1691 lines
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1691 lines
78 KiB
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26 page printout.
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Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
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**** ****
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This file, its printout, or copies of either
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are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
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**** ****
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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
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1896
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_______
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I
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For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of
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habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our
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garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned
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by our surroundings.
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Environment is a sculptor -- a painter.
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If we had been born in Constantinople, the most of us would
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have said: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his
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prophet." If our parents had lived on the banks of the Ganges, we
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would have been worshipers of Siva, longing for the heaven of
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Nirvana.
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As a rule, children love their parents, believe what they
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teach, and take great pride in saying that the religion of mother
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is good enough for them.
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Most people love peace. They do not like to differ with their
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neighbors. They like company. They are social. They enjoy traveling
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on the highway with the multitude. They hate to walk alone.
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The Scotch are Calvinists because their fathers were. The
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Irish are Catholics because their fathers were. The English are
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Episcopalians because their fathers were, and the Americans are
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divided in a hundred sects because their fathers were. This is the
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general rule, to which there are many exceptions. Children
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sometimes are superior to their parents, modify their ideas, change
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their customs, and arrive at different conclusions. But this is
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generally so gradual that the departure is scarcely noticed, and
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those who change usually insist that they are still following the
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fathers.
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It is claimed by Christian historians that the religion of a
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nation was sometimes suddenly changed, and that millions of Pagans
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were made into Christians by the command of a king. Philosophers do
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not agree with these historians. Names have been changed, altars
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have been overthrown, but opinions, customs and beliefs remained
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the same. A Pagan, beneath the drawn sword of a Christian, would
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probably change his religious views, and a Christian, with a
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
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scimitar above his head, might suddenly become a Mohammedan, but as
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a matter of fact both would remain exactly as they were before --
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except in speech.
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Belief is not subject to the will. Men think as they must.
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Children do not, and cannot, believe exactly as they were taught.
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They are not exactly like their parents. They differ in
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temperament, in experience, in capacity, in surroundings. And so
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there is a continual, though almost imperceptible change. There is
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development, conscious and unconscious growth, and by comparing
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long periods of time we find that the old has been almost
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abandoned, almost lost in the new. Men cannot remain stationary.
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The mind cannot be securely anchored. If we do not advance, we go
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backward. If we do not grow, we decay. If we do not develop, we
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shrink and shrivel.
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Like the most of you, I was raised among people who knew --
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who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They had no
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doubts. They knew that they had the truth. In their creed there was
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no guess -- no perhaps. They had a revelation from God. They knew
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the beginning of things. They knew that God commenced to create one
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Monday morning, four thousand and four years before Christ. They
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knew that in the eternity -- back of that morning, he had done
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nothing. They knew that it took him six days to make the earth --
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all plants, all animals, all life, and all the globes that wheel in
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space. They knew exactly what he did each day and when he rested.
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They knew the origin, the cause of evil, of all crime, of all
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disease and death.
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They not only knew the beginning, but they knew the end. They
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knew that life had one path and one road. They knew that the path,
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grass-grown and narrow, filled with thorns and nettles, infested
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with vipers, wet with tears, stained by bleeding feet, led to
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heaven, and that the road, broad and smooth, bordered with fruits
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and flowers, filled with laughter and song and all the happiness of
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human love, led straight to hell. They knew that God was doing his
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best to make you take the path and that the Devil used every art to
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keep you in the road.
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They knew that there was a perpetual battle waged between the
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great Powers of good and evil for the possession of human souls.
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They knew that many centuries ago God had left his throne and had
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been born a babe into this poor world -- that he had suffered death
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for the sake of man -- for the sake of saving a few. They also knew
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that the human heart was utterly depraved, so that man by nature
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was in love with wrong and hated God with all his might.
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At the same time they knew that God created man in his own
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image and was perfectly satisfied with his work. They also knew
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that he had been thwarted by the Devil, who with wiles and lies had
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deceived the first of human kind. They knew that in consequence of
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that, God cursed the man and woman; the man with toil, the woman
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with slavery and pain, and both with death; and that he cursed the
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earth itself with briers and thorns, brambles and thistles. All
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these blessed things they knew. They knew too all that God had done
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to purify and elevate the race. They knew all about the Flood --
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knew that God, with the exception of eight, drowned all his
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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2
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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
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children -- the old and young -- the bowed patriarch and the
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dimpled babe -- the young man and the merry maiden -- the loving
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mother and the laughing child -- because his mercy endureth
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forever. They knew too, that he drowned the beasts and birds --
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everything that walked or crawled or flew -- because his loving
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kindness is over all his works. They knew that God, for the purpose
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of civilizing his children, had devoured some with earthquakes,
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destroyed some with storms of fire, killed some with his
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lightnings, millions with famine, with pestilence, and sacrificed
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countless thousands upon the fields of war. They knew that it was
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necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that
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there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the
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atoning blood of Jesus Christ.
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All who doubted or denied would be lost. To live a moral and
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honest life -- to keep your contracts, to take care of wife and
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child -- to make a happy home -- to be a good citizen, a patriot,
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a just and thoughtful man, was simply a respectable way of going to
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hell.
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God did not reward men for being honest, generous and brave,
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but for the act of faith. Without faith, all the so-called virtues
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were sins. and the men who practiced these virtues, without faith,
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deserved to suffer eternal pain.
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All of these comforting and reasonable things were taught by
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the ministers in their pulpits -- by teachers in Sunday schools and
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by parents at home. The children were victims. They were assaulted
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in the cradle -- in their mother's arms. Then, the schoolmaster
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carried on the war against their natural sense, and all the books
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they read were filled with the same impossible truths. The poor
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children were helpless. The atmosphere they breathed was filled
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with lies -- lies that mingled with their blood.
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In those days ministers depended on revivals to save souls and
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reform the world.
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In the winter, navigation having closed, business was mostly
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suspended. There were no railways and the only means of
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communication were wagons and boats. Generally the roads were so
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bad that the wagons were laid up with the boats. There were no
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operas, no theaters, no amusement except parties and balls. The
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parties were regarded as worldly and the balls as wicked. For real
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and virtuous enjoyment the good people depended on revivals.
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The sermons were mostly about the pains and agonies of hell,
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the joys and ecstasies of heaven, salvation by faith, and the
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efficacy of the atonement. The little churches, in which the
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services were held, were generally small, badly ventilated, and
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exceedingly warm. The emotional sermons, the sad singing, the
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hysterical amens, the hope of heaven, the fear of hell, caused many
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to lose the little sense they had. They became substantially
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insane. In this condition they flocked to the "mourner's bench" --
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asked for the prayers of the faithful -- had strange feelings,
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prayed and wept and thought they had been "born again." Then they
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would tell their experience -- how wicked they had been -- how evil
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had been their thoughts, their desires, and how good they had
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suddenly become.
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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3
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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
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They used to tell the story of an old woman who, in telling
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her experience, said: -- "Before I was converted, before I gave my
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heart to God, I used to lie and steal, but now, thanks to the grace
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and blood of Jesus Christ, I have quit 'em both, in a great
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measure."
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Of course all the people were not exactly of one mind. There
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were some scoffers, and now and then some man had sense enough to
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laugh at the threats of priests and make a jest of hell. Some would
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tell of unbelievers who had lived and died in peace.
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When I was a boy I heard them tell of an old farmer in
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Vermont. He was dying. The minister was at his bed-side -- asked
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him if he was a Christian -- if he was prepared to die. The old man
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answered that he had made no preparation, that he was not a
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Christian -- that he had never done anything but work. The preacher
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said that he could give him no hope unless he had faith in Christ,
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and that if he had no faith his soul would certainly be lost.
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The old man was not frightened. He was perfectly calm. In a
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weak and broken voice he said: "Mr. Preacher, I suppose you noticed
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my farm. My wife and I came here more than fifty years ago. We were
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just married. It was a forest then and the land was covered with
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stones. I cut down the trees, burned the logs, picked up the stones
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and laid the walls. My wife spun and wove and worked every moment.
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We raised and educated our children -- denied ourselves. During all
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these years my wife never had a good dress, or a decent bonnet. I
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never had a good suit of clothes. We lived on the plainest food.
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Our hands, our bodies are deformed by toil. We never had a
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vacation. We loved each other and the children. That is the only
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luxury we ever had. Now I am about to die and you ask me if I am
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prepared. Mr. Preacher, I have no fear of the future, no terror of
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any other world. There may be such a place as hell -- but if there
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is, you never can make me believe that it's any worse than old
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Vermont."
