Ingersoll
on progress.
Ingersoll
pointed out that Henry VIII passed "An act for abolishing of diversity of
opinion" which include six decrees regarding sacraments and other issues;
violating the first rule would get you death by burning while the others
required a second offense for the death penalty. “Your attention is called to
these six articles, established during the reign of Henry VIII., and by the
Church of England, simply because not one of these articles is believed by that
church to-day. If the law then made by the church could be enforced now, every
Episcopalian would be burned at the stake.”
Ingersoll was of course making a larger point. He was more aware of the changes in the faith than the faithful, observing the arc of Christianity from Moses to Jesus to Paul to Luther, watching as the founders of Christianity rejected the Old-Testament sanctions for slavery and genocide and polygamy, watching the faith retreat before the assaults of Galileo and Darwin and try to keep up with changing society. He knew that the rigid churchmen of his day were descended from rebels who left Catholicism, who were in turn descended from rebels against Judaism, and so on back in time. “You never can honor your father by going around swearing to his mistakes. You never can honor your mother by saying that ignorance is blessed because she did not know everything. I want to honor my parents by finding out more than they did. I suppose Judge Comegys to be a Presbyterian. Where did he get his right to be a Presbyterian? Where did he get his right to decide which creed is the correct one? How did he dare to pit his little brain against the word of God? He may say that his father was a Presbyterian. But what was his grandfather? If he will only go back far enough he will, in all probability, find that his ancestors were Catholics, and if he will go back a little farther still, that they were barbarians; that at one time they were naked, and had snakes tattooed on their bodies. What right had they to change? Does he not perceive that had the savages passed the same kind of laws that now exist in Delaware, they could have prevented any change in belief? They would have had a whipping-post, too, and they would have said: Any gentleman found without snakes tattooed upon his body shall be held guilty of blasphemy; and all the ancestors of this Judge, and of these ministers would have said, Amen! What right had the first Presbyterian to be a Presbyterian? He must have been a blasphemer first. A small dose of pillory might have changed his religion.”
Change and more change. “If the Bible is true and God is its author, then God was in favor of slavery four thousand years ago. He was also in favor of polygamy and religious intolerance. In other words, four thousand years ago he occupied the exact position the Devil is supposed to occupy now….At first, according to the account, Christ distinctly stated that his gospel was not for the Gentiles….The religions of to-day are the sciences of the past; and it may be that the sciences of to-day will be the religions of the future, and that other sciences will be as far beyond them as the science of to-day is beyond the religion of to-day. As a rule, religion is a sanctified mistake, and heresy a slandered fact. In other words, the human mind grows -- and as it grows it abandons the old, and the old gets it revenge by maligning the new. When a great truth has been discovered, one man has pitted himself against the world. A few think: the many believe. The few lead; the many follow. The light of the new day, as it looks over the window sill of the east, falls at first on only one forehead….As man advanced he slowly changed his God -- took a little ferocity from his heart, and put the light of kindness in his eyes. As man progressed he obtained a wider view, extended the intellectual horizon and again he changed his God, making him as nearly perfect as he could, and yet this God was patterned after those who made him. As man became civilized, as he became merciful, he began to love justice, and as his mind expanded his ideal became purer, nobler, and so his God became more merciful, more loving…. In our day Jehovah has been outgrown. He is no longer the perfect. Now theologians talk, not about Jehovah, but about a God of love, call him the Eternal father and the perpetual friend and providence of man. But, while they talk about this God of love, cyclones wreck and rend, the earthquake devours, the flood destroys, the red bolt leaping from the cloud still crashes the life out of men, and plague and fever still are tireless reapers in the harvest fields of death. That book, called the basis of all law and civilization, has to be civilized itself. We have outgrown it. Our laws are better; our institutions grander; our objects and aims nobler and higher. How long will what you call Christianity endure, if it changes as rapidly during the next century as it has during the last? What will there be left of the supernatural?”
Unsurprisingly Ingersoll credits the men of science for forcing both society and religion to change more quickly. “In old times there was a great difference between a clergyman and a layman. The clergyman was educated; the peasant was ignorant. The tables have been turned. The thought of the world is with the laymen. They are the intellectual pioneers, the mental leaders, and the ministers are following on behind, predicting failure and disaster, signing for the good old times when their word ended discussion. And here, allow me to say that the ministers who are answering me are turning their guns in the wrong direction. These reverend gentlemen should attack the astronomers. They should malign and vilify Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Herschel and Laplace. These men were the real destroyers of the sacred story. Then, after having disposed of them, they can wage a war against the stars, and against Jehovah himself for having furnished evidence against the truthfulness of his book.”
