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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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**** ****
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Little Blue Book No. 1597
|
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Haldeman-Julius Company
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|
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THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
by E. Haldeman-Julius
|
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|
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Atheism is accurately defined as the denial of the assumptions
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of theism. The theist affirms that there is a God running the
|
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universe; he declares that the idea of such a God is necessary to
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an understanding of life; he offers various arguments or, as he
|
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rather presumptuously calls them, evidences for his God Idea.
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||
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What is the position, logically, of the atheist? He will not
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||
say in a mild, uncertain fashion that he doesn't know whether the
|
||
idea is true or that it is an open question. He has studied
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||
carefully the case for and against theism. He finds that case
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||
utterly insupportable, lacking any real or positive evidence,
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||
defended by arguments which are easily discovered to be casuistic
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||
and fallacious, and linking itself with other supplementary ideas
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||
which are incredible.
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||
|
||
The atheist perceives that history, in every branch of
|
||
science, in the plainly observable realities of life and in the
|
||
processes of common sense there is no place for the picture of a
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||
God; the idea doesn't fit in with a calmly reasoned' and realistic
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||
view of life. The atheist, therefore dentes the assumptions of
|
||
theism because they are mere assumptions and are not proved;
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whereas the contrary evidences, against the idea of theism, are
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overwhelming. He takes a clear-cut position. To proclaim himself an
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agnostic, while to some if might appear more respectable and
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cautious, would be to say in effect that he hadn't decided what to
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believe.
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||
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||
We can understand, of course, why many prefer to call
|
||
themselves agnostics. They don't wish to appear bigoted. Or they
|
||
are honestly in doubt and feel that the idea of God may or may not
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||
be true; yet with scarcely an exception the attitude of the
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agnostic is the same as that of the atheist -- he denies the
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||
assumptions of theism -- his disbelief in God, as an agnostic, is
|
||
quite as strong really as the atheist's disbelief.
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But atheism is not in the least bigoted. It is a conclusion
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reached by the most reasonable methods and one which is not
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asserted dogmatically but is explained in its every feature by the
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||
light of reason. The atheist does not boast of knowing in a
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||
vainglorious, empty sense. He understands by knowledge the most
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||
reasonable and clear and sound position one can take on the basis
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||
of all the evidence at hand. This evidence convinces him that
|
||
theism is not true, and his logical position, then, is that of
|
||
atheism.
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We repeat that the atheist is one who denies the assumptions
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of theism. he asserts, in other words, that he doesn't believe in
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a God because he has no good reason for believing in a God. That's
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atheism -- and that's good sense.
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1
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THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
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ATHEISM IS THE REALISTIC ANSWER TO THE GOD IDEA
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We are not fanatics on the subject of religion. If it were
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merely a matter of abstract argument, we should not be so
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interested. Ideas, if they could be quite separated from actual
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influence in living issues, might be regarded with an air of
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||
detachment. They might in such case be discussed mildly and
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dismissively, One might be indifferent to such ideas or only amused
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by them.
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But religion has always asserted and it does yet assert a very
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direct and commanding interest in the conduct of men. It is true
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||
that, fortunately, there are old terrors and powers that religion
|
||
no longer can exercise so effectively as it did only a few score
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||
years ago. But the atmosphere and the attitude of bigotry remain.
|
||
If religion cannot ordinarily invoke the armed force of law to
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||
punish heretics, It still plays upon the psychology of fear and
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||
predominantly its influence is to frighten men and distort their
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||
views and poison every process of their reasoning.
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||
|
||
The remnant of religion that is cherished by a few educated
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and urbane men -- the philosophical or poetic religion that one
|
||
observes here and there -- does not concern us so acutely. Such a
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provisional or partial belief in religion is baseless logically and
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it is confusing; but we may grant that it is relatively harmless;
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we can point out its fallacy and continue cheerfully on our way
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about other things. But this philosophical or poet religion is not,
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after all, the religion of the masses.
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There are many cultured people who do not realize that among
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the masses -- among millions of honest but deluded people -- the
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||
most extravagant, fanatical and obviously dangerous notions about
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religion are prevalent. One of the malign emotional and prejudicial
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||
influences that helped to lend menacing strength to the late Ku
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||
Klux Klan, for example, was the spirit of religious prejudice. We
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||
all know how that vicious organization was strengthened by a
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||
Protestant tone of creedal fanaticism. On the other hand, the
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||
Catholics have their own extreme tone of fanaticism; and they still
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||
assert, moreover, that the Catholic religion should be and
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||
rightfully is supreme in belief and power -- Catholicism, that is
|
||
to say, is definitely opposed to the modern principles of political
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||
liberty and intellectual freedom.
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||
|
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Protestantism is not, in its definite official statements, so
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||
brazenly intolerant. Probably this is because Protestantism
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includes so many creeds -- and these religious people feel that
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||
they must be protected against one another. They are not so kindly
|
||
toward atheists.
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||
|
||
In a number of American states atheists cannot testify in a
|
||
court of law. Blasphemy laws are still on the statute books; and
|
||
occasionally they are enforced. Our laws regarding marriage and sex
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||
are sadly distorted by religious prejudice; and a few of these
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||
distortions and absurdities are ably summarized by Anthony M.
