Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
problem. A substantial number of evangelical Christians operate upon a
concept of inerrancy that assumes that the language of science can be true
to God only if it is also true to the Bible. The very name of one popular cre-
ationist website, “Answers in Genesis,” reflects this assumption: no scien-
tific account of origins will be vouchsafed which does not reflect the Bible's
language of creation. However, the historical record shows that even quite
conservative approaches to the Bible have not always ruled out evolution.
Important contributors to
The Fundamentals
, the volumes from which this
movement took its name, did not reject it. The fundamentalist theologians
Augustus Hopkins Strong (1836-1921), Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921),
James Orr (1844-1913), and George Frederick Wright (1838-1921) may
have promoted biblical inerrancy, but they did not suppose that it pre-
cluded evolution.
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Even Bryan's views were not as extreme as those of his
fictional counterpart in
Inherit the Wind
, the demagogic Matthew Harrison
Brady. One of the embarrassments that the Great Commoner faced when
called as Clarence Darrow's surprise witness on the last day of the Scopes
trial was the public exposure of a cosmology not quite in keeping with
the young-earth creationism of his followers.
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It had been Darrow's inten-
tion merely to expose Bryan's scientific ignorance, but he also managed to
expose some remnants of the Nebraska politician's earlier openness to the
evolutionary perspective.
Fundamentalist notions of the Bible have done much to prejudice Amer-
icans against evolutionary science, but evolutionism contributes as well. An
evolutionary outlook that proposes to encompass religious or philosophi-
cal questions of meaning automatically falsifies every alternative viewpoint.
Scientism in this way mirrors the bibliolatry it so likes to attack. A pattern
analogous to the hermeneutical positivism that causes many religionists to
suppose that scientific answers are found in Genesis invites scientists to sup-
pose that religious ones are found in science. Bryan certainly detected this,
and he could quote from Huxley's
Man's Place in Nature
to back himself up.
The materialist has always rejected the Bible account of Creation and,
during the last half century, the Darwinian doctrine has been the means
of shaking the faith of millions. It is important that man should have a
correct understanding of his line of descent. Huxley calls it the “question
of questions” for mankind. He says: “The problem which underlies all
others, and is more interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of
the place which man occupies in nature and of his relation to the universe
of things. Whence our race has come, what are the limits of our power
over nature, and of nature's power over us, to what goal are we tending,
