t .
July 1926
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S _______ _________________________ ¡ 5?
“ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth . . . . And God said, Let there be . . . . and there was . . . . And God said, Let the earth bring forth the herb, after his kind . . . . And the earth brought forth the h erb____ after his k ind --------And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind: . . . . And God made the beast of the earth . . . . after his kind . . . . And God said, Let us make man in our image......... So God created man in his own image.
V Evolution: Unscientific, Unscriptural, Anti-Christian! DR- WILLIAM B. RILEY Paator,/Firat Bajfoat Church. Minneapolia. Minneaota; President of the’ Northweatarn Bible School; Founder and Prea.dent of a ^ y World'* Chriatian Fundamental* Aaaociation. (See front cover page.)
Opening address delivered by Dr. Riley, debating with Mr. Maynard Ship- ley President of the Science League o f America, in the Bible Institute Audi torium June 19, 1925, before nearly five thousand people. The decision was overwhelmingly in favor of Dr. Riley, the vast audience rising practically en masse to show their approval o f his arguments against evolution.
,1r* the origin of all things. Its theories vary all the way from star dust to the Christian’s God, but it fails to account for the existence of “ star dust,” and it repudiates the super naturalism of the Christian faith, and so stands silent and dumb as to how the universe came into existence. Its explanation of the origin of species is antagonistic to nature’s own laws. With the hundreds of thousands of forms living now and reproducing each after its own kind, it is a travesty of terms for a professor to say, “ We do not know that the law now regnant obtained in remote times in all cases," and then make that lack of knowledge a basis upon which to build a philosophy of so-called "science.” Such a procedure makes ignorance the foundation of knowledge, and wild speculations and demonstrations of science to be synony mous terms. This is a reversal of reason itself. Mr. Darwin contends that while we now have no example* of hybrids reproducing their kind they “ may have done so in time’s remote history,"— a meagre supposition on which to base a science; but Darwin was a specialist in "suppo sitions.” In two of his chief works he introduces his argu ments over eight hundred times by the phrase, “ We may well suppose.” Since when did “ supposition” and “ science” become synonymy}us terms? Evolution’s explanation of man’s origin is false to every known fact. The greatest single hope of evolution is Henry Fairfield Osborn’s so-called “ Hall of Man.” There is not one specimen to be found in it save the chimpanzee and “ Homo Sapiens” (or the complete monkey and the com plete man) that can be historically defended. In the language of the late Prof. Virchow of Berlin, one of the greatest scientists known to any century, “ any attempt td find the transition from animal to man is now a total failure. The missing link has not been found and never will be.” When one remembers the disputed m*tbr- iais out of which the missing links in the “ Hall of Man” have been builded, he is disposed to agree with St. George Mivert, the Kensington University Biologist: "The whole hypothesis is puerile;” or with Dr. Fraas, the Old World’* great paleontologist, who, after having accepted and defended evolution, studied it further and confessed his mis take saying: “ The 14ea that mankind has descended froze
E are to consider the most burning question of the present day,— a subject which In Its natural rami fication Involves every form and Interest of life on this globe, namely, the hypothesis of evolution. My part In this debate will be to prove to your satisfaction that that hypothesis is unscientific, unscriptural, and anti- Christian, and to deduce from that demonstrated fact the conclusion that its teaching In tax-supported schools should be no longer tolerated, and that its defense and propagation In denominational schools is at once the defense and propa gation of a falsehood that can have but one fruit: the undoing and practical destruction of such institutions; while its final and more far-reaching effect will be the over throw of the State, or our highest and best form of civilisa tion. As suggested, I aflirm first of all that Evolution is Unscientific It is a speculation and not a science. Darwin called it a hypothesis. Huxley named it after the same manner. That term also was employed by Spencer. Haeckel was prac tically the only one of the old leaders who ever called it a science. It is the present day professor who talks of the ‘ ‘Science of Evolution,” and is only able so to do by for getting the Standard Dictionary’s exact definition of the term: "Science is knowledge gained and verified by obser vation and correct thinking.” I make an assertion here and nou^which I am ready to defend in the rebuttal address if it be denied: According to the scientists consulted, there is a claim of somewhere between 600.000 and 2,600,000 forms of life known to times past and present, not a single one of which has ever illustrated the evolutionary hypothesis; namely, that one specie« develops Into another; but, on the contrary, each one of them confirms the Genesis declaration, “ To each seed It is given to bring forth after its kind.” To employ the language of the late Prof. Agassiz (per haps the greatest paleontologist America has yet known), “ there is not a fact known to science tending to show that any being in the natural process of reproduction and multi plication has ever diverged from the course natural to its kind, or that a single kind (or species) has ever been trans mitted into any other.” I do not care to disco*« now the confessed fact that this hypothesis holds no explanation Of
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