 Section 11, Ingersoll's Lecture on Human Rights. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Ingersoll's Lecture on Human Rights from the book, Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, Volume 2. Ladies and gentlemen, I suppose that man from the most grotesque savage up to heckle has had a philosophy by which he endeavored to account for all the phenomena of nature he may have observed. From that, mankind may have got their ideas of right and wrong. Now, where there are no rights, there can be no duties. Let us always remember that only as a man becomes free can he by any possibility become good or great. As I said, every savage has had his philosophy and by it accounted for everything he observed. He had an idea of rain and rainbow, and he had an idea of a controlling power. One said there is a being who presides over our world and who will destroy us unless we do right. Others had many of these beings, but they were invariably like themselves. The most fruitful imagination cannot make more than a man, though it may make infinite powers and attributes out of the powers and attributes of man. You can't build a god unless you start with a human being. The savage said, when there was a storm, somebody is angry. When lightning leaped from the lurid cloud, he thought, what have I been doing? And when he couldn't think of any wrong he had been doing, he tried to think of some wrong his neighbor had been doing. I may as well state here that I believe man has come up from the lowest orders of creation and may not have come up very far. Still, I believe we are doing very well considering. But speaking of man's early philosophy, his morality was founded first on self-defense. When gathered together in tribes, he held that this infinite being would hold the tribe responsible for the actions of any individual who had angered him. They imagined this being got angry. Just imagine a serenity of an infinite being being disturbed and a god breaking into a passion because some poor wretch had neglected to bring two turtledoves to a priest. Then they sought out this poor, offending individual to punish him, and appeased the wrath of this being. And here commenced religious persecution. Now I do not say there is no god, but what I do say is that I do not know. The only difference between me and the theologian is that I am honest. There may or there may not be an infinite being, but I do not know it. And until I do, I cannot conceive of any obedience I owe to any unknown being. As soon as men began to imagine they would be held responsible for the act of any other person, came the necessity for someone to teach them how to keep from offending the being. Some called him medicine man, some called him priest. Now we call him theologian. These men set out to teach men how to keep from offending this being, and they laid down certain laws to regulate the conduct of men. First of all, it was necessary to believe in this power. To disbelieve in him was the worst offence of all. To have some human being dressed in the skin of a wild beast deny the existence of this infinite being was more than the infinite being could stand. The first thing, therefore, was to believe in this power. The next to support this gentleman standing between you and the supreme wrath. These gentlemen were the lobbyists with the power, and sometimes succeeded in getting the veto used in favour of their clients. For ages, as mankind slowly came through the savage state, the world was filled with infinite fear. They accounted for everything bad that happened as the wrath of this supreme being. But they went from savagery to barbarism, a step in improvement, and then began to build temples to and make images of this being. Then man began to believe he could influence this being by prayer, by getting on his knees to the image he had made. Nothing, I suppose, astonishes a missionary more than to see a savage in Central Africa on his knees before a stone praying for luck in hunting or in fighting. And yet it strikes me we have our army chaplains before a battle praying for the success of our side. They don't pray for assistance if our cause is just. But they pray, Lord, help us. I can't see the difference between the two. But there is this said in favour of prayer that whether successful or not, it is a sort of intellectual exercise. Like a man trying to lift himself, he may not succeed, but he gets a good deal of exercise. But as man proceeds, he begins to help himself and to take advantage of mechanical powers to assist him, and he begins to see he can help himself a little and exactly in the proportion he helps himself he comes to rely less on the power of priest or prayer to help him. Just to the extent we are helpless, to that extent do we rely upon the unknown. As religion developed itself, keeping pace with the belief in theology, came the belief in demonology. They gave one being all the credit for doing all the good things and must give someone credit for the bad things. So they created a devil. At one time it was as disreputable to deny the existence of a devil as to deny the existence of a god. To deny the existence of a hell with its fire and brimstone as to deny the existence of a heaven with its harp and love. With the development of religion came the idea that no man should be allowed to bring the wrath of God on a nation by his transgressions and this idea permeates the Christian world today. Now what does this prove? Simply that our religion is founded on fear and when you are afraid you cannot think. Fear drops on its knees and believes. It is only courage that can think. It was the idea that man's actions could do something outside of any effect his mechanical works might have to change the order of nature that he might commit some offence to bring on an earthquake. But he can't do it. You can't be bad enough to cause an earthquake. Neither can you be good enough to stop one. Out of that wretched doctrine an infamous mistake that man's belief could have any effect upon nature grew all these inquisitions, racks and collars of torture and all the blood that was ever shared by religious persecution. In Europe the country was divided between kings and priests. The king held that he got the power from the unknown. So did the priests. They could not say that they got it from the people. The people would deny it. The unknown could not deny it. And thus the altar and throne stand side by side and republicanism was a thing unknown. It has been said that the pilgrim fathers came to this country to establish religious liberty. They did no such thing. They were not in favour of it. They came with a testament in their hands and with it they could have no idea of religious liberty. When they had established thirteen colonies here and had struggled for and obtained their independence they established a federal government. But did they seek after religious liberty? No. When they