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So, they told of a man who compared himself with his dog. "My
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dog," he said, "just barks and plays -- has all he wants to eat. He
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never works -- has no trouble about business. In a little while he
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dies, and that is all. I work with all my strength. I have no time
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to play. I have trouble every day. In a little while I will die,
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and then I go to hell. I wish that I had been a dog."
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Well, while the cold weather lasted, while the snows fell, the
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revival went on, but when the winter was over, when the steamboat's
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whistle was heard, when business started again, most of the
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converts "backslid" and fell again into their old ways. But the
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next winter they were on hand, ready to be "born again." They
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formed a kind of stock company, playing the same parts every winter
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and backsliding every spring.
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The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in
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earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers.
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To them science was the name of a vague dread -- a dangerous enemy.
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They did not know much, but they believed a great deal. To them
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hell was a burning reality -- they could see the smoke and flames.
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The Devil was no myth. He was an actual person. a rival of God, an
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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4
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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
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enemy of mankind. They thought that the important business of this
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life was to save your soul -- that all should resist and scorn the
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pleasures of sense, and keep their eyes steadily fixed on the
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golden gate of the New Jerusalem. They were unbalanced, emotional,
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hysterical, bigoted, hateful, loving, and insane. They really
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believed the Bible to be the actual word of God -- a book without
|
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mistake or contradiction. They called its cruelties, justice -- its
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absurdities, mysteries -- its miracles, facts, and the idiotic
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passages were regarded as profoundly spiritual. They dwelt on the
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pangs, the regrets, the infinite agonies of the lost, and showed
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how easily they could be avoided, and how cheaply heaven could be
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obtained. They told their hearers to believe, to have faith, to
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give their hearts to God, their sins to Christ, who would bear
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their burdens and make their souls as white as snow.
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All this the ministers really believed. They were absolutely
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certain. In their minds the Devil had tried in vain to sow the
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seeds of doubt.
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I heard hundreds of these evangelical sermons -- heard
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hundreds of the most fearful and vivid descriptions of the tortures
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inflicted in hell, of the horrible state of the lost. I supposed
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that what I heard was true and yet I did not believe it. I said:
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"It is," and then I thought: "It cannot be."
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These sermons made but faint impressions on my mind. I was not
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convinced.
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I had no desire to be "converted," did not want a "new heart"
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and had no wish to be "born again."
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But I heard one sermon that touched my heart, that left its
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mark, like a scar, on my brain.
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One Sunday I went with my brother to hear a Free Will Baptist
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preacher. He was a large man, dressed like a farmer, but he was an
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orator. He could paint a picture with words.
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He took for his text the parable of "the rich man and
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Lazarus." He described Dives, the rich man -- his manner of life,
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the excesses in which he indulged, his extravagance, his riotous
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nights, his purple and fine linen, his feasts, his wines, and his
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beautiful women.
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Then he described Lazarus, his poverty, his rags and
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wretchedness, his poor body eaten by disease, the crusts and crumbs
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he devoured, the dogs that pitied him. He pictured his lonely life,
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his friendless death.
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Then, changing his tone of pity to one of triumph -- leaping
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from tears to the heights of exultation -- from defeat to victory
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-- he described the glorious company of angels, who with white and
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outspread wings carried the soul of the despised pauper to Paradise
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-- to the bosom of Abraham.
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Then, changing his voice to one of scorn and loathing, he told
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of the rich man's death. He was in his palace, on his costly couch,
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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5
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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
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the air heavy with perfume, the room filled with servants and
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physicians. His gold was worthless then. He could not buy another
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breath. He died, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in
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torment.
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Then, assuming a dramatic attitude, putting his right hand to
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his ear, he whispered, "Hark! I hear the rich man's voice. What
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does he say? Hark! 'Father Abraham! Father Abraham! I pray thee
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send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and
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cool my parched tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.'"
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"Oh, my hearers, he has been making that request for more than
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eighteen hundred years. And millions of ages hence that wail will
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cross the gulf that lies between the saved and lost and still will
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be heard the cry: 'Father Abraham! Father Abraham! I pray thee send
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Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger. in water and cool my
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parched tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.'"
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For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain --
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appreciated "the glad tidings of great joy." For the first time my
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imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian horror.
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Then I said: "It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is true,
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I hate your God."
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From that day I have had no fear, no doubt. For me, on that
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day, the flames of hell were quenched. From that day I have
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passionately hated every orthodox creed. That Sermon did some good.
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II
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From my childhood I had heard read, and read the Bible myself.
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Morning and evening the sacred volume was opened and prayers were
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said. The Bible was my first history, the Jews were the first
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||
people, and the events narrated by Moses and the other inspired
|
||
writers, and those predicted by prophets were the all important
|
||
things. In other books were found the thoughts and dreams of men,
|
||
but in the Bible were the sacred truths of God.
|
||
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Yet in spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no
|
||
love for God. He was so saving of mercy, so extravagant in murder,
|
||
so anxious to kill, so ready to assassinate, that I hated him with
|
||
all my heart. At his command, babes were butchered, women violated,
|
||
and the white hair of trembling age stained with blood. This God
|
||
visited the people with pestilence -- filled the houses and covered
|
||
the streets with the dying and the dead -- saw babes starving on
|
||
the empty breasts of pallid mothers, heard the sobs, saw the tears,
|
||
the sunken cheeks, the sightless eyes, the new made graves, and
|
||
remained as pitiless as the pestilence.
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This God withheld the rain -- caused the famine, saw the
|
||
fierce eyes of hunger -- the wasted forms, the white lips, saw
|
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mothers eating babes, and remained ferocious as famine.
|
||
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||
It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or
|
||
worship, or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really
|
||
civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in
|
||
abhorrence and contempt.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
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|
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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
But in the old days the good people justified Jehovah in his
|
||
treatment of the heathen. The wretches who were murdered were
|
||
idolaters and therefore unfit to live.
|
||
|
||
According to the Bible, God had never revealed himself to
|
||
these people and he knew that without a revelation they could not
|
||
know that he was the true God. Whose fault was it then that they
|
||
were heathen?
|
||
|
||
The Christians said that God had the right to destroy them
|
||
because he created them. What did he create them for? He knew when
|
||
he made them that they would be food for the sword. He knew that he
|
||
would have the pleasure of seeing them murdered.
|
||
|
||
As a last answer, as a final excuse, the worshipers of Jehovah
|
||
said that all these horrible things happened under the "old
|
||
dispensation" of unyielding law, and absolute justice, but that now
|
||
under the "new dispensation," all had been changed -- the sword of
|
||
justice had been sheathed and love enthroned. In the Old Testament,
|
||
they said. God is the judge -- but in the New, Christ is the
|
||
merciful. As a matter of fact, the New Testament is infinitely
|
||
worse than the Old. In the Old there is no threat of eternal pain.
|
||
Jehovah had no eternal prison -- no everlasting fire. His hatred
|
||
ended at the grave. His revenge was satisfied when his enemy was
|
||
dead.
|
||
|
||
In the New Testament, death is not the end, but the beginning
|
||
of punishment that has no end. In the New Testament the malice of
|
||
God is infinite and the hunger of his revenge eternal.
|
||
|
||
The orthodox God, when clothed in human flesh, told his
|
||
disciples not to resist evil, to love their enemies, and when
|
||
smitten on one cheek to turn the other, and yet we are told that
|
||
this same God, with the same loving lips, uttered these heartless,
|
||
these fiendish words; "Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire,
|
||
prepared for the devil and his angels."
|
||
|
||
These are the words of "eternal love."
|
||
|
||
No human being has imagination enough to conceive of this
|
||
infinite horror.
|
||
|
||
All that the human race has suffered in war and want, in
|
||
pestilence and famine, in fire and flood, -- all the pangs and
|
||
pains of every disease and every death -- all this is as nothing
|
||
compared with the agonies to be endured by one lost soul.
|
||
|
||
This is the consolation of the Christian religion. This is the
|
||
justice of God -- the mercy of Christ.
|
||
|
||
This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the
|
||
implacable enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in
|
||
eternal pain has been the real persecutor. It founded the
|
||
Inquisition, forged the chains, and furnished the fagots. It has
|
||
darkened the lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible
|
||
as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
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|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It
|
||
subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed
|
||
men to fiends and banished reason from the brain.
|
||
|
||
Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in
|
||
every orthodox creed.
|
||
|
||
It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is
|
||
the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a
|
||
public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind.
