Thomas Henry Huxley

Huxley and Gladstone on Genesis Thomas Henry Huxley

The revolutionary findings of science in the 19th century created a furor in the realms of philosophy, religion, and general culture. Many intellectuals began doubting that the earth was only a few thousand years old or that God had created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The upholders of conventional religion were, however, not prepared to go down without a fight. And so the former British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone ignited a controversy in the 1880s when he asserted that modern science actually confirmed the account of the creation of man and animal life as found in the Book of Genesis. His article led to a forceful rebuttal by Thomas Henry Huxley, one of the leading scientists of the day and a strong proponent of Darwin's theory of evolution. Over the next several years the controversy continued to play out, shifting focus to the so-called "miracle" of the Gadarene swine (the Gospels' account of how Jesus cured an insane person by expelling demons from his mine and thrusting them into the bodies of swine, who promptly killed themselves). The upshot of the controversy-here reprinted for the first time-shows how the defenders of religion were ill-matched to battle with the proponents of scientific truth.