 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, Volume 1, Chapter 1, Part 2, Ingersoll's Lecture on Gods The idea of a creative deity is gradually being abandoned and nearly all truly scientific minds admit that matter must have existed from eternity. It is indestructible and the indestructible cannot be created. It is the crowning glory of our century to have demonstrated the indestructibility and the eternal persistence of force. Neither matter nor force can be increased nor diminished. Force cannot exist apart from matter. Matter exists only in connection with force and consequently a force apart from matter and superior to nature is a demonstrated impossibility. Force then must have also existed from eternity and could not have been created. Matter in its countless forms from dead earth to the eyes of those we love and force in all its manifestations from simple motions to the grandest thought. Deny creation and defy control. Thought is a form of force. We walk with the same force with which we think. Man is an organism that changes several forms of force into thought force. Man is a machine into which we put what we call food and produce what we call thought. Think of that wonderful chemistry by which bread was changed into the divine tragedy of Hamlet. A god must not only be material, but he must be an organism capable of changing other forms of force into thought force. This is what we call eating. Therefore if the god thinks he must eat, that is to say he must of necessity have some means of supplying the force with which to think, it is impossible to conceive of a being who can eternally impart force to matter and yet have no means of supplying the force thus imparted. If neither matter nor force were created, what evidence have we then of the existence of a power superior to nature? The theologian will probably reply, we have law and order, cause and effect and beside all this matter could not have put itself in motion. Suppose for the sake of an argument that there is no being superior to nature and that matter and force have existed from eternity. Now suppose that two atoms should come together. Would there be an effect? Yes. Suppose they came in exactly opposite directions with equal force. They would be stopped to say the least. This would be an effect. If this is so, then you have matter, force and effect without a being superior to nature. Now suppose that two other atoms, just like the first two, should come together under precisely the same circumstances, would not the effect be exactly the same? Yes. Like causes producing like effects is what we mean by law and order. Then we have matter, force, effect, law and order without a being superior to nature. Now we know that every effect must also be a cause and that every cause must be an effect. The atoms coming together did produce an effect and as every effect must also be a cause, the effect produced by the collision of the atoms must as to something else have been a cause. Then we have matter, force, law, order, cause and effect without a being superior to nature. Nothing is left for the supernatural but empty space. His throne is a void and his boasted realm is without matter, without force, without law, without cause and without effect. But what put all this matter in motion? If matter and force have existed from eternity then matter must have always been in motion. There can be no force without motion. Force is forever active and there is and there can be no cessation. If therefore matter and force have existed from eternity so has motion. In the whole universe there is not even one atom in a state of rest. A deity outside of nature exists in nothing and is nothing. Nature embraces with infinite arms all matter and all force. That which is beyond her grasp is destitute of both and can hardly be worth the worship and adoration even of a man. There is but one way to demonstrate the existence of a power independent of and superior to nature and that is by breaking if only for one moment the continuity of cause and effect. Pluck from the endless chain of existence one little link, stop for one instant the grand procession and you have shown beyond all contradiction that nature has a master. Change the fact just for one second that matter attracts matter and a god appears. The rudest savage has always known this fact and for that reason always demanded the evidence of miracle. The founder of a religion must be able to turn water into wine, cure with a word the blind and lame and raise with a simple touch the dead to life. It was necessary for him to demonstrate to the satisfaction of his barbarian disciple that he was superior to nature. In times of ignorance this was easy to do the credulity of the savage was almost boundless. To him the marvellous was the beautiful, the mysterious was the sublime. Consequently every religion has for its foundation a miracle that is to say a violation of nature that is to say a falsehood. No one in the world's whole history ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle, nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed and no sane man ever thought he had performed one and until one is performed there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to and independent of nature. The church wishes us to believe. Let the church or one of its intellectual saints perform a miracle and we will believe. We are told that nature has a superior. Let this superior for one single instant control nature and we will admit the truth of your assertion. We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealist, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amends. All these amount to less than nothing. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your moldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want this year's fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact of charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years. Their reputations for truth and veracity in the neighborhood where they resided is wholly unknown to us. Give us a new miracle and substantiate it by witnesses who still have the cheerful habit of living in this world. Do not send us to Jericho to hear the winding horns nor put us in the fire with Shadrach, Moshech and Abednego. Do not compel us to navigate the sea with Captain Jonah nor dine with Mr. Ezekiel. There is no sort of use in sending us fox hunting with Samson. We have positively lost interest in that little speech so eloquently delivered by Balam's inspired donkey. It is worse than useless to show us fishes with money in their mouths and call our attention to vast multitudes stuffing themselves with five crackers and two sardines. We demand a new miracle and we demand it now. Let the church furnish at least one or forever after hold her peace. In the olden time the church by violating the order of nature proved the existence of her God. At that time miracles were performed with the most astonishing ease. They became so common that the church ordered her priests to desist. And now the same church, the people having found so little sense, admits not only that she cannot perform a miracle, but insists the absence of miracle, the steady unbroken march of cause and effect, proves the existence of a power superior to nature. The fact is, however, that the indissoluble chain of cause and effect proves exactly the contrary. Sir William Hamilton, one of the pillars of modern theology in discussing this very subject, uses the following language. The phenomena of matter taken by themselves so far from warranting any interference to the existence of a God would on the contrary ground even an argument to his negation. The phenomena of a material world are subjected to immutable laws, are produced and reproduced in the same invariable succession and manifest only the blind force of mechanical necessity. Nature is but an endless series of efficient causes. She cannot create, but she eternally transforms. There was no beginning and there can be no end. The best minds, even in the religious world, admit that in material nature there is no evidence of what they are pleased to call a God. They find their evidence in the phenomena of intelligence and very innocently assert that intelligence is above and in fact opposed to nature. They insist that a man at least is a special creation, that he had somewhere in his brain a divine spark, a little portion of the great first cause. They say that matter cannot produce thought, but that thought can produce matter. They tell us that man has intelligence and therefore there must be an intelligence greater than his. Why not say God has intelligence and therefore there must be an intelligent greater than his? So far as we know there is no intelligence apart from matter. We cannot conceive of thought except as produced within a brain. The science by means of which they demonstrate the existence of an impossible intelligence and an incomprehensible power is called metaphysics or theology. The theologians admit that the phenomena of matter tend at least to disprove the existence of any power superior to nature because in such phenomena we see nothing but an endless chain of efficient causes, nothing but the force of a mechanical necessity. They therefore appeal to what they denominate the phenomena of mind to establish this superior power. The trouble is that in the phenomena of mind we find the same endless chain of efficient causes, the same mechanical necessity. Every thought must have had an efficient cause. Every motive, every desire, every fear, hope and dream must have been necessarily produced. There is no room in the mind of a man for providence or change. The facts and forces governing thought are as absolute as those governing the motions of the planets. A poem is produced by the forces of nature and is as necessarily and naturally produced as mountains and seas. You will seek in vain for a thought in man's brain without its efficient cause. Every mental operation is the necessary result of certain facts and conditions. Mental phenomena are considered more complicated than those of matter and consequently more mysterious. Being more mysterious they are considered better evidence of the existence of a God. No one infers a God from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God. What we know is science. When we abandon the doctrine that some infinite being created matter and force and enacted a code of laws for their government, the idea of interference will be lost. The real priest will then be not the mouthpiece of some pretended deity, but the interpreter of nature. From that moment the church ceases to exist. The tapers will die out upon the dusty altar. The moths will eat the fading velvet of pulpit and pew. The Bible will take its place with the Shastras, Puranas, Vedas, Eddas, Sagas and Kurans. And the fetters of a degrading faith will fall from the minds of men. But, says the religionist, you cannot explain everything. You cannot understand everything. And that which you cannot explain, that which you do not comprehend, is my God. We are explaining more every day. We are understanding more every day. Consequently, your God is growing smaller every day. Nothing daunted. The religionist then insists that nothing can exist without a cause, except cause. And that this uncaused cause is God. To this we again replied, every cause must produce an effect. Because until it does produce an effect, it is not a cause. Every effect must in its turn become a cause. Therefore, in the nature of things, there cannot be a last cause. For the reason that a so-called last cause would necessarily produce an effect. And that effect must of necessity become a cause. The converse of these propositions must be true. Every effect must have had a cause. And every cause must have been an effect. Therefore, there could have been no first cause. A first cause is just as impossible