There
are many things that horrified Ingersoll about Christianity, but the one theme
he returned to over and over, the thing he really seemed to hate most of all,
was the notion that all mankind, all people living today and all who lived from
the beginning of time, were mostly going to burn in hellfire forever – take the
Bible at its word, and a majority of the people God created, were going into
God’s furnace to suffer forever. “The Old Testament is filled with cruelty, but
its cruelty stops with this world, its malice ends with death; whenever its
victim has reached the grave, revenge is satisfied. Not so with the New
Testament. It pursues its victim forever. So that, as a matter of fact, the New
Testament is infinitely more cruel than the Old. 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 dreamless dust; and yet, the New
Testament is claimed to be a gospel of love and peace. The Old Testament tells
us the frightful things that God has done, the New the frightful things that he
will do. These two books give us the sufferings of the past and the future --
the injustice, the agony and the tears of both worlds.”
He was offended at how disproportionate it all was. “He who commits the smallest sin no more deserves eternal pain than he who does the smallest virtuous deed deserves eternal bliss; I have insisted, and I still insist, that it is impossible for a finite man to commit a crime deserving infinite punishment. Here, the vicious may reform; here, the wicked may repent; here, a few gleams of sunshine may fall upon the darkest life. But in your future state, for countless billions of the human race, there will be no reform, no opportunity of doing right, and no possible gleam of sunshine can ever touch their souls. Do you not see that your future state is infinitely worse than this? You seem to mistake the glare of hell for the light of morning.”
His anger regarding this doctrine impelled him to speak in terms more personal and emotional than was his habit. He personalized his attack on this point by calling to mind the countless dead. “I want you to know that according to this creed the men who founded this great and splendid Government are in hell to-night. Most of the men who fought in the Revolutionary war, and wrested from the clutch of Great Britain this continent, have been rewarded by the eternal wrath of God. Thousands of the old Revolutionary soldiers are in torment tonight. Let the preachers have the courage to say so. The men who fought in 1812, and gave to the United States the freedom of the seas, have nearly all been damned. Thousands of heroes who served our country in the Civil war, hundreds who starved in prisons, are now in the dungeons of God, compared with which, Andersonville was Paradise. The greatest of heroes are there; the greatest of poets, the greatest scientists, the men who have made the world beautiful -- they are all among the damned if this creed is true….A man is born in Arkansas and lives there to be seventeen or eighteen years of age; is it possible that he can be truthfully told at the day of judgment that he had a fair chance?...I am charged with trying to take the consolation of this doctrine from the world. I am a criminal because I am endeavoring to convince the mother that her child does not deserve eternal punishment. I stand by the graves of those who "died in their sins," by the tombs of the "unregenerate," over the ashes of men who have spent their lives working for their wives and children, and over the sacred dust of soldiers who died in defense of flag and country, and I say to their friends -- I say to the living who loved them, I say to the men and women for whom they worked, I say to the children whom they educated, I say to the country for which they died: These fathers, these mothers, these wives, these husbands, these soldiers are not in hell. Do not proclaim as "tidings of great joy" that an Infinite Spider is weaving webs to catch the souls of men. 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. 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.”
In the age of the liberation of slaves Ingersoll wanted to liberate humanity from fear. To those who claimed that he was trying to “put out the light-houses on the coast of the next world” and “leave everybody in darkness at the narrows of death”, Ingersoll was emphatic. “There can be no necessity for these light-houses, unless the God of Mr. Talmage has planted rocks and reefs within that unknown sea. If there is no hell, there is no need of any lighthouse on the shores of the next world; and only those are interested in keeping up these pretended light-houses who are paid for trimming invisible wicks and supplying the lamps with allegorical oil. Mr. Talmage is one of these light-house keepers, and he knows that if it is ascertained that the coast is not dangerous, the light-house will be abandoned, and the keeper will have to find employment elsewhere. As a matter of fact, every church is a useless light-house. It warns us only against breakers that do not exist. Whenever a mariner tells one of the keepers that there is no danger, then all the keepers combine to destroy the reputation of that mariner….It seems to me that the heart of the Christian ought to burst into an efflorescence of joy when he becomes satisfied that the Bible is only the work of man; that there is no such place as perdition -- that there are no eternal flames -- that men's souls are not to suffer everlasting pain -- that it is all insanity and ignorance and fear and horror. I should think that every good and tender soul would be delighted to know that there is no Christ who can say to any human being -- to any father, mother, or child -- Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. So I believe the world will be happier when the life of Christ, as it is written now in the New Testament, is no longer believed.”
