es evolution
as a theory quite unnecessary; he found that the world is ruled not by
blind forces inherent in matter but by Supreme Intelligence. And in
their effort to keep themselves from being engulfed in the apostacy of a
great leader, the scientists, as by a unanimous chorus, announce that
the scientific dogmas which enter more or less essentially into their
atheistic conception of the universe, are nothing but surmises!

What reason has a Christian to surrender his faith on account of the
contradiction of scientists? He has the oracles of God, the sure Word of
Him Who created all things in six natural days. And if he but escape the
fascination of scientific speculations, and study the works of God
without bias, he will find in Nature nothing that does not agree with
the Book.

CHAPTER TWELVE.
The Fatal Bias.

If the theory of evolution is contradicted as we believe by the data of
experimental science, by the history of civilization, by the facts
especially of religion, more especially of Christianity, then the
question is justifiable: Why do scientists uphold the evolutionary
theory in some form or other, in spite of such absence of proof and such
insufficiency of the hypothesis?

In answering this question let us first observe that scientists do not
stand opposed to Christian belief _as representatives of science_. It is
not science, but the scientists, not geology, but the geologists, not
physics, but the physicists that oppose Christian theology. In other
words, there is no conflict between the _facts_ of science and the facts
of revelation. Why should one not be able to maintain Christian faith
though one accept the fact that the volume of expired air is one-fifth
less than inspired air; that plant substance is composed of cells; that
Halley's comet returns to our system every seventy five years; that
Sicily was part of the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus? These
physiological, botanical, astronomical, and historical facts are not in
conflict with the religious beliefs based on Scripture. The same holds
good with reference to the so-called laws of nature. These "laws" are
but group-names for certain phenomena. Thus we speak of the law of
gravity, of the conservation of energy, the Laws of Charles and Mariotte
regarding gaseous bodies, zoological laws, physiological, and
psychological laws. A book which merely records and classifies these
laws and describes the phenomena underlying them, is a truly sc