Ingersoll celebrated the fact that science and reason were supplanting superstition. “Recollect that everything except the demonstrated truth is liable to die. So 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 the 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? 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 upon the cold and unbelieving 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 changes 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 that they believe little and know nothing.”
So the preacher adapts but only reluctantly. “The highest type of the orthodox Christian does not forget; neither does he learn. He neither advances nor recedes. He is a living fossil embedded in that rock called faith. He makes no effort to better his condition, because all his strength is exhausted in keeping other people from improving theirs. The supreme desire of his heart is to force all others to adopt his creed, and in order to accomplish this object he denounces free thinking as a crime, and this crime he calls heresy. When he had power, heresy was the most terrible and formidable of words. It meant confiscation, exile, imprisonment, torture, and death.” But now with science in advance and religion in retreat, “you are no longer asked to swallow the Bible whole, whale, Jonah and all; you are simply required to believe in God, and pay your pew-rent. There is not now an enlightened minister in the world who will seriously contend that Samson's strength was in his hair, or that the necromancers of Egypt could turn water into blood, and pieces of wood into serpents. These follies have passed away, and the only reason that the religious world can now have for disliking Paine is that they have been forced to adopt so many of his opinions.”
But Ingersoll had little interest in being generous to the preachers and allowing them to catch up to the rest of society – he wanted them out of business. “Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, Halt! A creed is the ignorant Past bullying the enlightened Present. It gives me immense pleasure to say to this 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 country; 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; that puts a shadow upon the cradle; 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. In its place I want humanity, I want good fellowship, I want intellectual liberty -- free lips, the discoveries and inventions of genius, the demonstrations of science -- the religion of art, music and poetry -- of good houses, good clothes, good wages -- that is to say, the religion of this world.”
He also looked forward to the end of the reign of the Bible. “How long, O how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death? Supernatural religion has outlived its usefulness. The miracles and wonders of the ancients will soon occupy the same tent. Jonah and Jack the Giant Killer, Joshua and Red Riding Hood, Noah and Neptune, will all go into the collection of the famous Mother Hubbard. The miraculous will be classed with the impossible.”
Ingersoll was of course making a larger point. He was more aware of the changes in the faith than the faithful, observing the arc of Christianity from Moses to Jesus to Paul to Luther, watching as the founders of Christianity rejected the Old-Testament sanctions for slavery and genocide and polygamy, watching the faith retreat before the assaults of Galileo and Darwin and try to keep up with changing society. He knew that the rigid churchmen of his day were descended from rebels who left Catholicism, who were in turn descended from rebels against Judaism, and so on back in time. “You never can honor your father by going around swearing to his mistakes. You never can honor your mother by saying that ignorance is blessed because she did not know everything. I want to honor my parents by finding out more than they did. I suppose Judge Comegys to be a Presbyterian. Where did he get his right to be a Presbyterian? Where did he get his right to decide which creed is the correct one? How did he dare to pit his little brain against the word of God? He may say that his father was a Presbyterian. But what was his grandfather? If he will only go back far enough he will, in all probability, find that his ancestors were Catholics, and if he will go back a little farther still, that they were barbarians; that at one time they were naked, and had snakes tattooed on their bodies. What right had they to change? Does he not perceive that had the savages passed the same kind of laws that now exist in Delaware, they could have prevented any change in belief? They would have had a whipping-post, too, and they would have said: Any gentleman found without snakes tattooed upon his body shall be held guilty of blasphemy; and all the ancestors of this Judge, and of these ministers would have said, Amen! What right had the first Presbyterian to be a Presbyterian? He must have been a blasphemer first. A small dose of pillory might have changed his religion.”
