[Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith by Robert Patterson]@TWC D-Link book
Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith

CHAPTER II
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Those in his other works are too numerous to mention.

He continually mistakes his own assertions, or even his own mere conjectures, for proof, and refers back to them, and builds further assumptions upon them accordingly; and he assumes facts unproven and incapable of proof; and principles which he must know are denied by his opponents.

We can only take a few instances at random.
He assumes that all dogs are developed from wolves (Descent of Man, page 48); that the instincts of animals are developed (page 38); that language was developed (page 53); that there is a wider interval between the lamprey and the ape than between the ape and the man, thus begging the question of man's brutality (page 34); that the savage is the original state of man (page 63); that parental instincts are the result of Natural Selection, after owning utter ignorance of their origin (page 77); that the ideas of glory and infamy are the workings of sympathy (page 82); the heredity of moral tastes (page 98); that the standard of morality has been rising since the giving of the ten commandments (page 99); that our ancestors were quadrupeds (page 116); that there have been thousands of generations (page 125); that breeds have the character of species (Origin of Species, page 411); that rudimentary organs are inherited abortions (page 424); that there are four or five original progenitors, and distant evidence of only one (page 425); he assumes descent to prove his geology (page 428); and perpetual progress toward perfection (pages 59, 140, 176, 428), in the face of his own facts of retrogression.
Then look at the outrageous character of the assumption that beneficial variations may be added up indefinitely, that is, to infinity.

Because a gymnast can leap over two horses, can his son leap over three?
and his son over four?
and his son over five?
and can we in time breed a man who will leap to the moon?
And yet the whole theory is based upon forgetfulness of the maxim, that there is a limit to all things, and of the fact, that in creatures of flesh and blood this limit is very soon reached.
Look again at the utterly erroneous assumption that the tendency of the struggle for life is to improve the combatants; an assumption contradicted by the whole history of famine, war, pauperism, and disease, among brutes and men.

Were the survivors of the Irish famine of 1847, or those of the Persian, or Bengali famines improved by their struggle for life?
It is true the fittest survived; but that was all; they were miserably emaciated and demoralized.


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