[History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew Dickson White]@TWC D-Link bookHistory of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom CHAPTER I 93/124
I was passing the day with him at Nahant in 1868, consulting him regarding candidates for various scientific chairs at the newly established Cornell University, in which he took a deep interest.
As we discussed one after another of the candidates, he suddenly said: "Who is to be your Professor of Moral Philosophy? That is a far more important position than all the others." IV.
THE FINAL EFFORT OF THEOLOGY. Darwin's Origin of Species had come into the theological world like a plough into an ant-hill.
Everywhere those thus rudely awakened from their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and confused. Reviews, sermons, books light and heavy, came flying at the new thinker from all sides. The keynote was struck at once in the Quarterly Review by Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford.
He declared that Darwin was guilty of "a tendency to limit God's glory in creation"; that "the principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with the word of God"; that it "contradicts the revealed relations of creation to its Creator"; that it is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory"; that it is "a dishonouring view of Nature"; and that there is "a simpler explanation of the presence of these strange forms among the works of God": that explanation being--"the fall of Adam." Nor did the bishop's efforts end here; at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science he again disported himself in the tide of popular applause. Referring to the ideas of Darwin, who was absent on account of illness, he congratulated himself in a public speech that he was not descended from a monkey.
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