formed a federal government each church and each colony was jealous of the other. They said to the general government you can't have any religion in the constitution but each state could make its own religion and they made them. Here the speaker reads copious extracts from the statutes of the different states in reference to the qualifications for the exercise of citizenship. The religious belief necessary and on concluding asked had they the members who drew up these state constitutions any idea of religious liberty? Now my friends there's a party started in this country with the object of giving every man woman and child the rights they are entitled to. Now every one of us has the same rights. I have the right to labor and to have the products of my labor. I have the right to think and furthermore to express my thoughts because expression is the reward of my intellectual labor. And yet in the United States there are states where men of my ideas would not be allowed to testify in a court of justice. Is that right? There are states in this country where if the law had been enforced I would have been sent to the penitentiary for lecturing. All such laws are enacted by barbarians and our country will not be free until they are wiped from the statute books of every state. Does an infinite being need to be protected by a state legislature? If the Bible is inspired does the author of it need the support of the law to command respect? We don't need any law to make mankind respect Shakespeare. We come to the altar of that great man and cover it with our gratitude without a statute. Think of a law to govern tastes. Think of a law to govern mind or any question whatever. Think of the way in which they have supported the Bible. They've terrorized the old with laws and captured the dear little innocent children poison their minds with their false stories until when they have reached the age of manhood they have been afraid to think for themselves. Let us see what the laws are now by which they guard their Bible and their God. Here the speaker read extracts from the statutes of several states in reference to blasphemy and profanation of the Sabbath commenting on each as he ran them through. Pursuing the threat of his discourse he said every American should see to it that all these laws are done away with once and forever. There has been a reaction of late years. This country has begun to be prosperous. We don't think much of religion it is only when hard times come we turn our attention toward it. There are people in this country who say we are getting too irreligious too scientific. Now is it not a fact that we are happier today than at any period in our history? You live in a great country though perhaps you do not know it but live in any other country for a while and you'll find it out. See then what we've got by looking a little to the affairs of the world. The Bible can't stand today without the support of the civil power. No religion ever flourished except by the support of the sword and no religion like this could have been established except by brute force. At one time we thought a great deal of clergymen but now we have got to thinking they ain't of as much importance as a man that has invented something. The church seeing this has made up its mind that it is necessary to do something and so it got up a plan to be acknowledged by law. Here's what they wish to do. Here the speaker read some extracts from the Constitution of the National Reform Association. Continuing he said Our fathers in 1776 building better than they knew retired the gods from politics. I do not believe Jesus Christ is the ruler of nations. If he is the ruler of one, he is the ruler of all. Why does he not then rule one as well as another? If you give him credit for the good things of one you must denounce him for the tyranny and despotism of others. The revealed word of God is not the standing of civil justice in this country. The Bible is not the standard of right and wrong or of decency in this country. You can't put God in the Constitution because if you do there would be no room for the folks. Whatever you put in the Constitution you must enforce by the sword and you can't go to war with any man for not believing in your God. God has no business there and any man that is in favor of putting him there is an enemy to the interests of American institutions. Now for the purpose of preventing the name of God being put in the Constitution there's another little party has been started and these are its doctrines. We want an absolute divorce between church and state. We demand that church property should not be exempt from taxation. If you are going to exempt anything exempt the homesteads of the poor. Don't exempt a rich corporation and make men pay taxes to support a religion in which they do not believe but they say churches do good. I don't know whether they do or not. Do you see such a wonderful difference between a member of a church and the man who does not believe in it? Do church members pay their debts any better than any others? Do they treat their families better? Did you ever hear of any man coming into a town broke and inquire where the deacon of a Presbyterian church lived? Has not the church opposed every science in the first ray of light until now? Didn't they damn into eternal flames the man who discovered the world was round? Didn't they damn into eternal flames the man who discovered the movement of the earth in its orbit? Didn't they persecute the astronomers? Didn't they even try to put down life insurance by saying it was sinful to bet on the time God has given you to live? Science built the academy to superstition the inquisition. Science constructed the telescope religion the rack. Science made us happy here and says if there's another life we'll all stand an equal chance there. Religion made us miserable here and says a large majority will be eternally miserable there. Should we therefore exempt it from taxation for any good it has done? The next thing we ask is a perfect divorce between church and school. We say that every school should be secular because it's just to everybody. If I was an Israelite I wouldn't want to be taxed to have my children taught that his ancestors had murdered a supreme being. Let us teach not the doctrines of the past but the discoveries of the present not the five points of Calvinism but geology and geography. Education is the lever to raise mankind and superstition is the enemy of intelligence. We demand next that woman shall be put upon an equality with man. Why not? Why shouldn't men be decent enough in the management of the politics of the country for women to mingle with them? It is an outrage that anyone should live in this country for sixty or seventy years and be forced to obey the laws without having any voice in making them. Let us give woman the opportunity to care for herself since men are not decent enough to seek to