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  OLIPHANT-SMITH DEBATE
  by Oliphant
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A theological debate addressing the dangers of atheism and modern liberalism in
eroding Christian faith, emphasizing the need to defend fundamental Christian
doctrine against teachings that deny God and eternal accountability.

  Chapters: 8

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. O-SD-0.2-Propositions
    2. O-SD-0.3-Publisher's Preface
    3. O-SD-0.4-Introduction
    4. O-SD-0.5-Table of Contents
    5. O-SD-0.6-Explanatory Statement
    6. O-SD-1-God vs. Atheism
    7. O-SD-2-Atheist Morality vs. Christian Morality
    8. O-SD-3-Unintelligent Evolution vs.God and the Bible

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  CHAPTER 1: O-SD-0.2-PROPOSITIONS
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Propositions 1. "There is a Supreme Being (God, Creator)."

Affirmative: W. L. OLIPHANT.

Negative: CHARLES SMITH.

2. "Atheism is Beneficial to the Race, and is most conductive to Morality of any
Theory Known to Man."

Affirmative: CHARLES SMITH.

Negative: W. L. OLIPHANT.

3. "All Things Exist as the Result of Evolution, Directed by no Intelligence."

Affirmative: CHARLES SMITH.

Negative: W. L. OLIPHANT.

Chairman: F. L. PAISLEY.


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  CHAPTER 2: O-SD-0.3-PUBLISHER'S PREFACE
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Publisher’s Preface

Copyright 1929 By F. L. Rows GOSPEL ADVOCATE COMPANY, Owner Nashville, Tennessee
Copyright Not Renewed Not everyone is so situated that they can know what is
going on through the length and breadth of our land. Few are in positions where
they can feel the pulse of public sentiment and observe conditions that are
conspicuous in social and religious circles. As the publisher of a journal of
wide circulation I have been fortunate in being able to observe con­ditions,
including dangers that face our great country whose foundation has been the
fundamental truths of God’s Holy Word. When men with dangerous imaginations
began to destroy the faith of weak ones the older ones naturally sensed the
alarm and have been on the defensive. The dangers have become so great that they
must be met and handled as open foes. I have seen from every direction an
alarming tendency on the part of the careless, unthinking, pleasure-bound people
to take up with the theories of modern Atheists and be­cause of their liberal
and loose views on many moral subjects give up their love for and joy in
Christian doctrine and practice. The great mass of people are giving little
thought to religious mat­ters, and the advent of atheistic teachings has
contributed its large part in breaking down the faith of those who were easily
influenced and didn’t have the depth of thought to know and enjoy the strength
of the Christian doctrine. The present generation are not rooted and grounded in
God’s eternal truth, therefore it is easy for ideas that recognize no day of
accounting to give in and give way and follow the line of least resistance in
the enjoyment of everything that satisfies for a time those who have no fear of
God or eternity.

We who are older and have seen real life and have seen cowards and brave men
die, know that in the last day there will be gnashing of teeth and terrible
distress of mind when such deluded crea­tures will cry out in their agony and
dismay—"Lord, have mercy!" Such would not believe the Savior if one came from
the dead, but in that last day and before this mortal flesh is laid in the
ground, every last one of them will call to God for mercy and salvation, but
there will be none. The circulation of a book like this debate must do a world
of good, and we send it forth with the’ only thought and purpose that it may
open the eyes of those who are in darkness and who have been so easily led away
from the teaching of Godly parents. F. L. ROWE.


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  CHAPTER 3: O-SD-0.4-INTRODUCTION
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Introduction "The Oliphant-Smith Debate" On August 15 and 16, 1929, there was
held at Shawnee, Oklahoma, a debate between W. L. Oli­phant of Dallas, Texas,
and Charles Smith, Presi­dent of the American Association for the Advance­ment
of Atheism. Three propositions were dis­cussed during the debate. Proposition 1:
"There is a Supreme Being (God, Creator)." Affirmative: W. L. Oliphant;
Negative: Charles Smith. Prop­osition 2: "Atheism is Beneficial to the Race, and
is the Most Conducive to Morality of Any Theory Known to Man." Affirmative:
Charles Smith; Negative: W. L. Oliphant. Proposition 3: "All Things Exist as the
Result of Evolution, Directed by No Intelligence." Affirmative: Charles Smith;
Negative: W. L. Oliphant. I have read the manu­scripts of all the speeches made
during this de­bate. I enjoyed heartily the reading of the manu­scripts, and I
am pleased to have the privilege of writing a short introduction to the book.

W. L. Oliphant is a member of the Church of Christ, and is located with the Oak
Cliff congrega­tion in Dallas, Texas. He is a young man—phy­sically strong,
mentally bright, and well educated for the work of a preacher. He is deeply
spiritual, and believes with all his heart in the absolute truth of the Bible.
His speeches bear unmistakable evi­dence of his faith, as once for all delivered
unto the saints. His manner in debate, as everywhere else, is courteous; for he
is a polished gentleman, as well as a scholar.

Charles Smith, by virtue of the position which he holds, should be a fair
representative of the atheistic view of life. Considering his views, I think
that he behaved with commendable courtesy during the discussion. It is a
pleasure to state that at no time daring the discussion did the debaters descend
to discourteous treatment of one another. Brother Oliphant acquitted himself
with high credit, both as to the manner and matter of his speeches. He took the
debate seriously, and in his opening speech pitched it upon a high plane. It was
evidently his aim to make the discussion one that would be worthy of the
attention of all thoughtful people. I am sure that in his part of the debate he
succeeded nobly. The speeches made by Charles Smith in the discussion of the
first two propositions do not seem to me to have done justice to the side which
he represents. I have no sympathy for his position on any of the propositions;
but I do like to feel that even an opponent does credit, or at least justice, to
the side for which he contends. Mr. Smith’s speeches on propositions 1 and 2
consist, in the main, of finding fault with certain doctrines and practices of
professed Christians of all religious bodies, or of bringing forward accusations
against the truthfulness and purity of statements found in the Bible. I do not
know why he pursued the course which he did; but he excited sympathy in my mind
for himself by the very weakness of his efforts, as revealed in his speeches on
the first two proposi­tions. It is easy enough to find faults with all
pro­fessed Christians, and it is just as easy to mis­interpret Bible statements
and make them say things which any fair minded person would con­demn. Perhaps
Mr. Smith did the best he could. If this be true, the cause which he represents
should see to it that he prepares himself to represent the cause for which he
pleads in a more creditable manner so far as his arguments are concerned. In
discussing the third proposition, in which Mr. Smith was affirmative, the truth
of evolution, he did his best work. It seemed to me that this was the only
proposition upon which he had material appropriate to the discussion; but even
in his speeches on evolution, his arguments in the main were old and many of
them have been discredited for a long time, so that they are no longer used by
up-to-date proponents of evolution.

It was a pleasure to see how skillfully Brother Oliphant followed Mr. Smith
through every one of his speeches, and answered with force and clearness every
argument and even every quibble of his op­ponent. I am sure that those who
believe the Bible to be true and who have faith in God, will be pleased with the
manner in which the representa­tive of their side conducted himself personally,
and also with the masterly manner in which he handled his part of the argument.
He showed himself at all times to be well acquainted not only with his own side
in the discussion, but also with the side of his opponent. The book embodying
this debate is being printed by the Christian Leader Publishing Co., 422 Elm
St., Cincinnati, Ohio, with Brother F. L. Rowe as publisher. I trust the book
may have a large sale. It will be especially interesting to preachers and to
mature church members and officers. Books of this nature are net intended for
children or im­mature minds. It is a question how far the pub­lishing of
atheistic views, even when presented in well conducted discussions, is
profitable. There are those who think that the very publication of such views
gives them a circulation wider than they would perhaps get in any other way.
There are certain people upon whose minds a familiar or ir­reverent handling of
sacred things works a feeling of contempt. But it is the boast of Christianity
that its views do not shun the light of the most searching investigation,
whether coming from friends or foes. It is not likely that very many children or
immature persons would enjoy a dis­cussion of these themes; hence the book is
not likely to work any injury upon such minds through the danger just alluded
to. People with sufficient in­telligence to appreciate the argument presented in
this debate will be strengthened and greatly en­couraged by the splendid showing
made by Brother Oliphant against this champion of atheism. I trust that many of
our preachers and teachers and thoughtful church members will buy the book and
read it. Praying God’s blessing upon all who may read it, I am with brotherly
love, HALL L. CALHOUN, Belmont Blvd. and Observatory Drive, Nashville,
Tennessee.

October 8, 1929.


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  CHAPTER 4: O-SD-0.5-TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Table of Contents Propositions2 Publisher’s Preface3 Introduction5 Table of
Contents9 Explanatory Statement11 God vs. Atheism14 Preliminary Statement14
Oliphant’s first Affirmative16 Smith’s First Reply38 Oliphant’s Second
Affirmative49 Smith’s Second Reply60 The Vote of the Audience66 Atheist Morality
vs. Christian Morality67 Smith’s First Affirmative68 Oliphant’s First Reply78
Smith’s Second Affirmative97 Oliphant’s Second Reply102 Unintelligent Evolution
vs. God and the Bible114 Smith’s First Affirmative115 Oliphant’s First Reply136
Smith’s Second Affirmative173 Oliphant’s Second Reply178 Decision of the
Audience191


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  CHAPTER 5: O-SD-0.6-EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
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Explanatory Statement In offering to the public a discussion of the exist­ence
of God, I feel much as did Alexander Camp­bell about his debate with Robert
Owen. In his first speech, Brother Campbell explained that he did not intend by
engaging in such a discussion to seem to admit that the Christian religion is in
need of defense, or that there are reasonable grounds for the rejection of
Christianity. God’s Word has nothing to lose by its being contrasted with the
theories of its enemies. Truth is never so beauti­ful as when seen in contrast
with falsehood. In this debate I have tried simply to present truth, and allow
intelligent people to decide between it and what Mr. Smith offered.

I do not pretend to have exhausted the subjects discussed. In fact, the evidence
on the Christian side of this question is so abundant that I was not able to
offer more than a small percentage of the material available. I believe,
however, that the honest student will find in my speeches enough evi­dence of
the existence of God and the truth of the Bible to thoroughly ground him in the
faith. While I cannot comprehend God, I can acquire working knowledge of His
will, which is sufficient for the battles of life. It is said that Rowland Hill
was once trying to convey to his audience the greatness of God’s love. Suddenly
he stopped and raising his eyes heavenward, exclaimed: "I am unable to reach
this lofty theme. Yet I do not think that the smallest fish in the ocean ever
complains of the ocean’s vastness. So it is with me. With my puny powers I can
plunge with delight into a subject the immensity of which I shall never be able
to com­prehend."

Mr. Smith has been very fair about the publica­tion of the debate. He went so
far as to say in a letter: "If there is any atheist argument which I have failed
to present that you especially desire to refute, put it in my speech where it
will fit, and then reply to it in yours." However, I have not taken advantage of
this offer. His speeches appear just as corrected by him. By mutual agreement
some material has been added to the speeches on the last proposition. I speak
much faster than Mr. Smith speaks. This explains the fact that my speeches
occupy more space in print than his.

If it seems that I have given undue notice to the degrees and other evidences of
scholarship of the men I have quoted, I explain that I did this be­muse of Mr.
Smith’s charge that educated people do not believe in God. I am glad to have the
in­troduction written by Hall L. Calhoun. Brother Cal­houn is a scholar. He is a
graduate from the Col­lege of the Bible at Lexington, Kentucky; a gradu­ate from
Yale Divinity School, at New Haven, Connecticut, and has an M. A. and a Ph. D.
from Harvard University.

I am much indebted to the good brethren at 3hawnee, Oklahoma, for their
co-operation. Broth­ers Will J. Cullum and F. L. Paisley contributed much to the
success of the debate. I appreciate the splendid stenographic work done by Miss
Blanche Burton in reporting the speeches. I am also grate­ful to Mr. and Mrs. M.
L. Petty and Mrs. E. L. Fisher for their assistance in the preparation of the
manuscripts. For the material used in the speeches I am obligated to many
authors. Many direct quotations from others were used. In these cases, I have
given credit to the authors by citing names of books and pages on which
quotations are found.

I send this volume forth, asking only a fair examination of the arguments
presented; and pray­ing that it may be instrumental in leading some skeptic to
faith in the living God, and in strength­ening and encouraging Christians. Rest
assured that God’s Book will stand any test applied to it. The feeble blows of
infidelity, such as those made by Mr. Smith, will not so much as leave a scar on
the Book of God or the Church of God.

"Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith’s door And heard the anvil ring the
vesper chime; When looking in, I saw upon the floor, Old hammers worn with
beating years of time.

" ’How many anvils have you had,’ said I, `To wear and batter all these hammers
so?’ `Just one,’ said he; then said with twinkling eye, `The anvil wears the
hammers out, you know.’

"And so, I thought the anvil of God’s word For ages skeptic blows have beat
upon; Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard, The anvil unharmed—the
hammers gone!"

Sincerely,

W. L: OLIPHANT.


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  CHAPTER 6: O-SD-1-GOD VS. ATHEISM
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God vs. Atheism (Thursday evening, August 15, 1929)

Proposition:

"There is a Supreme Being (God, Creator)."

Affirmative: W. L. Oliphant Negative: Charles Smith.

Preliminary Statement The meeting was opened by Brother Will J. Cullum, minister
for the Shawnee Church of Christ. After a brief introductory speech, he
introduced Brother F. L. Young, minister for Tenth and Francis Streets Church of
Christ, Oklahoma City. Brother Young lead the congregation in prayer.

Brother Cullum then introduced Brother F. L. Paisley, minister for the Church of
Christ, Sem­inole, Oklahoma. Brother Paisley served as chair­man throughout the
debate.

After a few words in explanation of the prop­ositions for debate, the order in
which the speeches were to be delivered, etc., Brother Paisley intro­duced
Brother W. L. Oliphant, the first affirmative speaker.

Oliphant’s first Affirmative Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Respected
Opponent:

It is now my happy privilege to stand before you in defense of a proposition
which I believe as firmly as I believe any proposition I have ever con­sidered.
I am here to affirm the existence of God, the Creator of the universe, the
omnipotent Personality, "in whom we live, move and have our being." I realize
that with a vast majority of you, as is true of any intelligent audience in this
country, there is no need of my offering proof of this proposition. Your minds
are fully convinced of its truthfulness;. you believe for reasons—the
sufficiency of which you have never had occasion to question—not only in the
existence of God, but in His power and goodness.

I am glad to see such a large audience. I regret that because of lack of room,
some have been turned away. I am especially glad to see in the audience many of
my friends from various sections of the State. I appreciate your presence, and
thank you for the interest that prompted your coming to hear this discussion.
Let me say in the very begin­ning of the debate, that for Mr. Charles Smith, my
opponent, I hold nothing but the most kindly feeling; for his degrading doctrine
of atheism, I have the utmost contempt. The terms of the proposition I am to
affirm are so simple that I presume no defining or explaining is necessary.
However, that the precise point at issue may not escape the attention of any
one, I shall say a few words along that line. I am under no obligation to
comprehend and explain God. I cannot do so. In fact, if finite mind could
com­prehend Him, He would not be an infinite God. The infinite cannot be
completely grasped by the finite. So far as the proposition is concerned, I need
not discuss the methods of God’s operations. I am under no further obligation
than to prove the existence of Him Who is the Creator.

I should like to emphasize the fact that I am not under obligation to defend
degradations or counterfeits of the religion of Jesus Christ, any more than a
government is obligated to defend counterfeit coins. Really, the Christian
religion should not be brought into the discussion of the present proposition,
except perhaps, incidentally; but I feel that it is good to warn my opponent at
the very outset that I shall not at any time attempt to defend sectarianism,
even though it poses as the religion of the Christ. I have no sympathy or love
for de­nominationalism. THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH

It should be understood that my proposition must be accepted as a matter of
faith. We cannot demonstrate God to the senses. He must be accept­ed by faith.
The writer of Hebrews says faith is "the evidence of things not seen" (11:1);
and in Romans we are told that "faith comes by hear­ing" (10:17). My duty then,
is to examine the evidence upon which we accept the existence of God; and to
determine whether our belief in God stands upon a reasonable basis. We are not
the only ones who act upon the principle of faith; even the atheist does that
Anything that is not sus­ceptible to demonstration to any of the five senses can
be accepted only by an act of faith; even the atheist must accept many things
upon the principle of faith.

Consider electricity. George D. Shepardson, A.M., M.E., Sc.D., late Professor of
Electrical En­gineering, University of Minnesota, says:

"The mind of an electrical engineer at once reverts to the fact that we cannot
see electricity, nor do we hear, taste, smell or feel it directly, yet we have a
great deal of knowledge about it.—Electricity has long since become a relatively
exact science and art, notwithstanding the fact that electricity is not directly
manifest to a single one of our commonly recognized senses." (The Religion of an
Electrical Engineer, pg. 38.)

So, while we light our homes and streets with electricity, and use it in various
and sundry ways, still we must accept some things about it as matters of faith.

Some of the very finest principles of life must be accepted largely by faith.
Who ever saw "hope"? No one; and yet, hope of some kind is enjoyed by every sane
human being. We have never seen the principle of "patriotism." "Love" is not
perceptible to any of the five senses. Who doubts the existence of "mother
love"? Still, you have never seen that principle. You have witnessed some of its
work­ings, but the principle itself escapes actual contact with any of the
physical senses.

All persons and incidents of the generations past are accepted by us on the
principle of faith. We hear the evidence concerning them, and then formulate our
belief or faith regarding them. I accept the facts that Napoleon Bonaparte lived
and ruled and that George Washington was first presi­dent of the United States,
but I never saw either of those gentlemen, nor have I seen anyone who did see
them. I have evidence of their having lived; and I accept the facts of their
lives because of this evidence. Only by faith do I know of these men. He who
denies faith must refuse to accept as facts everything which he himself has not
ob­served. All historical information must be set at naught.

ABSURDITY OF ATHEISM The absurdity of the atheist’s position is evi­dent on its
face. We might exercise some patience with the man who is honestly an agnostic,
the man who says, "I do not know"; but the man who boldly claims to KNOW that
God does not exist, takes an absurd and ridiculous position. If there is one
thing he does not know, that thing may be that God exists. If there is one place
in all the universe he has never been, God may be in that place. Before a man
can consistently deny the existence of God, he must make a god of himself. He
must declare that he is infinite in knowledge—that he knows everything. No man
can consistently say these things. Therefore, no man can consistently declare
that God is not. The doctrine of atheism is prepos­terous and absurd.

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

Man is incurably religious. No nation or tribe of people has been discovered
that does not believe in some kind of Supreme Being, and practice some form of
religion. We may go farther, and say that in all the religions of earth there
are traces of mono­theism—belief in one God. No matter how polythe­istic we find
a people, nor how deeply enshrouded in darkness their religion is, there are
always faint, glimmering rays of a purer light. In the midst of the belief in
many gods we find relics of the faith of a previous time—a pure monotheism. It
is also worthy of note that the earlier forms of the various heathen religions
are purer than the later forms. Principal Fairbairn, of Oxford, lays down this
gen­eral rule with regard to historical religions:

"The younger the polytheism, the fewer its gods." (Studies in Philosophy of
Religion, pg. 22.)

Dr. James Orr, Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology, United Free
Church College, Glasgow, quotes this rule, with approval, and says:

"Man’s earliest ideas of God were not, as is commonly assumed, his poorest.—No
savage tribes are found who do not seem to have higher ideas of God along with
their superstitions. Man does not creep up from fetishism, through polytheism,
to monotheism, but polytheism repre­sents rather the refraction of an original
undifferentiated sense, or consciousness, or perception, of the divine.—In the
oldest religions, without exception, along with the poly­theism, we find a
monotheistic background." (The Problem of the Old Testament, pg. 496.)

Hear Dr. W. M. F. Petrie, D.C.L., LL.D., Lit.D., Ph.D., F.R.S., F.B.A., F.S.A.,
Professor of Egypt- ology, University College, London:

"Were the conception of a god only an evolution from such spirit worship
(referred to on previous page) we should find the worship of many gods preceding
the worship of one god, polytheism would precede monotheism in each tribe or
race. What we actually find is the contrary of this, monotheism is the first
stage traceable in theology. Wher­ever we can trace back polytheism to its
earliest stages we find that it results from combinations of monotheism." (The
Religion of Ancient Egypt, pg. 4.)

I next offer the testimony of Dr. E. W. Hop­kins, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of
Sanskrit and Com­parative Philology, Yale University. He says:

"That religions may all be traced back to one primor­dial religion is not wholly
a narrow ’orthodox’ view. In this form, however, it is still held by both the
Hindu and the Christian of very conservative type. For example, about two
thousand years ago Manu, the Hindu law-giver, declared, what is still believed
by orthodox Brahmans, that one true religion was revealed to man in the
beginning and that all later types of religion have been vain divergences from
this divine model." (The History of Religions, pg. 14.) This author then quotes
from "Fetishism in West Africa," by Dr. R. H. Nassau, pg. 23. Here is the
quotation:

"All religions had but one source and that a pure one. From it have grown
perversions varying in their propor­tions of truth and error."

We shall next listen to Dr. William A. P. Martin, of the Peking University. Dr.
Martin discusses the evolutionary theory of the origin and development of
religion, and then adds this signifi­cant statement:

"This theory has the merit of verisimilitude. It indi­cates what might be the
process if man were left to make his own religion; but it has the misfortune to
be at variance with the facts. A wide survey of the history of civilized nations
(and the history of others is beyond reach) shows that the actual process
undergone by the human mind in its religious development is precisely opposite
to that which this theory supposes; in a word, that man was not left to
construct his own creed, but that his blundering logic has always been active in
its attempts to corrupt and obscure a divine original." (The Chinese, pg. 163,
164.) This author continues at length in his discus­sion of the question. He
shows that the religious rites of the various countries bear "unmistakable
resemblance, suggestive of a common source."

Professor Max Muller, famous Oxford profes­sor, discusses in a similar way the
lapse of mankind from earlier and simpler types of belief to low and manifold
superstitions. He says:

"Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginning we find it free
from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases." (Chips from a
German Workshop, Vol. 1, pg. 23.)

We might continue almost indefinitely such quotations regarding religions,
generally. An ex­amination of the religions of specific nations fur­ther
confirms our position that all religions are degenerate forms of an original
pure monotheism. Let us look at the religions of some of the nations.

Egypt

Dr. Budge, keeper of the Egyptian and Assy­rian antiquities in the British
Museum, tells us that as late as the Fourth Dynasty the number of gods
worshipped in all Egypt was about two hun­dred. In the Nineteenth Dynasty,
Thebes alone had about twelve hundred, and there were hundreds of other local
gods in other religious centers. He adds:

"The sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient; and the last state of the
Egyptian religion, that which was known to the Greek or Latin writers, heathen
or Christian, was by far the grossest and most corrupt." (Renouf, "Hib­bard
Lectures,’ pg. 91. Quoted by Dr. John L. Campbell, in "The Bible Under Fire,"
pg. 89.) An Egyptian inscription which supposedly be­longs to a period fifteen
hundred years before Moses says regarding God:

"He has made all that is; thou alone art, the millions owe their being to thee;
he is Lord of all that which is, and of that which is not." (Quoted by Dr. F. F.
Ellinwood, "Oriental Religions and Christianity," pg. 250.)

India The Rig-Veda contains the most ancient hymns of India. In the 129th hymn
of the tenth book there is a very clear expression of monotheism. It reads:

"In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught Then there was neither
atmosphere or sky above, There was neither death or immortality,

There was neither day nor night, nor light, nor darkness, Only the EXISTENT ONE
breathed calmly self-contained. Naught else but he was there, naught else above,
beyond."

Greece The religion of Greece was originally mono­theistic. Says Dr. Martin.

"The Orphic hymns, long before the advent of the popular divinities, celebrated
the Pantheos, the Universal God." (Quoted by Dr. Ellinwood, "Oriental Religions
and Christianity," pg. 228.)

Babylon Do we find traces of monotheism in Babylon? Hear Winkler:

"There are many, nay numberless gods; but they are only revelation forms of the
one great divine might." (Quoted by Orr, "Problems of Old Testament," pg. 409.)

China

Professor Legge, of Oxford, contends that at a still earlier period than the
dynasty of Yao and Shun the worship of one God existed in China. He says:

"Five thousand years ago the Chinese were monothe­ists—not henotheists, but
monotheists." (The Religions of China, pg. 16.)

I have here the statements of men who are authorities in this field showing that
the same is true of Arabia, Persia, Africa, and other nations. But time will not
permit me to introduce these. However, I want before closing this line of
evi­dence to show you that our position holds good with what is probably the
lowest of any of the races extant:

Aborigines of Australia Our earliest account of these people is from Dampier,
who visited the country in 1688. He de­scribes the natives as the "miserablest
people in the world." They had no metals, bows, pottery, sheep, poultry, etc.
They had no houses; their only dwell­ing-place was a fire with a few boughs
before it. Yet even these people "believe in a Supreme Being whose abode is in
the heavens, and who observes and rewards conduct." ("The Making of Religion,"
by Andrew Lang, M.A., LL.D., pg. 189, 194.)

I think every reasonable person here will say that I have shown conclusively
that all over the earth, wherever human beings are found, they are religious;
that regardless of how low in the scale of civilization they may have fallen,
there is still to be found a trace of the worship of one God; that the earliest
stages of all religions are the purest stages. There are many points of
similarity between these various religions and the further back we go the more
alike do we find them. Listen to this quotation from a man who was selected by
some thirty of the best scholars in America, to lec­ture on the History of
Religions:

"Look in what continent we please, we shall find the myth of a Creation or of a
primeval construction, of a Del­uge or a destruction, and of an expected
Restoration." (Daniel G. Brinton, A.M., M.D., LL.D., Sc.D., Professor of
American Archaeology and Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, in "Religions
of Primitive Peoples," pg. 122.)

It seems to me that all these facts can point to but one conclusion: In the
beginning of the human race the Supreme Being gave to his crea­ture, man, a
revelation of Himself. All the religions of earth are but corruptions of this
original revela­tion. I challenge Mr. Smith to account for the facts we have
shown in any other manner. If he cannot, then I urge upon him the inevitable
con­clusion that there is a Supreme Being, as is evi­denced by the fact that
each nation of the world bears testimony of His having spoken to man. I insist
that we can account for these facts only in the language of the ancient
Preacher:

"God hath made man uprght, but they have sought out many inventions."
(Ecclesiastes 7:9). Or in the language of the great Apostle:

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were
thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was
darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the
glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and
to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave
them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their
own bodies between themselves; Who change the truth of God into a lie, and
worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed
forever." (Romans 1:21-25.)

DEDUCTIVE PROOF In the process of deduction we reason from the general to the
particular, from the universal to the individual. This method of reasoning is
used ex­tensively in the mathematical sciences—algebra, geometry, trigonometry,
analytics, calculus, etc. We have certain ideas of time, space, motion, num­ber
etc. These ideas are perfectly clear in the sense in which we use them, and
concerning them we are able to affirm some universal principles. Starting with
these principles which we consider axiomatic, we travel far and wide, building
up a great system of truth. "Things which are equal to each other are equal to
the same thing" is an axiom accepted by all mathematicians. Another mathematical
axiom is that "a straight line is the shortest distance between two points."
Another is that "the whole is equal to the sum of all the parts." We accept
these statements as being self-evident; they do not require any proof. Who can
prove these axioms by formal logic? The human mind is so constructed that it
does not require proof of the self-evident. Some things must be taken for
granted in all sound systems of final research. Most of our conclusions in
mathematics relate back to the self-evident—that for which the mind asked no
proof.

Now I wish to apply these principles of deduc­tive reasoning to the proof of the
existence of God. I maintain that in this field there are truths that are as
self-evident as the axioms of mathematics. One of these axioms I ask my opponent
to consider is this "Something cannot come from nothing."

Such a truth as this needs no proof, the intelli­gent man accepts it as prima
fade. Now let us consider another:

"Something is (exists)." This too, is self-evident. Now I ask you to consider
this syllogism "Something cannot come from nothing; but some­thing is; therefore
something always was."

Let us change the wording, but not the meaning:

"Something cannot create itself, but something is created; therefore, something
was always created, or was self-existent."

Now I ask my opponent to name that "some­thing" that always was. What is it that
is self-existent, eternal? The Christian says that some­thing is God. If that
something is not God, let Mr. Smith tell us what it is.

Let us continue this line of reasoning a little farther "A like cause must
produce a like effect."

If a cause produced an effect greater than itself, this would be equivalent to
something coming from nothing. Now notice our minor premise:

"Rational (thinking) being exists." This is self-evident. Descartes, one of the
fa­thers of modern philosophy, tried to doubt every­thing, but was finally
forced to a belief in his own existence. From this he formed his famous axiom:

"I think, therefore I am."

