September, 1928 



EVOLUTION 



Pace Nine. 



go," Every anthropologist, every encyclo- 

 pedia and our textbooks all assert that man 

 has been on earth not less than 500.000 

 years and the evidence that he did live 

 through MORE THAN ONE ICE-AGE IS 

 IRREFUTABLE. See "Men of the Old 

 Stone Age," by Osborn.) 



"The Old Stone Age, the New Stone 

 Age and the Age of Metals were not suc- 

 cessive but contemporaneous." This con- 

 tradicts every authority in anthropology 

 and simply ignores the evidence of the re- 

 mains of primitive man. (See Dr. Mc- 

 Curdy"s "Human Origins,",) 



"The Flood of Noah is historical. There 

 is a flood story in the traditions of every 

 people." Both statements are false and any 

 man in the twentieth century who thinks 

 that Noah's Flood is historical ought to be 

 ashamed of himself. The Encyclopedia 

 Biblica, the standard authority of the 

 Church, declares that the Deluge story is 

 but a myth. All other encyclopedias agree. 

 The history of Egypt begins 4241 B. C. 

 and her traditions go thousands of years 

 back of that date and there is no mention 

 of a Deluge. (History of the Warfare of 

 Science with Theology, by White.) 



"The tremendous catastrophe (The De- 

 luge) accounts for all the sedimentary 

 strata which we find all over the earth, 

 and is the cause of practically all the 

 great mountain systems of the world. 

 Waves rushed around the earth every 

 twenty-four hours at a rate of more than 

 a thousand miles per hour, and they must 

 have been six miles high." Can anyone 

 imagine stratified rock a mile thick laid 

 down in the first six months of the Flood 

 and the Grand Canon of the Colorado be- 

 ing cut in the next six months? Imagine 

 the Alps, the Andes and the Rockies be. 

 ing formed in the one year of the Deluge? 

 Imagine Noah and the menagerie in the 

 Ark safely riding these six-mile-high waves 

 moving at the rate of over sixteen miles 

 per minute? IS THIS THE "SCIENCE" 

 THEY WANT TAUGHT IN HIGH 

 SCHOOLS INSTEAD OF GEOLOGY? 



It is not my purpose to heap ridicule 

 upon their heads. If the fundamentalist 

 "message" is true, our leading scientists 

 are little more than charlatans and pol- 

 troons. If they are right we should re. 

 vise our courses of study, delete our librar- 

 ies of all works on Geology, Anthropology, 

 Biology, etc., etc., rewrite our histories and 

 encyclopedias, hold in utter contempt Dar- 

 win, Osborn, Wallace, McCabe. Sir Arthur 

 Keith, McCurdy, and thousands of others, 

 wipe out the results of the researches of 

 the past century, declare to the world: 

 "Fundamentalists hold the truth, the whole 

 truth, and nothing but the truth" and 

 STOP ALL RESEARCH. 



Indeed, SUCH A MOVE IS POSSIBLE 

 and in Mississippi and Tennessee it is 

 actually carried out. Children by the 

 millions are being LEGALLY RETARD- 

 ED IN THEIR MENTAL AND MORAL 

 DEVELOPMENT— and at the instigation 

 of religious leaders! All scientific facts 

 that contradict the fundamentalist inter- 

 pretation of Genesis are taboo. Teachers, 

 higkly trained in Science and History. 



Frogs Without Fathers 



By Joseph McCabe 



\ COUPLE of centuries ago, when 

 ■^^ science first discovered the existence 

 of germ cells, even the scientific imagina- 

 tion ran riot in speculating about them. 

 Here was a minute bit of jelly which, 

 given time and the proper conditions, 

 would build up the entire and marvelous 

 structure of a bird, a lion or a man. 

 How? Well, the first idea was that each 

 of these germs was a properly formed 

 body I of a bird, lion, man, and etc.) in 

 miniature. The tiny human ovum, less 

 than the hundredth of an inch in diameter, 

 was supposed to be a fully formed body, 

 with face, heart, nerves, muscles, etc. It 

 merely grew bigger in what we called its 

 embryonic development. If that is so, 

 the whole race must have been packed 

 away, in very small miniature, in the body 

 of Mother Eve. Indeed, one famous scien- 

 tist, working on the good old theory that 

 she trod the earth and ate apples six 

 thousand years ago, startled his contem- 

 poraries by estimating that Eve had inside 

 her no less than two hundred billion minia- 

 ture humans. ... It sounds funny today, 

 but recollect, on the other hand, that for 

 the previous five thousand years of civiliza- 

 tion men had been totally ignorant of the 

 very existence of germ-cells. They knew 

 little more about one of the most won- 

 derful phenomena in the world, the forma- 

 tion of a new body, than a child does. 



