 Section 17, Ingersoll's lecture on the religion of our day. Ladies and gentlemen, I am glad that I have lived long enough to see one gentleman in the pulpit brave enough to say that God would not be offended at one who speaks according to the dictates of his conscience, who does not believe that God will give wings to a bird, then damn the bird for flying. I thank the pastor, and I thank the church for allowing its pastor to be so brave. I admit that thousands and thousands of church people, with their pastors and the deacons, are today advocating religious principles that they deem right and good. I honor these men, but I do not believe that their method is a good one. I do not want these people to forgive me for the views I entertain, but I want them so to act that I will not have to forgive them. I am the friend of every one who preaches the gospel of absolute intellectual liberty, and that man is my friend. Is there a God who says that if man does so and so, he will damn him? Can there be such a fiend? I am not responsible to man unless I injure him, nor to God unless I injure him, but one cannot injure God, for he is infinite. When I was young, I was told that the Bible was inspired, written by God, that even the lids of the book were inspired. They say he is a personal God. If so, he has not revealed himself to me. There may be many gods. As I look around, I see that justice does not prevail, that innocence is not always effectual and a perfect shield. If there be a God, these things could not be. If God made us all, why did he not make us all equally well? He had the power of an infinite God. Why did God people the earth with so many idiots? I admit that orthodoxy could not exist without them, but why did God make them? If we believe the Bible, then he should have made us all idiots, for the orthodox Christian says the idiots will not be damned, simply transplanted, while a sensible man who believe if not will be sent to eternal damnation. If there is any God that made us, what right had he to make idiots? Is a man with a head like a pin under any obligation to thank God? Is the black man born in slavery under any obligation to thank God for his badge of servitude? What kind of a God is it that will allow men and women to be put in dungeons and chains, simply because they loved him and prayed to him? And what kind of a God is it that will allow such men and women to be burned at the stake? If God won't love such men and women, then under what circumstances will he love? Famine stalks over the land and millions die, not only the bad but the good, and there in the heavens above sits an infinite God who can do anything, can change the rocks and the stones and yet these millions die. I do not say there is no God, but I do ask, what is God doing? Look at the agony and wretchedness and woe all over the land, is there goodness, is there mercy in this? I do not say there is not, but I want to know, and I want to know if a man is to be damned for asking the question. He eloquently recited the agonies that clustered around the French Bastille, where great men and heroic women suffered and died for loving liberty, and said if there is a God, I think that one word, Bastille, would bring the blush of shame to his face. I find that the men who have received revelation are the worst, and that where the Bible goes, there go the sword and the faggot. If an infinite God makes a revelation to me, he knows how I will understand it. If God wrote the Bible, he knew that no two people would understand it alike. When I read the Bible, I found that God in his infinite wisdom couldn't control the people he had created, and that he had to drown them. If I had infinite power and couldn't make a people that I could control and had to drown them, why, I'd resign. Then I read in the Bible such cruel things, and I do not believe that God can be cruel. Such cruelty may make one afraid, but cannot inspire love. I can't love a God that will inflict pain and sorrow, and I won't. The preachers say all unbelievers will go to hell, tidings of great joy. When I confront them, they say, I'm taking away their consolation. The old Bible does not mention hell or heaven. Now God should have notified Adam and Cain of hell, but he didn't. When he came to drown all those people, he didn't tell a single one that he would drown them. He talked all about water, nothing about fire. When he came down on Mount Sinai and told Moses how to cut out clothes for a priest, he never said one word on the subject. When God gave Moses the ten commandments engraved on stone, there he said not one word about hell. There was plenty of room on the stone. Why did he not add, if you don't keep these commandments, you will be damned? Through all these ages when God was talking all the time, and when every howling prophet had his ear, not one word did he utter of hell or heaven. For four thousand years, God got along without mentioning those places or even hinting of them. It seems to me that we ought to have been notified by him. Here the orator recalled many stories from the old Bible and subjected them to keen irony and ridicule. Reciting the story wherein the she-bears came out of the woods and tore to pieces the forty children who marked the prophet, he asked if God did that, what would the devil have done under the same circumstances? Why, he said, did not God give a sure cure for leprosy unless he wanted to have his chosen people to have that frightful disease. Do you believe that God ever told a widow if her brother-in-law refused to marry her to spit in his face? Do you believe any such nonsense from a God? I call that courting under difficulties. Then Colonel Ingersoll dwelt pathetically on the sweet innocent babes eaten up by lions in the den after Daniel was rescued from their jaws and asked the question, what