care for her. The time will come when we'll treat a woman that works and takes care of two or three children as well as a woman dressed in diamonds who does nothing. The time will come when we'll not tell our domestic we expect to meet her in heaven and yet not be willing to have her speak to us in the drawing-room. Ignorance is a poor pedestal to set virtue upon and mock modesty should not have the right to prevent people from knowing themselves. Every child has a right to be well-born and ignorance has no right to people the world with scruffula and consumption. When we come to the conclusion that God is not taking care of us and that we have to take care of ourselves, then we'll begin to have something in the world worth living for. I would wish there was seated upon the throne of the universe one who would see to it that justice did always prevail. I do not propose to give up the little world I live in for the unknown. I would wish that the friends who bid us good night in this world might meet us with good morning there. Just as long as we love one another we'll hope for another world. Just as long as love kisses the lips of death will we believe and hope for a future reunion. I would not take one hope away from the human heart or one joy from the human soul but I hold in contempt the gentlemen who keep heaven on sale. I look with contempt on him who keeps it on draft. I look with pity in contempt on him who endeavors to prohibit honest thought by promising a reward in another world. If there is another world we'll find when we come there that no one has done enough good to be eternally rewarded no one has done enough harm to meet with an unending eternal pain and agony. We'll find that there is no being that ever hindered a man from exercising his reason. Now while we are here no matter what happens to us hereafter let us cultivate strength of heart and brain to stand the inevitable. No creed can help you there. When the heart is touched with agony nothing but time can heal it. I want, if I can, to do a little to increase the rights of men to put every human being on an equality to sweep away the clouds of superstition to make people think more of what happens today than what somebody said happened three thousand years ago. This is all I want to do what little I can to clutch one-seventh of our time from superstition to give our Sundays to rest and recreation. I want a day of enjoyment, a day to read old books, to meet old friends and get acquainted with one's wife and children. I want a day to gather strength to meet the toils of the next. I want to get that day away from the church, away from superstition and the contemplation of hell to be the best and sweetest and brightest of all the days in the week. The best way to make a day sacred is to fill it up with useful labour. That day is best on which most good is done for the human race. I hope to see the time when we'll have a day for the opera, the play, good plays, for they do good. You never saw the villain foiled in a play where the audience did not applaud. You never saw them applaud when the rascal was successful in his villainy. If you could go to a theatre and see put upon the stage the scenes of the Old Testament with its butcheries and rapes and deeds of violence, you would detest it all the days of your life. I'd like to have every horror of the Old Testament set on this stage to have somebody represent the being as he is represented there, giving his brutal orders and let the Orthodox see their God as he really is. I want to have us all do what little we can to secularize this government, take it from the control of savagery and give it to science, take it from the government of the past and give it to the enlightened present and in this government let us uphold every man and woman in their rights that everyone after he or she comes to the age of discretion may have a choice in the affairs of the nation. Do this and we'll grow in grandeur and splendor every day and the time will come when every man and every woman shall have the same rights as every other man and every other woman has. I believe we are growing better. I don't believe the wail of want shall be heard forever that the prison and gallows will always curse the ground. The time will come when liberty and law and love and the rings of Saturn will surround the world when the world will cease making these mistakes when every man will be judged according to his worth and intelligence. I want to do all I can to hasten that day. Section 12 Ingersoll's Lecture on Talmagian Theology Number 2 and 3. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Ingersoll's second and third lecture on Talmagian Theology from the book, The Stories of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, Volume 2. Colonel Ingersoll began. Only a few years ago the pulpit was almost supreme. The palace was almost in the shadow of the cathedral and the power behind every throne was a priest. Man was held in physical slavery by kings and in a mental prison by the church. He was not allowed to hold no opinions as to where he came from nor as to where he was going. It was sufficient for him to do the labor and believe the kings would do the governing and the priests the thinking. And my God, what thinking? If the world had obeyed the priests we would all be idiots tonight. The eagle of intellect would have given way of faith. They were the rack, the faggot, the thumbscrew in this world and hell in the next. Only a few years ago no man could express an honest thought unless he agreed with the church. The church has been a perpetual beggar. It has never plowed, it never sowed, it never spun, yet Solomon in all his glory was not so arrayed. Thanks to modern thought and of the 19th century to Voltaire, pain, Hume, to all the free men that beggar, the church is no longer upon horseback and it fills me with joy to state that even its walking is not now good. Only a little while ago a priest was thought more than human. Nobody dared contradict the minister. Now there are other learned professions. There are doctors, lawyers, writers, books, newspapers, and the priest has hundreds of rivals. The priest grew jealous, hateful. He was always thankful for an epidemic or pestilence so that people would turn to him in despair. In our country all the men of intellect were in the pulpit once. Now there are so many avenues to distinction the men of brain, heart and blood have left the pulpit and gone to useful things. I do not say all. There are still some men of mind in the pulpit but they are nearer infidels than any other. Where do we get our ministers? A young man without constitution enough to be wicked without health enough to enjoy the things of this world naturally fixes his gaze on high. He is educated, sent to a university where he is taught that it is criminal to think. Stuffed with a creed he comes out a shepherd. Most of them are intellectual shreds