Science and Hebrew tradition; essays by Thomas Henry Huxley 1894 PDF book
Contents:
On the method of Zadig <1880>--The rise and progress of palaeontology <1881>--Lectures on evolution --The interpreters of Genesis and the interpreters of nature <1885>--Mr. Gladstone and Genesis <1886>--The lights of the church and the light of science <1890>--Hasisadra's adventure <1891>--The evolution of theology: an anthropological study <1886>
for more than a thousand years, the great majority of the most highly civilized and instructed nations in the world have confidently believed and passionately maintained that certain writings, which they entitle sacred, occupy a unique position in literature, in that they possess an authority, different in kind, and immeasurably superior in weight, to that of all other books.
Age after age, they have held it to be an indisputable truth that whoever may be the ostensible writers of the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan scriptures, God Himself is their real author; and, since their conception of the attributes of the Deity excludes the possibility of error and at least in relation to this particular matter of wilful deception, they have drawn the logical conclusion that the denier of the accuracy of any statement, the questioner of the binding force of any command, to be found in these documents is not merely a fool, but a blasphemer. From the point of view of mere reason, he grossly blunders; from that of religion, he grievously sins.
Moreover, experience has proved that the severity of this strain tends to increase, and in an even more rapid ratio, with the growth in the intelligence of mankind and with the enlargement of the sphere of assured knowledge among them.
Download