Adam, the Fall, the Origin of Evil.

These, all taken together as Christian dogmas, are undoubtedly hard hit by the scientific proof of evolution (but are the only dogmas which can fairly be said to be so), and, as constituting the logical basis of the whole plan, they certainly do appear at first sight necessarily to involve in their destruction that of the entire superstructure.  But the question is whether, after all, they have been destroyed for a pure agnostic.  In other words, whether my principles are not as applicable in turning the flank of infidelity here as everywhere else.

First, as regards Adam and Eve, observe, to begin with, that long before Darwin the story of man in Paradise was recognized by thoughtful theologians as allegorical.  Indeed, read with unprejudiced eyes, the first chapters of Genesis ought always to have been seen to be a poem as distinguished from a history:  nor could it ever have been mistaken for a history, but for preconceived ideas on the matter of inspiration.  But to pure agnostics there should be no such preconceived ideas; so that nowadays no presumption should be raised against it as inspired, merely because it has been proved not to be a history—­and this even though we cannot see of what it is allegorical.  For, supposing it inspired, it has certainly done good service in the past and can do so likewise in the present, by giving an allegorical, though not a literal, starting-point for the Divine Plan of Redemption.

The evidence of Natural and Revealed Religion compared.

It is often said that evolution of organic forms gives as good evidence of design as would their special creation, inasmuch as all the facts of adaptation, in which the evidence consists, are there in either case.  But here it is overlooked that the very question at issue is thus begged.  The question is, Are these facts of adaptation per se sufficient evidence of design as their cause?  But if it be allowed, as it must be, that under hypothesis of evolution by natural causes the facts of adaptation belong to the same category as all the other facts of nature, no more special argument for design can be founded on these facts than on any others in nature.  So that the facts of adaptation, like all other facts, are only available as arguments for design when it is assumed that all natural causation is of a mental character:  which assumption merely begs the question of design anywhere.  Or, in other words, on the supposition of their having been due to natural causes, the facts of adaptation are only then available as per se good evidence of design, when it has already been assumed that, qua due to natural causes, they are due to design.