|
||
Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite
|
||
of malice, hatred, and revenge.
|
||
|
||
Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence
|
||
of its creator, God.
|
||
|
||
While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with
|
||
all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this
|
||
infinite lie.
|
||
|
||
Nothing gives me greater joy than to know that this belief in
|
||
eternal pain is growing weaker every day -- that thousands of
|
||
ministers are ashamed of it. It gives me joy to know that
|
||
Christians are becoming merciful, so merciful that the fires of
|
||
hell are burning low -- flickering, choked with ashes, destined in
|
||
a few years to die out forever.
|
||
|
||
For centuries Christendom was a madhouse. Popes, cardinals,
|
||
bishops, priests, monks and heretics were all insane.
|
||
|
||
Only a few -- four or five in a century were sound in heart
|
||
and brain. Only a few, in spite of the roar and din, in spite of
|
||
the savage cries, heard reason's voice. Only a few in the wild rage
|
||
of ignorance, fear and zeal preserved the perfect calm that wisdom
|
||
gives.
|
||
|
||
We have advanced. In a few years the Christians will become --
|
||
let us hope -- humane and sensible enough to deny the dogma that
|
||
fills the endless years with pain. They ought to know now that this
|
||
dogma is utterly inconsistent with the wisdom, the justice, the
|
||
goodness of their God. They ought to know that their belief in
|
||
hell, gives to the Holy Ghost -- the Dove -- the beak of a vulture,
|
||
and fills the mouth of the Lamb of God with the fangs of a viper.
|
||
|
||
III
|
||
|
||
In my youth I read religious books -- books about God, about
|
||
the atonement -- about salvation by faith, and about the other
|
||
worlds. I became familiar with the commentators -- with Adam Clark,
|
||
who thought that the serpent seduced our mother Eve, and was in
|
||
fact the father of Cain. He also believed that the animals, while
|
||
in the ark, had their natures' changed to that degree that they
|
||
devoured straw together and enjoyed each other's society -- thus
|
||
prefiguring the blessed millennium. I read Scott, who was such a
|
||
natural theologian that he really thought the story of Phaeton --
|
||
of the wild steeds dashing across the sky -- corroborated the story
|
||
of Joshua having stopped the sun and moon. So, I read Henry and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
MacKnight and found that God so loved the world that he made up his
|
||
mind to damn a large majority of the human race. I read Cruden, who
|
||
made the great Concordance, and made the miracles as small and
|
||
probable as he could.
|
||
|
||
I remember that he explained the miracle of feeding the
|
||
wandering Jews with quails, by saying that even at this day immense
|
||
numbers of quails crossed the Red Sea, and that sometimes when
|
||
tired, they settled on ships that sank beneath their weight. The
|
||
fact that the explanation was as hard to believe as the miracle
|
||
made no difference to the devout Cruden.
|
||
|
||
To while away the time I read Calvin's Institutes, a book
|
||
calculated to produce, in any natural mind, considerable respect
|
||
for the Devil.
|
||
|
||
I read Paley's Evidences and found that the evidence of
|
||
ingenuity in producing the evil, in contriving the hurtful, was at
|
||
least equal to the evidence tending to show the use of intelligence
|
||
in the creation of what we call good.
|
||
|
||
You know the watch argument was Paley's greatest effort. A man
|
||
finds a watch and it is so wonderful that he concludes that it must
|
||
have had a maker. He finds the maker and he is so much more
|
||
wonderful than the watch that he says he must have had a maker.
|
||
Then he finds God, the maker of the man, and he is so much more
|
||
wonderful than the man that he could not have had a maker. This is
|
||
what the lawyers call a departure in pleading.
|
||
|
||
According to Paley there can be no design without a designer
|
||
-- but there can be a designer without a design. The wonder of the
|
||
watch suggested the watchmaker, and the wonder of the watchmaker,
|
||
suggested the creator, and the wonder of the creator demonstrated
|
||
that he was not created -- but was uncaused and eternal.
|
||
|
||
We had Edwards on The Will, in which the reverend author shows
|
||
that necessity has no effect on accountability -- and that when God
|
||
creates a human being, and at the same time determines and decrees
|
||
exactly what that being shall do and be, the human being is
|
||
responsible, and God in his justice and mercy has the right to
|
||
torture the soul of that human being forever. Yet Edwards said that
|
||
he loved God.
|
||
|
||
The fact is that if you believe in an infinite God, and also
|
||
in eternal punishment, then you must admit that Edwards and Calvin
|
||
were absolutely right. There is no escape from their conclusions if
|
||
you admit their premises. They were infinitely cruel, their
|
||
premises infinitely absurd, their God infinitely fiendish, and
|
||
their logic perfect.
|
||
|
||
And yet I have kindness and candor enough to say that Calvin
|
||
and Edwards were both insane.
|
||
|
||
We had plenty of theological literature. There was Jenkyn on
|
||
the Atonement, who demonstrated the wisdom of God in devising a way
|
||
in which the sufferings of innocence could justify the guilty. He
|
||
tried to show that children could justly be punished for the sins
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
of their ancestors, and that men could, if they had faith, be
|
||
justly credited with the virtues of others. Nothing could be more
|
||
devout, orthodox, and idiotic. But all of our theology was not in
|
||
prose. We had Milton with his celestial militia with his great and
|
||
blundering God, his proud and cunning Devil -- his wars between
|
||
immortals, and all the sublime absurdities that religion wrought
|
||
within the blind man's brain.
|
||
|
||
The theology taught by Milton was dear to the Puritan heart.
|
||
It was accepted by New England and it poisoned the souls and ruined
|
||
the lives of thousands. The genius of Shakespeare could not make
|
||
the theology of Milton poetic. In the literature of the world there
|
||
is nothing, outside of the "sacred books," more perfectly absurd.
|
||
|
||
We had Young's Night Thoughts, and I supposed that the author
|
||
was an exceedingly devout and loving follower of the Lord. Yet
|
||
Young had a great desire to be a bishop, and to accomplish that end
|
||
he electioneered with the king's mistress. In other words, he was
|
||
a fine old hypocrite. In the "Night Thoughts" there is scarcely a
|
||
genuinely honest, natural line. It is pretence from beginning to
|
||
end. He did not write what he felt, but what he thought he ought to
|
||
feel.
|
||
|
||
We had Pollok's Course of Time, with its worm that never dies,
|
||
its quenchless flames, its endless pangs, its leering devils, and
|
||
its gloating God. This frightful poem should have been written in
|
||
a madhouse. In it you find all the cries and groans and shrieks of
|
||
maniacs, when they tear and rend each other's flesh. It is as
|
||
heartless, as hideous, as hellish as the thirty-second chapter of
|
||
Deuteronomy.
|
||
|
||
We all know the beautiful hymn commencing with the cheerful
|
||
line: "Hark from the tombs, a doleful sound." Nothing could have
|
||
been more appropriate for children. It is well to put a coffin
|
||
where it can be seen from the cradle. When a mother nurses her
|
||
child, an open grave should be at her feet. This would tend to make
|
||
the babe serious, reflective, religious and miserable.
|
||
|
||
God hates laughter and despises mirth. To feel free,
|
||
untrammeled, irresponsible, joyous, -- to forget care and death --
|
||
to be flooded with sunshine without a fear of night -- to forget
|
||
the past, to have no thought of the future, no dream of God, or
|
||
heaven, or hell -- to be intoxicated with the present -- to be
|
||
conscious only of the clasp and kiss of the one you love -- this is
|
||
the sin against the Holy Ghost.
|
||
|
||
But we had Cowper's poems. Cowper was sincere. He was the
|
||
opposite of Young. He had an observing eye, a gentle heart and a
|
||
sense of the artistic. He sympathized with all who suffered -- with
|
||
the imprisoned, the enslaved, the outcasts. He loved the beautiful.
|
||
No wonder that the belief in eternal punishment made this loving
|
||
soul insane. No wonder that the "tidings of great Joy" quenched
|
||
Hope's great star and left his broken heart in the darkness of
|
||
despair.
|
||
|
||
We had many volumes of orthodox sermons, filled with wrath and
|
||
the terrors of the judgment to come -- sermons that had been
|
||
delivered by savage saints.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
We had the Book of Martyrs, showing that Christians had for
|
||
many centuries imitated the God they worshiped.
|
||
|
||
We had the history of the Waldenses -- of the reformation of
|
||
the Church. We had Pilgrim's Progress, Baxter's Call and Butler's
|
||
Analogy.
