Ingersoll
on reason.
Occasionally
Ingersoll lost patience with the sheer nonsense in the Bible. “How, in the
desert of Sinai, did the Jews obtain curtains of fine linen? How did these
absconding slaves make cherubs of gold? Where did they get the skins of
badgers, and how did they dye them red? How did they make wreathed chains and
spoons, basins and tongs? Where did they get the blue cloth and their purple?
Where did they get the sockets of brass? How did they coin the shekel of the
sanctuary? How did they overlay boards with gold? Where did they get the
numberless instruments and tools necessary to accomplish all these things?
Where did they get the fine flour and the oil? Were all these found in the
desert of Sinai?...The Christian religion rests on miracles. 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. There can be no
argument in favor of the supernatural. Suppose you should ask if I had read the
work of that gentleman who says that twice two are five. I should answer you
that no gentleman can prove that twice two are five; and yet this is exactly as
easy as to prove the existence of the supernatural. There are no arguments in
favor of the supernatural. There are theories and fears and mistakes and
prejudices and guesses, but no arguments -- plenty of faith, but no facts;
plenty of divine revelation, but no demonstration. The supernatural, in my
judgment, is a mistake. I believe in the natural….As long as it is believed
that the Bible is inspired, that book is the master -- no mind is free. With
that belief, intellectual liberty is impossible. With that belief, you can
investigate only at the risk of losing your soul. And I do believe that life
and property will be safer, that liberty will be surer, that homes will be
sweeter, and life will be more joyous, and death less terrible, if the myth
called Jehovah can be destroyed from the human mind.”
Ingersoll was proud of America’s tradition of challenging authority. “All the advance that has been made in the religious world has been made by "infidels," by "heretics," by "skeptics," by doubters, -- that is to say, by thoughtful men. In 1776 our fathers endeavored to retire the gods from politics. They declared that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. This was a contradiction of the then political ideas of the world; it was, as many believed, an act of pure blasphemy -- a renunciation of the Deity. Politically it tore down every altar and denied the authority of every sacred book.”
Ingersoll looked forward to seeing Christian preachers in the unusual position of having to defend their views in a fair fight. “The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness. Is it a crime to investigate, to think, to reason, to observe? Is it a crime to be governed by that which to you is evidence, and is it infamous to express your honest thought? There is also another question: Is credulity a virtue? Is the open mouth of ignorant wonder the only entrance to Paradise? The defenders of orthodox creeds should have the courage to candidly answer at least two questions: First, Is the Bible inspired? Second, Is the Bible true? And when they answer these questions, they should remember that if the Bible is true, it needs no inspiration, and that if not true, inspiration can do it no good. A religion that is not manly and robust enough to bear attack with smiling fortitude is unworthy of a place in the heart or brain. A religion that takes refuge in sentimentality, that cries out: "Do not, I pray you, tell me any truth calculated to hurt my feelings," is fit only for asylums.”
Likewise he wanted to put the Bible on the same plane as any other book. “But why should God be so particular about our believing the stories in his book? Why should God object to having his book examined? We do not have to call upon legislators, or courts, to protect Shakespeare from the derision of mankind. Was not God able to write a book that would command the love and admiration of the world? If the God of Mr. Talmage is infinite, he knew exactly how the stories of the Old Testament would strike a gentleman of the nineteenth century. He knew that many would have their doubts, -- that thousands of them -- and I may say most of them, -- would refuse to believe that a miracle had ever been performed. Now, it seems to me that he should either have left the stories out, or furnished evidence enough to convince the world.”
Ingersoll had little patience for any argument that only the clergy could properly understand or discuss the Bible. “Is it necessary to understand Hebrew in order to know that cruelty is not a virtue, that murder is inconsistent with infinite goodness, and that eternal punishment can be inflicted upon man only by an eternal fiend? Is it really essential to conjugate the Greek verbs before you can make up your mind as to the probability of dead people getting out of their graves? Must one be versed in Latin before he is entitled to express his opinion as to the genuineness of a pretended revelation from God? Common sense belongs exclusively to no tongue. Logic is not confined to, nor has it been buried with, the dead languages. Paine attacked the Bible as it is translated. If the translation is wrong, let its defenders correct it.”