as a last effect. Beyond the universe, there is nothing. And within the universe, the supernatural does not and cannot exist. The moment these great truths are understood and admitted, a belief in general or special providence becomes impossible. From that instant men will cease their vain efforts to please an imaginary being and will give their time and attention to the affairs of this world. They will abandon the idea of attaining any object by prayer and supplication. The element of uncertainty will in a great measure be removed from the domain of the future. And man gathering courage from a succession of victories over the obstructions of nature will attain a serene grandeur unknown to the disciples of any superstition. The plans of mankind will no longer be interfered with by the finger of a supposed omnipotence and no one will believe that nations or individuals are protected or destroyed by any deity whatever. Science freed from the chains of pious custom and evangelical prejudice will within her sphere be supreme. The mind will investigate without reverence and publish its conclusions without fear. Agassiz will no longer hesitate to declare the mosaic cosmogony utterly inconsistent with the demonstrated truths of geology and will cease pretending any reverence for the Jewish scriptures. The moment science succeeds in rendering the church powerless for evil, the real thinkers will be outspoken. The little flags of truths carried by timid philosophers will disappear and the cowardly parley will give place to victory, lasting and universal. If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and people, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce. Age after age the strong have trampled upon the weak. The crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent. And nowhere in the annals of mankind has any God suckered the oppressed. Man should cease to expect aid from on high. By this time he should know that heaven has no ear to hear and no hand to help. The present is the necessary child of all the past. There has been no chance and there can be no interference. If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed, if the hungry are fed, if justice is done, if labour is rewarded, if superstition is driven from the mind, if the defenceless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man and by man alone. Nature, so far as we can discern, without passion and without intention, forms, transforms and re-transforms forever. She neither weeps nor rejoices. She produces man without purpose and obliterates him without regret. She knows no distinction between the beneficial and the hurtful. Poison and nutrition, pain and joy, life and death, smiles and tears are alike to her. She is neither merciful nor cruel. She cannot be flattered by worship nor melted by tears. She does not know even the attitude of prayer. She appreciates no difference between poison in the fangs of snakes and mercy in the hearts of men. Only through man does nature take cognizance of the good, the true and the beautiful. And so far as we know, man is the highest intelligence. And yet man continues to believe that there is some power independent of and superior to nature and still endeavors by form, ceremony, supplication, hypocrisy to obtain its aid. His best energies have been wasted in the service of this phantom. The horrors of witchcraft were all born of an ignorant belief in the existence of a totally depraved being superior to nature, acting in perfect independence of her laws. And all religious superstition has had for its basis a belief in at least two beings, one good and the other bad, both of whom could arbitrarily change the order of the universe. The history of religion is simply the story of man's efforts in all ages to avoid one of these powers and to pacify the other. Both powers have inspired little else than abject fear. The cold, calculating sneer of the devil and the frown of God were equally terrible. In any event man's fate was to be arbitrarily fixed forever by an unknown power superior to all law and to all fact. Until this belief is thrown aside, man must consider himself the slave of phantom masters, neither of whom promise liberty in this world nor in the next. Man must learn to rely upon himself. The living Bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires and clothing will. To prevent famine one plow is worth a million sermons and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world. Although many imminent men have endeavored to harmonize necessity and free will, the existence of evil and the infinite power and goodness of God, they have succeeded only in producing learned and ingenious failures. Immense efforts have been made to reconcile ideas utterly inconsistent with the facts by which we are surrounded and all persons who have failed to perceive and pretended reconciliation have been denounced as infidels, atheists and scoffers. The whole power of the church has been brought to bear against philosophers and scientists in order to compel a denial of the authority of demonstration and to induce some Judas to betray reason, one of the saviours of mankind. During that frightful period known as the Dark Ages, faith reigned with scarcely rebellious subject. Her temples were carpeted with knees and the wealth of nations adorned her countless shrines. The great painters prostituted their genius to immortalize her vagaries while the poets enshrined them in song. At her bidding man covered the earth with blood. The scales of justice were turned with gold and for her use were invented all the cunning instruments of pain. She built cathedrals for God and dungeons for men. She peopled the clouds with angels and the earth with slaves. For centuries the world was retracing its steps, going steadily back toward barbaric night. A few infidels, a few heretics cried halt to the great rabble of ignorant devotion and made it possible for the genius of the 19th century