And, if that is the case, then, as has often been pointed
out, the sloths of the Brazilian forests, the kangaroos of
Australia, the great tortoises of the Galapagos islands, must
have respectively hobbled, hopped, and crawled over many
thousand miles of land and sea from "Ararat" to their present
habitations. Thus, the unquestionable facts of the geographical
distribution of recent land animals, alone, form an insuperable
obstacle to the acceptance of the assertion that the kinds of
animals composing the present terrestrial fauna have been, at
any time, universally destroyed in the way described in
the Pentateuch.
It is upon this and other unimpeachable grounds that, as I
ventured to say some time ago, persons who are duly conversant
with even the elements of natural science decline to take the
Noachian deluge seriously; and that, as I also pointed out,
candid theologians, who, without special scientific knowledge,
have appreciated the weight of scientific arguments, have long
since given it up. But, as Goethe has remarked, there is nothing
more terrible than energetic ignorance;<9> and there are, even
yet, very energetic people, who are neither candid, nor clear-
headed, nor theologians, still less properly instructed in the
elements of natural science, who make prodigious efforts to
obscure the effect of these plain truths, and to conceal their
real surrender of the historical character of Noah's deluge
under cover of the smoke of a great discharge of
pseudoscientific artillery.
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