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||
Turano. Bible reading (which means Bible-teaching) in the public
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||
schools is compulsory in Pennsylvania, Arkansas and other states.
|
||
in Tennessee and Mississippi a medieval law bans the teaching of
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||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
2
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
evolution -- the teaching, in a word, of the most serious principle
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||
of truth in modern science -- in the, public schools. The
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||
circulation of a responsible, scholarly, important sex
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questionnaire at the University of Missouri was followed by a
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||
ridiculous campaign of prejudice in which the chief element,
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||
plainly enough, was a religious attitude of obscurantism on sex
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||
question.
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||
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||
Our laws and customs are still deplorably handicapped and
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||
corrupted by the ideas of religion. These ideas are no longer of
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||
valid currency in the intellectual world. They are centuries behind
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||
the times. They are not insisted upon with such vicious and
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||
perilous persistency as was the case a few centuries ago. But they
|
||
remain -- these terribly wrong and menacing ideas -- and it is the
|
||
part of a civilized program of enlightenment to combat these ideas
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||
with all the force Possible.
|
||
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||
We, of course, believe in the force of reason and argument and
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||
persuasion; yes, and the force of ridicule and denunciation, all
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||
legitimate and free weapons which we can employ against religion;
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||
in short, we believe in the clarifying conflict of ideas, and as
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||
region cannot be defended intelligently we know that in the long
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run it must he conquered. It remains yet, however, as a serious and
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||
major issue in the thoughts and actions of men. Granting, we
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naturally do, the fullest right of every man to believe in any
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||
theory of religion or politics or social conduct which is preferred
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||
by him, we do not forget that we have an equal right to promote our
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||
own ideas and to attack, relentlessly and clearly, ideas which we
|
||
recognize as vicious in theory and inevitably vicious also in
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||
practice.
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||
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||
We are well aware that religion is not as bad an influence as
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||
it was a short time ago, as history is counted. But it is a
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||
sufficiently bad influence even in modern times; and its reduced
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||
viciousness (in practice) is due plainly enough to its reduced
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||
power. We want to reduce that power to an absolute nullity. We want
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||
religion to be entirely outgrown by the advancing intelligence of
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mankind. Universal education is our ideal; and this means, in our
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||
convinced opinion, that the philosophy of atheism (which is also
|
||
the philosophy of realism) wall displace with complete sanity and
|
||
wholesomeness the dark and morbid and unintelligently fanciful
|
||
ideas of religion.
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||
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||
We advocate the atheistic philosophy because it is the only
|
||
clear, consistent position which seems possible to us. As atheists,
|
||
we simply deny the assumptions of theism; we declare that the God
|
||
idea, in all its features, is unreasonable and unprovable; we add,
|
||
more vitally, that the God idea is an interference with the
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||
interests of human happiness and progress. We oppose religion not
|
||
merely as a set of theological ideas; but we must also oppose
|
||
religion as a political, social and moral influence detrimental to
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the welfare of humanity.
|
||
|
||
We attack religion because religion is not true -- because
|
||
religion is an obstacle (or a set of obstacles) in the way of
|
||
progress -- because religion foments strife and prejudice --
|
||
because religion is the breeding ground of intolerance -- because,
|
||
in short, religion is essentially hostile to mankind.
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
3
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
Religion glorifies the dogma of a despotic, mythical God.
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||
Atheism ennobles the interests of free and progressive Man.
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||
Religion is superstition. Atheism is sanity. Religion is medieval.
|
||
Atheism is modern.
|
||
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PREACHER URGES THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
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RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM
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That religious fanaticism is a modern menaCe and not merely a
|
||
medieval memory, that steady propaganda on behalf of freedom of
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||
thought is a most serious necessity, we have proved again for our
|
||
warning in the sermon of Rev. W.D. Lewis, pastor of the Second
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Presbyterian church of Wheeling, W. Va. This preacher, who occupies
|
||
the pulpit of an important city church, declares that religious
|
||
liberty must be ended in America and that a system of compulsory
|
||
religion must be established. "I shall never be in full sympathy
|
||
with our system of compulsory education," he said, "until there is
|
||
set up side by side with it a system of compulsory religion."
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||
|
||
In suggesting a course of despotic religious procedure for
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||
modern times, Rev. Lewis goes away back to the days of ancient
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||
Israel. He turns to the Bible and its Old Testament code of
|
||
theocratic laws. Modern Americans, he says, must be compelled to
|
||
acknowledge the sovereignty of a personal, autocratic, all-ruling
|
||
God. even as did the ancient Israelites -- and, according to the
|
||
scheme of this preacher, this God of Bunk must be worshipped by all
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||
and no argument permitted.
