Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful. George Henry Dole
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George Henry Dole
Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful
Published by Good Press, 2020
EAN 4064066065102
Table of Contents
The Moral Motive in the Cosmic Process
The Absoluteness of Right and Wrong
PREFACE
IN ATTEMPTING to search out first causes, science, fearing the introduction of the uncertain, has rejected all contributions from religion. Indeed, this feeling has been carried so far, that God is not mentioned in science, except as unknowable or unnecessary. Religion, fearing the destruction of so-called "faith," and the overthrow of favored doctrine, has rejected science, and slowly and stubbornly granted concessions to its conclusions. This separation and antagonism reduce science to gross materialism, and religion on one hand to irrational dogmatism, and on the other to scientific skepticism or even agnosticism.
MORE RECENTLY, under the influence of the new renaissance and the feeling that all truth is a unit of harmonious parts, there has been a growing tendency to recognize that true science and genuine religion are in perfect agreement and mutually helpful.
IT is not the intention to elaborate here a system with its details, but merely to state some fundamental principles, and to add a few thoughts in the line of the general position to which advancing times are progressing, and where may be realized a greater and even satisfying light.
GEORGE HENRY DOLE.
Bath, Me.
Evolution
CHAPTER I
Evolution
IT HAS been the work of the last century to present a nearly complete theory of Evolution, and to formulate a chain of reasoning that upholds the doctrine that every genus and species of plants and animals are derived from simple forms through gradual modification of functions.
The first suggestion of this doctrine threw the religious world into consternation. At first its advocates did not openly attack the fundamentals of religion, but with ominous reticence in regard to the spiritual and the Divine, or with the subtlety of cautious but factitious wisdom pleading them unknown, they proceeded to elaborate a theory that, if true, not only undermines all religion, but so thoroughly denies God as to render Him unnecessary.
The religiously inclined saw in Evolution, with its theories of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest," a most dangerous enemy, threatening to do away with religion, spirituality, the Scriptures, and God, as the impressions of superstition made in the childhood of our race.
Evolution was too formidably intrenched behind apparent fact and crafty reason to admit of absolute defeat with the weapons then at hand. Some scoffed, others ridiculed; but never in the world's history have these resorts stayed the progress of good or evil. Yet here and there a stalwart nature has risen and dealt the theory a staggering blow, from which it has tried to recover by shifting position or by re-intrenchment.
Nevertheless, Evolution has extended its lines until it is accepted by many among all thinking classes. There are many of the religious who accept it, in one form or another, as the Creator's method of bringing the universe into existence as it is to-day; though it is a little difficult to comprehend how a system of creation that is all-sufficient in itself could be a method employed by any one.
Yet there has ever been a feeling of dissatisfaction, a sense that Evolution is not all, that it is sadly inadequate. Consequently Evolution has made its way against a reluctance almost universal, and has been accepted, openly by some and tacitly by others, because backed by so formidable an array of apparent fact and contrived reason that no one has been found who could satisfactorily defeat it all along the line and at the same time offer a better solution of phenomena.
In this regard it may be said that the favor with which Evolution is met exists more from the lack of any other well-defined system than from its own merits.
The most prominent defect in Evolution is that it does not go deep enough. It is too superficial. It purports to give a history of outward effects, but openly avows that it cannot explain their inner causes. And so far as the causes are approached, the explanation is ridiculously inadequate to the effect, involving even a greater mystery than the cause itself. For it is easier to conceive of the governing intelligence, order, power, truth, love, and righteousness as existing in a personal God who creates from Himself, than it is to imagine these wonderful things existing in the "primeval units," which hypothesis assumes the very thing to be proved. That society with its marvelous developments, scientific, civil, and spiritual, should have started by the "fortuitous concourse of atoms," is more strange than the creation which it cannot explain. And when we come to the application of the principles of Evolution to social problems, and witness the final conclusions in regard to the origin of right, good, spirituality, conceptions of God, and the like, we are led so far away from the possible, and so deeply into the absurd and profane, that only the most sordid devotee, the shallow, and the credulous can entertain the doctrine.
The same causes that started creation have continued it, even to bringing forth its final form, which is the righteous and holy Christian, with a rational comprehension of a spiritual world, aspirations for eternal life, a living faith in God, and inmost desire to become more and more His image and likeness.
Now if fortune began creation, it has been by luck and