and patches, mental ravelings, selvage. Every pulpit is a pillory in which stands a convict. Every member of the church stands over him with a club called a creed. He is an intellectual slave and dare not preach his honest thought. There are thousands of good men in the pulpit, honest men. I am simply describing the average shepherd. They tell me they've been called that Almighty God selected them. He looked all over the world and said now there's a man I want and what selections Shakespeare was not called yet he has done more for this world than all the ministers who have ever lived in it. Beethoven, he was not called Raphael was not called he was all an accident. All the inventors discoverers, poets God never called one of them. He turned his attention to popes, cardinals, priests exorters and what selections has made it is astonishing. In the United States a great many ministers have been good enough to take me for a text among others the Reverend Mr. Talmadge of Brooklyn. I have nothing to say about his reputation. It has nothing to do with the question. Some ministers think he has more gesticulation than grace. Some call him a pious pantaloon, a Christian clown but such remarks I think are born of envy. He is the only Presbyterian minister in the United States who can draw an audience. He stands at the head of the denomination and I answer him. He's a strange man. I believe he's orthodox or intellectual pride would prevent his saying these things. He believes in a literal resurrection of the dead that we shall see countless bones flying through the air. He has some charges against me and he has denied some of my statements. He has produced what he calls arguments and I am going to answer some of the charges. Next Sunday afternoon at two o'clock in this place I shall have a matinee and answer his arguments. He says I am the champion blasphemer. What is blasphemy to contradict a priest? To have a mind of your own, whoever takes a step in advance is a blasphemer. Blasphemy is what a last year's leaf says to a this year's bud. To deny that Mohammed is the prophet of God is not blasphemy in New York. It is in Constantinople. It is a question then largely of geography. It depends on where you are. The missionary who laughs at a modern God is a blasphemer. In a Catholic country whoever says Mary is not the mother of God is a blasphemer. In a Protestant country to say she is the mother of God is blasphemy. Everything has been blasphemy. My doctrine is this. He is a blasphemer who refuses to tell his honest thought, who is not true to himself, who enslaves his fellow man who charges that God was once in favor of slavery. If there is any God, that man is a blasphemer. They're afraid we'll injure God. How is infinite goodness and mercy to become livid with wrath because a finite being expresses an opinion? I cannot help the infinite. That man only is the good man who helps his fellow man. I know them who would do anything for God who doesn't need it, but nothing for men who do need it. Why should God be so particular about my believing his book? It's no more his work than the stars of gravitation. Yet I may earth is flat and he'll not damn me for that, but if I make a mistake about that book, I'm gone. I can blaspheme the multiplication table and deify the power of the wedge. In fact, the less I know, the better my chance will be. I say that book is not inspired and there is no infinitely good God who will damn one soul. At the judgment if I am mistaken, I own up. I am here. I do not know where I came from nor where I am going. I'll be honest about it. I am on a ship and not on speaking terms with the captain, but I propose to have a happy voyage and the best way is to do what you can to make your fellow passengers happy. If we run into a good port, I'll be as happy an angel as you'll meet that day. Blaspheme is the cry of a defeated priest, the black flag of theology. It shows where argument stops and slander and persecution begin. I am told by Mr. Talmadge that whoever contradicts this word is a fool, a howling wolf, one of the assassins of God. I presume the gentleman is honest. Take Mr. Talmadge now. He is a good man. Mr. Humboldt he was another good man. What Humboldt knew and what Talmadge didn't know would make a library. The next charge is that I have said the universe was made of nothing according to the Bible. False in one thing, false in all, he says. Think of that rule. Let us apply that to man. If the world was created, what was it made of? And who made that? If the Lord created it, what did he make it of? Nothing. That's all he had. No sides, no top, nothing. Yet God had lived there forever. What did he think about? What did he do? Nothing. Nothing had ever happened all at once. He made something. What did he make it of? Mr. Talmadge explains. He says if I knew anything, I would know that God made this world out of his omnipotence. He might just as well have made it out of his memory. What is omnipotence? Is it a raw material? The weakest man in the world can lift as much anything as God. Yet he made this world out of his omnipotence. It is so stated by a doctor of divinity and I should think such divinity would need a doctor. I don't believe this. I don't believe this universe has existed throughout all eternity. Everything. All that is is God. I do not give to that universe a personality that wants man to get his knees into dust and his fingers in holy water, that wants somebody to ring a bell or eat a wafer. I am a part of this universe and I believe all there is is all the God there is. I may be mistaken, I don't know. I just give my best opinion. If there's any heaven, I'll quit there, but there'll be no discussion in heaven. Hell is the only place where mental improvement will be possible. I have said it is charged that the Bible says the world was made in six days. He says I don't understand Hebrew. The Bible says the world was made in six days. God didn't work nights. Evening and morning were the first day. God rested on the seventh day and sanctified it. That, they say, didn't mean days it meant good wiles. He made the world in six good wiles. Adam was made, I think, along about Saturday. If the account is correct, it's only six thousand years since man made his appearance. We know that to be false. A few years ago a gentleman who was in California in the cars met a minister. They came to the place called the Sink of the Humboldt, the most desolate place in the world. Just imagine perdition with the fire out. The traveller asked the minister whether God made the earth in six days and the minister said he did. Then don't you think said he he could have put in another day's work to great advantage right here? I am charged too with saying that the sun was not made till the fourth day, whereas according to the Bible vegetation began on the third day before there was any light. But Mr. Talmadge says there was light without the