Tales from the Morgue: Creation vs. evolution

"YOUNG MINDS ARE BEING POISONED," FUNDAMENTALIST SPEAKER SAYS
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"Evolution Bunk" Is Crammed Down Boys and Girls in High Schools, Dr. W. B. Riley Tells Tucson Crowd
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Professors in high schools and universities throughout the nation are teaching as "science" the theory of evolution; poisoning the minds of young people against the truth of the Holy Scriptures; telling them they descended from apes or monkeys or some other animal, Dr. W. B. Riley, Fundamentalist, told an audience in the Safford auditorium here last night.

For two hours Dr. Riley, who is pastor of the First Baptist church, head of the Northwest Bible institute, Minneapolis, and a leader among Fundamentalists, drove home a stirring message to a crowd that filled the auditorium.

He told in convincing terms why he believed the teaching of the theory of evolution should be barred from tax supported schools.

"They have no right to teach my child or your child a falsehood," he declared. Then he went on to prove why he believed the theory of evolution was unsound.

Species Never Cross

The speaker asserted that while evolution was only a theory, it was being taught as a fact, as science.

Science, he said, is knowledge gained and verified by exact observation or experimentation. Evolution, he pointed out, is a theory, a hypothesis, a "guess."

"I have no opposition against science," he said. "Every scientific discovery is but a discovery of God's word.

"There are 3,000,000 forms of life in nature, and in all these there never has been an example of one definite species developing into another species."

He emphasized this point, and quoted many authorities to prove that no definite species had ever evolved into any other definite species. There are many types of one species; for example, there are many varieties of pigeons, but they are all pigeons. If evolution were true, some of these thirty odd varieties of pigeons would be turkey gobblers, or something else, he said.

The mule, he explained, was an attempt to make a different species, and the mule is sterile. The crowd laughed when he said the mule was an attempt of the jackass to prove evolution, "thus making a bigger ass than himself," he said.

Species of animals which have been crossed will always revert back to the original type, when left alone, he pointed out. This is a scientific, almost undisputed fact, throughout nature.

He also quoted authorities who declared that, after years and years of study, they had found no illustration of evolution in the great British Museum.

"Bunk" Being Taught

All life is after the law of Genesis, he said: "All seed shall bring forth of its kind."

Ten times is this unfailing law found in Genesis: "Each seed is given to bring forth of its kind."

In a debate with a college professor, the professor cited the automobile as an every-day example of evolution. "First we had the one-cylinder and then the two; then the four-cylinder, then the six and then the double six,a' he quoted the professor as saying. "This is evolution."

Here was Dr. Riley's answer: "First there was one cylinder in the auto, then two, four, six and 12, as you say. But the first cylinder didn't decide to evolve itself into two cylinders, and the two cylinders decided to turn themselves into four and so on. The creator that made the one-cylinder made another, then two more, and kept adding. The same creator that made the one made the other."

He denounced evolution from other sources, but mainly on the grounds that it was un-scientific and un-scriptural.

He has read text books from many high schools and universities and has taken excerpts from them. Some of the excerpts he read were almost unbelievable. In one of the books from which he quoted, which is taught in a school, he said, there was a picture of a big worm. Underneath this picture was written: "This is a picture of the form from which we all have evolved."

How to Study the Bible

Dr. Riley for an hour and a half yesterday afternoon at the Baptist church, instructed about 100 persons in Bible study. He told them how to get the most out of their Bibles.

He gave five simple rules for Bible study. They are:

1. Read the Bible. Read it all.

2. Read it consecutively. Don't stop until you have finished any book which you have started.

3. Read it repeatedly. Each reading will provide new truth and new life.

4. Read it independently. Let the helps and hints and suggestions alone while you are reading it.

5. Read it prayerfully.

"The Bible originally was not chopped into chapters and split into verses," he said. "The verses and chapters are man made. Man usually makes a mess out of everything he does, and he did when he got to the Bible."

The speaker, who is said to be one of the foremost Bible scholars in the world, said there are too many hints and suggestions for Bible students. Persons are inclined to study the hints and miss the text of the Bible, especially in Sunday school lessons.