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2211 lines
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34 page printout.
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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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THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
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(The Ingersoll -- Black Debate)
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III
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by Robert G. Ingersoll
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1881
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"Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to
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do, in order to become acceptable to God, is mere superstition and
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religious folly."
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Kant.
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Several months ago, The North American Review asked me to
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write an article, saying that it would be published if some one
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would furnish a reply. I wrote the article that appeared in the
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August number, and by me it was entitled "Is All of the Bible
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Inspired?" Not until the article was written did I know who was
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expected to answer. I make this explanation for the purpose of
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dissipating the impression that Mr. Black had been challenged by
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me. To have struck his shield with my lance might have given birth
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to the impression that I was somewhat doubtful as to the
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correctness of my position. I naturally expected an answer from
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some professional theologian, and was surprised to find that a
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reply had been written by a "policeman," who imagined that he had
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answered my arguments by simply telling me that my statements were
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false. It is somewhat unfortunate that in a discussion like this
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any one should resort to the slightest personal detraction. The
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theme is great enough to engage the highest faculties of the human
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mind, and in the investigation of such a subject vituperation is
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singularly and vulgarly out of place. Arguments cannot be answered
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with insults. It is unfortunate that the intellectual arena should
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be entered by a "Policeman," who has more confidence in concussion
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than discussion. Kindness is strength. Good-nature is often
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mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius.
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Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great
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and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed,
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and calm, Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance,
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Insolence is not logic. Epithets are the arguments of malice.
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Candor is the courage of the soul. Leaving the objectionable
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portions of Mr. Black's reply, feeling that so grand a subject
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should not be blown and tainted with malicious words, I proceed to
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answer as best I may the arguments he has urged.
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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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THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
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by Robert G. Ingersoll
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I am made to say that "the universe is natural"; that "it came
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into being of its own accord"; that "it made its own laws at the
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start, and afterward improved itself considerably by spontaneous
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evolution."
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I did say that "the universe is natural," but I did not say
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that "it came into being of its own accord": neither did I say that
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"it made its own laws and afterward improved itself" The universe,
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according to my idea, is, always was, and forever will be. It did
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not "come into being," it is the one eternal being, -- the only
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thing that ever did, does, or can exist. It did not "make its own
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laws." We know nothing of what we call the laws of nature except as
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we gather the idea of law from the uniformity of phenomena
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springing from like conditions. To make myself clear: Water always
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runs down-hill. The theist says that this happens because there is
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behind the phenomenon an active law. As a matter of fact, law is
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this side of the phenomenon. Law does not cause the phenomenon, but
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the phenomenon causes the idea of law in our minds; and this idea
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is produced from the fact that under like circumstances the same
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phenomenon always happens. Mr. Black probably thinks that the
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difference in the weight of rocks and clouds was created by law;
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that parallel lines fail to unite only because it is illegal; that
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diameter and circumference could have been so made that it would be
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a greater distance across than around a circle; that a straight
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line could enclose a triangle if not prevented by law, and that a
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little legislation could make it possible for two bodies to occupy
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the same space at the same time. It seems to me that law cannot be
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the cause of phenomena, but is an effect produced in our minds by
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their succession and resemblance. To put a God back of the
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universe, compels us to admit that there was a time when nothing
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existed except this God; that this God had lived from eternity in
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an infinite vacuum, and in absolute idleness. The mind of every
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thoughtful man is forced to one of these two conclusions: either
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that the universe is self-existent, or that it was created by a
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self-existent being. To my mind, there are far more difficulties in
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the second hypothesis than in the first.
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Of course, upon a question like this, nothing can be
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absolutely known. We live on an atom called Earth, and what we know
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of the infinite is almost infinitely limited; but, little as we
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know, all have an equal right to give their honest thought. Life is
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a shadowy, strange, and winding road on which we travel for a
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little way -- a few short steps -- just from the cradle, with its
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lullaby of love, to the low and quiet way-side inn, where all at
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last must sleep, and where the only salutation is -- Good-night.
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I know as little as any one else about the "plan" of the
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universe and as to the "design," I know just as little. It will not
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do to say that the universe was designed, and therefore there must
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be a designer. There must first be proof that it was "designed." It
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will not do to say that the universe has a "plan," and then assert
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that there must have been an infinite maker. The idea that a design
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must have a beginning and that a designer need not, is a simple
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expression of human ignorance. We find a watch, and we say: "So
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curious and wonderful a thing must have had a maker. "We find the
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watch-maker, and we say: "So curious and wonderful a thing as man
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must have had a maker." We find God, and we then say: "He is so
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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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THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
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by Robert G. Ingersoll
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wonderful that he must not have had a maker. "In other words, all
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things a little wonderful must have been created, but it is
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possible for something to be so wonderful that it always existed.
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One would suppose that just as the wonder increased the necessity
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for a creator increased, because it is the wonder of the thing that
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suggests the idea of creation. Is it possible that a designer
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exists from all eternity without design? Was there no design in
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having an infinite designer? For me, it is hard to see the plan or
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design in earthquakes and pestilences. It is somewhat difficult to
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discern the design or the benevolence in so making the world that
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billions of animals live only on the agonies of others. The justice
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of God is not visible to me in the history of this world. When I
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think of the suffering and death, of the poverty and crime, of the
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cruelty and malice, of the heartlessness of this "design" and
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"plan," where beak and claw and tooth tear and rend the quivering
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flesh of weakness and despair, I cannot convince myself that it is
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the result of infinite wisdom, benevolence, and justice.
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Most Christians have seen and recognized this difficulty, and
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have endeavored to avoid it by giving God an opportunity in another
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world to rectify the seeming mistakes of this. Mr. Black, however,
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avoids the entire question by saying: "We have neither jurisdiction
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nor capacity to rejudge the justice of God." In other words, we
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have no right to think upon this subject, no right to examine the
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questions most vitally affecting human kind. We are simply to
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accept the ignorant statements of barbarian dead. This question
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cannot be settled by saying that "it would be a mere waste of time
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and space to enumerate the proofs which show that the Universe was
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created by a preexistent and self-conscious Being." The time and
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space should have been "wasted," and the proofs should have been
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enumerated. These "proofs," are what the wisest and greatest are
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trying to find. Logic is not satisfied with assertion. It cares
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nothing for the opinions of the "great," -- nothing for the
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prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of
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the dead. In the world of Science, a fact is a legal tender.
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Assertions and miracles are base and spurious coins. We have the
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right to rejudge the justice even of a god. No one should throw
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away his reason -- the fruit of all experience. It is the
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intellectual capital of the soul, the only light, the only guide,
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and without it the brain becomes the palace of an idiot king,
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attended by a retinue of thieves and hypocrites.
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Of course it is admitted that most of the Ten Commandments are
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wise and just. In passing, it may be well enough to say, that the
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commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or
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any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the
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earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth," was the
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absolute death of Art, and that not until after the destruction of
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Jerusalem was there a Hebrew painter or sculptor. Surely a
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commandment is not inspired that drives from the earth the living
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canvas and the breathing stone -- leaves all walls bare and all the
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niches desolate. In the tenth commandment we find woman placed on
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an exact equality with other property, which, to say the least of
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it, has never tended to the amelioration of her condition.
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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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THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
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by Robert G. Ingersoll
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A very curious thing about these commandments is that their
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supposed author violated nearly every one. From Sinai, according to
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the account, he said: "Thou shalt not kill," and yet he ordered the
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murder of millions; "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and yet he
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gave captured maidens to gratify the lust of captors; "Thou shalt
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not steal," and yet he gave to Jewish marauders the flocks and
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herds of others; "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, nor
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his wife," and yet he allowed his chosen people to destroy the
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homes of neighbors and to steal their wives; "Honor thy father and
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thy mother," and yet this same God had thousands of fathers
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butchered, and with the sword of war killed children yet unborn;
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"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," and yet
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he sent abroad "lying spirits" to deceive his own prophets, and in
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a hundred ways paid tribute to deceit. So far as we know, Jehovah
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kept only one of these commandments -- he worshiped no other god.
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The religious intolerance of the Old Testament is justified
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upon the ground that "blasphemy was a breach of political
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allegiance," that "idolatry was an act of overt treason," and that
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"to worship the gods of the hostile heathen was deserting to the
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public enemy, and giving him aid and comfort. "According to Mr.
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Black, we should all have liberty of conscience except when
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directly governed by God. In that country where God is king,
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liberty cannot exist. In this position, I admit that he is upheld
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and fortified by the "sacred" text. Within the Old Testament there
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is no such thing as religious toleration. Within that volume can be
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found no mercy for an unbeliever. For all who think for themselves,
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there are threatenings, curses, and anathemas. Think of an infinite
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being who is so cruel, so unjust, that he will not allow one of his
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own children the liberty of thought! Think of an infinite God
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acting as the direct governor of a people, and yet not able to
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command their love! Think of the author of all mercy imbruing his
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hands in the blood of helpless men, women, and children, simply
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because he did not furnish them with intelligence enough to
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understand his law! An earthly father who cannot govern by
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affection is not fit to be a father; what, then, shall we say of an
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infinite being who resorts to violence, to pestilence, to disease,
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and famine, in the vain effort to obtain even the respect of a
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savage? Read this passage, red from the heart of cruelty:
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"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy
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daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as
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thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve
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other gods which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers . . .
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thou shalt not consent unto him. nor harken unto him, neither shalt
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thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou
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conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be
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first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all
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the people; and thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die."
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This is the religious liberty of the Bible. If you had lived
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in Palestine, and if the wife of your bosom, dearer to you than
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your own soul, had said: "I like the religion of India better than
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that of Palestine," it would have been your duty to kill her. "Your
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eye must not pity her, your hand must be first upon her, and
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afterwards the hand of all the people." If she had said: "Let us
|
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worship the sun -- the sun that clothes the earth in garments of
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|
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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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|
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THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
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green -- the sun, the great fireside of the world -- the sun that
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covers the hills and valleys with flowers -- that gave me your
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face, and made it possible for me to look into the eyes of my babe
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-- let us worship the sun," it was your duty to kill her. You must
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throw the first stone, and when against her bosom -- a bosom filled
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with love for you -- you had thrown the jagged and cruel rock, and
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had seen the red stream of her life oozing from the dumb lips of
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death, you could then look up and receive the congratulations of
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the God whose commandment you had obeyed. Is it possible that a
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being of infinite mercy ordered a husband to kill his wife for the
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crime of having expressed an opinion on the subject of religion?
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Has there been found upon the records of the savage world anything
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more perfectly fiendish than this commandment of Jehovah? This is
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justified on the ground that "blasphemy was a breach of political
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allegiance, and idolatry an act of overt treason." We can
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understand how a human king stands in need of the service of his
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people. We can understand how the desertion of any of his soldiers
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weakens his army; but were the king infinite in power, his strength
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would still remain the same, and under no conceivable circumstances
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could the enemy triumph.
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I insist that, if there is an infinitely good and wise God, he
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beholds with pity the misfortunes of his children. I insist that
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such a God would know the mists, the clouds, the darkness
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enveloping the human mind. He would know how few stars are visible
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in the intellectual sky. His pity, not his wrath, would be excited
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by the efforts of his blind children, groping in the night to find
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the cause of things, and endeavoring, through their tears, to see
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some dawn of hope. Filled with awe by their surroundings, by fear
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of the unknown, he would know that when, kneeling, they poured out
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their gratitude to some unseen power, even to a visible idol, it
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was, in fact, intended for him. An infinitely good being, had he
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the power, would answer the reasonable prayer of an honest savage,
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even when addressed to wood and stone.
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The atrocities of the Old Testament, the threatenings,
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maledictions, and curses of the "inspired book," are defended on
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the ground that the Jews had a right to treat their enemies as
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their enemies treated them; and in this connection is this
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remarkable statement: "In your treatment of hostile barbarians you
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not only may lawfully, you must necessarily, adopt their mode of
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warfare. If they come to conquer you, they may be conquered by you;
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if they give no quarter, they are entitled to none; if the death of
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your whole population be their purpose, you may defeat it by
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exterminating theirs."
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For a man who is a "Christian policeman," and has taken upon
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himself to defend the Christian religion; for one who follows the
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Master who said that when smitten on one cheek you must turn the
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other, and who again and again enforced the idea that you must
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overcome evil with good, it is hardly consistent to declare that a
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civilized nation must of necessity adopt the warfare of savages. Is
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it possible that in fighting, for instance, the Indians of America,
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if they scalp our soldiers we should scalp theirs? If they ravish,
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murder, and mutilate our wives, must we treat theirs in the same
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manner? If they kill the babes in our cradles, must we brain
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theirs? If they take our captives, bind them to the trees, and if
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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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THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
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by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
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their squaws fill their quivering: flesh with sharpened fagots and
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set them on fire, that they may die clothed with flame, must our
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wives, our mothers, and our daughters follow the fiendish example?
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Is this the conclusion of the most enlightened Christianity? Will
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the pulpits of the United States adopt the arguments of this
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"policeman"? Is this the last and most beautiful blossom of the
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Sermon on the Mount? Is this the echo of "Father, forgive them.
