Abstract
A GLANCE through this book will not satisfy the reader that the great problems of modern thought are to be settled even by the well-meant essays of a well-read pastor. It is one of the “reconciliations” of science and religion, so common in England, but less so in Germany, where people are in general unwilling to check views on scientific questions by their relation to theology. The author impresses on his readers that the theory of universal law is compatible with the Christian doctrine of miracles, and that the Darwinian hypothesis of development may really receive strong support from the doctrine of human development in a future state. But his arguments prove little or nothing one way or the other. Next, turning to the Creation, we find him placidly remarking that the order of its stages is given differently in Genesis and again in Job, his inference being that neither order is “binding on us.” The six days, in his opinion, are not natural days, nor are they geological periods, for neither would this fit with the geological evidence; he therefore concludes that they are “divine days,” whatever that may mean. Such reading ought to suggest to religious minds the serious question whether disbelief can do so much harm as the habit of perverting and mystifying belief. We may hope that when theologians have become more familiar with the theory of evolution as manifested in the development of religious ideas themselves, their reconciliation of man's religious tendencies with his scientific knowledge may be placed on a higher basis than in such attempts as this, of which the weakness is only made more conspicuous by its good intention.
Die Darwin'sche Theorien und ihre Stellung zur Philosophie, Religion und Moral.
Rudolf
Schmid
Von, Stadtpfarrer in Friedrichshafen. (Stuttgart, 1876.)
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T., E. Die Darwin'sche Theorien und ihre Stellung zur Philosophie, Religion und Moral . Nature 15, 176 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/015176b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/015176b0