|
||
|
||
To use a Western phrase or saying, I found that Bishop Butler
|
||
dug up more snakes than he killed -- suggested more difficulties
|
||
than he explained -- more doubts than he dispelled.
|
||
|
||
Among such books my youth was passed. All the seeds of
|
||
Christianity -- of superstition, were sown in my mind and
|
||
cultivated with great diligence and care.
|
||
|
||
All that time I knew nothing of any science -- nothing about
|
||
the other side -- nothing of the objections that had been urged
|
||
against the blessed Scriptures, or against the perfect
|
||
Congregational creed. Of course I had heard the ministers speak of
|
||
blasphemers, of infidel wretches, of scoffers who laughed at holy
|
||
things. They did not answer their arguments, but they tore their
|
||
characters into shreds and demonstrated by the fury of assertion
|
||
that they had done the Devil's work. And yet in spite of all I
|
||
heard -- of all I read. I could not quite believe. My brain and
|
||
heart said No.
|
||
|
||
For a time I left the dreams, the insanities, the illusions
|
||
and delusions, the nightmares of theology. I studied astronomy,
|
||
just a little -- I examined maps of the heavens -- learned the
|
||
names of some of the constellations -- of some of the stars --
|
||
found something of their size and the velocity with which they
|
||
wheeled in their orbits -- obtained a faint conception of
|
||
astronomical spaces -- found that some of the known stars were so
|
||
far away in the depths of space that their light, traveling at the
|
||
rate of nearly two hundred thousand miles a second, required many
|
||
years to reach this little world -- found that, compared with the
|
||
great stars, our earth was but a grain of sand -- an atom -- found
|
||
that the old belief that all the hosts of heaven had been created
|
||
for the benefit of man, was infinitely absurd.
|
||
|
||
I compared what was really known about the stars with the
|
||
account of creation as told in Genesis. I found that the writer of
|
||
the inspired book had no knowledge of astronomy -- that he was as
|
||
ignorant as a Choctaw chief -- as an Eskimo driver of dogs. Does
|
||
any one imagine that the author of Genesis knew anything about the
|
||
sun -- its size? that he was acquainted with Sirius, the North
|
||
Star, with Capella, or that he knew anything of the clusters of
|
||
stars so far away that their light, now visiting our eyes, has been
|
||
traveling for two million years?
|
||
|
||
If he had known these facts would he have said that Jehovah
|
||
worked nearly six days to make this world, and only a part of the
|
||
afternoon of the fourth day to make the sun and moon and all the
|
||
stars?
|
||
|
||
Yet millions of people insist that the writer of Genesis was
|
||
inspired by the Creator of all worlds.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
Now, intelligent men, who are not frightened, whose brains
|
||
have not been paralyzed by fear, know that the sacred story of
|
||
creation was written by an ignorant savage. The story is
|
||
inconsistent with all known facts, and every star shining in the
|
||
heavens testifies that its author was an uninspired barbarian.
|
||
|
||
I admit that this unknown writer was sincere, that he wrote
|
||
what he believed to be true -- that he did the best he could. He
|
||
did not claim to be inspired -- did not pretend that the story had
|
||
been told to him by Jehovah. He simply stated the "facts" as he
|
||
understood them.
|
||
|
||
After I had learned a little about the stars I concluded that
|
||
this writer, this "inspired" scribe, had been misled by myth and
|
||
legend, and that he knew no more about creation than the average
|
||
theologian of my day. In other words, that he knew absolutely
|
||
nothing.
|
||
|
||
And here, allow me to say that the ministers who are answering
|
||
me are turning their guns in the wrong direction. These reverend
|
||
gentlemen should attack the astronomers. They should malign and
|
||
vilify Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Herschel and Laplace. These men
|
||
were the real destroyers of the sacred story. Then, after having
|
||
disposed of them, they can wage a war against the stars, and
|
||
against Jehovah himself for having furnished evidence against the
|
||
truthfulness of his book.
|
||
|
||
Then I studied geology -- not much, just a little -- Just
|
||
enough to find in a general way the principal facts that had been
|
||
discovered, and some of the conclusions that had been reached. I
|
||
learned something of the action of fire -- of water -- of the
|
||
formation of islands and continents -- of the sedimentary and
|
||
igneous rocks -- of the coal measures -- of the chalk cliffs,
|
||
something about coral reefs -- about the deposits made by rivers,
|
||
the effect of volcanoes, of glaciers, and of the all surrounding
|
||
sea -- just enough to know that the Laurentian rocks were millions
|
||
of years older than the grass beneath my feet -- just enough to
|
||
feel certain that this world had been pursuing its flight about the
|
||
sun, wheeling in light and shade, for hundreds of millions of years
|
||
-- just enough to know that the "inspired" writer knew nothing of
|
||
the history of the earth -- nothing of the great forces of nature
|
||
-- of wind and wave and fire -- forces that have destroyed and
|
||
built, wrecked and wrought through all the countless years.
|
||
|
||
And let me tell the ministers again that they should not waste
|
||
their time in answering me. They should attack the geologists. They
|
||
should deny the facts that have been discovered. They should launch
|
||
their curses at the blaspheming seas, and dash their heads against
|
||
the infidel rocks.
|
||
|
||
Then I studied biology -- not much -- just enough to know
|
||
something of animal forms, enough to know that life existed when
|
||
the Laurentian rocks were made -- just enough to know that
|
||
implements of stone, implements that had been formed by human
|
||
hands, had been found mingled with the bones of extinct animals,
|
||
bones that had been split with these implements, and that these
|
||
animals had ceased to exist hundreds of thousands of years before
|
||
the manufacture of Adam and Eve.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
Then I felt sure that the "inspired" record was false -- that
|
||
many millions of people had been deceived and that all I had been
|
||
taught about the origin of worlds and men was utterly untrue. I
|
||
felt that I knew that the Old Testament was the work of ignorant
|
||
men -- that it was a mingling of truth and mistake, of wisdom and
|
||
foolishness, of cruelty and kindness, of philosophy and absurdity
|
||
-- that it contained some elevated thoughts, some poetry, -- a good
|
||
deal of the solemn and commonplace, -- some hysterical, some
|
||
tender, some wicked prayers, some insane predictions, some
|
||
delusions, and some chaotic dreams.
|
||
|
||
Of course the theologians fought the facts found by the
|
||
geologists, the scientists, and sought to sustain the sacred
|
||
Scriptures. They mistook the bones of the mastodon for those of
|
||
human beings, and by them proudly proved that "there were giants in
|
||
those days." They accounted for the fossils by saying that God had
|
||
made them to try our faith, or that the Devil had imitated the
|
||
works of the Creator.
|
||
|
||
They answered the geologists by saying that the "days" in
|
||
Genesis were long periods of time, and that after all the flood
|
||
might have been local. They told the astronomers that the sun and
|
||
moon were not actually, but only apparently, stopped. And that the
|
||
appearance was produced by the reflection and refraction of light.
|
||
|
||
They excused the slavery and polygamy, the robbery and murder
|
||
upheld in the Old Testament by saying that the people were so
|
||
degraded that Jehovah was compelled to pander to their ignorance
|
||
and prejudice.
|
||
|
||
In every way the clergy sought to evade the facts, to dodge
|
||
the truth, to preserve the creed.
|
||
|
||
At first they flatly denied the facts -- then they belittled
|
||
them -- then they harmonized them -- then they denied that they had
|
||
denied them. Then they changed the meaning of the "inspired" book
|
||
to fit the facts. At first they said that if the facts, as claimed,
|
||
were true, the Bible was false and Christianity itself a
|
||
superstition. Afterward they said the facts, as claimed, were true
|
||
and that they established beyond all doubt the inspiration of the
|
||
Bible and the divine origin of orthodox religion.
|
||
|
||
Anything they could not dodge, they swallowed and anything
|
||
they could not swallow, they dodged.
|
||
|
||
I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its
|
||
absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New
|
||
because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on
|
||
account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his
|
||
disciples believe in the existence of devils -- talked and made
|
||
bargains with them. expelled them from people and animals.
|
||
|
||
This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that
|
||
devils do not exist -- that Christ never cast them out, and that if
|
||
he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
These stories about devils demonstrate the human, the ignorant
|
||
origin of the New Testament. I gave up the New Testament because it
|
||
rewards credulity, and curses brave and honest men, and because it
|
||
teaches the infinite horror of eternal pain.
