Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll, Volume 2 — 05 - Orthodoxy, Part 1

Ingersoll's Lecture on "Orthodoxy" Ladies and Gentlemen: It is utterly inconceivable that any man believing in the truth of the Christian religion could publicly deny it, because he who believes in that religion would believe that, by a public denial, he would peril the eternal salvation of his soul.

It is conceivable, and without any great effort of the mind, that millions who don't believe in the Christian religion should openly say that they did.

In a country where religion is supposed to be in power--where it has rewards for pretense, where it pays a premium upon hypocrisy, where it at least is willing to purchase silence--it is easily conceivable that millions pretend to believe what they do not.

And yet I believe it has been charged against myself, not only that I was insincere, but that I took the side I am on for the sake of popularity; and the audience tonight goes far toward justifying the accusation.

It gives me immense pleasure to say to this immense audience that orthodox religion is dying out of the civilized world.

It is a sick man.

It has been attacked with two diseases--softening of the brain and ossification of the heart.

It is a religion that no longer satisfies the intelligence of this county; a religion that no longer satisfies the brain; a religion against which the heart of every civilized man and woman protests.

It is a religion that gives hope only to a few; a religion that puts a shadow upon the cradle; a religion that wraps the coffin in darkness and fills the future of mankind with flame and fear.

It is a religion that I am going to do what little I can while I live to destroy; and in its place I want humanity, I want good-fellowship, I want a brain without a chain, I want a religion that every good heart will cheerfully applaud.

We must remember that this is a world of progress, a world of change.

There is perpetual death and there is perpetual birth.

By the grave of the old forever stands youth and joy; and, when an old religion dies, a better one is born.

When we find out that an assertion is a falsehood, a shining truth takes its place, and we need not fear the destruction of the false.

The more false we destroy the more room there will be for the true.

There was a time when the astrologer sought to read in the stars the fate of men and nations.

The astrologer has faded from the world, but the astronomer has taken his place.

There was a time when the poor alchemist, bent and wrinkled and old, over his crucible, endeavored to find some secret by which he could change the baser metals into purest gold.

The alchemist is gone; the chemist took his place; and, although he finds nothing to change metals into gold, he finds something that covers the earth with wealth.

There was a time when the soothsayer and auger flourished, and after them came the parson and the priest; and the parson and priest must go.

The preacher must go, and in his place must come the teacher--that real interpreter of nature.

We are done with the supernatural.

We are through with the miraculous and the wonderful.

There was once a prophet who pretended to read in the book of the future.

His place was taken by the philosopher, who reasons from cause to effect--a man who finds the facts by which he is surrounded and endeavors to reason from these premises, and to tell what in all probability will happen in the future.

The prophet is gone, the philosopher is here.

There was a time when man sought aid entirely from heaven--when he prayed to the deaf sky.

There was a time when the world depended upon the supernaturalist.

That time in Christendom has passed.

We now depend upon the naturalist--not upon the disciple of faith, but upon the discoverer of facts--upon the demonstrator of truth.

At last we are beginning to build upon a solid foundation, and just as we progress the supernatural must die.

Religion of the supernatural kind will fade from this world, and in its place we will have reason.

In the place of the worship of something we know not of, will be the religion of mutual love and assistance--the great religion of reciprocity.

Superstition must go.

Science will remain.

The church, however, dies a little hard.

The brain of the world is not yet developed.

There are intellectual diseases the same as diseases of the body.

Intellectual mumps and measles still afflict mankind.

Whenever the new comes, the old protests, and the old fights for its place as long as it has a particle of power.

And we are now having the same warfare between superstition and science that there was between the stagecoach and the locomotive.

But the stage-coach had to go.

It had its day of glory and power, but it is gone.

It went West.

In a little while it will be driven into the Pacific, with the last Indian aboard.

So we find that there is the same conflict between the different sects and the different schools, not only of philosophy, but of medicine.

Recollect that everything except the demonstrated truth is liable to die.

That is the order of nature.

Words die.

Every language has a cemetery.

Every now and then a word dies and a tombstone is erected, and across it is written the word "obsolete."

New words are continually being born.

There is a cradle in which a word is rocked.

A thought is molded to a sound, and the child-word is born.

And then comes a time when the word gets old, and wrinkled, and expressionless, and is carried mournfully to the grave, and that is the end of it.

