Evolution -- Philosophy, Not Science
The first question a little child asks, I suppose, about himself is, "Where did I come from?" The philosopher and the scientist ask the same question. Whence came all things? Whence came this universe? And the only reasonable, sensible answer that has ever been given to that question is found in the first verse in the Bible, and almost in the first line of that verse, "In the beginning, God . . . " Once we reach the word, "God," all the rest is easy. Suppose one should try to start something "in the beginning" with no God. Things start and there is nothing to start them; things begin and there is no power behind their origin. Is that reasonable? Certainly not.
The story is told of a young man who went out from the Association For the Advancement of Atheism in America to deliver a speech in behalf of atheism. This was his first such talk, and he was nervous. But he began like this: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I have entirely gotten rid of the idea of a Supreme Being, and I thank God for it!" He had gotten rid of the idea about as successfully as infidels usually get rid of it. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." That sublime statement of fact cannot be gotten rid of, and it cannot be ignored.
Whence Came The Egg?
Science does not deal with origins. Neither does the theory of evolution. This theory does not account for the beginning of anything. All of us believe that certain things come about by "evolution." But by evolution out of what? Out of a cell, an amoeba, or whatever you will. There is a natural growth and development by which a living creature "evolves" out of a single cell. But the cell had to be here before the development started. There had to be something to begin with. A California scientist published a statement many years ago saying, "I believe that all life on this earth sprang from a fertilized egg." Brother A. McGary replied to him, "I'd like to ask one question, and only one: What laid that egg?" The California professor had stopped just one step short of where he should have stopped; he had not explained where the egg came from. He had not dealt with the real problem of experience at all.
Science does not deal with beginnings. It examines things that it finds, and deals with processes and methods; but it does not and it cannot deal with things outside its realm. The theory of evolution is in the field of philosophy, anyhow, and not in the field of science. We are sometimes criticized for speaking of the evolutionary doctrine as a "theory" or a "hypothesis." But, as a matter of fact, it is nothing other than a hypothesis; it is not a science at all. It is not based upon proved and demonstrable fact; it cannot be repeated in a laboratory. It is philosophy, pure and simple. A theory or hypothesis was worked out, and then the proponents of the theory called upon science to prove the theory. Up to date no scientist has done so. Some of them frankly confess that it cannot be proved. Others are still vainly looking for one fact, just one, that will stand up under investigation by which the theory can be upheld.
Natural Development
I once heard a man laughing at Moses and the Genesis record on account of what was said about creation. "Why," said he, "just look at what Burbank did out in California. He took a peach and improved it, grafted, budded, transplanted, and finally developed a peach bigger, better, and finer than any that had ever been known. How can anybody deny evolution after seeing a thing like that?" But suppose that peach fruit is allowed to seek its natural level; suppose all cultivation and care of it ceases. Then in a few generations the peaches will be back to their natural level. Acquired traits and characteristics are not transmitted. Turn loose either a plant or an animal, and it at once begins to revert to the original stock. Almost endless improvement may be made by careful breeding and cultivation; but every bit of it comes within the species. One species never evolves into another species; there is no such transmutation. Scientists have demonstrated over and over again that all growth, development, and improvement must come within the species, and never from one species to another. If the theory of evolution were true, one could never say, "Here one species begins, and another ends," for there would be no such lines of distinction. But the lines do exist; they are not to be crossed; and no fact is more fully and undeniably established than that.
Fossils In The Rocks
Going back into the earliest strata of fossils in the rocks, we find there evidence of plants and animals exactly as they are today in the earth. They appear in the earliest strata as being fully grown, and fully developed. Some time back an eminent scientist was displaying an agate rock that was formed when the earth was young. Imbedded in the rock was a mosquito—just exactly the same kind of mosquito that makes life miserable for us today. Now if evolution had been working in regard to that mosquito and his descendants, mosquitoes in our day would be as big as eagles. But not only have the mosquitoes not evolved into something else, they haven't even improved any as mosquitoes! They are exactly today what their long-imbedded progenitor was those millenniums ago. Evolution has not produced anything from them but mosquitoes.
The evolutionary hypothesis has no place in any scientific discussion. It is philosophy, pure and simple, and speculative philosophy at that!