Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. EVOLUTION AND FAITH. If we are permitted to assume some uncertainty in regard to that doctrine of evolution which so largely holds the viewpoint of the average author of text books in science and philosophy today, the uncertainty must transfer itself immediately to the new theology, and its pressure must fall equally upon almost every part of the system. We shall, therefore, deem it in keeping with the unity of this book to insert here some considerations on the status of the doctrine of evolution down to date. The appropriateness of this is more apparent when we remember that the new theology has eliminated its departments on cosmology and anthropology and passed them over to be decided and explained as branches of .natural science, refusing to have a voice in the decision. Even those not wholly committed to the rationalistic program have adopted this' method, thus showing their whole-hearted faith in science and in the illuminated judg- For illustration of this, see "An Outline of Christian Theology" by William Newtam Clarke, D.D., p. 222 f. ment of scientists, even upon questions which are beyond the reach of scientific analysis. That there is something true in evolution we need not undertake to deny. But we shall not need to rehearse any arguments in defense of this concession. As the library shelves are groaning with arguments favoring evolution in its full twentieth century connotation, we can afford to reserve the space in this book to examine its weak points. In recent years, a directly adverse view has been hard to find among teachers of good attainment in scientific thought. Since the last decades of the nineteenth century the bold materialism of the doctrine has been greatly softened, and its atheistic notes largely silenced. Until it showed t...