kind of a God was it that allowed such horrible deeds? They say that I pick out all the bad things in the Bible. Well, God ought not to have put bad things in the book. If you only read the Bible, you will not believe it. Why, it is such a bad book that it has to be supported by legislation. In Maine and elsewhere they will send you to jail for two years if you deny the Bible or the judgment day. No, we are told we must not only believe in the God we have been talking about, but must also believe in another one. Let us look at the church today. The Orthodox Church, that is, all but the universalist, he is trying to be orthodox, but he can't get in. The God of the universalists, to say the least, is a gentleman. Now what is this religion? To believe certain things that we may be saved, that we won't be damned, what are they? First, that the old and new testament are inspired. No matter how kind, how just a man may be, unless he believes in the inspiration, he will be damned. Second, he must believe in the trinity, that there are three in one, that father and son are precisely of the same age, the son possibly a little might older, and that three times one is one, and that once one is three. It is a mercy, you don't know how to understand it, but you must believe it or be damned. Therein you see the mercy of the Lord. This trinity doctrine was announced several hundred years after Christ was born. Do you believe such a doctrine will make a man good or honest? Will it make him more just? Is the man that believes any better than the man who does not believe? How is it with nations? Look at Spain, the last slaveholder in the civilized world. She's Christian. She believes in the trinity. And Italy, the beggar of the world, under the rule of priestcraft, money streamed in from every land, and yet she did not advance. Today she is reduced to a hand organ. Take poor Ireland, groaning under the heel of British oppression. Could she cast off her priests? She would soon be one with America in freedom. Protestantism is better than Catholicism, because there is less of it. Both dread education. They say they brought the arts and sciences out of the dark ages. Why? They made the dark ages, and what did they preserve? Nothing of value, only an account of events that never happened. What did they teach the world? Slavery. The best country the sun ever shown upon is the northern part of the United States, and there you will find less religion than anywhere else on the face of the earth. You will find here more people that don't believe the Bible, and you will find better husbands, better wives, happier homes, where the women are most respected and where the children get less blows and more huggings and kissings. We have improved just as we lost this religion and this superstition. Great Britain is the religious nation par excellence, and there you will find the most Kant and most hypocrisy. They are always thanking God that they have killed somebody. Look at the opium war with China. They forced the Chinese to open their ports and receive the deadly drug, and then had the impudence to send a lot of driveling idiots of missionaries into China. Go around the world, and where you find the least superstition, there you will find the best men, the best women, the best children. Two powerful levers are at work, love and intelligence. The true test of a man is generosity that covers a multitude of sins. They have got so now they damn a man on a technicality. You must be baptized by immersion, sprinkling or pouring. If you come to the day of judgment and can't show the watermark, you're damned. What more? That a fellow named Adam, whom you don't know and never voted for, is your representative. You are charged with his sins. Equally abused is the doctrine of atonement that you are created with the sacrifice of another. If Christ had more virtue than Adam had meanness, then you are ahead. Atonement is the cornerstone of the Christian religion, but there is one great objection. It saves the wrong man, and it is not honest. In holding up the atonement to ridicule, the orator said, if Judas had failed to betray Christ, the mother of Christ would be in hell today. Then he ridiculed the miracles recorded in the New Testament, pronounced them absurdities. He said that the four apostolic writers were very contradictory in their statements and did not even agree as to the last word of this great man. The ascension was the most striking, the grandest of miracles, if true. Yet the ascension is only recorded by two of these writers. If he was God, I know he will forgive somebody for not believing the miracles unless convinced. Another contradiction in the book. In one Gospel, the condition of salvation is, whosoever believeth shall not be damned. And in another, we are promised that if we forgive our enemies, God will forgive us. And there's sense in this last promise. The first, I believe, a lie. It was never spoken by God. Christ said, love your enemies. Nobody can do that. The doctrine of Confucius's sound, to love one's friends and to do justice to one's enemies without any mixture of revenge. If Christ was God, did he not know on his cross what crimes would be done in his name? Why didn't he settle all disputes about the Trinity and about baptism? Why didn't he post his disciples? Because he could no more see into the future than I can. Only in this way can you acquit him of the crimes committed in his name. The way to save our own souls is to save another soul. God can't turn into hell a man who makes on this earth a little heaven for himself, wife, and babes. Any minister who preaches the doctrine of hell ought to be ashamed. I want if I can while I live to put an end to all belief in this infamous doctrine that doctrine has done incalculable harm, wrought incalculable injury. I