sun. They got light, he says, from the crystallization of rocks. A nice thing to raise a crop of corn by. There may have been volcanoes, he says. How'd you like to farm it and depend on volcanic glare to raise a crop? That's what they call religious science. God won't damn a man for things like that. What else? The Aurora Borealis, a great cucumber country. It's strange he never thought of glowworms. Imagine it, a Presbyterian divine, gravely saying vegetation could grow by the light of the crystallization of rocks, by the light of volcanoes in other worlds probably now extinct. He says of me too in his pulpit that I was in favor of the circulation of immoral literature. Let me tell you the truth. Several gentlemen, so called, were trying to exclude from the males books called infidel. I said the war should be modified. It is impossible for anybody to reach the depth of one who will print or circulate obscene books. One of my objections to the Bible is that it contains obscene stories. Any book couched in decent language should have the liberty of the United States males. Where books are immoral and obscene I say burn them and have always said it. Mr. Talmadge said what he knew to be untrue. He said it out of hatred and because he cannot answer the arguments I have urged. I believe in pure books and pure literature, but when a God writes there is no excuse for him. In Shakespeare we say obscene things are impure. We do not say they are inspired. That I have falsified the records of the Bible showing the period of Jewish slavery is another of the charges against me. That slavery extended over a period of 215 years and he proceeded to substantiate the statement by going through a long and somewhat complicated genealogical table. If I made any misstatement I was misled by the New Testament. Mr. Talmadge may settle with St. Paul. If you can depend on what my friend St. Paul says the Jews in 215 years increased from 70 persons till they had 600,000 men of war. I know it isn't so and so does any man who knows anything. For such an increase as this each woman must have born somewhat over 57 children and every child lived. The next charge is that I have laughed at holy things. The priest always says now don't laugh, look solemn, this is no laughing matter. There's nothing a priest hates like mirthfulness. He despises a smile. I read in the Bible that God gave a recipe to Aaron for making hair oil and said if anybody made any like it kill him. Well I don't believe it. And fringing on that patent was death. Do you believe an infinite God gave a recipe for hair oil? Is it possible for absurdity to go beyond that? That's what they call a holy thing. And water for baptism. Do you believe God will look for this watermark on the soul? The next charge is that I misquote the Scriptures. That's because I don't know Hebrew. Why didn't he write to me in English? If he wishes to hold a gentleman responsible, why doesn't he address him in his native tongue? Why write his word in such a way that hundreds of thousands make their living explaining it? If I'd only understood Hebrew I would have known God didn't make Eve out of a rib. He made her out of Adam's side. How did he get it out? Well I suppose he cut it out with a kind of splinter of his omnipotence. Then our mother was made from a rib. When you consider the material used it was the most successful job ever done. There's even a serpent in the Bible that knows a language. It won't do. Sin, how did it come into the world? Where did the serpent come from? He was wicked. Adam's sin did not make him bad. Then there was sin in the world before Adam. There's no sin in it. Not a particle. Then Talmud touches me upon the flood. His flood didn't come to America because America was not discovered then. He says it was a partial flood. Then why did they have to take any birds in the ark? How did they ever get the animals in the ark? Talmud says it was through the instinct to get out of the rain. According to the Bible they went in before the rain began. Dr. Scott says the angels helped carry them in. Imagine an angel with an animal under each wing. It must have rained 800 feet a day for forty days. Why does Talmud try to explain a miracle? The beauty of a miracle is it cannot be explained. The moment the church begins to explain the church is gone. All it's got to do is swear it is so. The ark landed on Ararat which is 17,000 feet high. There was only one window 22 inches square. Talmud says the window ran clear around the ark. The Bible doesn't say so. That's Brooklyn. That's no Bible. If the Bible account is true the ark must have struck bottom on the top of a mountain. Would any but a God of mercy and kindness people a world and then drown them all? A God cruel enough to drown his own children ought not to have the impudence to tell me how to bring up mine. Why did he save eight of the same kind of people to take a fresh start? Why didn't he make a fresh lot? Kill his snake and give his children a fair show. It won't do. Talmud says the Bible does not favor polygamy and slavery. There was room enough on the table of stone for saying man should only have one wife and no slaves. If not God might have written it on the other side. David and Solomon were pursued of God but they had a pretty good time of it. Most anybody would be willing to be pursued that way. There is not a word in the Old Testament against slavery or polygamy. Frederick Douglass, a slave in Maryland is the greatest man that state ever produced. He was enslaved by Christians. Why did God pay so much attention to blasphemers and so little to slaveholders and robbers? I am opposed to any God that was ever in favor of slavery. The Bible upholds polygamy and that's the reason I don't uphold the Bible. The most glorious temple ever erected is the home. That's my church. I've misquoted the story of Jonah, Talmud says. When somebody had been guilty of blasphemy the winds rose. They tried to get Jonah ashore but couldn't do it. The sea waxed. He was swallowed by a whale. The people of Minerva wrapped all their cattle up in sackcloth. And if anything would have pleased God I should think that would. Jonah sat under a gourd made a worm out of some omnipotence he had left over and set it to work on the ground. Talmud doesn't think Jonah was in the whale's belly he said in his mouth. Well, judging from the doctor's photograph that explanation would be quite natural to him. He says he might have been in the whale's stomach and avoided the action of the gastric juice by walking up and down. Imagine Jonah sitting on a back tooth leaning against the upper jaw longingly looking through the open mouth for signs of land. But that scripture and you've got to believe it or be damned. Let me say his brother preachers will not thank Talmud for his explanations. I don't believe it and if I am to be damned for it I'll accept it cheerfully. They say I was defeated in Illinois because I