Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-04-24
SCIENTIFIC SILENCE.

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SCIENTIFIC SILENCE.
Evolutionists Determine Scientifically That
There May BE a God-The Moral and
Spiritual Facts of Christianity Complete
the Proof of Things Heavenly and Di-
vine.
1t has been an old and often incon-
siderate charge of theology against sci
encc that it was too dogmatic. AS to
its methods and conclusions, this is
often true. Glittering concentrations
have often been built up from a very
slender fact basis. At this point, how
ever, t%heologians and scientists may
well share, and perhaps about equally,
in the common structure. Projecting
the intellectual arch beyond the point
where the base will hold it firm and
steady is the old temptation of all
mental workers. Scientific dogmatism,
OF any other can, however, be con-
cerned only with the treatment of facts.
The facts themselves can not be too
much emphasized. 1t is quite right for
a man who has a fact whether in relig-
ion or science to be positive in regard
to it.
But the most noticeable thing regard
ing the latest developments Of science,
at least at those points where science
touches the religious realm, is nc: Dog
matte volubility, but a most impressive
silence. Thus as to the fundamental
question of the Being of God, the vul-
gar atheism Of q past century has no
place at all in scientific thinking.
And that for two reasons In the
sertion that there is no God
implies that he who makes it has
been everywhere and seen and undeI-
stood every thing. Since if he has not
seen and understood every thing the
place where he has not been may, for
aught he is competent to say, contain
evidence Of a divine being. The state
ment, therefore, that there is no God is
al u%nscientific assumption, and rs such
is nov universally discarded by scien-
titic men.
Another and even stronger reason for
abandoning positive atheism is the sus-
picion raised by the last results of sci-
ence that there may be a God. Our ev-
olutionists do not all of them believe
positively in the existence of q Creator,
but their last investigations significant
~ hint that there may be, and when
they write scientifically they write
though unconsciously-in the terms of
that confession. Thus Mr.. Huxley
studies a very small animal, the water
newt. He says the plastic matter out
OF which it is formed undergoes changes
SO steady and purpose-like in their sue
cesslon ''that n can only compare
them to those operated by a skillful
modelcr upon aformless lump of clay"
and adds: ''One is almost possessed
by the notion that some more subtle
aid to vision than an achromatic would
show the hidden artist with his plan be-
fore him, striving with skillful manipu-
lation to perfect his work" In other
words MI. Huxley recognizes Design
and thinks, with vision strong enough.
he could see the Designer. He is right.
He merely mistakes the nature of the
vision which would bring the designer
into view. He does not need a more
powerful achromatic but a spiritual eve
with which to look through the n he
has.
But we cite these words of the great
scientist as illustrative of a general con-
fession of silence now pervadinp the
ranks of science. And the word under
which that silence stands is aonosticism
Ihe worker among Natures laws has
reached the point where he says two
definite things regarding the relations
OF science and religion. The first is that
Atheism is an unscientific blunder. The
second is that there is such a tendency
upward OF facts in Nature as to suggest
q spiritual world about the natural and
10 make Theism, at the very least. a sci
entific possibility.
s to the first of these, It is remark
able That the Atheism, ALWAYS renno.
nant to the moral sense, should in tLis
age have been dethroned by the scien.
tlf1c sense. Prof. Drummond nuts l.
flnally thus: cit is y remark,bie
thing that, after trailing its black
length Tor centuries across E%uronoan
thought, Atheism should have had its
COON pronounced by science. With
us most penetrating gaze, science has
now looked at the back Of phcnomana
1t says: The Atheist tells us thero ;s
nothing there. W. can not l helior .s
nm. We can not tell what it is, but
there is certainly something. Agnos.
ucs We may be; we can no longer be
II; then, it was true that the first
crude forms of the doctrine of evojn0
r no NV Were Atheistic, it is certainly true
no 19nger. The unsolvee problems Of
t"n oocsrlne, such as the essential ma
ture OF matter, the origin of lie. the
evident design in nature. and the
origin Of the moral sense. enforce 'no
significant silence. where once thara
was positive disbelief. AS tn these
things, science does not know, and d oss
not pretend to say. GA" ooes
II indeed. INDUCES the hone Of .
more powerful lens to open M tbesa
myeteres, but until that lens is bro Murst
>"""io ~ IS dumb before the mystery