to revolutionize the cruel creeds and superstitions of mankind. The thoughts of man in order to be of any real worth must be free. Under the influence of fear the brain is paralyzed and instead of bravely solving a problem for itself tremblingly adopts the solution of another. As long as a majority of men will cringe to the very earth before some petty prince or king, what must be the infinite abjectness of their little souls in the presence of their supposed creator and God? Under such circumstances what can their thoughts be worth? The originality of repetition and the mental vigor of acquiescence are all that we have any right to expect from the Christian world as long as every question is answered by the word God. Scientific inquiry is simply impossible. As fast as phenomena are satisfactorily explained the domain of the power supposed to be superior to nature must decrease while the horizon of the known must as constantly continue to enlarge. It is no longer satisfactory to account for the fall and rise of nations by saying it is the will of God. Such an explanation puts ignorance and education upon exact equality and does away with the idea of really accounting for anything whatever. Will the religionist pretend that the real end of science is to ascertain how and why God acts? Science from such a standpoint would consist in investigating the law of arbitrary action and in a grand endeavor to ascertain the rule necessarily obeyed by infinite caprice. From a philosophical point of view, science is knowledge of the laws of life, of the condition of happiness, of the facts by which we are surrounded and the relations we sustain to men and things by means of which man, so to speak, subjugates nature and bends the elemental powers to his will making blind force the servant of his brain. A belief in special provenance does away with the spirit of investigation and is inconsistent with personal efforts. Why should man endeavor to thwart the designs of God? Which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? Under the influence of this belief, man basking in the sunshine of a delusion considers the lilies of the field and refuses to take any thought for the morrow. Believing himself in the power of an infinite being can at any moment dash him to the lowest hell or raise him to the highest heaven. He necessarily abandons the idea of accomplishing anything by his own efforts. So long as this belief was general, the world was filled with ignorance, superstition, and misery. The energies of man were wasted in a vain effort to obtain the aid of this power supposed to be superior to nature. For countless ages even man was sacrificed upon the altar of this impossible God. To please him mothers have shed the blood of their own babies, martyrs have chanted triumphant songs in the midst of flames, priests have gorged themselves with blood, nuns have foresworn the ecstasies of love, old men have tremblingly implored, women have sobbed and intreated, every pain has been endured and every horror has been perpetrated. Through the dim long years that have fled, humanity has suffered more than can be conceived. Most of the misery has been endured by the weak, the loving, and the innocent. Women have been treated like poisonous beasts and little children trampled upon as though they had been vermin. Rememberless altars have been reddened even with the blood of babies. Beautiful girls have been given to slimy serpents, whole races of men, doomed to centuries of slavery. Everywhere there has been outrage beyond the power of genius to express. During all these years the suffering have supplicated, the withered lips of famine have prayed, the pale victims have implored that heaven has been death and blind. Of what use have the gods been to man? It is no answer to say that some god created the world, established certain laws, and then turned his attention to other matters, leaving his children weak, ignorant, and unaided to fight the battle of life alone. It is no solution to declare that in some other world this god will render a few or even all of his subjects happy. What right have we to expect that a perfectly wise, good, and powerful being will ever do better than he has done and is doing? The world is filled with imperfections. If it was made by an infinite being what reason have we for saying that he will render it nearer perfect than it is now? If the infinite father allows a majority of his children to live in ignorance and wretchedness now what evidence is there that he will ever improve their condition? Will God have more power? Will he become more merciful? Will his love for his poor creatures increase? Can the conduct of infinite wisdom, power, and love ever change? Is the infinite capable of any improvement whatever? We are informed by the clergy that this world is a kind of school, that the evils by which we are surrounded are for the purpose of developing our souls and that only by suffering can men become pure, strong, virtuous, and grand. Supposing this to be true what is to become of those who die in infancy? The little children, according to this philosophy can never be developed. They were so unfortunate as to escape the ennobling influences of pain and misery and as a consequence are doomed to an eternity of mental inferiority. If the clergy are right on this question none are so unfortunate as the happy and we should envy only the suffering and distressed. If evil is necessary to the development of man in this life how is it possible for the soul to improve in the perfect joy of paradise? Since Paley found his watch the argument of design has been relied upon as unanswerable. The church teaches that this world and all that it contains were created substantially as we now see them. That the grasses, the flowers, the trees, and all animals including man were special creations and that they sustain no necessary relation to each other. The most orthodox will admit that some earth has