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they know not what they do"?
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Mr. Black justifies the wars of extermination and conquest
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because the American people fought for the integrity of their own
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country; fought to do away with the infamous institution of
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slavery; fought to preserve the jewels of liberty and justice for
|
||
themselves and for their children. Is it possible that his mind is
|
||
so clouded by political and religious prejudice, by the
|
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recollections of an unfortunate administration, that he sees no
|
||
difference between a war of extermination and one of self-
|
||
preservation? that he sees no choice between the murder of helpless
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age, of weeping women and of sleeping babes, and the defence of
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liberty and nationality?
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The soldiers of the Republic did not wage a war of
|
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extermination. They did not seek to enslave their fellow-men. They
|
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did not murder trembling age. They did not sheathe their swords in
|
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women's breasts. They gave the old men bread, and let the mothers
|
||
rock their babes in peace. They fought to save the world's great
|
||
hope -- to free a race and put the humblest hut beneath the canopy
|
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of liberty and law.
|
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Claiming neither praise nor dispraise for the part taken by me
|
||
in the Civil war, for the purposes of this argument, it is
|
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sufficient to say that I am perfectly willing that my record, poor
|
||
and barren as it is, should be compared with his.
|
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Never for an instant did I suppose that any respectable
|
||
American citizen could be found willing at this day to defend the
|
||
institution of slavery; and never was I more astonished than when
|
||
I found Mr. Black denying that civilized countries passionately
|
||
assert that slavery is and always was a hideous crime. I was amazed
|
||
when he declared that: "the doctrine that slavery is a crime under
|
||
all circumstances and at all times was first started by the
|
||
adherents of a political faction in this country less than forty
|
||
years ago." He tells us that "they denounced God and Christ for not
|
||
agreeing with them," but that "they did not constitute the
|
||
civilized world; nor were they, if the truth must be told, a very
|
||
respectable portion of it. Politically they were successful; I need
|
||
not say by what means, or with what effect upon the morals of the
|
||
country."
|
||
|
||
Slavery held both branches of Congress, filled the chair of
|
||
the Executive, sat upon the Supreme Bench, had in its hands all
|
||
rewards, all offices; knelt in the pew, occupied the pulpit, stole
|
||
human beings in the name of God, robbed the trundle-bed for love of
|
||
Christ; incited mobs, led ignorance, ruled colleges, sat in the
|
||
chairs of professors, dominated the public press, closed the lips
|
||
of free speech, and polluted with its leprous hand every source and
|
||
spring of power. The abolitionists attacked this monster. They were
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
the bravest, grandest men of their country and their century.
|
||
Denounced by thieves, hated by hypocrites, mobbed by cowards,
|
||
slandered by priests, shunned by politicians, abhorred by the
|
||
seekers of office, -- these men "of whom the world was not worthy,"
|
||
in spite of all opposition, in spite of poverty and want, conquered
|
||
innumerable obstacles, never faltering for one moment, never
|
||
dismayed -- accepting defeat with a smile born of infinite hope --
|
||
knowing that they were right -- insisted and persisted until every
|
||
chain was broken, until slave-pens became schoolhouses, and three
|
||
millions of slaves became free men, women, and children. They did
|
||
not measure with "the golden metewand of God," but with "the
|
||
elastic cord of human feeling." They were men the latches of whose
|
||
shoes no believer in human slavery was ever worthy to unloose. And
|
||
yet we are told by this modern defender of the slavery of Jehovah
|
||
that they were not even respectable; and this slander is justified
|
||
because the writer is assured "that the infallible God proceeded
|
||
upon good grounds when he authorized slavery in Judea."
|
||
|
||
Not satisfied with having slavery in this world, Mr. Black
|
||
assures us that it will last through all eternity, and that forever
|
||
and forever inferiors must be subordinated to superiors. Who is the
|
||
superior man? According to Mr. Black, he is superior who lives upon
|
||
the unpaid labor of the inferior, With me, the superior man is the
|
||
one who uses his superiority in bettering the condition of the
|
||
inferior. The superior man is strength for the weak, eyes for the
|
||
blind, brains for the simple; he is the one who helps carry the
|
||
burden that nature has put upon the inferior. Any man who helps
|
||
another to gain and retain his liberty is superior to any
|
||
infallible God who authorized slavery in Judea. For my part, I
|
||
would rather be the slave than the master. It is better to be
|
||
robbed than to be a robber. I had rather be stolen from than to be
|
||
a thief.
|
||
|
||
According to Mr. Black, there will be slavery in heaven, and
|
||
fast by the throne of God will be the auction-block, and the
|
||
streets of the New Jerusalem will be adorned with the whippingpost,
|
||
while the music of the harp will be supplemented by the crack of
|
||
the driver's whip. If some good Republican would catch Mr. Black,
|
||
"incorporate him into his family, tame him, teach him to think, and
|
||
give him a knowledge of the true principles of human liberty and
|
||
government, he would confer upon him a most beneficent boon,"
|
||
Slavery includes all other crimes. It is the joint product of the
|
||
kidnapper, pirate, thief, murderer, and hypocrite. It degrades
|
||
labor and corrupts leisure. To lacerate the naked back, to sell
|
||
wives, to steal babes, to breed bloodhounds, to debauch your own
|
||
soul -- this is slavery. This is what Jehovah "authorized in
|
||
Judea." This is what Mr. Black believes in still. He "measures with
|
||
the golden metewand of God." I abhor slavery. With me, liberty is
|
||
not merely a means -- it is an end. Without that word, all other
|
||
words are empty sounds.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black is too late with his protest against the freedom of
|
||
his fellow-man. Liberty is making the tour of the world. Russia has
|
||
emancipated her serfs; the slave trade is prosecuted only by
|
||
thieves and pirates; Spain feels upon her cheek the burning blush
|
||
of shame; Brazil with proud and happy eyes is looking for the dawn
|
||
of freedom's day; the people of the South rejoice that slavery is
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
no more, and every good and honest man (excepting Mr. Black), of
|
||
every land and clime, hopes that the limbs of men will never feel
|
||
again the weary weight of chains.
|
||
|
||
We are informed by Mr. Black that polygamy is neither
|
||
commanded nor prohibited in the Old Testament -- that it is only
|
||
"discouraged." It seems to me that a little legislation on that
|
||
subject might have tended to its "discouragement." But where is the
|
||
legislation? In the moral code, which Mr. Black assures us
|
||
"consists of certain immutable rules to govern the conduct of all
|
||
men at all times and at all places in their private and personal
|
||
relations with others," not one word is found on the subject of
|
||
polygamy. There is nothing "discouraging" in the Ten Commandments,
|
||
nor in the records of any conversation Jehovah is claimed to have
|
||
had with Moses upon Sinai. The life of Abraham, the story of Jacob
|
||
and Laban, the duty of a brother to be the husband of the widow of
|
||
his deceased brother, the life of David, taken in connection with
|
||
the practice of one who is claimed to have been the wisest of men
|
||
-- all these things are probably relied on to show that polygamy
|
||
was at least "discouraged." Certainly, Jehovah had time to instruct
|
||
Moses as to the infamy of polygamy. He could have spared a few
|
||
moments from a description of the patterns of tongs and basins, for
|
||
a subject so important as this. A few words in favor of the one
|
||
wife and the one husband -- in favor of the virtuous and loving
|
||
home -- might have taken the place of instructions as to cutting
|
||
the garments of priests and fashioning candlesticks and ounces of
|
||
gold. If he had left out simply the order that rams' skins should
|
||
be dyed red, and in its place had said, "A man shall have but one
|
||
wife, and the wife but one husband," how much better would it have
|
||
been.
|
||
|
||
All the languages of the world are not sufficient to express
|
||
the filth of polygamy. It makes man a beast, and woman a slave. It
|
||
destroys the fireside and makes virtue an outcast. It takes us back
|
||
to the barbarism of animals, and leaves the heart a den in which
|
||
crawl and hiss the slimy serpents of most loathsome lust. And yet
|
||
Mr. Black insists that we owe to the Bible the present elevation of
|
||
woman. Where will he find in the Old Testament the rights of wife,
|
||
and mother, and daughter defined? Even in the New Testament she is
|
||
told to "learn in silence, with all subjection; "that she" is not
|
||
suffered to teach, nor to usurp any authority over the man, but to
|
||
be in silence." She is told that "the head of every man is Christ,
|
||
and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God."
|
||
In other words, there is the same difference between the wife and
|
||
husband that there is between the husband and Christ.
|
||
|
||
The reasons given for this infamous doctrine are that "Adam
|
||
was first formed, and then Eve;" that "Adam was not deceived," but
|
||
that "the woman being deceived, was in the transgression." These
|
||
childish reasons are the only ones given by the inspired writers.
|
||
We are also told that "a man, indeed, ought to cover his head,
|
||
forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God;" but that "the woman
|
||
is the glory of the man," and this is justified from the fact, and
|
||
the remarkable fact, set forth in the very next verse that "the man
|
||
is not of the woman, but the woman of the man." And the same
|
||
gallant apostle says: "Neither was the man created for the woman,
|
||
but the woman for the man;" "Wives, submit yourselves unto your
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
husbands as unto the Lord; for the husband is the head of the wife,
|
||
even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of
|
||
the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let
|
||
the wives be subject to their own husbands in everything. "These
|
||
are the passages that have liberated woman!
|
||
|
||
According to the Old Testament, woman had to ask pardon, and
|
||
had to be purified, for the crime of having borne sons and
|
||
daughters. If in this world there is a figure of perfect purity, it
|
||
is a mother holding in her thrilled and happy arms her child. The
|
||
doctrine that woman is the slave, or serf, of man -- whether it
|
||
comes from heaven or from hell, from God or a demon, from the
|
||
golden streets of the New Jerusalem or from the very Sodom of
|
||
perdition -- is savagery, pure and simple.
|
||
|
||
In no country in the world had women less liberty than in the
|
||
Holy Land, and no monarch held in less esteem the rights of wives
|
||
and mothers than Jehovah of the Jews. The position of woman was far
|
||
better in Egypt than in Palestine. Before the pyramids were built,
|
||
the sacred songs of Isis were sung by women, and women with pure
|
||
hands had offered sacrifices to the gods. Before Moses was born,
|
||
women had sat upon the Egyptian throne. Upon ancient tombs the
|
||
husband and wife are represented as seated in the same chair. In
|
||
Persia women were priests, and in some of the oldest civilizations
|
||
"they were reverenced on earth, and worshiped afterward as
|
||
goddesses in heaven." At the advent of Christianity, in all pagan
|
||
countries women officiated at the sacred altars. They guarded the
|
||
eternal fire. They kept the sacred books. From their lips came the
|
||
oracles of fate. Under the domination of the Christian Church,
|
||
woman became the merest slave for at least a thousand years. It was
|
||
claimed that through woman the race had fallen, and that her loving
|
||
kiss had poisoned all the springs of life. Christian priests
|
||
asserted that but for her crime the world would have been an Eden
|
||
still. The ancient fathers exhausted their eloquence in the
|
||
denunciation of woman, and repeated again and again the slander of
|
||
St. Paul. The condition of woman has improved just in proportion
|
||
that man has lost confidence in the inspiration of the Bible.
|
||
|
||
For the purpose of defending the character of his infallible
|
||
God, Mr. Black is forced to defend religious intolerance, wars of
|
||
extermination, human slavery, and almost polygamy. He admits that
|
||
God established slavery; that he commanded his chosen people to buy
|
||
the children of the heathen; that heathen fathers and mothers did
|
||
right to sell their girls and boys: that God ordered the Jews to
|
||
wage wars of extermination and conquest; that it was right to kill
|
||
the old and young; that God forged manacles for the human brain;
|
||
that he commanded husbands to murder their wives for suggesting the
|
||
worship of the sun or moon; and that every cruel, savage passage in
|
||
the Old Testament was inspired by him. Such is a "policeman's" view
|
||
of God.
|
||
|
||
Will Mr. Black have the kindness to state a few of his
|
||
objections to the devil?