We cannot reasonably question the existence of thinking beings. But, rational
being cannot come from irrational being; the unthinking cannot pro­duce the
thinking. If this were possible, we would again have something produced by
nothing. With these truths established, let us consider their appli­cation.

"Thinking being exists, but thinking being could not come from unthinking being;
therefore, thinking being has always existed."

Now I ask my opponent to tell us what this eternal, rational, or thinking being
is. We say it is God. What alternative has my opponent to offer?

INDUCTIVE PROOF In the process of inductive reasoning the mind begins with the
particular and proceeds to the gen­eral. This is the method of the scientist.
The greater part of our knowledge is gained through this method of mental
activity. Inductively, we argue the existence of God from the things about which
we know. Paul reasons in this way in Romans 1:19-20 :

"Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed
it unto them. For the invis­ible things of Him from the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal
power and Godhead; so that they are with­out excuse."

It has been said that,

"If the word ’God’ were written upon every blowing leaf, embossed on every
passing cloud, engraved on every granite rock; the inductive evidence of God in
the world would be no stronger than it is. When the human intellect thinks in
terms of finality with the world as. its premise, the therefore of every
syllogism is God. The universe is a big advertising poster that spells ’God.’"
(E. A. Maness, B.L., M.A., Ph.D., in "Evidence of Divine Being." pg. 27.)

GRAVITATION

It has been estimated that if all the men who have lived on the earth during the
past six thou­sand years were to put their combined strength against the earth,
they could perhaps move it about a foot in a thousand years. Yet there is a
force which moves this earth at the rate of more than a thousand miles a minute.
What is this force? We call it gravitation. It is one of those things about
which we talk much, and know little. This force moves our earth systematically
and orderly, so that the seasons, as well as day and night, follow each other in
regular order. Is this the result of blind chance? Can you see no intelligence
in this opera­tion? I am tempted to say that the man who can see no intelligence
in this orderly, systematic pro­gram simply does not have intelligence enough to
see it! Perhaps that is the trouble with the athe­ist. This same force, which we
call gravitation, is working constantly in the great domain of space about us.
The planets do not move across the heavens in a haphazard, hit-or-miss manner;
each planet moves in its particular orbit, and with almost clock-like precision.
Because of this orderly pro­cedure, astronomers are able to predict the exact
date of an eclipse, or other planetary action. Be­cause we have observed the
systematic way in which gravity operates, we speak of the "law of gravita­tion."
What is this law? Can there be a law with­out a law-maker? Who made the law of
gravita­tion?

ASTRONOMY The sweet Singer of Israel exclaimed "The heavens declare the glory of
God, and the firma­ment showeth his handiwork." (Psalms 19:2.)

If you were to look into the skies on a clear night, under the most favorable
circumstances, you should be able to see six or seven thousand stars. With the
aid of the high-powered telescope we are able to count something like one
hundred millions; photographic plates reveal hundreds of millions more than the
telescope; and we have evidence that beyond these are countless myriads of
planets and stars that we have never been able to discover. Our closest fixed
star is probably Alpha, of the constella­tion of Centauri; yet, when we look at
Alpha we are not seeing Alpha as she is today, but as she was almost five years
ago, for it takes light—travelling at the tremendous speed of one hundred
eighty-six thousand miles a second, nearly five years to come from Alpha to us.
Thus we see that our nearest neighbor among the starry hosts is some twenty-five
trillion miles away.

Pollus, the brighter star of the "Twins," is some twenty-four light-years
distant from the earth. The term, "light-year" is used in astronomy as we use
the expressions "a ten-minute walk" or a "two-hour drive." We use the time
required in walking or driving as a unit of measurement. In actual miles, Pollux
is approximately 145,000,000,000,000 miles away! Castor, the other "twin" is
some twen­ty light-years farther than Pollux. We are now receiving its
light-message of some fifty years ago. For a long time astronomers, depending
upon the method of surveying by triangulation, could not cal­culate the distance
to stars that are more than about three hundred light-years from us; the
diameter of the earth was not sufficient for the imaginary tri­angle base. But
now, through ingenious methods first developed at the Mount Wilson Observatory,
they are able to calculate the distaike to any star or swarm of stars whose
light can be caught by the most high-powered telescope. The latest measurements
of the universe, the work of Dr. Allen Douglas Maxwell, of the Lick Observatory
on Mount Hamilton, have reached as far as fifteen thousand light years—one
hundred quadrillion miles. In other words, the light that entered Dr. Maxwell’s
telescope and blackened the photographic plate, left the star fifteen thousand
years before. And still the immensity of space goes on and on—how far, we cannot
now know. What power must have been required to bring into exist­ence such an
immense universe! Certainly "the heavens declare the glory of God!" The order in
which these countless planets are found and the precision and harmony with which
they move, are no less wonderful than the immense space which they occupy.
Astronomers find that the stars are not sprinkled at random in space, but are
grotiped together in countless universes. Some plan has been followed in their
grouping; some in­telligence has designed them. We contend that God designed and
grouped them. What is the athe­ist’s solution to the problem?

Dr. Charles Young, Professor of Astronomy, Princeton College, in his larger text
book on astron­omy, pg. 515, has this to say:

"We see that our planetary system is not a mere acci­dental aggregation of
bodies. Masses of matter coming haphazard towards the sun would move, as comets
do, in orbits, always conic sections, to be sure, but of every degree of
accentricity of inclination. There are a multi­tude of relations actually
observed in the planetary system which are wholly independent of gravitation and
demand explanation."

Dr. Young then enumerates eight of these "relations," which he says are
independent of grav­itation and demand explanation. If the atheist could explain
gravitation—which he cannot, he would still have a "multitude of actually
observed relations" to explain. I challenge Mr. Smith to offer any plausible
explanation of these matters, without admitting a Supreme Intelligence! The
evidence of design is not limited to the big things of the universe. The most
minute things bear evidence of having been designed. Do you know that every
snowflake that falls upon the earth has an angle of sixty, or one hundred and
twenty degrees? A great mathematician has said that "the heavens are but
crystalized mathematics." I ask you who set the angles of the snowflake? With
whose square and compasses were they designed? The atheist cannot explain so
small a thing as a snowflake. The Christian can explain it in the one word,
"God." My friend cannot explain it in a million words, without God. In fact, I
challenge my opponent to explain anything, without God! THE LAW OF PROBABILITIES

Mathematics deal with what is known as the Law of Probabilities. It has been
calculated that if the twenty-six letters of the alphabet were tossed
promiscuously into the air by chance force, they might fall together in the
present order of the alphabet—A-B-C-etc., once in five hundred million, million,
million times that they were thus tossed up and allowed to fall without
guidance. I ask, on this basis, what would be the probability of the
in­numerable combinations of nature coming together in the wonderful order of
the universe, iflhey were tossed about by blind chance? It would be just as
reasonable to suppose that the letters of the alpha­bet, tossed about
unintelligently, would form them­selves into a learned treatise on science or
philoso­phy. Certainly it is no more unreasonable to think that a book about the
heavens could be formed by chance than to think that the heavens themselves are
the result of chance.

I have heard that Kircher, the great astrono­mer, made a globe upon which he
pictured the loca­tion of the planets. An atheistic friend noticed the globe,
and exclaimed: "What a remarkable of workmanship! Who made it?" Keicher replied:
"I do not know to whom it belongs, nor where it came from; but one thing I know,
nobody made it." "What? That is impossi­ble," contended the atheist, "Someone
must have made it. Such a perfectly arranged globe could not have made itself."
To which Kircher replied: "Nor could such a perfectly arranged universe--of
which this is but a small representation—have made itself."

ENERGY The same energy we find asserting itself in the operation of planets is
also found to be working in the most minute things in the world. A microbe so
small you cannot see it without the aid of a microscope, will produce in three
or four hours something like a million more just like itself.

Speaking of energy, science tells us there is enough energy in every ounce of
coal brought out, if properly used, to pull two tons a mile; and there are
substances containing energy in a much more compressed form than it is in coal.
Take radium; Dr. Millikan tells us that a gram of radium shoots off each second
145,000 billion particles (known as alpha particles), and that these particles
reach the speed of twelve thousand miles a second. The beta rays travel more
than ten times as fast as the alpha particles. The gamma rays are sent off at
the rate of thirty billion billions per second. The helium atoms sent forth by
radium shoot right through solids, as though nothing stood in the way. Radium
contains 300,000 times more energy per gram than coal contains. ("Science and
Life," by Dr. Robert A. Milliken). The air is charged with waves in the ether;
sounds travelling throughout the universe are now heard by means of the radio.
Who can, without God, account for these remarkable energies all ceaselessly
engaged in a most harmonious and systematic work?

LIFE

We have been accustomed to think of inorganic matter as dead; but it is now
believed that gases, liquids and even solids are subject to radio-activity, in a
state of constant change, electrons eternally jostling, moving and disturbing.
The universe is alive; life is expressing itself from every source. Can the
atheist account for the origin of life? Is there any way to account for it,
without a Supreme Life? I challenge Mr. Smith to offer us an account of life’s
beginning.

Science cannot solve the problem. Huxley says:

"Of the causes which lead to the origin of living mat­ter, it may be said that
we know absolutely nothing." (Article on Biology in Encyclopedia Britannica.)
Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, head of the American Museum of Natural
History, says:

"The mode of the origin of life is a matter of pure speculation in which we have
as yet little observation or uniformitarian reasoning to guide us, for all the
experi­ments of Butschli and others, to imitate the original life process, have
proved fruitless." (The Origin and Evolution of Life, pg. 67.)

Darwin said:

"The inquiry as to how life first originated is hope­less."

Professor Tyndall, after nearly a thousand experiments with organic infusions,
concluded that, "Living things come only from the living."

Professor Dana, renowned geologist, gives this testimony:

"Science has no explanation of the origin of life." (Manual of Geology.) Jordan
and Kellogg, in their book, "Evolution and Animal Life," page 41, make this
statement:

"Finally, we may refer briefly to the ’grand problem’ of the origin of life
itself. Any treatment of this question is bound to be wholly theoretical. We do
not know a single thing about it.—All life comes from life. The biologist cannot
admit spontaneous generation in the face of the scientific evidence he has."

We might continue indefinitely with such quota­tions from scientists. All agree
that science does not solve the problem of life’s origin. However, let us hear
one more scholar. This man, Prof. H. W. Conn, of Wesleyan University, gives us
no hope that science can ever answer the question. Listen to his testimony:

"Upon this subject it must be confessed we are in as deep ignorance as ever.
Indeed, if anything, the dis­closures of the modern microscope have placed the
solution of this problem even further from our grasp." (Method of Evolution.)

Science cannot tell us of the beginning of life, but it does give us the rule
that "life comes only from life." In view of this truth, how can we account for
life without a self-existent First Life? Let our atheist friend come forward
with an answer to the question of life’s origin—an answer that harmonizes with
his Godless theory.

ATHEISM ACCOUNTS FOR NOTHING

Atheism cannot account for the origin of con­sciousness. If the beginning of
life could be ex­plained on a purely materialistic basis, there would still be
the necessity of explaining the cause of conscious life.

Man has a moral nature not possessed by the beast. An animal shows no signs of
compunction of conscience after having killed a fellow member of his species.
Certain animals have been known to kill and eat their own offspring. Man has
con­science. From whence did it come?

How do atheists explain the esthetic nature of man—the taste for music, the love
of the beautiful? How could any "struggle for existence" have pro­duced this?
Even Huxley, though he claimed to be an agnostic, said:

"One thing which weighs with me against pessimism and tells for a benevolent
author of the universe, is my enjoyment of scenery and music. I do not see how
they can have helped in the struggle for existence. They are gratuitous gifts."
(Darwinism, pg. 478.) In fact, atheism cannot account for anything. If there be
no God, then, as someone has said:

"Life is certainly a useless package, handed to us by some ruthless enemy."

Mr. Smith reminds me of the story of a dog on an express car (I am not comparing
him to a dog, except as far as this story goes). Someone asked the man in charge
of the express: "Where does this dog go?" ’The expressman answered: "I don’t
know, he don’t know, nobody don’t know; because he’s gone and chewed up his
tag." According to atheism, nobody knows where we came from, why we are here, or
where we are going. We refuse to let the atheist "chew up the tag!"

I thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Smith’s First Reply Mr. Chairman, Respected Opponent, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Inasmuch as the other side has specially asked that there be no applause, I make
the same request. In speaking with my opponent this afternoon about the matter,
I suggested that the audience be given no instructions. In Atheist meetings the
audience takes part. You don’t sit as dumb bells; you can express your opinion:
when you go to a church you don’t express your opinion; or if you do, they tell
the police.

I want to say a word complimentary to my opponent and the pastor of this church.
I have very little respect for their judgment, but a great deal for their
courage. Unlike other ministers in this town they believe their doctrines can be
de­fended in the open. Their fellow clergymen know better; they know that the
Christian religion will not stand criticism and open debate.

Let me tell you something of how I came to be an Atheist. I used to live in
Maud, Oklahoma—was there before the town was built; and have lived in Shawnee. I
was in this town some twenty years ago, working for the Farmers’ Union. I joined
the First Methodist Church. A few years later, I went to a Methodist school,
Epworth University, in Okla­homa City. The following Summer I worked for the
State Code Commission in Guthrie. One Saturday after­noon I found in the library
a book entitled: "Jeffer­son’s Bible." Being a Democrat, I greatly admired
Jefferson. The book interested me. I found from reading the introduction to that
book that Thomas Jefferson was an infidel. He did not believe that Jesus was the
son of God; he thus ridiculed the virgin birth:

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being
as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the
generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." (Works v. 4, p. 365.) That day
has come. The preachers did not tell me that. Have they told you? They conceal
such facts, and a great deal more. If you will investi­gate, you will find that
the great men of this coun­try, and our greatest Presidents, have not been
Christians. The next season I went to the State University at Norman. I tried to
continue to believe the Chris­tian religion, but began to investigate its
doctrines. One day when watching a football game with my pastor, I asked him if
he believed the virgin birth story, and the Adam and Eve story. He said, "Why,
of course not." I demanded: "Why do you not tell your congregation that?" He
replied: "That would do a great deal of harm, and no good."

I expect that in Shawnee you have such men among the ministers who oppose this
debate. They will admit privately that they believe in evolution; yet, they
preach a Savior, and that is why they endeavored to suppress this debate. The
descend­ants of apes don’t need a Savior. An evolutionist preaching Jesus
crucified is in no position to appear in a public discussion.

I continued investigating, but still retained my faith and prayed daily. The
time came when I realized there was nobody above listening to my words. I ceased
to pray.

I found no stopping place short of atheism. I went East, and after years of
study, with others in New York City, in 1925, launched the American Association
for the Advancement of Atheism. We received a charter, and we are now duly
incorpo­rated under the Laws of the State of New York. Our headquarters are at
119 East Fourteenth Street. You can look us up. You will find our charter in the
State Capitol at Albany.

There is a great deal of prejudice against athe­ism. Thomas Jefferson said:

"It does me no harm for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It
neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket."

How many Christians have that attitude? A Roman emperor said:

"Injuries to the gods, should be the concern of the gods."

Why don’t we have that spirit of tolerance to­day? No, every little two-by-four
preacher takes it upon himself to defend the ruler of the universe.

Last evening I made application to the town council in Maud to be granted equal
privileges with a representative of the American Bible Society, who was selling
religious literature on the streets. The mayor spoke feelingly of "The Holy
Bible" and "Mother’s religion." I lost out.

I noticed as I came in the door a motto, reading in part:

"It is better to work with a construction gang than with the wrecking crew."

You are, in this city, tearing down and building all the time. Do you mean to
say that men who do the wrecking are baser than the ones who build? The one is
as necessary as the other. If you will look in the New York City directory under
"Wrecking Companies," you will find some forty concerns listed. No one
prosecutes them. The men who tear down condemned buildings are just as necessary
as the men who build skyscrapers. The Christian religion has been condemned by
the civil­ized conscience of the world, and our business is to wreck it. The
question is often asked, "What will you put in its place?" We don’t put anything
in its place. When a physician cures you of a, disease he does not give you
another disease; he merely re­stores you to health. We seek to restore you to
reason. In the short time left, I shall give you briefly the arguments for
atheism, refute some of the argu­ments for theism, and then introduce Dr.
Sparkes Gladman, the great theologian of the atheistic move­ment.

Let us consider the origin of religion. My opponent is all mixed up when he says
that mono­theism degenerated into polytheism. It is not so taught even in the
theological schools. The Fun­damentalists of this country have lost control of
almost every theological seminary. They will soon lose control of the Baptist
Seminary in Louisville, Ky. They lost their last major school in the North this
year when they lost Princeton Seminary.

No! Religion arose through error. Primitive man was unable to explain what he
saw about him. I have not the time to give in detail the various fac­tors in the
evolution of religion. Primitive man, when he ate too much, had dreams and on
awaking he recalled the dream and decided that he had been somewhere; and in
this way he came to the idea that he had a spirit, had a soul that could leave
his body. The beliefs in magic, animism, ghosts, and ancestor worship
contributed to the growth of re­ligion. In my judgment ancestor worship was the
principal factor. As Grant Allen has well said:

"Corpse worship is the protoplasm of religion."

You cannot refine falsehood into truth.

Let us consider the five fundamentals of atheism. The first is Materialism, the
doctrine that Matter, with its indwelling property, Force, constitutes the
reality of the universe. In other words, there is no spirit, soul or supreme
being. If I were to strike a match you would see a flame burst forth. If, I move
the match suddenly or hold it long enough, the flame is said to go out. Where
does it go? It does not go anywhere, because it never existed, except as matter
in motion. The same is true of us.

There is no soul or free-will. Voltaire defined free-will as the faculty
bestowed by the grace of God upon man whereby he may get himself damned. The
second fundamental of atheism is that which, for lack of a better word, we call
Empiricism, or Sensationalism. It is the doctrine that all our knowledge is
derived from experience. You have had no experience with God. You have no idea
with which to form a conception of God. I know my opponent has contended—it has
always been the contention of priests and preachers—that man has born within him
a religious sense. The idea of God is innate, says the priest, and my opponent
tells us tonight men everywhere believe in God. Yet, you find that the clergy
are trying to inculcate the idea of God into every child. They are bootlegging
their religion into our public schools. They know that every child is born an
atheist. Our third basic doctrine is that of Evolution, which will be debated
tomorrow night. Our fourth fundamental is Hedonism, the doctrine that happiness
here and now should be the motive of conduct. That will come up tomorrow
afternoon when we consider whether or not Chris­tianity benefited mankind. The
last fundamental of atheism is the Exist­ence of Evil. More than two thousand
years ago, Epicurus bottled up God with logic forever in these words:

"Either God wishes to destroy evil and cannot; or he can but will not; or
neither wishes nor has the power; or he both desires and is able. If he wishes
and cannot, he is impotent; if he can but will not, he is wicked; if he neither
wishes nor can, he is impotent as well as wicked; if he can and will, why does
evil exist?" For two thousand years the priests have been unable to refute the
Greek atheist. That which rules the universe knows no right or wrong. If a man
gets cold and wet helping a friend in dis­tress, the consequences to his health
are the same as if he were committing murder. Perhaps in a thoughtless moment
you have sung the Doxology, "P-raise God from whom all blessings flow." It is as
unreasonable as the New Doxology which we atheists sometimes sing, "Praise God
from whom all cyclones blow." The Almighty God could, and a Heavenly Father
would, prevent evil. There is something wrong. If there be a good God, why did
he not arrange another way to perpetuate life than by having one animal eat
another? Huxley says:

"If our hearing were sufficiently acute to catch every note of pain, we would be
deafened by one continuous scream."

If there be a God who knows everything, he knows that life feeds upon life.

Sixty parasites prey upon man. Did God make them? If so, what do you think of
him for having made them? Some of those parasites live only upon the body of
man; and if they did not evolve, they were created in the beginning, and must
have lived on Adam and Eve. They must have been the two most diseased persons
that ever lived.

I believe prayer and providence are being given up except in the more backwoods
sections of the country. Which portions of the world are most re­ligious? You
know it is the South—my own home land. But the South has always led the North in
the commission of murder. Memphis, Tennessee, where there are no atheist
societies and where evo­lution is outlawed, has led this country in murder for
the last twenty years, with one or two excep­tions, when pious Jacksonville,
Florida, took the lead. A Fundamentalist in New-York recently de­clared that it
is easier to convert negroes in the Congo to Christianity than to convert the
professors at Columbia University. Of course, he was right. If you want to get
people to believe in God, don’t go to educated people; go to the hillbillies of
Ar­kansas and the Hottentots in Africa. In the old days, they prayed for rain.
Why don’t you have the Governor of this state set aside a day to pray that the
drought may end? Crops are burning up; the cotton will soon suffer; and the corn
that was not made some ten days ago is ruined. Formerly Christians prayed when
they were sick. In St. James, last chapter, it says:

"Is any sick among you? Send for a physician."

No, that is what the atheist does. The Bible says:

"Call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him
with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick."
Who of you do that? Last night in Maud I heard an old woman, a true Christian,
lament that many who call themselves Christians, the moment they get sick, send
for a physician.

If there is a being who controls the universe, what do you think of his system
of raising fruit in Oklahoma? When I was a boy living at Maud, every Spring I
saw with joy, the fruit trees in bloom, expecting to have lots of apples and
peaches to eat; but four times out of five, frost came so late that the fruit
was killed. Four times out of five that happens in Oklahoma. Is that good
manage­ment?

You have a theologian in this city by the name of Vanderpool. I read one of his
sermons. He says that when a great man is needed God always sends him. In the
middle ages for a thousand years schools were almost blotted from the face of
the earth. Humanity was in darkness, because reli­gion stopped the development
of science. Instead of following the Greeks in treating disease, the Christians
followed Jesus and Paul who believed the insane were possessed by demons.
Christianity caused the Dark Ages. Why did not God send some­one during that
period? Andrew Carnegie, who has done more to disseminate knowledge than any
other American, through establishing libraries (he built one in this city) said:

"I have not bothered Providence with my petitions for about forty years."

Only the other day I read a significant item in a magazine called "Liberty,"
which has a circula­tion of over two million copies (I give this as an
illustration of the trend of the times—as showing that belief in prayer and
providence is being aban­doned in the enlightened centers). Liberty is
pub­lished in Chicago by the same concern publishing The Chicago Tribune. They
are giving $5.00 for every bright saying of a child which they accept. One
mother sent in this saying, which was printed.

You will see that her child asked a question that my friend here cannot answer.
A preacher discoursing concerning a certain disaster at sea, said five thou­sand
passengers were providentially saved. The girl asked the preacher how many were
providen­tially drowned.

There was a 17th Century bishop in England by the name of Hall who preached
providence. This bishop endeavored to prove the existence of a watchful Heavenly
Father by citing a certain inci­dent in his life. He started on a trip overseas,
when, by the interposition of providence, he was just prevented from boarding
the ship which later sank with all on board. How about the others? To be
religious, you must practice the art of ignor­ing.

If prayer ever accomplished anything, why did the World War continue? This Dr.
Gladman, of whom I spoke in the beginning, says prayer is answered when God is
awake, but that he some­times sleeps. During the War all preachers prayed for
peace, and I dare say my opponent in his church in Dallas prayed for peace. Dr.
Gladman says that the moment God woke up the war ended.

It may be that as children in school, you read the poem by Bryant entitled, "To
a Water Fowl."

"He who from zone to zone guides thy boundless flight, In the long way that I
must tread alone, Will guide my steps aright." That poet may have eaten that
very bird for dinner that evening, after writing that poem. My opponent has
discoursed to you very elo­quently about snowflakes, about their angles, and how
God must have squared them off. If God made everything, including snowflakes, he
must have made disease germs, the germs of small pox and syphilis, and of
diptheria that kills children. Why did not my opponent speak of that? The clergy
like to talk about the human eye, and how it could not have happened by chance.
If God made good eyes, who made cross eyes, blear eyes, and squint eyes? Why not
talk of the fangs of the rattlesnake? Don’t they fulfill their functions? You
cannot be­lieve in a good God, unless you have a double stand­ard of morals, one
for man and another for God. If you have the same standard of morals for both,
God stands condemned before the bar of human reason. A few years ago in Arizona
a mother and child were left alone on a ranch. The father had gone away. A
rattlesnake bit the mother. She tried to get help, but was far distant from the
nearest human being. What could she do? She saw she was going to die and that
the children would starve, as the father would not return for a week. She killed
her babies and herself. How can you explain such an event if God exists? If you
could have helped that woman, would you not have helped her? Maybe you
Christians will say that she for­got to pray. If God must be begged before he
will help, is he worthy of worship?

Here is another question. You who believe in God, if you don’t like this answer,
give us a better one: "Why does not God reveal a cure for can­cer?" The answer:
"He will, when scientists dis­cover it. That is his method. He prefers to share
the credit with others rather than hog all the glory himself." Voltaire, who did
more to liberate the human race than any other man, said that prayer and arsenic
will kill a cow. A man asked this question: "I long for the consolations of
religion, but my reason forbids. Would you suggest a surgical operation to
weaken my mind?" Dr. Gladman counseled: "No, that is not necessary, go to church
regularly, cease to reason, and exercise the faculty of faith; and you will
probably get relief. If these means are unsuc­cessful, time will help you out.
As you grow old, you will become sufficiently feebleminded to accept religion."

One man says he has found a pocket book con­taining a considerable sum of money
and wants to know whether or not he should give thanks to God. The answer is
that he should, especially as God will probably receive no thanks from the
person who lost the pocketbook. In conclusion, let me introduce you to Dr.
Sparkes Gladman, the most eminent theologian of the United States, the present
company, Rev. Oli­phant, and Rev. Cullum, excepted. This is the way he answers
the questions, and if these are not correct, I ask my opponent to give the right
an­swer. "Who made God?" The answer is, "Like most persons who have amounted to
anything, God is self-made. He made himself out of nothing just prior to the
beginning. The act of self-creation—­the greatest miracle of all time—ought to
convince even an atheist."

Oliphant’s Second Affirmative (Duration, 20 minutes) Brother Chairman, Ladies
and Gentlemen, Respected Opponent:

I am wondering if I have been misinformed about the rules of controversy. I have
been taught that it is the duty of a speaker on the negative side of a
proposition to consider and attempt to refute the arguments made by the,
affirmative. But I must confess that if the speech to which you have just
listened is to be considered the standard, I have had the wrong idea. Mr. Smith
scarcely referred, directly or indirectly, to my speech. In my opening speech I
made a number of arguments which I con­sider germane to the issue. It seems to
me that my opponent should have made an effort to refute these arguments, or
attempted to show that they are foreign to the question under consideration. How
many of my arguments did he attempt to answer? (Here the speaker was interrupted
by an atheist in the audience who said: "I can answer three of your arguments.")
Mr. Oliphant: I thank the gentleman for his admission that he can answer only
three of the many arguments I pre­sented. What about the others? Sir, are you
dis­satisfied with the work of the president of your association? I do not blame
you. If I were in your place I should be dissatisfied, too. However, if when
this debate is over, you think Mr. Smith has not done justice to your cause, I
shall be glad to give you a chance to see if you can do a better job.

Now to continue my speech. It is not primarily my duty to answer the arguments
of the negative. However, I shall consider everything the gentleman says, that
is at all worthy of notice. Some of his statements are so childish that my
ten-year-old daughter could answer them.

What Mr. Smith says about Modernist preach­ers knowing that their doctrine will
not bear the test of public discussion, may be true. I have no desire to defend
them. I am content to present the truth of God’s word, and leave those who hear
to decide whether it stands the test. My opponent tells us "how he came to be an
atheist." I am not particularly interested in that. His faith was shaken by a
preacher who did not believe the Bible. For a man who does not believe God’s
word to pretend to preach it is a travesty on common decency. Mr. Smith should
not be in­fluenced so easily by preachers. He should think for himself. However,
if an unbelieving preacher could lead him away from faith in God, possibly I can
lead him back.

Mr. Smith intimates that Thomas Jefferson had a part in making him an atheist.
Jefferson was not an atheist. Hear him:

"The rights of conscience we never submitted we could not submit. We are
answerable to them to our God." (Notes on Virginia, 1782, F. 111, 264.) In his
bill for establishing religious freedom, Mr. Jefferson said:

"Almighty God hath created the mind free and man­ifested his supreme will that
free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint—" (1779,
F. 11, 238. ) Hear him once more as he plainly declares:

"An atheist I can never be." (Letter to John Adams. Quoted by Wm. E. Curtis, in
"The True Thomas Jefferson," pg. 309.) Mr. Jefferson referred to the so-called
"Jeffer­son Bible," of which Mr. Smith spoke, as:

"The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, extracted from the account of his life and
doctrines, as given by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; being an abridgement of the
New Testament for the use of the Indians, unembarrassed with matters of fact or
faith beyond the level of their com­prehension." (Preface, "Jefferson’s Bible,"
published by N. D. Thompson Publishing Company.) The fact that a certain city
leads in the com­mission of crime does not prove that religion causes crime,
unless it can be shown that the difference between this and other cities
consists solely in a difference in degree of religiousness. Hundreds of other
elements of difference may enter into the question. Our friend tells us that the
greatest presidents of the United States have been disbelievers. His statement
is not true. All of our presidents (with two exceptions) have been members of
some church. The exceptions are Lincoln and Jefferson. Lincoln was a very
religious man and Jefferson was far from being an atheist. The assertion that
the most educated people of this country are disbelievers is about as near the
truth as the statement about our presidents. A document expressing belief in God
was, published in 1923. The following scientists signed the state­ment:

Charles D. Walcott, Geologist, President of the Na­tional Academy of Sciences,
President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Head
of the Smithsonian Institute of Washington.