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||
|
||
"The whole scheme of things In Israel," says Rev. Lewis,
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||
"revolved around the idea of a personal God. The first leaders of
|
||
the Jews saw that it would never do to attempt to create a national
|
||
solidarity without the establishment of a fixed authority ... So,
|
||
those first leaders of Israel did the wisest thing eyer done by any
|
||
group of men aspiring to bring forth a nation: They invested all
|
||
authority in God. They took neither responsibility nor credit for
|
||
themselves.... They were simply his mouthpieces and his agents."
|
||
|
||
That the priests and rulers of Israel "took neither
|
||
responsibility nor credit for themselves" is of course a ridiculous
|
||
bit of sophistry. They had a very imposing prestige and very
|
||
profitable revenues in their role as the "mouthpieces and agents"
|
||
of their mythical God, Clearly it was a great stroke of clever
|
||
exploitation (clever enough to deceive primitive tribes and clever
|
||
enough to fool many moderns who nevertheless do not live
|
||
intellectually in the modern age) for the priests to put over the
|
||
faction that a big, strong, mysterious and fearsome God was behind
|
||
their words and actions; that piece of fiction made the priests
|
||
seem far greater than mere men, greater than merely human rulers,
|
||
and they have fought and schemed jealously through the centuries to
|
||
retain that advantage.
|
||
|
||
It is the prestige and power of clericalism that Rev. Lewis is
|
||
eager to have restored fully in America. This is clear in what he
|
||
says about the specific command to worship (i.e., to patronize the
|
||
clerical shops of superstition). "One day in seven, the Sabbath,"
|
||
he says, "was made holy unto God and set aside solely for his
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
4
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
worship (in ancient Israel). There was no choice about It. In those
|
||
first days there was no such thing as religious liberty in Israel.
|
||
A man had to go to worship whether he liked It or not. The fact
|
||
that he didn't like the priests didn't matter... The excuse that he
|
||
was intellectually superior to the congregation of Israel didn't
|
||
work... Religious liberty was given no thought in Israel. I
|
||
sometimes wonder if it isn't given too much thought in our own
|
||
America."
|
||
|
||
We might indeed remind Rev. Lewis that in modern America we
|
||
have many features of life which were unknown in ancient Israel. We
|
||
have not only religious liberty but also political liberty, and the
|
||
two are inseparable. The Old Testament Jews, that primitive and
|
||
superstitious tribe, had no conception of modern democracy. They
|
||
had no glimmering of the materials of modern education. For
|
||
instance, those old Jews whom Rev. Lewis would have us follow in
|
||
their system of religious despotism had the most ridiculous notions
|
||
of life -- they believed in creation by a God and in all the
|
||
farrago of legends which are sprawlingly conspicuous in the Old
|
||
Testament. They believed that the earth was the center of a very
|
||
small universe (they had really no conception of a universe) and
|
||
that the sun, moon and stars were merely conveniences to illuminate
|
||
the earth. They had the most absurd, strangely twisted, cruelly
|
||
barbaric and superstitious ideas of morality -- the conception of
|
||
moral law as social law, while it was necessarily followed by them
|
||
to some extent, was not fully understood by them. Crude indeed were
|
||
the ideas prevalent in ancient Israel about religion and about
|
||
government and about morality and about the earth and man. If we
|
||
were really compelled to follow the ways of ancient Israel, as this
|
||
West Virginia preacher insists we should, we have should have to
|
||
scrap our system of education and embrace the system of despotic
|
||
religion in its stead.
|
||
|
||
It may be doubted if Rev. Lewis has much concern for
|
||
education, save as it can be used spuriously as a support for
|
||
religion. His fixed idea seems to be the importance of compulsory
|
||
religion. "I shall never be in full sympathy with our system of
|
||
irreligious education. Why should we be compelled to attend and
|
||
support our schools if there is nothing that can be done to compel
|
||
us to attend and support our churches? ... If education is
|
||
absolutely necessary for our community life so is religion. Or yet
|
||
why should we be compelled to support the idea of government if we
|
||
are at liberty to treat the idea of God with contempt? ... You will
|
||
never make a full success of a compulsory government or a
|
||
compulsory education until you give the same dignity to religion
|
||
and make it compulsory; at any rate compulsory enough to make it
|
||
respected throughout the land. The nation that plays fast and loose
|
||
with its idea of God will soon or late play fast and loose with its
|
||
idea of education and its idea of government. ... If God doesn't
|
||
matter, then nothing else matters, and all the compulsions of life
|
||
might just as well be set aside."
|
||
|
||
What Rev. Lewis does not understand (and presumably does not
|
||
care about) is the truth, well illustrated in history, that no
|
||
system of education can survive as educationally free and genuine
|
||
if it is loaded with the chains of a compulsory religion. A
|
||
religious despotism is utterly incompatible with the freedom and
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
5
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
dignity and progressive achievements of social life. As a matter of
|
||
fact, religion is an eccentric revival from ignorant earlier
|
||
periods in the life of mankind. It is not in sympathy with
|
||
modernism (of course not) and it cannot be reconciled with
|
||
modernism. The right to believe in religion and practice its forms
|
||
of worship as an individual affair is one that, on modern
|
||
principles, we must grant. Religion however, must be kept in its
|
||
place as a private matter. It is too dangerous when it goes beyond
|
||
that and presumes to command or threaten the state. Rev. Lewis is
|
||
an exponent, bold yet typical, of a sentiment of religious bigotry
|
||
which we cannot afford lightly to dismiss nor to ignore. We must
|
||
expose these bigots and fight them with a sternness that is
|
||
uncompromising and a sweep of propaganda that is resistible.
|
||
|
||
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
|
||
|
||
The problem of evil has always been a mischievous, difficult
|
||
trap, of tormented logic for theologians. They have affirmed
|
||
dogmatically the existence of an all-powerful and omniscient and
|
||
benevolent God -- but in explaining the evil things in the world
|
||
they have been not at all deft but rather desperate.
