And here is another extract:  “We often dream of falling.  Those who fell out of the trees some fifty thousand years ago and were killed, of course, had no descendants.  So those who fell and were not hurt, of course, lived, and so we are never hurt in our dreams of falling.”  Of course, if we were actually descended from the inhabitants of trees, it would seem quite likely that we descended from those that were not killed in falling.  But they must have been badly frightened if the impression made upon their feeble minds could have lasted for fifty thousand years and still be vivid enough to scare us.

If the Bible said anything so idiotic as these guessers put forth in the name of science, scientists would have a great time ridiculing the sacred pages, but men who scoff at the recorded interpretation of dreams by Joseph and Daniel seem to be able to swallow the amusing interpretations offered by the Pennsylvania professor.

A few months ago the Sunday School Times quoted a professor in an Illinois University as saying that the great day in history was the day when a water puppy crawled up on the land and, deciding to be a land animal, became man’s progenitor.  If these scientific speculators can agree upon the day they will probably insist on our abandoning Washington’s birthday, the Fourth of July, and even Christmas, in order to join with the whole world in celebrating “Water Puppy Day.”

Within the last few weeks the papers published a dispatch from Paris to the effect that an “eminent scientist” announced that he had communicated with the spirit of a dog and learned from the dog that it was happy.  Must we believe this, too?

But is the law of “natural selection” a sufficient explanation, or a more satisfactory explanation, than sexual selection?  It is based on the theory that where there is an advantage in any characteristic, animals that possess this characteristic survive and propagate their kind.  This, according to Darwin’s argument, leads to progress through the “survival of the fittest.”  This law or principle (natural selection), so carefully worked out by Darwin, is being given less and less weight by scientists.  Darwin himself admits that he “perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection and the survival of the fittest” (page 76).  John Burroughs, the naturalist, rejects it in a recent magazine article.  The followers of Darwin are trying to retain evolution while rejecting the arguments that led Darwin to accept it as an explanation of the varied life on the planet.  Some evolutionists reject Darwin’s line of descent and believe that man, instead of coming from the ape, branched off from a common ancestor farther back, but “cousin” ape is as objectionable as “grandpa” ape.

While “survival of the fittest” may seem plausible when applied to individuals of the same species, it affords no explanation whatever, of the almost infinite number of creatures that have come under man’s observation.  To believe that natural selection, sexual selection or any other kind of selection can account for the countless differences we see about us requires more faith in chance than a Christian is required to have in God.