The old story about the camel that wanted to get its nose inside the tent has been used many times to illustrate the comparatively insignificant beginnings of enormous evils. But it will do no harm to use it again to illustrate the apparently innocent way in which the evolution doctrine began to enter into that possession of the Christian world which we see it now has.
In the fable the camel complained that he was suffering with the cold; he begged his master just to let him put his head inside the tent. When this was granted, the animal persisted in working his shoulders inside also; presently he was entirely inside; and as the tent was small, the owner found himself completely crowded out into the cold.
The nose of the evolutionary camel was admitted when over a hundred years ago the students of geology became convinced that a genuine time value is shown by each of the successive beds of rock in any specific locality, and that this time value attaches to the fossils found in these successive beds. When this was admitted as an actual fact, a chronological scheme of the fossil life of the world became inevitable. This world scheme of the fossils soon became the long geological "ages;" and these inevitably grew into the skeleton or outline of organic development, needing only some Darwin to come along and clothe the skeleton with flesh and blood, resulting in the full-grown world philosophy which has so completely taken possession of the modern world.
If any of us recognizes distinct anti-Christian features in the modern mature form of the evolution theory, with its denial of every fundamental of the Christian religion, he ought to give close attention to the facts and the logic of the first stages of its history. For if we admit the nose of this clever and very persistent intruder, we shall find great logical difficulty in repelling the advances of the monster, organic evolution, though we struggle and fight our very utmost. At least this has been the sad experience of the Christian church during the past century or so.
* Contact and conflict with the evolution theory is inescapable for workers in this cause who herald the creatorship of God to a world largely committed to the philosophy of evolution and all its implications. It behooves us to master such fundamental principles and distinctions as are here set forth by Professor Price, a recognized authority in this field.—Editors.
That a time element of some sort really inheres in the stratified beds seems one of the most obvious facts derived from the study of them and their mode of formation. Yet there is a very dangerous fallacy in the related idea that this time element also attache's to the various fossils contained in these beds; And it is to an analysis of this greatly misunderstood set of facts that I would invite the attention of Ministry readers.
When we find any two beds or two strata one above another, it is a matter of common sense to say that a time element is clearly indicated. The lower one must obviously have been deposited before the upper. This is the geological law of superposition. Moreover, the fact that we have not one continuous layer, but two beds, with a distinct dividing line between them, is proof that an interval, large or small, must have intervened between the laying down of the two beds. Otherwise there would have been one continuous bed, not two.
And yet, how much of an interval of time is indicated in a case of this kind? Was it twenty minutes, or twenty million years? By the mere physical evidence of the beds themselves (that is, disregarding the fossils which may be contained in them) it is quite impossible to say what this interval of time really amounted to. And yet, when the two layers are strictly conformable to each other, with no signs of any erosion or disturbance intervening, one bed must have followed the other in tolerably quick succession, with no extensive interval of time between them. On the other hand, if the lower bed shows evidence of having been eroded or tilted up on edge before the next layer was deposited upon it, even this would not be absolute evidence of any long geological "age" having intervened. Any such combination of events might very easily have taken place during the rather prolonged turmoil and disturbances of the deluge.
However, this is not where the trouble arises. Evolutionary geologists do not depend upon either the mineral composition or the physical appearance of the beds of shale or sandstone or limestone for their time theories. For a hundred years or so they have accustomed themselves to disregard entirely the physical appearance presented by the rocks, placing their entire dependence upon the fossil contents of the strata for that time element which they always seek to read from the rocks. And since by this time element which the geologists read from the rocks by means of their fossils, more than by all other means combined, the evolution theory has been foisted upon the world, we should consider this matter with our utmost care and attention.
To illustrate how the matter works out, let us suppose that we have three distinct layers or beds one above another, the lower one containing trilobites, the middle one containing the bones of the huge dinosaurs, and the top one containing some bones of a mastodon, a kind of extinct elephant. I own that this would be a very unusual combination of fossils; perhaps no such combination occurs in any locality on earth! but it will serve to illustrate the subject better than the ordinary cases which are usually much more complicated.
According to the accepted theory of the fossils, three completely distinct periods of time would be here represented. The trilobites (if of a particular type) would be assigned to the Cambrian "age," the dinosaur bones would be dated as of Cretaceous "age," while the mastodon would be said to belong to the late Tertiary period or "age." Thus the entire geological scheme would be covered by these three groups of fossils. For the trilobites of the Cambrian rocks are considered about the oldest fossils on earth, the Tertiary mastodon would be almost the youngest, while the Cretaceous dinosaur would come somewhere in between, though nearer the latest. Many, many millions of years (we are told) elapsed after the trilobites lived and died before the dinosaurs appeared, and the dinosaurs were all dead and gone several more millions of years before the mastodons came into existence. And these precise time intervals are always stated by the evolutionary geologists, not as mere theories more or less probable, but as settled facts which none but the ignorant would dare to doubt or question.
Thus from a real time element shown by the physical laying down of beds, we have arrived at a very prodigious time element represented by these fossils. How did we-rnake the transition? We did it by the legerdemain of quietly transferring the time element shown by the making of the beds to the fossils contained in these beds. But what is the harm in this? Why may this not be done?
Let us carefully reconsider our methods of reasoning. For it is a well-known fact that more scientific blunders have been made by false or illogical reasoning than by incorrect observations or poorly planned experiments.
We have admitted a genuine time element in the physical act of the laying down of these successive beds. But this is by no means to admit a time distinction between the clay, the sand, and the gravel of the lowest bed and the very similar materials found in the other beds! assuming (which may or may not be the case) that the three sets of beds we are here discussing happen to be composed of similar fragmental materials. It would be obviously absurd for anyone to say that the clay, the sand, and the gravel of all three sets of beds (disregarding the fossils) could not all have been in existence somewhere in the vicinity simultaneously, different currents having merely brought them here together in this position, one above another.
Science means knowledge, not guessing or assuming. And no human being has any right to assume a time distinction between the pieces of sand and gravel which we find here in these beds in superposition. For the materials of which all these beds are now composed may have been (and indeed very probably were) all in existence at the very same time, though currents from different directions laid them down here in a genuine time order. Whether the bottom layer was deposited thirty minutes or thirty days or thirty years before the next one, we have absolutely no means whatever of determining from these physical facts alone; though of course if all the materials were already in existence simultaneously, no very long time interval could have intervened.
But the reasoning is very similar when we pass from the sand and gravel of the beds to the fossils. It is a sad slip in logic to transfer the time element represented by the physical order of depositing these beds to the sand and the gravel of which these beds are composed without substantial and wholly independent evidence; but it is an exactly similar slip in logic to affirm a long-drawn-out time element for the three kinds of fossils, the trilobites, the dinosaurs, and the mastodons contained in these beds. Is there any way of proving independently a genuine time value for these forms of life? None whatever. The entire idea of their time sequence is based entirely upon such geological examples as these. But is there any genuine method of proving that all these three kinds of animals may not have been living contemporaneously in the same world, their remains having merely been washed into their present positions, one above another, by successive currents of the rivers or of the ocean? Whether these currents were acting in a normal, regular manner, or in some very abnormal manner, as in a world convulsion like the deluge, would not make the slightest difference in the logic of the case.
If the evolutionary geologist is to establish his case, he must be prepared to prove genuine time values for the fossil shells and bones which neither he nor anyone else would think of trying to prove for the sand and gravel found accompanying them. How is he to prove in any reliable way that all these three kinds of animals were not living contemporaneously? Every gospel worker should remember that this is the very crux of the whole evolution theory.
Walla Walla, Wash.