Ingersoll raged over the damage done by the doctrine of damnation. “The truth is, Christianity has not made friends; it has made enemies. It is not, as taught, the religion of peace, it is the religion of war. Why should a Christian hesitate to kill a man that his God is waiting to damn? Why should a Christian not destroy an infidel who is trying to assassinate his soul? Why should a Christian pity an unbeliever -- one who has rejected the Bible -- when he knows that God will be pitiless forever? [This doctrine] has been guarded by the cherubim of persecution, whose flaming swords were wet for many centuries with the best and bravest blood. It has been guarded by cunning, by hypocrisy, by mendacity, by honesty, by calumniating the generous, by maligning the good, by thumbscrews and racks, by charity and love, by robbery and assassination, by poison and fire, by the virtues of the ignorant and the vices of the learned, by the violence of mobs and the whirlwinds of war, by every hope and every fear, by every cruelty and every crime, and by all there is of the wild beast in the heart of man. A doctrine that divides this world, a doctrine that divides families, a doctrine that teaches the son that he can be happy, with his mother in perdition; the husband that he can he happy in heaven while his wife suffers the agonies of hell. It has caused the religious wars; bound hundreds of thousands to the stake; founded inquisitions; filled dungeons; invented instruments of torture; taught the mother to hate her child; imprisoned the mind; filled the world with ignorance; persecuted the lovers of wisdom; built the monasteries and convents; made happiness a crime, investigation a sin, and self-reliance a blasphemy. It has poisoned the springs of learning; misdirected the energies of the world; filled all countries with want; housed the people in hovels; fed them with famine. This doctrine is infinite injustice, and tends to subvert all ideas of justice in the human heart.”
Ingersoll condemned priests who exploit the death of loved ones to peddle the dream of heaven. “A loved one dies and we wish to meet again; and from the affection of the human heart grew the great oak of the hope of immortality. Around that oak has climbed the poisonous vines of superstition. Theologians, pretenders, soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops, have taken advantage of that. They have stood by graves and promised heaven. They have stood by graves and prophesied a future filled with pain. They have erected their toll-gates on the highway of life and have collected money from fear.”
And he showed the obvious flaw in that religious argument – if your relative is dying, there are actually two potential destinations. “According to Mr. Talmage, a man can be perfectly happy in heaven, with his mother in hell. He will be so entranced with the society of Christ, that he will not even inquire what has become of his wife. The Holy Ghost will keep him in such a state of happy wonder, of ecstatic Joy, that the names, even, of his children will never invade his memory. No matter about your wife, your children, your brother, your sister -- no matter about all the affections of the human heart -- when you get there, you will be with the angels. I do not know whether I would like the angels. I do not know whether the angels would like me. I would rather stand by the ones who have loved me and whom I know; and I can conceive of no heaven without the loved of this earth. That is the trouble with this Christian religion. Leave your father, leave your mother, leave your wife, leave your children, leave everything and follow Jesus Christ. I will not. I will stay with my people. The only thing that makes life endurable in this world is human love, and yet, according to Christianity, that is the very thing we are not to have in the other world. I had rather think of those I have loved, and lost, as having returned to earth, as having become a part of the elemental wealth of the world -- I would rather think of them as unconscious dust, I would rather dream of them as gurgling in the streams, floating in the clouds, bursting in the foam of light upon the shores of worlds, I would rather think of them as the lost visions of a forgotten night, than to have even the faintest fear that their naked souls have been clutched by an orthodox god. I will leave my dead where nature leaves them. Whatever flower of hope springs up in my heart I will cherish, I will give it breath of sighs and rain of tears. But I cannot believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. I would rather that every god would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony. Such a religion is a disgrace to human nature.”