So in the schools of medicine.

You can remember, so can I, when the old alopathists reigned supreme.

If there was anything the matter with a man, they let out his blood.

Called to the bedside, they took him to the edge of eternity with medicine, and then practiced all their art to bring him back to life.

One can hardly imagine how perfect a constitution it took a few years ago to stand the assault of a doctor.

And long after it was found to be a mistake, hundreds and thousands of the old physicians clung to it, carried around with them, in one pocket, a bottle of jalap, and in the other a rusty lancet, sorry that they couldn't find some patient idiotic enough to allow the experiment to be made again.

So these schools, and these theories, and these religions die hard.

What else can they do?

Like the paintings of the old masters, they are kept alive because so much money has been invested in them.

Think of the amount of money that has been invested in superstition!

Think of the schools that have been founded for the more general diffusion of useless knowledge!

Think of the colleges wherein men are taught that it is dangerous to think, and that they must never use their brains except in an act of faith!

Think of the millions and billions of dollars that have been expended in churches, in temples and in cathedrals!

Think of the thousands and thousands of men who depend for their living upon the ignorance of mankind!

Think of those who grow rich on credulity and who fatten on faith!

Do you suppose they are going to die without a struggle?

They will die if they don't struggle.

What are they to do?

From the bottom of my heart I sympathize with the poor clergyman that has had all his common sense educated out of him, and is now to be thrown out upon the cold and uncharitable world.

His prayers are not answered; he gets no help from on high, and the pews are beginning to criticize the pulpit.

What is the man to do?

If he suddenly change, he is gone.

If he preaches what he really believes, he will get notice to quit.

And yet if he and the congregation would come together and be perfectly honest, they would all admit they didn't believe anything of it.

Only a little while ago a couple of ladies were riding together from a revival in a carriage late at night, and one said to the other; as they rode along: "I am going to say something that will shock you, and I beg of you never to tell it to anybody else.

I am going to tell it to you."

"Well, What is it?"

Says she: "I don't believe in the bible."

The other replied: "Neither do I." I have often thought how splendid it would be if the ministers could but come together and say: "Now let us be honest.

Let us tell each other, honor bright--like Dr. Currie did in the meeting here the other day--let us tell just what we believe."

They tell a story that in the old time a lot of people, about twenty, were in Texas in a little hotel, and one fellow got up before the fire, put his hands behind him, and says he: "Boys, let us all tell our real names."

If the ministers and the congregations would only tell their real thoughts they would find that they are nearly as bad as I am, and that they believe just about as little.

Now, I have been talking a great deal about the orthodox religion; and, after having delivered a lecture, I would meet some good, religious person, and he would say to me: "You don't tell it as we believe it."

"Well, but I tell it as you have it written in your creed."

"Oh, well," he says, "we don't mind that any more."

"Well, why don't you change it?"

"Oh, well," he says, "we understand it."

Possibly the creed is in the best possible condition for them now.

There is a tacit understanding that they don't believe it.

There is a tacit understanding that they have got some way to get around it, that they read between the lines; and if they should meet now to form a creed, they might fail to agree; and the creed is now so that they can say as they please, except in public.

Whenever they do so in public, the church, in self-defense, must try them; and I believe in trying every minister that doesn't preach the doctrine as he agrees to.

I have not the slightest sympathy with a Presbyterian preacher who endeavors to preach infidelity from his pulpit and receive Presbyterian money.

When he changes his views, he should step down and out like a man, and say: "I don't believe your doctrine, and I will not preach it.

You must hire some bigger fool than I am."

But I find that I get the creed very nearly right.

Today there was put into my hands the new Congregational creed.

I have just read it, and I thought I would call your attention to it tonight, to find whether the church has made any advance; to find whether it has been affected by the light of science; to find whether the sun of knowledge has risen in the heavens in vain; whether they are still the children of intellectual darkness; whether they still consider it necessary for you to believe something that you by no possibility, can understand, in order to be a winged angel forever.

Now, let us see what their creed is.

I will read a little of it.

They commence by saying that they "believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven, and of earth, and of all things visible and invisible."

I am perfectly willing that He should make the invisible, if they want Him to.

They say, now, that there is this one personal God; that He is the maker of the universe, and its ruler.

I again ask the old question: of what did He make it?

If matter has not existed through eternity, then this God made it.

Of what did He make it?

