Most modern histories of mankind begin with the word evolution, and with a rather wordy exposition of evolution . . . . There is something slow and soothing and gradual about the word and even about the idea. As a matter of fact, it is not, touching these primary things, a very practical word or a very profitable idea. Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth” even if you only mean “In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.” For God is by it’s nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. it has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else; just as many of them live under a sort of illusion that they have read the Origin of Species.
—G.K. Chesterton, Heretics (1905)
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