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black should have answered my arguments, instead of
|
||
calling me "blasphemous" and "scurrilous." In the discussion of
|
||
these questions I have nothing to do with the reputation of my
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
opponent. His character throws no light on the subject, and is to
|
||
me a matter of perfect indifference. Neither will it do for one who
|
||
enters the lists as the champion of revealed religion to say that
|
||
"we have no right to rejudge the justice of God." Such a statement
|
||
is a white flag. The warrior eludes the combat when he cries out
|
||
that it is a "metaphysical question." He deserts the field and
|
||
throws down his arms when he admits that "no revelation has lifted
|
||
the veil between time and eternity." Again I ask, why were the
|
||
Jewish people as wicked, cruel, and ignorant with a revelation from
|
||
God, as other nations were without? Why were the worshipers of
|
||
false deities as brave, as kind, and generous as those who knew the
|
||
only true and living God?
|
||
|
||
How do you explain the fact that while Jehovah was waging wars
|
||
of extermination, establishing slavery, and persecuting for
|
||
opinion's sake, heathen philosophers were teaching that all men are
|
||
brothers, equally entitled to liberty and life? You insist that
|
||
Jehovah believed in slavery and yet punished the Egyptians for
|
||
enslaving the Jews. Was your God once an abolitionist? Did he at
|
||
that time "denounce Christ for not agreeing with him"? If slavery
|
||
was a crime in Egypt, was it a virtue in Palestine? Did God treat
|
||
the Canaanites better than Pharaoh did the Jews? Was it right for
|
||
Jehovah to kill the children of the people because of Pharaoh's
|
||
sin? Should the peasant be punished for the king's crime? Do you
|
||
not know that the worst thing that can be said of Nero, Caligula,
|
||
and Commodus is that they resembled the Jehovah of the Jews? Will
|
||
you tell me why God failed to give his Bible to the whole world?
|
||
Why did he not give the Scriptures to the Hindu, the Greek, and
|
||
Roman? Why did he fail to enlighten the worshipers of "Mammon" and
|
||
Moloch, of Belial and Baal, of Bacchus and Venus? After all, was
|
||
not Bacchus as good as Jehovah? Is it not better to drink wine than
|
||
to shed blood? Was there anything in the worship of Venus worse
|
||
than giving captured maidens to satisfy the victor,s lust? Did
|
||
"Mammon" or Moloch do anything more infamous than to establish
|
||
slavery? Did they order their soldiers to kill men, women, and
|
||
children, and to save alive nothing that had breath? Do not answer
|
||
these questions by saying that "no veil has been lifted between
|
||
time and eternity," and that "we have no right to rejudge the
|
||
justice of God."
|
||
|
||
If Jehovah was in fact God, he knew the end from the
|
||
beginning. He knew that his Bible would be a breastwork behind
|
||
which tyranny and hypocrisy would crouch; that it would be quoted
|
||
by tyrants; that it would be the defence of robbers. called kings,
|
||
and of hypocrites called priests. He knew that he had taught the
|
||
Jewish people but little of importance. He knew that he found them
|
||
free and left them captives. He knew that he had never fulfilled
|
||
the promises made to them. He knew that while other nations had
|
||
advanced in art and science, his chosen people were savage still.
|
||
He promised them the world, and gave them a desert. He promised
|
||
them liberty, and he made them slaves. He promised them victory,
|
||
and he gave them defeat. He said they should be kings, and he made
|
||
them serfs. He promised them universal empire, and gave them exile.
|
||
When one finishes the Old Testament, he is compelled to say:
|
||
Nothing can add to the misery of a nation whose king is Jehovah!
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
And here I take occasion to thank Mr. Black for having
|
||
admitted that Jehovah gave no commandment against the practice of
|
||
polygamy, that he established slavery, waged wars of extermination,
|
||
and persecuted for opinion's sake even unto death. Most theologians
|
||
endeavor to putty, patch, and paint the wretched record of inspired
|
||
crime, but Mr. Black has been bold enough and honest enough to
|
||
admit the truth. In this age of fact and demonstration it is
|
||
refreshing to find a man who believes so thoroughly in the
|
||
monstrous and miraculous, the impossible and immoral -- who still
|
||
clings lovingly to the legends of the bib and rattle -- who through
|
||
the bitter experiences of a wicked world has kept the credulity of
|
||
the cradle, and finds comfort and joy in thinking about the Garden
|
||
of Eden, the subtle serpent, the flood, and Babel's tower, stopped
|
||
by the jargon of a thousand tongues -- who reads with happy eyes
|
||
the story of the burning brimstone storm that fell upon the cities
|
||
of the plain, and smilingly explains the transformation of the
|
||
retrospective Mrs. Lot who laughs at Egypt's plagues and Pharaoh's
|
||
whelmed and drowning hosts -- eats manna with the wandering Jews,
|
||
warms himself at the burning bush, sees Korah's company by the
|
||
hungry earth devoured, claps his wrinkled hands with glee above the
|
||
heathens, butchered babes, and longingly looks back to the
|
||
patriarchal days of concubines and slaves. How touching when the
|
||
learned and wise crawl back in cribs and ask to hear the rhymes and
|
||
fables once again! How charming in these hard and scientific times
|
||
to see old age in Superstition's lap, with eager lips upon her
|
||
withered breast!
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black comes to the conclusion that the Hebrew Bible is in
|
||
exact harmony with the New Testament, and that the two are
|
||
"connected together;" and "that if one is true the other cannot be
|
||
false."
|
||
|
||
If this is so, then he must admit that if one is false the
|
||
other cannot be true; and it hardly seems possible to me that there
|
||
is a right minded, sane man, except Mr. Black, who now believes
|
||
that a God of infinite kindness and justice ever commanded one
|
||
nation to exterminate another; ever ordered his soldiers to destroy
|
||
men, women, and babes; ever established the institution of human
|
||
slavery; ever regarded the auction-block as an altar, or a
|
||
bloodhound as an apostle.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black contends (after having answered my indictment
|
||
against the Old Testament by admitting the allegations to be true)
|
||
that the rapidity with which Christianity spread "proves the
|
||
supernatural origin of the Gospel, or that it was propagated by the
|
||
direct aid of the Divine Being himself."
|
||
|
||
Let us see, In his efforts to show that the "infallible God
|
||
established slavery in Judea," he takes occasion to say that the
|
||
doctrine that slavery is a crime under all circumstances was first
|
||
started by the adherents of a political faction in this country
|
||
less than forty years ago;" that "they denounced God and Christ for
|
||
not agreeing with them;" but that "they did not constitute the
|
||
civilized world; nor were they, if the truth must be told, a very
|
||
respectable portion of it." Let it be remembered that this was only
|
||
forty years ago; and yet, according to Mr. Black, a few
|
||
disreputable men changed the ideas of nearly fifty millions of
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
people, changed the Constitution of the United States, liberated a
|
||
race from slavery, clothed three millions of people with political
|
||
rights, took possession of the Government, managed its affairs for
|
||
more than twenty years, and have compelled the admiration of the
|
||
civilized world. Is it Mr. Black's idea that this happened by
|
||
chance? If not, then according to him, there are but two ways to
|
||
account for it; either the rapidity with which Republicanism spread
|
||
proves its supernatural origin, "or else its propagation was
|
||
provided for and carried on by the direct aid of the Divine Being
|
||
himself." Between these two, Mr. Black may make his choice. He will
|
||
at once see that the rapid-rise and spread of any doctrine does not
|
||
even tend to show that it was divinely revealed.
|
||
|
||
This argument is applicable to all religions. Mohammedans can
|
||
use it as well as Christians. Mohammed was a poor man, a driver of
|
||
camels. He was without education, without influence. and without
|
||
wealth, and yet in a few years he consolidated thousands of tribes,
|
||
and made millions of men confess that there is "one God, and
|
||
Mohammed is his prophet." His success was a thousand times greater
|
||
during his life than that of Christ. He was not crucified; he was
|
||
a conqueror. "Of all men, he exercised the greatest influence upon
|
||
the human race." Never in the world's history did a religion spread
|
||
with the rapidity of his. It burst like a storm over the fairest
|
||
portions of the globe. If Mr. Black is right in his position that
|
||
rapidity is secured only by the direct aid of the Divine Being,
|
||
then Mohammed was most certainly the prophet of God. As to wars of
|
||
extermination and slavery, Mohammed agreed with Mr. Black, and upon
|
||
polygamy, with Jehovah. As to religious toleration, he was great
|
||
enough to say that "men holding to any form of faith might be
|
||
saved, provided they were virtuous." In this, he was far in advance
|
||
both of Jehovah and Mr. Black. It will not do to take the ground
|
||
that the rapid rise and spread of a religion demonstrates its
|
||
divine character. Years before Gautama died, his religion was
|
||
established, and his disciples were numbered by millions. His
|
||
doctrines were not enforced by the sword, but by an appeal to the
|
||
hopes, the fears, and the reason of mankind; and more than
|
||
one-third of the human race are to-day the followers of Gautama.
|
||
His religion has outlived all that existed in his time; and
|
||
according to Dr. Draper, "there is no other country in the world
|
||
except India that has the religion to-day it had at the birth of
|
||
Jesus Christ." Gautama believed in the equality of all men;
|
||
abhorred the spirit of caste, and proclaimed justice, mercy, and
|
||
education for all.
|
||
|
||
Imagine a Mohammedan answering an infidel; would he not use
|
||
the argument of Mr Black, simply substituting Mohammed for Christ,
|
||
just as effectually as it has been used against me? There was a
|
||
time when India was the foremost nation of the world. Would not
|
||
your argument, Mr. Black, have been just as good in the mouth of a
|
||
Brahmin then, as it is in yours now? Egypt, the mysterious mother
|
||
of mankind, with her pyramids built thirty four hundred years
|
||
before Christ, was once the first in all the earth, and gave to us
|
||
our Trinity, and our symbol of the cross. Could not a priest of
|
||
Isis and Osiris have used your arguments to prove that his religion
|
||
was divine, and could he not have closed by saying: "From the facts
|
||
established by this evidence it follows irresistibly that our
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
religion came to us from God"? Do you not see that your argument
|
||
proves too much, and that it is equally applicable to all the
|
||
religions of the world?
|
||
|
||
Again, it is urged that "the acceptance of Christianity by a
|
||
large portion of the generation contemporary with its founder and
|
||
his apostles was, under the circumstances, an adjudication as
|
||
solemn and authoritative as mortal intelligence could pronounce."
|
||
If this is true, then "the acceptance of Buddhism by a large
|
||
portion of the generation contemporary with its founder was an
|
||
adjudication as solemn and authoritative as mortal intelligence
|
||
could pronounce." The same could be said of Mohammedanism, and, in
|
||
fact, of every religion that has ever benefited or cursed this
|
||
world. This argument, when reduced to its simplest form, is this:
|
||
All that succeeds is inspired.
|
||
|
||
The old argument that if Christianity is a human fabrication
|
||
its authors must have been either good men or bad men, takes it for
|
||
granted that there are but two classes of persons -- the good and
|
||
the bad. There is at least one other class -- the mistaken, and
|
||
both of the other classes may belong to this. Thousands of most
|
||
excellent people have been deceived, and the history of the world
|
||
is filled with instances where men have honestly supposed that they
|
||
had received communications from angels and gods.
|
||
|
||
In thousands of instances these pretended communications
|
||
contained the purest and highest thoughts, together with the most
|
||
important truths; yet it will not do to say that these accounts are
|
||
true; neither can they be proved by saying that the men who claimed
|
||
to be inspired were good. What we must say is, that being good men,
|
||
they were mistaken; and it is the charitable mantle of a mistake
|
||
that I throw over Mr. Black, when I find him defending the
|
||
institution of slavery. He seems to think it utterly incredible
|
||
that any "combination of knaves, however base, would fraudulently
|
||
concoct a religious system to denounce themselves, and to invoke
|
||
the curse of God upon their own conduct." How did religions other
|
||
than Christianity and Judaism arise? Were they all "concocted by a
|
||
combination of knaves"? The religion of Gautama is filled with most
|
||
beautiful and tender thoughts, with most excellent laws, and
|
||
hundreds of sentences urging mankind to deeds of love and self-
|
||
denial. Was Gautama inspired?
|
||
|
||
Does not Mr. Black know that thousands of people charged with
|
||
witchcraft actually confessed in open court their guilt? Does he
|
||
not know that they admitted that they had spoken face to face with
|
||
Satan, and had sold their souls for gold and power? Does he not
|
||
know that these admissions were made in the presence and
|
||
expectation of death? Does he not know that hundreds of judges,
|
||
some of them as great as the late lamented Gibson, believed in the
|
||
existence of an impossible crime?
|
||
|
||
We are told that "there is no good reason to doubt that the
|
||
statements of the Evangelists, as we have them now, are genuine."
|
||
The fact is, no one knows who made the "statements of the
|
||
Evangelists."
|
||
|
||
There are three important manuscripts upon which the Christian
|
||
world relies. "The first appeared in the catalogue of the Vatican,
|
||
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
in 1475. This contains the Old Testament. Of the New, it contains
|
||
the four gospels, -- the Acts, the seven Catholic Epistles, nine of
|
||
the Pauline Epistles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, as far as the
|
||
fourteenth verse of the ninth chapter," -- and nothing more. This
|
||
is known as the Codex Vatican. "The second, the Alexandrine, was
|
||
presented to King Charles the First, in 1628. It contains the Old
|
||
and New Testaments, with some exceptions; passages are wanting in
|
||
Matthew, in John, and in II. Corinthians. It also contains the
|
||
Epistle of Clemens Romanus, a letter of Athanasius, and the
|
||
treatise of Eusebius on the Psalms." The last is the Sinaitic
|
||
Codex, discovered about 1850, at the Convent of St. Catherine's, on
|
||
Mount Sinai. "It contains the Old and New Testaments, and in
|
||
addition the entire Epistle of Barnabas, and a portion of the
|
||
Shepherd of Hermas -- two books which, up to the beginning of the
|
||
fourth century, were looked upon by many as Scripture." In this
|
||
manuscript, or codex, the gospel of St. Mark concludes with the
|
||
eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter, leaving out the frightful
|
||
passage: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every
|
||
creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he
|
||
that believeth not shall be damned."