What did He use for the purpose?

There was nothing in the universe except this God.

What had the God been doing for the eternity He had been living?

He had made nothing--called nothing into existence; never had had an idea, because it is impossible to have an idea unless there is something to excite an idea.

What had He been doing?

Why doesn't the Congregational Church tell us?

How do they know about this infinite being?

And if He is infinite, how can they comprehend Him?

What good is it to believe something that you don't understand--that you never can understand?

In the old creeds they described this God as a being without body and parts or passions.

Think of that!

Something without body and parts or passions.

I defy any man in the world to write a letter descriptive of nothing.

You can not conceive of a finer word-painting of a vacuum than a something without body and parts or passions.

And yet this God, without passions, is angry at the wicked every day; this God, without passions, is a jealous God, whose anger burneth to the lowest hell.

This God, without passions, loves the whole human race, and this God, without passions, damns a large majority of the same.

So, too, He is the ruler of the world, and I find here that we find His providence in the government of the nations.

What nations?

What evidence can you find, if you are absolutely honest and not frightened, in the history of nations, that this universe is presided over by an infinitely wise and good God?

How do you account for Russia?

How do you account for Siberia?

How do you account for the fact that whole races of men toiled beneath the master's lash for ages without recompense and without reward?

How do you account for the fact that babes were sold from the arms of mothers--arms that had been reached toward God in supplication?

How do you account for it?

How do you account for the existence of martyrs?

How do you account for the fact that this God allows people to be burned simply for loving Him?

How do you account for the fact that justice doesn't always triumph?

How do you account for the fact that innocence is not a perfect shield?

How do you account for the fact that the world has been filled with pain, and grief, and tears?

How do you account for the fact that people have been swallowed by volcanoes, swept from the earth by storms, dying by famine, if there is above us a ruler who is infinitely good and infinitely powerful?

I don't say there is none.

I don't know.

As I have said before, this is the only planet I was ever on.

I live in one of the rural districts of the universe.

I know not about these things as much as the clergy.

And if they know no more about the other world than they do about this, it is not worth mentioning.

How do they answer all this?

They say that God "permits it."

What would you say to me if I stood by and saw a ruffian beat out the brains of a child, when I had full and perfect power to prevent it?

You would say truthfully that I was as bad as the murderer.

That is what you would say.

Is it possible for this God to prevent it?

Then, if He doesn't, He is a fiend; He is not good.

But they say He "permits it."

What for?

So we may have freedom of choice.

What for?

So that God may find, I suppose, who are good and who are bad.

Didn't He know that when He made us?

Did He not know exactly just what He was making?

Why should He make those whom He knew would be criminals?

If I should make a machine that would walk your streets and commit murder, you would hang me.

Why not?

And if God made a man whom He knew would commit murder, then God is guilty of that murder.

If God made a man, knowing he would beat his wife, that he would starve his children, that he would strew on either side of his path of life the wrecks of ruined homes, then, I say, the being who called that wretch into existence is directly responsible.

And yet we are to find the providence of God in the history of nations.

What little I have read shows me that when man has been helped, man had to do it; when the chains of slavery have been broken, they have been broken by man; when something bad has been done in the government of mankind, it is easy to trace it to man, and to fix the responsibility upon human beings.

You will not look to the sky; you need throw neither praise nor blame; you can find the efficient causes nearer home--right here.

What is the next thing I find in this creed?

"We believe that man was made in the image of God, that he might know, love and obey God, and enjoy Him for ever."

I don't believe that anybody ever did love God, because nobody ever knew anything about Him.

We love each other.

We love something that we know.

We love something that our experience tells us is good and great, and good and beautiful.

We cannot by any possibility love the unknown.

We can love truth, because truth adds to human happiness.

We can love justice, because it preserves human joy.

We can love charity.

We can love every form of goodness that we know, or of which we can conceive, but we cannot love the infinitely unknown.

And how can we be made in the image of something that has neither body and parts nor passions?

"That our first parents, by disobedience, fell under the condemnation of God, and that all men are so alienated from God that there is no salvation from the guilt and power of sin except through God's redeeming power."

Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story?

If there is, strike here (tapping his forehead) and you will hear an echo.

Something is for rent.

Does any human being now believe that God made man of dust and a woman of a rib, and put them in a garden, and put a tree in the middle of it?

