The Warfare of Science with Theology by A. D. White

[_Maksutov]

The Unicorn of the King James translation is likely a rhinoceros. The Behemoth could have been a brachiosaur. Some, who are not intimidated by evolutionary presuppositions, dare to suggest that the leviathan may have been some variety of ancient dinosaur – now extinct. Such thoughts may bother you; however, they do not bother me.

It is more likely that the Unicorn of the King James translation was the aurochs or wild ox, a now extinct ancestor of modern domesticated cattle, and it definitely was not a one horned creature. Here is one of many references to the word "re'em" which is the word the King James scholars translated to "unicorn" because, at the time, they had no idea what "re'em" actually meant. I think you will find with a little research that most biblical scholars, both secular and religious, agree with that assessment.

And the brachiosaur? Is that a traditional Christian point of dogma?

Yes, evolution brings the presuppositions. Not the unprovenanced and unevidenced myth that supports a flat earth.

[_Maksutov]

Other devoted scholars followed in the paths thus opened
— Sayce in England, Lenormant in France, Schrader in Ger-
many — with the result that the Hebrew account of the Del-
uge, to which for ages theologians had obliged all geological re-
search to conform, was quietly relegated, even by most emi-
nent Christian scholars, to the realm of myth and legend."

Sundry feeble attempts to break the force of this dis-
covery, and an evidently widespread fear to have it known,
have certainh^ impaired not a little the legitimate influence
of the Christian clergy.

And yet this adoption of Chaldean myths into the Hebrew
Scriptures furnishes one of the strongest arguments for the
value of our Bible as a record of the upward growth of man ;
for, while the Chaldean legend primarily ascribes the Deluge
to the mere arbitrary caprice of one among many gods (Bel),
the Hebrew development of the legend ascribes it to the
justice, the righteousness, of the Supreme God ; thus show-
ing the evolution of a higher and nobler sentiment which
demanded a moral cause adequate to justify such a catas-
trophe.

[_Maksutov]

Unfortunately, thus far, save in a few of the broader and
nobler minds among the clergy, the policy of ignoring such
new revelations has prevailed, and the results of this policy,
both in Roman Catholic and in Protestant countries, are not
far to seek. What the condition of thought is among the
middle classes of France and Italy needs not to be stated

* For George Smith, see his Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York, 1876,
especially pp. 36, 263, 286 ; also his special work on the subject. See also Ler.or-
mant, Les Origincs de riJistoire, Paris, 1880, chap. viii. For Schrader, see his
The Ctineiforin Inscriptions and the Old Testament, Whitehouse's translation,
London, 1885, vol. i, pp. 47-49 and 58-60, and elsewhere.

here. In Germany, as a typical fact, it may be mentioned
that there was in the year 1881 church accommodation in
the city of Berlin for but two per cent of the population,
and that even this accommodation was more than was
needed. This fact is not due to the want of a deep religious
spirit among the North Germans: no one who has lived
among them can doubt the existence of such a spirit ; but it
is due mainly to the fact that, while the simple results of
scientific investigation have filtered down among the people
at large, the dominant party in the Lutheran Church has
steadily refused to recognise this fact, and has persisted in
imposing on Scripture the fetters of literal and dogmatic
interpretation which Germany has largely outgrown. A
similar danger threatens every other country in which the
clergy pursue a similar policy. No thinking man, whatever
may be his religious views, can fail to regret this. A thought-
ful, reverent, enlightened clergy is a great blessing to any
country ; and anything which undermines their legitimate
work of leading men out of the worship of material things
to the consideration of that which is highest is a vast mis-
fortune.*



IV. FINAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.— THE VICTORY OF
SCIENCE COMPLETE.

Before concluding, it may be instructive to note a few
especially desperate attempts at truces or compromises, such
as always appear when the victory of any science has be-
come absolutely sure. Typical among the earliest of these
may be mentioned the effort of Carl von Raumer in 18 19.
With much pretension to scientific knowledge, but wdth
aspirations bounded by the limits of Prussian orthodoxy, he
made a laboured attempt to produce a statement which,
by its vagueness, haziness, and "depth," should obscure the
real questions at issue. This statement appeared in the


* For the foregoing statements regarding Germany the writer relies on his per-
sonal observation as a student at the University of Berlin in 1856, as a traveller at
various periods afterward, and as Minister of the United States in 1879, iSSo, and
1881.


shape of an argument, used by Bertrand and others in the
previous century, to prove that fossil remains of plants in
the coal measures had never existed as living plants, but had
been simply a ** result of the development of imperfect plant
embryos"; and the same misty theory was suggested to
explain the existence of fossil animals without supposing the
epochs and changes required by geological science.

[_Fence Sitter]

Lighten up, Nipper. It's time you stopped telling God what to think.

Isn't that what all believers do? Assume somehow, out of the hundreds of billions of people that have lived, and from the thousands if not millions of different gods they have created, that they got god right?

[_huckelberry]

Lighten up, Nipper. It's time you stopped telling God what to think.

Isn't that what all believers do? Assume somehow, out of the hundreds of billions of people that have lived, and from the thousands if not millions of different gods they have created, that they got god right?

At least what I see is that sometimes they do and sometimes they don't

[_Fence Sitter]

Lighten up, Nipper. It's time you stopped telling God what to think.

Isn't that what all believers do? Assume somehow, out of the hundreds of billions of people that have lived, and from the thousands if not millions of different gods they have created, that they got god right?