|
||
|
||
In matters of the utmost importance these manuscripts
|
||
disagree, but even if they all agreed it would not furnish the
|
||
slightest evidence of their truth. It will not do to call the
|
||
statements made in the gospels "depositions," until it is
|
||
absolutely established who made them, and the circumstances under
|
||
which they were made. Neither can we say that "they were made in
|
||
the immediate prospect of death," until we know who made them. It
|
||
is absurd to say that "the witnesses could not have been mistaken,
|
||
because the nature of the facts precluded the possibility of any
|
||
delusion about them." Can it be pretended that the witnesses could
|
||
not have been mistaken about the relation the Holy Ghost is alleged
|
||
to have sustained to Jesus Christ? Is there no possibility of
|
||
delusion about a circumstance of that kind? Did the writers of the
|
||
four gospels have "'the sensible and true avouch of their own eyes'
|
||
and ears" in that behalf? How was it possible for any one of the
|
||
four Evangelists to know that Christ was the Son of God, or that he
|
||
was God? His mother wrote nothing on the subject. Matthew says that
|
||
an angel of the Lord told Joseph in a dream, but Joseph never wrote
|
||
an account of this wonderful vision. Luke tells us that the angel
|
||
had a conversation with Mary, and that Mary told Elizabeth, but
|
||
Elizabeth never wrote a word. There is no account of Mary or Joseph
|
||
or Elizabeth or the angel, having had any conversation with
|
||
Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John in which one word was said about the
|
||
miraculous origin of Jesus Christ. The persons who knew did not
|
||
write, so that the account is nothing but hearsay. Does Mr. Black
|
||
pretend that such statements would be admitted as evidence in any
|
||
court? But how do we know that the disciples of Christ wrote a word
|
||
of the gospels? How did it happen that Christ wrote nothing? How do
|
||
we know that the writers of the gospels "were men of unimpeachable
|
||
character"?
|
||
|
||
All this is answered by saying "that nothing was said by the
|
||
most virulent enemies against the personal honesty of the
|
||
Evangelists." How is this known? If Christ performed the miracles
|
||
recorded in the New Testament, why would the Jews put to death a
|
||
man able to raise their dead? Why should they attempt to kill the
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
Master of Death? How did it happen that a man who had done so many
|
||
miracles was so obscure, so unknown, that one of his disciples had
|
||
to be bribed to point him out? Is it not strange that the ones he
|
||
had cured were not his disciples? Can we believe, upon the
|
||
testimony of those about whose character we know nothing, that
|
||
Lazarus was raised from the dead? What became of Lazarus? We never
|
||
hear of him again. It seems to me that he would have been an object
|
||
of great interest. People would have said: "He is the man who was
|
||
once dead." Thousands would have inquired of him about the other
|
||
world; would have asked him where he was when he received the
|
||
information that he was wanted on the earth. His experience would
|
||
have been vastly more interesting than everything else in the New
|
||
Testament. A returned traveler from the shores of Eternity -- one
|
||
who had walked twice through the valley of the shadow -- would have
|
||
been the most interesting of human beings. When he came to die
|
||
again, people would have said: "He is not afraid; he has had
|
||
experience; he knows what death is." But, strangely enough, this
|
||
Lazarus fades into obscurity with "the wise men of the East," and
|
||
with the dead who came out of their graves on the night of the
|
||
crucifixion. How is it known that it was claimed, during the life
|
||
of Christ, that he had wrought a miracle? And if the claim was
|
||
made, how is it known that it was not denied? Did the Jews believe
|
||
that Christ was clothed with miraculous power? Would they have
|
||
dared to crucify a man who had the power to clothe the dead with
|
||
life? Is it not wonderful that no one at the trial of Christ said
|
||
one word about the miracles he had wrought? Nothing about the sick
|
||
he had healed, nor the dead he had raised?
|
||
|
||
Is it not wonderful that Josephus, the best historian the
|
||
Hebrews produced, says nothing about the life or death of Christ;
|
||
nothing about the massacre of the infants by Herod; not one word
|
||
about the wonderful star that visited the sky at the birth of
|
||
Christ; nothing about the darkness that fell upon the world for
|
||
several hours in the midst of day; and failed entirely to mention
|
||
that hundreds of graves were opened, and that multitudes of Jews
|
||
arose from the dead, and visited the Holy City? Is it not wonderful
|
||
that no historian ever mentioned any of these prodigies? and is it
|
||
not more amazing than all the rest, that Christ himself concealed
|
||
from Matthew, Mark, and Luke the dogma of the atonement, the
|
||
necessity of belief, and the mystery of the second birth?
|
||
|
||
Of course I know that two letters were said to have been
|
||
written by Pilate to Tiberius, concerning the execution of Christ,
|
||
but they have been shown to be forgeries. I also know that "various
|
||
letters were circulated attributed to Jesus Christ," and that one
|
||
letter is said to have been written by him to Abgarus, king of
|
||
Edessa; but as there was no king of Edessa at that time, this
|
||
letter is admitted to have been a forgery. I also admit that a
|
||
correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul was forged.
|
||
|
||
Here in our own country, only a few years ago, men claimed to
|
||
have found golden plates upon which was written a revelation from
|
||
God. They founded a new religion, and, according to their
|
||
statement, did many miracles. They were treated as outcasts, and
|
||
their leader was murdered. These men made their "depositions" "in
|
||
the immediate prospect of death." They were mobbed, persecuted,
|
||
derided, and yet they insisted that their prophet had miraculous
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
power, and that he, too, could swing back the hingeless door of
|
||
death. The followers of these men have increased, in these few
|
||
years, so that now the murdered prophet has at least two hundred
|
||
thousand disciples. It will be hard to find a contradiction of
|
||
these pretended miracles, although this is an age filled with
|
||
papers, magazines, and books. As a matter of fact, the claims of
|
||
Joseph Smith were so preposterous that sensible people did not take
|
||
the pains to write and print denials. When we remember that
|
||
eighteen hundred years ago there were but few people who could
|
||
write, and that a manuscript did not become public in any modern
|
||
sense, it was possible for the gospels to have been written with
|
||
all the foolish claims in reference to miracles without exciting
|
||
comment or denial. There is not, in all the contemporaneous
|
||
literature of the world, a single word about Christ or his
|
||
apostles. The paragraph in Josephus is admitted to be an
|
||
interpolation, and the letters, the account of the trial, and
|
||
several other documents forged by the zeal of the early fathers,
|
||
are now admitted to be false.
|
||
|
||
Neither will it do to say that."the statements made by the
|
||
Evangelists are alike upon every important point." If there is
|
||
anything of importance in the New Testament, from the theological
|
||
standpoint, it is the ascension of Jesus Christ. If that happened,
|
||
it was a miracle great enough to surfeit wonder. Are the statements
|
||
of the inspired witnesses alike on this important point? Let us
|
||
see.
|
||
|
||
Matthew says nothing upon the subject, Either Matthew was not
|
||
there, had never heard of the ascension, -- or, having heard of it,
|
||
did not believe it, or, having seen it, thought it too unimportant
|
||
to record. To this wonder of wonders Mark devotes one verse: "So
|
||
then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into
|
||
heaven, and sat on the right-hand of God." Can we believe that this
|
||
verse was written by one who witnessed the ascension of Jesus
|
||
Christ; by one who watched his Master slowly rising through the air
|
||
till distance reft him from his tearful sight? Luke, another of the
|
||
witnesses, says: "And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he
|
||
was parted from them, and carried up into heaven." John
|
||
corroborates Matthew by saying nothing on the subject. Now, we find
|
||
that the last chapter of Mark, after the eighth verse, is an
|
||
interpolation; so that Mark really says nothing about the
|
||
occurrence. Either the ascension of Christ must be given up, or it
|
||
must be admitted that the witnesses do not agree, and that three of
|
||
them never heard of that most stupendous event.
|
||
|
||
Again, if anything could have left its form and pressure" on
|
||
the brain, it must have been the last words of Jesus Christ. The
|
||
last words, according to Matthew, are: "Go ye, therefore, and teach
|
||
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the
|
||
Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things
|
||
whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even
|
||
unto the end of the world." The last words, according to the
|
||
inspired witness known as Mark, are: "And these signs shall follow
|
||
them that believe: in my name shall they cast out devils; they
|
||
shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if
|
||
they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay
|
||
hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Luke tells us that the
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
last words uttered by Christ, with the exception of a blessing,
|
||
were: "And behold, I send forth the promise of my Father upon you;
|
||
but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with
|
||
power from on high." The last words, according to John, were:
|
||
"Peter, seeing Him, saith to Jesus: Lord, and what shall this man
|
||
do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what
|
||
is that to thee? follow thou me."
|
||
|
||
An account of the ascension is also given in the Acts of the
|
||
Apostles; and the last words of Christ, according to that inspired
|
||
witness, are: "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy
|
||
Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in
|
||
Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost
|
||
part of the earth." In this account of the ascension we find that
|
||
two men stood by the disciples in white apparel, and asked them:
|
||
"Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same
|
||
Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in
|
||
like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." Matthew says
|
||
nothing of the two men. Mark never saw them. Luke may have
|
||
forgotten them when writing his gospel, and John may have regarded
|
||
them as optical illusions.
|
||
|
||
Luke testifies that Christ ascended on the very day of his
|
||
resurrection. John deposes that eight days after the resurrection
|
||
Christ appeared to the disciples and convinced Thomas. In the Acts
|
||
we are told that Christ remained on earth for forty days after his
|
||
resurrection. These "depositions" do not agree. Neither do Matthew
|
||
and Luke agree in their histories of the infancy of Christ. It is
|
||
impossible for both to be true. One of these "witnesses" must have
|
||
been mistaken.
|
||
|
||
The most wonderful miracle recorded in the New Testament, as
|
||
having been wrought by Christ, is the resurrection of Lazarus.
|
||
While all the writers of the gospels, in many instances, record the
|
||
same wonders and the same conversations, is it not remarkable that
|
||
the greatest miracle is mentioned alone by John?
|
||
|
||
Two of the witnesses, Matthew and Luke, give the genealogy of
|
||
Christ. Matthew says that there were forty-two generations from
|
||
Abraham to Christ. Luke insists that there were forty-two from
|
||
Christ to David, while Matthew gives the number as twenty-eight. It
|
||
may be said that this is an old objection. An objection remains
|
||
young until it has been answered. Is it not wonderful that Luke and
|
||
Matthew do not agree on a single name of Christ's ancestors for
|
||
thirty-seven generations?
|
||
|
||
There is a difference of opinion among the "witnesses" as to
|
||
what the gospel of Christ is. If we take the "depositions" of
|
||
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, then the gospel of Christ amounts simply
|
||
to this: That God will forgive the forgiving, and that he will be
|
||
merciful to the merciful. According to three witnesses, Christ knew
|
||
nothing of the doctrine of the atonement never heard of the second
|
||
birth; and did not base salvation, in whole nor in part, on belief
|
||
In the "deposition" of John, we find that we must be born again;
|
||
that we must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; and that an
|
||
atonement was made for us. If Christ ever said these things to, or
|
||
in the hearing of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they forgot to mention
|
||
them.
