File:Christian faith in an age of science (1903) (14797503623).jpg

Identifier: christianfaithin00rice (find matches)
Title: Christian faith in an age of science
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Rice, William North, 1845-1928
Subjects: Religion and science
Publisher: New York, A.C. Armstrong and Son
Contributing Library: Princeton Theological Seminary Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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conformed to the same plan in its generaloutline, though with much greater differences in thedetails. Now such a relation is perfectly intelligible, ifall these animals have had a common ancestry, and allhave inherited from that common ancestry a commontype of structure, which has never been lost, but whichhas been more or less modified in adaptation to varyingconditions and varying modes of life. It is not, how-ever, easy to see why those organs should all have thesame plan of structure if each one has been created in-dependently of any relation to any of the others. Theteleological suggestion that that plan of structure ismaintained in all these organs because it is the onlyplan, or at least the best plan, for organs appropriatedto all those different functions, is obviously inadmis-sible, since we find in other branches of the animalkingdom organs for every one of these functions—or-gans for prehension, for walking, for flying, and for 177 The Origin ofSpecies *^ M <^ ^ i<^
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^«^ P g^>..> :g ^ * ^ £ CnO p.® 3^ rt ;=- ^ ^ d) C p^.^ CD ^ ^ U ^ ^ -X -M ^ -X OJ o +J ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^ P c^ C ?^ § ;^ i^ Z ^ -^ ^ ;;: o -x <i^ ^^ O ^2 <u r; ^ c^ cij -^- fi, I.-^ ^. C OS o s- O fo 178 Rudimentary Organs swimming—constructed on plans which present no re-semblance whatever to the plan of vertebrate limbs.The invalidity of the teleological explanation appearsyet more manifest when we notice that the degrees ofresemblance in structure between the various forms oflimbs that have been referred to are by no means pro-portional to the degrees of resemblance in function.The function of a bats wing is essentially the same asthat of a birds wing, yet the bats wing has a veryclose resemblance in structure to the arm of a man orthe fore leg of a dog, while its resemblance in structureto the wing of a bird is very much less close. In likemanner, the function of the whales flipper is obviouslvmuch more similar to the fishs fin than to the mansarm or the dogs

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