Henry Fairfield Osborn, Paleontologist, President of the American Museum of
Natural History, New York.

Edwin Grant Conklin, Zoologist, Head of the Depart­ment of Zoology, Princeton
University.

James Rowland Angell, Psychologist, President of Yale University.

John Merle Coulter, Botanist, Head of the Department of Botany, University of
Chicago.

Michael I. Pugin, Physcist and Engineer, Professor of Electromechanics and
Director of Phoenix Research Lab­oratory, Columbia University.

William James Mayo, Surgeon, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research,
Rochester, Minnesota.

George David Berkhoff, Mathematician, Head of the Department of Mathematics,
Harvard University, Cam­bridge, Massachusetts.

Arthur A. Noyes, Chemist, Director of the Gates Chemical Laboratory, California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.

William Wallace Campbell, Astronomer’ Director of Lick Observatory and
President-elect of the University of California.

John J. Carthy, Engineer, Vice-President in Charge of Research, American
Telephone and Telegraph Company, New York.

Robert A. Milliken, Physicist, Director of Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics,
Pasadena, California.

William Henry Welch, Pathologist, Director of the School of Hygiene and Public
Health, John Hopkins Univer­sity, Baltimore.

John G. Merriam, Paleontologist, President of the Car­negie Institution of
Washington.

Gano Dunn, Engineer, Chairman of the National Re­search Council, Washington, D.
C. The statement was also signed by a number of the leading business men of
America, including Hon. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Smith
says these men are ignorant! As a further refutation of the charge that
reli­gion and education do not go together, I ask you to examine the history of
the great educational in­stitutions of Europe and America. The University of
Leyden was founded by a group of Christian Hollanders more than three hundred
years ago. An examination of a list of twenty universities which were
established in Europe between 1550 A.D. and 1700 A.D. shows that they were all
found­ed and maintained by religious organizations. The great universities of
America were built by religious men. Harvard University was found­ed by the
Puritans. Its first private benefactor was a preacher—John Harvard, from whom
the insti­tution received its name. Dr. James Blair (another preacher) was
active in founding William and Mary College, and was first president of the
school. Where are the schools that atheists have built? I say, without fear of
successful contradiction, that every educational institution in the world
is—directly or indirectly—the fruit of religion. Let Mr. Smith name an
exception. Atheists have never built a school or a hospital. Atheism offers
noth­ing constructive. It has no standard. What do you have to believe to be an
atheist? Nothing. What do you have to do to be an atheist? Nothing. What do you
have to be to be an atheist? Nothing. Atheism sets no standard for belief,
action or character.

Mr. Smith admits that he offers nothing con­structive; he says he belongs to the
"wrecking crew." He then compares atheism to the wrecking companies that wreck
condemned buildings. Let me remind him that these companies wreck only buildings
that have been condemned by proper authorities, or whose owners want them
wrecked. Sir, Christians have not asked you to wreck their building, nor has the
building been condemned by any legitimate authority. By whose authority are you
making your feeble effort to wreck the building of God? If a wrecking company
should wreck your home without proper authority, you would have them arrested.
That’s what they did to you over in Arkansas. My friends, it is not difficult to
understand why he has such dislike for Arkansas. He was put in jail for his
blasphemous attack on Christianity in that State.

Mr. Smith admits that atheism has nothing to offer in the place of Christianity.
In an attempt to justify his wholly destructive doctrine, he says that when the
doctor has removed disease, he does not give you anything to take its place. But
the doctor does not attempt to remove anything that is beneficial to man. The
atheist must first show us that religion is a disease. I have never seen a
doc­tor out trying to convince healthy, happy people that they are sick, and
should have disease removed. If the atheist is a doctor he is visiting well
patients, and that without an invitation! The wise doctor gives God credit for
the healing of disease, through the wonderful curative powers of nature. I
recently saw, over the office door of a Dallas physician, these words:

"We dress the wound, God heals it."

It is charged that religion arose through super­stition, fetishism, animism,
magic, etc. What proof does he offer? Merely his assertion. A man who will not
accept the statements of Almighty God should not ask an intelligent audience to
accept his bare assertions. In my first speech, I offered con­clusive proof that
all religions are but corrupted forms of the pure religion that God gave in the
beginning. Mr. Smith answers this proof with an unsupported assertion! The match
and flame illustration means noth­ing for atheism until we are shown how a match
can make and strike itself. The question of whether man is a machine, without
free will, belongs in tomorrow afternoon’s discussion. It will be considered
then.

Mr. Smith defines Empiricism (the second fundamental of atheism): "the doctrine
that all our knowledge is derived from experience." He then argues that man has
had no experience with God, and therefore, can have no conception of God. Well,
let’s try his own logic. Man can have no conception of God without experience
with Him. But man, everywhere, has a conception of God. Therefore, man has had
experience with God. It seems to me that our friend’s premises (if true) point
to the wrong conclusion for him. If man must have mate­rial with which to form a
conception of anything, and he has formed a conception of God; does that not
prove that man has such material as is neces­sary for such conception?

We all admit that there is evil in the world; but we cannot consistently blame
God for it. Man has brought evil upon himself. Disease was brought into the
world by sin. Had man lived in harmony with the law of God, there would have
been no disease.

We are asked: "Why does God allow man to sin?" God has given man the power to
think and act upon his own volition. If man chooses to act contrary to the laws
of God, as revealed in His word and nature, God should not be considered
re­sponsible for the results. There could be but one way to be assured that man
will not -sin; that is, make him a machine—with no power to govern his own
actions. This would not be good for man. A mechanically perfect world would be
very imperfect for man. Despite the terrible results of sin, who wants to give
up his freedom of thought and action, to avoid the possibility of wrong-doing? I
know that eating certain things will make me sick, but I do not want to give up
my freedom of choice to avoid the possibility of illness. God has given cer­tain
laws governing man’s health. Disobedience of these laws brings suffering. A law
is of no value unless it provides a penalty for its violation.

Man could never be safe were it not for the fact that God governs the elements
of nature by specific laws. What a terrible thing electricity would be, if not
controlled by law! Man would indeed, be helpless, were it not that he can learn
the laws of nature, and use them in furthering the interests of mankind. God has
given certain laws in nature; and has given man intelligence, to be used in
learning and using these laws. Man, living among the elements of a lawless
nature, would have no use for intelligence. The improper use of beneficial
things may make them injurious. It is God’s law in nature that fire will burn.
If I put my hand in the fire, I must suffer the consequences; but God is not
re­sponsible for my suffering.

Evil is often the result of man’s shutting out the good. The French Naturalist,
Fabre, performed an experiment for the enlightenment of some boys. He put, a
bird under a bell-glass from which the oxygen had been exhausted. Of course, the
little creature was soon dead. The boys asked what was in the glass, and were
told "nitrogen only." "What a terrible poison this nitrogen must be!" they
exclaimed. "Not at all," said Fabre, "nitrogen is in the air we all breathe, and
it does us no harm."

He then explained that it was not the presence of the nitrogen—but the absence
of the oxygen that killed the bird. In the same way, evil may be the absence of
God, hence, not "created" by Him. Then, that which we conceive to be evil may
not, in its final analysis, be evil at all. Because of our limited vision, there
are many things we cannot explain. A man who is inside a house (and has never
been outside) cannot describe the house. We should not expect to describe the
world and explain all its phenomena—being on the "inside," and having never been
"outside." The trouble with the atheist is that he con­siders himself the
supreme judge of good and evil. How can man, with his circumscribed view of
life, know what is good for a universe throughout eter­nity? Man’s view of both
time and space is very much limited. He should not attempt to sit in judgment on
the word of God—at least not until he knows all the facts in the case!

We do not contend that God made all things just as they now exist. Two harmless
medicines may, when mixed, become a deadly poison. Who knows but that disease
germs may be the result of man’s improper mixing of things, which as they were
created, are good?

I was amused at Mr. Smith’s remarks about this being a "backwoods" section of
the country. He used to live here; but of course all the country’s intelligence
left with him! My only answer to this charge is that some boys can go to town
and keep their equilibrium, while others cannot—and he seems to be one of the
"others."

I am under no obligation to defend the foolish assertions attributed to this
atheist dummy. Mr. Smith finds it easier to debate with a straw man of his own
making than with a living opponent. In­stead of resorting to "Dr. Gladman’s"
silly answer to the question; "Who made God?"—why did not Mr. Smith notice the
arguments in my first speech which prove that God is an eternal, self-existent
Being? The atheist assumes that something is eternal—why not God?

We are asked why God does not cure cancer. Perhaps God has given a remedy. Man
is able to cure disease just to the extent that he discovers and uses God’s
remedies. God works through human instrumentality. A pessimist said: "I could
make a better world than this." An optimist replied: "Well, let’s go to work and
do it." Man is given the power to either improve or degrade the world. But we
are told that man must do all the work and give God the credit. Man cannot
accomplish anything without the help of God. In whatever man undertake; he must
have God’s materials with which to work. What could man do without sun­light, or
without air? Man is a very dependent creature; there is nothing he can do
without the aid of elements which he cannot make for himself. Man certainly owes
thanks to some one; and until Mr. Smith shows us that the blessings of nature
are not the gift of God, we shall continue to thank God for them.

It is the rankest sort of egotism—the most contemptible type of self-exaltation,
to set one’s self up as being independent of the assistance of Divinity. Atheism
begets egotism. Mr. Smith says in one of his tracts (describing this and another
of his leaflets):

"The greatest anti-religious tracts ever written." Of course he considers
anti-religionists more intelligent than others; and now he just breaks down and
confesses that he is the smartest disbe­liever of all time! Such an attitude is
to be expect­ed of one who KNOWS there is no God! In regard to "Dr. Gladman’s"
advice to his inquirer, that he go to church to weaken his mind: May I suggest
that this is not the atheist’s trouble.

What he needs is a religion weak enough for his feeble mind. I realize this is
foolishness, but I am following my opponent—even when he introduces things which
cannot be seriously considered. My time has expired. I thank you for your
attention.

Smith’s Second Reply Mr. Chairman, Respected Opponent, Ladies and Gentlemen: My
opponent accuses me of not having an­swered a single argument. Those of you who
ap­plauded must be deaf. He spoke of the wonderful design in the snowflake, and
I asked you and him whether God designed the fangs of the rattlesnake; J could
stand here all night and name things harm­ful to man. Did God make them? The
Rev. Oliphant would give you the impres­sion that I said Jefferson was an
atheist. I did not say it. I said he was "an infidel." Whoever says that he was
a Christian says that which is not so. Jefferson called himself a materialist.
He did not believe in the supernatural. He did not pray. They asked him to set
aside a day for prayer. He refused to do it. He spoke of the doctrine of the
Trinity as "The incomprehensible jargon of Trinitarian arithmetic, that three
are one and one is three."

I will read something else by Jefferson. You will find this in his works, Vol.
4, page 325. He pronounces the Bible God "a being of terrific char­acter, cruel,
vindictive, capricious, and unjust." I did not say that Jefferson made me an
atheist but that he was the first to set me investigating. My friend says he
cannot comprehend God nor explain him, but compares him to electricity.
Elec­tricity is not a substance any more than heat is a substance. It does not
exist by itself. He says you cannot feel electricity. If you get hold of a live
wire you will feel it as much as you feel heat. Does he hold that heat exists by
itself? He further says that hope cannot be seen, and motherly love cannot be
seen, but that they exist. Is that not really childish? Is mother-love a
substance? You know it does not exist apart from mothers. My opponent is like a
man who loves woman but hates each particular woman. He confuses the categories
of existence. Preachers do not think clearly.

Some twenty years ago I was in New Orleans. Wandering one evening on the
outskirts of the city, I came across a negro revival meeting. Sometimes the
preacher did not talk sense—just one stream of words, without subjects and
predicates. That did not bother his hearers. They were religious. Whenever he
would say "Jesus," "salvation," and "heaven," they would shout, "hallelujah,"
"Glory to God," and "amen." Every preacher does the same thing. The clergy use
words for their emotional value. I could take every sermon preached in this city
last Sunday, including the one preached here, and put in the word "not" in every
sentence and preach it, and if I kept a pious face, the congrega­tion would not
know the difference. They would come up and shake my hand and say, "Brother
Smith, you certainly did preach a soul-searching sermon," and invite me home for
a chicken dinner. The Rev. Oliphant says that he has patience with the agnostic
but none with the atheist who says there is no God. It may be some of the
agnos­tics with whom he has patience are present. Let me say to them: If your
position is such that you cannot come out in the open, go ahead as you are. You
have our sympathy. You say you don’t know whether or not there is a God. How do
you know there are no witches? Almost invariably, if you ask an agnostic if
there are witches, he will say no. Theological schools should have a
"witchological" department. My opponent says man everywhere has believed in God.
He quotes me as saying you cannot form an idea without experience, and he says
all men have an idea of God, therefore they must have had experience with God.
He has changed ideas and conceptions until you don’t know whom you are. I admit
that the belief in God is widespread. It is not true, however, that there are no
races without the belief. Some have had no conception of God. The belief in
witches and evil spirits, however, is wider spread than the belief in God.’ John
Wesley said:

"Giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible." (Journal, 1768.) The
Bible God commands:

"Suffer not a witch to live."

Atheists came along and discredited the belief which caused hundreds of
thousands of people to be put to death. During the period of witchcraft
persecution, man came nearest to the God who cre­ated a hell where millions
suffer throughout eter­nity. The preachers say that the teachings of the Bible
were misinterpreted. God must be a poor inspirer if he so words his message that
it is easily misunderstood. My opponent has strange views concerning the
development of religion. It seems he has never studied comparative religion.
Long before Jeho­vah was known, the Jews and other races believed in many gods.
Long before Adam and Eve there were men in different parts of the world who
wor­shipped the sun. If you must worship, worship the sun—it is the true source
of life. My clerical opponent states that we cannot ex­plain anything in a
million words without God, but that Christians explain everything in one
word—God. I don’t know what your reaction is to that, but it sounds as absurd to
me as would the advice of a fool who when you are trying to solve a problem
comes along and says that all you have to do is put an X in the middle.

Holbach defined theology as "systematized ig­norance." Epicurus declared:

"God dwells in the inter-spaces of our knowledge of the world." The more you
learn, the more God recedes. There was a time when God was in medicine, but they
don’t resort to supernatural means now. God was in law. The priests ran the
whole show. Priests are not holding their own in number or quality. There is a
shortage of preachers. Empty churches are found all over the country. The Rev.
Oliphant endeavors to refute the argument that the soul is to the body as the
flame is to the match, by asking "Did the match strike itself? It is a question
he should not have asked, because spontaneous combustion does occur. Hay and
grain under certain conditions burst into flame. I believe life originated in
the same manner.

Thomas H. Huxley declared:

"If the hypothesis of Evolution is true, living matter must have originated from
non-living matter, for, by the hypothesis, the condition of the globe was at one
time such that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely
incompatible with the gaseous state."

Tyndall said:

"If it were given to me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time,
to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and
chemical conditions which it can no more see again than a man can recall his
infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm
from non-living matter."

Again:

"Evolution is a theory that not alone the lower forms of animal life—not alone
the noble forms of the horse and the lion—not alone the wonderful mechanism of
the human body, but the mind itself—emotion, intelligence, and will—were once
latent in a fiery cloud. All our phil­osophy, science, and art were potential in
the fires of the sun."

Synthetic chemistry has built up materials such as alcohol, which were once
thought to be producible only by the vital activity of plants and animals. The
creation of life by chemists in the laboratory would cause no great excitement.
It is expected.

I believe in spontaneous generation. It is an essential of evolution. Prof.
Alphonse Herrera of Mexico City, a member of our Association, has pro­duced in
the laboratory substances that behave much as does that which we call life.
Scientists have produced some of the lower forms of life without crossing the
two sexes. They have combined the germ cells of one sex with a chemical and it
has produced life without the aid of the other sex. My clerical friend is very
oratorical about the wonders of the universe. He states that the plan­ets keep
perfect time. That sounds all right, un­less you stop to think. Do the planets
keep time? Yes, the sun always crosses the heavens in the day time and never at
midnight. It is indeed remark­able. Don’t you see what my friend is doing? He is
putting the cart before the horse. You don’t get anywhere by saying that each
day is just twenty-four hours long. These are man-made measurements. Would I not
be silly if I tried to prove to you there is a God because every foot contains
twelve inches, never more nor less?

He said there were myriads of stars. Read the book called the Bible, and you
will find that these innumerable stars, some of which are millions of times
larger than this earth, are unimportant. We read:

"He made the stars also."

According to the scripture writer the stars were only an afterthought, and the
earth was the big thing.

God’s word says that the moon was made to rule the night. Half the time it
appears during the day. It must not obey orders, or there would be no moonless
nights. The Vote of the Audience

Mr. Smith insisted that the audience be asked to vote on this proposition. Mr.
Oliphant objected. It was his contention that questions of truth are not
determined by majority vote. After some dis­cussion, Mr. Oliphant consented to
the questions being submitted to a vote. Mr. F. L. Paisley, chair­man of the
meeting, said: "All who believe that the affirmative speaker (Brother Oliphant)
WON this discussion will please stand." Almost everyone in the audience stood.
Mr. Paisley said: "I will not attempt to count this vast number. You may be
seated. All those who think the negative speaker (Mr. Smith) won the debate will
now rise to their feet." Seven persons stood. The audience was dismissed with
prayer, lead by Brother Will J. Cullum.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: O-SD-2-ATHEIST MORALITY VS. CHRISTIAN MORALITY
========================================================================

Atheist Morality vs. Christian Morality (Friday afternoon, Aug. 16, 1929)

Proposition:

"Atheism is Beneficial to the Race, and is Most Conducive to Morality of any
Theory Known to Man."

Affirmative: Charles Smith.

Negative: W. L. Oliphant.

Chairman, F. L. Paisley.

Smith’s First Affirmative Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Honored Opponent:
The question for debate this afternoon is whether or not religion is necessary
to support morals. Down through the centuries the priests and clergy have
contended that unless you believe in God you cannot be good. That doctrine is
what we atheists call the "morality lie." The truth is, nothing so deadens the
moral conscience as religion. There is a story of a young lady who visited a
seaport and while riding with a captain, asked: "What do the people of this town
eat?" The captain replied, "Mostly fish." The young lady continued, "I thought
fish was a brain food, and these seem to be the most stupid people I ever saw."
He responded: "Imagine how they would look if they did not eat fish." The clergy
tell us religion is what makes Christians moral, and when we point out that they
exceed others in immorality, they tell us how immoral they would be if they had
no re­ligion!

Religion and crime, generally speaking, go to­gether. Whether you take the
people by classes or by sections, you will find that to be true. What section of
the United States is the most religious? The South. It is known as the "Bible
belt." In proportion to population, there are more murders in the South than any
other section of the country. As I told you last night, the City of Memphis,
Ten­nessee, leads the country in murders. The City of Little Rock is near the
front in murder and piety. Which class of people are most given to crime? Is it
the group of college professors, most of whom are atheists? They may not use the
word "atheist," but they have no God, and they are atheists. Are they given to
crime? No, not so much as the lower classes of people, intellectually speaking.
You know it is the uneducated who are the most religious, and are most criminal.
There are more religious than non-religious people in jail. In Sing Sing,
accord­ing to the report for 1926, issued by Warden Lawes, 99 percent are
religious—almost no atheists in that institution. We have a book entitled
"Religion and Roguery," wherein are collected the statistics from the various
prisons of the country, proving that religion and crime, generally speaking, go
together. You know that Jesse James was much interested in theology, and
believed in God. If this doctrine that these preachers give you be true—that
accepting Jesus as your Savior insures your eternal happiness in heaven—be
assured that most murderers here­after will be happy, for they accept God and
Jesus at the last moment. It was a consideration of these facts that caused Mark
Twain, an atheist, to ex­claim:

"Heaven for climate; hell for company!" Did you ever hear of the "Mann Act"—the
Federal White Slave Law prohibiting the transpor­tation across State lines of
human beings for im­moral purposes? It should be called the "Preachers’ Act;" it
catches so many wearers of the cloth. What is the explanation of the high
criminality of the religious, and the high religiousness of criminals? Let my
opponent explain why crime and religion go together. I hope he will not give the
explana­tion given by a Georgia preacher, who stated that the clergy consume so
much of their energy preach­ing morality as to have but little left with which
to practice it.

I will give you the explanation. What causes a man to be a criminal, especially
to commit violent crimes? It is an excess of emotional nature over reasoning
power. That is the very thing that causes man to be religious. A thoroughly
rational man does not act mad and shoot someone to get vengeance. Religion does
not directly cause crime, except when some poor ignoramus has no better sense
than to take certain parts of the Bible liter­ally, and sacrifices a child,
after reading in the Old Testament that human beings were sacrificed to God.
That which causes religion causes crime. That is why they go together.

You heard the statement last evening that an atheist never built hospitals or
established schools. If you are a preacher, you can make statements without
having to prove them. If in a church, you ask questions, they call the police.
If you go to an atheist meeting you can ask questions. Atheists have founded
hospitals. No Bible-following Chris­tian ever founded a hospital. You read in.
James 5:1-20 th Chapter:

"Is any sick among you, send him to a hospital."

No.

"Send for the elders of the church, let them anoint him in the name of the Lord
and the prayer of the faithful shall heal the sick." That is the Bible doctrine
of healing; and you will find how they cured insane persons by casting devils
out of them. For two thousand years after Christ there were no insane asylums.
They thought that those unbalanced mentally were possessed by devils; and that
they should beat the devils out of these poor unfortunate persons. My opponent
last night referred especially to Harvard University, which I attended. He said
it was founded by Christians. Yes, it is true Chris­tians have founded most of
the large educational institutions in the country. Atheists did not found them.
Why? Up until the time the organization of which I have the honor to be
President, was launched, were there any avowed atheists in this country? You
know of your own knowledge that, with few exceptions, there were no atheists who
called themselves that name. A man may have called another man an atheist; but
the man himself did not use the title, because of the bigotry of the Christians.

It is not true that atheists never established colleges. What did Christians do
when they were in power? They closed the schools of Athens, and for one thousand
years humanity was in ignorance and darkness. Science and reason were outlawed.
The Christians burned heretics at the stake. Spir­itualism was supreme;
materialism was rejected.

I shall now examine "Christian morality," and show you what a fraud it is. It is
based on hope and fear—a system of threats and bribes. Heine, the German poet,
asked:

"Do you want a tip because you did not poison your brother and because you took
care of your aged mother?" That is what you Christians want. You want a reward
for being good. I will read you a passage from the pagan writer:

"Do good, for good is good to do; spurn bribe of heaven and threat of hell." The
Christian religion is profoundly immoral. The doctrine of atonement is
barbarous. What is it? The innocent suffers for the guilty. An en­raged God
would not be at peace with us until an innocent person was put to death. Is
there a moth­er or father who, if their child did wrong, and another child came
to be whipped for the one who did the wrong, would whip that innocent child?
Yet, that is what the preachers tell us God Almighty did.

Let me show you something of the immorality of the Bible. God established
slavery. Read Leviticus 25:44. Who was it that abolished slavery in mod­ern
times? It was the French Revolutionists. I quote from a man who should be
listened to in this church. You have heard of the Rev. Alexander Campbell. I
read you his words on the subject of slavery:

"There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slav­ery, but many regulating
it." The founder of the Christian Church said slav­ery is not immoral according
to the Bible, and he is right. God established it.

"Thou shall not suffer a witch to live." (Exodus 22:18.)

Three hundred thousand persons were killed because of that text. The soil of our
Republic has been stained with innocent blood because of that text. John Wesley
said:

"Giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible."

I ask my opponent if he believes in witches and whether they should be put to
death.

We have a question put to Gladman. A woman writes:

"I am a Sunday School teacher. How shall I explain `concubine’ to my pupils
without giving them the impres­sion that the Bible Patriarchs had more than one
wife each?" The Doctor replies:

"Tell them ’concubine’ is the Hebrew equivalent for stenographer." The
Patriarchs were polygamists.

There is a good deal of the Bible that is not pure literature. This is a mixed
company. Read chapters 19 and 38 of the Book of Genesis, and ask yourself what
would happen to a man if he wrote a book today and incorporated into it that
kind of material. He would land behind prison bars.

Liberty of thought is alien to the Bible. A man must slay his wife, friend or
daughter for religion. Duet. 13: 6-10. The Bible upholds tyranny. Romans 13:1 :

"The powers that be are ordained of God. They that resist shall receive
damnation."

If that be true, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Voltaire, and Thomas Paine
are in hell, because they resisted the powers of their day. See also 1 Peter
2:13-14.

I will read what Moses ordered, and he said he got the order from God. He
directs that inno­cent women and children be killed and commanded his officers:
"—all the women and children who have not known man by lying with them, keep
alive for yourselves." Numbers 31:17-18. Do you know how David got his first
wife? He bought her with two hundred foreskins. 1 Samuel 18:27.

Just a word about the character of Christ. I quote you some of the teachings of
Jesus.

"He that believeth not shall be damned." Mark 16:16.

What do you think of damnation for disbelief? Can a man believe contrary to the
evidence? If you do not follow evidence as it appears to you, in the light of
your experience, then you are a hyp­ocrite. If the evidence convinces me that
the Bible is false, where am I in error for disbelieving it? I would be a liar
if I professed to believe it.

Mark 9:45 :

"Cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched."

Jesus taught the doctrine of eternal punish­ment in hell. What good will it do
to punish a man forever? It could not do anybody any good. Only a vindictive
being, such as Jefferson said Jehovah is, could torture persons eternally for
disbelieving something that seems to them to be untrue.

One of the worst features of Christianity is the doctrine of free-will—the
doctrine that somehow you have the power to do as you please, regardless of your
heredity and environment; that when a man does wrong he could have avoided doing
it, and therefore, must be punished. It is a childish con­ception. When a child
stumps its toe against the chair it may kick the chair, thinking that the chair
is responsible. The more enlightened persons have given up the idea of free-will
and vindictive pun­ishment. This does not mean that we should let criminals run
at large. To protect society, it is necessary to lock them up. Man is what his
hered­ity and environment make him. When a mad dog comes down the street and
bites a person, you kill the animal, but you don’t torture it. If you would, you
have the character of the being who invented hell.

If materialistic mechanism were not true, if man were not a machine, there would
be no rational basis for effort. It would not be worthwhile to teach your child
to be honest. Even Fundamental­ist preachers adopt the mechanistic theory in
win­ning souls; they use the emotional appeal that will bring the most converts.
When I last evening asked the question, wheth­er or not God made certain disease
germs, the Rev. Oliphant told you that disease germs were sent by God as a
punishment for sin. Let me tell you something. You take the class of people who
make prostitution their profession. Do you think they are atheists? So far as I
know we do not have a single prostitute in the United States as a member of our
organization. Most of them are religious.

If it be true, as my opponent contends, that these venereal diseases are sent as
a punishment for sin, is it not a most cruel method of punishing sin? The
innocent often suffer as much as the guilty. Could not an omnipotent God find
another punish­ment for sin than have babies born blind and women crippled for
life? The doctrine of faith makes the clergy a men­ace to civilization. It
depreciates reason. We live in a dark forest with only a candle (reason) to
guide us; and here comes a person, the priest, who says:

"Blow it out and you will see better."

Faith is strongest among children and illiterate persons. If you will read, "The
Belief in God and Immortality" by Professor Leuba you will find the most
educated persons believe the least in the Bible. Of the psychologists eight
percent believe in immortality, six percent of the women and two percent of the
men. Women are in the majority in the churches. In the American Association for
the Advancement of Atheism we have almost ten men to one woman. I will not say
what the implications are, but man’s brain is considerably larger than woman’s.
In the remaining few minutes I shall quote from this word of God concerning the
use of rea­son. This is from St. Paul:

"Beware lest any man spoil you by philosophy and vain deceit."

Again:

"Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world." The whole scheme of
redemption is foolishness to me. Because our parents and forefathers dis­obeyed
God, he would not be on good terms with us until his son was nailed on a cross.
That is not reasonable.