Ingersoll insisted that belief was involuntary and that punishing someone for his beliefs was unfair. “The truth is that no one can justly be held responsible for his thoughts. The brain thinks without asking our consent. We believe, or we disbelieve, without an effort of the will. Belief is a result. It is the effect of evidence upon the mind. The scales turn in spite of him who watches. There is no opportunity of being honest or dishonest in the formation of an opinion. The conclusion is entirely independent of desire. We must believe, or we must doubt, in spite of what we wish. Surely no God can have the right to punish his children for being honest. He should not reward hypocrisy with heaven, and punish candor with eternal pain. [The] mind [of a believer] is so that a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being gives satisfaction and content: of course, you are entitled to no credit for this belief, as you ought not to be rewarded for believing that which you cannot help believing; neither should I be punished for failing to believe that which I cannot believe. In order that you may see the effect of belief in the formation of character, it is only necessary to call your attention to the fact that your Bible shows that the devil himself is a believer in the existence of your God, in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and in the divinity of Jesus Christ. He not only believes these things, but he knows them, and yet, in spite of it all, he remains a devil still.”
He was offended at how disproportionate it all was. “He who commits the smallest sin no more deserves eternal pain than he who does the smallest virtuous deed deserves eternal bliss; I have insisted, and I still insist, that it is impossible for a finite man to commit a crime deserving infinite punishment. Here, the vicious may reform; here, the wicked may repent; here, a few gleams of sunshine may fall upon the darkest life. But in your future state, for countless billions of the human race, there will be no reform, no opportunity of doing right, and no possible gleam of sunshine can ever touch their souls. Do you not see that your future state is infinitely worse than this? You seem to mistake the glare of hell for the light of morning.”
His anger regarding this doctrine impelled him to speak in terms more personal and emotional than was his habit. He personalized his attack on this point by calling to mind the countless dead. “I want you to know that according to this creed the men who founded this great and splendid Government are in hell to-night. Most of the men who fought in the Revolutionary war, and wrested from the clutch of Great Britain this continent, have been rewarded by the eternal wrath of God. Thousands of the old Revolutionary soldiers are in torment tonight. Let the preachers have the courage to say so. The men who fought in 1812, and gave to the United States the freedom of the seas, have nearly all been damned. Thousands of heroes who served our country in the Civil war, hundreds who starved in prisons, are now in the dungeons of God, compared with which, Andersonville was Paradise. The greatest of heroes are there; the greatest of poets, the greatest scientists, the men who have made the world beautiful -- they are all among the damned if this creed is true….A man is born in Arkansas and lives there to be seventeen or eighteen years of age; is it possible that he can be truthfully told at the day of judgment that he had a fair chance?...I am charged with trying to take the consolation of this doctrine from the world. I am a criminal because I am endeavoring to convince the mother that her child does not deserve eternal punishment. I stand by the graves of those who "died in their sins," by the tombs of the "unregenerate," over the ashes of men who have spent their lives working for their wives and children, and over the sacred dust of soldiers who died in defense of flag and country, and I say to their friends -- I say to the living who loved them, I say to the men and women for whom they worked, I say to the children whom they educated, I say to the country for which they died: These fathers, these mothers, these wives, these husbands, these soldiers are not in hell. Do not proclaim as "tidings of great joy" that an Infinite Spider is weaving webs to catch the souls of men. 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. 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.”