was an infidel and that I am an infidel because I was defeated. That's logic. Now I'll tell you they asked me whether I was an infidel and I said I was. I was defeated. I preserved my manhood and lost an office. If everybody were as frank as I was some men now in office and citizens I would rather be what I am than hold any office in the world and be a slimy hypocrite. Next they say I slandered my parents because I do not believe what they believed. My father at one time believed the Bible to be the inspired word of God. He was an honorable man and told me to read the Bible for myself and be honest. I believe that the Old Testament was not the word of God. He had not in his life as much happiness as I have in one year. I hope my children will dishonor me by being nearer right than I am. If I have made a mistake I want my children to correct it. My mother died when I was two years old. Was she living tonight or if she does live she would say be absolutely true to yourself and preserve your manhood. If Talmerge had been born in Constantinople he would have been a dervish. He is what he is because he can't help it. His head is just that shape. I am taking away the hope and consolation of the world as he says. His consolation is that 99 out of every 100 are going to hell. His church was founded by John Calvin, a murderer. Better have no heaven than a hell. I would rather God would commit suicide this minute than that a single soul should go to hell. I want no Presbyterian consolation. I want no poor ordination, no consolation, no damnation. Colonel Ingersoll concluded with a few remarks about the Bible women saying that women today are as true to the gallows as Mary Magdalene was to the cross. Wherever there are women there are heroines. Shakespeare's women are vastly superior to the Bible women. I am accused of putting out the shores of the other world. The Christians are trimming invisible wicks and pouring in allegorical oil. The Christian is willing wife. Children and parents shall burn if only he can sing and have a harp. Mr. Talmadge can see countless millions burn in hell without decreasing the length of his orthodox smile. End of Ingersoll's lecture on Talmajan theology. Second lecture. Ingersoll's lecture on Talmajan theology. Third lecture. We must judge people somewhat by their creeds. Mr. Talmadge is a Calvinist and he therefore regards every human being who has been born only once as totally depraved. He thinks that God never made a single creature that didn't deserve to be damned the minute he finished him. So everyone who opposes Mr. Talmadge is infamous. The generosity of an agnostic is meanness. His honesty is larceny and his love is hate. Talmadge is a consistent follower of Calvin and Knox and a consistent worshipper of the Jehovah of the ancient Jews. I oppose not him but his creed because it tends to crush out the natural tendencies in men to joyousness and goodness. There is something good in every human being and there is something bad. There are no perfect saints and no totally bad persons. There is the seed of goodness in every human heart and the capacity for improvement in every human soul. Isn't it possible for a man who acts like Christ to be saved whatever be his belief? Can not a soul be infinitely generous and can any God damn such a soul? If Mr. Talmadge's creed be true nearly all the great and glorious men of the past are burning today. If it be true the greatest man England has produced in a hundred years is in hell. The world is poorer since I spoke here last for Darwin has passed away. He was a true child of nature one who knew more about his mother than any other child she had. Yet he was not a Calvinist. He did not get his inspiration from any book in the heavens from the insect in the sun-beam from the flowers in the meadows and from the everlasting rocks. If the doctrine of the Calvinists is true what right had anyone to ask an unbeliever to fight for his country in the civil war? What right has a believer to buy an unbelieving substitute when some day he will look over the edge of heaven and pointing forward would say to a friend that is my substitute blistering there. Mr. Talmich says that my mind is poisoned and that the reason why all infidel's minds are poisoned is that they don't believe the Jew Bible. Let us see whether it is worth believing. I deny that an infinitely merciful God would protect slavery or would uphold polygamy which pollutes the human language. I will not believe that God told men to exterminate their fellow men to plunge the sword into women's breasts and into the hearts of tender babes. I am opposed to the Jew Bible because it is bad. I don't deny that there are many good passages in it nor that among all those thorns there are some roses. I admit that many Christians are doing all they can to idealize the frightful things in the Old Testament. It is the protest of human nature. Now they tell me that this book is inspired. Let us see what inspired means. If it means anything it is that the thoughts of God through the instrumentality of men constitute this Jew Bible and that these thoughts were written. Now just suppose that some voice whispered in your ear how would you know it was God's? How did these gentlemen of old know it was God who was talking to them? If anyone now told you that God whispered in his ear you wouldn't believe him. Why? Because you know him. Why are we asked to believe those ancient gentlemen? Because we don't know them. Another reason according to Mr. Talmadge why the Jew Bible is inspired is that prophecies in it have been fulfilled. How do we know that the prophecies were not fulfilled before they were written? They are so vague that you can't tell what was prophesied. If you will read the Jew Bible carefully you will see that there was not a line, not a word prophesying the coming of Christ. Catholics were right in saying that if the Jew Bible was to be kept in awe it must be kept from the people. Protestants are wrong in letting the people read it. Another argument of Mr. Talmadge for the inspiration of the Bible is that the Jews have been kept as a wandering, persecuted race to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. I don't believe an infinitely merciful God would persecute a race for thousands of years to use them as witnesses. Christian hate has not allowed the Jews to earn a living or at least to practice a profession and now by a kind of poetic justice the Jews control the money of the world. Imperers go to their bankers with hat in hand and beg them to discount their notes. This is because God has cursed the Jews. Only a little while ago Christians have robbed Hebrews, stripped them naked, turned them into the streets and pointed to them as a fulfillment of divine prophecy. If you want to know the difference between some Jews and some Christians compare the address of Felix Adler with the sermon of the Reverend Dr. Talmadge. Mr. Talmadge