|
||
|
||
We have been told that God created only the good and not the
|
||
evil -- but that doesn't jibe with the theory of a God who has
|
||
complete power. If he can't prevent evil, then he is a limited God
|
||
with a grave element of weakness.
|
||
|
||
Others have argued that God permitted the evil for purposes of
|
||
his own, which were really good purposes but beyond man's finite
|
||
comprehension. But that is a harassed recourse of a man who is in
|
||
a corner and can think of nothing better to say. It is an argument
|
||
that admits of no demonstration. It assumes something that can't be
|
||
proved. It isn't satisfactory.
|
||
|
||
Again, we are told that there is no evil in the world -- that
|
||
when we regard certain phenomena as evil it is only because we have
|
||
a distorted view -- that all things are good if we could only
|
||
understand them truly. And that again is wild assertion without
|
||
even the appearance of logic.
|
||
|
||
Yes, the problem of evil is too much for theologians. It can't
|
||
be reconciled with the God Idea. It is understandable only in a
|
||
naturalistic, atheistic view of things.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
After all, the principle objection which a thinking man has to
|
||
religion is that religion is not true -- and is not even sane.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
The fear of gods and devils is never anything but a pitiable
|
||
degradation of the human mind,
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
CAN GOD LIE?
|
||
|
||
This question is put to Christians who believe that the Bible
|
||
unerringly describes God and reports the commands and the
|
||
characteristics of God. If there is a God, it is natural that we
|
||
should wish to be quite correct in our understanding of that God's
|
||
nature. So, we ask: Can and does God lie?
|
||
|
||
Looking this point up in the mazes of Holy Writ, we discover
|
||
confusion. In Numbers xxiii, 19, we are told: "God is not a man,
|
||
that he should lie." This is put even mere strongly in Hebrews vi,
|
||
18, where we read: "It was impossible for God to lie."
|
||
|
||
But do these citations settle the matter? Ah, no, we are upset
|
||
in, our calculations the moment we turn to 2 Thessalonians ii, 11,
|
||
where we read: "For this cause God shall send them strong
|
||
delusions, that they should believe a lie." And in I Kings xxii,
|
||
23, God is thus reported: "Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath
|
||
put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the
|
||
Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee."
|
||
|
||
Can God lie? Can the Bible lie? Anyway, there is a mistake
|
||
somewhere. The big mistake is in entertaining the idea of a God.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
When we read that some minor scientist (usually a skilled
|
||
technical worker but not a thinker in science) has "found God"
|
||
somewhere, we are not excited. We know this is only a form of
|
||
words, meaning only that the scientific worker, turning away from
|
||
science, has rediscovered the stale old assumption of theology,
|
||
"There is a God." We find invariably (as we should expect) that
|
||
there is no satisfactory definition or description or
|
||
identification or location or proof of a God. "God" is merely a
|
||
word, whether it is used by a preacher or a mystic in a laboratory.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
The fact that millions of people still believe in a hell of
|
||
eternal punishment for sinners and unbelievers is a drastic
|
||
reminder of the need for persistent, progressive education of the
|
||
masses. We have as yet only begun to realize the possibilities of
|
||
progress. But science, rationalism and humanism have pointed the
|
||
way, they have taken the first great steps, and we must keep right
|
||
ahead on the highway of modernism.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
Don't take our word for it. Read the Bible itself. Read the
|
||
statements of preachers. And you will understand that God is the
|
||
most desperate character, the worst villain in all fiction
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
Commonly, those who have professed the strongest motives of
|
||
love of a God have demonstrated the deepest hatred toward human joy
|
||
and liberty.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
Theism tells men that they are the slaves of a God. Atheism
|
||
assures men that they are the investigators and users of nature.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
Belief in gods and belief in ghosts is identical. God is taken
|
||
as a more respectable word than ghost, but it means no more.
|
||
______________
|
||
|
||
Religion, throughout the greater part of its history, has been
|
||
a form of "holy" terrorism. It still aims its terrors at men, but
|
||
modern realism and the spread of popular enlightenment has
|
||
progressively robbed those terrors of their old-fashioned
|
||
effectiveness. Wherever men take religion very seriously --
|
||
wherever there is devout belief -- there is also the inseparable
|
||
feeling of fear.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
Christian theology has taught men that they should submit with
|
||
unintelligent resignation to the worst real evils of life and waste
|
||
their time in consideration of imaginary evils in "the life to
|
||
come."
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
Priests and preachers have tricked, terrified and exploited
|
||
mankind. They have lied for glory of God." They have collected
|
||
immense financial tribute for "the glory of God." Whatever may be
|
||
said about the character of individuals among the clergy, the
|
||
character of the profession as a whole has been distinctly and
|
||
drastically anti-human. And of course the most sincere among the
|
||
clergy have been the most dangerous, for they have been willing to
|
||
go to the most extreme lengths of intolerance for "the glory of
|
||
God."
