Part 15 (2/2)

But there was a time when there was a drought, and this tribe of savages with their false notions of religion says somebody has been wicked. Somebody has been lecturing on Sunday. Then the tribe hunted out the wicked man. They said you've got to stop. We cannot allow you to continue your wickedness, which brings punishment upon the whole of us. What is the reason they allow me to speak tonight. Because the Christians are not as firm in their belief now as they were a thousand years ago. The luke warmness and hypocrisy of Christians now permit me to speak tonight. If they felt as they did a thousand years ago they would kill me. So religious persecution was born of the instinct of self-defense. Is there any duty we owe to G.o.d? Can we help him, can we add to his glory or happiness? They tell me this G.o.d is infinitely wise, I cannot add to his wisdom; infinitely happy--I cannot add to his happiness. What can I do? Maybe he wants me to make prayers that won't be answered. I cannot see any relation that can exist between the finite and the infinite. I acknowledge that I am under obligations to my fellow man. We owe duties to our fellow man. And what? Simply to make them happy.

The only good, is happiness; and the only evil, is misery, or unhappiness. Only those things are right that tend to increase the happiness of man; only those things are wrong which tend to increase the misery of man. That is the basis of right and wrong. There never would have been the idea of wrong except that man can inflict sufferings upon others. Utility, then, is the basis of the idea of right and wrong.

The church tells us that this world is a school to prepare us for another, that it is a place to build up character. Well, if that is the only way character can be developed it is bad for children who die before they get any character. What would you think of a school-master who would kill half his pupils the first day?

Now, I read the bible, and I find that G.o.d so loved this world that He made up His mind to d.a.m.n the most of us. I have read this book, and what shall I say of it? I believe it is generally better to be honest.

Now, I don't believe the bible. Had I not better say so? They say that if you do you will regret it when you come to die. If that be true, I know a great many religious people who will have no cause to regret it--they don't tell their honest convictions about the bible.

There are two great arguments of the church--the great man argument and the death-bed. They say the religion of your fathers is good enough.

Why should your father object to your inventing a better plow than he had. They say to one, do you know more than all the theologians dead?

Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now we have come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think. Would G.o.d give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any G.o.d that would d.a.m.n one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief.

When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequence like a man. And so I object to paying for the support of another man's belief. I am in favor of the taxation of all church property. If that property belongs to G.o.d, He is able to pay the tax. If we exempt anything, let us exempt the home of the widow and orphan.

[A voice here interrupted the speaker.

Col. Ingersoll--What did the gentleman say? A voice--O, he's drunk.

Col. Ingersoll--I didn't think any Christian ought to get drunk and come here to disturb us.

The speaker resumed:]

The church has today $600,000,000 or $700,000,000 of property in this country. It must cost $2,000,000 a week, that is to say $500 a minute, to run these churches. You give me this money and if I don't do more good with it than four times as many churches I'll resign. Let them make the churches attractive and they'll get more hearers. They will have less empty pews if they have less empty heads in the pulpit. The time will come when the preacher will become a teacher.

Admitting that the bible is the book of G.o.d, is that His only good job?

Will not a man be d.a.m.ned as quick for denying the equator as denying the bible? Will he not be d.a.m.ned as quick for denying geology as for denying the scheme of salvation? When the bible was first written it was not believed. Had they known as much about science as we know now that bible would not have been written.

Col. Ingersoll next gave his views of the Puritans, declared they left Holland to escape persecution and came came here to persecute others.

He referred to the persecutions heaped upon those of other religious belief by the Puritans, paid the Catholics the compliment to say that Maryland, which they ruled, was the first colony to enact a law tolerating religious views not held by themselves, and went on to explain that G.o.d was never mentioned in the const.i.tution of the United States because each colony had a different religious belief, and each sect preferred to have G.o.d not mentioned at all than to having another religious belief than their own recognized.

”In 1876,” said the speaker, ”our forefathers retired G.o.d from politics. They said all power comes from the people. They kept G.o.d out of the const.i.tution and allowed each state to settle the question for itself.”

The present laws of different states were neatly reviewed, so far as they relate to the prevention of infidels giving testimony and to religious intolerance in any way, and these features were all branded and discussed as a gigantic evil.

The lecture was attentively listened to by the immense audience from beginning to the end, and the speaker's most blasphemous fights were the most loudly applauded.

Ingersoll's Lecture on Hereafter

My Friends: I tell you tonight, as I have probably told many of you dozens of times, that the orthodox doctrine of eternal punishment in the hereafter is an infamous one! I have no respect for the man who preaches it, or pretends to you he believes it. Neither have I any respect for the man who will pollute the imagination of innocent childhood with that infamous lie! And I have no respect for the man who will deliberately add to the sorrows of this world with this terrible dogma; no respect for the man who endeavors to put that infinite cloud and shadow over the heart of humanity. I will be frank with you and say, I hate the doctrine; I despise it, I defy it; I loathe it--and what man of sense does not. The idea of a h.e.l.l was born of revenge and brutality on the one side, and arrant cowardice on the other. In my judgment the American people are too brave, too generous, too magnanimous, too humane to believe in that outrageous doctrine of eternal d.a.m.nation.

For a great many years the learned intellects of Christendom have been examining into the religions of other countries and other ages, in the world--the religions of the myriads who have pa.s.sed away. They examined into the religions of Egypt, the religion of Greece, that of Rome and the Scandinavian countries. In the presence of the ruins of those religions, the learned men of Christendom insisted that those religions were baseless, false and fraudulent. But they have all pa.s.sed away.

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