Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T09:02:33.346Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

APPENDIX II - DR. McCOSH ON EVOLUTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2010

Get access

Summary

The venerable ex-president of Princeton has just issued (1890) a second edition of his little work, The Development Hypothesis under a new name: The Religious Aspect of Evolution. The work makes no serious attempt to prove the validity of any of those various and often conflicting theories of evolution, the insufficiency of which, regarded in the light of scientific causation, I have endeavoured to show in the preceding pages. It assumes them all as established scientific results, and then proceeds to show that they can be received up to a certain point without destroying our belief in God. Perhaps it would be correct to say that the actual thesis of the work is that the belief in secondary causes in creation is perfectly consistent with a belief in a Divine First Cause. This is very clearly stated, and with much interesting illustration; and as setting forth this great principle the work is of value, and its use in this respect will remain, even if all those imaginary and partial causes of development on which it relies should be swept away as of no scientific validity, and replaced by more rational views of the vastly complicated and still mysterious causes which have no doubt conspired under Creative guidance to bring about the succession of living beings in geological time. In this respect the work is similar in its tendency to Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World; and in another aspect both may be regarded as examples of the tendency of theology to conform itself to the philosophical and scientific hypotheses which are ever cropping up and disappearing.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1890

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×