|
||
|
||
V
|
||
|
||
Having spent my youth in reading books about religion -- about
|
||
the "new birth" -- the disobedience of our first parents, the
|
||
atonement, salvation by faith, the wickedness of pleasure, the
|
||
degrading consequences of love, and the impossibility of getting to
|
||
heaven by being honest and generous, and having become somewhat
|
||
weary of the frayed and raveled thoughts, you can imagine my
|
||
surprise, my delight when I read the poems of Robert Burns.
|
||
|
||
I was familiar with the writings of the devout and insincere,
|
||
the pious and petrified, the pure and heartless. Here was a natural
|
||
honest man. I knew the works of those who regarded all nature as
|
||
depraved, and looked upon love as the legacy and perpetual witness
|
||
of original sin. Here was a man who plucked joy from the mire, made
|
||
goddesses of peasant girls, and enthroned the honest man. One whose
|
||
sympathy, with loving arms, embraced all forms of suffering life,
|
||
who hated slavery of every kind, who was as natural as heaven's
|
||
blue, with humor kindly as an autumn day, with wit as sharp as
|
||
Ithuriel's spear, and scorn that blasted like the simoon's breath.
|
||
A man who loved this world, this life, the things of every day, and
|
||
placed above all else the thrilling ecstasies of human love.
|
||
|
||
I read and read again with rapture, tears and smiles, feeling
|
||
that a great heart was throbbing in the lines.
|
||
|
||
The religious, the lugubrious, the artificial, the spiritual
|
||
poets were forgotten or remained only as the fragments, the half
|
||
remembered horrors of monstrous and distorted dreams.
|
||
|
||
I had found at last a natural man, one who despised his
|
||
country's cruel creed, and was brave and sensible enough to say:
|
||
"All religions are auld wives' fables, but an honest man has
|
||
nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come."
|
||
|
||
One who had the genius to write Holy Willie's Prayer -- a poem
|
||
that crucified Calvinism and through its bloodless heart thrust the
|
||
spear of common sense -- a poem that made every orthodox creed the
|
||
food of scorn -- of inextinguishable laughter.
|
||
|
||
Burns had his faults, his frailties. He was intensely human.
|
||
Still, I would rather appear at the "Judgment Seat" drunk, and be
|
||
able to say that I was the author of "A man's a man for 'a that,"
|
||
than to be perfectly sober and admit that I had lived and died a
|
||
Scotch Presbyterian.
|
||
|
||
I read Byron -- read his Cain, in which, as in Paradise Lost,
|
||
the Devil seems to be the better god -- read his beautiful, sublime
|
||
and bitter lines -- read his prisoner of Chillon -- his best -- a
|
||
poem that filled my heart with tenderness, with pity, and with an
|
||
eternal hatred of tyranny.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
I read Shelley's Queen Mab -- a poem filled with beauty,
|
||
courage, thought, sympathy, tears and scorn, in which a brave soul
|
||
tears down the prison walls and floods the cells with light. I read
|
||
his Skylark -- a winged flame -- passionate as blood -- tender as
|
||
tears -- pure as light.
|
||
|
||
I read Keats, "whose name was writ in water" -- read St. Agnes
|
||
Eve, a story told with such an artless art that this poor common
|
||
world is changed to fairy land -- the Grecian Urn, that fills the
|
||
soul with ever eager love, with all the rapture of imagined song --
|
||
the Nightingale -- a melody in which there is the memory of morn --
|
||
a melody that dies away in dusk and tears, paining the senses with
|
||
its perfectness.
|
||
|
||
And then I read Shakespeare, the plays, the sonnets, the poems
|
||
-- read all. I beheld a new heaven and a new earth; Shakespeare,
|
||
who knew the brain and heart of man -- the hopes and fears, the
|
||
loves and hatreds, the vices and the virtues of the human race:
|
||
whose imagination read the tear-blurred records, the blood-stained
|
||
pages of all the past, and saw falling athwart the outspread scroll
|
||
the light of hope and love; Shakespeare, who sounded every depth --
|
||
while on the loftiest peak there fell the shadow of his wings.
|
||
|
||
I compared the Plays with the "inspired" books -- Romeo and
|
||
Juliet with the Song of Solomon, Lear with Job, and the Sonnets
|
||
with the Psalms, and I found that Jehovah did not understand the
|
||
art of speech. I compared Shakespeare's women -- his perfect women
|
||
-- with the women of the Bible. I found that Jehovah was not a
|
||
sculptor, not a painter -- not an artist -- that he lacked the
|
||
power that changes clay to flesh -- the art, the plastic touch,
|
||
that molds the perfect form -- the breath that gives it free and
|
||
joyous life -- the genius that creates the faultless.
|
||
|
||
The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and
|
||
common stones compared with Shakespeare's glittering gold and
|
||
gleaming gems.
|
||
VI
|
||
|
||
Up to this time I had read nothing against our blessed
|
||
religion except what I had found in Burns, Byron and Shelley. By
|
||
some accident I read Volney, who shows that all religions are, and
|
||
have been, established in the same way -- that all had their
|
||
Christs, their apostles, miracles and sacred books, and then asked
|
||
how it is possible to decide which is the true one. A question that
|
||
is still waiting for an answer.
|
||
|
||
I read Gibbon, the greatest of historians, who marshaled his
|
||
facts as skillfully as Caesar did his legions, and I learned that
|
||
Christianity is only a name for Paganism -- for the old religion,
|
||
shorn of its beauty -- that some absurdities had been exchanged for
|
||
others -- that some gods had been killed -- a vast multitude of
|
||
devils created, and that hell had been enlarged.
|
||
|
||
And then I read the Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Let me
|
||
tell you something about this sublime and slandered man. He came to
|
||
this country just before the Revolution. He brought a letter of
|
||
introduction from Benjamin Franklin, at that time the greatest
|
||
American.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
In Philadelphia, Paine was employed to write for the
|
||
Pennsylvania Magazine. We know that he wrote at least five
|
||
articles. The first was against slavery, the second against
|
||
duelling, the third on the treatment of prisoners -- showing that
|
||
the object should be to reform, not to punish and degrade -- the
|
||
fourth on the rights of woman, and the fifth in favor of forming
|
||
societies for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals.
|
||
|
||
From this you see that he suggested the great reforms of our
|
||
century.
|
||
|
||
The truth is that he labored all his life for the good of his
|
||
fellow-men, and did as much to found the Great Republic as any man
|
||
who ever stood beneath our flag.
|
||
|
||
He gave his thoughts about religion -- bout the blessed
|
||
Scriptures, about the superstitions of his time. He was perfectly
|
||
sincere and what he said was kind and fair.
|
||
|
||
The Age of Reason filled with hatred the hearts of those who
|
||
loved their enemies, and the occupant of every orthodox pulpit
|
||
became, and still is, a passionate malinger of Thomas Paine.
|
||
|
||
No one has answered -- no one will answer, his argument
|
||
against the dogma of inspiration -- his objections to the Bible.
|
||
|
||
He did not rise above all the superstitions of his day. While
|
||
he hated Jehovah, he praised the God of Nature, the creator and
|
||
preserver of all. In this he was wrong, because, as Watson said in
|
||
his Reply to Paine, the God of Nature is as heartless, as cruel as
|
||
the God of the Bible.
|
||
|
||
But Paine was one of the pioneers -- one of the Titans, one of
|
||
the heroes, who gladly gave his life, his every thought and act, to
|
||
free and civilize mankind.
|
||
|
||
I read Voltaire -- Voltaire, the greatest man of his century,
|
||
and who did more for liberty of thought and speech than any other
|
||
being, human or "divine." Voltaire, who tore the mask from
|
||
hypocrisy and found behind the painted smile the fangs of hate.
|
||
Voltaire, who attacked the savagery of the law, the cruel decisions
|
||
of venal courts, and rescued victims from the wheel and rack.
|
||
Voltaire, who waged war against the tyranny of thrones, the greed
|
||
and heartlessness of power. Voltaire, who filled the flesh of
|
||
priests with the barbed and poisoned arrows of his wit and made the
|
||
pious jugglers, who cursed him in public, laugh at themselves in
|
||
private. Voltaire, who sided with the oppressed, rescued the
|
||
unfortunate, championed the obscure and weak, civilized judges,
|
||
repealed laws and abolished torture in his native land.