Faith means mental slavery. Are you going to be the subject of the one who first
gets your ear? If you had grown up in that part of Asia where Mohammedanism
prevails, you would have accepted that religion. In the Royal Society of England
it was debated whether the placing of a fish in a barrel of water would increase
the weight of the barrel and its con­tents. There were those who said it would
not. King Charles commanded: "Make trial." They put the fish in the water and
the weight increased. That is the way of science. Science is born of experience;
religion is made of deductions from assertions. In conclusion, let me say a word
about the character of the clergy. I am not personal in this, but speak of them
as a group. I have intimated to you they are no more moral than other persons,
and in certain crimes are in the lead. They are not a very useful class of
citizens. They pay half fare on the railroads; west of the Mississippi, they pay
one-third. They are exempt from military duty. They do not pay taxes on their
homes. What is their profession? You know what they are doing. They are selling
you homes in heaven. It is the greatest swindle ever put over on the human race.
Suppose that when a man offered to sell you a piece of land and you asked where
it is and he replied: "I don’t know;" "What direction?" "I don’t know." The
clergy don’t know where heaven is. They have not the slightest idea in which
direction it lies, or how far distant. It is a gold brick, they ask you to live
on hay, and promise pie in the sky when you die.

Oliphant’s First Reply Brother Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Respected
Opponent:

Contrary to the precedent set by Mr. Smith while in the negative, I intend to
consider his argu­ments. I shall begin with the last things he said, while they
are fresh in your minds.

He makes a number of statements which are not true. Preachers do not ride the
trains on one-third fare. It is true that the railroad companies give ministers
reduced rates; we pay two-thirds fare. Why do the railroads extend this
courtesy? Being familiar with the development of this coun­try, they know that
the preachers have had a large part in building its civilization. They know that
without the civilizing influence of the Christian re­ligion they could not
safely carry on their business. It is very largely due to the work of Christian
mis­sionaries that the railroad companies can now run their trains in every
section of the United States, without having them attacked by Indian bands. In
recognition of this service, and as an expression of gratitude for it, the
railroad companies volun­tarily extend the courtesy of a reduced rate to the
ministry.

I know of no State in which homes owned by ministers are exempt from taxation.
In some States property owned by churches, and used for religious services, is
exempt. (Here Mr. Smith asked: "Most preachers live in parsonages, do they
not?") Mr. Oliphant: I think not; I am of the opinion that the majority own
their homes, or rent them. Where a house is furnished the minister, this is
usually considered in determining his salary. The government exempts certain
church property from taxation in recognition of a service considered more
valuable than money.

Why are preachers exempt from military serv­ice? Because the government
officials understand that there is a more vital work for ministers than carrying
guns. I challenge Mr. Smith to name any class of men who rendered more service
than the preachers during the World War.

It is charged that faith is contrary to reason. The basis for this charge is my
friend’s misunder­standing of faith. Faith is based on testimony—evidence. It
"comes by hearing," and is "the evi­dence of things not seen." There can be no
faith in the absence of evidence; and the evidence must be reasoned upon, and
accepted intelligently. The Scriptures quoted to prove that Paul condemned the
use of reason do not prove it. Paul condemned a philosophy that produced "vain
deceit." He also condemned "science falsely so-called." (1 Timothy 6:20.) True
science was never condemned by any Bible writer. The apostle whom Mr. Smith
charges with con­demning reason, said:

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." (1 Thessalonians 5:21.) Can
atheists give us a better rule for determin­ing truth? Do you know of a better
way to use reasoning power?

All the atheist knows about historical charac­ters is what he learns from
testimony. I ask Mr. Smith if he believes Alexander the Great lived. If so, he
exercises faith. He who rejects faith must reject all history. The inference
about the intelligence of women is amusing. I need not defend women. As someone
has said, "She speaks for herself." Some of the most intellectual feats of the
age have been ac­complished by women. Mr. Smith’s attitude toward woman is just
another of the fruits of atheism. In spite of his boast of superior
intelligence, I can name a number of women who would have no dif­ficulty in
meeting the arguments he has made in this debate.

We are told that there are more women than men in the churches; and more men
than women in the atheist society. Since this is a discussion of morality, I ask
what this fact implies. Does it indicate that atheism is more moral than
Christian­ity? I challenge my opponent to say that women are more immoral than
men. The argument used to prove that man is a machine proves the reverse. Mr.
Smith asks: "If man is not a machine—but has free-will, why teach your child to
be honest?" Why sir, that is the very reason. Why do we not attempt to teach
automo­biles? Because they are machines. Machines can only operate according to
the design of their maker; they do not think or reason. Human beings think, and
therefore, should be taught to think cor­rectly.

Mr. Smith contends that criminals ’cannot help committing crime; that they are
criminal by nature. Being mere machines, the entire course of their lives is
mapped out by heredity. Hence they should not be blamed for their crimes.’ This
is proved to be untrue by the thousands of criminals who have reformed. Many men
who in the past have com­mitted crimes are now respectable, law-abiding
cit­izens. If man is a machine, there is no opportunity for reform, or for
improvement of character.

What a hopeless doctrine atheism offers! Not only is a man a mere machine; but
there is no one operating the machinery. If there is no God, we are machines
running wild! Man has no responsi­bility. And then it is affirmed that this
theory is conducive to morality! Will it make man better to remove all
responsibility from him?

Machines do not grow; man grows. Machines do not procreate; man has the power to
reproduce his species. To eliminate God, atheists must do more than show that
man is a machine; they must prove that machines have the power to create
them­selves. The Bible is charged with teaching unques­tioned obedience to
governments. It is true that Christians are taught to respect in the proper
man­ner duly constituted authority. Christians are good citizens, respecting and
supporting their governm­ent. But should unrighteous authorities make laws which
conflict with the law of God; if decision must be made between God and human
govern­ment, the Bible says:

"We ought to obey God rather than men." 5:29. That the early Christians were
governed by this rule is evidenced by the fact that when human authority forbade
the preaching of the gospel, they continued to preach it. Atheism breeds
anarchy. If the authority of God is rejected, what authority can be accepted?

Mr. Smith charges that Jesus condemns men for not believing, when no evidence is
given. The evidence for Christianity is overwhelming. A vast majority of those
who have heard it accept it. Jesus also says:

"If any man will do his will, he shall know the teaching, whether it be of God."
(John 7:17.)

Any man who honestly wants to know the truth and to practice it, can learn the
truth. I am convinced that the big reason for disbelief is not a lack of
evidence, but an unwillingness to live right. My opponent brings the old charge
that the Bible contains impure statements; literature that should not be read
before a mixed audience. Text books used in medical colleges contain passages
which it might not be wise to read before a mixed assembly. I have seen pictures
in medical journals which I would not enjoy exhibiting to an audience of ladies.
But the doctors must have these books; they are indispensible to the teaching of
anatomy. We do not condemn these books because of these things. They were not
written for indiscriminate public reading. The Bible deals with man’s spirit­ual
anatomy. Sin is a disease; the Bible offers a remedy. Some sins are so vile that
we would not want to discuss them in a mixed assembly. Still, these hideous sins
are committed by mankind; and, therefore, must be dealt with. To point out the
remedy, the Bible must first describe the disease. The mention in the Bible of
an unclean thing is al­ways to condemn it.

Bob Ingersoll charged that the Bible mentions the most vile things "without the
least bit of humor." Ingersoll unconsciously confessed the rea­son for this
charge against the Bible. If the Bible made a joke of immorality, infidels would
like it. But, because the Bible deals seriously with the vile pollutions of
ungodly men, infidels criticize it. It is the "hit dog that howls."

It is charged that eternal punishment is im­moral. We have sympathy for the man
who is being punished by the State. I do not like to see men go to the
penitentiary. But who is to blame for the punishment of criminals? Not the
State, but the criminals themselves. So it is with God’s punishment of the
wicked. God cannot be blamed.

I may not be able to see the justice of eternal punishment. My view of life is
too limited for me to attempt to judge matters of eternity. If I were asked to
describe a plant and tell its uses, having never seen more than a tiny portion
of its leaf, I should not be able to do so. While, after I have examined the
whole plant, I can describe it, and perhaps explain the purpose of its
existence, I see but a small arc broken from the great circle of eternity. Hence
I cannot explain the things of eternity. The child often thinks the punishment
admin­istered by his parents is unjust and unreasonable. In later years he
understands the reason for it. We are but children in regard to eternity; we
must leave its government in the hands of a loving Heavenly Father, knowing that
"He doeth all things well."

Mr. Smith says atheists have built schools and hospitals. I have asked him to
name one. So far, he has not done so. My friends, he has a good rea­son for not
naming a school or hospital that atheists have built. There is no such
institution in the world. In explaining this situation, my opponent say that
there were no avowed atheists before his "4A Society" was organized. Why my
friends, some of you remember that Stanley J. Clark (who was in the audience
last night) debated these very issues with Joe S. Warlick in this town some
twelve of fifteen years ago. (Here Mr. Smith asked: "But did he call himself an
atheist?") Mr. Oliphant: I’ll put that question back to you—did he? (Mr. Smith:
"He did not.") Mr. Oliphant: Mr. Clark affirmed the very same things you are
affirming. Why did he not call himself an atheist? (Mr. Smith: "Bigoted
Christians made it too unpopu­lar.") Mr. Oliphant: Then you admit that Clark was
an atheist, but charge that he was too cowardly to admit it. I would not charge
Stanley Clark with cowardice. I believe he was an atheist, and at­tempted to
defend his atheism. I am more charita­ble toward him than you are. Everybody
under­stood at the time of that debate that Mr. Clark was an atheist.

Mr. Smith is trying to give undue prestige to the organization of which he is
president. There have been atheists for centuries. But I do not care to quibble
about names: let Mr. Smith name an educational institution or a hospital that
was built by anti-religionists—I don’t care what name they wore. Sir, can you
name such an institution that was founded by those opposed to religion?

He says no Bible-believing Christian ever built a hospital. Investigate the
history of the hospitals of our nation, and see who is responsible for their
existence. Mr. Smith quotes:

"Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them
pray over him anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord."

Olive oil was one of the most commonly used medicines of that day. It seems to
me that in modern language, James says: "Pray for the sick, and use the best
known remedies in nature." God has given man intelligence. He should use his
in­telligence in combating disease, and at the same time, pray to God. When Mr.
Smith charges that Christianity for­bids the use of a physician he speaks
without knowl­edge. Jesus said:

"They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick." (Luke 5:31.)

Luke, the disciple who recorded this statement, was a physician. Mr. Smith’s
charge is contrary to the facts. He should inform himself on the teach­ing of
the Bible before he attempts to say what it teaches.

I stated in the beginning of the debate that I would not attempt to defend
perversions of Chris­tianity. All of my friend’s talk about Christians closing
the schools of Athens, and being responsible for the Dark Ages, is irrelevant.
Everyone who has studied the history of medieval times knows that the
institution then posing as the church was far from being like the church
established by our Lord. Christianity should not be condemned be­cause of the
conduct of those who have apostatized from it.

Even this corruption of Christianity is a vin­dication of the inspiration of the
New Testament; it was foretold. (See 2 Thessalonians 2:3; Acts 20:30; 1 Timothy
4:1-3.) The crimes of the Dark Ages were the fruits of Christianity’s being
rejected, rather than prac­ticed. The teachings of Jesus Christ and His
apos­tles could never bring about such conditions. Chris­tianity must be judged
by the teachings of its Author. The charge is again made that educated people do
not believe in God. I refuted that charge yes­terday by the statements of a
number of the most scholarly men in America. Mr. Smith now refers to Dr. Leuba’s
book. I have examined this book. Dr. Leuba’s findings are not what they might
ap­pear to be. His investigation was not conducted fairly. He did not ask the
scientists to whom he addressed his questionnaire if they believed in God; but
prepared his own question to which they were to answer yes or no. Some questions
cannot be answered so simply. If I were to ask Mr. Smith if he has quit
stealing, he would not want to answer with a simple yes or no.

Dr. Leuba’s question embraced a belief in the answer to prayer, and intimated a
specific method of answer. Many people believe wholeheartedly in an intelligent
Creator, who is interested in His creatures; and at the same time they hesitate
to say just to what degree, and in what way, He an­swers our prayers.

While Dr. Leuba’s question was unfair, it is interesting to note that forty-one
percent of the scientists answered in the affirmative. To me, this indicates
that forty-one percent of the scientists who answered were so firm in their
conviction that, lest their answers be used against God, they af­firmed
everything Dr. Leuba asked. No one can justly charge the other fifty-eight
percent with un­belief, simply because they refused to accept the position Dr.
Leuba tried to hand them.

Mr. Smith has seen a few newspaper accounts of preachers having committed crime,
and he jumps at the conclusion that preachers are more immoral than others. It
is true that some, preachers are sinners; but their sin is not caused by
Christianity. When they sin they go contrary to the gospel they preach. But Mr.
Smith has an exaggerated esti­mate of the number of this kind of preacher. I
once criticized the editor of a great daily paper for "displaying" the accounts
of preachers’ crimes. He said

"Do you know why we print the, story of a preacher’s immorality on the front
page? Because it is news. We do not display articles about the good done by
preachers, because that is not news. Everybody knows that. It is his mistakes
that are unusual—hence, news. We do not write front-page stories about the
misdemeanors of great criminals. You should consider every newspaper story about
a preacher’s immorality a compliment to the ministry." The atheist tract,
"Religion and Roguery," does not prove that religion causes crime. The
statistics given do not indicate the number of irre­ligious in the penal
institutions. All who expressed a church preference are listed as religious.
This is not necessarily true. Even an atheist may pre­fer one church above
another. Such dastard crimes as that committed by the two young atheists,
Leopold and Loeb, are but logical fruits of the athe­istic philosophy of life.

I deny his statement that most college profes­sors are atheists. He offers no
proof; until he at­tempts to prove it, I shall simply say it is untrue.

Let me give you an example of the honesty of atheist scientists. Ernst Haeckel,
an atheist, in an effort to prove that in certain rudimentary stages animals of
wholly different species exactly resemble each other; printed pictures of what
purported to be embryos of a man, an ape and a dog. He also printed pictures
supposed to be the embryos of a dog, a fowl and a turtle—all being identical.

Soon Professor Ruthmeyer, of Basle, discov­ered that the embryos were in both
instances, the same plate printed three different times. This was proved by
accidental scratches on the face of the plates. This fact was brought to
Haeckel’s atten­tion. He did not deny it. In 1908 Haeckal published a defense to
put to rest what he termed "brutal fuss" and "Christian slanders." In this reply
he freely confesses that a small portion of his embryo illustration had been
"faked," but this had been done "in connection with such picture when the
available data was insuffi­cient," and that he was compelled to fill in the
"lacunal with hypotheses, and to construct the miss­ing links by comparative
synthesis." Quite an alibi for outright dishonesty! When scientists try to prove
atheism, they sometimes do peculiar things!

Dr. Horace J. Bridges was a member of the Rationalist Press Association, which
association issued Haeckel’s "Riddles of the Universe," and "Evolution of Man."
Dr. Bridges calls Haeckel’s essay on "Science and Christianity" a "farrago of
ignorant nonsense." He then tells how Professor Freidrich Loofs of Halle,
Germany, denounced Haeckel, deliberately choosing such language as would make it
possible for Haeckel to prosecute him for libel. Dr. Bridges points out that
Haeckel did not see fit to do so. He also says that the con­troversy disclosed
the fact that Haeckel had gotten his information from a "tenth-rate free-thought
book by an obscure English journalist." Dr. Bridges remarks that "no such
crushing exposure of presumptuous ignorance was ever made before in the case of
a man of academic training and career." (Criticisms of Life, pgs. 77-120.)

Mr. Smith talks a great deal about reason. Reason has been the god of many
infidels. When man succeeds in getting God out of his mind, he usually resorts
to some form of idolatry. Robert Ingersoll said:

"We are looking for the time when the useful shall be the honorable; and when
Reason, throned upon the world’s brain, shall be King of Kings, and God of
Gods." (The Gods, pg. 64.)

Let us notice France during her Revolutionary period. We have here a most
clear-cut example of the results of atheism. Dr. Shailer Matthews, Professor in
the University of Chicago, speaking of Denis Diderot, D’Alembert, Helvetius,
Holbach, Rosseau, and others, says:

"They attacked not only Christianity, but immortality and God as well." As for
morals, the historian tells us that they would have "none of, such conventions
as marriage, and championed the most extreme of free-love doc­trines." He says
that they found in "the natural, or uncivilized man the ideal being."

Rosseau lived some ten or twelve years with a woman of "accommodating morals,"
left her, be­cause of a rival lover, when he was thirty years old. He then went
to Paris, where he lived with an illiterate maid-servant, Therese Levasseur, by
whom he had five children, each of whom he promptly sent to the foundling
asylum.

Rosseau contended that the progress of the arts and sciences had tended to
corrupt morals; that civilization was a curse, and the uncivilized man the ideal
of life. The historian points out that "the millennium of his gospel was The
Reign of Terror." (The French Revolution, pgs, 63-66.)

After the overthrow of the French Monarchy, by the masses, led by the atheistic
leaders, the "Convention of Public Safety" had full sway. Dr. Matthews says
their "actions were coarse and irra­tional."

"On November 10, 1793, the convention established the worship of Reason. Decked
out in red liberty caps, the deputies went in a body to the cathedral of Notre
Dame, and consecrated it to the Goddess of Reason, whose repre­sentative, a
beautiful actress, sat on the altar, while women of the town danced in the
darmagnole in the nave." The historian says the service then degenerated into a
"shameless orgy." In Paris, the words: "Liberty and Equality," were inscribed
over the door of every householder; yet the Committee of Public Safety
suppressed free­dom of thought, opened letters, instituted a secret police,
destroyed right of trial by jury, and put hundreds of poor lace women to death
because they wanted to begin their work with prayer. The City of Lyons, which
had offered resist­ance to their armies, was ordered annihilated, and the name
of its site changed. Some two thousand persons were massacred during five
months. An order of a levy en masse started a rebellion of the people in La
Vendee (lying on the Bay of Biscay, between the Loire and La Rochelle). After
they were defeated, the Committee of Public Safe­ty undertook to punish them.
Troops were sent, villages were burned, thousands of people were exe­cuted. At
least eighteen hundred people were shot without trial. This method, however,
proved too slow for these blood-thirsty atheists. They turned to drowning. Men
and women were stripped naked, bound and sent out by companies in old vessels
which were sunk in the Loire. Perhaps two thou­sand were killed this way within
less than two months. This terrible program continued until the mouth of the
river was stopped with corpses, and thousands of people died from pestilence
resulting from unburied bodies. (French Revolution, pgs. 245, 246.)

All this, ladies and gentleman, is but a part of the picture of a country ruled
by atheism. Is this the atheist’s conception of morality? May God keep us far
from such!

I charge that the philosophy of atheism is brutal, savage and immoral. In Mr.
Smith’s tract, "Godless Evolution," he quotes Cardinal Manning as saying:
"Darwinism is a brutal philosophy—to-wit, there is no God, and an ape is our
Adam." Mr. Smith follows this quo­tation with one word of his own: "Correct." In
other words, Mr. Smith accepts Darwinism as his philosophy, and then admits that
it is "brutal." I need no further proof of my first charge. I have Mr. Smith’s
own words in substantiation of it.

I quote again from this tract, Mr. Smith’s words:

"The crowning glory of evolution is to have shown how to improve the human
stock—not by prayers to God; no, not even by education, but by selective
breeding. Evo­lution links man with the animals. The laws of heredity operate as
inexorably with him as with them. Mental and moral dualities are no exception,
for these have a physical basis, which is inherited."

I want you to notice that Smith says education has no, part in the development
of the human race. He is the man who has been charging that Chris­tianity is
opposed to education! Ile also says, "Mental and moral qualities are no
exception." These too, must be disregarded in his brutish pro­gram. To continue
the quotation:

" ’To grade up the cattle of the country,’ a rich reli­gious stockman demands:
’A pure-bred bull for every herd.’ There is but one way to grade up the human
race —to let only the best breed. This does not mean that the State should adopt
the primary principle of animal breed­ing, so that the best male in a community
should be the father of its children? But if it were not immoral, the principle
would be the greatest possible engine for ele­vating the human race, compared to
which other means are feeble."

There you have it, in Mr. Smith’s own words: Place human life on the same plane
with that of the brute, disregard all mentality and morality; simply develop the
biggest brute possible! This is the "morality" of atheism.

Smith says that "if it were not immoral, the best male in a community should be
the father of the children." But, who told him it would be im­moral? According
to the standard of atheism, it would not be immoral. Sir, the only reason you do
not attempt the practice of your heathenish, de­grading plan of "breeding" is
that you live in a country whose government has too many Christian standards to
permit it! Why don’t you go to some heathen country, where God’s old Bible has
never gone? You should fit in nicely with the lowest grade of heathenism.
Perhaps some strong "phys­ically-developed" cannibal would eat you. At least,
you could there try on human beings your brute system of living. I am of the
opinion that such an opportunity will never be given you in a civilized country.

I want to continue the quotation from Mr. Smith’s "Godless Evolution:"

"Weakness of mind and body are now transmitted to increasing numbers in each
generation, when, Nature, left alone, would weed them out. Birth control would
lessen the evil." No wonder atheists have never established hos­pitals! Mr.
Smith advocates letting "nature weed out" the weak. In other words, do not take
care of the weak or the sick; just let them die! I am wondering if that
principle would have rid the world of my opponent! Perhaps not, since mental­ity
and morality are not to be considered. He would possibly survive on the basis of
a strictly beast "survival of the fittest." My friends, can you imagine a more
beastly philosophy? This principle—of letting nature "weed out" the physically
weak, would have deprived the world of some of the greatest characters that have
ever lived. Many of the greatest minds have been in weak bodies. John T. Faris
wrote a book, "Men Who Made Good," in which he gives sketches of the lives of
twenty-six men—artists, authors and lecturers, editors and publishers,
inventors, philan­thropists, religious workers, scientists, statesmen. Nearly
all of these men had a handicap of heredity or environment. Without the aid and
protection of Christian society, these men might have been "weeded out" by
nature. The world would have been loser. My charge that atheism is brutal,
savage and immoral, has been proved. Let my opponent at­tempt to refute it.

One of the "fundamentals of atheism," as expressed by Mr. Smith is "that
happiness here and now should be the motive of conduct." If it gives me
happiness "here and now" to, knock a man in the head and rob him, what prevents
my doing so? Atheism makes no difference between a man and a beast. If it is not
wrong to kill a hog, why is it wrong to kill a man?

I challenge my opponent to show any reason why he should not be killed. If a mad
dog goes about endangering the physical health of people, we kill him. Mr. Smith
goes over the country try­ing to rob peopleof their spiritual health and
hap­piness; why shouldn’t he be killed, like the mad dog? Rejecting God and the
Bible as he does, he cannot offer a single reason why it would be wrong for
someone to shoot him. Again I ask him: Why is it more wrong to kill a man than
to kill a snake?

Atheism, if adopted by a nation, would lead to the most chaotic condition
imaginable; no man respecting the rights of any other; every man "a law unto
himself," looking only to his own happiness "here and now." The French
Revolution is but a small sample.

I again ask Mr. Smith to show us atheism’s standard of morality. And again, I
charge that it has none. To be an atheist, you need not believe anything; you
need not do anything, you need not be anything. As to religion and crime, let me
give you a few statements from men who should know. Judge Fawcett of New York
City has said:

"In the five years I have been sitting on the bench, I have had 2,700 boys
before me for sentence and not one of them was an attendant at Sunday School."

Judge John R. Newcomber, of the Municipal Court of Chicago, reported that as
prosecuting at­torney and presiding judge, he had handled more than one hundred
thousand cases. Out of this vast number of cases, not as many as ten defendants
were boys or girls who had been regular attendants in the Protestant Sunday
Schools up to the time of their majority. (Week Day Religious Instruc­tion,
introduced by John H. Finley, LL.D., Associate Editor, New York Times, formerly
Commissioner of Education, New York State.) The work of Judge Hoyt as Judge of
the Chil­dren’s Court of New York City, led him to say:

"If our experience in the Children’s Court has proved one thing, it is that
religion is essential in the training of children and that no lasting good can
be achieved when their spiritual development is neglected." (Quicksands of
Youth, pg. 229.) Dr. Wm. H. Cox says:

"In Chicago in the five years up to 1915, out of 55,000 persons below the age of
sixteen who had passed through the hands of the police, fewer than one-sixth had
ever heard of the Ten Commandments."

Judge B. J. Humphreys says that in his twenty years on the bench he cannot
recall but one of the thousands of criminals brought before him who had had a
Sunday School training. (Quoted by Charles S. Knight, "Both Sides of Evolution."
pg. 160.)

We shall introduce one more witness on this point. These facts were reported in
the Evangelical Messenger, July 7, 1929:

"During the last twenty years 20,000 young men be­tween the ages of eighteen and
twenty-five years have been admitted to the Indiana Reformatory, now at
Pendleton. More than 85 percent of these were from broken homes—fathers and
mothers had separated and remarried. There was not a single Boy Scout in the
number. Only four percent of the twenty thousand belonged to a church."

These are facts, stated by men who have been in a position to see the effects of
religious training on young lives. I put these plain statements up in contrast
to Smith’s garbled statistics.

I want you people to remember that, though Mr. Smith is supposed to be affirming
that atheism is conducive to good morals, he has not said one word in defense of
the morality of atheism. He has done nothing but attack Christianity. This
method of debating is in harmony with the whole program of atheism; it is
entirely destructive. In the few minutes I have left, I shall introduce a few of
the principles of morality taught in the New Testament. The religion of Jesus
Christ teaches: Avoid­ing hatred (Matthew 5:21-22); No lustful thinking (Matthew
5:24); No unfair judgments (Matthew 7:1-2); Love of enemies. (Matthew 5:44);
Reconciliation (Matthew 5:24); Non-resistence (Matthew 5:38-39); Avoiding
Anxiety (Matthew 6:25-29); Self-examination (Matthew 7:3-5); Re­spect for
government. (Romans 13:1-7); Equality of man (James 2:1-4); A universal
Brotherhood (Matthew 23:9); Forgiveness (Matthew 11:25); Thrift and indus­try
(Ephesians 4:28); Progress (Hebrews 6:1); The value of truth (2 Corinthians
13:8); Truth as the basis for free­dom (John 8:32); Humility (Luke 14:11);
Benevo­lence (Acts 20:35); Honesty (Romans 12:17); Single standard of morals
(Galatians 3:28); Unselfishness (Romans 12:10).

Consider the Golden Rule:

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even
so to them; for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12.) This
expresses the world’s only perfect stand­ard of conduct. I challenge any atheist
to find a single fault in it.

I could continue indefinitely in naming the principles of righteousness given in
God’s word. I do not deem it necessary. To reduce this ques­tion to the most
definite, concise issue, I am willing to risk the whole proposition on this
challenge: I challenge Mr. Smith to name any principle of morality that I cannot
read in the Bible. Let him mention any virtue he may think of, and I will read
it in this Book—the Christian’s standard of life.

Smith’s Second Affirmative Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Honored Opponent:

I have been asked to name one moral principle my opponent cannot find in the
Bible. Perhaps I cannot; you can prove most anything by the Bible. It contains
contradictory teachings on most every subject. But the good teachings were not
original with Jesus or with the authors of the Bible. They stole them—or took
them—from earlier writers. The Golden Rule was taught by various philoso­phers
long before Jesus came into the world. My opponent seems to take special
pleasure in accusing me of egotism because I deny the ex­istence of God. I do
not care to make any personal remarks of the character he has made against me.
But if it be egotism to deny the existence of one god, where is the humility in
saying that there is only one god? Why is it more egotistical to deny the
existence of God than to deny the existence of hobgoblins, and demons?

It is not necessary to deny the existence of God to be an atheist. The man who
has no god is an atheist, though he may not have the courage to admit the fact.
I can think of no more egotis­tical person that he who believes that a being who
created the innumerable myriads of stars and directs the universe is interested
in him.

It is charged that atheism is anarchistic. The charge is baseless. We accept the
government. We believe in the United States Constitution. We are a duly
chartered organization. I will tell you who are the law-breakers in this
country. You have no more law-breaking class than the clergy, who are willing to
disregard the Constitution in the sep­aration of Church and State. They want to
get into the State, and bootleg their religion into our public schools. Some of
them, as chaplains, are in the army and navy, paid for, in part, by the
athe­ist. That nothing so deadens the moral conscience as religion was shown by
the persecution of me last year in Arkansas. It was stated last night that I was
arrested there because of my blasphe­mous remarks. What is the status of the
Arkan­sas case? The bigoted Christians in Arkansas ar­rested me, though I was
violating no law. I was distributing atheist tracts when I was arrested on a
charge of blasphemy. By their actions, my pros­ecutors have exonerated me. They
dismissed one case and have refused to set the other for trial. They know they
had no right to arrest me. In Arkansas today, an atheist cannot testify in
court, not even in his own defense. A Christian can steal an atheist’s watch and
the atheist cannot testify against him. A Christian can shoot down an atheist in
cold blood, and if only atheists are witnesses, the Christian will go free. That
is the law which the bigoted Christians in Arkansas do not want tested.
Amendment 14 of the United States Constitution says that no State shall deny a
citizen of the United States the equal protection of the laws. They are
violating the Federal Con­stitution. No wonder they don’t want to stay in court.

