Word: huxleyism
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According to Julian Huxley man has now become his own savior and has complete control of his own future. Man can now save his own self by "a comprehensive theory of evolution" and "its reliance on scientific method." However, if this be true, we should look at the world situation today and see the works of the scientific savior, who only studies man, who cannot love man because to love would destroy the validity of the "scientific method," and who, finally, can only point to, but not forgive, the sins of the world. Huxley's savior promises not eternal...
Theology is based, Huxley writes, on "a combination of an elaborate god-theory with a subsidiary but equally elaborate soul-theory," and is limited in applicability and the power of self-correction. Humanism, on the other hand, "is acquiring a well-organized theoretical basis in the form of a comprehensive theory of evolution as a whole"; it is capable of unlimited development, and "its reliance on scientific method" instead of divine intervention and revelation "makes it automatically self-correcting...
...idea that the universe must have been created, hence have a Creator, is scientifically old hat. Dr. Mascall, Huxley says, dealt with this question in his book, Christian Theology and Natural Science, by identifying creation "not with an act in the past by which the world was originated, but with an incessant activity [of God] by which it is conserved in existence . . . Preservation and creation are really identical." This, to Huxley, is nothing but "doubletalk. The whole range of physicochemical and biological phenomena can now be accounted for in principle in naturalistic terms: to invoke the operation...
...origin of man, says Huxley, "the assertion of Roman Catholic theology that all mankind is descended from a single couple, instead of from a slowly evolving population, is certainly untrue; and its claim that, though natural evolution can only account for man's body, God is needed to account for his soul. is quite unjustified...
Unique Man. In reply, the Rev. Dr. Mascall is prepared to accept the victory of the Darwinian theory of evolution. But he does not think the story ends there. Biologist Huxley, he says, has overlooked the significance of two "striking conclusions" of biology that are of great importance to theology. The first: man, as an intelligent being, is unique on earth. The second: "With the appearance of an intelligent being, evolution as generally understood . . . has virtually come to an end, or, to state the position in a different way, an entirely new mode of evolution has come into being...