When the microscope became more 

 powerful, and it was seen that the body 

 was only gradually formed, the question of 

 the respective shares of male and female 

 became very intriguing, especially in view 

 of the scores of cases in which the male 

 did not co-operate. 



For the experimental embryologist 

 animals of the star-fish and sea- 

 urchin type are the most convenient. 

 He easily secures a few ova, as we 



must take orders from the ignorant clergy 

 as to what they shall teach, or lose their 

 positions. AND THE SAME CONDI- 

 TIONS PREVAIL IN MANY LOCALI- 

 TIES IN OTHER STATES. 



But the greatest menace in the piogram 

 of the Fundamentalists is their method of 

 teaching. Not one of their preachers would 

 open even the church basement to May- 

 nard Shipley, David .Starr Jordan, Joseph 

 McCabe or to Sir Arthur Keith. In deny- 

 ing a hearing to their opponents, in pro- 

 hibiting hv law the teaching of evolution, 

 they ASSUME THEY HAVE A MONOP- 

 OLY OF THE TRUTH. Did not this very 

 assumption cause the execution of Socra- 

 tes, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the burning 

 of Bruno, and the damnable humiliation of 

 poor old Galileo? Has it not caused more 

 suffering, more hindrance to progress, than 

 any idea that ever cursed the human race? 

 And will it not wreck our educational sys- 

 tem completely wherever it is put into 

 practice? 



insist on calling them in this "vulgar age" 

 of ours, instead of using the English 

 word "eggs," which seems to hurt peo- 

 ple's feelings, and bring the dark lanterns 

 of the police upon you. These microsco- 

 pic ova are then put in sea-water under 

 a lens, and you can follow the whole won- 

 derful story of the construction of the 

 very elaborate body of a starfish from 

 the tiny speck of plasm. If there are 

 both male and female elements in the 

 water, you find the tadpole-like male ele- 

 ments wrigghng about until one gets, by 

 chance, near the ovtun. Then some evacu- 

 ation from the ovum, akin to smell, seems 

 to attract it — here I am giving you a- 

 mere supposition — and at all events it 

 moves in toward the ovum. The next 

 step is curious. There is a jelly-like sub- 

 stance surrounding the ovum, and through 

 this it sends out a sort of filament toward 

 the male particle: for all the world as if 

 it were fishing for it. The male, in fact, 

 seems reluctant to be drawn in, and often 

 the tail lashes more vigorously and it 

 breaks away again. Normally it enters or 

 is drawn into the ovum, and the first 

 steps in the formation of a new organism 

 Soon follow. 



Loeb and others, watching these sea- 

 urchin elements under the microscope, no- 

 ticed that if the tadpole-like male cell 

 touched the ovum and got away again, 

 the ovum began to change just as if it 

 were fertilized. This gave them the idea- 

 of touching it with a needle. You want 

 some skill to touch a little globule of jelly 

 about the two-hundredth of an inch in 

 diameter — that is to say, far smaller than; 

 the dot on this i — with the point of a 

 needle, but the resources of a modern 

 laboratory can meet more exacting re- 

 quirements than that. It was done, and 

 we found the ovum began to develop. 



Meantime it was found that altering 

 the condition of the sea-water in which 

 the germ cells floated could bring about 

 the same result. If the quantity of salt ia 

 the water is greatly increased, the ovum, 

 without fertilization, begins to develop^ 

 Neither the simple prick of a needle nor 

 the strong solution of salt will make it 

 develop into a fully formed animal, but 

 experiments were multiplied by the thou- 

 sand until acids were discovered to bring 

 about the desired result. The pricked 

 ovum in a certain medium without the 

 needle, made the male superfluous, and 

 all kinds of animals, un to the level of the- 

 frog and the newt, came into the world 

 sinless and fatherless. You may ask why 

 we stop at the frog. Why not open out 

 the prospect. . . . There is no need to- 

 run on to speculations of this nature. On 

 reflection you will understand a very good 

 reason why the experiment stops at the 

 frog. It is the highest animal in the 

 world which leaves its ova floating in the 

 water. It is not so easy to try such ex- 

 periments on land animals. 



0. B. U. Bulletin. 