He also rejected the double standard pursued by Christians who sought new converts abroad while fighting apostasy at home. “In this connection we must remember that the priests of one religion never credit the miracles of another religion. Is this because priests instinctively know priests? Now, when a Christian tells a Buddhist some of the miracles of the Testament, the Buddhist smiles. When a Buddhist tells a Christen the miracles performed by Buddha, the Christian laughs. This reminds me of an incident. A man told a most wonderful story, Everybody present expressed surprise and astonishment, except one man. He said nothing; he did not even change countenance, One who noticed that the story had no effect on this man, said to him: "You do not seem to be astonished in the least at this marvelous tale." The man replied, "No; I am a liar myself."…Has a man the right to examine, to investigate, the religion of his own country -- the religion of his father and mother? Christians admit that the citizens of all countries not Christian have not only this right, but that it is their solemn duty. Thousands of missionaries are sent to heathen countries to persuade the believers in other religions not only to examine their superstitions, but to renounce them, and to adopt those of the missionaries. It is the duty of a heathen to disregard the religion of his country and to hold in contempt the creed of his father and of his mother. If the citizens of heathen nations have the right to examine the foundations of their religion, it would seem that the citizens of Christian nations have the same right. Christians, however, go further than this; they say to the heathen: You must examine your religion, and not only so, but you must reject it; and, unless you do reject it, and, in addition to such rejection, adopt ours, you will be eternally damned. Then these same Christians say to the inhabitants of a Christian country: You must not examine; you must not investigate; but whether you examine or not, you must believe, or you will be eternally damned.”
Ingersoll reminded us that the clergy have been trying to stifle dissent since the Roman days. “Since the murder of Hypatia in the fifth century, when the polished blade of Greek philosophy was broken by the club of ignorant Catholicism, until to-day, superstition has detested every effort of reason. The priests, in all ages, have been hindrances -- stumbling-blocks. They have prevented man from using his reason. They have told ghost stories to courage until courage became fear. They have done all in their power to keep men from growing intellectually, to keep the world in a state of childhood, that they themselves might be deemed great and good and wise. They have always known that their reputation for wisdom depended upon the ignorance of the people. Christianity endeavors to destroy intellectual liberty. Nothing is better calculated to retain barbarism than to deny to every human being the right to think. The church, for a thousand years, did all within its power to prevent the expression of honest thought; and when the church had power, there was in this world no civilization.
“Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense. Whoever investigates a religion as he would any department of science, is called a blasphemer. Whoever contradicts a priest, whoever has the impudence to use his own reason, whoever is brave enough to express his honest thought, is a blasphemer in the eyes of the religionist. When a missionary speaks slightingly of the wooden god of a savage, the savage regards him as a blasphemer. To laugh at the pretensions of Mohammed in Constantinople is blasphemy. To say in St. Petersburg that Mohammed was a prophet of God is also blasphemy. There was a time when to acknowledge the divinity of Christ in Jerusalem was blasphemy. To deny his divinity is now blasphemy in New York. Blasphemy is to a considerable extent a geographical question. It depends not only on what you say, but where you are when you say it. Blasphemy is what the old calls the new, -- what last year's leaf says to this year's bud. The founder of every religion was a blasphemer. The Jews so regarded Christ, and the Athenians had the same opinion of Socrates. Catholics have always looked upon Protestants as blasphemers, and Protestants have always held the same generous opinion of Catholics. To deny that Mary is the Mother of God is blasphemy. To say that she is the Mother of God is blasphemy.”