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
Perhaps religion might be dismissed as unimportant if it were
|
||
merely theoretical. If it were merely theoretical. It is difficult,
|
||
however, if not impossible to separate theory and practice.
|
||
Religion, to be sure, is full of inconsistencies between theory and
|
||
practice; but there is and has always been sternly and largely a
|
||
disposition of religion to enforce its theory in the conduct of
|
||
life; religion has meant not simply dogmatism in abstract thinking
|
||
but intolerance in legal and social action. Religion interferes
|
||
with life and, being false, it necessarily interferes very much to
|
||
the detriment of the sound human interests of life.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
For centuries men have fought in the most unusual and devious
|
||
ways to prove the existence of a God. But evidently a God, if there
|
||
were a God, has been hiding out. He has never been discovered or
|
||
proved. One would think a God, if any, should have revealed himself
|
||
unmistakably. Isn't this non-appearance of a God (the non-
|
||
appearance of a God in the shape of a single bit of evidence for
|
||
his existence) a pretty, strong, sufficient proof of non-existence?
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
A God of love, a God of wrath, a God of jealousy, a God of
|
||
bigotry, a God of vulgar tirades, a God of cheating and lying --
|
||
yes, the Christian God is given all of these characteristics, and
|
||
isn't it a wretched mess to be offered to men in this twentieth
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
century? The beginning of wisdom, the beginning of humanism, the
|
||
beginning of progress is the rejection of this absurd,
|
||
extravagantly impossible myth of a God.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
HIDDEN GODS
|
||
|
||
Look at the God idea from any angle, and it is foolish, it
|
||
doesn't make sense, but extravagantly proposes more mysteries than
|
||
it assumes to explain. For instance, is it sensible that a real God
|
||
would leave mankind in such confusion and debate about his
|
||
character and his laws?
|
||
|
||
There have been many alleged revelations of God. There have,
|
||
indeed, been many Gods as there have been many Bibles. And in
|
||
different ages and different lands an endless game of guessing and
|
||
disputing has gone on. Men have argued blindly about God. They
|
||
still argue -- just as blindly.
|
||
|
||
And if there is a God, we must conclude that he has willfully
|
||
left men in the dark. He has not wanted men to know about him.
|
||
Assuming his existence, then it would follow that he would have
|
||
perfect ability to give a complete and universal explanation of
|
||
himself, so that all men could see and know without further
|
||
uncertainty. A real God could exhibit himself clearly to all men
|
||
and have all men following his will to the last letter without a
|
||
doubt or a slip.
|
||
|
||
But when we examine even cursorily the many contradictory
|
||
revelations of God, the many theories and arguments, the many and
|
||
diverse principles of piety, we perceive that all this talk about
|
||
God his been merely the natural floundering of human ignorance.
|
||
|
||
There has been no reality in the God idea which men could
|
||
discover and agree upon. The spectacle has been exactly what we
|
||
should expect when men deal with theories of something which does
|
||
not exist.
|
||
|
||
Hidden Gods -- no Gods -- all we see is mans poor guesswork.
|
||
|
||
TAKE YOUR CHOICE
|
||
|
||
If the Bible, which Christians believe is the word of God, is
|
||
inspired and infallible, why does it have two distinctly opposite
|
||
versions of many things? God's nature and God's opinions and God's
|
||
wishes are contradictorily reported in Holy Writ.
|
||
|
||
It is stated, for example, in Genesis i, 31, as follows: "And
|
||
God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good."
|
||
But in Genesis vi, 6, it is stated: "And it repented the Lord that
|
||
he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."
|
||
Does the good Christian believe both statements?
|
||
|
||
In Chronicles vii, 12, 16, we read: And the Lord appeared to
|
||
Solomon by night, and said unto him: I have heard thy prayer, and
|
||
have chosen this place to myself for a house of sacrifice... For
|
||
now have I chosen and sanctified this house that my name may be
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
there forever; and mine eyes and my heart shall be there
|
||
perpetually." Then in Acts vii 48, we read: "Howbeit the Most High
|
||
dwelleth not in temples made with hands."
|
||
|
||
Whether God preferred the darkness or the light seemed to be
|
||
uncertain to the Hebrew prophets of the Most High; but if the Bible
|
||
were thoroughly inspired there should have been perfect agreement.
|
||
But in I Timothy vi, 16, God is referred to in this manner:
|
||
"Dwelling in the light which no man can approach." On the other
|
||
hand, in I Kings viii, 12 this reference is contradictorily made:
|
||
"The Lord said that he would dwell in the thick darkness." And in
|
||
Psalm xviii we are told about God: He made darkness his secret
|
||
place." And in Psalm xcvii, 2 we are told: "Clouds and darkness are
|
||
round about him."
|
||
|
||
Such contradictions are common in the Bible. Naturally this
|
||
happened, as the Bible was a collection of books written at
|
||
different times by different men -- a strange mixture of diverse
|
||
human documents -- and a tissue of irreconcilable notions.
|
||
Inspired? The Bible is not even intelligent. It is not even good
|
||
craftsmanship, but is full of absurdities and contradictions.
|
||
|
||
"GOD'S WILL"
|
||
|
||
Thoughtful men have always observed that "God's will," as that
|
||
amusing expression has been employed by theologians and by lay
|
||
Commentators, has been nothing more nor less than a reflection of
|
||
human impulses and desires and fears and whimsicalities. Whoever
|
||
interprets this so-called will of God always presents a picture of
|
||
his own, the interpreter's, way of looking at things.