despise it and I defy it. The Orthodox Church says that religion does good, that it restrains crime. It restrains a man from artificial, not from natural crimes. A man can be made so religious that he will not eat meat on Friday, yet he will steal. Did you ever hear of a tramp coming to town and inquiring where the deacon of the Presbyterian Church lived? The Bible says consider the lilies. What good would it do to a naked man standing out in the bitter blasts of this night to consider the lilies? What is the social position of a man in heaven who through all eternity remembers that if he had had a grain of courage he would never have been there? The religion of our day does not satisfy the intelligence of the people. The people have outgrown it. It shocks us and we have got to have another religion. We must have a religion of charity, one that will do away with poverty, close the prisons, and cover this world with homes. 18. Ingersoll's Lecture on Heretics and Heresies, Part 1 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 Heretics and Heresies, Part 1 from the book Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, Volume 2. Liberty, a word without which all other words are in vain. Whoever has an opinion of his own and honestly expresses it will be guilty of heresy. Heresy is what the minority believe. It is a name given by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak. This word was born of the hatred, arrogance, and cruelty of those who love their enemies, and who, when smitten on one cheek, turn the other. This word was born of intellectual slavery in the feudal ages of thought. It was an epithet used in the place of argument. From the commencement of the Christian era, every art has been exhausted and every conceivable punishment inflicted to force all people to hold the same religious opinions. This effort was born of the idea that a certain belief was necessary to the salvation of the soul. Christ taught, and the Church still teaches, that unbelief is the blackest of crimes. God is supposed to hate with an infinite and implacable hatred every heretic upon the earth, and the heretics who have died are supposed at this moment to be suffering the agonies of the damned. The Church persecutes the living, and her God burns the dead. It is claimed that God wrote a book called the Bible, and it is generally admitted that this book is somewhat difficult to understand. As long as the Church had all the copies of this book and the people were not allowed to read it, there was comparatively little heresy in the world. But when it was printed and read, people began honestly to differ as to its meaning. A few were independent and brave enough to give the world their real thoughts, and for the extermination of these men the Church used all her power. Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the work of enslaving the human mind. For ages they were rivals in the infamous effort to rid the earth of honest people. They infested every country, every city, town, hamlet, and family. They appealed to the worst passions of the human heart. They sowed the seeds of discord and hatred in every land. Brother denounced brother, wives informed against their husbands, mothers accused their children, dungeons were crowded with the innocent, the flesh of the good and true rotted in the clasp of chains, the flames devoured the heroic, and in the name of the most merciful God, his children were exterminated with famine, sword, and fire. Over the wild waves of battle rose and fell the banner of Jesus Christ. For sixteen hundred years the robes of the Church were red with innocent blood. The ingenuity of Christians was exhausted in devising punishment severe enough to be inflicted upon other Christians who honestly and sincerely differed with them upon any point whatever. Give any Orthodox Church the power and today they would punish heresy with whip and chain and fire. As long as a Church deemed a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power. Why should the Church pity a man whom her God hates? Why should she show mercy to a kind and noble heretic whom her God will burn in eternal fire? Why should a Christian be better than his God? It is impossible for the imagination to conceive of a greater atrocity than has been perpetrated by the Church. Let it be remembered that all churches have persecuted heretics to the extent of their power. Every nerve in the human body capable of pain has been sought out and touched by the Church. Toleration has increased only when and where the power of the Church has diminished. From Augustine until now the spirit of the Christian has remained the same. There has been the same intolerance, the same undying hatred of all who think for themselves, the same determination to crush out of the human brain all knowledge inconsistent with the ignorant creed. Every Church pretends that it has a revelation from God, and that this revelation must be given to the people through the Church, that the Church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with a revelation not from God but from the Church. Had the people submitted to this preposterous claim, of course there could have been but one Church, and that Church never could have advanced. It might have retrograded because it is not necessary to think or investigate in order to forget. Without heresy there could have been no progress. The highest type of the Orthodox Christian does not forget. Neither does he learn. He neither advances nor recedes. He is a living fossil embedded in that rock called faith. He makes no effort to better his condition because all his strength is exhausted in keeping other people from improving theirs. The supreme desire of his heart is to force all others to adopt his creed, and in order to accomplish this object he denounces all