Page 175 - Systematic Theology - Louis Berkhof

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Yet it can very well be accounted for by the assumption that God in creating the animal world
made certain typical forms basic throughout, so as to have unity in variety, just as a great
musician builds up his mighty composition on a single theme, which is repeated time and again,
and at each repetition introduces new variations. The principle of preformation gives an
adequate explanation of the similarities under consideration. The embryological similarity, such
as it is, can be explained on the same principle. Moreover recent biological studies would seem
to indicate that no structural similarity but only a genetic relationship can prove affinity or
descent. As far as the rudimentary organs are concerned, more than one scientist has
expressed doubt as to their vestigial character. Instead of being the useless remains of animal
organs, it may very well be that they serve a definite purpose in the human organism. The
blood tests in their original form, while pointing to a certain likeness between the blood of
animals and man, do not prove genetic relationship, since in these tests only part of the blood,
the sterile serum which contains no living matter, was used, while it is an established fact that
the solid portion of the blood, containing the red and white cells, is the carrier of hereditary
factors. Later tests, in which the spectroscope was called into use and the entire blood was
examined, proved conclusively that there is an essential difference between the blood of
animals and that of man. The palaeontological argument is equally inconclusive. If man really
descended from the anthropoid apes, it might be expected that the intermediate forms would
be in existence somewhere. But Darwin was not able to find this missing link any more than the
thousands of missing links between the various species of animals. We are told that the early
progenitors of man have long since died out. This being so, it was still possible that they might
be found among the fossil remains. And to-day scientists actually claim that they have found
some bones of very ancient men. They have reconstructed these men for us, and we can now
enjoy looking at the imaginary photos of the reconstructed Java man (Pithecanthropus erectus),
the Heidelberg man (Homo Heidelbergensis), the Neanderthal man (Homo Neanderthalensis),
the Cro-Magnon, the Piltdown man, and others. These reconstructions seem to be taken
seriously by some, but really have very little value. Since only a few bones were found of each,
and even these were scattered in some cases, so that it is not certain that they belong to the
same body, they merely testify to the ingenuity of the scientists who reconstructed them. In
some cases the specialists are by no means agreed as to whether the bones in question
belonged to a man or to an animal. Dr. Wood, professor of anatomy in the University of
London, says in a booklet on the Ancestry of Man: “I find no occupation less worthy of the
science of Anthropology than the not unfashionable business of modelling, painting, or drawing
these nightmare pictures of the imagination, and lending them in the process, an utterly false
value of apparent reality.”[Quoted by Allen, Evolution in the Balances, p. 110.] Fleming, one of
the most prominent present day scientists, says: “The upshot of it all is that we cannot arrange
all the known fossil remains of supposed ‘man’ in a lineal series gradually advancing in type or