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
To my mind, the failure of the evangelists to agree as to what
|
||
is necessary for man to do in order to insure the salvation of his
|
||
soul, is a demonstration that they were not inspired.
|
||
|
||
Neither do the witnesses agree as to the last words of Christ
|
||
when he was crucified. Matthew says that he cried: "My God, my God,
|
||
why hast thou forsaken me?" Mark agrees with Matthew. Luke
|
||
testifies that his last words were: "Father, into thy hands I
|
||
commend my spirit." John states that he cried: "It is finished."
|
||
|
||
Luke says that Christ said of his murderers: "Father, forgive
|
||
them: for they know not what they do." Matthew, Mark, and John do
|
||
not record these touching words. John says that Christ, on the day
|
||
of his resurrection, said to his disciples: "Whosesoever sins ye
|
||
remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain,
|
||
they are retained."
|
||
|
||
The other disciples do not record this monstrous passage. They
|
||
did not hear the abdication of God. They were not present when
|
||
Christ placed in their hands the keys of heaven and hell, and put
|
||
a world beneath the feet of priests.
|
||
|
||
It is easy to account for the differences and contradictions
|
||
in these "depositions" (and there are hundreds of them) by saying
|
||
that each one told the story as he remembered it, or as he had
|
||
heard it, or that the accounts have been changed, but it will not
|
||
do to say that the witnesses were inspired of God. We can account
|
||
for these contradictions by the infirmities of human nature; but,
|
||
as I said before, the infirmities of human nature cannot he
|
||
predicated of a divine being.
|
||
|
||
Again, I ask, why should there be more than one inspired
|
||
gospel? Of what use were the other three? There can be only one
|
||
true account of anything. All other true accounts must simply be
|
||
copies of that. And I ask again, why should there have been more
|
||
than one inspired gospel? That which is the test of truth as to
|
||
ordinary witnesses is a demonstration against their inspiration. It
|
||
will not do at this late day to say that the miracles worked by
|
||
Christ demonstrated his divine origin or mission. The wonderful
|
||
works he did, did not convince the people with whom he lived. In
|
||
spite of the miracles, he was crucified. He was charged with
|
||
blasphemy. "Policemen" denounced the "scurrility" of his words, and
|
||
the absurdity of his doctrines. He was no doubt told that it was
|
||
"almost a crime to utter blasphemy in the presence of a Jewish
|
||
woman;" and it may be that he was taunted for throwing away "the
|
||
golden metewand" of the "infallible God who authorized slavery in
|
||
Judea," and taking the "elastic cord of human feeling."
|
||
|
||
Christians tell us that the citizens of Mecca refused to
|
||
believe on Mohammed because he was an impostor, and that the
|
||
citizens of Jerusalem refused to believe on Jesus Christ because he
|
||
was not an impostor.
|
||
|
||
If Christ had wrought the miracles attributed to him -- if he
|
||
had cured the maimed, the leprous, and the halt -- if he had
|
||
changed the night of blindness into blessed day -- if he had
|
||
wrested from the fleshless hand of avaricious death the stolen
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
jewel of a life, and clothed again with throbbing flesh the
|
||
pulseless dust, he would have won the love and adoration of
|
||
mankind. If ever there shall stand upon this earth the king of
|
||
death, all human knees will touch the ground.
|
||
|
||
We are further informed that "what we call the fundamental
|
||
truths of Christianity consist of great public events which are
|
||
sufficiently established by history without special proof"
|
||
|
||
Of course, we admit that the Roman Empire existed; that Julius
|
||
Caesar was assassinated; and we may admit that Rome was founded by
|
||
Romulus and Remus; but will some one be kind enough to tell us how
|
||
the assassination of Caesar even tends to prove that Romulus and
|
||
Remus were suckled by a wolf? We will all admit that, in the sixth
|
||
century after Christ, Mohammed was born at Mecca; that his
|
||
victorious hosts vanquished half the Christian world; that the
|
||
crescent triumphed over the cross upon a thousand fields; that all
|
||
the Christians of the earth were not able to rescue from the hands
|
||
of an impostor the empty grave of Christ. We will all admit that
|
||
the Mohammedans cultivated the arts and sciences; that they gave us
|
||
our numerals; taught us the higher mathematics; gave us our first
|
||
ideas of astronomy, and that "science was thrust into the brain of
|
||
Europe on the point of a Moorish lance;" and yet we will not admit
|
||
that Mohammed was divinely inspired, nor that he had frequent
|
||
conversations with the angel Gabriel, nor that after his death his
|
||
coffin was suspended in mid-air.
|
||
|
||
A little while ago, in the city of Chicago, a gentleman
|
||
addressed a number of Sunday-school children. In his address, he
|
||
stated that some people were wicked enough to deny the story of the
|
||
deluge; that he was a traveler; that he had been to the top of
|
||
Mount Ararat, and had brought with him a stone from that sacred
|
||
locality. The children were then invited to form, in procession and
|
||
walk by the pulpit, for the purpose of seeing this wonderful stone.
|
||
After they had looked at it, the lecturer said: "Now, children, if
|
||
you ever hear anybody deny the story of the deluge, or say that the
|
||
ark did not rest on Mount Ararat, you can tell them that you know
|
||
better, because you have seen with your own eyes a stone from that
|
||
very mountain."
|
||
|
||
The fact that Christ lived in Palestine does not tend to show
|
||
that he was in any way related to the Holy Ghost; nor does the
|
||
existence of the Christian religion substantiate the ascension of
|
||
Jesus Christ. We all admit that Socrates lived in Athens, but we do
|
||
not admit that he had a familiar spirit. I am satisfied that John
|
||
Wesley was an Englishman, but I hardly believe that God postponed
|
||
a rain because Mr. Wesley wanted to preach. All the natural things
|
||
in the world are not sufficient to establish the supernatural. Mr.
|
||
Black reasons in this way: There was a hydra-headed monster. We
|
||
know this, because Hercules killed him. There must have been such
|
||
a woman as Proserpine, otherwise Pluto could not have carried her
|
||
away. Christ must have been divine, because the Holy Ghost was his
|
||
father. And there must have been such a being as the Holy Ghost,
|
||
because without a father Christ could not have existed. Those who
|
||
are disposed to deny everything because a part is false, reason
|
||
exactly the other way. They insist that because there was no hydra-
|
||
headed monster, Hercules did not exist. The true position, in my
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
judgment, is that the natural is not to be discarded because found
|
||
in the company of the miraculous, neither should the miraculous be
|
||
believed because associated with the probable. There was in all
|
||
probability such a man as Jesus Christ. He may have lived in
|
||
Jerusalem. He may have been crucified, but that he was the Son of
|
||
God, or that he was raised from the dead, and ascended bodily to
|
||
heaven, has never been, and, in the nature of things, can never be,
|
||
substantiated.
|
||
|
||
Apparently tired with his efforts to answer what I really
|
||
said, Mr. Black resorted to the expedient of "compressing" my
|
||
propositions and putting them in italics. By his system of
|
||
"compression" he was enabled to squeeze out what I really said, and
|
||
substitute a few sentences of his own. I did not say that
|
||
"Christianity offers eternal salvation as the reward of belief
|
||
alone," but I did say that no salvation is offered without belief
|
||
There must be a difference of opinion in the minds of Mr. Black's
|
||
witnesses on this subject. In one place we are told that a man is
|
||
"justified by faith without the deeds of the law;" and in another,
|
||
"to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the
|
||
ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness;" and the
|
||
following passages seem to show the necessity of belief:
|
||
|
||
"he that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that
|
||
believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in
|
||
the only begotten Son of God" "He that believeth on the Son hath
|
||
everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son, shall not see
|
||
life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." "Jesus said unto her,
|
||
I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though
|
||
he were dead, yet shall he live." "And whosoever liveth and
|
||
believeth in me, shall never die." "For the gifts and calling of
|
||
God are without repentance." "For by grace are ye saved through
|
||
faith; and that not of yourself; it is the gift of God." "Not of
|
||
works, lest any man should boast." "Whosoever shall confess that
|
||
Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God."
|
||
"Whosoever believeth not shall be damned."
|
||
|
||
I do not understand that the Christians of to-day insist that
|
||
simple belief will secure the salvation of the soul. I believe it
|
||
is stated in the Bible that "the very devils believe;" and it would
|
||
seem from this that belief is not such a meritorious thing, after
|
||
all. But Christians do insist that without belief no man can be
|
||
saved; that faith is necessary to salvation, and that there is
|
||
"none other name under heaven given among men whereby we can be
|
||
saved," except that of Christ. My doctrine is that there is only
|
||
one way to be saved, and that is to act in harmony with your
|
||
surroundings -- to live in accordance with the facts of your being.
|
||
A Being of infinite wisdom has no right to create a person destined
|
||
to everlasting pain. For the honest infidel, according to the
|
||
American Evangelical pulpit, there is no heaven. For the upright
|
||
atheist, there is nothing in another world but punishment. Mr.
|
||
Black admits that lunatics and idiots are in no danger of hell.
|
||
This being so, his God should have created only lunatics and
|
||
idiots. Why should the fatal gift of brain be given to any human
|
||
being, if such gift renders him liable to eternal hell? Better be
|
||
a lunatic here and an angel there. Better be an idiot in this
|
||
world, if you can be a seraph in the next.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
As to the doctrine of the atonement, Mr. Black has nothing to
|
||
offer except the barren statement that it is believed by the wisest
|
||
and the best. A Mohammedan, speaking in Constantinople, will say
|
||
the same of the Koran. A Brahmin, in a Hindu temple, will make the
|
||
same remark, and so will the American Indian, when he endeavors to
|
||
enforce something upon the young of his tribe. He will say: "The
|
||
best, the greatest of our tribe have believed in this." This is the
|
||
argument of the cemetery, the philosophy of epitaphs, the logic of
|
||
the coffin. Who are the greatest and wisest and most virtuous of
|
||
mankind? This statement, that it has been believed by the best, is
|
||
made in connection with an admission that it cannot be fathomed by
|
||
the wisest. It is not claimed that a thing is necessarily false
|
||
because it is not understood, but I do claim that it is not
|
||
necessarily true because it cannot be comprehended. I still insist
|
||
that "the plan of redemption," as usually preached, is absurd,
|
||
unjust, and immoral.
|
||
|
||
For nearly two thousand years Judas Iscariot has been
|
||
execrated by mankind; and yet, if the doctrine of the atonement is
|
||
true, upon his treachery hung the plan of salvation. Suppose Judas
|
||
had known of this plan -- known that he was selected by Christ for
|
||
that very purpose, that Christ was depending on him. And suppose
|
||
that he also knew that only by betraying Christ could he save
|
||
either himself or others; what ought Judas to have done? Are you
|
||
willing to rely upon an argument that justifies the treachery of
|
||
that wretch?
|
||
|
||
I insisted upon knowing how the sufferings of an innocent man
|
||
could satisfy justice for the sins of the guilty. To this, Mr.
|
||
Black replies as follows: "This raises a metaphysical question,
|
||
which it is not necessary or possible for me to discuss here." Is
|
||
this considered an answer? Is it in this way that "my misty
|
||
creations are made to roll away and vanish into air one after
|
||
another? "Is this the best that can be done by one of the disciples
|
||
of the infallible God who butchered babes in Judea? Is it possible
|
||
for a "policeman" to "silence a rude disturber" in this way? To
|
||
answer an argument, is it only necessary say that it "raises a
|
||
metaphysical question"? Again I say: The life of Christ is worth
|
||
its example, its moral force, its heroism of benevolence. And again
|
||
I say: The effort to vindicate a law by inflicting punishment on
|
||
the innocent is a second violation instead of a vindication.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black, under the pretence of "compressing," puts in my
|
||
mouth the following: "The doctrine of non-resistance, forgiveness
|
||
of injuries, reconciliation with enemies, as taught in the New
|
||
Testament, is the child of weakness, degrading and unjust."
|
||
|
||
This is entirely untrue. What I did say is this: "The idea of
|
||
non-resistance never occurred to a man who had the power to protect
|
||
himself. This doctrine was the child of weakness, born when
|
||
resistance was impossible." I said not one word against the
|
||
forgiveness of injuries, not one word against the reconciliation of
|
||
enemies -- not one word. I believe in the reconciliation of
|
||
enemies. I believe in a reasonable forgiveness of injuries. But I
|
||
do not believe in the doctrine of non-resistance. Mr. Black
|
||
proceeds to say that Christianity forbids us "to cherish animosity,
|
||
to thirst for mere revenge, to hoard up wrongs real or fancied, and
|
||
lie in wait for the chance of paying them back; to be impatient,
|
||
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
unforgiving, malicious, and cruel to all who have crossed us." And
|
||
yet the man who thus describes Christianity tells us that it is not
|
||
only our right, but our duty, to fight savages as savages fight us;
|
||
insists that where a nation tries to exterminate us, we have a
|
||
right to exterminate them. This same man, who tells us that "the
|
||
diabolical propensities of the human heart are checked and curbed
|
||
by the spirit of the Christian religion," and that this religion
|
||
"has converted men from low savages into refined and civilized
|
||
beings," still insists that the author of the Christian religion
|
||
established slavery, waged wars of extermination, abhorred the
|
||
liberty of thought, and practiced the divine virtues of retaliation
|
||
and revenge. If it is our duty to forgive our enemies, ought not
|
||
God to forgive his? Is it possible that God will hate his enemies
|
||
when he tells us that we must love ours? The enemies of God cannot
|
||
injure him, but ours can injure us. It is the duty of the injured
|
||
to forgive, why should the uninjured insist upon having revenge?
|
||
Why should a being who destroys nations with pestilence and famine
|
||
expect that his children will be loving and forgiving?