Ingersoll was offended at the sheer futility of trying to impose thought and belief by force. “For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument. You can stand with the lash over a man, or you can stand by the prison door, or beneath the gallows, or by the stake, and say to this man: "Recant, or the lash descends, the prison door is locked upon you, the rope is put about your neck, or the torch is given to the fagot." And so the man recants. Is he convinced? Not at all. Have you produced a new argument? Not the slightest. And yet the ignorant bigots of this world have been trying for thousands of years to rule the minds of men by brute force. They have endeavored to improve the mind by torturing the flesh -- to spread religion with the sword and torch. They have tried to convince their brothers by putting their feet in iron boots, by putting fathers, mothers, patriots, philosophers and philanthropists in dungeons. And what has been the result? Are we any nearer thinking alike to-day than we were then?
“No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame. And yet every church that ever was established commenced in the minority, and while it was in the minority advocated free speech -- every one. John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian Church, while he lived in France, wrote a book on religious toleration in order to show that all men had an equal right to think; and yet that man afterward, clothed in a little authority, forgot all his sentiments about religious liberty, and had poor Serviettes burned at the stake, for differing with him on a question that neither of them knew anything about. In the minority, Calvin advocated toleration -- in the majority, he practiced murder.
“I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever -- why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan -- if he wanted us all to believe alike? … Suppose that we put Mr. Reynolds in jail. The argument has not been sent to jail. That is still going the rounds, free as the winds. Suppose you keep him at hard labor a year -- all the time he is there, hundreds and thousands of people will be reading some account, or some fragment, of this trial. There is the trouble. If you could only imprison a thought, then intellectual tyranny might succeed. If you could only take an argument and put a striped suit of clothes on it -- if you could only take a good, splendid shining fact and lock it up in some dungeon of ignorance, so that its light would never again enter the mind of man, then you might succeed in stopping human progress. Otherwise, no.”
Ingersoll was irritated by ignorance in any form. “The most ignorant part of Christendom is the most orthodox. I find that theology is a subject that only the most ignorant are certain about, and that the more a man thinks, the less he knows. Whenever a statement in the Bible is unreasonable, and you believe it, you are considered quite a good Christian. If the statement is grossly absurd and infinitely impossible, and you still believe it, you are a saint…. For most people, theism is the easiest solution of the universe. They are satisfied with saying that there must be a Being who created and who governs the world. But the universality of a belief does not tend to establish its truth. The belief in the existence of a malignant Devil has been as universal as the belief in a beneficent God, yet few intelligent men will say that the universality of this belief in an infinite demon even tends to prove his existence. In the world of thought, majorities count for nothing. Truth has always dwelt with the few. Man has filled the world with impossible monsters, and he has been the sport and prey of these phantoms born of ignorance and hope and fear. To appease the wrath of these monsters man has sacrificed his fellow-man. He has shed the blood of wife and child; he has fasted and prayed; he has suffered beyond the power of language to express, and yet he has received nothing from these gods -- they have heard no supplication. They have answered no prayer….I have the right to do my own thinking. I am going to do it. I have never met any minister that I thought had brain enough to think for himself and for me too.”
He looked forward to a future with a little more logic and a little less faith. “I find everywhere the best people and the brightest people -- the people with the most heart and the best brain -- all tending toward free thought. Of course, a man of brain cannot believe the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. A man of heart cannot believe in the doctrine of eternal pain. The best religion, after all, is common sense; a religion for this world, one world at a time, a religion for to-day. If we wish to improve the condition of mankind -- if we wish for nobler men and women we must develop the brain, we must encourage thought and investigation. We must convince the world that credulity is a vice, -- that there is no virtue in believing without, or against evidence, and that the really honest man is true to himself. We must fill the world with intellectual light. We must applaud mental courage. We must educate the children, rescue them from ignorance and crime. School-houses are the real temples, and teachers are the true priests.”