|
||
|
||
In every direction this tireless man fought the absurd, the
|
||
miraculous, the supernatural, the idiotic, the unjust. He had no
|
||
reverence for the ancient. He was not awed by pageantry and pomp,
|
||
by crowned Crime or mitered Pretence. Beneath the crown he saw the
|
||
criminal, under the miter, the hypocrite.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
To the bar of his conscience, his reason, he summoned the
|
||
barbarism and the barbarians of his time. He pronounced judgment
|
||
against them all, and that judgment has been affirmed by the
|
||
intelligent world. Voltaire lighted a torch and gave to others the
|
||
sacred flame. The light still shines and will as long as man loves
|
||
liberty and seeks for truth.
|
||
|
||
I read Zeno, the man who said, centuries before our Christ was
|
||
born, that man could not own his fellow-man.
|
||
|
||
"No matter whether you claim a slave by purchase or capture,
|
||
the title is bad. They who claim to own their fellow-men, look down
|
||
into the pit and forget the justice that should rule the world."
|
||
|
||
I became acquainted with Epicurus, who taught the religion of
|
||
usefulness, of temperance, of courage and wisdom, and who said:
|
||
"Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is. I am
|
||
not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?"
|
||
|
||
I read about Socrates, who when on trial for his life, said,
|
||
among other things, to his judges, these wondrous words: "I have
|
||
not sought during my life to amass wealth and to adorn my body, but
|
||
I have sought to adorn my soul with the jewels of wisdom, patience,
|
||
and above all with a love of liberty."
|
||
|
||
So, I read about Diogenes, the philosopher who hated the
|
||
superfluous -- the enemy of waste and greed, and who one day
|
||
entered the temple, reverently approached the altar, crushed a
|
||
louse between the nails of his thumbs, and solemnly said: "The
|
||
sacrifice of Diogenes to all the gods." This parodied the worship
|
||
of the world -- satirized all creeds, and in one act put the
|
||
essence of religion.
|
||
|
||
Diogenes must have know of this "inspired" passage -- "Without
|
||
the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins."
|
||
|
||
I compared Zeno, Epicures and Socrates, three heathen wretches
|
||
who had never heard of the Old Testament or the Ten Commandments,
|
||
with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, three favorites of Jehovah, and I
|
||
was depraved enough to think that the Pagans were superior to the
|
||
Patriarchs -- and to Jehovah himself.
|
||
|
||
VII
|
||
|
||
My attention was turned to other religions, to the sacred
|
||
books, the creeds and ceremonies of other lands -- of India, Egypt,
|
||
Assyria, Persia, of the dead and dying nations.
|
||
|
||
I concluded that all religions had the same foundation -- a
|
||
belief in the supernatural -- a power above nature that man could
|
||
influence by worship -- by sacrifice and prayer.
|
||
|
||
I found that all religions rested on a mistaken conception of
|
||
nature -- that the religion of a people was the science of that
|
||
people, that is to say, their explanation of the world -- of life
|
||
and death -- of origin and destiny.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
I concluded that all religions had substantially the same
|
||
origin, and that in fact there has never been but one religion in
|
||
the world. The twigs and leaves may differ, but the trunk is the
|
||
same.
|
||
|
||
The poor African that pours out his heart to deity of stone is
|
||
on an exact religious level with the robed priest who supplicates
|
||
his God. The same mistake, the same superstition, bends the knees
|
||
and shuts the eyes of both. Both ask for supernatural aid, and
|
||
neither has the slightest thought of the absolute uniformity of
|
||
nature.
|
||
|
||
It seems probable to me that the first organized ceremonial
|
||
religion was the worship of the sun. The sun was the "Sky Father,"
|
||
the "All Seeing," the source of life -- the fireside of the world.
|
||
The sun was regarded as a god who fought the darkness, the power of
|
||
evil, the enemy of man.
|
||
|
||
There have been many sun-gods, and they seem to have been the
|
||
chief deities in the ancient religions. They have been worshiped in
|
||
many lands, by many nations that have passed to death and dust.
|
||
|
||
Apollo was a sun-god and he fought and conquered the serpent
|
||
of night. Baldur was a sun-god. He was in love with the Dawn -- a
|
||
maiden. Chrishna was a sun-god. At his birth the Ganges was
|
||
thrilled from its source to the sea, and all the trees, the dead as
|
||
well as the living, burst into leaf and bud and flower. Hercules
|
||
was a sun-god and so was Samson, whose strength was in his hair --
|
||
that is to say, in his beams. He was shorn of his strength by
|
||
Delilah, the shadow -- the darkness. Osiris, Bacchus, and Mithra,
|
||
Hermes, Buddha, and Quetzalcoatl, Prometheus, Zoroaster, and
|
||
Perseus, Cadom, Lao-tsze, Fo-hi, Horus and Rameses, were all sun-
|
||
gods.
|
||
|
||
All of these gods had gods for fathers and their mothers were
|
||
virgins. The births of nearly all were announced by stars,
|
||
celebrated by celestial music, and voices declared that a blessing
|
||
had come to the poor world. All of these gods were born in humble
|
||
places -- in caves, under trees, in common inns, and tyrants sought
|
||
to kill them all when they were babes. All of these sun-gods were
|
||
born at the winter solstice -- on Christmas. Nearly all were
|
||
worshiped by "wise men." All of them fasted for forty days -- all
|
||
of them taught in parables -- all of them wrought miracles -- all
|
||
met with a violent death, and all rose from the dead.
|
||
|
||
The history of these gods is the exact history of our Christ.
|
||
|
||
This is not a coincidence -- an accident. Christ was a sun-
|
||
god. Christ was a new name for an old biography -- a survival --
|
||
the last of the sun-gods. Christ was not a man, but a myth -- not
|
||
a life, but a legend.
|
||
|
||
I found that we had not only borrowed our Christ -- but that
|
||
all our sacraments, symbols and ceremonies were legacies that we
|
||
received from the buried past. There is nothing original in
|
||
Christianity.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
The cross was a symbol thousands of years before our era. It
|
||
was a symbol of life, of immortality -- of the god Agni, and it was
|
||
chiseled upon tombs many ages before a line of our Bible was
|
||
written.
|
||
|
||
Baptism is far older than Christianity -- than Judaism. The
|
||
Hindus, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had Holy Water long before a
|
||
Catholic lived. The eucharist was borrowed from the Pagans. Ceres
|
||
was the goddess of the fields -- Bacchus of the vine. At the
|
||
harvest festival they made cakes of wheat and said: "This is the
|
||
flesh of the goddess." They drank wine and cried: "This is the
|
||
blood of our god."
|
||
|
||
The Egyptians had a Trinity. They worshiped Osiris, Isis and
|
||
Horus, thousands of years before the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
|
||
were known.
|
||
|
||
The Tree of Life grew in India, in China, and among the
|
||
Aztecs, long before the Garden of Eden was planted.
|
||
|
||
Long before our Bible was known, other nations had their
|
||
sacred books.
|
||
|
||
The dogmas of the Fall of Man, the Atonement and Salvation by
|
||
Faith, are far older than our religion.
|
||
|
||
In our blessed gospel, -- in our "divine scheme," -- there is
|
||
nothing new -- nothing original. All old -- all borrowed, pieced
|
||
and patched.
|
||
|
||
Then I concluded that all religions had been naturally
|
||
produced, and that all were variation, modifications of one, --
|
||
then I felt that I knew that all were the work of man.
|
||
|
||
VIII
|
||
|
||
THE theologians had always insisted that their God was the
|
||
creator of all living things -- that the forms, parts, functions,
|
||
colors and varieties of animals were the expressions of his fancy,
|
||
taste and wisdom -- that he made them all precisely as they are
|
||
to-day -- that he invented fins and legs and wings -- that he
|
||
furnished them with the weapons of attack, the shields of defence
|
||
-- that he formed them with reference to food and climate, taking
|
||
into consideration all facts affecting life.
|
||
|
||
They insisted that man was a special creation, not related in
|
||
any way to the animals below him. They also asserted that all the
|
||
forms of vegetation, from mosses to forests, were just the same
|
||
to-day as the moment they were made.
|
||
|
||
Men of genius, who were for the most part free from religious
|
||
prejudice, were examining these things -- were looking for facts.
|
||
They were examining the fossils of animals and plants -- studying
|
||
the forms of animals -- their bones and muscles -- the effect of
|
||
climate and food -- the strange modifications through which they
|
||
had passed.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
Humboldt had published his lectures -- filled with great
|
||
thoughts -- with splendid generalizations -- with suggestions that
|
||
stimulated the spirit of investigation, and with conclusions that
|
||
satisfied the mind. He demonstrated the uniformity of Nature -- the
|
||
kinship of all that lives and grows -- that breathes and thinks.
