Chapter I
The agitation of the controversy between Modernists and Fundamentalists. Between the orthodoxy of the Bible and the teachings of Science, in fact between all that great host that look to the past for their inspiration and faith, and that ever-increasing number who believe that research and demonstration are the best guides to faith, has reached such proportions that a careful investigation and comparison of the different teachings seems in order. I shall, therefore, undertake to examine and parallel what the Bible teaches with what is accepted as the Theory of Evolution, in such a simple style that the average reader may have no trouble understanding both, and be able to draw his own conclusion as to whether or not there is any disagreement. There is good reason for such a statement, since there are three well-defined groups or schools of thought. One highly trained group contending that science and modern progressive thought is correct and the Bible wrong. Another group who cling tenaciously to the Bible and undertake to contradict and ridicule the Modernist. The third group represents the would-be peace-makers who carry water on both shoulders, and argue that there is no conflict between the Bible and the teachings of science in the Theory of Evolution. Let us, then, set about the task of examining both carefully and faithfully; reserving special comment until after we have studied the facts, and let the conclusion fall wherever reason and logic may dictate. I hold no brief for either and am thoroughly convinced that, for my part, I am interested only in the search for Truth.
The Bible
The Bible teaches that five thousand nine hundred and thirty-four years ago (1930 A.D.) God created the heavens and the Earth, and everything, animal and vegetable, on the earth—including every insect and creeping thing both in water and on the dry land—in six days.
There were no eggs nor baby animals and no vegetable seeds until the next generation. Everything was created full-grown, having its seed in itself. (“And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.”—Gen. 2:5.) And every plant and animal and creeping thing having within itself the seed of reproduction “after its kind”. Man was created a grown man, not a boy, and from his side God took a rib and made a grown up woman—old enough to marry. The trees in the garden were bearing their perfect fruit, and the grasses were bearing seeds at the time that the sun and moon were set in the heavens—not at sunrise or sunset, but at high noon. The day began at its noon day perfection—“The evening and the morning were the first day”, and so on through out the week. On the seventh day God rested. Creation was complete and every living thing was equipped to propagate its own kind.
The third group, referred to, like to hold that each day of the creation week may represent millions of years. There is no such conclusion from the text, and nobody ever would have thought of such construction had scientific investigation not advanced to the point of casting a shadow over the text. It is very evident, if we accept the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, that Moses understood it as the same kind of days that are still ruled by the sun. He set the seventh day apart for that reason, and it was so understood by all Bible followers and students until very recently. The Bible claims to be God’s Word, and Moses, it is persistently claimed, was inspired to say just what God wanted him to say. If Moses, then, giving God’s Word to his people, misled them, it was God’s deception and not his.
In dealing with the Bible account of man and his progress from the time of creation, we have many, yes very many, historical items. The record is broken and even more scattering than what I may write, but there is a central thought permeating the whole of both the old and the New Testament. I would emphasize the importance of keeping in mind this central chain in any investigation which has Truth for all its goal. The authors of the Bible (all supposed to be so inspired that it represents God’s word just as much as if He had written it himself) understood that man was created absolutely perfect, and by virtue of such perfection he was fit for the intimate association with God—in fact God walked and talked with the man of His creation with whom he was well pleased. Told him what to eat and what not to eat. Set the tree of life in his presence the eating of whose fruit would perpetuate his life forever. Cautioned him—yes, commanded him—not to eat of a certain fruit which would increase his knowledge, setting a penalty of death if he should fail to obey this particular injunction.
The next step in this central thought of the whole Bible is that the hitherto perfect man ate the fruit which had been so strenuously forbidden and as a result had fallen from his perfection to so low a state of degradation that he was driven from his paradise, separated from the tree of life, forced to work for his living, and he and all his descendents were “without God and without hope in the world”. Every imagination of their hearts was evil continually, and God became so displeased with the crowning object of His creation effort that He was sorry that He had made man, and determined that He would utterly destroy, not only the human creation, but also the beasts and creeping things, and the fowls of the air.—Gen. 6:7. And this complete annihilation of all life on the earth was averted only by the apparently accidental discovery of another perfect man in the person of Noah.