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black insists that without a belief in God there can be no
|
||
perception of right and wrong, and that it is impossible for an
|
||
atheist to have a conscience. Mr. Black, the Christian, the
|
||
believer in God, upholds wars of extermination. I denounce such
|
||
wars as murder. He upholds the institution of slavery. I denounce
|
||
that institution as the basest of crimes. Yet I am told that I have
|
||
no knowledge of right and wrong; that I measure with "the elastic
|
||
cord of human feeling," while the believer in slavery and wars of
|
||
extermination measures with "the golden metewand of God."
|
||
|
||
What is right and what is wrong? Everything is right that
|
||
tends to the happiness of mankind, and everything is wrong that
|
||
increases the sum of human misery. What can increase the happiness
|
||
of this world more than to do away with every form of slavery, and
|
||
with all war? What can increase the misery of mankind more than to
|
||
increase wars and put chains upon more human limbs? What is
|
||
conscience? If man were incapable of suffering, if man could not
|
||
feel pain, the word "conscience" never would have passed his lips.
|
||
The man who puts himself in the place of another, whose imagination
|
||
has been cultivated to the point of feeling the agonies suffered by
|
||
another, is the man of conscience. But a man who justifies slavery,
|
||
who justifies a God when he commands the soldier to rip open the
|
||
mother and to pierce with the sword of war the child unborn, is
|
||
controlled and dominated, not by conscience, but by a cruel and
|
||
remorseless superstition.
|
||
|
||
Consequences determine the quality of an action. If
|
||
consequences are good, so is the action. If actions had no
|
||
consequences, they would be neither good nor bad. Man did not get
|
||
his knowledge of the consequences of actions from God, but from
|
||
experience and reason. If man can, by actual experiment, discover
|
||
the right and wrong of actions, is it not utterly illogical to
|
||
declare that they who do not believe in God can have no standard of
|
||
right and wrong? Consequences are the standard by which actions are
|
||
judged. They are the children that testify as to the real character
|
||
of their parents. God or no God, larceny is the enemy of industry
|
||
-- industry is the mother of prosperity -- prosperity is a good,
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
and therefore larceny is an evil. God or no God, murder is a crime.
|
||
There has always been a law against larceny, because the laborer
|
||
wishes to enjoy the fruit of his toil. As long as men object to
|
||
being killed, murder will be illegal.
|
||
|
||
According to Mr. Black, the man who does not believe in a
|
||
supreme being acknowledges no standard of right and wrong in this
|
||
world, and therefore can have no theory of rewards and punishments
|
||
in the next. Is it possible that only those who believe in the God
|
||
who persecuted for opinion's sake have any standard of right and
|
||
wrong? Were the greatest men of all antiquity without this
|
||
standard? In the eyes of intelligent men of Greece and Rome, were
|
||
all deeds, whether good or evil, morally alike? Is it necessary to
|
||
believe in the existence of an infinite intelligence before you can
|
||
have any standard of right and wrong? Is it possible that a being
|
||
cannot be just or virtuous unless he believes in some being
|
||
infinitely superior to himself? If this doctrine be true, how can
|
||
God be just or virtuous? Does he believe in some being superior to
|
||
himself?
|
||
|
||
It may be said that the Pagans believed in a god, and
|
||
consequently had a standard of right and wrong. But the Pagans did
|
||
not believe in the "true" God. They knew nothing of Jehovah. Of
|
||
course it will not do to believe in the wrong God. In order to know
|
||
the difference between right and wrong, you must believe in the
|
||
right God -- in the one who established slavery. Can this be
|
||
avoided by saying that a false god is better than none?
|
||
|
||
The idea of justice is not the child of superstition -- it was
|
||
not born of ignorance; neither was it nurtured by the passages in
|
||
the Old Testament upholding slavery, wars of extermination, and
|
||
religious persecution, Every human being necessarily has a standard
|
||
of right and wrong; and where that standard has not been polluted
|
||
by superstition, man abhors slavery, regards a war of extermination
|
||
as murder, and looks upon religious persecution as a hideous crime.
|
||
If there is a God, infinite in power and wisdom, above him, poised
|
||
in eternal calm, is the figure of Justice. At the shrine of Justice
|
||
the infinite God must bow, and in her impartial scales the actions
|
||
even of Infinity must be weighed. There is no world, no star, no
|
||
heaven, no hell, in which gratitude is not a virtue and where
|
||
slavery is not a crime.
|
||
|
||
According to the logic of this "reply," all good and evil
|
||
become mixed and mingled -- equally good and equally bad, unless we
|
||
believe in the existence of the infallible God who ordered husbands
|
||
to kill their wives. We do not know right from, wrong now, unless
|
||
we are convinced that a being of infinite mercy waged wars of
|
||
extermination four thousand years ago. We are incapable even of
|
||
charity, unless we worship the being who ordered the husband to
|
||
kill his wife for differing with him on the subject of religion.
|
||
|
||
We know that acts are good or bad only as they effect the
|
||
actors, and others. We know that from every good act good
|
||
consequences flow, and that from every bad act there are only evil
|
||
results. Every virtuous deed is a star in the moral firmament.
|
||
There is in the moral world, as in the physical, the absolute and
|
||
perfect relation of cause and effect. For this reason, the
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
atonement becomes an impossibility. Others may suffer by your
|
||
crime, but their suffering cannot discharge you; it simply
|
||
increases your guilt and adds to your burden. For this reason
|
||
happiness is not a reward -- it is a consequence. Suffering is not
|
||
a punishment -- it is a result.
|
||
|
||
It is insisted that Christianity is not opposed to freedom of
|
||
thought, but that "it is based on certain principles to which it
|
||
requires the assent of all." Is this a candid statement? Ate we,
|
||
only required to give our assent to certain principles in order to
|
||
be saved? Are the inspiration of the Bible, the divinity of Christ,
|
||
the atonement, and the Trinity, principles? Will it be admitted by
|
||
the orthodox world that good deeds are sufficient unto salvation --
|
||
that a man can get into heaven by living in accordance with certain
|
||
principles? This is a most excellent doctrine, but it is not
|
||
Christianity. And right here, it may be well enough to state what
|
||
I mean by Christianity. The morality of the world is not
|
||
distinctively Christian. Zoroaster, Gautama, Mohammed, Confucius,
|
||
Christ, and, in fact, all founders of religions, have said to their
|
||
disciples: You must not steal; You must not murder; You must not
|
||
bear false witness; You must discharge your obligations.
|
||
Christianity is the ordinary moral code, plus the miraculous origin
|
||
of Jesus Christ, his crucifixion, his resurrection, his ascension,
|
||
the inspiration of the Bible, the doctrine of the atonement, and
|
||
the necessity of belief. Buddhism is the ordinary moral code, plus
|
||
the miraculous illumination of Buddha, the performance of certain
|
||
ceremonies, a belief in the transmigration of the soul, and in the
|
||
final absorption of the human by the infinite. The religion of
|
||
Mohammed is the ordinary moral code, plus the belief that Mohammed
|
||
was the prophet of God, total abstinence from the use of
|
||
intoxicating drinks, a harem for the faithful here and hereafter,
|
||
ablutions, prayers, alms, pilgrimages, and fasts.
|
||
|
||
The morality in Christianity has never opposed the freedom of
|
||
thought. It has never put, nor tended to put, a chain on a human
|
||
mind, nor a manacle on a human limb; but the doctrines
|
||
distinctively Christian -- the necessity of believing a certain
|
||
thing; the idea that eternal punishment awaited him who failed to
|
||
believe; the idea that the innocent can suffer for the guilty --
|
||
these things have opposed, and for a thousand years substantially
|
||
destroyed, the freedom of the human mind. All religions have, with
|
||
ceremony, magic, and mystery, deformed, darkened. and corrupted the
|
||
soul. Around the sturdy oaks of morality have grown and clung the
|
||
parasitic, poisonous vines of the miraculous and monstrous.
|
||
|
||
I have insisted, and I still insist, that it is impossible for
|
||
a finite man to commit a crime deserving infinite punishment; and
|
||
upon this subject Mr. Black admits that "no revelation has lifted
|
||
the veil between time and eternity;" and, consequently, neither the
|
||
priest nor the "policeman" knows anything with certainty regarding
|
||
another world. He simply insists that "in shadowy figures we are
|
||
warned that a very marked distinction will be made between the good
|
||
and bad in the next world." There is "a very marked distinction"
|
||
in this; but there is this rainbow on the darkest human cloud: The
|
||
worst have hope of reform. All I insist is, if there is another
|
||
life, the basest soul that finds its way to that dark or radiant
|
||
shore will have the everlasting chance of doing right. Nothing but
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
the most cruel ignorance, the most heartless superstition, the most
|
||
ignorant theology, ever imagined that the few days of human life
|
||
spent here, surrounded by mists and clouds of darkness, blown over
|
||
life's sea by storms and tempests of passion, fixed for all
|
||
eternity the condition of the human race. If this doctrine be true,
|
||
this life is but a net, in which Jehovah catches souls for hell.
|
||
|
||
The idea that a certain belief is necessary to salvation
|
||
unsheathed the swords and lighted the fagots of persecution. As
|
||
long as heaven is the reward of creed instead of deed, just so long
|
||
will every orthodox church be a bastille, every member a prisoner,
|
||
and every priest a turnkey.
|
||
|
||
In the estimation of good orthodox Christians, I am a
|
||
criminal. because I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers,
|
||
brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, and lovers the consolations
|
||
naturally arising from a belief in an eternity of grief and pain.
|
||
I want to tear, break, and scatter to the winds the God that
|
||
priests erected in the fields of innocent pleasure -- a God made of
|
||
sticks, called creeds, and of old clothes, called myths. I have
|
||
tried to take from the coffin its horror, from the cradle its
|
||
curse, and put out the fires of revenge kindled by the savages of
|
||
the past. Is it necessary that heaven should borrow its light from
|
||
the glare of hell? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless
|
||
injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler hardens,
|
||
debases, and pollutes the soul. While there is one sad and breaking
|
||
heart in the universe, no perfectly good being can be perfectly
|
||
happy. Against the heartlessness of this doctrine every grand and
|
||
generous soul should enter its solemn protest. I want no part in
|
||
any heaven where the saved, the ransomed, and redeemed drown with
|
||
merry shouts the cries and sobs of hell -- in which happiness
|
||
forgets misery where the tears of the lost increase laughter and
|
||
deepen the dimples of joy. The idea of hell was born of ignorance,
|
||
brutality, fear, cowardice, and revenge. This idea tends to show
|
||
that our remote ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens,
|
||
lairs, and caves -- only from mouths filled with cruel fangs --
|
||
only from hearts of fear and hatred -- only from the conscience of
|
||
hunger and lust -- only from the lowest and most debased, could
|
||
come this most cruel, heartless, and absurd of all dogmas.
|
||
|
||
Our ancestors knew but little of nature. They were too
|
||
astonished to investigate. They could not divest themselves of the
|
||
idea that everything happened with reference to them; that they
|
||
caused storms and earthquakes; that they brought the tempest and
|
||
the whirlwind; that on account of something they had done, or
|
||
omitted to do, the lightning of vengeance leaped from the darkened
|
||
sky. They made up their minds that at least two vast and powerful
|
||
beings presided over this world; that one was good and the other
|
||
bad; that both of these beings wished to get control of the souls
|
||
of men; that they were relentless enemies, eternal foes; that both
|
||
welcomed recruits and hated deserters; that one offered rewards in
|
||
this world, and the other in the next. Man saw cruelty and mercy in
|
||
nature, because he imagined that phenomena were produced to punish
|
||
or to reward him. It was supposed that God demanded worship; that
|
||
he loved to be flattered; that he delighted in sacrifice; that
|
||
nothing made him happier than to see ignorant faith upon its knees;
|
||
that above all things he hated and despised doubters and heretics,
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
and regarded investigation as rebellion. Each community felt it a
|
||
duty to see that the enemies of God were converted or killed. To
|
||
allow a heretic to live in peace was to invite the wrath of God.
|
||
Every public evil -- every misfortune -- was accounted for by
|
||
something the community had permitted or done. When epidemics
|
||
appeared, brought by ignorance and welcomed by filth, the heretic
|
||
was brought out and sacrificed to appease the anger of God. By
|
||
putting intention behind what man called good, God was produced. By
|
||
putting intention behind what man called bad, the Devil was
|
||
created. Leave this "intention" out, and gods and devils fade away.
|
||
If not a human being existed, the sun would continue to shine, and
|
||
tempest now and then would devastate the earth; the rain would fall
|
||
in pleasant showers; violets would spread their velvet bosoms to
|
||
the sun, the earthquake would devour, birds would sing and daisies
|
||
bloom and roses blush, and volcanoes fill the heavens with their
|
||
lurid glare; the procession of the seasons would not be broken, and
|
||
the stars would shine as serenely as though the world were filled
|
||
with loving hearts and happy homes. Do not imagine that the
|
||
doctrine of eternal revenge belongs to Christianity alone. Nearly
|
||
all religions have had this dogma for a corner-stone. Upon this
|
||
burning foundation nearly all have built. Over the abyss of pain
|
||
rose the glittering dome of pleasure. This world was regarded as
|
||
one of trial. Here, a God of infinite wisdom experimented with man.
|
||
Between the outstretched paws of the Infinite, the mouse -- man --
|
||
was allowed to play. Here, man had the opportunity, of hearing
|
||
priests and kneeling in temples. Here, he could read, and hear
|
||
read, the sacred books. Here, he could have the example of the
|
||
pious and the counsels of the holy. Here, he could build churches
|
||
and cathedrals. Here, he could burn incense, fast, wear hair-cloth,
|
||
deny himself all the pleasures of life, confess to priests,
|
||
construct instruments of torture, bow before pictures and images,
|
||
and persecute all who had the courage to despise superstition, and
|
||
the goodness to tell their honest thoughts. After death, if he died
|
||
out of the church, nothing could be done to make him better. When
|
||
he should come into the presence of God, nothing was left except to
|
||
damn him. Priests might convert him here, but God could do nothing
|
||
there. All of which shows how much more a priest can do for a soul
|
||
than its creator. Only here, on the earth, where the devil is
|
||
constantly active, only where his agents attack every soul, is
|
||
there the slightest hope of moral improvement. Strange! that a
|
||
world cursed by God, filled with temptations, and thick with
|
||
fiends, should be the only place where man can repent, the only
|
||
place where reform is possible!