thinks that the light of every burning Jewish home in Russia throws light upon the Gospel. Every wound in a Jewish breast is to him a mouth to proclaim the divine inspiration of the Bible. Every Jewish maiden violated is another fulfillment of God's holy word. What do these horrid persecutions prove except the barbarity of Christians? Next it is said that martyrs prove the truth of the Bible. Mr. Talmadge affirms that he never died cheerfully for a lie. Why, men have gone cheerfully to their death for believing that a wafer was God's flesh. Thousands have died for their belief in Mohammed. Men have died because they believed in immersion. Either Mr. Talmadge is a Catholic and Mohammedan a Baptist or else he believes that these thousands died for lies. Every religion cannot be true. Then it is said that miracles provide the inspiration of the Bible. But it is impossible by the human senses to establish a violation of nature's laws. When the Hebrews threw down the sticks before Pharaoh and they became snakes did he believe? No, because he was there. After the Jews had been led through the desert and had been fed with bread in heaven, had been clothed in indestructible pantaloons and had quenched their thirst with water that followed them over the mountains and through the sands. When they saw Jehovah wrapped in the smoke of Sinai they still had more faith in a calf that they could make than anything Jehovah could give them. It was so with the miracles of Christ. Not twenty people were converted to one of them. In fact human testimony cannot substantiate a miracle. Take the miracle about the bears which ate the children who laughed at the bald-headed old prophet. What do you suppose Mr. Talmadge would say that meant? Why first that children ought to respect preachers and second that God is kind to animals. Nearly every miracle in the Old Testament is wrought in the interest of history, polygamy, creed or lust. I wish by denying them to rescue the reputation of Jehovah from the assaults of the Bible. Who are the witnesses to the truth of the narratives of the Jews Bible? Eusebius was one. He lived in the reign of Constantine and said that the tracks of Pharaoh's chariots could be seen perfectly preserved in the sands of the Red Sea. He was the man who forged the passage in Josephus which speaks about the coming of Christ. Good witness, isn't he? Another one was polycarp. We don't know much about him. He suffered martyrdom in the reign of Marcus Aurelius and when the fire wouldn't burn and he looked like gold through it a heathen was so mad about it that he ran his sword through polycarp. The blood gushed out and quenched the fire while the martyr's soul flew up to heaven in the form of a dove and that's all we know about polycarp. To know how much reliance should be placed upon the judgment of such trustworthy witnesses we should look at what some of their beliefs were. They thought that the world was flat that the Phoenix story was true that the stars had souls and sinned and one said there were four gospels because there were four winds in the corners of the earth. He might have added that it was also because a donkey has four legs. As far as the argument drawn from the sufferings of the martyrs is concerned the speaker said that thousands upon thousands of men had died as cheerfully in defense of the Quran as Christians had died in defense of the Bible. Their heroic suffering simply proved that they were sinners in their beliefs and that those beliefs were true. This argument as advanced by Mr. Talmadge proves too much. Every religion on the face of the globe has had its martyrs but all religions cannot be true. Men do die cheerfully for falsehoods when they believe them to be true. The question of miracles was discussed at some length and Colonel Ingersoll declared that it was impossible to establish by any human evidence that a miracle had ever been performed. Pharaoh was not convinced by the alleged miracle performed by Aaron of turning a stick into a serpent. Why? Because he was there and no such miracle was ever done. No twenty people were convinced by the reported miracles of Christ and yet people of the 19th century were asked to be convinced on hearsay by miracles which those who are supposed to have seen them refused to credit. It won't do. The laws of nature never have been interrupted and they never will be. All the books in the universe will never convince a thinking man that miracles have been performed. The lecture was sprinkled throughout with the satirical wit for which and concluded by the enumeration of a long list of unscientific facts and events recorded in the Bible. End of Ingersoll's lecture on Talmagean Theology Third lecture. This has been a LibriVox recording read for you by Ted DeLorm in Fort Mill, South Carolina on May 7th, 2009. Section 13 Ingersoll's lecture on religious intolerance. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Ingersoll's lecture on religious intolerance from the book Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll Volume 2 How anybody ever came to the conclusion that there was any God who demanded that you should feel sorrowful and miserable and bleak one seventh of the time is beyond my comprehension. Neither can I conceive how they say that one seventh of time is holy. That day is the most sacred day on which the most good has been done for mankind. Now there was a time among the Jews when if a man violated the Sabbath they would kill him. They said God told them to do it. I think they were mistaken. If not if any God did tell them to kill him then I think he was mistaken. I hope the time will come when every man can spend the Sabbath just as he pleases provided he does not interfere with the happiness of others. I would fight just as earnestly that the Christian go to church as that the infidel may have the right to spend the Sabbath as he wishes. Are the people who go to church the only good people? Are there not a great many bad people who go to church? Not a bank in Pittsburgh will lend a dollar to the man who belongs to the church without security quicker than to the man who don't go to church. Now I believe that all laws upon the statute book should be enforced. I do not blame anybody in this town. I am perfectly willing that every preacher in this town should preach. They are employed to preach and to preach a certain doctrine and if they don't preach that doctrine they will be turned out. I have no objection to that. But I want the same privilege to express my views and what is the difference whether the man pays the day he goes in or pays for it the week before by subscription. What would the church people think if the theatrical people should attempt to suppress the churches? What harm would it do to have an opera here tonight? It would elevate us more than to hear ten thousand sermons on the world that never dies. There is more practical wisdom in one of the plays of