The state of apostasy could not, however, be corrected in Noah’s descendents—no provision was in operation that could remove the result of Adam’s fall so that man could re-enter the presence of God, who, being perfect, could not look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. Man’s sins could not be pardoned, and for that reason a system of religious observances and sacrifices was inaugurated whereby a remembrance of sins could be made every year (rolling, as it were, all sins of the people one year ahead as each annual sin-offering) and the best that even the most devout could hope for was to keep their sins pushed forward after the manner of renewing one’s note at the bank, with the hopes that a satisfactory accounting might be had some time.
The record of these bloody sacrifices, intermingled with still more blood wars, constitutes a goodly portion of the Old Testament. But the blood which was the specific element of every offering to appease the wrath of an offended God was only the blood of bulls and goats, and they could not satisfy the law which had doomed man from his first offence. Blood was necessary, but it must be of a higher type than the blood of animals; yes, it must be even superior to the blood of man. An atonement which will bring man back to God and perfection and replace man in such a position that he can again approach God and have the stain removed from his new-born posterity,--in a word, to remove the effects of Adam’s sin, required the blood of the Creator, who became both God and man by being born of a human woman.
The blood of this Jesus Christ was taken by himself, after his resurrection from the dead into the presence of the Father, and offered once for all. This sacrifice blotted out, to be remembered no more forever, all the sins of the ancients which had been properly rolled forward every year to await this occasion, as well as corrected the sad state of degradation with which Adam’s fall had cursed the Earth for four thousand years. Thus perfecting the “atonement” and making it possible for man, by following certain other programs, to return to the tree of life and live forever in the presence of the God from whom he had been estranged since Adam’s fall.
I have tried to make it plain that the Bible teaches—first: that man was created full grown, from the dust of the earth, and perfect; second: that he fell from the perfection and went to the lowest depths of imperfection and separation from God; third: that an atonement was necessary and was brought about by the Divine sacrifice; fourth: that perception is returned to man—restoring him to his God and allowing eternal life.
The Bible further teaches that the fall of man has been contemplated and the atonement had been planned even before man was created. The New Testament asserts that Jesus Christ had been slain from the foundation of the earth, preceding the creation of man. The same authority declares that this same Jesus Christ was the one who actually created man—“Having created all things, and without him there was not anything made that was made.: The fall of man is given emphasis as being very real, when, in order to readjust things, it was necessary that the God who had created man had to yield up apostasy in the Garden of Eden, and the rescue of man from its evil consequences, constitutes the very crux of both the Old and the New Testament. The sine qua non of the whole Bible. Remove from the Bible the fact of Adam’s fall, and the details and statements consequent there to, and what is left will be a poor history of the Jewish people in their struggle, and failure, for national existence; a few, more or less interesting, personal biographies; and quite a conglomeration of superstitions and witchcraft, in the Old Testament, and almost nothing will be left of the New Testament. I am, at present, unable to recollect any verse in the New Testament that could be counted appropriate, and carry any intelligence to our minds, if we were to eliminate the fact of Adam’s fall.
Other specific references will be made to what the Bible sets forth when we come to give personal comments on what might be taken as conflicting ideas in the teachings of the Bible and the contentions of Science.
A word here might be said as to the chronology of the Bible. It seems almost apparently that the writers of the several books of the Bible might have had some fears that future generations would raise the question of how long man had inhabited the earth. Much space is given in the Old Testament to the chronology. They had an even more specific point from which to start than we have in our Anno Domini. Dates are given so specifically that no serious question can arise as to what they meant. Adam was one hundred and thirty years old when he begat Seth. Seth was one hundred and five when he begat Enos. And so on down to the flood. And, if after the flood, it seems more difficult to follow the exact connection of dates, it is not at all impossible. And the whole chronological history is given in generations again in the New Testament when Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham, and Luke, who claims to have had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, traces him all the way back to Adam.