Wasn't there room outside of the garden to put His tree, if He didn't want people to eat His apple?

If I didn't want a man to eat my fruit I would not put him in my orchard.

Does anybody now believe in the snake story?

I pity any man or woman who, in this nineteenth century, believes in that childish fable.

Why did they disobey?

Why, they were tempted.

Who by?

The devil.

Who made the devil?

What did He make him for?

Why didn't He tell Adam and Eve about this fellow?

Why didn't he watch the devil instead of watching Adam and Eve?

Instead of turning them out, why didn't He keep him from getting in?

Why didn't He have His flood first and drown the devil, before He made man and woman?

And yet people who call themselves intelligent--professors in colleges and presidents of venerable institutions--teach children, and young men who ought to be children, that the Garden of Eden story is an absolute, historical fact!

Well, I guess it will not be long until that will fade from the imagination of men.

I defy any man to think of a more childish thing.

This God waiting around there, knowing all the while what would happen, made them on purpose so it would happen; and then what does he do?

Holds all of us responsible; and we were not there.

Here is a representative before the constituency had been born.

Before I am bound by a representative, I want a chance to vote for or against him; and if I had been there, and known all the circumstances, I should have voted against him.

And yet, I am held responsible.

What did Adam do?

I cannot see that it amounted to much anyway.

A god that can create something out of nothing ought not to have complained of the loss of an apple.

I can hardly have the patience to speak upon such a subject.

Now, that absurdity gave birth to another--that, while we could be rightfully charged with the rascality of somebody else, we could also be credited with the virtues of somebody else; and the atonement is the absurdity which offsets the other absurdity of the fall of man.

Let us leave them both out; it reads a great deal better with both of them out; it makes better sense.

Now, in consequence of that, everybody is alienated from God.

How?

Why?

Oh, we are all depraved, you know; we all want to do wrong.

Well, why?

Is that because we are depraved?

No. Why do we make so many mistakes?

Because there is only one right way, and there is an almost infinite number of wrong ones; and as long as we are not perfect in our intellects we must make mistakes.

There is no darkness but ignorance;

and alienation, as they call it, from God, is simply a lack of intellect upon our part.

Why were we not given better brains?

That may account for the alienation.

But the church teaches that every soul that finds its way to the shore of this world is against God--naturally hates God; that the little dimpled child in the cradle is simply a chunk of depravity.

Everybody against God!

It is a libel upon the human race; it is a libel upon all the men who have worked for wife and child; it is a libel upon all the wives who have suffered and labored, wept and worked for children; it is a libel upon all the men who have died for their country; it is a libel upon all who have fought for human liberty; it is a libel upon the human race.

Leave out the history of the church, and there is nothing in this world to prove the depravity of man left.

Everybody that comes is against God.

Every soul, they think, is like the wrecked Irishman.

He was wrecked in the sea and drifted to an unknown island, and as he climbed up the shore he saw a man, and said to him, "Have you a government here?"

The man said, "We have."

"Well," said he, "I am agin it!"

The church teaches us that that is the attitude of every soul in the universe of God.

Ought a god to take any credit to himself for making depraved people?

A god that cannot make a soul that is not totally depraved, I respectfully suggest, should retire from the business.

And if a god has made us, knowing that we would be totally depraved, why should we go to the same being for repairs?

What is the next?

"That all men are so alienated from God that there is no salvation from the guilt and power of his sin except through God's redeeming grace."

Reformation is not enough.

If the man who steals becomes perfectly honest, that is not enough; if the man who hates his fellow-man changes and loves his fellowman, that is not enough; he must go through the mysterious thing called the second birth; he must be born again.

That is not enough unless he has faith; he must believe something that he does not understand.

Reformation is not enough; there must be what they call conversion.

I deny it.

According to the church, nothing so excites the wrath of God--nothing so corrugates the brows of Jehovah with revenge--as a man relying on his own good works.

He must admit that he ought to be damned, and that of the two he prefers it, before God will consent to save him.

I saw a man the other day, and he said to me, "I am a Unitarian Universalist; that is what I am."

Said I, "What do you mean by that?"

"Well," said he, "here is what I mean: the Unitarian thinks he is too good to be damned, and the Universalist thinks God is too good to damn him, and I believe them both."

What is the next thing in this great creed?