Shakespeare than in all the sacred books ever written. What wrong would there be to see one of those grand plays on Sunday? There was a time when the church would not allow you to cook on Sunday. You had to eat your vitals cold. There was a time when they thought the more miserable you feel the better God feels. There are sixty odd thousand preachers in the United States. Some people regard them as a necessary evil. Some as an unnecessary evil. There are sixty odd thousand churches in the United States and it does seem to me that with all the wealth on their side with all the good people on their side with all these advantages they ought to let us at least have the right to speak our thoughts. The history of the world shows me that the right has not always prevailed. When you see innocent men chained to the steak and the flames licking their flesh it is natural to ask why does God permit this? When you see a man in prison with the chains eating into his flesh simply for loving God you've got to ask why does not a just God interfere? You've got to meet this. It won't do to say that it will all come out for the best. That may do very well for God but it's awful hard on the man. Where was the God that permitted slavery for two hundred years in these United States? The history of the world shows that what a mean thing was done man did it. When a good thing was done man did it. But there was a time when there was a drought and this tribe of savages with their false notions of religion says somebody has been wicked. Somebody has been lecturing on Sunday. Then the tribe hunted out the wicked man. They said you've got to stop. We cannot allow you to continue your wickedness which brings punishment upon the whole of us. What is the reason they allow me to speak tonight? Because the Christians are not as firm in their belief now as they were a thousand years ago. The lukewarmness and hypocrisy Christians now permit me to speak tonight. If they felt as they did a thousand years ago they would kill me. So religious persecution was born of the instinct of self-defense. Is there any duty we owe to God? Can we help him? Can we add to his glory or happiness? They tell me this God is infinitely wise. I cannot add to his wisdom, infinitely happy. I cannot add to his happiness. What can I do? Maybe he wants me to make prayers that won't be answered. I cannot see any relation that can exist between the finite and the infinite. I acknowledge that I am under obligations to my fellow man. We owe duties to our fellow man. And what? Simply to make them happy. The only good is happiness. And the only evil is misery or unhappiness. Only those things are right that tend to increase the happiness of man. Only those things are wrong which tend to increase the misery of man. That is the basis of right and wrong. There never would have been the idea of wrong except that man can inflict sufferings upon others. Utility then is the basis of the idea of right and wrong. The church tells us that this world is a school to prepare us for another. That it is a place to build up character. Well, if that is the only character can be developed it is bad for children who die before they get any character. What would you think of a schoolmaster who would kill half his pupils the first day? Now I read the Bible and I find that God so loved this world that he made up his mind to damn most of us. I have read this book and what shall I say of it? I believe it is generally better to be honest. Now I don't believe the Bible. Had I not better say so? They say that if you do you will regret it when you come to die. If that be true I know a great many religious people who will have no cause to regret it. They don't tell their honest convictions about the Bible. There are two great arguments of the church. They say the religion of your fathers is good enough. Why should your father object to your inventing a better plow than he had? They say to one do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now we have come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think. Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would dam one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequence like a man. So I object to paying for the support of another man's belief. I am in favor of the taxation of all church property. If that property belongs to God he is able to pay the tax. If we exempt anything let us exempt the home of the widow and orphan. A voice here interrupted the speaker. Colonel Ingersoll what did the gentleman say? Oh he's drunk. Colonel Ingersoll I didn't think any Christian ought to get drunk and come here to disturb us. The speaker resumed the church has today 600 million or 700 million dollars of property in this country. It must cost 2 million a week that is to say 500 a minute to run these churches. You give me this money and if I don't do more good with it than four times as many churches I'll resign. Let them make the churches attractive and they'll get more hearers. They will have less empty pews if they have less empty heads in the pulpit. The time will come when the preacher will be a teacher. Admitting that the Bible is the book of God is that his only good job? Will not a man be damned as quick for denying the equator as denying the Bible? Will he not be damned as quick for denying geology as for denying the scheme of salvation? When the Bible was first written it was not believed. Had they known as much about science as we know now that Bible would not have been written. Colonel Ingersoll next gave his views of the Puritans, declared that they left Holland to escape persecution and came here to persecute others. He referred to the persecutions heaped upon those of other religious belief by the Puritans, paid the Catholics the compliment to say that Maryland, which they ruled was the first colony to enact a law tolerating religious views not held by themselves and went on to explain that God was never mentioned in the Constitution of the United States because each colony had a different religious belief and each sect preferred to have God not mentioned at all than to having another religious belief than their own recognized. In 1876 said the speaker our forefathers retired God from politics. They said all power comes from people. They kept God out of the Constitution and allowed each state to settle the question for itself. The present laws of different states were neatly reviewed so far as they relate to the prevention of infidels giving testimony and to religious intolerance in any way and these features were all branded and discussed as a gigantic evil. The lecture was attentively listened to by the immense audience from beginning to the end and the speaker's most blasphemous fights were the most loudly applauded. End of Ingersoll's lecture on religious intolerance. This is a LibriVox recording read for you by Ted DeLorm in Fort Mill, South Carolina on May 20, 2009.