ted, combines and solidifies society.
Dishonesty is disintegration; it destroys confidence; it brings
social chaos; it is therefore immoral.

I also admit that I regard the Mosaic account of the creation as
an absurdity--as a series of blunders. Probably Moses did the best
he could. He had never talked with Humboldt or Laplace. He knew
nothing of geology or astronomy. He had not the slightest suspicion
of Kepler's Three Laws. He never saw a copy of Newton's Principia.
Taking all these things into consideration, I think Moses did the
best he could.

The religious people say now that "days" did not mean days. Of
these "six days" they make a kind of telescope, which you can push
in or draw out at pleasure. If the geologists find that more time
was necessary they will stretch them out. Should it turn out that
the world is not quite as old as some think, they will push them
up. The "six days" can now be made to suit any period of time.
Nothing can be more childish, frivolous or contradictory.

Only a few years ago the Mosaic account was considered true, and
Moses was regarded as a scientific authority. Geology and astronomy
were measured by the Mosaic standard. The opposite is now true.
The church has changed; and instead of trying to prove that modern
astronomy and geology are false, because they do not agree with
Moses, it is now endeavoring to prove that the account by Moses is
true, because it agrees with modern astronomy and geology. In
other words, the standard has changed; the ancient is measured by
the modern, and where the literal statement in the Bible does not
agree with modern discoveries, they do not change the discoveries,
but give new meanings to the old account. We are not now endeavoring
to reconcile science with the Bible, but to reconcile the Bible
with science.

Nothing shows the extent of modern doubt more than the eagerness
with which Christians search for some new testimony. Luther answered
Copernicus with a passage of Scripture, and he answered him to the
satisfaction of orthodox ignorance.

The truth is that the Jews adopted the stories of Creation, the
Garden of Eden, Forbidden Fruit, and the Fall of Man. They were
told by older barbarians than they, and the Jews gave them to us.

I never said that the Bible is all bad. I have always admitted
that there are many good and splendid things in the Jewish Scriptures,
and many bad things. What I insist is that we should have the