DEFENCE OF SCIENCE 



sin of Adam. The tigers could not have given loose to 

 their flesh-eating propensities until the fall." 



Writing later from Buffalo, on the same trip, Dana 

 adds: 



" I understand that [a minister who heard him] said 

 that if science shows that animals died before Adam's 

 fall, the Bible all goes to naught. Funny that the sin of 

 Adam should have killed those old trilobites! The 

 blunderbuss must have kicked back into time at a tre- 

 mendous rate to have hit those poor innocents and their 

 associates. Truth, though so glorious in itself, aye, 

 heaven-born, how it is feared and fought against and 

 often persecuted by self-deluded man! Give the trilo- 

 bites a chance to speak, and they would correct many a 

 false dogma in theological systems! " 



It was under these circumstances that Dana took the 

 attitude of an uncompromising defender of science, from 

 within the camp of undisputed orthodoxy and from a 

 group of men whose devoutness was unquestionable. 



Professor Tayler Lewis was a man of great ability and 

 of unusual attainments as a scholar. He had been a 

 professor of Greek literature in the University of the City 

 of New York, and subsequently held a like position in 

 Union College. A small volume, entitled Science and the 

 Bible, in which he defended the literal interpretation of 

 the word " days " in the first chapter of Genesis, and cast 

 aspersions on the teachings of science and scientific men, 

 aroused the attention of Dana, who picked up the glove 

 thus thrown into the arena. In four articles printed in 

 the Bibliotheca Sacra he came to the defense of geology, 

 and in vigorous paragraphs attacked the position of Dr. 

 Lewis. It is not worth while, forty years later, to review 

 the merits of this controversy, but it is significant as an 

 expression of Dana's opinions on the relation of science 

 and religion, and it is of even greater importance as an 



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