|
||
|
||
Masters frightened slaves with the threat of hell, and slaves
|
||
got a kind of shadowy revenge by whispering back the threat. The
|
||
imprisoned imagined a hell for their gaolers; the weak built this
|
||
place for the strong; the arrogant for their rivals; the vanquished
|
||
for their victors; the priest for the thinker; religion for reason;
|
||
superstition for science. All the meanness, all the revenge, all
|
||
the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of
|
||
which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed, and bore fruit
|
||
in this one word -- Hell. For the nourishment of this dogma,
|
||
cruelty was soil, ignorance was rain, and fear was light.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
Why did Mr. Black fail to answer what I said in relation to
|
||
the doctrine of inspiration? Did he consider that a "metaphysical
|
||
question"? Let us see what inspiration really is. A man looks at
|
||
the sea, and the sea says something to him. It makes an impression
|
||
on his mind. It awakens memory, and this impression depends upon
|
||
his experience -upon his intellectual capacity. Another looks upon
|
||
the same sea. He has a different brain; he has a different
|
||
experience. The sea may speak to him of joy, to the other of grief
|
||
and tears. The sea cannot tell the same thing to any two human
|
||
beings, because no two human beings have had the same experience.
|
||
One may think of wreck and ruin, and another, while listening to
|
||
the "multitudinous laughter of the sea," may say: Every drop has
|
||
visited all the shores of earth; every one has been frozen in the
|
||
vast and icy North, has fallen in snow, has whirled in storms
|
||
around the mountain peaks, been kissed to vapor by the sun, worn
|
||
the seven-hued robe of light, fallen in pleasant rain, gurgled from
|
||
springs, and laughed in brooks while lovers wooed upon the banks.
|
||
Everything in nature tells a different story to all eyes that see
|
||
and to all ears that hear. So, when we look upon a flower, a
|
||
painting, a statue, a star, or a violet, the more we know, the more
|
||
we have experienced, the more we have thought, the more we
|
||
remember, the more the statue, the star, the painting, the violet
|
||
has to tell. Nature says to me all that I am capable of
|
||
understanding -- gives all that I can receive. As with star, or
|
||
flower, or sea, so with a book. A thoughtful man reads Shakespeare.
|
||
What does he get? All that he has the mind to understand. Let
|
||
another read him, who knows nothing of the drama, nothing of the
|
||
impersonations of passion, and what does he get? Almost nothing.
|
||
Shakespeare has a different story for each reader. He is a world in
|
||
which each recognizes his acquaintances. The impression that nature
|
||
makes upon the mind, the stories told by sea and star and flower,
|
||
must be the natural food of thought. Leaving out for the moment the
|
||
impressions gained from ancestors, the hereditary tears and drifts
|
||
and trends -- the natural food of thought must be the impressions
|
||
made upon the brain by coming in contact through the medium of the
|
||
senses with what we call the outward world. The brain is natural;
|
||
its food is natural the result, thought, must be natural. Of the
|
||
supernatural we have no conception. Thought may be deformed, and
|
||
the thought of one may be strange to, and denominated unnatural by,
|
||
another; but it cannot be supernatural. It may be weak, it may be
|
||
insane, but it is not supernatural. Above the natural, man cannot
|
||
rise. There can be deformed ideas, as there are deformed persons.
|
||
There may be religions monstrous and misshapen, but they were
|
||
naturally produced. The world is to each man according to each man.
|
||
It takes the world as it really is and that man to make that man's
|
||
world.
|
||
|
||
You may ask, And what of all this? I reply, As with everything
|
||
in nature, so with the Bible. It has a different story for each
|
||
reader. Is, then, the Bible a different book to every human being
|
||
who reads it? It is. Can God, through the Bible, make precisely the
|
||
same revelation to two persons? He cannot. Why? Because the man who
|
||
reads is not inspired. God should inspire readers as well as
|
||
writers.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
27
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
You may reply: God knew that his book would be understood
|
||
differently by each one, and intended that it should be understood
|
||
as it is understood by each. If this is so, then my understanding
|
||
of the Bible is the real revelation to me. If this is so, I have no
|
||
right to take the understanding of another. I must take the
|
||
revelation made to me through my understanding, and by that
|
||
revelation I must stand. Suppose then, that I read this Bible
|
||
honestly, fairly, and when I get through am compelled to say, "The
|
||
book is not true." If this is the honest result, then you are
|
||
compelled to say, either that God has made no revelation to me, or
|
||
that the revelation that it is not true is the revelation made to
|
||
me, and by which I am bound. If the book and my brain are both the
|
||
work of the same infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and
|
||
brain do not agree? Either God should have written a book to fit my
|
||
brain, or should have made my brain to fit his book. The
|
||
inspiration of the Bible depends on the credulity of him who reads.
|
||
There was a time when its geology, its astronomy, its natural
|
||
history, were thought to be inspired; that time has passed. There
|
||
was a time when its morality satisfied the men who ruled the world
|
||
of thought; that time has passed.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black, continuing his process of compressing my
|
||
propositions, attributes to me the following statement: "The gospel
|
||
of Christ does not satisfy the hunger of the heart." I did not say
|
||
this. What I did say is: "The dogmas of the past no longer reach
|
||
the level of the highest thought, nor satisfy the hunger of the
|
||
heart." In so far as Christ taught any doctrine in opposition to
|
||
slavery, in favor of intellectual liberty, upholding kindness,
|
||
enforcing the practice of justice and mercy, I most cheerfully
|
||
admit that his teachings should be followed. Such teachings do not
|
||
need the assistance of miracles. They are not in the region of the
|
||
supernatural. They find their evidence in the glad response of
|
||
every honest heart that superstition has not touched and stained.
|
||
The great question under discussion is, whether the immoral,
|
||
absurd, and infamous can be established by the miraculous. It
|
||
cannot be too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of
|
||
miracle. That which actually happens sets in motion innumerable
|
||
effects, which, in turn, become causes producing other effects.
|
||
These are all "witnesses" whose "depositions" continue. What I
|
||
insist on is, that a miracle cannot be established by human
|
||
testimony. We have known people to be mistaken. We know that all
|
||
people will not tell the truth. We have never seen the dead raised.
|
||
When people assert that they have, we are forced to weigh the
|
||
probabilities, and the probabilities are on the other side, It will
|
||
not do to assert that the universe was created, and then say that
|
||
such creation was miraculous, and, therefore, all miracles are
|
||
possible, We must be sure of our premises. Who knows that the
|
||
universe was created? If it was not; if it has existed from
|
||
eternity if the present is the necessary child of all the past,
|
||
then the miraculous is the impossible. Throw away all the miracles
|
||
of the New Testament, and the good teachings of Christ remain --
|
||
all that is worth preserving will be there still. Take from what is
|
||
now known as Christianity the doctrine of the atonement, the
|
||
fearful dogma of eternal punishment, the absurd idea that a certain
|
||
belief is necessary to salvation, and with most of the remainder
|
||
the good and intelligent will most heartily agree.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
28
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black attributes to me the following expression:
|
||
"Christianity is pernicious in its moral effect, darkens the mind,
|
||
narrows the soul, arrests the progress of human society, and
|
||
hinders civilization." I said no such thing. Strange, that he is
|
||
only able to answer what I did not say. I endeavored to show that
|
||
the passages in the Old Testament upholding slavery, polygamy, wars
|
||
of extermination, and religious intolerance had filled the world
|
||
with blood and crime. I admitted that there are many wise and good
|
||
things in the Old Testament. I also insisted that the doctrine of
|
||
the atonement -- that is to say, of moral bankruptcy -- the idea
|
||
that a certain belief is necessary to salvation, and the frightful
|
||
dogma of eternal pain, had narrowed the soul, had darkened the
|
||
mind, and had arrested the progress of human society. Like other
|
||
religions, Christianity is a mixture of good and evil. The church
|
||
has made more orphans than it has fed. It has never built asylums
|
||
enough to hold the insane of its own making. It has shed more blood
|
||
than light.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black seems to think that miracles are the most natural
|
||
things imaginable, and wonders that anybody should be insane enough
|
||
to deny the probability of the impossible. He regards all who doubt
|
||
the miraculous origin, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus
|
||
Christ, as afflicted with some "error of the moon," and declares
|
||
that their "disbelief seems like a kind of insanity."
|
||
|
||
To ask for evidence is not generally regarded as a symptom of
|
||
a brain diseased. Delusions, illusions, phantoms, hallucinations,
|
||
apparitions, chimeras, and visions are the common property of the
|
||
religious and the insane. Persons blessed with sound minds and
|
||
healthy bodies rely on facts, not fancies -- on demonstrations
|
||
instead of dreams. It seems to me that the most orthodox Christians
|
||
must admit that many of the miracles recorded in the New Testament
|
||
are extremely childish. They must see that the miraculous draught
|
||
of fishes, changing water into wine, fasting for forty days,
|
||
inducing devils to leave an insane man by allowing them to take
|
||
possession of swine, walking on the water, and using a fish for a
|
||
pocket-book, are all unworthy of an infinite being, and are
|
||
calculated to provoke laughter -- to feed suspicion and engender
|
||
doubt.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black takes the ground that if a man believes in the
|
||
creation of the universe -- that being the most stupendous miracle
|
||
of which the mind can conceive -- he has no right to deny anything.
|
||
He asserts that God created the universe; that creation was a
|
||
miracle; that "God would be likely to reveal his will to the
|
||
rational creatures who were required to obey it," and that he would
|
||
authenticate his revelation by giving his prophets and apostles
|
||
supernatural power.
|
||
|
||
After making these assertion, he triumphantly exclaims: "It
|
||
therefore follows that the improbability of a miracle is no greater
|
||
than the original improbability of a revelation, and that is not
|
||
improbable at all."
|
||
|
||
How does he know that God made the universe? How does he know
|
||
what God would be likely to do? How does he know that any
|
||
revelation was made? And how did he ascertain that any of the
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
29
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
apostles and prophets were entrusted with supernatural power? It
|
||
will not do to prove your premises by assertions, and then claim
|
||
that your conclusions are correct, because they agree with your
|
||
premises.
|
||
|
||
If "God would be likely to reveal his will to the rational
|
||
creatures who were required to obey it," why did he reveal it only
|
||
to the Jews? According to Mr. Black, God is the only natural thing
|
||
in the universe.
|
||
|
||
We should remember that ignorance is the mother of credulity;
|
||
that the early Christians believed everything but the truth, and
|
||
that they accepted Paganism, admitted the reality of all the Pagan
|
||
miracles -- taking the ground that they were all forerunners of
|
||
their own. Pagan miracles were never denied by the Christian world
|
||
until late in the seventeenth century. Voltaire was the third man
|
||
of note in Europe who denied the truth of Greek and Roman
|
||
mythology. "The early Christians cited Pagan oracles predicting in
|
||
detail the sufferings of Christ. They forged prophecies, and
|
||
attributed them to the heathen sibyls, and they were accepted as
|
||
genuine by the entire church."
|
||
|
||
St. Irenaeus assures us that all Christians possessed the
|
||
power of working miracles; that they prophesied, cast out devils,
|
||
healed the sick, and even raised the dead. St. Epiphanius asserts
|
||
that some rivers and fountains were annually transmuted into wine,
|
||
in attestation of the miracle of Cana, adding that he himself had
|
||
drunk of these fountains. St. Augustine declares that one was told
|
||
in a dream where the bones of St. Stephen were buried, that the
|
||
bones were thus discovered. and brought to Hippo, and that they
|
||
raised five dead persons to life, and that in two years seventy
|
||
miracles were performed with these relics. Justin Martyr states
|
||
that God once sent some angels to guard the human race, that these
|
||
angels fell in love with the daughters of men, and became the
|
||
fathers of innumerable devils.
|
||
|
||
For hundreds of years, miracles were about the only things
|
||
that happened. They were wrought by thousands of Christians, and
|
||
testified to by millions. The saints and martyrs, the best and
|
||
greatest, were the witnesses and workers of wonders. Even heretics,
|
||
with the assistance of the devil, could suspend the "laws of
|
||
nature." Must we believe these wonderful accounts because they were
|
||
written by "good men," by Christians, "who made their statements in
|
||
the presence and expectation of death"? The truth is that these
|
||
"good men" were mistaken. They expected the miraculous. They
|
||
breathed the air of the marvelous. They fed their minds on
|
||
prodigies, and their imaginations feasted on effects without
|
||
causes. They were incapable of investigating. Doubts were regarded
|
||
as "rude disturbers of the congregation." Credulity and sanctity
|
||
walked hand in hand. Reason was danger. Belief was safety. As the
|
||
philosophy of the ancients was rendered almost worthless by the
|
||
credulity of the common people, so the proverbs of Christ, his
|
||
religion of forgiveness, his creed of kindness, were lost in the
|
||
mist of miracle and the darkness of superstition.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
30
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
If Mr. Black is right, there were no virtue, justice,
|
||
intellectual liberty, moral elevation, refinement, benevolence, or
|
||
true wisdom, until Christianity was established. He asserts that
|
||
when Christ came, "benevolence, in any shape, was altogether
|
||
unknown."
