The weekly chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Craig County, Okla.) 1905-1913, 1912-02-23

4 iuS III turkey ne WOuiu De deNOut
Musselman ana would have prayers
three times a day standing on the
street corner, and with uplifted hands
proclaim: There is no God but Allah,
and Mohammed is his prophet" II
is very easy for man to express the
generally accepted opinions of his
countrymen and every excuse for him
remaining in the beaten path. Gus
tom greets us at the cradle and re-
mains with us through life, and we are
j largely the creatures Of circumstance.
4 l have no quarrel with the Captain as
to his beliefs, but insist that he must
allow other people the same rights that
he takes, and in answer to his oft-re-
peated dictum that he can not debate
+ a question with a hidden foe. / will
say that l have no desire to see my
name in print as | am not craving the
notoriety that the Captain seems to
think l do. In answer to his ques-
tions as to why corn produces feathers
when feed to a goose. or hair when fed
to a hog. l will gladly enlighten the
Captain on this point This is one of
the facts that shows to us that the
Universe is governed by law, irrevoc-
able, immutable law-the eternal law
of Cause and Effect, and not the cap
rice of some 2X4 Jewish God
Let me illustrate: The Captain be-
lieves that rains come from the heav-
ems, by God opening T. 'e windows of
Heaven and pouring the moisture down
upon us for he has re that the job
das done this way during the flood.
Science steps in and says that the rains
are governed by eyaporation-tha the
moisture is gathered in clouds and that
precipitation occurs by cold winds sud
denly causing the cloud vtpor to be-
come over saturated The precipita-
ton then occurs in the form of rain.
Science teaches that the beautiful rain
bow is caused by the reflection and re-
fraction of the suns rays on the little
atoms of moisture in the cloud. Cap
tain White knows that this phenome-
non is a miraculous affair and a GER
tificate given by God to his creatures
that he win not drown them again.
Science has proven through the eff
forts of Bruno, Copernicus, Calico
and others that the earth revolves on
its axis and that the sun is the center
of the Solar system. The Captain
knows this is not true because his
Bible teaches him that the sun moves
and that the earth has ends.
No, Captain, we are under immut-
able, inexorable laws, and we are as
unable to understand grain of sand
as we are the stars; but that fact does
not cause us to believe that a man
should murder his wife because she
holds religious opinions differing from
| his. Neither does it cause us to be.
llieve that the blowing of rams horns
caused the Walls of Jericho to fall
down. No doubt, there is great First
Cause, but we are as ignorant of that
as we are of anything else. Every
nation on the face of the earth has
sought to solve these problems and
they have all failed.
The first Nation to offer any ex-
tended solution of the Riddle of the
Universe" (and allow me to here sug-
gest to the Captain that he get a copy
of Haeckels work of this name) was
Babylonia. In this account which is
about four thousand years prior to the
account of Moses, the Creation COM
menced with Chaos. The gods arose
before heaven and earth had taken
shape, while the tumultuous floods of
oceans were still intermingled with
universal chaos The gods chose Mar
duk to be their champion against
Tiamat, the disturbing, chaotic ocean
flood. Marduk armed himself with the
| lightning flash and thunderbolt. and
lcalled the winds to his assistance.
Marduk yanquished Tiamat and diyid-
ed his corpse into two parts from
the one part he created the heavens
and from the other the earth and sea.
Marduk peopled the heavens with
stars, the dwellings of the great gods.
Then followed the creation of plants
and animals and finally the creation
of the first two human beings out of
clay. This account is of course not
true, for our God created out of moth
ing. It might be germane to this sub
ject to inquire who created our God.
In the famous Paley Watch argument.
Paley is made to say that a watch is
wonderful piece of mechanism, but
that the man that made the watch is
more wonderful than the watch; there
fore he must have had a being to
create him more wonderful than the
creature; but here the comparison
stops, and the supposition is; that the
Deity that created man being so much
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