kinds of free thinking as a crime. And this crime he calls heresy. When he had the power, heresy was the most terrible and formidable of words. It meant confiscation, exile, imprisonment, torture, and death. In those days the cross and rack were inseparable companions. Across the open Bible lay the sword and faggot. Not content with burning such heretics as were alive, they even tried the dead in order that the Church might rob their wives and children. The property of all heretics was confiscated, and on this account they charged the dead with being heretical, indicted as it were their dust, to the end that the Church might clutch the bread of orphans. Learned Divines discussed propriety of tearing out the tongues of heretics before they were burned, and the general opinion was that this ought to be done, so that the heretics should not be able by uttering blasphemies to shock the Christians who were burning them. With a mixture of ferocity and Christianity, the priests insisted that heretics ought to be burned at a slow fire, giving as a reason the more time was given them for repentance. No wonder that Jesus Christ said, I came not to bring peace but a sword. Every priest regarded himself as the agent of God. He answered all questions by authority, and to treat him with disrespect was an insult offered to God. No one was asked to think, but all were commanded to obey. In 1208 the Inquisition was established. Seven years afterward the Fourth Council of the Lateran enjoined all kings and rulers to swear an oath that they would exterminate heretics from their dominions. The sword of the Church was unsheathed, and the world was at the mercy of ignorant and infuriated priests whose eyes feasted upon the agonies they inflicted. Acting as they believed or pretended to believe under the command of God, stimulated by the hope of infinite reward in another world, hating heretics with every drop of their Bastille blood, savage beyond description, merciless beyond conception, these infamous priests in a kind of frenzy joy leaped upon the helpless victims of their rage. They crushed their bones in iron boots, tore their quivering flesh with iron hooks and pinches, cut off their lips and eyelids, pulled out their nails and into the bleeding quick thrust needles, tore out their tongues, extinguished their eyes, stretched them upon racks, flayed them alive, crucified them with their head downward, exposed them to wild beasts, burned them at the stake, mocked their cries and groans, ravished their wives, robbed their children and then prayed God to finish the holy work in hell. Millions upon millions were sacrificed upon the altars of bigotry. The Catholic burned the Lutheran, the Lutheran burned the Catholic, the Episcopalian tortured the Presbyterian, the Presbyterian tortured the Episcopalian. Every denomination killed all it could of every other, and each Christian felt it duty bound to exterminate every other Christian who denied the smallest fraction of his creed. In the reign of Henry VIII, that pious and moral founder of the Apostolic Episcopal Church, there was passed by the Parliament of England an act entitled An Act for Abolishing of Diversity of Opinion, and in this act was set forth what a good Christian was obliged to believe. First, that in the sacrament was the real body and blood of Jesus Christ. Second, that the body and blood of Jesus Christ was in the bread, and the blood and body of Jesus Christ was in the wine. Third, that priests should not marry. Fourth, that vows of chastity were of perpetual obligation. Fifth, that private masses ought to be continued. And sixth, that auricular confession to a priest must be maintained. This creed was made by law in order that all men might know just what to believe by simply reading the statute. The Church hated to see the people wearing out their brains in thinking upon these subjects. It was thought far better that a creed should be made by Parliament, so that whatever might be lacking in evidence might be made up in force. The punishment for denying the first article was death by fire, for the denial of any other article, imprisonment, and for the second offence, death. Your attention is called to these six articles established during the reign of Henry VIII, and by the Church of England simply because not one of these articles is believed by that Church today. If the law then made by the Church could be enforced now, every Episcopalian would be burned at the stake. Similar laws were passed in most Christian countries, as all Orthodox Churches firmly believed that mankind could be legislated into heaven. According to the creed of every Church, slavery leads to heaven, liberty leads to hell. It was claimed that God had founded the Church and that to deny the authority of the Church was to be a traitor to God, and consequently an ally of the devil. To torture and destroy one of the soldiers of Satan was a duty no good Christian cared to neglect. Nothing can be sweeter than to earn the gratitude of God by killing your own enemies. Such a mingling of profit and revenge of heaven for yourself and damnation for those you dislike is a temptation that your ordinary Christian never resists. According to the theologians, God, the father of us all, wrote a letter to his children. The children have always differed somewhat as to the meaning of this letter. In consequence of those honest differences, these brothers began to cut out each other's hearts. In every land where this letter from God has been read, the children to whom and for whom it was written have been filled with hatred and malice. They have imprisoned and murdered each other and the wives and children of each other. In the name of God, every possible crime has been committed. Every conceivable outrage has been perpetrated. Brave men, tender and loving