|
||
|
||
He insists that "the infallible God who authorized slavery in
|
||
Judea" established a government; that he was the head and king of
|
||
the Jewish people; that for this reason heresy was treason. Is it
|
||
possible that God established a government in which benevolence was
|
||
unknown? How did it happen that he established no asylums for the
|
||
insane? How do you account for the fact that your God permitted
|
||
some of his children to become insane? Why did Jehovah fail to
|
||
establish hospitals and schools? Is it reasonable to believe that
|
||
a good God would assist his chosen people to exterminate or enslave
|
||
his other children? Why would your God people a world, knowing that
|
||
it would be destitute of benevolence for four thousand years?
|
||
Jehovah should have sent missionaries to the heathen. He ought to
|
||
have reformed the inhabitants of Canaan. He should have sent
|
||
teachers, not soldiers -- missionaries, not murderers. A God should
|
||
not exterminate his children; he should reform them.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black gives us a terrible picture of the condition of the
|
||
world at the coming of Christ; but did the God of Judea treat his
|
||
own children, the Gentiles, better than the Pagans treated theirs?
|
||
When Rome enslaved mankind -- when with her victorious armies she
|
||
sought to conquer or to exterminate tribes and nations, she but
|
||
followed the example of Jehovah. Is it true that benevolence came
|
||
with Christ, and that his coming heralded the birth of pity in the
|
||
human heart? Does not Mr. Black know that, thousands of years
|
||
before Christ was born, there were hospitals and asylums for
|
||
orphans in China? Does he not know that in Egypt, before Moses
|
||
lived, the insane were treated with kindness and wooed back to
|
||
natural thought by music's golden voice? Does he not know that in
|
||
all times, and in all countries, there have been great and loving
|
||
souls who wrought, and toiled, and suffered, and died that others
|
||
might enjoy? Is it possible that he knows nothing of the religion
|
||
of Buddha -- a religion based upon equality, charity and
|
||
forgiveness? Does he not know that, centuries before the birth of
|
||
the great Peasant of Palestine, another, upon the plains of India,
|
||
had taught the doctrine of forgiveness; and that, contrary to the
|
||
tyranny of Jehovah, had given birth to the sublime declaration that
|
||
all men are by nature free and equal? Does he not know that a
|
||
religion of absolute trust in God had been taught thousands of
|
||
years before Jerusalem was built -- a religion based upon absolute
|
||
special providence, carrying its confidence to the extremist edge
|
||
of human thought, declaring that every evil is a blessing in
|
||
disguise, and that every step taken by mortal man, whether in the
|
||
rags of poverty or the royal robes of kings, is the step necessary
|
||
to be taken by that soul in order to teach perfection and eternal
|
||
joy? But how is it possible for a man who believes in slavery to
|
||
have the slightest conception of benevolence, justice or charity?
|
||
If Mr. Black is right, even Christ believed and taught that man
|
||
could buy and sell his fellow-man. Will the Christians of America
|
||
admit this? Do they believe that Christ from heaven's throne mocked
|
||
when colored mothers, reft of babes, knelt by empty cradles and
|
||
besought his aid?
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
32
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
For the man Christ -- for the reformer who loved his fellowmen
|
||
-- for the man who believed in an Infinite Father, who would shield
|
||
the innocent and protect the just -- for the martyr who expected to
|
||
be rescued from the cruel cross, and who at last, finding that his
|
||
hope was dust, cried out in the gathering gloom of death: "My God!
|
||
My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" -- for that great and suffering
|
||
man, mistaken though he was, I have the highest admiration and
|
||
respect. That man did not, as I believe, claim a miraculous origin;
|
||
he did not pretend to heal the sick nor raise the dead. He claimed
|
||
simply to be a man, and taught his fellow-men that love is stronger
|
||
far than hate. His life was written by reverent ignorance. Loving
|
||
credulity belittled his career with feats of jugglery and magic
|
||
art, and priests, wishing to persecute and slay, put in his mouth
|
||
the words of hatred and revenge. The theological Christ is the
|
||
impossible union of the human and divine -- man with the attributes
|
||
of God, and God with the limitations and weaknesses of man.
|
||
|
||
After giving a terrible description of the Pagan world, Mr.
|
||
Black says. "The church came, and her light penetrated the moral
|
||
darkness like a new sun; she covered the globe with institutions of
|
||
mercy."
|
||
|
||
Is this true? Do we not know that when the Roman empire fell,
|
||
darkness settled on the world? do we not know that this darkness
|
||
lasted for a thousand years, and that daring all that time the
|
||
church of Christ held, with bloody hands, the sword of power? These
|
||
years were the starless midnight of our race. Art died, law was
|
||
forgotten, toleration ceased to exist, charity fled from the human
|
||
breast, and justice was unknown. Kings were tyrants, priests were
|
||
pitiless, and the poor multitude were slaves. In the name of
|
||
Christ, men made instruments of torture, and the auto da fe took
|
||
the place of the gladiatorial show. Liberty was in chains, honesty
|
||
in dungeons, while Christian superstition ruled mankind.
|
||
Christianity compromised with Paganism. The statues of Jupiter were
|
||
used to represent Jehovah, Isis and her babe were changed to Mary
|
||
and the infant Christ. The Trinity of Egypt became the Father, Son,
|
||
and Holy Ghost. The simplicity of the early Christians was lost in
|
||
heathen rites and Pagan pomp. The believers in the blessedness of
|
||
poverty became rich, avaricious, and grasping, and those who had
|
||
said, "Sell all, and give to the poor," became the ruthless
|
||
gatherers of tithes and taxes. In a few years the teachings of
|
||
Jesus were forgotten. The gospels were interpolated by the
|
||
designing and ambitious. The church was infinitely corrupt. Crime
|
||
was crowned, and virtue scourged, The minds of men were saturated
|
||
with superstition. Miracles, apparitions, angels, and devils had
|
||
possession of the world. "The nights were filled with incubi and
|
||
succubi; devils, clad in wondrous forms, and imps in hideous
|
||
shapes, sought to tempt or fright the soldiers of the cross. The
|
||
maddened spirits of the air sent hail and storm. Sorcerers wrought
|
||
sudden death, and witches worked with spell and charm against the
|
||
common weal." In every town the stake arose, Faith carried fagots
|
||
to the feet of philosophy. Priests -- not "politicians" -- fed and
|
||
fanned the eager flames. The dungeon was the foundation of the
|
||
cathedral. Priests sold charms and relics to their flocks to keep
|
||
away the wolves of hell. Thousands of Christians, failing to find
|
||
protection in the church, sold their poor souls to Satan for some
|
||
magic wand. Suspicion sat in every house, families were divided,
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
32
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
wives denounced husbands, husbands denounced wives, and children
|
||
their parents. Every calamity then, as now, increased the power of
|
||
the church. Pestilence supported the pulpit, and famine was the
|
||
right hand of faith. Christendom was insane.
|
||
|
||
Will Mr. Black be kind enough to state at what time "the
|
||
church covered the globe with institutions of mercy"? In his reply,
|
||
he conveys the impression that these institutions were organized in
|
||
the first century, or at least in the morning of Christianity. How
|
||
many hospitals for the sick were established by the church during
|
||
a thousand years? Do we not know that for hundreds of years the
|
||
Mohammedans erected more hospitals and asylums than the Christians?
|
||
Christendom was filled with racks and thumbscrews, with stakes and
|
||
fagots, with chains and dungeons, for centuries before a hospital
|
||
was built. Priests despised doctors. Prayer was medicine.
|
||
Physicians interfered with the sale of charms and relics. The
|
||
church did not cure -- it killed. It practiced surgery with the
|
||
sword. The early Christians did not build asylums for the insane.
|
||
They charged them with witchcraft, and burnt them. They built
|
||
asylums, not for the mentally diseased, but for the mentally
|
||
developed. These asylums were graves.
|
||
|
||
All the languages of the world have not words of horror enough
|
||
to paint the agonies of man when the church had power. Tiberius,
|
||
Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus were not as cruel,
|
||
false, and base as many of the Christians Popes. Opposite the names
|
||
of these imperial criminals write John the XII., Leo the VIII,
|
||
Boniface the VII. Benedict the IX., Innocent the III., and
|
||
Alexander the VI. Was it under these pontiffs that the "church
|
||
penetrated the moral darkness like a new sun," and covered the
|
||
globe with institutions of mercy? Rome was far better when Pagan
|
||
than when Catholic. It was better to allow gladiators and criminals
|
||
to fight than to burn honest men. The greatest of the Romans
|
||
denounced the cruelties of the arena. Seneca condemned the combats
|
||
even of wild beasts. He was tender enough to say that "we should
|
||
have a bond of sympathy for all sentient beings, knowing that only
|
||
the depraved and base take pleasure in the sight of blood and
|
||
suffering. "Aurelius compelled the gladiators to fight with blunted
|
||
swords. Roman lawyers declared that all men are by nature free and
|
||
equal. Woman, under Pagan rule in Rome, became as free as man.
|
||
Zeno, long before the birth of Christ, taught that virtue alone
|
||
establishes a difference between men. We know that the CIVIL LAW is
|
||
the foundation of our codes. We know that fragments of Greek and
|
||
Roman art -- a few manuscripts saved from Christian destruction,
|
||
some inventions and discoveries of the Moors -- were the seeds of
|
||
modern civilization. Christianity, for a thousand years, taught
|
||
memory to forget and reason to believe. Not one step was taken in
|
||
advance. Over the manuscripts of philosophers and poets, priests
|
||
with their ignorant tongues thrust out, devoutly scrawled the
|
||
forgeries of faith. For a thousand years the torch of progress was
|
||
extinguished in the blood of Christ, and his disciples, moved by
|
||
ignorant zeal, by insane, cruel creeds, destroyed with flame and
|
||
sword a hundred millions of their fellow-men. They made this world
|
||
a hell. But if cathedrals had been universities -- if dungeons of
|
||
the Inquisition had been laboratories -- if Christians had believed
|
||
in character instead of creed -- if they had taken from the Bible
|
||
all the good and thrown away the wicked and absurd -- if domes of
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
33
|
||
|
||
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION - III
|
||
by Robert G. Ingersoll
|
||
|
||
temples had been observatories -- if priests had been philosophers
|
||
-- if missionaries had taught the useful arts -- if astrology had
|
||
been astronomy -- if the black art had been chemistry -- if
|
||
superstition had been science -- if religion had been humanity --
|
||
it would have been a heaven filled with love, with liberty, and
|
||
joy.
|
||
|
||
We did not get our freedom from the church. The great truth,
|
||
that all men are by nature free, was never told on Sinai's barren
|
||
crags, nor by the lonely shores of Galilee.
|
||
|
||
The Old Testament filled this world with tyranny and crime,
|
||
and the New gives us a future filled with pain for nearly all the
|
||
sons of men. The Old describes the hell of the past, and the New
|
||
the hell of the future. The Old tells us the frightful things that
|
||
God has done -- the New the cruel things that he will do. These two
|
||
books give us the sufferings of the past and future -- the
|
||
injustice, the agony, the tears of both worlds. If the Bible is
|
||
true -- if Jehovah is God -- if the lot of countless millions is to
|
||
be eternal pain -- better a thousand times that all the
|
||
constellations of the shoreless vast were eyeless darkness and
|
||
eternal space. Better that all that is should cease to be. Better
|
||
that all the seeds and springs of things should fail and wither
|
||
from great Nature's realm. Better that causes and effects should
|
||
lose relation and become unmeaning phrases and forgotten sounds.
|
||
Better that every life should change to breathless death, to
|
||
voiceless blank, and every world to blind oblivion and to moveless
|
||
naught.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Black justifies all the crimes and horrors, excuses all
|
||
the tortures of all the Christian years, by denouncing the
|
||
cruelties of the French Revolution. Thinking people will not hasten
|
||
to admit that an infinitely good being authorized slavery in Judea,
|
||
because of the atrocities of the French Revolution. They will
|
||
remember the sufferings of the Huguenots. They will remember the
|
||
massacre of St. Bartholomew. They will not forget the countless
|
||
cruelties of priest and king. They will not forget the dungeons of
|
||
the Bastille. They will know that the Revolution was an effect, and
|
||
that liberty was not the cause -- that atheism was not the cause.
|
||
Behind the Revolution they will see altar and throne -- sword and
|
||
fagot -- palace and cathedral -- king and priest -- master and
|
||
slave -- tyrant and hypocrite. They will see that the excesses, the
|
||
cruelties, and crimes were but the natural fruit of seeds the
|
||
church had sown. But the Revolution was not entirely evil. Upon
|
||
that cloud of war, black with the myriad miseries of a thousand
|
||
years, dabbled with blood of king and queen, of patriot and priest,
|
||
there was this bow: "Beneath the flag of France all men are free."
|
||
In spite of all the blood and crime, in spite of deeds that seem
|
||
insanely base, the People placed upon a Nation's brow these stars:
|
||
-- Liberty, Fraternity, Equality -- grander words than ever issued
|
||
from Jehovah's lips.
|
||
**** ****
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
34
|
||
|