been washed into the sea that the sea has encroached a little upon the land and that some mountains may be a trifle lower than in the morning of creation. The theory of gradual development was unknown to our fathers. The idea of evolution did not occur to them. Our fathers looked upon the then arrangement of things as the primal arrangement. The earth appeared to them fresh from the hands of a deity. They knew nothing of the slow evolutions of countless years but supposed that the almost infinite variety of vegetable and animal forms had existed from the first. Suppose that upon some island we should find a man a million years of age and suppose that we should find him in the possession of a most beautiful carriage constructed upon the most perfect model and suppose further that he should tell us that it was the result of several hundred thousand years of labour and of thought. That for fifty thousand years he used as flat a log as he could find before it occurred to him that by splitting the log he could have the same surface with only half the weight. That it took him many thousand years to invent wheels for this log. That the wheels he first used were solid and that fifty thousand years of thought suggested the use of spokes and tire. That for many centuries he used the wheels without lynch pins. That it took a hundred thousand years more to think of using four wheels instead of two. That for ages he walked behind the carriage when going downhill in order to hold it back and that only by a lucky chance he invented the tongue. Would we conclude that this man from the very first had been an infinitely ingenious and perfect mechanic? Suppose we found him living in an elegant mansion and he should inform us that he lived in that house for five hundred thousand years before he thought of putting on a roof and that he had but recently invented windows and doors. Would we say that from the beginning he had been an infinite accomplished and scientific architect? Does not an improvement in the things created show the corresponding improvement in the creator? Would an infinitely wise, good and powerful God intending to produce man commence with the lowest possible forms of life with the simplest organism that can be imagined and during immeasurable periods of time slowly and almost imperceptibly improve upon the rude beginning until man was evolved? Would countless ages thus be wasted in the production of awkward forms afterward abandoned? Can the intelligence of man discover the least wisdom in covering the earth with crawling, creeping horrors that live only upon the agonies and pangs of others? Can we see the propriety of so constructing the earth that only an insignificant portion of its surface is capable of producing an intelligent man? Who can appreciate the mercy of so making the world that all animals devour animals so that every mouth is a slaughterhouse and every stomach a tomb? Is it possible to discover infinite intelligence and love in universal and eternal carnage? What would we think of a father who should give a farm to his children and before giving them possession should plant upon it thousands of deadly shrubs and vines should stock it with ferocious beasts and poisonous reptiles should take pains to put a few swamps in the neighborhood to breed malaria? Should so arrange matters that the ground would occasionally open and swallow a few of his darlings and besides all this should establish a few volcanoes in the immediate vicinity that might at any moment overwhelm his children with rivers of fire? Suppose that this father neglected to tell his children which of the plants were deadly that the reptiles were poisonous would he say anything about the earthquakes and kept the volcano business a profound secret? Would we pronounce him angel or fiend? And yet this is exactly what the orthodox God has done. According to the theologians God prepared this globe expressly for the habitation of his loved children and yet he filled the forests with ferocious beasts placed serpents in every path stuffed the world with earthquakes and adorned its surface with mountains of flame. Notwithstanding all this we are told that the world is perfect that it was created by a perfect being and is therefore necessarily perfect. The next moment these same persons will tell us that the world was cursed covered with brambles, thistles and thorns and that man was doomed to disease and death simply because our poor dear mother ate an apple contrary to the command of an arbitrary God. A very pious friend of mine having heard that I had said the world was full of imperfections asked me if the report was true. Upon being informed that it was he expressed great surprise that anyone could be guilty of such presumption. He said that in his judgment it was impossible to point out an imperfection. Be kind enough, said he, to name even one improvement that you could make if you had the power. Well, said I, I would make good health catching instead of disease. The truth is it is impossible to harmonize all the ills and pains and agonies of this world with the idea that we were created by and are watched over and protected by an infinitely wise, powerful and beneficent God who is superior to and independent of nature. The clergy, however, balance all the real ills of this life with the expected joys of the next. We are assured that all is perfection in heaven. There the skies are cloudless. There all is serenity and peace. Here empires may be overthrown, dynasties may be extinguished in blood, millions of slaves may toil neath the fierce rays of the sun and the cruel strokes of the lash, yet all is happiness in heaven. Pestilence may strew the earth with corpses of the loved, the survivors may bend above them in agony, yet the placid bosom of heaven is unruffled. Children may expire vainly asking for bread. Babies may be devoured by serpents while the gods sit smiling in the clouds. The innocent may languish unto death