|
||
|
||
Darwin, with his Origin of Species, his theories about Natural
|
||
Selection, the Survival of the Fittest, and the influence of
|
||
environment, shed a flood of light upon the great problems of plant
|
||
and animal life.
|
||
|
||
These things had been guessed, prophesied, asserted, hinted by
|
||
many others, but Darwin, with infinite patience, with perfect care
|
||
and candor, found the facts, fulfilled the prophecies, and
|
||
demonstrated the truth of the guesses, hints and assertions. He
|
||
was, in my judgment, the keenest observer, the best judge of the
|
||
meaning and value of a fact, the greatest Naturalist the world has
|
||
produced.
|
||
|
||
The theological view began to look small and mean.
|
||
|
||
Spencer gave his theory of evolution and sustained it by
|
||
countless facts. He stood at a great height, and with the eyes of
|
||
a philosopher, a profound thinker, surveyed the world. He has
|
||
influenced the thought of the wisest.
|
||
|
||
Theology looked more absurd than ever.
|
||
|
||
Huxley entered the lists for Darwin. No man ever had a sharper
|
||
sword -- a better shield. He challenged the world. The great
|
||
theologians and the small scientists -- those who had more courage
|
||
than sense, accepted the challenge. Their poor bodies were carried
|
||
away by their friends.
|
||
|
||
Huxley had intelligence, industry, genius, and the courage to
|
||
express his thought. He was absolutely loyal to what he thought was
|
||
truth. Without prejudice and without fear, he followed the
|
||
footsteps of life front the lowest to the highest forms.
|
||
|
||
Theology looked smaller still.
|
||
|
||
Haeckel began at the simplest cell, went from change to change
|
||
-- from form to form -- followed the line of development, the path
|
||
of life, until he reached the human race. It was all natural. There
|
||
had been no interference from without.
|
||
|
||
I read the works of these great men -- of many others -- and
|
||
became convinced that they were right, and that all the theologians
|
||
-- all the believers in "special creation" were absolutely wrong.
|
||
|
||
The Garden of Eden faded away, Adam and Eve fell back to dust,
|
||
the snake crawled into the grass, and Jehovah became a miserable
|
||
myth.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
IX
|
||
|
||
I took another step. What is matter -- substance? Can it be
|
||
destroyed -- annihilated? Is it possible to conceive of the
|
||
destruction of the smallest atom of substance? It can be ground to
|
||
powder -- changed from a solid to a liquid -- from a liquid to a
|
||
gas -- but it all remains. Nothing is lost -- nothing destroyed.
|
||
|
||
Let an infinite God, if there be one, attack a grain of sand
|
||
-- attack it with infinite power. It cannot be destroyed. It cannot
|
||
surrender. It defies all force. Substance cannot be destroyed.
|
||
|
||
Then I took another step.
|
||
|
||
If matter cannot be destroyed, cannot be annihilated, it could
|
||
not have been created.
|
||
|
||
The indestructible must be uncreateable.
|
||
|
||
And then I asked myself: What is force?
|
||
|
||
We cannot conceive of the creation of force, or of its
|
||
destruction. Force may be changed from one form to another -- from
|
||
motion to heat -- but it cannot be destroyed -- annihilated.
|
||
|
||
If force cannot be destroyed it could not have been created.
|
||
It is eternal.
|
||
|
||
Another thing -- matter cannot exist apart from force. Force
|
||
cannot exist apart from matter. Matter could not have existed
|
||
before force. Force could not have existed before matter. Matter
|
||
and force can only be conceived of together. This has been shown by
|
||
several scientists, but most clearly, most forcibly by Buchner.
|
||
|
||
Thought is a form of force, consequently it could not have
|
||
caused or created matter. Intelligence is a form of force and could
|
||
not have existed without or apart from matter. Without substance
|
||
there could have been no mind, no will, no force in any form, and
|
||
there could have been no substance without force.
|
||
|
||
Matter and force were not created. They have existed from
|
||
eternity. They cannot be destroyed.
|
||
|
||
There was, there is, no creator. Then came the question; Is
|
||
there a God? Is there a being of infinite intelligence, power and
|
||
goodness, who governs the world?
|
||
|
||
There can he goodness without much intelligence -- but it
|
||
seems to me that perfect intelligence and perfect goodness must go
|
||
together.
|
||
|
||
In nature I see, or seem to see, good and evil -- intelligence
|
||
and ignorance -- goodness and cruelty -- care and carelessness --
|
||
economy and waste. I see means that do not accomplish the ends --
|
||
designs that seem to fail.
|
||
|
||
To me it seems infinitely cruel for life to feed on life -- to
|
||
create animals that devour others.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
The teeth and beaks, the claws and fangs, that tear and rend,
|
||
fill me with horror. What can be more frightful than a world at
|
||
war? Every leaf a battle-field -- every flower a Golgotha -- in
|
||
every drop of water pursuit, capture and death. Under every piece
|
||
of bark, life lying in wait for life. On every blade of grass,
|
||
something that kills, -- something that suffers. Everywhere the
|
||
strong living on the weak -- the superior on the inferior.
|
||
Everywhere the weak, the insignificant, living on the strong -- the
|
||
inferior on the superior -- the highest food for the lowest -- man
|
||
sacrificed for the sake of microbes.
|
||
|
||
Murder universal. Everywhere pain, disease and death -- death
|
||
that does not wait for bent forms and gray hairs, but clutches
|
||
babes and happy youths. Death that takes the mother from her
|
||
helpless, dimpled child -- death that fills the world with grief
|
||
and tears.
|
||
|
||
How can the orthodox Christian explain these things?
|
||
|
||
I know that life is good. I remember the sunshine and rain.
|
||
Then I think of the earthquake and flood. I do not forget health
|
||
and harvest, home and love -- but what of pestilence and famine? I
|
||
cannot harmonize all these contradictions -- these blessings and
|
||
agonies -- with the existence of an infinitely good, wise and
|
||
powerful God.
|
||
|
||
The theologian says that what we call evil is for our benefit
|
||
-- that we are placed in this world of sin and sorrow to develop
|
||
character. If this is true I ask why the infant dies? Millions and
|
||
millions draw a few breaths and fade away in the arms of their
|
||
mothers. They are not allowed to develop character.
|
||
|
||
The theologian says that serpents were given fangs to protect
|
||
themselves from their enemies. Why did the God who made them, make
|
||
enemies? Why is it that many species of serpents have no fangs?
|
||
|
||
The theologian says that God armored the hippopotamus, covered
|
||
his body, except the under part, with scales and plates, that other
|
||
animals could not pierce with tooth or tusk. But the same God made
|
||
the rhinoceros and supplied him with a horn on his nose, with which
|
||
he disembowels the hippopotamus.
|
||
|
||
The same God made the eagle, the vulture, the hawk, and their
|
||
helpless prey.
|
||
|
||
On every hand there seems to be design to defeat design.
|
||
|
||
If God created man -- if he is the father of us all, why did
|
||
he make the criminals, the insane, the deformed and idiotic?
|
||
|
||
Should the inferior man thank God? Should the mother, who
|
||
clasps to her breast an idiot child, thank God? Should the slave
|
||
thank God?
|
||
|
||
The theologian says that God governs the wind, the rain, the
|
||
lightning. How then can we account for the cyclone, the flood, the
|
||
drought, the glittering bolt that kills?