In the age of the liberation of slaves Ingersoll wanted to liberate humanity from fear. To those who claimed that he was trying to “put out the light-houses on the coast of the next world” and “leave everybody in darkness at the narrows of death”, Ingersoll was emphatic. “There can be no necessity for these light-houses, unless the God of Mr. Talmage has planted rocks and reefs within that unknown sea. If there is no hell, there is no need of any lighthouse on the shores of the next world; and only those are interested in keeping up these pretended light-houses who are paid for trimming invisible wicks and supplying the lamps with allegorical oil. Mr. Talmage is one of these light-house keepers, and he knows that if it is ascertained that the coast is not dangerous, the light-house will be abandoned, and the keeper will have to find employment elsewhere. As a matter of fact, every church is a useless light-house. It warns us only against breakers that do not exist. Whenever a mariner tells one of the keepers that there is no danger, then all the keepers combine to destroy the reputation of that mariner….It seems to me that the heart of the Christian ought to burst into an efflorescence of joy when he becomes satisfied that the Bible is only the work of man; that there is no such place as perdition -- that there are no eternal flames -- that men's souls are not to suffer everlasting pain -- that it is all insanity and ignorance and fear and horror. I should think that every good and tender soul would be delighted to know that there is no Christ who can say to any human being -- to any father, mother, or child -- Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. So I believe the world will be happier when the life of Christ, as it is written now in the New Testament, is no longer believed.”
Ingersoll raged over the damage done by the doctrine of damnation. “The truth is, Christianity has not made friends; it has made enemies. It is not, as taught, the religion of peace, it is the religion of war. Why should a Christian hesitate to kill a man that his God is waiting to damn? Why should a Christian not destroy an infidel who is trying to assassinate his soul? Why should a Christian pity an unbeliever -- one who has rejected the Bible -- when he knows that God will be pitiless forever? [This doctrine] has been guarded by the cherubim of persecution, whose flaming swords were wet for many centuries with the best and bravest blood. It has been guarded by cunning, by hypocrisy, by mendacity, by honesty, by calumniating the generous, by maligning the good, by thumbscrews and racks, by charity and love, by robbery and assassination, by poison and fire, by the virtues of the ignorant and the vices of the learned, by the violence of mobs and the whirlwinds of war, by every hope and every fear, by every cruelty and every crime, and by all there is of the wild beast in the heart of man. A doctrine that divides this world, a doctrine that divides families, a doctrine that teaches the son that he can be happy, with his mother in perdition; the husband that he can he happy in heaven while his wife suffers the agonies of hell. It has caused the religious wars; bound hundreds of thousands to the stake; founded inquisitions; filled dungeons; invented instruments of torture; taught the mother to hate her child; imprisoned the mind; filled the world with ignorance; persecuted the lovers of wisdom; built the monasteries and convents; made happiness a crime, investigation a sin, and self-reliance a blasphemy. It has poisoned the springs of learning; misdirected the energies of the world; filled all countries with want; housed the people in hovels; fed them with famine. This doctrine is infinite injustice, and tends to subvert all ideas of justice in the human heart.”
Ingersoll condemned priests who exploit the death of loved ones to peddle the dream of heaven. “A loved one dies and we wish to meet again; and from the affection of the human heart grew the great oak of the hope of immortality. Around that oak has climbed the poisonous vines of superstition. Theologians, pretenders, soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops, have taken advantage of that. They have stood by graves and promised heaven. They have stood by graves and prophesied a future filled with pain. They have erected their toll-gates on the highway of life and have collected money from fear.”