Ingersoll unsurprisingly wanted to see more science and less faith in the schools too. “The pious denounce the secular schools as godless. They should be. The sciences are all secular, all godless. Get theology out of education. Nothing should be taught in a school that somebody does not know. There are plenty of things to be learned about this world, about this life. Every child should be taught to think, and that it is dangerous not to think. Children should not be taught the absurdities, the cruelties and imbecilities of superstition. No church should be allowed to control the common school, and public money should not be divided between the hateful and warring sects. …Many of our colleges are under the control of churches. Presidents and professors are mostly ministers of the gospel and the result is that all facts inconsistent with the creeds are either suppressed or denied. Only those professors who are naturally stupid or mentally dishonest can retain their places. Those who tell the truth, who teach the facts, are discharged. In every college truth should be a welcome guest. Every professor should be a finder, and every student a learner, of facts. Theology and intellectual dishonesty go together. The teacher of children should be intelligent and perfectly sincere.”
Likewise, theology was not his favorite subject. “Theology bears the same relation to science that the black art does to chemistry, that magic does to mathematics. It is something that cannot be taught, because it cannot be known. It has no foundation in fact. It neither produces, nor accords with, any image in the mind. It is not only unknowable but unthinkable. Through hundreds and thousands of generations men have been discussing, wrangling and fighting about theology. No advance has been made. The robed priest has only reached the point from which the savage tried to start. We know that theology always has and always will make enemies. It sows the seeds of hatred in families and nations. It is selfish, cruel, revengeful and malicious. It has heaven for the few and perdition for the many. We now know that credulity is not a virtue and that intellectual courage is. We must stop rewarding hypocrisy and bigotry. We must stop persecuting the thinkers, the investigators, the creators of light, the civilizers of the world.”
He saw a need to defend real learning from its black-robed detractors. “In all countries where human beings are held in bondage, it is a crime to teach a slave to read and write. Masters know that education is an abolitionist, and theologians know that science is the deadly foe of every creed in Christendom. There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: Let us be friends. Science is the real redeemer. It will put honesty above hypocrisy; mental veracity above all belief. It will teach the religion of usefulness. It will destroy bigotry in all its forms. It will put thoughtful doubt above thoughtless faith. It will give us philosophers, thinkers and savants, instead of priests, theologians and saints. It will abolish poverty and crime, and greater, grander, nobler than all else, it will make the whole world free.”
Ingersoll trod the line between agnosticism and atheism nimbly. He flippantly described his view as “infidelity”, the act of not believing. At times he would sing the agnostic sheet music – “These questions of origin and destiny -- of infinite gods -- are beyond the powers of the human mind. They cannot be solved. We might as well try to travel fast enough to get beyond the horizon. It is like a man trying to run away from his girdle.” But sometimes he would steer that argument more in the direction of atheism, suggesting that he had little intention of entertaining the notion of God except in the unlikely event that someday science might trip over deities during its hunt for truth – “No human being has brain enough, or knowledge enough, or experience enough, to say whether there is, or is not, a God. Into this darkness Science has not yet carried its torch.”
Sometimes he would describe agnosticism in such a way that no one was sure whether he was advocating it. “The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.”
Ingersoll was, however, clear in explaining his rejection of the Bible: “It is not true; it is not inspired; it upholds human slavery; it sanctions concubinage; it commands the most infamously cruel acts of war, such as the utter destruction of old men and little children; after killing fathers, mothers and brothers, it commands the generals to divide the girls among the soldiers and priests; it upholds human sacrifice [a reference to Leviticus 28-29]; its laws are absurd, and the punishments cruel and unjust. -- Think of killing a man for making hair oil! Think of killing a man for picking up sticks on Sunday! -- it upholds polygamy; it knows nothing of astronomy, nothing of geology, nothing of any science whatever; it is opposed to religious liberty, and teaches a man to kill his own wife if she differs with him on religion; it treats woman like a beast, and man like a slave; it fills heaven with tyranny, and earth with hypocrisy and grief. There is no book in the world in which can be found so much that is thoroughly despicable and infamous. Of course there are some good passages, some good sentiments. But they are, at least in the Old Testament, few and far between.”