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
Suppose we had a man in this country who could control the
|
||
wind, the rain and lightning, and suppose we elected him to govern
|
||
these things, and suppose that he allowed whole States to dry and
|
||
wither, and at the same time wasted the rain in the sea. Suppose
|
||
that he allowed the winds to destroy cities and to crush to
|
||
shapelessness thousands of men and women, and allowed the
|
||
lightnings to strike the life out of mothers and babes. What would
|
||
we say? What would we think of such a savage?
|
||
|
||
And yet, according to the theologians, this is exactly the
|
||
course pursued by God.
|
||
|
||
What do we think of a man, who will not, when he has the
|
||
power, protect his friends? Yet the Christian's God allowed his
|
||
enemies to torture and burn his friends, his worshipers.
|
||
|
||
Who has ingenuity enough to explain this?
|
||
|
||
What good man, having the power to prevent it, would allow the
|
||
innocent to be imprisoned, chained in dungeons, and sigh against
|
||
the dripping walls their weary lives away?
|
||
|
||
If God governs the world, why is innocence not a perfect
|
||
shield? Why does injustice triumph?
|
||
|
||
Who can answer these questions?
|
||
|
||
In answer, the intelligent, honest man must say: I do not
|
||
know.
|
||
|
||
X
|
||
|
||
This God must be, if he exists, a person -- a conscious being.
|
||
Who can imagine an infinite personality? This God must have force,
|
||
and we cannot conceive of force apart from matter. This God must be
|
||
material. He must have the means by which he changes force to what
|
||
we call thought. When he thinks he uses force, force that must be
|
||
replaced. Yet we are told that he is infinitely wise. If he is, he
|
||
does not think. Thought is a ladder -- a process by which we reach
|
||
a conclusion. He who knows all conclusions cannot think. He cannot
|
||
hope or fear. When knowledge is perfect there can be no passion, no
|
||
emotion. If God is infinite he does not want. He has all. He who
|
||
does not want does not act. The infinite must dwell in eternal
|
||
calm.
|
||
|
||
It is as impossible to conceive of such a being as to imagine
|
||
a square triangle, or to think of a circle without a diameter.
|
||
|
||
Yet we are told that it is our duty to love this God. Can we
|
||
love the unknown, the inconceivable? Can it be our duty to love
|
||
anybody? It is our duty to act justly, honestly, but it cannot be
|
||
our duty to love. We cannot be under obligation to admire a
|
||
painting -- to be charmed with a poem -- or thrilled with music.
|
||
Admiration cannot be controlled. Taste and love are not the
|
||
servants of the will. Love is, and must be free. It rises from the
|
||
heart like perfume from a flower.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
For thousands of ages men and women have been trying to love
|
||
the gods -- trying to soften their hearts -- trying to get their
|
||
aid.
|
||
|
||
I see them all. The panorama passes before me. I see them with
|
||
outstretched hands -- with reverently closed eyes -- worshiping the
|
||
sun. I see them bowing, in their fear and need, to meteoric stones
|
||
-- imploring serpents, beasts and sacred trees -- praying to idols
|
||
wrought of wood and stone. I see them building altars to the unseen
|
||
powers, staining them with blood of child and beast. I see the
|
||
countless priests and hear their solemn chants. I see the dying
|
||
victims, the smoking altars, the swinging censers, and the rising
|
||
clouds. I see the half-god men -- the mournful Christs, in many
|
||
lands. I see the common things of life change to miracles as they
|
||
speed from mouth to mouth. I see the insane prophets reading the
|
||
secret book of fate by signs and dreams. I see them all -- the
|
||
Assyrians chanting the praises of Asshur and Ishtar -- the Hindus
|
||
worshiping Brahma, Vishnu and Draupadi, the whitearmed -- the
|
||
Chaldeans sacrificing to Bel and Hea -- the Egyptians bowing to
|
||
Ptah and Fta, Osiris and Isis -- the Medes placating the storm,
|
||
worshiping the fire -- the Babylonians supplicating Bel and
|
||
Murodach -- I see them all by the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Ganges
|
||
and the Nile. I see the Greeks building temples for Zeus, Neptune
|
||
and Venus. I see the Romans kneeling to a hundred gods. I see
|
||
others spurning idols and pouring out their hopes and fears to a
|
||
vague image in the mind. I see the multitudes, with open mouths,
|
||
receive as truths the myths and fables of the vanished years. I see
|
||
them give their toil, their wealth to robe the priests, to build
|
||
the vaulted roofs, the spacious aisles, the glittering domes. I see
|
||
them clad in rags, huddled in dens and huts, devouring crusts and
|
||
scraps, that they may give the more to ghosts and gods. I see them
|
||
make their cruel creeds and fill the world with hatred, war, and
|
||
death. I see them with their faces in the dust in the dark days of
|
||
plague and sudden death, when cheeks are wan and lips are white for
|
||
lack of bread. I hear their prayers, their sighs, their sobs. I see
|
||
them kiss the unconscious lips as their hot tears fall on the
|
||
pallid faces of the dead. I see the nations as they fade and fail.
|
||
I see them captured and enslaved. I see their altars mingle with
|
||
the common earth, their temples crumble slowly back to dust. I see
|
||
their gods grow old and weak, infirm and faint. I see them fall
|
||
from vague and misty thrones, helpless and dead. The worshipers
|
||
receive no help. Injustice triumphs. Toilers are paid with the
|
||
lash, -- babes are sold, -- the innocent stand on scaffolds, and
|
||
the heroic perish in flames. I see the earthquakes devour, the
|
||
volcanoes overwhelm, the cyclones wreck, the floods destroy, and
|
||
the lightnings kill.
|
||
|
||
The nations perished. The gods died. The toil and wealth were
|
||
lost. The temples were built in vain, and all the prayers died
|
||
unanswered in the heedless air.
|
||
|
||
Then I asked myself the question: Is there a supernatural
|
||
power -- an arbitrary mind -- an enthroned God -- a supreme will
|
||
that sways the tides and currents of the world -- to which all
|
||
causes bow?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
I do not deny. I do not know -- but I do not believe. I
|
||
believe that the natural is supreme -- that from the infinite chain
|
||
no link can be lost or broken -- that there is no supernatural
|
||
power that can answer prayer -- no power that worship can persuade
|
||
or change -- no power that cares for man.
|
||
|
||
I believe that with infinite arms Nature embraces the all --
|
||
that there is no interference -- no chance -- that behind every
|
||
event are the necessary and countless causes, and that beyond every
|
||
event will be and must be the necessary and countless effects.
|
||
|
||
Man must protect himself. He cannot depend upon the
|
||
supernatural -- upon an imaginary father in the skies. He must
|
||
protect himself by finding the facts in Nature, by developing his
|
||
brain, to the end that he may overcome the obstructions and take
|
||
advantage of the forces of Nature.
|
||
|
||
Is there a God?
|
||
|
||
I do not know.
|
||
|
||
Is man immortal?
|
||
|
||
I do not know.
|
||
|
||
One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear,
|
||
belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it
|
||
will be as it must be.
|
||
|
||
We wait and hope.
|
||
|
||
XI
|
||
|
||
When I became convinced that the Universe is natural -- that
|
||
all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain,
|
||
into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling,
|
||
the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the
|
||
dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and
|
||
manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave.
|
||
There was for me no master in all the wide world -- not even in
|
||
infinite space. I was free -- free to think, to express my thoughts
|
||
-- free to live to my own ideal -- free to live for myself and
|
||
those I loved -- free to use all my faculties, all my senses --
|
||
free to spread imagination's wings -- free to investigate, to guess
|
||
and dream and hope -- free to judge and determine for myself --
|
||
free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired"
|
||
books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of
|
||
the past -- free from popes and priests -- free from all the
|
||
"called" and "set apart" -- free from sanctified mistakes and holy
|
||
lies -- free from the fear of eternal pain -- free from the winged
|
||
monsters of the night -- free from devils, ghosts and gods. For the
|
||
first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the
|
||
realms of thought -- no air, no space, where fancy could not spread
|
||
her painted wings -- no chains for my limbs -- no lashes for my
|
||
back -- no fires for my flesh -- no master's frown or threat -- no
|
||
following another's steps -- no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl,
|
||
or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly,
|
||
joyously, faced all worlds.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.
|
||
|
||
And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with
|
||
thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers
|
||
who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain -- for the
|
||
freedom of labor and thought -- to those who fell on the fierce
|
||
fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains --
|
||
to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs -- to those whose
|
||
bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn -- to those by
|
||
fire consumed -- to all the wise, the good, the brave of every
|
||
land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of
|
||
men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and
|
||
hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.
|
||
|
||
Let us be true to ourselves -- true to the facts we know, and
|
||
let us, above all things, preserve the veracity of our souls.
|
||
|
||
If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our
|
||
fellow-men. We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife
|
||
and child and friend.
|
||
|
||
We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked
|
||
what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not
|
||
know. We can tell the truth, and we can enjoy the blessed freedom
|
||
that the brave have won. We can destroy the monsters of
|
||
superstition, the hissing snakes of ignorance and fear. We can
|
||
drive from our minds the frightful things that tear and wound with
|
||
beak and fang. We can civilize our fellow-men. We can fill our
|
||
lives with generous deeds, with loving words, with art and song,
|
||
and all the ecstasies of love. We can flood our years with sunshine
|
||
-- with the divine climate of kindness, and we can drain to the
|
||
last drop the golden cup of joy.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
||
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
||
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
||
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
|
||
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
|
||
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
|
||
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
|
||
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
|
||
|
||
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
|
||
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
|
||
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
|
||
us, we need to give them back to America.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|