CREATION AND EVOLUTION

The world in which we live can have experienced few tragedies so great as the conflict between religion and science. The contrast between the Puritan scientists of the seventeenth century and the scientists and church-men involved in the Darwinian controversy of the nineteenth century is fundamental, and marks a disastrous revolution in the approach to nature of both Christians and non-Christians. Whereas the Puritans regarded science as an ally of true religiont, most of those engaged in the first flurry of the evolution debacle were ranged into opposing camps depending upon whether they were scientists, evolutionists and unbelievers, or theologians and anti-evolutionists. The legacy of this radically changed attitude has remained with us and even today is a determinative influence in much of our religious and scientific life. The reasons for the change are complex, and will only partly concern us here. Whatever else may be true of the evolutionary controversy, one point is clear-emotional and philosophical considerations have predominated