You heard it charged that Ernst Haeckel, a German scientist, was guilty of
fraud. That is too long a subject for me to go into in this rebuttal. I
challenge my opponent to deny that scientists have vindicated him. The facts are
set forth in "Haeckel’s Answer to the Jesuits."

You have heard a great deal about the French Revolution, painted in the colors
of eloquence of which my opponent is capable. The number of persons killed in
that revolution is insignificant compared to those killed in obedience to
certain Bible commands. Witchcraft and slavery are thorns in the flesh of
Christians. You have ob­served that my opponent has not replied to this except
by saying that God regulated slavery. A God capable of making the world and the
stars would be able to stop slavery. He could have said: "Thou shalt not have
slaves." Was there not room on those stones Moses got on Sinai to write another
command? The Bible deity gave instructions how to brand a slave, by piercing
through the ear. Exodus 21:6. The Rev. Oliphant has not said a word about
witchcraft. I ask him to tell you whether or not he believes in witches. If
there be a true God there should be true witches. In Pennsylvania last year they
put three boys in the penitentiary for following the command given by Jehovah
not to suffer witches to live. My opponent did not refute the statement that the
French Revolutionists were first to abolish slav­ery. He did not say anything
about Alexander Campbell, who said that according to the Bible slavery is not
immoral. I ask you, did Campbell tell the truth or not? He is the founder of the
Christian Church. He said:

"According to the Bible, slavery is not immoral."

I say Campbell is right, but that his Bible is wrong.

What is morality? What is the original mean­ing of the word? It comes from the
Latin word "Mor," plural, "mores," meaning "custom." Morals are good customs.

You remember those vivid pictures which our oratorical friend painted of the
French Revolution. He has made a mountain out of a molehill. The French
Revolution at the worst is a dim copy of what the Christians did before that;
and what they did was a dimmer copy of what God did in estab­lishing a hell
where they torture persons who do not believe, torture them for not being
hypocrites. What in the French Revolution is comparable to that? When they were
persecuting those poor here­tics for not believing the stories told in the
Bible, they made them suffer as much as possible. Servetus was burned because he
did not believe in infant damnation and because he said the Holy land was not
fertile. The Bible says it was a land "flowing with milk and honey." Every
sensible man knows it is a barren country, and has always been so. How did they
burn him? They used green wood so as to have a slow fire to prolong the agony.
As the victim was burning, he asked: "Did not the watch and the gold chain that
you took from me suffice to buy enough dry wood?" The inquisition is man’s
nearest approach to God’s hell. No atheist would be guilty of creating such a
place as hell. I ask my opponent, "If the devil were to die, would God create
another?"

"Atheists have no standard of morals," say the clergy. The charge is untrue.
Happiness here and now determines our conduct. The Golden Rule expresses
enlightened self-interest. It was taught by pagan philosophers long before Jesus
was in­vented. Conscience is not the voice of God, but is the result of social
experience. Morals have not been revealed, but have evolved. The Bible is not a
safe moral guide, for it sanctions slavery, witchcraft persecution, intolerance
of opinion, subjection of women, damnation for disbelief, and many other
immoralities. The history of the Chris­tian Church and the record of Christians
today re­fute the assertions of my opponent.

Reference has been made to Rosseau. He was not an atheist. It seems Rev.
Oliphant is unable to distinguish between an atheist and an infidel. Leopold and
Loeb are offered as examples of what atheism leads to. What about Hickman,
Hight, and Hotelling, a few of the religionists who in recent times have
committed dastardly deeds?

Now we come to the question of eugenics. The Rev. Oliphant takes exception to my
statement that only the best should breed. What are you going to do? Let the
inferior breed? If you do, you are going to get hillbillies and morons. A
weak-minded person is apt to produce weak-minded offspring. According to
Christians, every person has a soul. They try to save every defective person
that comes into the world. They let the deaf and dumb multi­ply. In a few
States, the leaders are beginning to take some thought of tomorrow. They don’t
want to debase the stock of the human race. They are passing more laws for the
sterilization of the unfit. Christians oppose that, and also oppose birth
con­trol.

I conclude with an account of a recent occur­rence in Newark, New Jersey. A
family there had as many children as the parents were able to pro­vide for. The
mother was in delicate health and did not want to bear more children. They were
Catholics, but the mother went to the birth control clinic and obtained
information on how to prevent conception. The husband found out what she was
doing and called in the priest, who said she was committing a mortal sin against
God. What could the poor woman do? She threw away her medicines and appliances,
but declared that if ever her hus­band forced his relations upon her she would
not bear children—she would commit suicide first. The husband did force
relations upon her, and the next night on returning from work he found the house
had burned down, with his wife and children inside. It was published in the
newspapers that the cause of the tragedy was unknown. That is what Chris­tianity
causes—unhappiness in this world. Atheism teaches that happiness here and now
should be the motive of conduct.

Oliphant’s Second Reply Brother Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Respected
Opponent:

I am now to make the last speech on the pres­ent proposition. I do not have much
to do as I am following my opponent and, consequently, when he makes no argument
I have nothing to answer.

I thank the gentleman for his admission that he cannot name a moral principle
not contained in the Bible. I want it to go on record that the pres­ident of the
American Association for the Advance­ment of Atheism has admitted publicly that
the Bible contains a complete system of morals—at least, that he cannot think of
anything that is lacking.

Mr. Smith says the Golden Rule was taught before the time of Christ. His only
proof is his assertion. Sir, your word is not authority with this or any other
intelligent audience. If, as Mr. Smith says, preachers do not have to prove what
they say; is it not a pity that he is not a preacher? With reference to my
charge that for one to say he KNOWS there is no God is egotism, my friend asks
why it is more egotistical to deny all gods than to deny one. The proof that the
religions of many gods (polytheism) are degenerate forms of the original
religion of one God (monotheism), still stands. I offered it in my first speech;
my op­ponent has never noticed it.

I am charged with egotism because of my be­lieving that God will hear my
prayers. If that be egotism, it is in behalf of the race of men—not an
exaltation of myself. Nor, do I contend that men are worthy of the attention of
God; but because man is a rational being, capable of development, God has seen
fit to be "mindful of him." We thank God that this is true.

Mr. Smith is certainly inconsistent in his def­initions of an atheist. When he
is trying to dodge a charge made against atheists, he minimizes the number, and
makes a clear distinction between "in­fidels" and "atheists." When he wants to
attribute something good to atheism, he makes every man who is not devoutly
religious, an atheist. There are many people not actively engaged in church work
who will earnestly contend for the existence and goodness of God. The most
foolish absurdity that I have heard is Mr. Smith’s statement (made last night)
that he could come into this pulpit and say just the reverse of what was said
last Sunday, and it would be ac­cepted; provided he assumed a pious expression.
No sane man believes that statement to be true. I would not make such an absurd
assertion in regard to an atheist meeting. I could, with as much rea­son, say
that I could preach the gospel to an atheist meeting, and that it would meet
their approval; provided I assumed an "impious and blasphemous" look. The
attitude of this audience toward his speeches indicates whether they accept his
doc­trines.

We are charged with being law-breakers in not adhering to the doctrine of
separation of Church and State. I firmly believe in the separation of Church and
State. Jesus taught that men should "render unto Caesar (civil governments) the
things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s." (Matthew
22:21.) Nor, do we demand the teaching of religion in the Public Schools. We do
insist that if religion is not to be taught, that anti-religion shall not be
taught. Is it lawlessness to insist that the religion of an overwhelming
major­ity of the tax-payers shall not be attacked in insti­tutions supported by
taxes?

I believe in freedom of speech, hence, would not want to see Mr. Smith
imprisoned for his teach­ing. I do not think he can do much harm among
intelligent people. However, there is some justifi­cation for the State of
Arkansas forbidding an atheist to testify in court. Testimony is offered "in the
name of God." How can a man testify in the name of a God whom he does not think
exists? No honest atheist would so testify. My friend has a great deal to say
about Alex­ander Campbell’s attitude toward slavery. I am not obligated to
defend Mr. Campbell’s position. A man may be influenced by his environment.
Camp­bell lived among a people who believed in slavery. I do not know that he
ever gave the question much consideration. I have a high regard for Brother
Campbell. I believe him to have been a great and good man, but, as a Christian,
with no denomina­tional obligations, I have as much right to differ from him as
from any other teacher. I am not a member of a church founded by Alexander
Camp­bell. Mr. Smith should inform himself or refrain from speaking on that
subject. My opponent denies that Ernst Haeckel was guilty of fraud. He does
something for Mr. Haeckel that he refused to do for himself. Haeckel admitted
that he "faked" the embryo pictures. Possibly some so-called scientists did
vindicate him. Haeckel said "hundreds" of them were guilty of the same thing.

Mr. Smith says "morals" comes from the Latin "mores," meaning customs. It is
easy to see that one’s customs (practices) bear close relation to his morals (as
we now use the word). Granting that "good morals" are "good customs," does not
help the position of atheism. What are good cus­toms? What standard of customs
(morals) does atheism offer? How can any man determine from atheism what are
good customs, or morals?

Mr. Smith implies that religion was respon­sible for the terrible crime of
Edward Hickman. Just the reverse is true; lack of religion and the presence of
atheism caused this heinous crime. Just before Hickman was hanged he handed a
message to Warden Holohan, who asked a news­paper man to read it aloud. Among
other things, the statement contained these words:

"A young man who tries to build character without truth is like the house built
on the sands. It is very dangerous for young men to neglect their spiritual
wel­fare. During high school I took an interest in evolution and atheism and
denied Christian faith. Therefore, I became susceptible to worse errors and
finally took up crime and murder." (Clipped from press reports, by Free Tract
Society, Los Angeles, Cal.).

You see we have from Hickman, himself, the reason for his crime. No doubt Mr.
Smith can find where crimes have been committed by religious people. False
religion may have contributed to some crimes; but the religion of Jesus Christ
never caused any one to commit a crime. On the contrary, it is the strongest
deterrent of crime the world has ever known.

If any individual atheists are moral, their mor­ality is stolen from
Christianity; they are moral because of the influence of religion upon their
lives.

Christianity does not cause unhappiness in this world, as Mr. Smith charges. The
spirit of the Christian religion is one of rejoicing. (See Php 3:1; Php 4:4; 1
Peter 1:8.) Christianity condemns those things that are not conducive to lasting
happiness, and authorizes conduct that gives happiness "here and now," as well
as eternal happiness.

It is only a misinterpreted Bible that produces unhappiness. What has caused
more unhappiness than misunderstood science? Shall we condemn science because
some have harmed themselves by a wrong application of its principles?

Christians did not kill Servetus. He was burned by fanatical apostates. Mr.
Smith cannot consistently charge Christianity with such crimes, unless he can
show that the Founder of Christianity sanctioned such deeds. This, he cannot do.

I do not believe in infant damnation any more than did Servetus. The Bible does
not teach it; on the contrary, Jesus taught that children are fit subjects for
the Kingdom of Heaven, (See Matthew 18:3; Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14.) Our friend
says every sensible man knows that Palestine is a barren country, and "has
always been so." This is just another sample of his disregard for facts. That
this land was at one time fertile and productive, a "land flowing with milk and
honey," can be established by an abundance of authority outside of the Bible.
Josephus, Jewish historian, says of the Galileans:

"Their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and full of the plantations of
trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take pains in
its cultivation by its fruitfulness; accordingly, it is all cultivated by its
in­habitants, and no part of it lies idle. Moreover, the cities lie here very
thick, and the very many villages there are here are everywhere so full of
people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contained
above fif­teen thousand inhabitants." (Jewish Wars, book 3, Chap­ter 3.)
Tacitus, Roman historian, gives this testimony:

"The soil is rich and fertile; besides the fruits known in Italy, the palm and
balm trees flourish in great luxuri­ance." (History, book 6, section 6.) Edward
Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," says:

"From the age of David to that of Heraclius the coun­try was overspread with
ancient and flourishing cities." (Chapter 51.)

It is true that the country is now desolate. This condition was foretold by Old
Testament writ­ers. (See Leviticus 26:22; Leviticus 26:31-34; Deuteronomy
29:22-25.) Its desolation is a most minute fulfillment of these Old Testament
prophecies. That Palestine was not always desolate, can be proved by infidel
writers. C. M. F. Volney, com­paring the present with the ancient condition of
the country, says:

"We are informed by the philosophical geographer, Strabo, that the territories
of Jamnia and Joppa in Pales­tine, alone were formerly so populous as to be able
to bring forty thousand armed mien into the field. At present they could
scarcely furnish three thousand. From the accounts we have of Judea in the time
of Titus, and which are to be esteemed tolerably accurate, that country must
have con­tained four millions of inhabitants; but at present there are not
perhaps above three thousand * * There is nothing in nature or experience to
contradict the great population of high antiquity; without appealing to the
positive testimony of history, there are innumerable mon­uments that depose in
favor of the fact." (Travels through Syria and Egypt.-1783-4-5, ch. 32.) The
same infidel writer also says:

"The plain country is rich and light, calculated for the greatest fertility."
(Travels, ch. 1, sec. 6.)

Because infidels do not want to admit the ful­fillment of Moses’ prophecies,
they assert that Pal­estine never flourished as the Bible says it did. But,
unfortunately for their cause, they are refuted by reliable historians, as well
as by their own writers. He who is familiar with history cannot fail to see in
this country as it stands today, conclusive proof of the inspiration of the Old
Testament writers.

Mr. Smith asks: "If the devil were to die, would God create another?" I think
not, there are enough atheists in hell to fully replace him. I real­ize there is
no sense in this answer; neither is there any in his question. I am forced to
the advice of Solomon: "Answer a fool according to his folly."

Thomas Jefferson is brought up again. Not only was Jefferson not an atheist; he
was not an infidel, in any sense that will help my opponent. In addition to the
quotations from Jefferson I gave you last night, I Want you to hear him again:

"To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed op­posed; but not to the genuine
precepts of Jesus himself." (Letter to Benjamin Rush, 1803, F. VIII, 223.)
Referring to his "Philosophy of Jesus," Jeffer­son says:

"It is a document in proof that I am a REAL CHRIS­TIAN, that is to say, a
disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call
ME infidel and THEMSELVES Christians and preachers of the Gospel, while they
draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw."
(Letter to Charles Thomp­son.) In a letter to his daughter, written In 1803, Mr.
Jefferson characterized the charge that be was ir­religious as "the libels
published against me." Do these statements sound like Jefferson be­longed in
the, camp occupied by Smith? The faith of Jefferson cannot possibly be reduced
to less than that of Unitarianism. The fact that he said, "I am a Materialist,"
proves nothing. There is now a religious sect known as Materialists. It depends
altogether on how you use the term.

Mr. Jefferson certainly did not agree with Mr. Smith on the morality of
Christianity. In a letter to Wm. Canby, 1813, he says:

"Of all the systems of morality, ancient and modern, which have come under my
observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus."

If I had time I could continue at length such quotations. Why did Mr. Smith
bring Jefferson into this controversy anyway?

We are told that the Golden Rule "expresses enlightened self-interest." Can Mr.
Smith give us a rule that will furnish better protection for the rights of
others? A certain amount of interest in self is commendable. In the Golden Rule,
and all other New Testament teachings, self-interest comes second to the
interests of others. Jesus said:

"Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant; even as the Son of
Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a
ransom for many." (Matthew 20:28.) Paul, in harmony with his Master’s teaching,
said:

"Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth." (1 Corinthians
10:24.) Can Mr. Smith see any unwholesome self-inter­est in this teaching? The
charge that the Bible teaches the subjec­tion of women comes with poor grace
from Mr. Smith, after his having argued that women are in­ferior in
intelligence. A sufficient answer is to remind him that it is in the countries
where the Christian religion is accepted that woman occupies the highest
position. Compare woman’s position in the United States with her position in
Japan. In the East Indies it was for a long time the custom to burn the widow
alive on the funeral pyre of her dead husband. What stopped this custom? The
introduction of Christian civilization by Great Bri­tain. Before the Bible was
introduced to the American Indians, their women were made to do all the hard
work, and then occupy the coldest place in the wigwam. The Bible lifts woman to
her rightful place by man’s side—his co-partner and helpmate.

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is
neither male nor female; for we are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28.)
Is the charge that the Bible sanctions intoler­ance of opinion, true? Jesus
forbids us to judge our fellow men. (Matthew 7:1.) Paul, in the four­teenth and
fifteenth chapters of Romans, advocates the most liberal attitude toward those
who differ from us in matters of opinion. I quote a few of his statements:

"One believeth that he may eat all things; another ­eateth herbs. Let not him
that eateth despise him that eat­eth not; and let not him which eateth not judge
him that eateth; for God hath received him." (14:2,3.)

"One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let
every man be fully per­suaded in his own mind." (14:5.)

"Let us not therefore judge one another any more; but judge this rather, that no
man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way." (14:13.)

"Let us therefore follow after the things which make for his neighbor, for his
good to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself." (15:2,3.)

Now to the arguments on eugenics: It is charged that Christians try to save
people who are physically weak. Thanks for the compliment. Christians do not
feel at liberty to take a man’s life just because he is not physically strong.
Chris­tianity is not a brute philosophy; it deals with in­tellect and spirit, as
well as flesh. Christianity does not place man on the level of a beast, and
judge his value on a purely physical basis.

We are not discussing the question of legal sterilization of the physically
unfit. Why avoid the main issue? Mr. Smith argued, in his tract, that for "the
best male in a community to be the father of its children" would be the finest
thing for the human race. I charged that this is im­moral, vulgar and brutish.
He does not deny the charge.

I do not know that Christianity opposes birth control, under certain conditions.
An unnatural, illegal, mechanical birth control is opposed. I am not contending
for the co-habitation of mental and physical defectives. In reality, the issue
is: shall we accept the atheistic "survival of the fittest," and kill all the
weak—or let them die, without attempting to save them? Or, shall we follow the
humanitarian pro­gram of Christianity, in helping the helpless? The doctrine of
"the survival of the fittest" is simply the old Iron Rule: "Might makes right."
If I am stronger than you, and can, therefore, crush you, it is right for me to
do so. Mr. Smith says the only standard of morals atheists have is based on
"happiness here and now." I again ask him if it would be wrong, according to
atheism, for me to knock a man unconscious and rob him. Judged by the atheist
standard, if it contributed to my happiness "here and now," it would be right.

You will remember that I asked my opponent to tell us why it would be wrong to
kill him. He offered no reason. He cannot offer a consistent reason. I suppose
it is up to me to defend his right to live. I’ll tell you why it would be wrong
to kill him; he has an immortal spirit, made in the image of God, and in spite
of the fact that he has degrad­ed and deformed the soul God gave him, it is
still wrong to take his life. Let Mr. Smith offer a rea­son why it would be
wrong! Listen to him care­fully, and see if he attempts it.

Denying the Biblical standard of manhood as he does, my friend cannot prove that
he is a man. He cannot prove that he is not a hog. In order to give him a chance
to refute it, I charge that he is a hog! Now deny it and offer your evidence,
Sir! In practice, if not in theory, the atheist recog­nizes a difference between
men and animals. When an animal kills another of his species we do not try him
in our courts. Why not? If a man, in a car, ran over Mr. Smith and injured him,
he would probably sue the driver. If a horse kicked him, would he sue the horse?
Even an atheist has more sense than that! What, then, is the difference?
According to the atheist’s theory, there is no differ­ence between a man and a
horse. In closing, I maintain that I have fully estab­lished my charge that
atheism is brutal, savage and immoral; that it offers nothing constructive, but
is devastating in its results. Let me repeat: What must a man believe to be an
atheist? Nothing. What must one do to be an atheist? Nothing. What must one be
to be an atheist? Nothing!


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: O-SD-3-UNINTELLIGENT EVOLUTION VS.GOD AND THE BIBLE
========================================================================

Unintelligent Evolution vs. God and the Bible (Friday evening, Aug. 16, 1929)

Proposition:

"All Things Exist as the Result of Evolution, Directed by No Intelli­gence."

Affirmative: Charles Smith.

Negative: W. L. Oliphant.

Chairman—F. L. Paisley.

Smith’s First Affirmative (Duration 50 minutes) Mr. Chairman, Ladies and
Gentlemen, Honored Opponent:

I wish my opponent were in the lead. Since he is not, I ask him to let us know
as soon as he has taken the floor, whether or not he is a
Funda­mentalist—whether or not he believed this earth and all that is in it, all
the planets and stars were made some six thousand years ago, or whether he, too,
has a little of that modernism that twists "days" to mean "periods." I ask also,
if he has any questions that I have not sufficiently replied to, that he restate
them; because I have only one more speech.

I am to present to you the case for Evolution, which, if established, proves
that the Bible is not true. But I shall show you by the Bible itself that you
cannot accept that book as the inspired word of God.

HISTORY OF EVOLUTION

I have not the time to give you the history of Evolution. It is sufficient to
say it is an old doc­trine. The Greeks knew of it when the Jews were ignorant
barbarians in Asia Minor. In 1859 Charles Darwin established the truth of
evolution by his "Origin of Species."

GEOLOGY The star witness among the sciences for evolu­tion is geology. Nature’s
museum, the earth’s sur­face, contains incontrovertible evidence of the truth of
evolution. In the stratified rocks one finds the remains of animals and plants
which lived in the period when these rocks were formed. In the lower layers,
there are no fossil remains. In the succes­sive higher layers appear, first, the
remains of the lower forms of life—early shell fish, snails, and coral, then
fish, and on, in graduation, up to and including primitive man. The close
relation be­tween the fossil remains of successive layers cannot be accounted
for except by direct descent. Will my opponent explain why the fossil re­mains
are found in that order? I give you Dr. Gladman’s explanation. He is a
Fundamentalist; and if the the Rev. Oliphant has a better theory, let him give
it to us.

"When God made Adam and Eve and the animals," says Dr. Gladman, "He made many
models before he got just what he wanted, and these rejected models or skeletons
were found lying around Eden. When the flood came they were scat­tered all over
the world and became mixed with the uni­versal mud, which hardened into rock,
with the bones en­closed."

Coal is the fossil remains of dense forests. Who denies it, when the impressions
of leaves and ferns are plainly visible? Who believes that coal veins a mile
underground have formed within six thousand years? A lump of coal contains
enough factual dynamite to blow the Bible to pieces. Chalk beds, some a mile
thick, are the skeletons of small forms of life laid down on the bottom of the
sea at the yearly rate of the thickness of a sheet of tis­sue paper, or one inch
in a thousand years. The Mississippi River has a delta where the mud has settled
hundreds of feet thick in places. A hundred centuries was required for the
forma­tion. The Mississippi River once emptied into the gulf where Cairo,
Illinois, now stands.

Niagara Falls has worn away twenty miles of rock. At the measured rate of three
feet a year, that action would require thirty thousand years, not six thousand,
as given in the word of God. The Grand Canyon, a mile deep, has been carved
through solid rock. Ages were required. Geology alone establishes evolution.

EMBRYOLOGY—DEVELOPMENT BEFORE BIRTH The second proof of evolution it
"Develop­ment Before Birth." In the course of development in the body of the
mother, the unborn child passes through the various stages through which its
ancestors evolved. At one stage it has the gill slits of the fish; at another, a
tail longer than its hind legs; and at six months a thick coat of hair covering
its body. In succession, the human em­bryo has the two-chambered heart of the
fish; the three- chambered heart of the reptile, and the four-chambered heart of
the mammal, which includes man.

I quote from Encyclopedia Britannica. Under the heading of Evolution, we read:

"The fact that a fowl or a man passes through a stage in which its organization
is essentially like that of a fish is meaningless, save on the assumption that
land verte­brates (animals with a backbone) evolved from fish-like aquatic
(water) ancestors." The unborn baby undergoes changes in form as revolutionary
as those of the frog, which, through cell and tadpole, reclimbs its line of
des­cent. I ask my opponent why he denies descent from tailed beings of millions
of years ago, when all persons, including my opponent, had a tail when in the
embryonic stage. Why do not the Funda­mentalists organize an Anti-Embryology
Society? They could secure followers, and could perhaps get a charter in
Arkansas or Mississippi.

VESTIGIAL (USELESS) ORGANS The third proof of Evolution is the existence of
useless organs within the human body. There are more than one hundred organs
used by lower animals that are useless in man; including the ap­pendix, the
tonsils, the muscles for moving the scalp and ears. Every one has these; and
some of you can use them—can move your ears and your scalp.

Every normal man has on his breast useless nipples. I ask my opponent to explain
their pres­ence, if they are not the remains of that which was once useful.

Every farm boy has seen the unused small toes of the hog, just back and above
its big used toes. They were once useful. Charles Darwin compared these useless
organs to the "b" in doubt, which is silent, but reveals something of the word’s
past, which at one time was sounded; just as the toe on the back of the hog’s
foot was once used.

SIMILARITY OF STRUCTURE The fourth proof of Evolution is "Similarity of
Structure." I quote Charles Darwin:

"How inexplicable is the similar pattern of the hand of man, the foot of a dog,
the wing of a bat, the flipper of the seal, on the doctrine of independent acts
of crea­tion! How simply explained on the principle of natural selection of
successive slight variations in the diverging descendants from a single
progenitor."

You will find the same general structure in man and the lower animals, which is
easily ex­plained on the principle of Evolution.

GEOGRAPHICAL GROUPING The fifth proof is "Geographical Grouping." The animals in
a region have the same general character; but when a barrier of an ocean or a
mountain is passed, new forms of life are found. This fact cannot be reconciled
with Special Crea­tion. It necessarily follows from evolution. Until recently,
Australia had none of the higher animals. Why? Because one hundred million
years, ago, when the kangaroo was the highest form of life, Australia became an
island. If my opponent be­lieves the story of the flood, I ask him whether the
kangaroo swam across the ocean to get to the ark.

MAN-MADE SPECIES The sixth proof of Evolution is "Man-made Species." Man has
created new species. The Bur­bank potato, grapefruit, and spineless cactus have
been developed by artificial selection. The same process has produced two
hundred breeds of tame pigeons. Ladies, I appeal to you especially, with this
obvious and undeniable proof of evolution: Cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, collards,
cauliflower and brussel sprouts have evolved from a common stock. You know the
difference in these vegetables. They have been developed by man. What man does
on a small scale, within a narrow range of time, Nature does on a large scale
during geological epochs. Man’s action is planned; Nature’s is blind.

GRADATION OF ORGANISMS The seventh proof of Evolution is "Grada­tion of
Organisms." The divisions, or classes, are artificial. Species fade into
species. Varieties are the beginning of new species. There is no definite line
between plants and animals. I quote Huxley:

"Certain questionable forms of sea life belong to a sort of biological no-man’s
land."

Two kinds of animals live today, the echidna and the duckbill, which lay eggs
and yet suckle their young. Flying fish can stay in the air for one hundred
yards. These are transitional forms.

Each organ of the body has an interesting history. Our arms and legs have
developed from the belly fins of the ancient fishes. The Eustachian tube,
connected with the ear, is the remnant of the gill-slits of the fish. The wrists
are modified ankles of the forelegs.

Snakes are lizards without legs. Birds are flying reptiles, their feathers being
modified scales. I appeal to you farm boys: Ask your Sunday School teacher and
your preacher to explain why hens’ legs are still covered with scales. These
scales came through the reptile from the fish. The earliest bird, the
Archeopteryx, of which a well preserved fossil has been found, had teeth in both
jaws and a long tail like a lizard and a wing with toes at the end. The wing is
an evolved front leg. The whale once had four legs and walked on land. It is a
mammal—not a fish. The history of the horse has been traced from a small
five-toed ancestor, about the size of a fox. He walks today on the nail of his
big middle toe.

Certain snakes have traces in their body of feet. Are these inherited from the
snake which deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden? If so, per­haps someday traces
of vocal organs will be found in the snake; for, according to the Scriptures,
that animal talked, as well as walked.

MAN’S APE ANCESTRY

Now I come to a rather delicate subject: "Man’s Ancestry." We atheists hold with
Charles Darwin that man descends from the monkey. I quote from Darwin’s "The
Descent of Man," chap­ter six, next to the last paragraph:

"The simiadae (ape family) then branched off into two great stems, the New World
and the Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the
wonder and glory of the universe, proceeded."

Timid scientists or modernist clergymen who say Darwin never taught that man
descends from the monkey, either are ignorant or they lie. That does not apply
to my opponent; because he will admit, I suppose, that Charles Darwin taught
monkey descent for man. If I had the time I would quote at length from the
leading scientists within the last fifty years statements to the effect that man
has evolved from the monkey. We issue a special leaflet on the subject, entitled
"The Ape Ancestry of Man."

I have time to quote only a few of the au­thorities.

Haeckel:

"From the half apes or lemurs, a direct line leads, through the baboons, to the
anthropoid apes, and through these on to man."

