Dead Men Tell Tales

by Harry Rimmer

The so-called scientific investigation of the Scripture, however, has not been made on the basis of credible science. Rather, the prejudiced enemies have sought to gather from pseudo-scientific claims such help and hope for their opinions as would bolster their failing school. We frankly admit that the text of the Bible does refute the fallacies of men of science. There is a great deal of theoretical speculation indulged in by men who call themselves scientists, and who march under the banner of technical learning. In every age, when such fallacious theories are current, the Bible is necessarily repudiated by the exponents of those false ideas. Few such men, however, know the Bible, and their opposition has no lasting effect. This Book does not stand in any age by human consent, but has been able to maintain itself in every age by the inherent power of its supernatural character.

The science of archeology has played a great and leading role in demolishing these fallacies of a pseudo-scientific generation.

As an instance of this, we may note that the theory of organic evolution is unquestionably incompatible with the record of the Scripture. In the “dark ages” of biology which began to draw to a close at the beginning of this present decade, the thoughts of men were so darkened by the general acceptance of the baseless and unscientific theory of man’s animal origin, as sadly to handicap capable research and frustrate the pursuit of real knowledge. We see again, however, that truth, though crushed to the earth, will rise again. For certainly no one who is within ten years of being up to date in the facts of biology and the discoveries of archeology, will contend any longer for the animal origin of the human species.

The theory cannot be harmonized with the record of the Scripture. Therefore, in the days of blindness, when this particular theory possessed the imagination of men, it was used as an argument against the integrity of the text of the Word of God. This whole problem simmers down to a simple illustration. In dealing with the origin of man, there are two horses. The problem of every man is to decide which one he shall ride. One horse is known by the name of “specific creation,” and the other is called “organic evolution.”

It is impossible to ride them both at once. In riding two horses at one time, it is necessary to keep them close together and both going in the same direction. There is no record of anyone who successfully rode two horses simultaneously when they were headed in opposite directions!

These two premises are irreconcilable. The first is that man was created in perfection. In the moment of his fiat origin, he was formed by the hand of God, gifted with all the arts and cultures by a process of involution. The word “involution” simply means “to come down into.” That is to say, all of the graces and abilities possessed by man were imparted by creation.

The second theory is that “man has himself consummated a gradual ascent from a brutish state to our present high and civilized condition.” (If there were room in such a work as this for sarcasm, we might say that this is another way of noting that we have left the arrow and the club for heavy artillery, poison gas and aerial bomb. If one were to wax facetious, one might be tempted to suggest that if the present condition of international hatred, mass murder, violated treaties, forgotten honor, and civilian extermination in the holy name of war, are the best that evolution can accomplish, we should hand the whole mess back to the monkeys and ask them to stir up another batch!)

But to remain upon the sober grounds of scientific inquiry, it is not too much to say that the archeologist speaks upon this problem with absolute finality. There is nothing theoretical about archeology. What you dig up with your own hands, you are inclined to believe.

Some years ago we had a college lad on one of our expeditions who was strongly addicted to the theory of organic evolution. At the beginning of the work the lad showed some disposition to argue, and was somewhat disappointed that we refused to enter into debate with him upon our differing theories. As day followed day, however, and we got into the rich contents of burial mounds containing a fabulous amount of ossi, this lad became deeply concerned with the discrepancies between his textbook learning and what he saw in his own personal recoveries of ancient skeletons.

Every time he came to us with some bone that did not fit in with his classroom theories, we would laugh and say, “Don’t bother us. You dug that up. This poor bone never read your textbook and it doesn’t know how you want it to be. Now, which are you going to believe? The schematized drawing in a textbook written by some professor who never saw a burial mound, or this evidence that you yourself have acquired by your own labor?”