"We believe that the scriptures of the old and new testaments are the records of God's revelation of Himself in the work of redemption; that they are written by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that they constitute an authoritative standard by which religious teaching and human conduct are to be regulated and judged."

This is the creed of the Congregational Church; that is, it is the result of the high-joint commission appointed to draw up a creed for churches; and there we have the statement that the bible was written "by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit."

What part of the bible?

All of it; all of it; and yet what is this old testament that was written by an infinitely good God?

The being who wrote it did not know the shape of the world He had made.

The being who wrote it knew nothing of human nature; He commands men to love Him, as if one could love upon command.

The same God upheld the institution of human slavery; and the church says the bible that upholds that institution was written by men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Then I disagree with the Holy Ghost upon that institution.

The church tells us that men, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, upheld the institution of polygamy--I deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men upheld wars of extermination and conquest--I deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men wrote that it was right for a man to destroy the life of his wife if she happened to differ with him on the subject of religion--I deny it.

And yet that is the book now upheld in this creed of the Congregational Church.

If the devil had written upon the subject of slavery, which side would he have taken?

Let every minister answer, honor bright.

If you knew the devil had written a little work on human slavery, in your judgment would he uphold slavery or denounce it?

Would you regard it as any evidence that he ever wrote it if he upheld slavery?

And yet, here you have a work upholding slavery, and you say that it was written by an infinitely good, wise and beneficent God!

If the devil upheld polygamy would you be surprised?

If the devil wanted to kill somebody for differing with him would you be surprised?

If the devil told a man to kill his wife, would you be astonished?

And yet, you say, that is exactly what the God of us all did.

If there be a God, then that creed is blasphemy.

That creed is a libel upon Him who sits upon heaven's throne.

I want--if there be a God--I want Him to write in the book of his eternal remembrance that I denied these lies for Him.

I do not believe in a slave-holding God; I do not worship a polygamous Holy Ghost; I do not get upon my knees before any being who commands a husband to slay his wife because she expresses her honest thought.

Did it ever occur to you that if God wrote the old testament, and told the Jews to crucify or kill anybody that disagreed with them on religion, and that God afterward took upon Himself flesh and came to Jerusalem, and taught a different religion, and the Jews killed Him--did it ever occur to you that He reaped exactly what he had sown?

Did it ever occur to you that He fell a victim to His own tyranny, and was destroyed by His own law!

Of course I do not believe that any God ever was the author of the bible, or that any God was ever crucified, or that any God was ever killed or ever will be, but I want to ask you that question.

Take this old testament, then, with all its stories of murder and massacre; with all its foolish and cruel fables; with all its infamous doctrines; with its spirit of caste; with its spirit of hatred, and tell me whether it was written by a good God.

Why, if you will read the maledictions and curses of that book, you would think that God, like Lear, had divided heaven among his daughters, and then, in the insanity of despair, had launched his curses upon the human race.

And yet, I must say--I must admit--that the old testament is better than the new.

In the old testament, when God got a man dead, He let him alone.

When He saw him quietly in his grave He was satisfied.

The muscles relaxed, and a smile broke over the Divine face.

But in the new testament the trouble commences just at death.

In the new testament God is to wreak His revenge forever and ever.

It was reserved for one who said, "Love your enemies," to tear asunder the veil between time and eternity and fix the horrified gaze of men upon the gulfs of eternal fire.

The new testament is just as much worse than the old, as hell is worse than sleep; just as much worse as infinite cruelty is worse than annihilation; and yet, the new testament is pointed to as a gospel of love and peace.

But "more of that hereafter," as the ministers say.

"We believe that Jesus Christ came to establish among men the Kingdom of God, the reign of truth and love, of righteousness and peace."

Well, that may have been the object of Jesus Christ.

I do not deny it.

But what was the result?

The Christian world has caused more war than all the rest of the world besides; all the cunning instruments of death have been devised by Christians; all the wonderful machinery by which the brains are blown out of a man, by which nations are conquered and subdued--all these machines have been born in Christian brains.

And yet He came to bring peace, they say.

But the testament says otherwise: "I came not to bring peace, but a sword."

And the sword was brought.

What are the Christian nations doing today in Europe?

Is there a solitary Christian nation that will trust any other?

How many millions of Christians are in the uniform of everlasting forgiveness, loving their enemies?

There was an old Spaniard upon the bed of death, and he sent for a priest, and the priest told him that he would have to forgive his enemies before he died.