Show EVOLUTION the conflict between so called science and so called religion is a contest which will continue until the former shall become more religious religions and the latter more scientific the recent controversy in your city between mr watts and the rev bev mr braden serves to both illustrate and emphasize the truth of this proposition I 1 during the lost last four or five hundred years science has been slowly but surely pressing its adversary otherwise known as orthodox christianity to the inner wall and will soon force an unconditional surrender unless orthodoxy shall sufficiently purge itself of pagan errors and human dogmas as to pre dentan invulnerable front of religious ious truth if the writer has correctly interpreted the gospel of christas taught by the prophet joseph smith all truth comes from god and should be accepted as such that the constitution of the united states was given by inspiration has ever been asserted by the entire body of latter day saints and further it is generally believed that our father has revealed and is continual revealing through what are termed secular channels such truths as are necessary to the continued progression of his children hence all truth should be reverently accepted no matter whether it be religious truth revealed through god gods chosen prophets or scientific truth revealed through the te astronomer aAro nomer in his midnight watches through the chemist in his laboratory through the geologist in his patient study of the earths strata or the truth arrived at by the philosopher in his investigations of known laws and principles if the conflict between science and religion could be divested of its acrimonious personalities and the love of truth be made superior to the love of victory or triumph science and religion would join in a peaceful search for those precious gems of truth that lie hidden in the great volume of nature or that remain undiscovered in the vast expanse where revolve those countless suns and worlds it is equally an act of folly to repudiate the existence of god or to contemptuously deny the conclusions of science without a fair unbiased investigation of the subject in order to illustrate the 11 de and dum of the conflict let us take one of the bones of contention in this re bigio scientific discussion and examine it in a spirit of toleration the very mention of the word I 1 evolution or its popular synonym darwinism Is ia sufficient to arouse the ire and contempt of the average orthodox christian he seems to forget that there are tens of thousands of intelli intelligent 1 9 ent men and women who entertain that most obnoxious of all scientific heresies her esies as a cardinal truth nor does the disciple of orthodoxy seem to realize that it is the inconsistencies of his doctrine of the creation as drawn from uninspired translations of holy writ darkened by the interpretations of the mother church and insisted upon by all her daughters that have driven thousands to the supposed alternative doctrine of evolution in order to account for the existence of mankind the man of science in an examination of the remains of the various forms of life from the earliest ages down to the present time thinks lie he sees in their successive relationship evidences of a gradual modification of structure and function sufficient clent to warrant him in believing that all recent forms of life are the result of a slow development or unfolding of life in obedience to an universal law paralleled by the illustration of a seed placed in the soll soil that the fully developed tree bears no more resemblance to the seed than does the highest mammal man bear to the jellylike jelly like protozoan or supposed ancestor of the human family he believes that the first germs of life were sufficiently plastic as to be easily modified by their environment viron ment or surroundings L i i water air temperature food etc and that as the environment was progressively adapted to successively higher forms forma of life those forms which failed to keep pace pac e with the progressive environment became extinct while those more favored survived and transmitted their im proved structure and function to their posterity until today to day the various species have become so fixed as to permit of no further physic physical variation the above explained law has been bee termed natural Wa tural selection or the th i survival of the fittest i e C natu re selected those forms best beat adapted to existing conditions and it te 10 used in contradistinction to artificial selection which permits of an im i provement pro of forms within specific limits the evolutionist also believes that all mental moral and aesthetic pw pra gross gress of the human family is pro beeding in obedience to the same sam aw of universal progression it Is but justice to add that many earnest disciples of evolution see no bair barrier rier in that doctrine to a belief in gad and in him crucified to term the evolutionists foote fools and their doctrine bosh will no facilitate the search for truth nor turn them from the error of their ways there are however bo wever many grave difficulties in the path of the SW stu dent of evolution but like those itt io M