in the obscurity of dungeons. Brave men and heroic women may be changed to ashes at the bigot's stake while heaven is filled with song and joy. Out on the wide sea in darkness and in storm the shipwreck struggle with the cruel waves while the angels play upon their golden harps. The streets of the world are filled with the diseased, the deformed, and the helpless. The chambers of pain are crowded with the pale forms of the suffering while the angels float and fly in the happy realms of day. In heaven they are too happy to have sympathy, too busy singing to aid the imploring and distressed. Their eyes are blinded, their ears are stopped, and their hearts are turned to stone by the infinite selfishness of joy. The saved mariner is too happy when he touches the shore to give a moment's thought to his drowning brothers. With the indifference of happiness, with the contempt of bliss, heaven barely glances at the miseries of earth. Cities are devoured by the rushing lava. The earth opens and thousands perish. Women raised their clasped hands towards heaven, but the gods are too happy to aid their children. The smiles of the deities are unacquainted with the tears of men. The shouts of heaven drown the sobs of earth. Having shown how man created gods and how he became the trembling slave of his own creation, the questions naturally arise. How did he free himself even a little from these monarchs of the sky, from these despots of the clouds, from this aristocracy of the air? How did he even, to the extent that he has, outgrow his ignorant abject terror and throw off the yoke of superstition? Probably the first thing that tended to disabuse his mind was the discovery of order, of regularity, of periodicity in the universe. From this he began to suspect that everything did not happen purely with reference to him. He noticed that whatever he might do, the motions of the planets were always the same, that eclipses were periodical, and that even comets came at certain intervals. This convinced him that eclipses and comets had nothing to do with him and that his conduct had nothing to do with them. He perceived that they were not caused for his benefit or injury. He thus learned to regard them with admiration instead of fear. He began to suspect that famine was not sent by some enraged and revengeful deity but resulted often from the neglect and ignorance of man. He learned that diseases were not produced by evil spirits. He found that sickness was occasioned by natural causes and would be cured by natural means. He demonstrated to his own satisfaction at least that prayer is not a medicine. He found, by sad experience, that his gods were of no practical use as they never assisted him except when he was perfectly able to help himself. At last he began to discover that his individual action had nothing whatever to do with strange appearances in the heavens, that it was impossible for him to be bad enough to cause a whirlwind or good enough to stop one. After many centuries of thought, he about half concluded that making mouths at a priest would not necessarily cause an earthquake. He noticed, and no doubt with considerable astonishment, that very good men were occasionally struck by lightning while very bad ones escaped. He was frequently forced to the painful conclusion and it is the most painful to which any human being ever was forced that the right did not always prevail. He noticed that the gods did not interfere in behalf of the weak and innocent. He was now and then astonished by seeing an unbeliever in the enjoyment of most excellent health. He finally ascertained that there could be no possible connection between an unusually severe winter and his failure to give sheep to a priest. He began to suspect that the order of the universe was not constantly being changed to assist him because he repeated a creed. He observed that some children would steal after having been regularly baptized. He noticed a vast difference between religions and justice and that the worshippers of the same god took delight in cutting each other's throats. He saw that these religious disputes filled the world with hatred and slavery. At last he had the courage to suspect that no god at any time interferes with the order of events. He learned a few facts and these facts positively refused to harmonize with the ignorant superstitions of his fathers. Finding his sacred books incorrect and false in some particulars, his faith in their authenticity began to be shaken. Finding his priests ignorant on some points, he began to lose respect for the cloth. This was the commencement of intellectual freedom. The civilization of man has increased just to the same extent that religious power has decreased. The intellectual advancement of man depends upon how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth. The church never enabled a human being to make even one of these exchanges. On the contrary, all her power has been used to prevent them. In spite, however, of the church, man found that some of his religious conceptions were wrong. By reading his Bible he found that the ideas of his god were more cruel and brutal than those of the most depraved savage. He also discovered that this holy book was filled with ignorance and that it must have been written by persons wholly unacquainted with the nature of the phenomena by which we are surrounded. And now and then some man had the goodness and courage to speak his honest thoughts. At every age some thinker, some doubter, some investigator, some hater of hypocrisy, some despiser of sham, some brave lover of the right has gladly, proudly, and heroically braved the ignorant fury of superstition for the sake of man and truth. These divine men were generally torn to pieces by the worshipers of the gods. Socrates was poisoned because he lacked reverence for some of the deities. Christ was crucified by the religious rabble for the crime of blasphemy. Nothing is more gratifying to a religionist