OCR Text |
Show 'TEACHERS AT PRQVO TO RESIGN Provo. Feb. 21. -Prof. Henry Peter-sou, Peter-sou, dean of the teachers' college of Brlgham Young university, returned from Mantl today and held a conference confer-ence with his brother. Joseph Peterson, Peter-son, professor of psychology and Ralph V. Chamberlain, professor of biology, all three or whom will bo askod this week to either resign from tho faculty or cease teaching doctrines that are regardod as heresies b tho church authorities, since they are contrary con-trary to tho Mormon belief. Tho three professors will not Issuo a statement to the public until they have been formally apprised of the recommendations of tho general board of education of the church. Friends of tho threo professors bollcvo- that they will net In unison by resigning, instead of accepting the othor alternative alterna-tive of adhering more closely to tho religious views to tho church, as interpreted in-terpreted in Its mqst Important educational edu-cational Institution. While complaints have been general against tho three men, and while all of the objections crystallized Into an Investigation In-vestigation by the church board it is bclloed that one of the most ol.Joc- f tlonnble utternnces was an article np- J pcarlng in the "White and Blue" as a supplement to the college paper, from the pen of Prof. Chamberlain. Thoso who know tho orthodox views of all three men regard this stirring exposition exposi-tion as one that typifies, the ideas of alL The article is entitled "Evolution and Theological Belief and expounds theories that are contrawisp to tho bo-Hof bo-Hof of tho Mormon church regarding tho origin rof man. The Chamberlain article in part follows: The dunllsm or antagonism manifested mani-fested in what has beou widely spoken spo-ken of as the conflict between science and religion, has been a conspicuous phenomenon In the life of recent gone-rations. gone-rations. Tho same conflict. In one form and another, extends back to very early times. In Greece, centuries before be-fore tho foundation of Christianity, contention was rife, which largely parallels In some fundamentals the controversy of recent times. In truth, however, a large amount of tho modern mod-ern conflict has been either over nonessentials non-essentials or has been due to mutual failure on the part of the combatants to understand each other If theso would stop long enough to agree upon definitions and to reuch some real un- dorstanding of each other's meaning and point of view, they would in most cases end by agreement. It Is another anoth-er caso illustrated by tho dispute over the two-sided shield. Those who saw but one side might conclude the shield to be black; but the other side of tho shield might be white, and those who had had this side alone presented to them might ju6tly contend for tho whiteness. Both would be in possession posses-sion of the truth, but not of tho wholo truth, which would consist In a combination com-bination of the truth possessed by tho two. In this conflict both sides have been guilty of the folly of dogmatism: and in a largo number of cases the question hns ceased to be one as to fact or truth, and has become one as to the relative skill of tho opponents In debate. Stripping off all the surplusage and coming to the hoart of the mnttor, the underlying cause of the controversy with which we are dealing has always been a difference in the philosophic interpretation of nature Since tho days of early Greece there have been men who saw nature as somothing designed de-signed and sustained by a conscious intelligence; while there havo been others who saw nothing In or behind nature excepting so-called natural causes, forces acting blindly and Inevitably. In-evitably. Either God controls nature It has been thought, or else nature runs itself by virtue of blind resident causes. Thus wo have theism and naturalism respectively. Tho naturalism natural-ism of recent times has been essentially essen-tially materialism, embracing the view thnt the universe can be reduced wholly to "matter and motion." Wo see, then, that It Is over the questions of effeclent causation that controversy has been waged and can understand why so much Importance has been attached at-tached to tho matter of origins. Now evolution, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, deals essentially with the origin of organic forms and in tho minds of many has seemed thereby tp bear with great weight upon this question ques-tion of causation. Honco, we can easily eas-ily understand the tremendous storm raised fifty years ago when the theory the-ory was revived with so much vigor by Spencer, Darwin and others. There were then many opponents of religion, who short-slghtedly