Sir Arthur Keith, who, as an authority, dwarfs Moses to nothing:

"Was Darwin right when he said that man, under the action of biological forces,
which can be observed and measured, has been raised from a place among the
an­thropoid apes to that which he now occupies? The answer is ’Yes’!"
Presidential Address, 1927.

Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 30, page 143, "Anthropology," by G. Elliott Smith:

"Comparative pathology, as well as the conclusive tests of blood relationship,
has definitely established the fact of man’s close kinship with the anthropoid
apes, and especially with the gorilla."

See also "Man, Evolution of," in the New Supplement. The Jewish-Christian Bible
is not to be compared with the Encyclopedia Britannica. Look up what the
Encyclopedia Britannica says on the "Bible" and "Genesis," as well as
"Evolution," "Anthropology," and Biology."

Ferris of Yale University:

"It is pretty well agreed that the anthropoid apes and man come from a common
ancestor, and he in turn from some primitive, broad-nosed ape."

Huxley:

"Whatever organ we take, the difference between man and the anthropoid apes is
less than the corresponding difference between the latter and the lower apes."
The difference are in degree only. There are similar differences between human
beings.

Lull of Yale University:

"The gorilla and the chimpanzee are our next of kin"

Whoever denies kinship with animals should visit the Hall of the Age of Man in
the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where, with his own eyes, he
may see, arranged in rising order, the physical proof of that kinship, which far
outweighs the stale hearsay of the Bible.

Why this violent dislike of ape ancestry? To have a criminal as a father is
embarrassing; but who bothers about the character of his fiftieth grandfather?

Man is not yet fully adjusted to walking on his hind-legs. The frequent breaking
down of the arches, the numerous cases of hernia and the diffi­culty with which
children learn to walk, show that the upright position is new to man. The
in-turned toes and the grasping and climbing ability of babies indicate monkey
kinship.

Harelips, cleft palates, and the tails in human beings are throwbacks to earlier
ancestral types. Cases are recorded of women with several pairs of breasts, with
the nipples arranged in two rows, as in many lower animals. THE BLOOD TEST The
strongest proof of man’s ape ancestry is the blood test. If the bloods of two
animals of the same family, such as the dog and fox, are mixed, no injury
follows; but if the blood of a dog is mixed with that of a rabbit, the two kinds
of blood cells fight for life. Human blood poisons and de­composes the blood of
the lower monkeys and other mammals, but flows peacefully with that of the
higher monkeys, or apes. The blood of man and the ape have the same chemical
reactions. In other words, the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla are not
only the same as we are in structure, but are our blood relatives. In order to
put this matter to a test, I challenge my opponent to have injected into his
veins the blood of one of the lower animals; and I will have the blood of an ape
injected into my veins. He will not accept, for he knows that I would live to
preach his funeral.

How many of you here believe that the China­man, the negro and white man are
descended from two Jews of six thousand years ago? Such differ­ences would
require one hundred thousand years to develop. Every normal person looks more
like an ape than the Russian greyhound looks like a poodle dog. If man is made
in the image of God, so is the monkey. If you doubt it, take a trip to the zoo.
Why don’t the Fundamentalists close up zoos? It should be against the law in
anti-evolution states to exhibit monkeys.

Darwin, closing words of "The Descent of Man":

"Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."
In the beginning was matter, which begat the ameba, which begat the worm, which
begat the fish, which begat the amphibian, which begat the reptile, which begat
the lower mammal, which begat the lemur, which begat the monkey, which begat
man, who imaged God. This is the genealogy of man. NO MISSING LINKS The gap
between man and ape has been bridged by fossils, of which the following, in the
order of their discovery, are the more important: Neanderthal Man, 1856; Java
Man, or Pithecan­thropus erectus, 1891; who was so near midway that scientists
debated whether he was a man or an ape; the Heidleberg Man, 1907; the Piltdown
Man, 1911; and the Taungs skull or Australopi­thecus Africanus, discovered some
fifty feet under­ground in South Africa, in 1924. There are no missing links.

Consider for a moment the alternative to the ape anceestry of man offered by the
Fundamental­ists. I wish I had the exhibits with me that I some­times use. In a
number of debates I have had a chimpanzee on the platform. If you don’t like the
ape as your ancestor; then, according to the Bible, you are descended from mud.
Of course, you ladies would not like that, so we will give you something
different. According to God’s Word, you are de­scended from the rib of a man.

NATURAL SELECTION

What is causing all this religious hullabaloo over evolution? Natural Selection,
the Great Theory of Descent. It is a mechanical process. It has five factors, as
follows:

Variation. No two plants or animals are exactly alike.

Overbreeding. More organisms are born than can survive. As Malthus pointed out,
animals multiply 2, 4, 8, 16; the food supply increases 2, 4, 6, 8.

Struggle for Existence. Obvious.

Survival of the Fittest. In the struggle for food and place, the weaker are
weeded out. Nature kills those unadapted to their environment; the adapted, or
fittest, survive.

5. Inheritance of Favorable Variation. If in­dividuals reach maturity because of
a favorable variation, those of their offspring which most in­herit that
variation will live to continue the race. In time this process of natural
selection produces such differences in structure and use that the re­sulting
forms must be regarded as new species, genera, and finally, higher groups.

Whatever causes variation, natural selection determines survival.

I don’t have time to give you in detail the working of selection. You can learn
how the gi­raffe came to get its long neck, and how the other animals acquired
various organs.

CONSEQUENCES OF EVOLUTION

What are the consequences of evolution? In the first place: Evolution bankrupts
the Bible. It discredits the Word of God. The Law Scheme and the Scheme of
Redemption do not go together. If descended from apes, we don’t need a Saviour.
The second consequence of Evolution is to ban­ish God from the universe. Prior
to Darwin the clergy denounced this theory as the godless Law Scheme. Evolution
is atheism; it substitutes natural law for supernatural intelligence. I quote
Gladstone, the great English statesman—or poli­tician, whichever you want to
call him:

"Upon the grounds of what is termed ’evolution,’ God is relieved from the labor
of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws, he is discharged from governing
the world."

I think if you are honest you will agree with Gladstone. If you accept
evolution, you must give up the Bible and God. I might say, in passing, that
most Catholics reject evolution. The Catholic Church is practically a
Fundamentalist organizat­ion, although it has few heretics. The Catholic Church
has gone on record as saying man has not evolved; but in some Catholic schools
evolution is taught as applied to the lower animals, though that’s as contrary
to the story of creation in Genesis, as is the evolution of man.

DISCREDITS DESIGN ARGUMENT The principal consequence of evolution is that it
discredits the only plausible argument the clergy ever had for the existence of
God. I refer to the famous design argument. The animals in the North have a
thicker fur than those of the South. Is it not more reasonable to hold with the
atheist and evolutionist that this difference in thickness of fur is the result
of the difference in climate than to imagine, with the clergy, that a heavenly
tailor regulates the wearing apparel of the various ani­mals? The old woman who
thanked God for mak­ing rivers to run by populous towns had a theol­ogical mind.
The clergy might as well praise their deity for making the bed of the river to
fit the river, or making their legs just long enough to each the ground. Of
course, there is fitness in nature. The continued existence of the unfit is
inconceivable. The unfit must perish. The priest or preacher reads his own
feelings into nature. A tape-worm inside a human body night as well glorify God
because his surroundings are so pleasant. A priestly worm would thank God for
making man.

Goethe ridiculed the design argument by praisi­ng God for foreordaining the cork
tree to furnish toppers for wine bottles.

If you believe in design, please observe how well God designed the diphtheria
germ for killing babies. They nearly always kill when not defeated by man, and
it is only in recent years that man can handle the situation.

I appeal to my opponent to tell us whether or not Caesarian operations discredit
the design argu­ment. It seems to me that a designer who would make a woman so
she could become with child and yet be unable to give birth to the child; so
that a doctor must cut the woman open to take the child out, is a poor designer.

Most organs in the body are imperfect. If God is a beginner, and this is his
first world, I hope He improves with His next. Who designed God?

DARWIN AN ATHEIST Darwin, in a letter to Dr. Asa Gray, said:

"I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun and kill it. I do this
designedly. An innocent and good man stands under a tree and is killed by a
flash of lightning. Do you believe (and I should really like to hear) that God
designedly killed that man? Many or most persons believe this: I can’t and
don’t. If you believe so, do you believe when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God
designed that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that
particular instant? I believe that the man and the gnat are in the same
predicament. If the death of neither man nor gnat is designed, I see no reason
to believe that their first birth of production should be necessarily
de­signed." That is sound atheism.

If the Rev. Oliphant should fall into the sea; I don’t hope he will do anything
like this—but if he should, and should discover a man-eating shark headed his
way, would he thank God for giving that shark so large a mouth? He probably
would, but I suspect that he would wait until he reached shore. You ask a
savage, "What makes a watch go?" and he will say, "A Spirit." You ask the
preacher what makes the world go and he says, "A Spirit." The idea of design
arose when man’s ignorance of nature permitted no other explanation. From
Charles Darwin:

"The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly
seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has
been discovered."

Charles Darwin was an atheist. He did not care for the term and did not use it.
He preferred the term "agnostic"; but he said to the great Ger­man Atheist,
Buchner:

"I am with you in thought, but prefer the word ag­nostic to atheist." The
agnostic is an atheist. See the definition of "Atheism," in the Encyclopedia
Britannica, or any unabridged dictionary. Darwin had no God; he was an atheist.

BIBLE EXAMINED So much for Evolution. I shall now take up the Bible. When you
begin to examine that Book with an open mind you run across some startling
facts. If you investigate, you will find that the Bible is one of twenty-seven
books for which divine origin is claimed. Christians deny the divinity of all
books except their own. We deny only one more than they. I would like to tell
you how the Bible originated, how in part it was copied from heathen myths; and
how the church fathers decided how many books should go into the Bible. They
voted on the matter. There were three Christian Bibles. The Catholic Bible has
more books than the Protes­tant. You have sixty-six in the one you use, and the
Catholics have seventy-two. The Greek Cath­olics have more than that.

Here is something that preachers don’t tell you. Martin Luther, who began the
Reformation, and is the founder of Protestantism, rejected six books in the
Bible. He rejected Esther, Jonah, He­brews, James, Jude, and Revelation.

I quote from Thomas Jefferson concerning the book of Revelation:

"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse (Revelation)
and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac—what has no meaning
admits of no explanation." The first five books of the Bible were not writ­ten
by Moses. Their language did not exist in his age, and they also record his
death and burial. Will Rev. Oliphant explain how a man can write up his own
funeral? A biography of George Washington, wherein Lincoln is named could not be
written by George Washington; and, by such proof, it is shown that the so-called
books of Moses were not written by that individual.

I have not time to tell about all the myths, such as the Tower of Babel and the
Creation—and where they came from. The Jews got them from the Egyptians and
Babylonians almost word for word. The Babylonian first man was named Adami.
After the book of Genesis, you find no reference to Adam and Eve. The Higher
Critics have won. Their victory makes the Fall of Man a fiction and the
Atonement an absurdity. The descendants of apes don’t need a saviour.

CONTRADICTIONS The Bible contains two thousand contradic­tions:

"Thou shalt not steal." Exodus 20:1-26; Exodus 15:1-27, "Ye shall spoil the
Egyptians." Exodus 3:22.

You know what the word "spoil" means. They spoiled them—stole their property.

"The wicked prosper." In another place that is denied.

Satan provokes David to number Israel. 1 Chronicles 21:1; and in another place
God moves him to number them. 2 Samuel 24:1. Both accounts can­not be true;
unless God and Satan are the same person. Whichever is true, God punishes
neither Satan or David, but slays seventy thousand Is­raelites for the crime of
being counted. (2 Samuel 24:17):

"Lo, I have sinned—but these sheep, what have they done?"

Here is another contradiction:

"There is no respect of persons with God." (Romans 2:11.) But in Deuteronomy
14:21, God authorizes the selling of diseased meat to strangers. If you have a
hog that dies of cholera you can sell its meat to the stranger within your
gates. Is not that "respect of persons"?

DOCTORED PASSAGES

There are quite a number of doctored passages in the Bible. It begins with a
forgery. "In the beginning God," should read, "In the beginning the gods." In
Hebrew it is "elohim," and those who have been through the primary grades know
"im" is the plural ending in Hebrew. Cherubim is the plural of "cherub."

I could give you a number of mistranslated passages. Matthew 3:2 is translated
by Protestants: "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The Catholics
render it:

"Do penance." The controverted word occurs fifty times in the New Testament.
Which is right? How are you going to know?

ABSURDITIES

I want to give you an absurdity taken from the Word of God. The sun obligingly
backs ten degrees to guarantee a fig poultice for Hezekiah. (2 Kings 20:7-11.)
In the Bible you will find that the "Sons of God" cohabit with the "Daughters of
Men," produc­ing giants. (Genesis 6:4.) Who believes it? Hill­billies and
uneducated persons. In the new Testament you find another absurd­ity. Mark
11:12-22, records that Jesus cursed a fig tree for not bearing figs when it was
not the season for figs. What would you think of a man who, in the early Spring,
came to your orchard and finding there a barren fruit tree, should beat it down
and curse it because it had no fruit on it? That is what your God did. Let the
Rev. Oliphant explain the passage.

There are quite a number of impossibilities in the Bible. The Jews in Palestine
were divided into small tribes. There were not many people. Yet, according to
the Bible (2 Chronicles 13:17), five hun­dred thousand men, to say nothing of
the women and children, were killed in one day, on one side. You know that could
not have happened. At the great battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War, the dead
numbered five thousand. That the Jews lost five hundred thousand men in one
battle is pre­posterous.

BIBLE SCIENCE

Now, for the science of the Bible. Heaven is a solid roof supporting reservoirs
of water. (Genesis 1:8.) The earth has foundations (Psalms 104:5), pil­lars (1
Samuel 2:8), and four corners (Revelation 7:1). The rainbow is given as a pledge
that the world would not be drowned again (Genesis 9:13). If you know anything
about the nature of a rainbow, you know that it is as old as rain and sunshine.
The Bible writer was ignorant of the nature of the rainbow.

Joshua stopped the sun and moon. I quote from Martin Luther:

"The fool (Copernicus) wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But
sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not
the earth."

FULFILLED PROPHECY

You hear much about fulfilled prophecy. Jesus predicted his return within the
lifetime of some of His hearers. (Matthew 16:28.) He is nineteen hun­dred years
late. I ask my opponent when he thinks Jesus will return. Most of the true
prophecies were written after the event. The Bible ends with an unfulfilled
prophecy.

There are two stories of the creation in Gene­sis. They contradict each other.
In the first story, trees are created before man; in the second, after man. I
could give you other discrepancies, but have not the time.

There are two flood stories. In one, the ani­mals went into the ark by twos; and
in the other, by sevens. I ask the Rev. Oliphant which is true. May­be two and
seven are the same; three and one are the same in the New Testament, and perhaps
in the Old Testament two and seven are the same.

CHARACTER OF BIBLE GOD In the remaining few minutes let us consider the
character of the Bible God. As Fundamental­ists, you do not believe in a God who
works through evolution. He is an impossibility. A god who would operate through
countless centuries to produce a world such as ours shows a lamentable lack of
intelligence. But can we accept the God of the Bible? If you will turn to Exodus
12:29-30, you will find that Jehovah (the Bible God) assassinates at midnight
the first born of every Egyptian family. In 2 Samuel 12:1-31; 2 Samuel 14:1-33,
you read that He kills a baby to punish its father for murder. David kills Uriah
and God punishes David by killing a baby.

I read from 1 Samuel 2:3, Jehovah speaking:

"Now go and smite the Amalekites, and utterly destroy all that they have, and
spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling."

Why this cruelty? Because the Amalekites had wronged the Israelites four hundred
years before. In the fifth chapter of Numbers you will find God authorizes trial
by ordeal. When a man suspects his wife of being unfaithful to him, he shall
take her before the priest, who will give her bitter water to drink and if her
belly swells and her thigh rots; she is guilty. That is the divine method of
determining whether or not a woman is virtuous.

Oliphant’s First Reply Mr. Chairman, Mr. Smith, Ladies and Gentle­men:

I am really pleased with the way my opponent starts off on this proposition.
This is the first time, in my opinion, that he has presented a series of
arguments really worth considering. I shall show my appreciation by refuting his
arguments, one by one.

I shall notice first a few things said by Mr. Smith in former speeches, which I
have overlooked. I want to answer now, because this is the last speech to which
he will have a reply.

SINS OF BIBLE CHARACTERS

Reference has been made to sins committed by Abraham, David, and other Bible
characters. In­stead of these things proving the Bible to be an uninspired book,
they are points on my side of the question. Books of fiction do not attribute
crimes to their heroes. Even historians "color" their nar­ratives according to
their likes or dislikes. An un­inspired historian does not tell the bad filings
about his hero. A biography written by a friend of the subject tells the good
things; one written by an enemy stresses the weak points.

It is said that Hannibal, the powerful Cart­haginian general who lived about 200
B. C., lost an eye in one of his perilous campaigns. Later, two artists were
engaged to paint his portrait. They were anxious to please the general, and
thought to do so they should hide his physical defect. One of them painted him
full-faced, but gave him two good eyes; the other produced a profile view,
carefully selecting the side which had the good eye. Their intentions were kind,
but the result was in both cases a deception.

How different are the pictures given in the Bible! God does not shield even
"faithful Abra­ham." The biographies of the Bible are true; if men committed
sins, their sins are recorded. The fact that a book tells the truth should not
be used as an argument against it. The Bible nowhere con­dones sin; where wrong
is found in a life, God con­demns it, regardless of who is the guilty party.

HOPE AND LOVE, ABSTRACTIONS

Mr. Smith criticizes my reference to hope and love being accepted by faith. I
understand that these are abstract principles; but they exist, never­theless.
Why cannot faith exist, on the same basis? I also showed that we accept
historical characters by faith. I again ask my opponent if he accepts the facts
of history? If so, he exercises faith.

SIN AND DISEASE

Mr. Smith quotes me as saying that God sends disease as a punishment for sin. He
misquotes me. God did not send disease into the world. Disease is one of the
results of violation of law. Fire is a blessing to man, but it can also cause
suffering. Some medicines are beneficial, if taken in proper quantities, but
will produce death if too much is taken. The germ theory (with reference to
certain diseases) is now generally accepted by the medical fraternity. However,
it is only a theory. We can­not afford to disregard facts, simply because they
seem to conflict with theories—however general may be the acceptance of the
theories. Physicians tell us that while they do not now know of any beneficial
service done by certain bacteria; still, they are not willing to affirm that
these germs, however parasitical they appear to be, have no beneficial purpose.

INNOCENT SUFFERS FOR GUILTY

We may not be able to understand exactly why the innocent must sometimes suffer
for the guilty. Nature is such an intricate, complicated affair—every part so
closely interwoven with every other part; that when "one member suffers," others
must also suffer. The bearing of one another’s burden sometimes requires the
suffering of the innocent; and what a world this would be if none were wil­ling
to bear the burdens of others! The atonement embraces this principle. Jesus did
not have his life taken from Him; He voluntar­ily laid down, in the interest of
humanity. (See John 10:18). The majesty of Divine Law must be maintained; and,
at the same time, man needs mercy. As the loving parent willingly suffers for
his child; so, the Christ voluntarily gave his life for mankind.

EVIL SPIRITS

Mr. Smith has much to say about the existence of witches, evil spirits, etc.
That there were in Bible times, such things as evil spirits, no Bible be­liever
can deny. I am of the opinion that they still exist. The Old Testament condemns
witches. Wheth­er these characters actually had the power to com­municate with
departed spirits, I do not know. It is possible that they only claimed such
power. In either case, such persons stood in open rebellion to the law of God;
and were to be punished for this wrong.

Modern Spiritualists make the same claim that was made by "witches" of Old
Testament times, if any of them are able to do the things they pretend to do,
such phenomena cannot be accounted for ex­cept as the work of evil spirits. We
are not now living under the law of Moses, which prescribed the death penalty
for witchcraft. Christianity is in no way to blame for the fanatical
witch-burners of the Dark Ages.

FUNDAMENTALIST OR MODERNIST?

Mr. Smith asks whether I am a Fundamental­ist or a Modernist. I answer, I am
neither; I am a Christian, only. I am not obligated to defend Fun­damentalism,
Modernism, or any other "ism." As a "Christian only," I am at liberty to accept
truth and reject error, wherever they are found. If Mr. Smith means to ask
whether I believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, I gladly answer,
that I do.

He asks whether I believe the earth was cre­ated six thousand years ago. Where
does the Bible say the earth is only six thousand years old? We are told that
"in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." So far as I know, the
Bible does not tell us just how long ago the "be­ginning" was. Scientists do not
know the age of the earth; it is certain that they do not know that it was
created before "the beginning!"

DR. GLADMAN AND NEGRO REVIVAL

Mr. Smith seems to find it easier to constantly refer to his atheist-made Dr.
Gladman than to deal in sensible arguments. For the same reason, he prefers to
argue against the silly practices of a negro sectarian revival, instead of
considering the intelligent worship of God, according to the New Testament. This
is just an evasion of the issue.

He asks me to restate my questions and argu­ments, to which he has not replied.
I could not pos­sibly do that in the time I have; there are too many of them. I
must now deal with his arguments for evolution.

EMBRYOLOGY—DEVELOPMENT BEFORE BIRTH The recapitulation theory (that the embryos
of higher animals pass through the various steps of development from lower
animals) is a deduction from the theory of evolution, rather than a proof of the
theory. Adam Sedgwick, Professor of Zo­ology, Imperial College of Science and
Technology, London, says that it is even less than a mere "de­duction." Hear
him:

"Thus the explanation ordinarily given to the em­bryonic structures referred to
is purely a deduction from the evolution theory. Indeed, it is less than this,
for all that can be said is something of this kind; if the evolution theory is
true, then it is conceivable that the reason why the embryo of a bird passes
through a stage in which its pharnyx presents some resemblance to that of a fish
is that a remote ancestor of the bird possessed a pharnyx with lateral apertures
such as are at present found in fishes...’ (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed.,
Vol.. 10, pg. 322.) The argument runs in a circle. It can be ac­cepted only on
the basis that evolution is true. Re­capitulation is used to prove evolution,
and then evolution is used to prove recapitulation! It re­minds me of a
conversation I once heard. One man said: "It will not rain until the weather
gets cooler." Another said: "The weather will not get cooler until it rains."

Suppose we assume the theory that man evolved from the ape, how are we to
explain, the fact that the shape of the embryonic ape’s skull is more like that
of a man’s skull, than is the skull of the grown ape? If this proves anything,
it is not that man evolved from the ape, but the con­verse; that the ape
descended from man. Why are there no teeth in the embryo of the bird, since it
is supposed to have evolved from animals which had teeth? There is no reason for
calling the pharyn­geal arches in the human embryo gill arches; they never
develop into gills, such as the fish has.

While there are points of similarity between the embryos of various animals,
these embryos are clearly distinguishable from each other at any period in their
development. Furthermore, the em­bryo of each species always produces "after its
kind." However similar they may appear, the em­bryo of the monkey develops into
a monkey; and the human embryo into the human species.

There are certain organs in embryos that are distinctively embryonic and could
never have func­tioned in adult forms. Prof. T. H. Morgan says:

"It was recognized that many embryonic stages could not possibly represent
ancestral animals. A young fish with a huge yolk sac attached could scarcely
ever have led a happy, free life as an adult individual." (Critique of the
Theory of Evolution, pg. 16.) The recapitulation theory is rapidly falling into
disrepute among scientists. The writer just quoted (an eminent evolutionist)
says the idea that the embryo climbs its ancestral tree "is in principle false."
(Evolution and Adaptation, pg. 83.)

Dr. W. B. Scott, of Princeton, in his "Readings in Evolution," pg. 173, speaking
of this so-called "fundamental biogenetic law," says:

"Nowadays, that ’fundamental law’ is very seriously questioned and by some high
authorities is altogether denied." No less an authority than Professor A. Weber,
of the University of Geneva, speaks of the "almost unanimous abandonment" of the
theory. (Scien­tific American Monthly, February, 1921.) Karl Vogt, Geneva
atheist, says:

"This law, which I long held as well founded, is absolutely and radically false.
Attentive study of embry­ology shows us, in fact, that embryos have their own
conditions suitable to themselves, and very different from those of adults."
(Quoted by G. B. O’Toole, Ph. D., S. T. D., in "The Case Against Evolution,"
page 276.)

Haeckel was perhaps the strongest advocate of the recapitulation theory. I
showed you last night how he used fraud in his effort to prove the theory. Du
Bois-Reymond made this caustic comment:

"Man’s pedigree, as drawn up by Haeckel, is worth about as much as is that of
Homer’s heroes, for critical historians." (Revue Scientifique, vol. 1, pg.
1101.)

It is manifest that embryos of the different species are not the same. Granting
that they have points of resemblance; does this prove that one animal evolved
from another? Is it not more reas­onable to account for these similarities by
suppos­ing the Creator’s work to be harmonious?

USELESS ORGANS

Mr. Smith contends that there are useless organs in man’s body, and that these
organs are holdovers from his animal ancestry. Before this argument is of any
value, he must prove two things: First, he must prove that some of the organs in
man’s body are useless; and, Second, that the ex­istence of such organs cannot
be explained on any other hypothesis. He makes no effort to prove either of
these propositions. This argument has no foundation except in man’s ignorance.
The fact that the use of an organ is not known does not prove that it is
useless. Sir Arthur Keith, one of England’s foremost scien­tists, and an
evolutionist, says that "our list of ’useless’ structures decreases as our stock
of knowl­edge increases." ("Nature." December 12, 1925.) Huxley said, regarding
these supposedly vestigial organs:

"A cautious reasoner will probably rather explain such cases deductively from
the doctrine of evolution than endeavor to support the doctrine of evolution by
them. For it is almost impossible to prove that any, structure, however
rudimentary, if it is in the slightest degree use­ful, there is no reason why,
on the hypothesis of direct creation, it should not have been created."
(Encyclopedia Britannica.)

Pineal Gland The pineal gland is a little organ located in the roof of the third
ventricle of the brain. Evolution­ists have contended that it is the rudiment of
a third eye, such as is found in certain lizards. However, it is now known that
this organ is not useless. Arthur Keith, in his address as president of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science, said:

"We have hitherto regarded the pineal gland, little bigger than a grain of wheat
and buried deeply in the brain, as a mere useless vestige of a medium or
parietal eye, derived from some distant human ancestor in whom that eye was
functional, but on the clinical and experi­mental evidence now rapidly
accumulating we must as­sign to it a place in the machinery which controls the
growth of the body." (Smithsonian Report, 1919, pg. 448.)

Dr. Swale Vincent, professor of Physiology, University of London, in his book,
"Internal Secre­tion of the Ductless Glands" (1922), shows that the pineal gland
has a very important function. He says that it seems to control the inflow and
outflow of the cerebrospinal fluid of the third ventricle. (pages 385-393.)

Pituitary Body Of this so-called useless organ, Dr. Vincent says:

"For a long time the pituitary body was looked upon as a ’vestigial relic’ and
of no importance in the animal economy." The writer then shows that it was
discovered in 1906, that "the organ is essential for life." If it does not
properly function it may cause what is known as "giantism" or overgrowth, or it
may cause "infantilism" or small and defective growth. (Internal Secretion and
the Ductless Glands, pgs. 264, 265.)

Thyroid Glands The thyroid glands, located on either side of the windpipe just
below the larynx, have been presented by evolutionists, as vestigal organs.

Dr. G. H. Parker, Zoologist of Harvard, says:

"These have often been passed over as unimportant functionless organs whose
presence was to be explained as an inheritance from some remote ancestor. But
such a conception is far from correct." (Biology and Social Problems, 1914, pg.
43.)

It is now known that they perform an essential work in the body. In the dog and
cat, their com­plete removal causes death. Dr. C. W. Salesby shows that the
thyroid "creates a unique substance, mostly consisting of iodine," and that
"without it, none can live." Without enough of this substance in the blood of an
expectant mother, her life is imperiled, and her baby cannot be born normal. Dr.
Salesby contends that if we will restore the missing iodine to our food, so that
the thyroids "can live and work for us as they should," we will thereby "save a
vast amount of ugliness, idiocy, deaf mutism, and possibly, cancer." (Quoted by
F. E. Allen, in "Evolution in the Balances," pgs. 82, 83.) Dr. Vincent says:

"Defective thyroid function in the mother is the essential factor in the
production of cretinism." (Glands, pg. 284.)

Dr. O’Toole says that these glands generate a hormone known as "thyroxin," which
regulates the body temperature, growth of the body, etc. He also says:

"Without a sufficient supply of this hormone„ the normal exercise of mental
powers in human beings is im­possible." (Case Against Evolution, pg. 294.)

Why doesn’t Mr. Smith have some evolution­ist doctor remove his thyroids? Or,
has he already had them removed?