Ingersoll goaded the clergy into hardening their opinions – so much the better for recruiting for the other team. “Go on, presbyters and synods, go on! Thrust the heretics out of the church -- that is to say, throw away your brains, -- put out your eyes. The infidels will thank you. They are willing to adopt your exiles. Every deserter from your camp is a recruit for the army of progress. Cling to the ignorant dogmas of the past; read the 109th Psalm; gloat over the slaughter of mothers and babes; thank God for total depravity; shower your honors upon hypocrites, and silence every minister who is touched with that heresy called genius. Be true to your history. Turn out the astronomers, the geologists, the naturalists, the chemists, and all the honest scientists. With a whip of scorpions, drive them all out. We want them all. Keep the ignorant, the superstitious, the bigoted, and the writers of charges and specifications. Keep them, and keep them all. Repeat your pious platitudes in the drowsy ears of the faithful, and read your Bible to heretics, as kings read some forgotten riot-act to stop and stay the waves of revolution. You are too weak to excite anger. We forgive your efforts as the sun forgives a cloud -- as the air forgives the breath you waste.”
Ingersoll was proud of America’s tradition of challenging authority. “All the advance that has been made in the religious world has been made by "infidels," by "heretics," by "skeptics," by doubters, -- that is to say, by thoughtful men. In 1776 our fathers endeavored to retire the gods from politics. They declared that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. This was a contradiction of the then political ideas of the world; it was, as many believed, an act of pure blasphemy -- a renunciation of the Deity. Politically it tore down every altar and denied the authority of every sacred book.”
Ingersoll looked forward to seeing Christian preachers in the unusual position of having to defend their views in a fair fight. “The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness. Is it a crime to investigate, to think, to reason, to observe? Is it a crime to be governed by that which to you is evidence, and is it infamous to express your honest thought? There is also another question: Is credulity a virtue? Is the open mouth of ignorant wonder the only entrance to Paradise? The defenders of orthodox creeds should have the courage to candidly answer at least two questions: First, Is the Bible inspired? Second, Is the Bible true? And when they answer these questions, they should remember that if the Bible is true, it needs no inspiration, and that if not true, inspiration can do it no good. A religion that is not manly and robust enough to bear attack with smiling fortitude is unworthy of a place in the heart or brain. A religion that takes refuge in sentimentality, that cries out: "Do not, I pray you, tell me any truth calculated to hurt my feelings," is fit only for asylums.”
Likewise he wanted to put the Bible on the same plane as any other book. “But why should God be so particular about our believing the stories in his book? Why should God object to having his book examined? We do not have to call upon legislators, or courts, to protect Shakespeare from the derision of mankind. Was not God able to write a book that would command the love and admiration of the world? If the God of Mr. Talmage is infinite, he knew exactly how the stories of the Old Testament would strike a gentleman of the nineteenth century. He knew that many would have their doubts, -- that thousands of them -- and I may say most of them, -- would refuse to believe that a miracle had ever been performed. Now, it seems to me that he should either have left the stories out, or furnished evidence enough to convince the world.”
Ingersoll had little patience for any argument that only the clergy could properly understand or discuss the Bible. “Is it necessary to understand Hebrew in order to know that cruelty is not a virtue, that murder is inconsistent with infinite goodness, and that eternal punishment can be inflicted upon man only by an eternal fiend? Is it really essential to conjugate the Greek verbs before you can make up your mind as to the probability of dead people getting out of their graves? Must one be versed in Latin before he is entitled to express his opinion as to the genuineness of a pretended revelation from God? Common sense belongs exclusively to no tongue. Logic is not confined to, nor has it been buried with, the dead languages. Paine attacked the Bible as it is translated. If the translation is wrong, let its defenders correct it.”