|
||
|
||
A sober, devout man will interpret "God's will" soberly and
|
||
devoutly. A fanatic, with bloodshot mind, will interpret "God's
|
||
will" fanatically. Men of extreme, illogical views will interpret
|
||
"God's will" in eccentric fashion. Kindly, charitable, generous men
|
||
will interpret "God's will" according to their character.
|
||
|
||
And of course this means that whatever happens in life and in
|
||
the world of nature, entirely independent of the will of any
|
||
supposed God, such happenings (of the most immensely variant and
|
||
complex kind) are ascribed to the will of Gad -- a blanket phrase,
|
||
and a bombastic one too, which explains absolutely nothing. Back of
|
||
the phrase "God's will" -- and back of the idea, such as it is,
|
||
which is reflected by this phrase -- there is the old, sound, and
|
||
really (to the thinking man) obvious truth that gods and all that
|
||
appertains to them are fashioned by, man in his own image or, that
|
||
is to say, by men in the images cast by their fancies and fears.
|
||
Whit we have under observation, always, are human impulses and
|
||
schemes of action: to say that "God's will" is behind them, is to
|
||
say exactly nothing.
|
||
|
||
INCREDIBLE INSTANCES
|
||
|
||
As the Bible is regarded as a holy and inspired book by
|
||
practically all Christians, a book absolutely without errors by
|
||
many Christians, and the most important proof (through alleged.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
revelation) of the existence of a God by many Christians, it is
|
||
very important to point out incredible instances recorded in the
|
||
Bible which no man can sensibly believe.
|
||
|
||
Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll did a very useful. work in
|
||
exposing the folly of believing that the Bible was inspired. "One
|
||
can scarcely be blamed," he said, "for hesitating to believe that
|
||
God met Moses at a hotel and tried to kill him [Exodus iv, 24];
|
||
that afterward he made, this Moses a god to Pharaoh, and gave him
|
||
his brother Aaron for a prophet [Exodus vii, 1]; that he turned all
|
||
the ponds and pools and streams and all the rivers into blood
|
||
[Exodus vii, 19] and all the water in vessels of wood and stone;
|
||
that the rivers thereupon brought forth frogs [Exodus viii, 3];
|
||
that the frogs covered the whole land of Egypt; that he changed
|
||
dust into lice, so that all the men, women, children and animals
|
||
were covered with them [Exodus viii, 16, 17]; that he sent swarms
|
||
of flies upon the Egyptians [Exodus viii, 21]; that he destroyed
|
||
the innocent cattle with painful diseases; that he covered man and
|
||
beast with blains and boils [Exodus ix, 9]; that he so covered the
|
||
magicians of Egypt with boils that they could not stand before
|
||
Moses for the purpose of performing the same feat [Exodus ix, 11];
|
||
that he destroyed every beast and every man that was in the fields,
|
||
and every herb, and broke every tree with storm of hail and fire
|
||
[Exodus ix, 25]; that he sent locusts that devoured every herb that
|
||
escaped the hall, and devoured every tree that grew [Exodus x, 15];
|
||
that he caused thick darkness over the land and put lights in the
|
||
houses of the Jews [Exodus x, 22, 23]; that he destroyed all of the
|
||
firstborn of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh upon the throne
|
||
to the firstborn of the maidservant that sat behind the mill
|
||
[Exodus xi, 5], together with the firstborn of all beasts, so that
|
||
there was not a house in which the dead were not [Exodus xii, 29,
|
||
30]."
|
||
|
||
Do these marvels read like inspiration? Or do they read like
|
||
superstition? Remember that millions of Christians still base their
|
||
belief in a God upon the words of the Bible, which is a collection
|
||
of the most flabbergasting fictions ever imagined -- by men, too,
|
||
who had lawless but very poor and crude imagination. Ingersoll and
|
||
numerous other critics have shot the Christian holy book full of
|
||
holes. It is worthless and proves nothing concerning the existence
|
||
of a God. The idea of a God is worthless and unprovable.
|
||
|
||
BLIND ALLEYS
|
||
|
||
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
|
||
Doctor and Saint and heard great argument
|
||
About it and about evermore
|
||
came out by the door as in I went.
|
||
|
||
This well-known stanza by Omar, the agnostic Persian poet,
|
||
expresses the simple truth that he learned nothing from all the
|
||
arguments about God -- nothing, that is to say, except that the
|
||
arguments were aimless and meaningless. The doctors and the saints
|
||
were floundering amid unrealistic abstractions. God was merely a
|
||
name. It had scarcely the solid dignity and comprehensibility of an
|
||
idea -- even a false idea.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
This argumentation which taught nothing to Omar -- which left
|
||
him with as little evidence for a God as before he heard a word of
|
||
the argumentation -- was a vain, wordy repetition of fears,
|
||
fancies, assumptions, dogmas and whimsically elaborated nonsense.
|
||
And so it has always been. The efforts of theism, intellectually
|
||
speaking, have been a chasing up blind alleys. They have arrived
|
||
nowhere -- but on the contrary the more argument there has been
|
||
about the idea of God, the more steadily have men grown in the
|
||
conviction that the idea is obviously untrue and unrealistic.