the beaten path of the student rf of special creation many jump over them and go on A few of difficulties may be profitably point ed out about 35 miles west of deseret in the shale formation of antelop antelope Ante lOPO springs are found thousands of fossils of a flat oblong creature varying in length from one eighth of 0 an inch to two inches and whish dij resemble petrified bugs and LU itt A deed are so named by sheep herd ers era and others that gather theatt through curiosity these fossils ar sa known in geological works as tri 4 lo bites and are supposed to be among the very oldest knowd fi forms all of them had perfectly perfect ky formed eyes many of the having several hundred lenses vaa ao i how upon the development byr po thesis the trilobite became p hessed of such perfect optical argao in the very dawn of life chills whiles all 11 nature was in a rudimentary cott dit ionis is a stump which evoid quieu generally plow around abou arou it la in a well known physiological fact that the heart would have no power to force the blood throughout the he system were it not for the presence of valves so arran arranged ged in the chief ailef arteries as to prevent the blood tean flowing in the wrong direction d as it is impossible to conceive of circulation proceeding in iia the absence of those valves so it IS equally inconceivable that circulation could continue with the valves in a half formed or rudimentary condition hence it te Is impossible to conceive of unaided evolution slowly producing a valve which in any of its modified forms would fail of its purpose or that the valve would be perfectly formed at nested ne step which is in entire opposition to the whole theory of progress by y infinitesimal variations Al another lother hill of difficult difficulty perhaps the highest is found in the wide gap that intervenes between the highest type of the monkey famely ithe the anthropoid ape and road n in vain has the evolutionist for the missing link in ato has been the effort to bridge the chum chasm that yawns between the 84 34 cubic inches of brain in the ape and nae 70 odd cubic inches of brain val 14 the lowest human type and if the TO test of analysis is applied to the object the difficulty enlarges if we proceed upon the theory of the me survival of the fittest we vw that as the anthropoid ape sars ours cvek he is certainly fitted to that being the case case if the missing ing link ever did exist he ta have been even better fitted to bethan ve than his immediate ancestor the ape because his bis brain power lust have been considerably sweater than that of the ape aly his structure correspond 14 y superior which being the tae Ms case he should survive and tot abot be so I missing ij j YA 15 also difficult to imagine a catas batas fy Y th that at would have utterly an wails bated Ua ud ted the species to which the C unk link may be ascribed aw sad left intact the species immedi at y I 1 below and above besides it would ald have taken more than one III ida to connect connect two such widely ted species as the ape and daft na and further farther if they cannot be ond surviving it it is consistent to ww ak for their remain fossils of the re are numerous in the recent lorr nations then why should not the tt of a solitary link be to dispel the mystery 0 O en shrouds the immediate pro of man il says saya investigator the 6 awe we 4 1 know that man exists and if the orthodox notion of his creation be wholly at variance with reason man must certainly be the product of evolution as in order to pursue the argument let us paw pass by those physiological difficulties and allow the correctness of evolution up to the anthropoid age as beyond that the total absence of evidence becomes an insuperable barrier to credulity the result would apparently be that the existence of man is left as wholly without cause and this as a substitution would be a greater absurdity than either of the above at this stage of the controversy where both sides have the worst of it and counter charges of inconsistency si sis tency steAcy are frequent and well deserved the doctrine entertained by nearly the entire body of latter day saints that as soon as theearta the earth was prepared for man mans Is occupancy god took adam and eve from a glorified planet where they had existed in a celestial condition having bodies similar to that of our savior after his resurrection and placed them upon the earth to become the pro genitors geni tors of the human race rac comes in and forms a more natural and consistent solution of mans present existence than either evolution or orthodoxy tho doxy thus where attempted scientific solution falls fails absolutely through total absence of evidence and that of orthodox religion is by reason do we find in mormonism one more evidence of the divinity of joseph smiths mission where we would least expect it and which proves in this case cascas as in many others that so called mormonism is in reality the science of theology and by virtue of the survival of the fittest as well as by the decree of the almighty it will continue to expand in the exact ratio as error shau shall give way before the irresistible march of truth J P F GIBBS utah march 6 5 1889 |