than to destroy his enemies at the command of God. Religious persecution springs from a due admixture of love towards God and hatred towards man. The terrible religious wars that inundated the world with blood tended at least to bring all religion into disgrace and hatred. Thoughtful people began to question the divine origin of a religion that made its believers hold the rights of others in absolute contempt. A few began to compare Christianity with the religions of heathen people and were forced to admit that the difference was hardly worth dying for. They also found that other nations were even happier and more prosperous than their own. They began to suspect that their religion, after all, was not of much real value. For three hundred years the Christian world endeavored to rescue from the infidel, the empty sepulcher of Christ. For three hundred years the armies of the cross were baffled and beaten by the victorious hosts of an impudent imposter. This immense fact sowed the seeds of distrust throughout all Christendom and millions began to lose confidence in a God who had been vanquished by Mohammed. The people also found that commerce made friends where religion made enemies and that religious zeal was utterly incompatible with peace between nations or individuals. They discovered that those who loved the God's most were apt to love men least. That the arrogance of universal forgiveness was amazing. That the most malicious had the effrontery to pray for their enemies and that humility and tyranny were the fruit of the same tree. For ages a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between science and faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honour, to law, to freedom, to the known and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown and to misery hereafter. The few have said think. The many have said believe. The first doubt was the womb and cradle of progress and from the first doubt man has continued to advance. Men began to investigate and the church began to oppose. The astronomer scanned the heavens while the church branded his grand forehead with the word infidel and now not a glittering star in all the vast expanse bears a Christian name. In spite of all religion the geologist penetrated the earth, read her history in books of stone and found hidden within her bosom souvenirs of all the ages. Old ideas perished in the retort of the chemist. Useful truths took their places. One by one religious conceptions placed in the crucible of science and thus far nothing but dross has been found. A new world has been discovered by the microscope. Everywhere has been found the infinite. In every direction man has investigated and explored and nowhere in earth or stars has been found the footstep of any being superior to or independent of nature. Nowhere has been discovered the slightest evidence of any interference from without. These are the sublime truths that enable man to throw off the yoke of superstition. These are the splendid facts that snatched the scepter of authority from the hands of the priests. In the vast cemetery called the past are most of the religions of men and there too are nearly all their gods. The sacred temples of India were ruins long ago. Over column and cornice, over the painted and pictured walls cling and creep the trailing vines. Brahma, the golden with four heads and four arms. Vishnu, the somber, the punisher of the wicked with his three eyes, his crescent and his necklace of skulls. Shiva, the destroyer red with seas of blood. Kali, the goddess. Draupadi, the white-armed. And Krishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile Isis no longer wandering weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore and his golden beams still smite the lips of Memnon. But Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands. The dusty mummies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests. And the old beliefs wrought in curiously sculptured stone sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead. Odin, the author of Life and Soul, Vilyan Vey and the mighty giant Emyr, strode long ago from the icy halls of the north, and thaw with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains to the earth no more. Broken are the circles and the cromlex of the ancient druids. Fallen upon the summits of the hills and covered with a centuries' moss are the sacred cairns. The divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs have died out in the ashes of the past and there is none to rekindle and none to feed the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still. The drained cup of Bacchus has been thrown aside. Venus lies dead in stone and her white bosom heaves no more with love. The streams still murmur, but no niads bathe. The trees still wave, but in the forest isles no dryads dance. The gods have flown from high Olympus. Not even the beautiful women can lure them back and Daneid lies unnoticed, naked to the stars. Hushed forever are the thunders of Sinai. Lost are the voices of the prophets and the land once flowing with milk and honey is but a desert and waste. One by one the myths have faded from the clouds. One by one the phantom host has disappeared and one by one facts, truths and realities have taken their places. The supernatural has almost gone, but the natural remains. The gods have fled, but man is here. Nations like individuals have their periods of youth of manhood and decay. Religions are the same. The same inexorable destiny awaits them all. The gods created by the nations must perish with their creators. For created by men and like men they must pass away. The deities of one age are the bywords of the next. The religion of one day and country is no more exempt from the sneer of the future than others have been. When India was supreme Brahma sat upon the world's throne when the scepter passed to Egypt, Isis and Osiris received the homage of mankind. Greece with her fierce valor