|
||
|
||
Talk of God leads by a direct road to the conclusion of
|
||
atheism. The only sensible attitude is to dismiss the idea of God
|
||
-- to get it out of the way of more important ideas. The wide
|
||
dissemination of this intelligent atheistic attitude is one of the
|
||
leading features of any program of popular education which is
|
||
completely worthy of the name.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
With its fears and superstitions and prejudices, religion
|
||
poisons the mind of any one who believes in it -- and even the best
|
||
man, under the influence of religion, cannot reason wholesomely.
|
||
Atheism, on the contrary, opens the mind to the clean winds of
|
||
truth and establishes a fresh-air sanity.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
Nobody has ever taken notable pains to locate the legendary
|
||
heaven; but probably that is because nobody ever thought seriously
|
||
of going to a heaven.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
IS GOD A JOKER?
|
||
|
||
A few weeks ago a hurricane struck the little religious
|
||
community of Bethany, Okla. A number of pious citizens of the
|
||
little town were killed. Houses were destroyed -- homes in which
|
||
prayer and devotion reigned. A church was demolished.
|
||
|
||
Only a few miles away is the large, wicked city of Oklahoma
|
||
City -- at least we Can certainly assume that, from the religious
|
||
viewpoint, many sinners live in Oklahoma City. Assuming also (which
|
||
is a great deal riskier ;assumption) that there is a God, why
|
||
should he perpetrate this grim and sardonic joke? The sinners in
|
||
the big city were left untouched. The godly folk in the little
|
||
nearby village were punished by the evidences of God's wrath. How
|
||
do the religious people interpret this calamity? Often and often
|
||
they explain such calamities as flood, fire and storm by saying
|
||
that God is angry at the sinful people and is warning them or
|
||
destroying them for their sins. Was the hurricane in Bethany a sign
|
||
of the love of God for his faithful worshipers?
|
||
|
||
And God missed an even better chance, if there were a God who
|
||
wished to punish rebels against his majesty and inscrutability.
|
||
Just a few hundred miles north and east of Bethany, Okla., is
|
||
Girard -- the home of The American Freeman: and The Debunker and
|
||
The Joseph McCabe Magazine and the Little Blue Books -- the center
|
||
of American free thought where an enormous stream of atheistic
|
||
literature and. godless modern knowledge pours forth to enlighten
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
the masses. If there were a God directing hurricanes and he wanted
|
||
to really "get" an uncompromising foe, whom he has no chance of
|
||
persuading in the ordinary way, it would have been a devastating
|
||
stroke for him to send his howling Punitive blasts through the town
|
||
of Girard. It would be a more remarkable suggestion of the avenging
|
||
act of a God if only the Haldeman-Julius plant were destroyed and
|
||
the rest of the town left unhurt -- and, as good neighbors, we
|
||
shouldn't wish the Christian and respectable, people of Girard nor
|
||
those Who are respectable and not so Christian nor those who are
|
||
Christian and not exactly respectable to suffer from our proximity
|
||
and our propaganda of atheism.
|
||
|
||
Is God a joker? No -- let us whisper it -- the joke is that
|
||
there is no God. Hurricanes come upon the just and the unjust, the
|
||
pious and the impious.
|
||
_______________
|
||
|
||
To be true to the mythical conception of a God is to be false
|
||
to the interests of mankind.
|
||
|
||
GOD AS A GAMBLE
|
||
|
||
One of the most amusing arguments, frequently offered in
|
||
defense of belief in the idea of a God, is that such a belief is a
|
||
way of Playing safe. It is said that even though a man is not sure
|
||
of the existence of a God and a future life beyond the grave, it is
|
||
the part of caution for him to believe; then, as the argument goes,
|
||
the man believing is safe "Whether there is or is not a God and a
|
||
future existence; if there is no God, the believer will be no more
|
||
dead than the unbeliever; while if there is a God, the believer
|
||
will have preferential treatment in the judgments of the celestial
|
||
tribunal.
|
||
|
||
This queer, argument makes the matter of belief in a God an
|
||
intellectual gamble. It is of course an utter denial of
|
||
intellectual Integrity. Proceeding on this basis, the appeal to
|
||
belief is not made on the score of truth. One is urged to consider
|
||
the God idea not from the standpoint of its reasonableness; but
|
||
rather, from the standpoint of blind faith and a chance bet on an
|
||
idea.
|
||
|
||
Doesn't the religious person who uses this appealing to a
|
||
particularly low form of intellectual cowardice? What men need is
|
||
courage in their thinking. They need to be trained in facing facts
|
||
frankly. They need to learn that all ideas should be judged with
|
||
strict regard for the evidence. Instead religion harps on the
|
||
emotion of fear and tells men that they should treat ideas merely
|
||
as gambling chances and that it is safer (not intellectually the
|
||
better but the more craven part) to believe in a God.
|
||
|
||
This argument has other fallacious aspects. it assumes, for
|
||
instance, that the evidence for and against the idea of a God is
|
||
equal; whereas the vast preponderance of evidence is against the
|
||
idea, there being in fact no genuine evidence for the idea. It is
|
||
overlooked, too, that belief is genuine or it is not; and that a
|
||
belief which is frankly grounded on a gamble -- a belief affirmed
|
||
for safety's sake -- cannot be a real belief. One believes or one
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
does not; real belief, can only assert the truth of an idea. In
|
||
short, the man who bases his belief on such a principle is
|
||
bordering close to hypocrisy and is certainly revealing a striking
|
||
lack of mental integrity.