Change and more change. “If the Bible is true and God is its author, then God was in favor of slavery four thousand years ago. He was also in favor of polygamy and religious intolerance. In other words, four thousand years ago he occupied the exact position the Devil is supposed to occupy now….At first, according to the account, Christ distinctly stated that his gospel was not for the Gentiles….The religions of to-day are the sciences of the past; and it may be that the sciences of to-day will be the religions of the future, and that other sciences will be as far beyond them as the science of to-day is beyond the religion of to-day. As a rule, religion is a sanctified mistake, and heresy a slandered fact. In other words, the human mind grows -- and as it grows it abandons the old, and the old gets it revenge by maligning the new. When a great truth has been discovered, one man has pitted himself against the world. A few think: the many believe. The few lead; the many follow. The light of the new day, as it looks over the window sill of the east, falls at first on only one forehead….As man advanced he slowly changed his God -- took a little ferocity from his heart, and put the light of kindness in his eyes. As man progressed he obtained a wider view, extended the intellectual horizon and again he changed his God, making him as nearly perfect as he could, and yet this God was patterned after those who made him. As man became civilized, as he became merciful, he began to love justice, and as his mind expanded his ideal became purer, nobler, and so his God became more merciful, more loving…. In our day Jehovah has been outgrown. He is no longer the perfect. Now theologians talk, not about Jehovah, but about a God of love, call him the Eternal father and the perpetual friend and providence of man. But, while they talk about this God of love, cyclones wreck and rend, the earthquake devours, the flood destroys, the red bolt leaping from the cloud still crashes the life out of men, and plague and fever still are tireless reapers in the harvest fields of death. That book, called the basis of all law and civilization, has to be civilized itself. We have outgrown it. Our laws are better; our institutions grander; our objects and aims nobler and higher. How long will what you call Christianity endure, if it changes as rapidly during the next century as it has during the last? What will there be left of the supernatural?”
Unsurprisingly Ingersoll credits the men of science for forcing both society and religion to change more quickly. “In old times there was a great difference between a clergyman and a layman. The clergyman was educated; the peasant was ignorant. The tables have been turned. The thought of the world is with the laymen. They are the intellectual pioneers, the mental leaders, and the ministers are following on behind, predicting failure and disaster, signing for the good old times when their word ended discussion. And here, allow me to say that the ministers who are answering me are turning their guns in the wrong direction. These reverend gentlemen should attack the astronomers. They should malign and vilify Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Herschel and Laplace. These men were the real destroyers of the sacred story. Then, after having disposed of them, they can wage a war against the stars, and against Jehovah himself for having furnished evidence against the truthfulness of his book.”
Ingersoll celebrated the fact that science and reason were supplanting superstition. “Recollect that everything except the demonstrated truth is liable to die. So 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 the 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? 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 upon the cold and unbelieving 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 changes 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 that they believe little and know nothing.”
So the preacher adapts but only reluctantly. “The highest type of the orthodox Christian does not forget; neither does he learn. He neither advances nor recedes. He is a living fossil embedded in that rock called faith. He makes no effort to better his condition, because all his strength is exhausted in keeping other people from improving theirs. The supreme desire of his heart is to force all others to adopt his creed, and in order to accomplish this object he denounces free thinking as a crime, and this crime he calls heresy. When he had power, heresy was the most terrible and formidable of words. It meant confiscation, exile, imprisonment, torture, and death.” But now with science in advance and religion in retreat, “you are no longer asked to swallow the Bible whole, whale, Jonah and all; you are simply required to believe in God, and pay your pew-rent. There is not now an enlightened minister in the world who will seriously contend that Samson's strength was in his hair, or that the necromancers of Egypt could turn water into blood, and pieces of wood into serpents. These follies have passed away, and the only reason that the religious world can now have for disliking Paine is that they have been forced to adopt so many of his opinions.”
But Ingersoll had little interest in being generous to the preachers and allowing them to catch up to the rest of society – he wanted them out of business. “Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, Halt! A creed is the ignorant Past bullying the enlightened Present. It gives me immense pleasure to say to this 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 country; 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; that puts a shadow upon the cradle; 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. In its place I want humanity, I want good fellowship, I want intellectual liberty -- free lips, the discoveries and inventions of genius, the demonstrations of science -- the religion of art, music and poetry -- of good houses, good clothes, good wages -- that is to say, the religion of this world.”
He also looked forward to the end of the reign of the Bible. “How long, O how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death? Supernatural religion has outlived its usefulness. The miracles and wonders of the ancients will soon occupy the same tent. Jonah and Jack the Giant Killer, Joshua and Red Riding Hood, Noah and Neptune, will all go into the collection of the famous Mother Hubbard. The miraculous will be classed with the impossible.”