women, beautiful girls, prattling babes have been exterminated in the name of Jesus Christ. For more than fifty generations, the church has carried the black flag. Her vengeance has been measured only by her power. During all these years of infamy, no heretic has ever been forgiven. With the heart of a fiend she has hated, with the clutch of avarice she has grasped, with the jaws of a dragon she has devoured, pitiless as famine, merciless as fire, with the conscience of a serpent, such is the history of the church of God. I do not say and I do not believe that Christians are as bad as their creeds. In spite of church and dogma, there have been millions and millions of men and women true to the loftiest and most generous promptings of the human heart. They have been true to their convictions and with a self-denial and fortitude excelled by none have laboured and suffered for the salvation of men. Imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, believing that by personal effort they could rescue at least a few souls from the infinite shadow of hell, they have cheerfully endured every hardship and scorned danger and death. And yet, notwithstanding all this, they believed that honest error was a crime. They knew that the Bible so declared and they believed that all unbelievers would be eternally lost. They believed that religion was of God and all heresy of the devil. They killed heretics in defense of their own souls and the souls of their children. They killed them because, according to their idea, they were enemies of God and because the Bible teaches that the blood of the unbeliever is a most acceptable sacrifice to heaven. Nature never prompted a loving mother to throw her child into the Ganges. Nature never prompted men to exterminate each other for a difference of opinion concerning the baptism of infants. These crimes have been produced by religions, filled with all that is illogical, cruel, and hideous. These religions were produced for the most part by ignorance, tyranny, and hypocrisy. Under the impression that the infinite ruler and creator of the universe had commanded the destruction of heretics and infidels, the church perpetrated all these crimes. Men and women have been burned for thinking that there was but one God, that there was none, that the Holy Ghost is younger than God, that God was somewhat older than his son, for insisting that good works will save a man without faith, that faith will do without good works, for declaring that a sweet babe will not be barred eternally because its parents fail to have its head wet by a priest, for speaking of God as though he had a nose, for denying that Christ was his own father, for contending that three persons rightly added together make more than one, for believing in purgatory, for denying the reality of hell, for pretending that priests can forgive sins, for preaching that God is an essence, for denying that which is rode through the air on sticks, for doubting the total depravity of the human heart, for laughing at irresistible grace, predestination, and particular redemption, for denying that good bread could be made of the body of a dead man, for pretending that the pope was not managing this world for God, and in place of God, for disputing the efficacy of a vicarious atonement, for thinking that the Virgin Mary was born like other people, for thinking that a man's rib was hardly sufficient to make a good sized woman, for denying that God used his finger for a pen, for asserting that prayers are not answered, that diseases are not set to punish unbelief, for denying the authority of the Bible, for having a Bible in their possession, for attending mass, and for refusing to attend, for wearing a surplus, for carrying a cross, and for refusing, for being a Catholic, and for being a Protestant, for being an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, a Baptist, and for being a Quaker. In short, every virtue has been a crime, and every crime a virtue. The church has burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy, and all this she did, because it was commanded by a book, a book that men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book, to examine it even, was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this world or in the next. The Bible was a real persecutor. The Bible burned heretics, built dungeons, founded the Inquisition, and trampled upon all the liberties of men. How long, oh how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, oh how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death? Unfortunately for the world, about the beginning of the 16th century, a man by the name of Gerard Chauvin was married to Jean LeFranc, and still more unfortunately for the world. The fruit of this marriage was a son called John Chauvin, who afterward became famous as John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian Church. This man forged five fetters for the brain, these fetters he called points that is to say predestination, particular redemption, total depravity, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. About the neck of each follower he put a collar, bristling with these five iron points. The presence of all these points on the collar is still the test of orthodoxy in the church he founded. This man, when in the flush of youth, was elected to the office of preacher in Geneva. He at once in union with Farrell, drew up a condensed statement of the Presbyterian doctrine, and all the citizens of Geneva on pain of banishment were compelled to take an oath that they believed this statement. Of this proceeding Calvin very innocently remarked that it produced great satisfaction. A man by the name of Caroli had the audacity to dispute with Calvin. For this outrage he was banished. To show you what great subjects occupied the attention