|
||
|
||
Such weak arguments exemplify the decline of religion and show
|
||
its utter intellectual bankruptcy. It has all the air of a
|
||
desperate and last plea for a set of ideas which, ordinarily and
|
||
reasonably, cannot be defended. It is, after all, a virtual
|
||
admission of the charge of the atheist that the idea of a God is
|
||
merely an assumption and has no ground of truth upon which firmly
|
||
to plant itself.
|
||
|
||
CREDULITY -- A CRIME
|
||
|
||
Credulity is not a crime for the individual -- but it is
|
||
clearly a crime as regards the race. Just look at the actual
|
||
consequences of credulity. For years men believed in the foul
|
||
superstition of witchcraft and many poor people suffered for this
|
||
foolish belief. There was a general belief in angels and demons,
|
||
flying familiarly, yet skittishly through the air, and that belief
|
||
caused untold distress and pain and tragedy. The most holy Catholic
|
||
church (and, after it, the various Protestant sects) enforced the
|
||
dogma that heresy was terribly sinful and punishable by death.
|
||
Imagine -- but all you need do is to recount -- the suffering
|
||
entailed by that belief.
|
||
|
||
When one surveys the causes and consequences of credulity, it
|
||
is apparent that this easy believer in the impossible, this
|
||
readiness toward false and fanatical notions, has been indeed a
|
||
most serious and major crime against humanity. The social life in
|
||
any age, It may be said, is about what its extent of credulity
|
||
guarantees. In an extremely credulous age, social life will be
|
||
cruel and dark and treacherous. in a skeptical age, social life
|
||
will be more humane. We assert that the philosophy of humanity --
|
||
that the best interests of the human race -- demand a strong
|
||
statement and a repeated, enlightening statement of atheism.
|
||
|
||
"SPIRITUAL REALITIES"
|
||
|
||
When preachers talk about "spiritual realities," what do they
|
||
mean? They do not mean the emotions of men. At least they do not
|
||
mean these emotions as realistically observed and interpreted human
|
||
emotions. Love, hate, fear, greed, malice, envy, ambition, dreams
|
||
and desires -- these are human emotions which the rational,
|
||
scientific mind takes as themes for analysis, They are understood,
|
||
not in any "spiritual" sense, but in terms of heredity and
|
||
environment and constitutional (physical and mental) makeup. Their
|
||
causes and their expressions are, so far as science has been able
|
||
to trace them, essentially material.
|
||
|
||
All of mankind's art, mankind, mankind's morality, mankind's
|
||
experiments with and yearning for beauty, can be and are explained
|
||
in terms of human cause and effect and are placed in the
|
||
evolutionary pattern worked out by science. They are not mysterious
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
THE MEANING OF ATHEISM
|
||
|
||
in the theistic sense; they are not, that is to say, mystic, An
|
||
emotion in human nature is as realistic a fact as an object in
|
||
nature: and science deals with both emotions and objects
|
||
materialisticly, experimentally, analytically.
|
||
|
||
"Spiritual realities" mean nothing to science. This is the special
|
||
and unrealistic lingo of the clerical bunk-shooters, who depend
|
||
upon sweeping (but empty) phrases and pious dogmas and a large
|
||
spooky and spoofy atmosphere of aimless mystery for the maintenance
|
||
of their prestige. That their belief is often sincere does not
|
||
affect the case.
|
||
|
||
By "spiritual realities," If you probe the phrase, you will
|
||
discover that the preachers mean some mystic working of the mind of
|
||
a God in the minds and motives of men. They intend us to believe
|
||
that human emotions are something more than human -- that back of
|
||
them is the shadowed and obscure and awesomely immense loom on
|
||
which is woven a divine pattern.
|
||
|
||
"Spiritual realities," according to the preachers, are the
|
||
reflections of the most unreal of all myths, namely, the myth of a
|
||
God. These so-called "realities," said to be the highest
|
||
conceivable, are seen to be the most unreal and the most
|
||
inconceivable.
|
||
|
||
IS GOD FAIR?
|
||
|
||
That's a funny question. But still we ask it: Is God fair? The
|
||
Christians say that God damns forever anyone who is skeptical about
|
||
truth of bunkistic religion as revealed unto the holy haranguers.
|
||
What this means is that a God, if any, punishes a man for using his
|
||
reason.
|
||
|
||
If there is a God in existence, reasons should be available
|
||
for his existence. Assuming that such a precious thing as a man's
|
||
eternal future depends on his belief in a God, then the materials
|
||
for that belief should be overwhelming and not at all doubtful.
|
||
|
||
Yet here is a man whose reason makes it impossible for him to
|
||
believe in a God. He sees no evidence of such an entity. He finds
|
||
all the arguments weak and worthless. He doubts and he denies.
|
||
|
||
Then is a God fair in visiting upon such a skeptic the penalty
|
||
for his inevitable intellectual attitude? The intelligent man
|
||
refuses to believe fairy tales. Can a God blame him? If so, than a
|
||
God is not as fair as an ordinarily decent man. And fairness, we
|
||
think, is more important than piety.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
"Faith," said St. Paul, "is the evidence of things not seen."
|
||
We should elaborate this definition by adding that faith is the
|
||
assertion of things for which there is not a particle of evidence
|
||
and of things which are incredible.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
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