Biblical Biology: A Contribution to Religious Non-Science

In 1890, meeting in Paris Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, she was converted to Theosophy, becoming a member of the Theosophical Society and a prominent lecturer on the subject. When Blavatsky died in 1891, Besant was left as one of the leading figures in Theosophy and in 1893 she represented it at the Chicago World Fair.

Besides being a prolific writer, Besant was a “practised stump orator” who gave sixty-six public lectures in one year. In her long life she wrote numerous books and pamphlets.

The Annie Besant’s pamphlet Biblical Biology was published in London in 1884. It’s a reflection - only apparently provocative but actually profound and reasoned - on the theological and “biological” contradictions of the Holy Scriptures of Judeo-Christian monotheism, typical of Annie Besant’s youthful and revolutionary spirit.

Gen. I. contains some biological facts of great interest and novelty. Herein we learn that trees brought forth fruit, and herbs yielded seed, and the earth brought forth grass, before the sun existed to «divide the day from the night» (verses 11-14). These were the first living things that existed on the earth. At that time there was no animal life in existence; no sound of life broke the silence of those vast woods; for two days the vegetable world triumphed in security; no snail smeared the delicate fronds of the fern; no caterpillar ate the dainty new-born leaves; no sparrow pecked the cherry; no blackbird feasted on the strawberry. Dogmatic science asserts that these grasses and herbs and fruit-trees could not have brought forth their seeds and fruits without the sunrays, but Genesis knows better. Foolhardy science produces miserable pieces of rock, containing fossil animals older than any plants, and sets them against our glorious revelation. But are men moles or rabbits, that they should burrow in the earth and bring out these deceiving pebbles which God mercifully hid out of sight, clearly showing that he intended them to be out of mind?