And he showed the obvious flaw in that religious argument – if your relative is dying, there are actually two potential destinations. “According to Mr. Talmage, a man can be perfectly happy in heaven, with his mother in hell. He will be so entranced with the society of Christ, that he will not even inquire what has become of his wife. The Holy Ghost will keep him in such a state of happy wonder, of ecstatic Joy, that the names, even, of his children will never invade his memory. No matter about your wife, your children, your brother, your sister -- no matter about all the affections of the human heart -- when you get there, you will be with the angels. I do not know whether I would like the angels. I do not know whether the angels would like me. I would rather stand by the ones who have loved me and whom I know; and I can conceive of no heaven without the loved of this earth. That is the trouble with this Christian religion. Leave your father, leave your mother, leave your wife, leave your children, leave everything and follow Jesus Christ. I will not. I will stay with my people. The only thing that makes life endurable in this world is human love, and yet, according to Christianity, that is the very thing we are not to have in the other world. I had rather think of those I have loved, and lost, as having returned to earth, as having become a part of the elemental wealth of the world -- I would rather think of them as unconscious dust, I would rather dream of them as gurgling in the streams, floating in the clouds, bursting in the foam of light upon the shores of worlds, I would rather think of them as the lost visions of a forgotten night, than to have even the faintest fear that their naked souls have been clutched by an orthodox god. I will leave my dead where nature leaves them. Whatever flower of hope springs up in my heart I will cherish, I will give it breath of sighs and rain of tears. But I cannot believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. I would rather that every god would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony. Such a religion is a disgrace to human nature.”
Ingersoll insisted that belief was involuntary and that punishing someone for his beliefs was unfair. “The truth is that no one can justly be held responsible for his thoughts. The brain thinks without asking our consent. We believe, or we disbelieve, without an effort of the will. Belief is a result. It is the effect of evidence upon the mind. The scales turn in spite of him who watches. There is no opportunity of being honest or dishonest in the formation of an opinion. The conclusion is entirely independent of desire. We must believe, or we must doubt, in spite of what we wish. Surely no God can have the right to punish his children for being honest. He should not reward hypocrisy with heaven, and punish candor with eternal pain. [The] mind [of a believer] is so that a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being gives satisfaction and content: of course, you are entitled to no credit for this belief, as you ought not to be rewarded for believing that which you cannot help believing; neither should I be punished for failing to believe that which I cannot believe. In order that you may see the effect of belief in the formation of character, it is only necessary to call your attention to the fact that your Bible shows that the devil himself is a believer in the existence of your God, in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and in the divinity of Jesus Christ. He not only believes these things, but he knows them, and yet, in spite of it all, he remains a devil still.”
Ingersoll ridiculed those who use fear to impel belief. “They say: When you come to die you will be sorry if you do not. Will I be sorry when I come to die that I did not live a hypocrite? Will I be sorry that I did not say I was a Christian when I was not? Will the fact that I was honest put a thorn in the pillow of death? Cannot God forgive me for being honest? They say that when he was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing from him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "I do;" but he says. "I will damn mine." God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to be as generous as he asks us to be. No matter what his belief may be, no man, even in the hour of death, can regret having been honest. It never can be necessary to throw away your reason to save your soul. A soul without reason is scarcely worth saving.”
Or this illustration: “Suppose one should meet, we will say on London Bridge, a man clad in rags, and he should stop us and say, "My friend. I wish to talk with you a moment. I am the rightful King of Great Britain," and you should say to him, "Well, my dinner is waiting; I have no time to bother about who the King of England is," and then he should meet another and insist on his stopping while he pulled out some papers to show that he was the rightful King of England, and the other man should say, "I have got business here, my friend; I am selling goods, and I have no time to bother my head about who the King of England is. No doubt you are the King of England, but you don't look like him. "And then suppose he stops another man, and makes the same statement to him, and the other man should laugh at him and say, "I don't want to hear anything on this subject; you are crazy; you ought to go to some insane asylum, or put something on your head to keep you cool. "And suppose, after all, it should turn out that the man was King of England, and should afterward make his claim good and be crowned in Westminster. What would we think of that King if he should hunt up the gentlemen that he met on London Bridge, and have their heads cut off because they had no faith that he was the rightful heir? And what would we think of a God now who would damn a man eighteen hundred years after the event, because he did not believe that he was God at the time he was living in Jerusalem; not only damn the fellows that he met, and who did not believe in him, but gentlemen who lived eighteen hundred years afterward, and who certainly could have known nothing of the facts except from hearsay.”
