Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/188

 arising out of popular deductions (or supposed deductions) from science. Religion unquestionably lost ground in the sense that dogmatic irreligion became rather fashionable. When the people began to learn that geological research had entirely upset the Biblical chronology, and that biological research had proved the development of animal life by evolutionary processes not compatible with a literal acceptance of the account of the creation in Genesis; when knowledge of the developments of language proved that the various tongues of mankind could not possibly have been the subject of a sudden, cataclysmal "confusion" at Babel or elsewhere, and when it became common knowledge that the sun and stars were not suddenly produced for the convenience of man, but were, on the contrary, for the most part much older, as suns and stars, than the earth itself; it is not surprising that minds untrained in philosophical deduction leaped towards atheism, although, of course, none of these discoveries has any more to do with religion, as religion, than, say, chemistry has to do with music. Unless one takes a highly anthropomorphic view of the subject they are not even inimical to revelation. Of course it is open to anyone who chooses, to say that if the statements in the Bible, said to be inspired, are incorrect, the Creator (and Inspirer) either did not know how He had done His work, or