At least what I see is that sometimes they do and sometimes they don't

Hi Huckelberry,

Well unless one happens to believe is every different version of every god ever imagined, I don't see how it could be any different.

In LN's case, not only does he make such a presumption, he also acts as if it is his place to tell others why they are wrong about their own such beliefs (or lack thereof) and does so by claiming divine authority he creates in his own mind.

[_huckelberry]

Hi Huckelberry,

Well unless one happens to believe is every different version of every god ever imagined, I don't see how it could be any different.

In LN's case, not only does he make such a presumption, he also acts as if it is his place to tell others why they are wrong about their own such beliefs (or lack thereof) and does so by claiming divine authority he creates in his own mind.

Fence Sitter, I think there are quite a few people who think their own understanding has limitations and possible errors. They can look around and see a world full of people trying to do the best with the understanding which they have. That does not mean that thought and comparisons should not be done. I do not have absolute knowledge yet I can still share my views for others to consider and to make rational reflection on the differences.

My own view is that all over the world people have some intimation of an ultimate spiritual power and meaning. Cultures have all sorts of images and theories about that. I doubt any of those are completely wrong. Perhaps there are individuals whose views are so distorted that common ground cannot be found with them, but I think those are extremes.

[_Maksutov]

In 1837 VVagner sought to uphold this explanation; but
it was so clearly a mere hollow phrase, unable to bear the
weight of the facts to be accounted for, that it was soon
given up.

Similar attempts were made throughout Europe, the
most noteworthy appearing in England. In 1853 was issued
an anonymous work having as its title A Brief and Complete
Refutation of the Anti-Scriptiiral TJieory of Geologists', the
author having revived an old idea, and put a spark of life
into it — this idea being that "all the organisms found in the
depths of the earth were made on the first of the six creative
days, as models for the plants and animals to be created on
the third, fifth, and sixth days."

But while these attempts to preserve the old theory as
to fossil remains of lower animals were thus pressed, there
appeared upon the geological field a new scientific column
far more terrible to the old doctrines than any which had
been seen previously.

For, just at the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, geologists began to examine the caves and beds of
drift in various parts of the world ; and within a few years
from that time a series of discoveries began in France, in
Belgium, in England, in Brazil, in Sicily, in India, in Egypt,
and in America, which established the fact that a period of
time much greater than any which had before been thought
of had elapsed since the first human occupation of the earth.
The chronologies of Archbishop Usher, Petavius, Bossuet,
and the other great authorities on which theology had
securely leaned, were found worthless. It was clearly seen
that, no matter how well based upon the Old Testament
genealogies and lives of the patriarchs, all these systems

* See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 475.

[_Maksutov]

must go for nothing. The most conservative geologists were
gradually obliged to admit that man had been upon the
earth not merely six thousand, or sixty thousand, or one
hundred and sixty thousand years. And when, in 1863, Sir
Charles Lyell, in his book on The A^itiqiiity of Man, retracted
solemnly his earlier view — yielding with a reluctance almost
pathetic, but with a thoroughness absolutely convincing —
the last stronghold of orthodoxy in this field fell.*^

The supporters of a theory based upon the letter of
Scripture, who had so long taken the offensive, were now
obliged to fight upon the defensive and at fearful odds.
Various lines of defence were taken ; but perhaps the most
pathetic effort w^as that made in the year 1857, in England,
by Gosse. As a naturalist he had rendered great services
to zoological science, but he now concentrated his energies
upon one last effort to save the literal interpretation of
Genesis and the theological structure built upon it. In his
work entitled Omphalos he developed the theory previously
urged by Granville Penn, and asserted a new principle
called " prochronism." In accordance with this, all things
were created by the Almighty hand literally within the six
days, each made up of '' the evening and the morning," and
each great branch of creation was brought into existence in
an instant. Accepting a declaration of Dr. Ure, that " neither
reason nor revelation will justify us in extending the origin
of the material system beyond six thousand years from our
own days," Gosse held that all the evidences of convulsive
changes and long epochs in strata, rocks, minerals, and
fossils are simply ^^appearances'' — only that and nothing
more. Among these mere " appearances," all created simul-
taneously, were the glacial furrows and scratches on rocks,
the marks of retreat 'on rocky masses, as at Niagara, the
tilted and twisted strata, the piles of lava from extinct vol-
canoes, the fossils of every sort in every part of the earth,
the foot-tracks of birds and reptiles, the half-digested re-
mains of weaker animals found in the fossilized bodies of the

* See Prof. Marsh's address as President of the Society for the Advancement of
Science, in 1879 '» ^"^ ^^^ ^ development of the matter, see the chapters on The
Antiquity of Man and Egyptology and The Fall of Man and Anthropology, in this
work.

stronger, the marks of hyenas' teeth on fossilized bones found
in various caves, and even the skeleton of the Siberian mam-
moth at St. Petersburg with lumps of flesh bearing the marks
of wolves' teeth — all these, with all gaps and imperfections,
he urged mankind to believe came into being in an instant.
The preface of the work is especially touching, and it ends
with the prayer that science and Scripture may be reconciled
by his theory, and ''that the God of truth will deign so to
use it, and if he do, to him be all the glory." * At the close
of the whole book Gosse declared : " The field is left clear
and undisputed for the one witness on the opposite side,
whose testimony is as follows : * In six days Jehovah made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.'" This
quotation he placed in capital letters, as the final refutation
of all that the science of geology had built.

[_Philo Sofee]

So is this like a counter posting option to Little Nippers posting the entire bloody freaking Bible on the internet? If so it's a great book you've chosen to share with this Mak...