Ingersoll rejected a creed that could condemn an atheist who lived virtuously all his life while sending a churchgoing sinner to Saint Peter; a faith that would send a rapist, repentant on the scaffold, to heaven, while sending his victim to hell for not joining a church. Ingersoll also torpedoed the notion that Jesus could give us immortality by dying for our sins. “Nothing can exceed the foolishness of these two ideas -- first: Man can be justly punished forever for the sin of Adam. Second: Man can be justly rewarded with eternal joy for the [sacrifice] of Christ. Yet the man who believes this, preaches a sermon in which he says that a man must reap what he sows. Orthodox Christians teach exactly the opposite. They teach that no matter what a man sows, no matter how wicked his life has been, that he can by repentance change the crop. That all his sins shall be forgotten ….To make innocence suffer is the greatest sin; how then is it possible to make the suffering of the innocent [Jesus] a justification for the criminal? Why should a man be willing to let the innocent suffer for him? Does not the willingness show that he is utterly unworthy of the sacrifice? Certainly, no man would be fit for heaven who would consent that an innocent person should suffer for his sin. What would we think of a man who would allow another to die for a crime that he himself had committed? What would we think of a law that allowed the innocent to take the place of the guilty? Would not that be a second violation instead of a vindication? In countless ways the Christian world has endeavored, for nearly two thousand years, to explain the atonement, and every effort has ended in an admission that it cannot be understood.”
Ingersoll points out that the Bible is very confusing on the issue of immortality. In Genesis the Bible tells how we lost immortality, although confusingly it also says that when God took immortality away from Adam and Eve he also threw them out of the garden to prevent them from eating from the tree of life, which implies that since they hadn’t eaten from that tree yet, they weren’t immortal anyway. Moses goes up to Sinai and receives lengthy instructions on everything from pork to mildew to hair oil – not a word on the rules governing immortality. Then a witch is hired to summon the ghost of Samuel, the only other mention of immortality in the Old Testament, suggesting that only through witchcraft can we gain access to the afterlife. The New Testament is no clearer: Jesus amazingly is silent on the issue, and elsewhere the evangelists variously say that immortality belongs to the worthy, or that it belongs only to God. And then Ingersoll gives us this: “A little while ago priests told peasants that the New Jerusalem, the celestial city was just above the clouds. They said that its walls and domes and spires were just beyond the reach of human sight. The telescope was invented and those who looked at the wilderness of stars, saw no city, no throne. They said to the priests: Where is your New Jerusalem? The priests cheerfully and confidently replied. It is just beyond where you see."
Ingersoll pointed out the danger of relying on the Bible to prove that faith is the way to heaven. “According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, if you will forgive others God will forgive you. This is the one condition of salvation. But in John we find an entirely different religion. According to John you must be born again and believe in Jesus Christ. The four gospels cannot be harmonized. If John is true the others are false. If the others are true John is false….So I find in the nineteenth chapter: And behold, one came and said unto him: 'Good master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?' Here is a child of God asking God what is necessary for him to do in order to inherit eternal life. Now, if there ever has been an opportunity given to the Almighty to furnish a man of an inquiring mind with the necessary information upon that subject, here was the opportunity. And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; honor thy father and mother; and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." He did not say to him: "You must believe in me -- that I am the only begotten son of the living God." He did not say: "You must be born again." He did not say: "You must believe the Bible." What right has the church to add conditions of salvation? Why should we suppose that Christ failed to tell the young man all that was necessary for him to do? Is it possible that he left out some important thing simply to mislead? Will some minister tell us why he thinks that Christ kept back the scheme?”