claimed that tho establishment of the truth of evolution evolu-tion would ho tho Jast link In tjho evidence evi-dence required for the completo proof of naturalism; and there were likewise like-wise many theologians who with the utmost foil acquiesced in this opin ion inai naturalism anu evolution were one and inseparable. It Is very Interesting and Instructive Instruc-tive to uoto that whllo theologians of fifty and twenty-five years ago thus so widely and so warmly opposed op-posed evolution as mnklng for puro materialism, most of those of the early ear-ly part of tho eighteenth century did not look upon tho evolution of species from species or oven Ifcelr origin spontaneously from Inorganic matter as having any theological bearing other oth-er than ao "instancos of that vnrious wonder of the world which In devout minds is food for devotion' In the host minds of those earlier centuries there was never 9lo much as a well-defined well-defined suspicion that theological faith was in any way opposed by tho phenomena of the natural origination of tho dlfforont forms of plants and animals. On tho contrary, many of tho ablest men of tho church not only accepted the doctrine of evolution, but extonsively developed the theory as describing the method or one very Important method of creation. Among the Greeks the Evolution theory roachod Its highest and most refiuod development In tho master mind ot Aristotle. Aristotle was much more than a inoro speculator; for ho pursued In his natural history Btudles tho inductive or scientific method which alone hn3 given us substantial adrancos In knowledge. He inado varlouR dlscoverlotf pt fundamental gig nlficanco which have been confirmed only within the last century. Ho understood un-derstood correctly the general character char-acter of tho origin or tho Individual ns a progroflIve development from a, simple germ to the complex adult, and subseaucntlv extended this development develop-ment process to the kind of organ-Isms, organ-Isms, definitely conceiving of tho orl- gin of the higher from succcsshMy lower and lower forms through the operation of a "perfecting principle" or law. Through the collapse of tho ancient classic civilization and the crushing of Greek freedom of thought, the mental men-tal continuity or tho kind ot Investigation Investiga-tion and thinking represented so brilliantly bril-liantly In Aristotle was completely broken. For nearly two thousand years no real successor to Aristotle appeared, the writings on nature that havo come down to us from these long centuries representing a surprisingly lower plane. Among tho Romans tho poet Lucretius was much impressed with the evolution Idcn; and In his De Rerum Nntura he represents tho process as applying to all things both living and Inorganic. Lucretius, how-ovor. how-ovor. wrought wholly In speculation and fancy, as did Pliny tho older who lived during tho hrsi century a. u. Long famed as the foremost natural 1st of antiquity, wo now know that Pliny added nothlu? to our knowledge but thnt, as a shallow compiler, he wrought together, fact and tho fabulous fabu-lous Indiscriminately. Tho world-renouncing character of the Christianity of the middle ages was not favorable -to devotion to natural nat-ural things ;and. in fact, direct Investigation Inves-tigation of nature was completely dead. The writings of the time were Iargoly based upon such works as those ot Pliny and treated In all seriousness seri-ousness such mythical creajuros ns tho phoenix and dragon. The fact is that the world had passed tljor-oughy tljor-oughy under the thraldom of book learning. The effort wag to settle difficulties by reference to ancient authorities; and the polemics of tho time were essentially polemics on interpretation. in-terpretation. Nature vas not directly studied but the ablest mlndB of these times were In the church, and among them speculation upon matters treated In scripture and the earlier church fathers was rife. Among many other questions that as to the mode of crea-tlon crea-tlon was naturally much considered A dominant boliof in this matter, based upon the passage In Genesis referring re-ferring to the formation of mnn. was that God moulded directly with his hands, all things, both living and dead. At all times, however, there was present along with this belief another an-other one equally ancient and rather more scriptural, according to which creation In the beginning was largely large-ly potential. According to this tho Impress of tho Creator was given once for nil, and under its power the actual ac-tual formation and unfolding of natural na-tural things was oven yet continuing the creation occurring jlafljely through the operation or secondary causes as an evolution process. |