He also rejected the double standard pursued by Christians who sought new converts abroad while fighting apostasy at home. “In this connection we must remember that the priests of one religion never credit the miracles of another religion. Is this because priests instinctively know priests? Now, when a Christian tells a Buddhist some of the miracles of the Testament, the Buddhist smiles. When a Buddhist tells a Christen the miracles performed by Buddha, the Christian laughs. This reminds me of an incident. A man told a most wonderful story, Everybody present expressed surprise and astonishment, except one man. He said nothing; he did not even change countenance, One who noticed that the story had no effect on this man, said to him: "You do not seem to be astonished in the least at this marvelous tale." The man replied, "No; I am a liar myself."…Has a man the right to examine, to investigate, the religion of his own country -- the religion of his father and mother? Christians admit that the citizens of all countries not Christian have not only this right, but that it is their solemn duty. Thousands of missionaries are sent to heathen countries to persuade the believers in other religions not only to examine their superstitions, but to renounce them, and to adopt those of the missionaries. It is the duty of a heathen to disregard the religion of his country and to hold in contempt the creed of his father and of his mother. If the citizens of heathen nations have the right to examine the foundations of their religion, it would seem that the citizens of Christian nations have the same right. Christians, however, go further than this; they say to the heathen: You must examine your religion, and not only so, but you must reject it; and, unless you do reject it, and, in addition to such rejection, adopt ours, you will be eternally damned. Then these same Christians say to the inhabitants of a Christian country: You must not examine; you must not investigate; but whether you examine or not, you must believe, or you will be eternally damned.”
Ingersoll reminded us that the clergy have been trying to stifle dissent since the Roman days. “Since the murder of Hypatia in the fifth century, when the polished blade of Greek philosophy was broken by the club of ignorant Catholicism, until to-day, superstition has detested every effort of reason. The priests, in all ages, have been hindrances -- stumbling-blocks. They have prevented man from using his reason. They have told ghost stories to courage until courage became fear. They have done all in their power to keep men from growing intellectually, to keep the world in a state of childhood, that they themselves might be deemed great and good and wise. They have always known that their reputation for wisdom depended upon the ignorance of the people. Christianity endeavors to destroy intellectual liberty. Nothing is better calculated to retain barbarism than to deny to every human being the right to think. The church, for a thousand years, did all within its power to prevent the expression of honest thought; and when the church had power, there was in this world no civilization.
“Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense. Whoever investigates a religion as he would any department of science, is called a blasphemer. Whoever contradicts a priest, whoever has the impudence to use his own reason, whoever is brave enough to express his honest thought, is a blasphemer in the eyes of the religionist. When a missionary speaks slightingly of the wooden god of a savage, the savage regards him as a blasphemer. To laugh at the pretensions of Mohammed in Constantinople is blasphemy. To say in St. Petersburg that Mohammed was a prophet of God is also blasphemy. There was a time when to acknowledge the divinity of Christ in Jerusalem was blasphemy. To deny his divinity is now blasphemy in New York. Blasphemy is to a considerable extent a geographical question. It depends not only on what you say, but where you are when you say it. Blasphemy is what the old calls the new, -- what last year's leaf says to this year's bud. The founder of every religion was a blasphemer. The Jews so regarded Christ, and the Athenians had the same opinion of Socrates. Catholics have always looked upon Protestants as blasphemers, and Protestants have always held the same generous opinion of Catholics. To deny that Mary is the Mother of God is blasphemy. To say that she is the Mother of God is blasphemy.”
Ingersoll was offended at the sheer futility of trying to impose thought and belief by force. “For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument. You can stand with the lash over a man, or you can stand by the prison door, or beneath the gallows, or by the stake, and say to this man: "Recant, or the lash descends, the prison door is locked upon you, the rope is put about your neck, or the torch is given to the fagot." And so the man recants. Is he convinced? Not at all. Have you produced a new argument? Not the slightest. And yet the ignorant bigots of this world have been trying for thousands of years to rule the minds of men by brute force. They have endeavored to improve the mind by torturing the flesh -- to spread religion with the sword and torch. They have tried to convince their brothers by putting their feet in iron boots, by putting fathers, mothers, patriots, philosophers and philanthropists in dungeons. And what has been the result? Are we any nearer thinking alike to-day than we were then?
“No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame. And yet every church that ever was established commenced in the minority, and while it was in the minority advocated free speech -- every one. John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian Church, while he lived in France, wrote a book on religious toleration in order to show that all men had an equal right to think; and yet that man afterward, clothed in a little authority, forgot all his sentiments about religious liberty, and had poor Serviettes burned at the stake, for differing with him on a question that neither of them knew anything about. In the minority, Calvin advocated toleration -- in the majority, he practiced murder.