Mr. Smith likes to quote Thomas Huxley. It would do him good to heed Huxley’s
advice:

"The recent discovery of the important part played by the thyroid gland should
be a warning to all pecu­lators about useless organs." (Quoted by F. E. Allen,
in "Evolution in the Balances," pg. 86.) The Thymus The thymus, which is located
in front of the heart and behind the breastbone, in the region be­tween the two
lungs, is a transitory organ. It is well developed at birth, but degenerates
with the growth of the body. This has been considered a useless organ, but is
now understood to have an influence on the growth of the bones. Ernest H.

Starling, Professor of Physiology, University Col­lege, London, says:

"In certain cases of arrested development or of gen­eral weakness in young
people, the thymus has been found persistent." (Physiology, Third Edition, 1920,
pg. 1245.) Dr. Albert Mathews says:

"That they have an important function in the young animal, can hardly be
doubted." (Physiological Chemistry, 1916, pg. 675.) Islands of Langerhands

Until a few years ago it was thought by some that a part of the tissue in the
pancreas composed of little projections about the size of a pin-head, and known
as the Islands of Langerhands, was useless tissue. It was argued that this was
vestigial structure left over from the lower animals. The work of Banting and
MacLeod, of Toronto, proved that this tissue plays an important part in the
regulation of sugar in the blood, and thus in the prevention of diabetes. This
discovery has led to the preparation of an insulin from the pancreas of animals,
which is used in the treatment of diabetes. The conclusions of Banting and
MacLeod were verified in 1925 by the investigations of Drs. E. C. Dodds, F.
Dickens and Swale Vincent. They say:

"The result of this investigation was to provide further evidence that, as
MacLeod states, the source of insulin is, in fact, the islet tissue." (Chemical
and Physiological Properties of the Internal Secretions, pg. 53.) The Appendix

Mr. Smith says the appendix is a useless organ. However, he is not an authority
on this question. We shall hear Howard A. Kelly, M. D., LL. D., John Hopkins
University; than whom there is no greater authority on surgery in America today.
Dr. Kelly shows that the appendix is a valuable organ; that its secretion helps
to lubricate the intestines. He says:

"It increases the extent of the intestinal mucuous surface for secretion and
absorption." (Vermiform Ap­pendix, pg. 78.) The Coccyx My opponent contends that
the coccyx in man is a remnant of a tail, and is, therefore, evidence of man’s
development from tailed beings. W. W. Keen reasoned this way in his book, "I
Believe in God and in Evolution." In this book, he printed a picture of a "Head
Hunter" of the Philippines, with a tail. He later learned and stated that the
picture was a fake, "the tail having been added to the original by a
photographer, I suppose as a joke." (Science, April 2, 1926, pg. 360.) It is to
the credit of Mr. Keen that he was honest enough to correct the mistake.
However, this honesty cannot be credited to atheism; Mr. Keen believes in God.
The coccyx serves for the attachment of several small muscles, which could not
possibly function without it. Even Darwin admitted this. He con­fesses that the
four vertebrae of the coccyx "are furnished with some small muscles." (Descent
of Man.) Professor A. Wilford Hall offers this testi­mony:

"Now, as regards the ’little tail of man,’ about which Prof. Haeckel and Mr.
Darwin have so much to say, and which is regarded by all evolutionists as such a
powerful proof of man’s descent from tailed ancestors, I wish to remark that a
more manifest and inexcusable mis­conception was never harbored by men." (The
Problem of Human Life, pg. 134.) This author then explains that the spine of all
vertebrates develops first, and the end protrudes until the fleshy portion
develops to cover it. This explains the fact that this so-called tail is
manifest in the embryo, and gradually disappears as the flesh grows over it.

I ask Mr. Smith how he accounts for the fact that the fish, which is not
supposed to have de­veloped from a tailed ancestor, also has this em­bryonic
tail.

Extra Mammary Glands

It is cited that there are known cases of women having extra mammary glands,
similar to lower animals. Professor D. Carazzi, in his Address of Inauguration
in the Chair of Zoology and Compara­tive Anatomy at the University of Padua,
says that these "supernumerary mammary glands are not a reversion to type." He
says they have been known to develop "upon the median line, upon the deltoid,
and even upon the knee, regions far-distant from the `milk-line’." (Quoted by G.
B. O’Toole, "The Case Against Evolution," pgs. 304, 305.)

Some of the evolutionist’s "vestigial organs" are simply abnormalities. I once
knew a boy who had an extra finger on one hand. Of what organ of the beast is
this a relic?

MAN RIGHT-HANDED As far back as we know anything about man, the right hand has,
in general, been used in pref­erence to the left. G. Elliot Smith says:

"The superiority of one hand is as old as mankind." (Smithsonian Report, 1912,
pg. 570.) On his theory that organs deteriorate with dis­use, until, in course
of time, they become mere remnants; how does Mr. Smith explain the fact that
man’s arms are equally developed? Bones, muscles, nerves, ligaments, tendons,
blood vessels, and all parts are of equal size in both arms and both hands. The
fact is that excessive exercise of a certain part of the body may overdevelop
it, but this is an ac­quired characteristic; and is never transmitted to the
offspring. The strength of the blacksmith’s arm is not passed on to his
children.

SIMILARITY OF STRUCTURE

Mr. Smith’s next argument for evolution is on the similarity of structure
between certain animals and man. We freely admit that there are many points of
resemblance; but we insist that there are more differences between any species
of animal and man than there are similarities. Dr. O’Toole quotes from Ranke, a
long list of outstanding dif­ferences between the body of an ape and the body of
a man. ("Case Against Evolution," pgs. 271- 273.) What do these radical
differences prove? Does the similarity of structure between the ape and man
prove that man developed from the ape? When Mr. Smith sees a Ford and a
Cadillac, does he think one developed from the other? There are many points of
resemblance.

Frequently I read a book which reminds me of other books I have read. Do I
conclude that this book must have evolved from the others? No; I decide that
perhaps they were written by the same author. When I see that men and animals
are made on more or less the same plan, I am reminded that they were all created
by the same God. Is it not reasonable to suppose that, knowing animals and man
were to breathe the same air, eat largely the same food and live under pretty
much the same environment, a wise Creator would have made them somewhat alike in
physical structure?

DIFFERENCE IN MENTAL CAPACITY

Man’s superiority over the animal is very marked when we consider the difference
in their capacity for mental development. For this reason man has been able to
"subdue" the animal kingdom, as God commanded (Genesis 1:28). Animals do not
make progress; the monkey has lived the same "monkey life" since the beginning
of his existence. Man dwells alone in the field of advancement.

Speaking of the difference in man’s brain and that of an ape, Dr. O’Toole says:

"In the ape the brain weighs only 100th part of the weight of its body, whereas
in man the brain has a weight equivalent to the 37th part of the weight of the
human body. The cranial capacity of the largest apes ranges from 500 to 600 c.
cm., while the average cranial capacity in man is 1500 c. cm. Moreover, the
human brain is far more extensively convoluted within the brain-case than that
of an ape, so much so that the surface or cortical area of the human brain is
four times as great as that of the ape’s brain." (Case Against Evolution, pg.
274) NO MAN-MADE SPECIES

Mr. Smith says: "Man has created new species," and then offers the Burbank
potato, grape­fruit, spineless cactus, cabbage, collards, two hun­dred breeds of
pigeons, etc., as examples. These are not new species; the Burbank potato is
still a potato, the spineless cactus is still a cactus and the two hundred
breeds of pigeons are all pigeons. None of these things have evolved out of
their original species. Furthermore, these developments within species have been
accomplished by intelligence. Does he think the accomplishments of Mr. Burbank
were without intelligence? Sir, you should remember that you are affirming that
evolu­tion, "directed by no intelligence," is the creator. If the intelligence
of man is necessary for develop­ment of plants and animals, even within their
spe­cies; why do you contend that man developed from the lowest form of life
without the direction of mind? He says that man’s action is planned; while
nature’s is blind. Is it not strange that Nature has been able to accomplish so
much more with her blind action, than man with his intelli­gent planning? We are
told that there is "fitness in nature." Can there be fitness without
intelli­gence?

If Mr. Smith’s so-called man-made species are left without the care of man they
degenerate—re­vert to original type. By selective breeding the small pony may be
developed into the large Per­cheron horse; but when man ceases to guide the
de­velopment, he reverts back to the common stock. We see that even development
within species must be directed by intelligence.

Man’s effort to cross different species has not resulted in the formation of new
species, capable of reproducing themselves, and developing into still other
species. The mule stands squarely across the path of the evolutionist at this
point. Anah, grand­son of the Horite Seer, reported the finding of mules in the
wilderness of Horeb before the time of Moses. Thus, we see that the mule is not
something "new under the sun." Why has not the mule con­tinued in the process of
species development? When species are crossed by man’s work the hy­brid, such as
the mule, which cannot reproduce himself, is the result.

GRADATION OF ORGANISMS My opponent’s assertion that certain animals of the
present time are transitional forms—connect­ing links between species, has no
foundation in fact. Leading evolutionists admit that they know of no
transitional forms. Professor Lull, in speaking of the evolution of mammals,
says:

"The record of the actual transition is as yet unre­vealed." In speaking of the
evolution of birds, the same author says:

"There is again no fossil record of transitional forms." (Evolution of the
Earth, pages 128, 129.) Even Darwin admitted,

"There are two or three millions of species on the earth.... but it must be said
today that in spite of all the efforts of trained observers, not one change of
one species into another is on record." (Life and letters, vol. 3, pg. 25.)

If Mr. Smith has discovered connecting links between species, he has
accomplished a feat at which evolutionist scientists, from Darwin to the present
time, have balked.

I answered most of Mr. Smith’s assertions along this line while discussing
so-called vestigial remains, man-made species, etc. His gradations are purely
fanciful. Take one of the examples he gives—the horse. He tells us that the
horse has been traced from a small five-toed animal about the size of a fox.
Even if this be true, it cannot be shown that the small animal, from which our
pres­ent type of horse developed, was not a horse. How­ever, the "tracing" to
which he refers has been done very largely in the field of man’s imagination.

James D. Dana, renowned geologist, in naming some of the animals found in what
he terms the Cham­plain geological period, says that "the modern spe­cies of the
horse was among them." He refers to them as "horses of large size." (The
Geological Story, pgs. 267, 269.) Why has not the horse de­veloped any since
that time? Where is the proof that the horse was ever anything but a horse?

APE ANCESTRY

Evolutionists are not at all agreed as to just what animal is man’s nearest
relative. Darwin assigned to man and the ape a common ancestor, "the early
progenitor of the whole simian stock, in­cluding man." (Descent of Man, pgs.
239, 240.) He said we might "imagine three lines of descent proceeding from a
common stock."

I could quote from a number of evolutionists who do not think the ape is man’s
ancestor, but do not consider it worthwhile. One line of animal ancestry is as
acceptable as another; the first step in tracing any of them is to (with Darwin)
"imag­ine." There is absolutely no reliable proof of a bestial ancestry for
humanity.

Mr. Smith says that if we do not accept the ape as an ancestor, we are descended
from mud. Well, it might be interesting for him to learn that science has
discovered almost every element of man’s body in the earth. Oxygen, hydrogen,
mag­nesium, sodium, phosphorus, silicon, carbon, etc—elements of the "dust," are
also parts of man’s body. Is this not evidence of the fact that "the Lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground?" (Genesis 2:7.) God said to man:

"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Genesis 3:19.)

We constantly see this truth demonstrated. We know that the body, after death,
"returns to the dust." Can Mr. Smith give us such clear proof of man’s having
come from the ape?

Man is more than a material body. While his body is made of the dust, and
returns to the dust, his spirit (that which God "breathed into him") returns to
"God who gave it." (Ecclesiastes 12:7.) SIMILARITY OF BLOOD

Mr. Smith says the strongest proof of man’s ape ancestry is the blood test.
Suppose we examine this "strongest proof." In the first place—as Dr. Arthur I.
Brown, surgeon, shows in his book, "Evo­lution and the Blood-Precipitation
Test"—the so-called "blood tests" are not really tests of blood. He says:

"It is necessary constantly to remember that what scientists are using in their
so-called blood tests is nothing but serum—a small part of blood. If the blood
cells are taken out of the blood, we have withdrawn a most im­portant group of
chemicals, in the absence of which, we are not testing blood at all."

According to the reports of evolutionists, the qualitative tests and the
quantitative tests do not agree. The qualitative tests reported by Prof.
Nuttall, Lecturer in Bacteriology and Preventive Medicine at Cambridge, showed
no difference between the blood of the crab and the lemur. Are we to con­clude
that the lemur (related to the ape tribe) is a close relative of the crab? The
quantitative tests also showed some very peculiar results. For instance, if
these tests show relationship; the otter, jackal, sheep, ox, etc., bear
considerable relationship to man. The ox, sheep and baboon produced the same
results; while the whalebone whale, one species of baboon, the tiger, the
African antelope and man all showed the same relationship. Does not this reduce
the whole theory to an absurdity? Even Prof. W. B. Scott admits:

"It could hardly be maintained that an ostrich and a parrot are more nearly
allied than a wolf and a hyena, and yet that would be the inference from the
blood tests." (Theory of Evolution, page 79.)

Dr. Erich Wassman, an authority on the blood, tells us that the
blood-relationship between man and chimpanzee cannot be proved by similarity of
blood until it has been shown that similarity of blood depends solely upon
direct blood-relation between two animals possessing this blood. He then adds,
"And no one can maintain this to have been estab­lished."

Dr. Wassman points to the fact that, according to Friedenthal’s experiments, the
blood of the com­mon crab, or that of a lug-worm, did not destroy the red
blood-corpuscles of a sea-mew or a rat. He then concludes:

"But surely no one would infer that for this reason rats must be descended from
lug-worms, or sea-mews from crabs." (Modern Biology, pg. 458.)

Dr. Brown says the serum of the horse can be used with safety on a human being,
but that this does not prove relationship between the horse and man; nor on the
other hand, would incompatibility disprove it. He shows that there are no two
men whose blood is of the same chemical composition.

Prof. H. Newman, who testified in favor of evolution at the Scopes trial, gives
considerable time to the blood similarity argument; but admits that "there is no
exactness about this parallel."

Dr. Brown also calls attention to the fact that asses’ milk is more like human
milk than is that of any other mammal. What does Mr. Smith think this similarity
proves? The truth of the matter is, that similarity of blood (or milk) proves
nothing for my friend’s position. Dr. H. C. Morton, well says

"Ultra-microscopical examination of human and all animal blood has revealed
difference of structure in the red blood corpuscles. No doubt this matter will
be pursued; and meantime all that these blood—reaction tests prove (if indeed
they prove anything) is blood similarity: and similarity does not involve
relationship. It amounts to just this: That the blood of certain Primates and
other mammals, share certain chemico-physiological properties. But chem­ical
resemblance and identity of origin are quite distinct." (The Bankruptcy of
Evolution, pg. 191.)

GEOLOGY

We come now to Mr. Smith’s "Star Witness." What has geology to say for
evolution? Nothing. Prof. George McCready Price, in his textbook, "The New
Geology," shows that the arrangements of different kinds of rocks by older
geologists was purely artificial and arbitrary. Facts that have since been
emphasized, completely overthrow these artificial arrangements.

Some of the supposedly oldest strata of rocks are sometimes found above some of
the youngest strata. Dr. Price gives numbers of instances of this reverse order,
both in Europe and America. This reversal of order is found over areas
contain­ing as much as 20,000 square miles of territory. One of these areas
begins in-New York State, and stretches up into Canada. From these facts, Dr.
Price has formulated what he calls, "the great law of conformable stratigraphic
sequence," which he says may be stated as follows:

"Any kind of fossiliferous bed whatever, ’young’ or `old’ may be found occurring
conformably on any other fossiliferous beds, ’older’ or ’younger.’ "

He then adds that, this:

"Forever puts an end to all evolutionary speculations about the order in which
the various plants and animals have developed.—This law alone is sufficient to
relegate the whole theory of organic evolution to the lumber room of science,
there to become the amusement of the future students of the history of
cosmological speculations." (Page 638.)

Thus we see that geology cannot tell us any­thing about the age of the earth. It
does indicate that at some time in the distant past this old earth passed
through some terrible catastrophe, which wrought a great change in its formation
and life. In northern Siberia there have been found the bodies of elephants
frozen in the ice, so well pre­served that dogs and wolves eat their flesh. Some
of them have undigested food in their stomachs, and even bits of tropical plants
in their mouths. Certainly there must have been some great change in the earth.
Elephants do not live in frozen regions. The geologist Dana says that "the
en­casing in ice of huge elephants, and the perfect preservation of the flesh,
shows that the cold finally became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter’s
night, and knew no relenting afterwards." (Man­ual, pg. 1007.)

Dr. Price accepts the Genesis account of the Flood as an explanation of this
great change in the climate, life and surface of the earth. It seems that a
universal flood would also account for cer­tain ocean deposits now found between
mountain ranges. How can they be explained in any other way? Certainly not on
the basis of a gradual, evo­lutionary development!

Thus geology adds its testimony of the flood to that of history. Almost every
nation has a tra­dition concerning the flood.

Geology Proves Degeneration

Instead of geology being a witness of evolu­tion, it witnesses to a
degeneration. Dana tells us that elephants, bears, hyenas, lions, etc., of the
Champlain period were much larger than the pres­ent species. He says "these
modern kinds are dwarfs in comparison." He says, "the Irish deer, skeletons of
which have been found in Irish bogs, had a height to the tip of the antlers of
10 to 11 feet, and the span of the antlers was sometimes 12 feet." He tells of
elephants "a third taller than the largest of modern elephants," and of
rhinoceros eleven and a half feet long. He sums the matter up by saying

"Thus the brute races of the middle Quaternary pe­riod on all the continents
greatly exceeded the modern races in magnitude." (Geological Story, pg. 270.)
Where is the evidence for evolution in Mr. Smith’s "Star Witness?"

MISSING LINKS

Evolutionists teach there have been classified as different species, 600,000
invertebrates and 36,000 vertebrates. If this is true, there are 636,000
unbridged gaps between distinct species. None of these gaps have ever been
bridged. My opponent says "the gap between man and ape has been bridged by
fossils." He offers first: The Neanderthal Man This is a creature constructed on
the basis of a few bones discovered in 1856. It has incited from competent
authorities, a dozen or more different opinions concerning itself. Some have
said it was a "human idiot," some "an old celt," "an old Hollander," etc., etc.
(Case against Evolution: pg. 324.) James Dana says the capacity of the
Neanderthal skull was seventy-five cubic inches "which is greater than in some
existing men" (Geological Story, pg. 273).

Sir Arthur Keitl says:

"We were compelled to admit that men of the modern type had been in existence
long before the Neanderthal type." (The Antiquity of Man.)

Huxley said:

"In no case can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human
being intermediate between men and apes." (Evidence of Man’s place in Nature,
pg. 253.) Dr. Thomas D. Parkman, Professor of Anat­omy at Harvard, said:

"The Neanderthal Man is not a specimen of a race arrested in its upward climb,
but rather of a race thrown down from a still higher position." (Quoted by Dr.
J. R. Stratton, in "Fundamentalist-Modernist Debates," pg. 96.) Pithecanthropus
Erectus This name has been given to the creature man­ufactured from a part of a
skull, part of a femur bone and a tooth, supposed to have been found by Dr.
Eugene Dubois.

They were found scattered far apart in a gravel pit, along a rushing stream.
(Smithsonian Report, 1898, pg. 447.) The femur bone was found a year after the
finding of the bit of skull. Vir­chow, Dana, Klaatch, and other scientists
rejected these bones as evidence of a "missing link." In the 1922 Edition of
Encyclopedia Britannica (vol. 30, pg. 146), you will find in one short
paragraph, three different opinions by three famous men, conc­erning these
bones. In 1894, twenty-four scientists met at London and made a critical
examination of this so-called "missing link." Ten said they were the bones of an
ape; seven declared they were the bones of a nan; while the remaining seven
thought they were A some intermediate creature. Mr. Smith is cer­tainly correct
when he says that "scientists debated whether he was a man or an ape." Why, I
ask, does he try to make us believe that he was neither?

Dr. Cunningham, of Dublin, one of the world’s greatest authorities on
Comparative Anatomy, said the bones could not have belonged to the same
in­dividual.

Heidelberg Man Of this man (?) only one piece of a jaw-bone was found. He is
one-half of one percent genuine, and ninety-nine and one-half percent
restoration. As Mr. Francis D. Nichol remarks:

"Evolutionists make great sport of the Genesis story that tells how a woman was
made of a rib; and now, be­hold, they turn about and construct a whole man out
of a jawbone!" (The San Francisco Debates on Evolution, pg. 76.) Dr. Lull, of
Yale University, says of the Heid­elberg specimen:

"The teeth are regularly placed and the canines are not in any way beastial in
their development, less so, indeed, than in some modern men." (Quoted.by J. F.
Herget, in "Questions Evolution Does Not Answer," pg. 65.)

Piltdown Man This is but another specimen of the extrava­gant guesses of
evolutionists. Four fragments of a skull-bone, a nasal-bone, a tooth and a bit
of a jaw-bone were discovered. It was immediately "reconstructed" into a man.
This first reconstruction was by Drs. Dawson and Woodward. The gave him a skull
capacity of 1070 c.c. Later, he was "re-reconstructed" by Prof. Keith, who
declared that his brain capacity should be something like 1500 c. c. This would
raise him above some modern men in brain capacity. No "missing link" here.

Taungs Skull Of the last named of Mr. Smith’s "missing links," a skull found in
Africa, Dr. Smith-Wood­ward says:

"The skull is in some features the most primitive one that has ever been found;
at the same time it has many points of resemblance to (or even identity with)
that of modern man." (Science, quoted in Case Against Evolu­tion, pg. 341.)

MAN NOT EVOLVED After considering the various fossil remains of man, Professor
Hugues Obermaier, says:

"With absolute certainty, we can only say that man of the Quatenary period
differed in no essential respect from man of the present day." (The Oldest
Remains of the Human Body.) Dr. Austin H. Clark, of the Smithsonian
In­stitution, United States Museum, Washington, D.C., says:

"So we see that the fossil record, the actual history of animal life upon the
earth, bears us out in the assump­tion that at its very first appearance, animal
life in its broader features was in essentially the same form as that in which
we now know it." (The Quarterly Review of Biol­ogy, Animal Evolution.) In the
beginning God made man in His image, says the Bible; science has discovered
nothing to indicate that this is untrue.

NATURAL SELECTION

Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection has been discounted by modern science. John
Burroughs, great Naturalist, says:

"Darwin has already been shorn of his selection doc­trines as completely as
Samson was shorn of his locks." (Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 1920, pg. 237.) The
factors of selection mentioned by Mr. Smith fail him. "The survival of the
fittest" doc­trine does not take into account mental power; nor, does it
consider the work of self-sacrifice. The "fittest" sometimes fails to survive
because of sac­rifice in the interest of those less fit. The World War destroyed
many of the "most fit" men of the world. The famous giraffe illustration fails.
If only the giraffes with the longest necks had survived, the females would have
all died; the male’s neck is several inches longer than the female’s.

If the inheritance of favorable variation aids evolution, what about unfavorable
variation? That unfavorable variations have been inherited is shown by the
larger specimens found in earlier periods.

CONSEQUENCES OF EVOLUTION

We are not interested in the consequences of evolution. Mr. Smith must first
prove that evolu­tion is true. If not true, it can be of no conse­quence.
However, evolution—if true—would not eliminate the need of a Creator. It cannot
account for the beginning of life, and there are evidences everywhere of
intelligent design.

Mr. Smith compares the savage’s answer that "A Spirit" made the watch with my
belief that "A Spirit" made the world. Correct. The spirit of man designs the
watch; but there must be a higher Spirit to design a world. THE BIBLE An honest
comparison of the other twenty-six books which claim inspiration, with the Bible
will convince anyone that they do not have the same grounds for their claim. The
charge that the books of the Bible were first selected by the vote of a Church
Council, is false. The Pentateuch

It is charged that Moses could not have writ­ten the first five books of the
Bible, since men, could not write in Moses’ age. This is false. In Egypt we find
that as early as 1385 B. C., letter-writing was in common practice among
govern­ment officials, and there is a presumption that it was practiced even
earlier. The Tell-el Amarna Letters are the correspondence of Egyptian allies in
various places in Syria, embodying reports on the conditions of the various
dependencies in their several districts. These letters cover a period from about
1385 to 1365 B. C. So we see that the art of writing was known in Egypt at least
a hun­dred and fifty years before the Israelites left there. ("The Exploration
of Egypt," pgs. 233-245)

Beginning shortly after the time the first five books of the Bible were written,
we have quota­tions from them made by other writers. For cen­turies they were
quoted, and every author of which we know anything attributed them to Moses. We
prove that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, and that it was written at
the time claimed, in the same way we prove authorship and date of any other
book. The account of Moses’ death may have been added by Joshua, or some other
inspired man; or it may be a prophecy.

Creation, Flood, etc.

It is granted that other nations than the Hebrews have traditions concerning
many things in Genesis; but is it not reasonable to suppose that these
traditions were handed down from a com­mon parentage—Adam and Eve? How does Mr.
Smith account for the records of the various nations being so similar? The fact
that the Babylonians’ first man was "Adami" merely shows that they learned about
him from the same source as the Hebrews.

So-called Contradictions

Exodus 20:15; Exodus 3:22 do not contradict. The Israelites did not steal the
goods of the Egyp­tians. The American Standard Version translates Exodus 3:22 :
"Every woman shall ask of her neighbor," instead of borrow, as the King James
version gives it. That this is a correct translation is indicated by the Lord’s
statement in the 21st verse:

"I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyp­tians: and it shall come
to pass that, and when ye go, ye shall not go empty." The Israelites had been
working for the Egyptians for centuries, without pay. God told them to "ask"
remuneration for this service, and He put it into the hearts of the Egyptians to
"give" it. Romans 2:11 and Deuteronomy 14:21 are not contradictory. God
prohibited His chosen people from eating such meat; others were not prohibited
from eating it. Then, possibly these animals were to be used in sacrifice.
Jehovah would not accept such sacrifices; the heathen could sacrifice animals
which "died of themselves," without violation of con­science. Anyway, God does
not become a respector of persons in permitting men to buy what they want, with
a full knowledge of what they are buy­ing.

There is no contradiction between the creation stories of Genesis 1:1-31 and
Genesis 3:1-24. The second account does not pretend to give the order of
crea­tion, but is simply a rehearsal of the creation his­tory, without regard to
order of occurrence.

Mr. Smith’s supposed contradiction in the flood narrative is born of his failure
to distinguish be­tween clean and unclean animals. When my opponent gives the
passages which say that the wicked prosper, and that they do not prosper, we
shall reply to this supposed contradic­tion.

Mistranslation

Mr. Smith says, "In the beginning, God," should be translated, "In the
beginning, the gods," because the plural, "Elohim" is used. In the early Hebrew
there was no distinction between the plural and singular form of a word. The
plural of "maj­esty" occurs more than two thousand times in the Old Testament.
In many instances the connection shows that it refers to only one. In Exodus
4:4, God said to Moses, "Thou shalt be to him (Aaron) as God." Here the plural
is used, but will my opponent contend that Moses was more than one person? We
also have evidence of the use of the plural form for the singular in meaning in
the Tell-el Armana Letters.

However, the plural form may have been used in Genesis 1:1-31 with reference to
the Trinity—God, Christ and the Holy Spirit.

There is very little difference in the meanings of the words "repent" and
"penance." I am not responsible for the fact that the Catholics, in order to
justify, their practices, have "colored" some passages in their translation.

I should like to ask how much Mr. Smith knows about the Hebrew language. Is he
qualified as a critic of its translation?

Absurdities The matter of the shadow on the sun dial going back, is not absurd
when God is admitted. The man who makes a watch has the power to stop or start
it, at will. The Bible does not say giants were produced by the co-habitation of
sons of God and daugh­ters of men. It merely says, "There were giants in those
days." (Genesis 6:4.) Geological records indicate the existence of a race of
large men in some period of the past. We occasionally see giants now.

Mark 11:12-22 does not say why Jesus cursed the fig tree. The reason was
supplied by Mr. Smith. We reject him as an authority!

Mr. Smith thinks it impossible that the Jews could have lost five hundred
thousand men in bat­tle. He should inform himself on the history of the Jews.
Volney says that the population of Judea in the time of Titus must have been
about four millions. ("Travels," Ch. 32). The comparison between the battles of
Israel and our battle of Gettysburg, is foolish. It should be remembered that
Israel was a nation of great antiquity, while the United States was at the time
of the Civil War, comparatively speaking, but an infant.

Science of the Bible The Bible was not written as a textbook on any of the
physical sciences. It makes no effort to explain things in the terms of science.
Its lan­guage is the language of the people to whom it was written. However,
where matters of science are incidentally mentioned, the statements are true.

