By Dr. S. H. Sutherland
review A Christian critique:
The Epic of Man in L ife magazine
I n the October 31, 1955 issue of Life magazine there appeared a publisher’s preview of a series of articles entitled, “ The Epic of Man.” In this preview the editor stated that this series would recre ate “ the high points of man’s prog ress; how he discovered fire and invented tools; how he learned to hunt beasts, clothe himself and cook; how he painted the first pic tures and developed religion and language; how he learned to farm; and how, at last, he came to lay the foundations of the great cultures of our Western heritage.” With this build-up it was only reasonable to expect that here at last would he presented some fac tual evidence in connection with the earliest phases of man’s exist ence upon the earth. Comparing Science with the Bible Of course there is an appreciable amount of material dealing with the origin and early history of man which is found in the Word of God. And it is always of interest to see how the discoveries of science fit into the truths that are already written in the Word of God. It is to be expected that the facts of nature and the facts of the Word of God will prove to be the same because the God of creation and the God of revelation is one God. For practical purposes the gen eral subject of science may be defined as “ a body of facts system at i cal ly arranged and showing the operation of general laws.” A fact, of course, is that which has been proven to be true and about
a scientific point of view, separated the entire article from true science. Keeping in mind the fact that sci ence is “ a body of facts systemati cally arranged, and showing the operation of general laws,” the reader was amazed at the number of times doubts and questions and probabilities occurred in the article. Indeed over 50 times the words “ s omeh ow , ” “ a b o u t , ” “ it is thought,” “may. have been,” “ prob ably,” “perhaps,” “mig;ht have,” “ it appears now,” and their equivalent were used in the article. There was hardly a paragraph in it in which these surmises were not expressed in one way or another. It is indeed a rather tragic situation when an article of such reputed importance, supposedly based on scientifically verified statements, is so completely filled with probabilities and possi bilities and admitted figments of the human imagination. It becomes even more tragic when the reader discovers at the end of the article that the editors of the magazine are preparing “A discussion outline on each article of ‘The Epic of Man’ for educators and adult discussion groups.” One wonders what can possibly be studied in the article that is of any value whatever, in view of the utterly unscientific ap proach which runs throughout. If the claim had been made that the article was scientific fiction such as the writings of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, it would make very inter esting reading. At the end of the article there was a rather imposing list of scien-
which there can he no question of a doubt. During the past years Life has produced a very distinguished line of articles dealing with various phases of contemporary history and events in our modern life. But this new series was far from following in the factual footsteps of these earlier articles. The reader could not read far before some questions began to emerge. For instance the article stated that philosophers and theo logians alike “ accept the fact of man’s relationship to animals and his physical evolution from them,” and they find “ no point of conflict with the religious concepts of di vinity and immortality” in the theory of evolution. Indeed, one rather famous Baptist minister, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, was quoted as saying, “ today the general idea of evolution is taken for granted as gravitation is.” Such sweeping statements are not scientific in the least. If only the article had said that some theolo gians, or even if it had gone so far as to say, most theologians accept in general the theory of evolution, there might have been some basis for making such a statement. But to put all theologians in the same class as those who believe in the theory of evolution is overstepping the bounds of scientific statements to a marked degree. Certainly Dr. Fosdick does not speak for the en tire theological world. But as one read further there began to take shape a far more damaging fact which indeed, from
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