“I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever -- why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan -- if he wanted us all to believe alike? … Suppose that we put Mr. Reynolds in jail. The argument has not been sent to jail. That is still going the rounds, free as the winds. Suppose you keep him at hard labor a year -- all the time he is there, hundreds and thousands of people will be reading some account, or some fragment, of this trial. There is the trouble. If you could only imprison a thought, then intellectual tyranny might succeed. If you could only take an argument and put a striped suit of clothes on it -- if you could only take a good, splendid shining fact and lock it up in some dungeon of ignorance, so that its light would never again enter the mind of man, then you might succeed in stopping human progress. Otherwise, no.”
Ingersoll was irritated by ignorance in any form. “The most ignorant part of Christendom is the most orthodox. I find that theology is a subject that only the most ignorant are certain about, and that the more a man thinks, the less he knows. Whenever a statement in the Bible is unreasonable, and you believe it, you are considered quite a good Christian. If the statement is grossly absurd and infinitely impossible, and you still believe it, you are a saint…. For most people, theism is the easiest solution of the universe. They are satisfied with saying that there must be a Being who created and who governs the world. But the universality of a belief does not tend to establish its truth. The belief in the existence of a malignant Devil has been as universal as the belief in a beneficent God, yet few intelligent men will say that the universality of this belief in an infinite demon even tends to prove his existence. In the world of thought, majorities count for nothing. Truth has always dwelt with the few. Man has filled the world with impossible monsters, and he has been the sport and prey of these phantoms born of ignorance and hope and fear. To appease the wrath of these monsters man has sacrificed his fellow-man. He has shed the blood of wife and child; he has fasted and prayed; he has suffered beyond the power of language to express, and yet he has received nothing from these gods -- they have heard no supplication. They have answered no prayer….I have the right to do my own thinking. I am going to do it. I have never met any minister that I thought had brain enough to think for himself and for me too.”
He looked forward to a future with a little more logic and a little less faith. “I find everywhere the best people and the brightest people -- the people with the most heart and the best brain -- all tending toward free thought. Of course, a man of brain cannot believe the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. A man of heart cannot believe in the doctrine of eternal pain. The best religion, after all, is common sense; a religion for this world, one world at a time, a religion for to-day. If we wish to improve the condition of mankind -- if we wish for nobler men and women we must develop the brain, we must encourage thought and investigation. We must convince the world that credulity is a vice, -- that there is no virtue in believing without, or against evidence, and that the really honest man is true to himself. We must fill the world with intellectual light. We must applaud mental courage. We must educate the children, rescue them from ignorance and crime. School-houses are the real temples, and teachers are the true priests.”
Ingersoll unsurprisingly wanted to see more science and less faith in the schools too. “The pious denounce the secular schools as godless. They should be. The sciences are all secular, all godless. Get theology out of education. Nothing should be taught in a school that somebody does not know. There are plenty of things to be learned about this world, about this life. Every child should be taught to think, and that it is dangerous not to think. Children should not be taught the absurdities, the cruelties and imbecilities of superstition. No church should be allowed to control the common school, and public money should not be divided between the hateful and warring sects. …Many of our colleges are under the control of churches. Presidents and professors are mostly ministers of the gospel and the result is that all facts inconsistent with the creeds are either suppressed or denied. Only those professors who are naturally stupid or mentally dishonest can retain their places. Those who tell the truth, who teach the facts, are discharged. In every college truth should be a welcome guest. Every professor should be a finder, and every student a learner, of facts. Theology and intellectual dishonesty go together. The teacher of children should be intelligent and perfectly sincere.”
