead us up the Great Staircase of Nature with its 26 or 27 steps, and tell us how on this step the vegetable grew into an animal, and how after many more steps the animal became a man, and thus the whole evolutionary drama will be unrolled. Concerning this theory of the universe, however, it is perti- nent to make these remarks: 1. Taken at its full value, with unquestioning admission of the alleged scientific facts on which it is based, it is at best only an inference or working hypothesis, which may or may not be true and which certainly cannot claim to be beyond dispute. 2 . So far from securing universal acceptance, it has been repudiated by scientists' of the highest repute. “The Kant- Laplace theory of the origin of the solar System by the whirl- ing masses of nebulous matter, till rings flew off and became the worlds we see,” says a German writer, “can no more be defended by any scientist” (Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1905, p. 957). The attempt to explain in this way the origin of the universe, says Merz, can be described as “belonging to the romance of science” (European Thought in the 19th Cent., p. 285). Indeed Laplace himself put it forward “with great reserve, and only as a likely suggestion” (ibid., p. 285), As regards the derivation of man from the lower animals, it is enough to remember that the late Prof. Virchow maintained that “we cannot designate it as a revelation of science, that man descends from the ape or from any other animal” (Nature, Dec. 8, 1877) ; that Prof. Paulsen, speaking of Haeckel, says “he belongs already to a dead generation,” and calls his theory
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