Page Twelve 



E \^ O L U T I O N 



April. 1^)29 



McCabe-Riley Debate 



(Continued from Page 2) 



I could run over the whole of the earth and point 

 out that wherever you find an island population, if 

 that island is a detached fragment of the main land. 

 the animal population came from that main land. In 

 every part of the earth animals and plants are dis- 

 tributed without one single exception precisely as the 

 law of evolution demands. I want an alternatiye ex- 

 planation not only of the distribution, but most par- 

 ticularly of the exact coincidence of that distribution 

 with the theory of evolution. 



Then I turn to the animals themselves. Why has 

 the python the rudiments of lep's and claws in its body? 

 Why has the bird the rudiments of toes on the corner 

 of its wings? Why has the whale vestigial limbs and 

 leg bones in the flesh? 



I could wander over the whole animal world. If 

 those animals evolved, we understand it, for organs 

 which are thrown out of employment gradually decay. 

 Over and over again, we find that those organs were 

 useful in an earlier generation. We find hundreds of 

 such evidences in the animal world, I want an alter- 

 native explanation for that. 



We turn to man. Why, there are in the body of man 

 alone fifty or sixty useless organs or parts of organs 

 which cannot be explained by any theory except evolu- 

 tion. These bits of gristle on the side of your head, 

 your ears, will refute all the anti-evolutionists in the 

 world. No one can tell us that medical men cannot 

 say whether these are useful or not. They are useless 

 With these fifty or sixty useless organs in the human 

 body today we do not need to find one single bone 

 or one single stone of early man. We need only one 

 living human body, and I defy all the anti-evolutionists 

 of America to interpret that body on any lines except 

 those accepted by evolution. 



Thus two lines of evidence coincide. And if the 

 story of evolution is true, somewhere in the rocks 

 underneath your feet you will find the bones of the 

 ancestors of the animals and plants of today. We 

 open up the rocks of the earth just here and there, 

 just in little tiny scratches, as it were, but we have dug 

 out literally millions of remains of animals and plants 

 of long ago. 



I ask Dr. Riley to tell me of one of those remains 

 that is inconsistent with the doctrine of evolution. 



I say that we have rarely opened up the rocks. But 

 there is one seam of rock which we are vigorously ex- 

 ploiting all the world over. I mean our coal seams. 

 Will Dr. Riley tell us why we have never found in any 

 coal seam in the world any bone of any mammal, any 

 flowering plant, any bee, any ant, any wasp ? The entire 

 life of that great formation is familiar to us. Why 

 has no geologist ever found in it a trace of any animal 

 higher than the amphibian? 



Why, beneath the level of the chalk — and you know 

 the greater part of Europe lies level like a billiard 

 table — why, lieneath that chalk have we never found 

 the bones of one single animal even remotely re- 

 sembling the animals of today? 



The order of the rocks was determined more than 

 one hundred years ago, long before any geologist in 



the world entertained the idea of evolution. W^hy, 

 when we started the idea of evolution, was it found 

 that the millions of fossils in those rocks corresponded 

 without one single exception to the theory of the evo- 

 lutionist? Or if there is an exception, let us hear of it 

 tonight. 



Those are three lines of evidence, the coincidence 

 of which requires a serious explanation. I assume that 

 it is universally true, without a single exception. It is 

 up to my opponent to give you exceptions. But I am 

 not finished with those three lines. 



Many of you hav^ seen a mountainside. You have 

 seen the seams of rock twisted and torn as by some 

 convulsive force. Does anybody imagine that they 

 were created in that condition? Surely, they point 

 back to some long period of time in which the sands 

 were laid down on the floor of the sea and later 

 pressed into that solid condition you find today. Thus 

 the earth itself tells you of evolution, which the geolog- 

 ists have known for years to run into hundreds of mil- 

 lions of years. 



Then comes another science just at the last moment. 

 Decade by decade the proofs have accumulated. Some 

 time ago we discovered the wonderful elements thor- 

 ium and uranium, breaking up and turning into lead. 

 Scientific men said : "We know how long it takes 

 in-anium to turn into lead, so let us test the chronology 

 of the earth." Once more this new line of research, 

 the most magnificent trial of physical science — said : 

 "Those rocks run back to something like more than 

 one billion years from the present time." One more ' 

 triumph for evolution. And nothing has transpired 

 that is in the slightest degree inconsistent with evolu- 

 tion. 



Why is our earth in the condition in which it is 

 today? Why is Mars so much colder and so much 

 tliinner in atmosphere than the earth? Why is the 

 moon the dead, frozen world that we know it to be 

 today? Why does our earth come between them? 

 Why does the sun remain that mass of boiling vapors 

 that it is today? Every single feature of every single 

 body of our solar system corresponds .perfectly with 

 the theory of evolution. 



When I look out over the great universe, this mas- 

 sive system of two billion stars that we know today, 

 once more every object in the universe teaches evolu- 

 tion to us. There are the giant red stars, the young 

 stars, the imperfectly condensed masses of matter ris- 

 ing in temperature. There are stars packing closer and 

 closer, getting hotter and hotter. There are blue-white 

 stars tens of thousands of degrees in temperature and 

 then, going down the scale, dying suns down to the 

 dull, blood-red star that once shone white in the sky 

 billions upon billions of years ago. 



Not only on the earth, but from end to end of this 

 universe which we sweep with mighty telescopes, there ^ 

 is not one single object inconsistent with the doctrine ~ 

 of evolution. There are myriads of objects, but there 

 is not one single thing in this universe that is incon- 

 sistent with the doctrine of evolution. There are two 

 billion human beings. There are two billion stars. 

 There are billions of animals and plants, and all of 



