34 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 
phones (the possibility of which were talked 
then) are impossibilities and rank infidelity; 
there is nothing in the Word of God about 
them. If God designed that his intelligent crea¬ 
tures should travel at the frightful speed of 
15 miles an hour He would have clearly fore¬ 
told it through his holy prophets. It is a de¬ 
vice of Satan to lead immortal souls down to 
hell.” 
Is there needed stronger proof than this of 
the mental slavery to which the belief in verbal 
inspiration reduces its devotees? 
Today those who oppose evolution for biblical 
reasons occupy the same absurd position as 
those who persecuted Galileo, denounced New¬ 
ton, opposed the use of anesthetics in child¬ 
birth, thwarted the digging of a Panama canal, 
regarded the introduction of railroads and other 
industrial innovations as tricks of the devil to 
damn our souls, and approved the selling into 
slavery of the adherents of a rival Christian 
sect. 
This medieval belief of verbal inspiration has 
filled the Christian world with strife and in¬ 
tolerance, and has drenched its soil with the 
blood of tens of thousands of “heretics.” It 
was this belief that for hundreds of years im¬ 
pelled whatever sect that had the power, be it 
Catholic or Protestant, to persecute, imprison, 
torture, burn, kill in every conceivable way 
those who differed with it in the interpretation 
of certain scriptural texts. T.his narrow, intol¬ 
erant belief, the very negation of the Christ 
spirit, lives today—but, thanks to modern sci¬ 
ence and intellectual progress, its teeth are 
drawn. 