Likewise, theology was not his favorite subject. “Theology bears the same relation to science that the black art does to chemistry, that magic does to mathematics. It is something that cannot be taught, because it cannot be known. It has no foundation in fact. It neither produces, nor accords with, any image in the mind. It is not only unknowable but unthinkable. Through hundreds and thousands of generations men have been discussing, wrangling and fighting about theology. No advance has been made. The robed priest has only reached the point from which the savage tried to start. We know that theology always has and always will make enemies. It sows the seeds of hatred in families and nations. It is selfish, cruel, revengeful and malicious. It has heaven for the few and perdition for the many. We now know that credulity is not a virtue and that intellectual courage is. We must stop rewarding hypocrisy and bigotry. We must stop persecuting the thinkers, the investigators, the creators of light, the civilizers of the world.”
He saw a need to defend real learning from its black-robed detractors. “In all countries where human beings are held in bondage, it is a crime to teach a slave to read and write. Masters know that education is an abolitionist, and theologians know that science is the deadly foe of every creed in Christendom. There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: Let us be friends. Science is the real redeemer. It will put honesty above hypocrisy; mental veracity above all belief. It will teach the religion of usefulness. It will destroy bigotry in all its forms. It will put thoughtful doubt above thoughtless faith. It will give us philosophers, thinkers and savants, instead of priests, theologians and saints. It will abolish poverty and crime, and greater, grander, nobler than all else, it will make the whole world free.”
Ingersoll trod the line between agnosticism and atheism nimbly. He flippantly described his view as “infidelity”, the act of not believing. At times he would sing the agnostic sheet music – “These questions of origin and destiny -- of infinite gods -- are beyond the powers of the human mind. They cannot be solved. We might as well try to travel fast enough to get beyond the horizon. It is like a man trying to run away from his girdle.” But sometimes he would steer that argument more in the direction of atheism, suggesting that he had little intention of entertaining the notion of God except in the unlikely event that someday science might trip over deities during its hunt for truth – “No human being has brain enough, or knowledge enough, or experience enough, to say whether there is, or is not, a God. Into this darkness Science has not yet carried its torch.”
Sometimes he would describe agnosticism in such a way that no one was sure whether he was advocating it. “The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.”
Ingersoll was, however, clear in explaining his rejection of the Bible: “It is not true; it is not inspired; it upholds human slavery; it sanctions concubinage; it commands the most infamously cruel acts of war, such as the utter destruction of old men and little children; after killing fathers, mothers and brothers, it commands the generals to divide the girls among the soldiers and priests; it upholds human sacrifice [a reference to Leviticus 28-29]; its laws are absurd, and the punishments cruel and unjust. -- Think of killing a man for making hair oil! Think of killing a man for picking up sticks on Sunday! -- it upholds polygamy; it knows nothing of astronomy, nothing of geology, nothing of any science whatever; it is opposed to religious liberty, and teaches a man to kill his own wife if she differs with him on religion; it treats woman like a beast, and man like a slave; it fills heaven with tyranny, and earth with hypocrisy and grief. There is no book in the world in which can be found so much that is thoroughly despicable and infamous. Of course there are some good passages, some good sentiments. But they are, at least in the Old Testament, few and far between.”
Ingersoll goaded the clergy into hardening their opinions – so much the better for recruiting for the other team. “Go on, presbyters and synods, go on! Thrust the heretics out of the church -- that is to say, throw away your brains, -- put out your eyes. The infidels will thank you. They are willing to adopt your exiles. Every deserter from your camp is a recruit for the army of progress. Cling to the ignorant dogmas of the past; read the 109th Psalm; gloat over the slaughter of mothers and babes; thank God for total depravity; shower your honors upon hypocrites, and silence every minister who is touched with that heresy called genius. Be true to your history. Turn out the astronomers, the geologists, the naturalists, the chemists, and all the honest scientists. With a whip of scorpions, drive them all out. We want them all. Keep the ignorant, the superstitious, the bigoted, and the writers of charges and specifications. Keep them, and keep them all. Repeat your pious platitudes in the drowsy ears of the faithful, and read your Bible to heretics, as kings read some forgotten riot-act to stop and stay the waves of revolution. You are too weak to excite anger. We forgive your efforts as the sun forgives a cloud -- as the air forgives the breath you waste.”
