Some Book, &c."

This at once betrays the utmost ignorance of the volume to which he claims to have devoted a whole year's study. I don't believe the man who made such a claim, and then displayed so much ignorance, knows "what study is." And right here, since he so contemptibly undervalues the exact astronomical knowledge of the writer of Genesis, I will challenge him to give in figures or words the exact diameter of the sun, or even of our little earth. With all his boast of modern science he cannot do either. Nor can he give the exact length of the sun's year. No more is he able to state within two millions of miles how far the page 14 earth is distant from the sun. Yet these are the initial propositions of astronomy, and without the perfect knowledge of them there cannot possibly be an exact knowledge of the "science of the heavens." For if we cannot tell within two millions of miles how far we are from the centre of our own system, how is it possible we can arrive at exact details of our distance from the centres of other systems? The whole affair resolves itself into this form: we think that our knowledge of astronomy is a good deal more perfect than we think Moses' was. It is only a matter of what we think, not of what we know.

How terribly illogical Ingersoll can be in his hypercritical examination of Moses. "I think he thought that the sun was about three feet in diameter, because I find in some book that the sun was stopped a whole day." What has Moses to do with "some book"? Moses is surely not held responsible for more books than those of which he is the reputed author. Will our lecturer endorse the following syllogism?

Moses wrote some books;

In some books it is said that the sun was stopped a whole day;

Therefore, Moses wrote that the sun was stopped a whole day. Is not the argument absolutely conclusive? Seriously, is it not an evident reductio ad absurdum? And yet this brilliant American lecturer uses it as if in good earnest. He was perfectly aware that Moses never wrote a word about