swept to empire and Zeus put on the purple of authority. The earth trembled with the tread of Rome's intrepid sons and drove grasps with mailed hand the thunderbolts of heaven. Rome fell and Christians from her territory with the red sword of war carved out the ruling nations of the world and now Christ sits upon the old throne. Who will be his successor? By day religious conceptions grow less and less intense. Day by day the old spirit dies out of book and creed. The burning enthusiasm the quenchless zeal of the early church have gone. Never, never to return. The ceremonies remain but the ancient faith is fading out of the human heart. The worn out arguments fail to convince and denunciations that once the faces of a race excite in us only derision and disgust. As time rolls on the miracles grow mean and small and the evidences our fathers thought conclusive utterly fail to satisfy us there is an irrepressible conflict between religion and science and they cannot peaceably occupy the same brain nor the same world. While utterly discarding all creeds and denying the truth of all religions there is neither in my heart nor upon my lips a sneer for the hopeful loving and tender souls who believe that from all this discord will result a perfect harmony. That every evil will in some mysterious way become a good and that above and over all there is a being who in some way will reclaim and glorify every one of the children of men but for those who heartlessly try to prove that salvation is almost impossible that damnation is almost certain that the highway of the universe leads to hell who fill life with fear and death with horror who curse the cradle and mock the tomb it is impossible to entertain other than feelings of pity, contempt and scorn. Reason, observation and experience the holy trinity of science have taught us that happiness is the only good that the time to be happy is now and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us in this belief we are content to live and die if by any possibility the existence of a power superior to and independent of nature shall be demonstrated there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then let us stand erect not withstanding the fact that infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice we are constantly charged by the church with tearing down without building again the church should by this time know that it is utterly impossible to rob men of their opinions the history of religious persecutions fully establishes the fact that the mind necessarily resists and defies every attempt to control it by violence the mind necessarily clings to old ideas until prepared for the new the moment we comprehend the truth all erroneous ideas are of necessity cast aside a surgeon once called upon a poor cripple and kindly offered to render him any assistance in his power the surgeon began to discourse very learnedly upon the nature and origin of disease of the curative properties of certain medicines of the advantages of exercise air and light and of the various ways in which health was discovered these remarks were so full of good sense and discovered so much profound thought and accurate knowledge that the cripple becoming thoroughly alarmed cried out do not I pray you take away my crutches they are my only support and without them I should be miserable indeed I am not going said the surgeon to take away your crutches I am going to cure you for the vagaries of the clouds the infidels proposed to substitute the realities of the earth for the superstition the splendid demonstrations and achievements of science and for the theological tyranny the chainless liberty of thought we do not say we have discovered all that our doctrines are the all in all in truth we know of no end to the development of man we cannot unravel the infinite complications of matter and force the history of one monad is as unknown as that of the universe one drop of water is as wonderful as all the seas one leaf as all the forests and one grain of sand as all the stars we are not endeavoring to chain the future but to free the present we are not doing fetters for our children but we are breaking those our fathers made for us we are the advocates of inquiry of investigation and thought this of itself is an admission that we are not perfectly satisfied with all our conclusions philosophy has not the egotism of faith while superstition builds walls and creates obstructions science opens all the ways of thought we do not pretend to have circumnavigated everything and to have solved all difficulties but we do believe that it is better to love men than to fear gods that it is grander and nobler to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed we are satisfied that there can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven we expect to accomplish everything in our day but we want to do what good we can and to render all the service possible in the holy cause of human progress we know that doing away with gods and supernatural persons and powers is not an end it is a means to an end the real end being the happiness of man felling forest is not the end of agriculture living pirates from the sea is not all there is of commerce we are laying the foundations of a grand temple of the future not the temple of all the gods but of all the people wherein with appropriate rights will be celebrated the religion of humanity we are doing what little we can to hasten the coming of the day when society shall cease millionaires and mendicants gorged indolence and famished industry truth in rags and superstition robed and crowned we are looking for the time when the useful shall be the honorable and when reason thrown upon the world's brain shall be the king of kings and the god of gods end of Ingersoll's lecture on the gods this is a Librivox recording all Librivox recordings are in the public domain read for you by Ted DeLorm in Fort Mill South Carolina during April 2007