It is now understood by scholars that the Hebrew word from which we get
"firmament" in Genesis 1:8, means "expanse." The passage does not indicate that
the heavens are a solid roof.

Modern writers speak of the earth’s "founda­tion," "pillars," etc., without
being charged with ignorance of science. These are every-day expres­sions in the
language of any people. The word from which we get "corners" in Revelation 7:1
is not so translated in any other instance. It was used with reference to the
four general directions, and does not signify literal "corners."

Genesis 9:13 does not say God made the rain­bow at the time of the flood, but
that he "set" it as a reminder of his covenant with man.

It is urged that the sun’s standing still at Joshua’s command is unscientific. A
literal rendi­tion reads, "Sun, be silent (or inactive.)" How­ever, the Bible
writer expressed that which, from the standpoint of the people, occurred. Mr.
Smith has no hesitancy in speaking in that manner. He would say, "I saw a
beautiful sunrise (or sunset)" while in fact he saw no such thing. What he
really saw was an "earth-roll." That such an incident as Joshua’s long day
really occurred in the history of the world is fully proven from sources other
than the Bible.

I now give Mr. Smith a few citations concern­ing the science of the Bible.
Genesis 1:3 says there was light before the creation of the sun. For a long time
infidels scoffed at this. Now scientists know that the sun is not the only
source of light. The rotundity of the earth is a comparatively new doctrine with
us. The Bible says:

"He set a circle upon the face of the deep." (Prov­erbs, 8:27.)

Isaiah speaks of God as one, "Who sitteth upon the circle of the earth" (Isaiah
40:22). Jesus did not discuss matters of science per se; He came to teach people
of a higher realm. However, that he knew of the globular shape of the earth, is
shown in Luke 17:34-36. He says that at the time of his second coming—which will
be instantaneous, one person will be sleeping, another will be grinding at the
mill, while another will be working in the field. In other words, at the moment
of His com­ing it will be night upon one part of the earth, early morning on
another, and broad daylight in a third section of the earth. This could not be
true except on the basis that the earth is round, and that it revolves. Job knew
that the earth is poised in space (Job 26:7). Job also refers to the "empty
place" in the north (26:7). At a comparatively recent date the Washington
Observatory discovered that this is literally true. I ask Mr. Smith: How did Job
know these scientific truths centuries be­fore they were discovered by men of
science? The author of the 65th Psalm knew that light is vocal (verse 8). How
did he know it? Job re­fers to the "way in which light dwells" (38:19). This
reference is scientifically accurate. Why did not the Bible writer speak of the
"place" in which light dwells? Because light does not dwell in a fixed place,
but is due to the vibration of waves in the ether; traveling at the rate of one
hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second, it may be said to dwell in a
"way."

I should like to hear Mr. Smith explain how these Bible writers knew of these
scientific prin­ciples thousands of years before they were discov­ered by
scientists. We cannot account for this "advance information," in any other way
than that the writers were not speaking from their own knowledge, but were
giving a revelation from God.

Fulfilled Prophecy The Bible abounds in prophecies which have been fulfilled. I
might cite those concerning the perpetuity of the Jews. God said they would
never be destroyed. (See Leviticus 26:44; Numbers 23:9, Genesis 28:15; Jeremiah
30:11; Jeremiah 46:28.) In spite of the fact that the Jew has no nation which he
can call his own; no flag he can point to as the flag of his peo­ple; still,
there are more Jews in the world today than there were in Christ’s time The
infidels, Volney, Gibbon, and others, bear witness to the ful­fillment of the
prophecies concerning Babylon, Tyre, Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Ninevah, and
many other Old Testament cities. Jesus, during His life on the earth, fulfilled
more than four hun­dred prophecies of the Old Testament.

Mr. Smith says Jesus prophesied His return during the life of some of the
disciples. A compar­ison of Matthew 16:28 with Mark 9:1 and John 14:15; John
14:20 shows that Jesus referred to His return in the per­son and power of the
Holy Spirit. This was ful­filled on Pentecost (Acts 2:1-47). When Mr. Smith
scoffed at the idea of Christ’s return, he did not know that he—an atheist, was
acting in fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Listen to this prophecy:

"Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking
after their own lusts, and saying: Where is the promise of his coming? For since
the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the be­ginning of
the creation." (1 Peter 3:3-4.) God’s Character

We can no more judge the righteousness of the acts of God than a three-year-old
child can under­stand all the actions of his parents. I do not know why God
sometimes destroys nations. Probably the destruction of the Amalekites was a
good thing for the world; I must leave that matter to the judg­ment of God.

Before Mr. Smith can justly charge God with punishing David’s baby for the sins
of David, he must see the other side of death, and know whether death was
punishment to the baby. We know that it was a punishment to David to lose the
child; while, in view of the Bible’s teaching about life after death, it was a
blessing to the baby.

Mr. Smith does not know that there was no scientific principle involved in the
trial prescribed in Numbers 5:1-31. Scientists believe the "truth serum" may
reveal the guilt or innocence of a person. However, in this Bible case, the
power need not have been in the "bitter water." The Lord operated in this case;
if He chose to reveal guilt or innocence in this manner, puny man has no reason
to object.

There are no conflicts between true science and true religion. Conflicts are the
result of sci­ence misunderstood, or religion misinterpreted. The Bible is true;
it has stood the test of time. If I had a title to property, and this title had
been re­peatedly tested for more than 1900 years, I should think my title good.
The Christian’s title "to man­sions in the sky" has been contested for all the
centuries of the Christian age: still it stands!

Smith’s Second Affirmative Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rev. Oliphant
has repeated the statement that we accept on faith historical persons and
char­acters, such as Napoleon and other great men. We have evidence of a
different character for the ex­istence of those individuals than we have for
that of Jesus. There are contemporary records of those great men, but you cannot
find a single passage (that is not admitted to be a later forgery) in a
historian of the time Jesus was here, containing a single reference to that man.
The gospels were written long after the time of Jesus.

It has been repeated that disease is caused by sin. If that is the way God
works, why does he not so arrange that only the guilty should suffer. The Rev.
Oliphant has never answered the question, "Did God make disease germs?" I ask
for a def­inite answer. Either God made them or they evolved. Which happened?

He says there is no law without a lawmaker. That may appear to you to be
profound. Did you ever know a lawmaker who did not have a father? Who is the
father of your lawmaker?

I am not at all surprised to find my opponent, in defending that old book of
his, professes a be­lief in Spiritualism. I have not time to refute that. I can
only describe spiritualism as one of the great­est frauds ever perpetrated upon
unsuspecting hu­manity.

He asks me to state where it says in the Bible that the world was created six
thousand years ago. If you have studied your book, you know that the genealogy
of Joseph, called the genealogy of Jesus, tells how long each man lived before
begetting the next in the genealogical line. If you add the years, you get 4004
years back to Adam, who was made on a certain day of a certain week. Adam was
made approximately six thousand years ago, and there were only so many days
before that. My op­ponent has become a scripture-twisting Modernist. He
stretches "days" into "periods." He knows that the world and the stars have been
here longer than six thousand years. We now see the light from stars hundreds of
billions of miles away. Those stars may have gone out of existence. They must
have existed long before the time of Adam, or we could not see them today. Their
light would not have reached us. My opponent seeks to give the impression that
scientists have rejected evolution, that they don’t believe in it any more. He
misleads you. There is not a scientific association in the more enlightened
countries whose members are not almost unanimous in accepting evolution. They
disagree only as to details and methods. The American Association for the
Advancement of Science came out squarely for evolution at its convention in
1922. It was meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the home of the Harvard
University. The association official­ly declared:

"No scientific generalization is more strongly sup­ported by thoroughly tested
evidence than is that of organic evolution." The scientists quoted by my
opponent are either dead men or living nobodies. Who is Arthur Brown? And this
man Price? What position do they hold? Why does he not show you some learned
opponents of evolution? He picks out a man here and there and yonder of whom we
have never heard.

He quotes Sir Arthur Keith. The quotation is correct; but did he tell you that
Keith is one of the foremost advocates of the ape ancestry of man? He was
President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Almost the
entire scientific world champions evolution. And what has my opponent to show?
An individual here, and a professor there, and a man dead long ago—and not known
well when alive.

I have not time to go into the controversy con­cerning Haeckel; but it is
conceded that the scien­tists exonerated him. If you want to know the truth of
the matter, read the pamphlet by Haeckel —his answer to the Jesuits.

Evolution is the universal question—answered. Why can some persons wiggle their
ears? Why do we have buttons on our coats? Why does every person have hair on
his body? Why are there silent letters in the English language? Only evo­lution
answers. Why do the Jews refuse to eat pork? Because at one time they worshipped
the wild boar. Why do Christians shut their eyes while praying? Because their
religion has evolved from sun worship, and they naturally closed their eyes
while facing the sun. The Rev. Oliphant tells you Evolution left to itself
proceeds by degeneration. I want to ask him whether, in his opinion, any species
have dis­appeared. If his theory be true, there were more species at the
beginning than there are today. I wonder if he believes that. The Rev. Oliphant
asks if you can have fitness without intelligence. In the nature of the case,
unfitness cannot continue to exist. I tear here a piece of paper. (Here the
speaker picked up a piece of paper, tore it in two, and then put the pieces
together.) I put it back. Does it not fit? Of course. Was there any intelligence
in the tear­ing of the paper? Certainly not. The clergy might as well say that
intelligence made my legs just long enough to reach the floor. My opponent does
not believe the books of the Bible were accepted by vote. Will he tell us how
they were accepted? When the church councils were held, maybe the meetings were
Bolsheviki. No, they accepted them by vote. He says the spoiling of the
Egyptians was not stealing. It was getting money under false pretenses. What is
the difference? He asks for the citation about the wicked prospering. See Job
21:37. Ecclesiastes 8:13 teaches the contrary. He asked for other passages. I
cannot give them now, for lack of time.

It is denied that there is a contradiction in the flood story. If you will look
that up you will find that according to the so-called Word of God, the animals
went into the ark by twos and sevens —both the clean and the unclean; and it is
not true as he explained. There is no argument. Look it up. Genesis 7:2; Genesis
7:8-9.

Certain passages have been quoted from Job trying to show that the Jews knew
that the world was round. The author of Job may have so known; but I doubt it.
Job is not a Jewish book, and is so recognized by the scholars in the
seminaries.

I ask those of you who believe that the book of Job is inspired, to read the 7th
chapter, 9th verse:

"As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to the grave
shall come up no more." The doctrine of immortality was unknown to the Jews
until the time of the New Testament. It is not in the Old Testament. Why was it
Job did not know he would live after he died? Hear the wise man, Ecclesiastes
9:5 :

"The dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward."

Let’s hear Ecclesiastes again, the inspired word of God:

"There is no knowledge or wisdom in the grave, where man goeth." My friend has
referred a number of times to Professor Millikan, and other scientists, as
holding that there is no conflict between science and reli­gion. Does he mean
the Christian religion? Does he seek to give you the impression that such men as
Millikan and other scientists whom he named, believe such tales as the virgin
birth, the resurrec­tion, the story of Adam and Eve, the Flood, and all those
fables in the Old Testament? They do not, and he should have told you.

I have only a moment or so in which to con­clude. My opponent has admitted he
cannot com­prehend God nor explain him; that he does not know where Heaven is;
how far it is, or in what direction it lies. He is selling you a gold brick.
What did this God of his do? How does he help you? Where did he ever do
anything? The action of God in this world is very much like that of the stone
with which you can make white stone soup. Here is the recipe for making this
delicious dish: To the white stone, add some meat and some vegetables, together
with the right seasoning. Cook properly and you have a wonder­ful soup. Do
everything needed to be done, and then credit God with the results—that’s
religion!

Oliphant’s Second Reply Brother Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Smith: This
is the last speech in this discussion. I cannot, of course, introduce any new
arguments. Although we have no rules governing this debate, I shall not be
unfair to my opponent. I wish that we had more time; there are so many more
arguments I should like to have made. In the few minutes at my command I can do
no more than give you a brief reiteration of the things to which you have
already listened. In our first proposition, I showed that we can­not explain the
origin of life, the origin of con­sciousness, or the beginning of man’s moral
nature, without God. In fact, atheism does not account for the beginning of
anything. My friend has offered tonight the only alternative to my conten­tion
that God is creator. What is this alternative? It is chance—evolution "directed
by no intelli­gence." His substitute fails; first, because he has not proved
that it is true; and second, because—if true—it does not account for things as
they are. How can any intelligent person believe that the orderly universe which
man beholds, is the result of the working of blind chance—a mere "fortuitous
concourse of atoms?"

Referring to his paper-tearing illustration, Mr. Smith says this is an example
of "fitness without intelligence." He declares there was no intelligence back of
the tearing of the paper. Perhaps not, since he did the tearing; if you had done
it, there would have been intelligence used. However, Mr. Smith also used
intelligence. He tore the paper ac­cording to design previously fixed in his
mind. It had to be fitted back together according to plan; otherwise it would
not fit. This would be all the more evident had the paper been torn several
times; the various pieces, in order to fit, must be put to­gether intelligently.
Can we believe that such a harmonious fitting together of all the "pieces" of
the universe is without the work of mind?

I quoted a number of imminent scientists who say that science cannot account for
the beginning of life. We are unable to imitate the original life-producing
process. If it could be shown that evo­lution explains the intricate forms of
life we now have, it would still be at a loss to show how the original germ of
life came to exist.

It is true that I cannot comprehend God; nor can I comprehend the principle of
life. The most ignorant man can plant a seed in the earth, and watch it grow
into a plant; while the wisest man in the world cannot explain the life-germ in
the tiny seed.

It is charged that I have not introduced any real scientists who do not believe
in evolution. To say one believes in evolution does not necessarily mean that he
believes what Mr. Smith is advocat­ing. We all believe in evolution, in one
sense of the word. We know that there is development within species. What we are
denying is that one kind of life develops into a distinctly different kind.

It is true that the American Association for the Advancement of Science passed
resolutions in favor of the evolution hypothesis. These men also engaged in some
very unscientific, and undignified language concerning W. J. Bryan, and his
"Round Head" adherents. Dr. O’Toole says the meeting at which these resolutions
were passed "was but sparsely attended, and packed, for the most part, with the
ultra-partisans of transformism." (Case against Evolution, pg. 343.) Even this
"ultra-partisan" group did not claim that evolution is more than a theory.

Honest scientists are often wrong. The theor­ies of science are constantly
changing. Dr. Frank Allen, head of the Department of Physics, Uni­versity of
Manitoba, recently said:

"There is scarcely a theory of science which is gen­erally accepted today, of
which I would be ready to affirm that it may not be abandoned within a few
years. Nearly all of the theories which were regarded as satisfactory a few
years ago, are now either modified or discarded by scientists." (Evolution in
the Balances, pg. 182.)

It is not true that all scientists accept the theory of evolution. I mention Dr.
Clark Wissler, Curator-in-Chief of the Anthropological section of the American
Museum, New York City; Prof. W. Brance, Director of the Institute of Geology and
Palaentology, University of Berlin; Sir Wm. Daw­son, President, McGill
University; Dr. Howard A. Kelly, John Hopkins University; Prof. L. S. Beale,
King’s College, London; Dr. Etheridge, Curator of the Natural History Museum;
Dr. Austin H. Clark, Smithsonian Institution, United States Museum. These
eminent scientists, and many others that could be named, reject the theory of
evolution. The last named, Dr. Clark, who is probably second to no other
scientist in ability, says:

"Thus so far as it concerns the major groups of ani­mals, the creationists seem
to have the better of the argu­ment. There is not the slightest evidence that
any one of the major groups arose from any other." (Quarterly Re­view of
Biology.)

Many of those who accept evolution regard it as no more than a theory, which can
be accepted only by faith. Dr. L. T. Moore, of the University of Cincinnati,
says:

"The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution
is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to
have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion." (Prince­ton Lectures,
pg. 160.)

Mr. Smith charges that Dr. Price is a "no­body," and that no scholars agree with
his geolog­ical theories. Mr. Price is a member of the Amer­ican Society for the
Advancement of Science. His theory of geology was introduced in his book,
"Il­logical Geology." I know of the following scholars who endorsed the book:

Prof. William C. Wilkinson, University of Chicago: C. W. Hall, Professor of
Geology and Mineralogy, University of Minnesota;

Wm. G. Moorehead, President, Xenia Theological Seminary;

Prof. Luther T. Townsend, Boston University;

Prof. James Orr, United Free Church College, Scot­land;

Prof. George H. Parker, Department of Zoology, Harvard University;

Prof. A. H. Sayce, Oxford University, England; and

Prof. Franklin Johnson, University of Chicago.

I am sure many more endorsed it. Even Dr. David Starr Jordan, President, Leland
Stanford University, said: "It is a very clever book." Those who do not accept
Mr. Price’s position find it easier to laugh at his arguments than to answer
them. Scientists do not agree in their conjectures about the age of the earth.
It has been estimated all the way from six or seven thousand years, up to 10,000
million years. If you ask: Does the Bible agree with science as to the age of
the earth? I ask: What science? It is evident that the Bible could not agree
with all these estimates.

However, the Bible does not tell us the earth’s age. I do not know whether the
six days of Genesis were six literal days, or six long periods of time. The term
"day" is frequently used to designate an indefinite period. This may have been
the sense in which it was used in Genesis. I do not think it does the Bible
record any injury to think they were long periods of time. I do not know that
the six days of Genesis even relate to the original creation. It may be that all
we know of the creation is that which we are told in the first verse of the
Bible. The work of the six days may have been done long after the creation.
There is no need to argue these questions. Opponents of the Bible have nothing
to offer but a guess. No scien­tist will contend that he knows anything about
the age of the earth. I believe the Bible account, re­gardless of what period of
time is meant by "day." Nothing has been offered to shake our faith in the Bible
record.

Mr. Smith repeats the charge that we do not know what books the Bible should
contain, except by the vote of a church conference. The earliest church assembly
to catalogue the books of the New Testament was the Council of Carthage, which
met in A. D. 397. Catalogues of the New Testament had been made by numbers of
individuals before this date. Athanasius, who was Bishop of Alexandria from 326
to 373 A. D., lists all the books of the New Testament as we have them today.
Cyril, who was Bishop of Jerusalem, catalogued the books of the New Testament.
He lived from 315 to 386 A. D. Several other men who lived before any church
council passed on the genuineness of Bible books, prepared lists of the books of
our New Test­ament.

Christians of the first four centuries quoted from the books of the New
Testament. These quo­tations were so many and so copious that if the New
Testament were lost, it could be reproduced from these writings. Some of these
early writers were: Eusebius (207-340 A. D.), Origen (185 to 254), Clement of
Alexandria (165 to 230), Irenaeus (135 to 200), Polycarp (disciple of the
Apostle John). All these, and many others, quoted from the books of the New
Testament, and attributed them to the authors whose names they now bear. When
the church councils, later, made catalogues, they were governed by the
acceptance and use of the books from the time of the apostles.

Mr. Smith seems to insinuate that Jesus is not a historical character. Not even
an infidel of any standing has ever questioned the facts that Jesus lived at the
time the gospel writers say He did, and that He did many of the things ascribed
to Him in the gospels. Tacitus, a reputable Roman historian, who was born about
58 A. D. tells us that Christians "derived their name and origin from Christ,
who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death by the sentence of the
procurator Pontius Pilate." (Annals, XV, 44).

Pliny, who was born about 62 A. D., tells of the punishment of Christians, and
indicates that he understood Christianity to have originated with Christ.
(Letter to the Emporer Trajan, Quoted by Gibbon, Vol. 2, Pgs. 26, 27).

Suetonius, Secretary under the Emperor Ad­rian, was born about 68 A. D. This
writer says that Christians were punished, and that Chrestus (Christ) was their
leader. (Lives of the Twelve Caesars).

Celsus was an early opponent of Christianity. He wrote a book, "The True Word,"
in which he not only admits that Jesus lived, but that He per­formed miracles.

We might also refer to the celebrated passage from Josephus:

"Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a
man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—He was (the) Christ; and when Pilate,
at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the
cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to
them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had fore­told these and
ten thousand other wonderful things con­cerning him: and the tribe of
Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day." (Antiquities, Bk.
18, chap. 3).

I am aware that the genuineness of this pass­age has been questioned, However,
there have been infidels in all ages who have accepted it. Ernest Renan said: "I
think the passage on Jesus authen­tic" (Life of Jesus, pg. 13). Even the
atheist, Joseph McCabe, thinks Josephus mentioned Christ, but that the passage
was altered by some Christian hand at a later date. Mr. McCabe, though a radical
atheist, accepts the historicity of Jesus. (See his book, "Did Jesus Ever
Live?"). If we grant that this passage is spurious, we still have a reference to
Jesus by Josephus. In his Antiquities, book 20, chapter 9, while discussing the
death of James, Josephus refers to "Jesus, who was called the Christ."

If it were conceded that Jesus did not live, we would have to attribute Divinity
to the gospel writers. Men who could imagine such a character must have been
more than mere men. He who denies the life of Jesus as given by the Evangelists
has more to account for than we, who accept their accounts. It would take a
"Christ" to imagine the Christ of the gospels.

All the evidence I have offered is from men who were not favorable to Jesus. The
testimonies of many Christian historians could be offered.

Mr. Smith says Job may have known the sci­entific truths which he stated. I
again ask, how could Job have known these things, without inspi­ration? The
passage my opponent quoted from Job in regard to the resurrection is a part of
Job’s com­plaint, which runs throughout the first part of the book. After the
Lord "answered Job out of the whirlwind," his attitude was completely changed.
Hear his confession:

"Then Job answered the Lord, and said, I know that thou canst do everything
(even to raising the dead—Oli­phant) and that no thought can be withholden from
thee..... I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I
knew not.... where- fore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." (Job
42:1-6). The Bible is an inspired book; its record of facts is correct. There
are quotations in the Bible, which do not state the truth. The fact that the
statements were made, is recorded by Inspiration. For instance, the words of
Satan are sometimes quoted. The Holy Spirit does not vouch for the truthfulness
of the statements; but the writer was inspired in his telling of Satan’s having
made them. So, we have in the book of Job, some state­ments made by Job,
Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, which may not be true. Job realized that he had made
some false statements; hence, made the con­fession I quoted from him. The charge
that Job did not know of the resurrection is false. Read the nineteenth chapter,
verse twenty-six:

"Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."

Mr. Smith quotes Solomon’s statement that there is no knowledge in the grave.
Certainly, there is not. Who has ever contended that there is knowledge in the
grave. Only the body of man goes to the grave. The same writer says, "the spirit
shall return unto God." (Ecclesiastes 12:7) The part of man that "knows" is
never in the grave. My friend quotes a part of Ecclesiastes 9:5 "The dead know
not anything, neither have they any more a reward." Why did he not quote the
rest of the passage? The sixth verse closes with a qualifying clause: "in
anything that is done under the sun." In other words, the dead know nothing,
have no reward, etc., "under the sun" (upon the earth). You can take any book,
and make it teach any­thing; provided you cut its sentences up in such manner.
Infidels do not deal honestly with the Bible.

God did not introduce slavery (Exodus 21:1-36), as my opponent has charged; on
the contrary, God here limits slavery, and provides a way for a slave to become
a free-man. All nations of that ancient time practiced slavery. God showed His
displeas­ure at the practice, by gradually leading His people out of it. It
would have been unwise to have at­tempted to suddenly abolish such a universal
cus­tom. God reveals Himself and His laws to man as rapidly as man is capable of
receiving them. Man’s receptive capacity limits God’s revelation. When Stanley
was in the jungle of Africa, the pigmies asked him where he came from and how he
got there. Having never seen a ship or an ocean, their vocabulary contained no
words for ships or oceans. Hence Stanley was unable to an­swer their question.
His inability was not due to his lack of knowledge, but to, the natives’ lack of
understanding. So, if our revelation of God is not clear, it is because of our
lack of receptive capac­ity.

Job 21:1-34 and Ecclesiastes 8:1-17 do not contradict. Job does not teach that
the wicked prosper, in the long run. Verse 30 says that the wicked are "reserved
to the day of destruction." The passage teaches that, though the wicked may seem
to prosper, tem­porarily; they must eventually reap what they sow. Ecclesiastes
teaches the same truth. I am re minded of this story: An infidel wrote an
article for a country newspaper, in which he said: "Your God does not punish men
for wrong. I plowed my land on Sunday, planted my corn on Sunday and harvested
it on Sunday. This October, I have as much corn as any of my neighbors, who went
to church on Sunday." The editor printed the arti­cle, and followed it with this
brief reply: "God does not settle all His accounts in October."

There is no contradiction in the Genesis ac­count of the flood. In Genesis 7:2,
God is telling Noah how many clean and unclean animals to take into the ark. The
eighth and ninth verses tell how they went in, "by twos and twos"—not how many
went in.

Throughout the debate yesterday afternoon, I challenged my opponent to give us
the atheist’s standard of morality. I charged that, according to the only rule
he offered, it would not be wrong to rob or kill. He never denied my charge. I
asked him to offer any reason why it would be wrong for me to take his life; he
offered none. Why? Be­cause, according to atheism, it is no more wrong to kill a
man than it is to kill a beast. I charged that atheism is brutal, savage and
immoral; he did not so much as deny the charge. It, therefore, stands, as I made
it.

I charged that atheists have never built a school or a hospital. He denied the
charge. I asked him to name such an institution, which was built by atheists.
The debate now closes without his having named a single one. He could not do so,
for the simple reason that, there is no such institution. I showed that even the
school Mr. Smith attended was built by religion. Sir, you are biting the hand
that feeds you!

I wish it to be remembered that Mr. Smith does not deny that his position means
the killing of persons who are physically weak. Such is the brutal theory he
wants to establish in the place of God and His word. So long as there are
intelligent men and women in the world, he cannot succeed.

There are no contradictions in the Bible. I think I have shown that none of his
supposed con­flicts are real; but suppose I cannot prove that there are no
contradictions in God’s word: what does that indicate? Merely that I do not
under­stand all about Infinite things. God has nowhere said that, from man’s
viewpoint, there are no con­tradictions in His word. Nature is made up of
opposites and contraries. We have opposite sexes; opposite forces (centripetal
and centrifugal), con­stantly pulling against each other; cold and heat;
darkness and light; etc. If I fail to harmonize all the statements of the Bible,
it still looks much like God’s other Book—Nature.

Music is made up of notes; but if these notes are jumbled and mixed, without
design, hideous and contradictory sounds are produced. So, the Bible sings a
beautiful song of eternal life to the man who conscientiously studies it; to the
disbeliever who distorts its notes, it presents a discord. It is not the Bible
scholar who finds contradictions in the Bible. The Bible has builded itself into
the very warp and woof of our being. Its influence on our litera­ture is
remarkable. Take Shakespeare: I found 138 references to Bible characters, and 53
refer­ences to Bible incidents, facts, places, etc., in his works. He also has
about 190 passages which are parallel with Bible statements. If the Bible were
destroyed, it could probably be reproduced from the literature of our day. A
ten-year-old book on science is hard to find; books of fiction are out-of-date
in a few years; but the Bible is still the "best seller." During 1927, the
American Bible Society distributed 10,034,797 copies of the Bible. This society
is 112 years old. Since the date of its organization it has averaged three
volumes a minute, night and day—making a total of 194,063,757 volumes
distributed since its work began. This is an average of 197 copies an hour for
112 years. Its average production now is 27,492 copies a day, 1,145 an hour, or
19 a min­ute. This society has circulated the Scriptures in 250 languages and
dialects. It has been estimated that if all the persons who have received copies
of the Scripture from this one agency were to stand in line, the line would
reach four times around the world. Does this look like the Bible is losing its
popularity. The Bible has been bitterly fought in every century of its life;
still it lives. It is adapted to the needs of humanity; it furnishes guidance,
hope and cheer to, an otherwise, cheerless world. All the hope the infidel has
in life comes, indirectly, from its pages. Col. Ingersoll, at his brother’s
grave, said:

"Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We,
strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is
the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead
there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening
love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mis­taking
the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest
breath, ’I am better now.’ Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas and
tears and fears that these dear words are true of all the countless dead." (Col.
R. G. Ingersol’s Great Speeches, pg. 67.)

There is no conflict between the Bible and true science. Theories of science may
sometimes differ from the Bible. Science must theorize; and her theories of
today are, many times, discarded to­morrow. We are learning all the time. If the
time ever arrives when men of science have a per­fect knowledge of the world,
all apparent conflicts will disappear; and on the title page of every sci­ence
textbook may be written:

"IN THE BEGINNING GOD."

Decision of the Audience At the close of this, the last session of the de­bate,
the chairman, F. L. Paisley, stated that a vote had been taken at the close of
the first session, be­cause of Mr. Smith’s desire. Mr. Smith had later requested
that no more votes be asked. "But now," said Mr. Paisley, "we are going to give
the audi­ence a chance to vote, by request of the Christian side of the
discussion." The vote stood: Two for Smith; the rest of the audience for
Oliphant.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/oliphant-smith-debate/
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