This period from Adam’s creation to the birth of Jesus Christ was four thousand years—we usually give it as four thousand and four—but the mistake was made in our own calendar, and not in the chronology of the Bible. I am not, at this time, raising the question of whether the Bible story is true, either as to chronology or any other subjects treated. I am trying to stay within the record, and give what it teaches and not what I or any other person may think it ought to teach. This is my idea of a fair and impartial investigation.
The Miracles of the Bible must also be taken into any account that compares that record with the teachings of science. The list of miracles is, of course, too long to try to record them all and make a comparison in each case. As usually understood, a miracle is a phenomenon that could not happen by the regular and fixed habits of nature’s laws. It is not a miracle for people to rise in great heights in balloons or air-planes, that is due to the regular application of the laws of nature just as much as walking or standing. It was miraculous to raise the widow-of-Nain’s son from the dead, as was the burning of the water-soaked offering of Elijah before the prophets of Bael, no matter where the fire came from. It may be that many of the Bible accounts which were classed by the ancients can be explained so as to leave no miracle, but it can not be doubted that the Bible teaching includes many miracles which can not be explained except by rejecting the story as untrue. That attitude might be taken and substantiated that the Bible is untrue, but it would not, even then, interfere with such an examination as I am trying to make. It is what the Bible teaches that we are now interested in, and not as to the truthfulness of the statements contained in it.
A teaching by inference is quite common in the Bible, as for instance that the first appearance of the rainbow was at the close of the flood. It is not stated that the rainbow had never been seen before, but it is stated that God told Noah that he would set his bow in the cloud as a token of the everlasting covenant into which He was then entering with Noah and all the creatures on the earth. Noah was a man six hundred years old, and it would have been a little more puerile than child’s play to try to get a man of his mature years, who had seen the rainbow thousands of times, to accept this as a token that there should never be another deluge to destroy him or his descendants. It would have been just as sensible to use the sun as the token of the pledge.
Another fact that must not be lost is that the earth was depopulated by this flood. Only eight souls in all the earth—this statement is corroborated by the New Testament—and all this so recently as twenty three hundred and fifty years before Christ. That this is Bible teaching requires no collateral substantiation.
Deeming it important to give but a passing mention to some of the high points over which there is or might be controversy, I shall include Jonah and the whale, Joshua’s memorable command to the sun and moon, Elijah’s aerial navigation, Daniel’s survival of in the lion’s den, and three Hebrews in Nebuchadnezzar’s super-heated furnace, the report of Balaam’s donkey, Saul’s visit with Samuel in the house of the witch of Endor (one of the best authenticated cases, of the many in the Bible, which demonstrates spiritualism—if one believes the teachings of the Bible, there should be no necessity for a Society for Psychic Research to determine whether it is real or not. It is very real all through the book.) The divine right of kings, Crossing the red Sea and the river Jordan on dry bottoms, and in the New Testament, the virgin birth, the miracles, the time and manner of establishing the New Testament, and so on throughout both volumes of the Bible. There is not a one of the sixty-six different books that does not contain teachings which might be specified for comparison in meaning with the teachings of science, to show grounds for controversy. One question is, Do they disagree, and is that disagreement vital enough to justify the great upheaval which is going on now in the world? Churches split between fundamentalism and modernism, trials for heresy, state legislators passing laws prohibiting the teaching, in public schools, of the subject of Evolution, the church plainly losing that old-fashioned hold it once had on the conduct of the people, in fact, an almost universal uncertainty as to what to believe. Let us investigate. An honest faith is not afraid of light. The Reason that God gave to man must operate. It should be trained to operate logically. “hear all things, prove all things, and hold fast to that which is good.” Hold fast to that which is good after the proving—not just through some notion or fancied sentiment, or because some sainted ancestor held that way.