CHAPTER TWELVE. 
The Fatal Bias. 
If the theory of evolution is contradicted as we be- 
lieve by the data of experimental science, by the history 
of civilization, by the facts especially of religion, more 
especially of Christianity, then the question is justifiable: 
Why do scientists uphold the evolutionary theory in some 
form or other, in spite of such absence of proof and such 
insufficiency of the hypothesis? 
In answering this question let us first observe that 
scientists do not stand opposed to Christian belief as rep- 
resentatives of science. It is not science, but the scien- 
tists, not geology, but the geologists, not physics, but the 
physicists that oppose Christian theology. In other 
words, there is no conflict between the facts of science 
and the facts of revelation. Why should one not be able 
to maintain Christian faith though one accept the fact 
that the volume of expired air is one-fifth less than the 
inspired air; that plant substance is composed of cells; 
that Halley’s comet returns to our system every seventy- 
five years; that Sicily was part of the Roman Empire in 
the time of Augustus? These physiological, botanical, 
astronomical, and historical facts are not in conflict with 
the religious beliefs based on Scripture. The same holds 
good with reference to the so-called laws of nature. 
These “laws” are but group-names for certain phenomena. 
Thus we speak of the law of gravity, of the conservation 
of energy, the Laws of Charles and Mariotte regarding 
gaseous bodies, zoological laws, physiological, and psy- 