of Calvin, it is only necessary to state that he furiously discussed the question as to whether the sacramental bread should be leavened or unleavened. He drew up laws regulating the cut of the citizens' clothes and prescribed their diet, and all whose garments were not in the Calvin fashion were refused the sacrament. At last the people becoming tired of this petty theological tyranny banished Calvin. In a few years, however, he was recalled and received with great enthusiasm. After this he was supreme, and the will of Calvin became the law of Geneva. Under the benign administration of Calvin, James Gruett was beheaded because he had written some profane verses. The slightest word against Calvin or his absurd doctrine was punished as a crime. In 1553 a man was tried at Vienne by the Catholic Church for heresy. He was convicted and sentenced to death by burning. It was his good fortune to escape. Pursued by the sleuth hounds of intolerance, he fled to Geneva for protection. A dove flying from the hawks sought safety in the nest of a vulture. This fugitive from the cruelty of Rome asked Shelter from John Calvin, who had written a book in favour of religious toleration. Servetus had forgotten that this book was written by Calvin when in the minority, that it was written in weakness to be forgotten in power, that it was produced by fear instead of principle. He did not know that Calvin had caused his arrest at Vienne in France, and had sent a copy of his work which was claimed to be blasphemous to the Archbishop. He did not then know that the Protestant Calvin was acting as one of the detectives of the Catholic Church, and had been instrumental in procuring his conviction for heresy. Ignorant of all this unspeakable infamy, he put himself in the power of this very Calvin. The maker of the Presbyterian creed caused the fugitive Servetus to be arrested for blasphemy. He was tried. Calvin was his accuser. He was convicted and condemned to death by fire. On the morning of the fatal day Calvin saw him, and Servetus, the victim, asked forgiveness of Calvin, the murderer, for anything he might have said that had wounded his feelings. Servetus was bound to the stake. The faggots were lighted. The wind carried the flames somewhat away from his body, so that he slowly roasted for hours. Vainly he implored a speedy death. At last the flame climbed around his form. Through smoke and fire his murderers saw a white heroic face, and there they watched until a man became a charred and shriveled mass. Liberty was banished from Geneva, and nothing but Presbyterianism was left. Honor, justice, mercy, reason, and charity were all exiled. But the five points of predestination, particular redemption, irresistible grace, total depravity, and the certain perseverance of the saints remained instead. Calvin founded a little theocracy in Geneva, modeled after the Old Testament, and succeeded in erecting the most detestable government that ever existed, except the one from which it was copied. Against all this intolerance one man, a minister, raised his voice. The name of this man should never be forgotten. It was Castelio. This brave man had the goodness and the courage to declare the innocence of honest error. He was the first of the so-called reformers to take this noble ground. I wish I had the genius to pay a fitting tribute to his memory. Perhaps it would be impossible to pay him a grander compliment than to say, Castelio was in all things the opposite of Calvin. To plead for the right of individual judgment was considered a crime, and Castelio was driven from Geneva by John Calvin. By him he was denounced as a child of the devil, as a dog of Satan, as a beast from hell, as one who, by this horrid blasphemy of the innocence of honest error, crucified Christ afresh, and by him he was pursued until rescued by the hand of death. Upon the name of Castelio Calvin heaved every epithet until his malice was satisfied and his imagination exhausted. It is impossible to conceive how human nature can become so frightfully perverted as to pursue a fellow man with the malignity of a fiend simply because he is good, just, and generous. Calvin was of a pallid, bloodless complexion, thin, sickly, irritable, gloomy, impatient, egotistic, tyrannical, heartless, and infamous. He was a strange compound of revengeful morality, malicious forgiveness, ferocious charity, egotistic humility, and a kind of hellish justice. In other words, he was as near like the God of the Old Testament as his health permitted. The best thing, however, about the Presbyterians of Geneva was that they denied the power of the Pope, and the best thing about the Pope was that he was not a Presbyterian. Section 19 Ingersoll's Lecture on Heretics and Heresies Part 2 of 2 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 heretics and heresies from the book Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll Volume 2 The doctrines of Calvin spread rapidly, and were eagerly accepted by multitudes on the continent. But Scotland, in a few years, became the real fortress of Presbyterianism. The Scotch rivaled the adherents of Calvin, and succeeded in establishing the same kind of theocracy that flourished in Geneva. The clergy took possession and control of everybody and everything. It is impossible to exaggerate the slavery, the mental degradation, the abject superstition of the people of Scotland during the reign of Presbyterianism. Heretics were hunted and devoured as though they had been wild beasts. The gloomy insanity of Presbyterianism took possession of a great majority of the people. They regarded their ministers as the Jews did Moses and Aaron. They believed that they were the special agents of God, and that whatsoever they bound in Scotland would be bound in heaven. There was not one particle of intellectual freedom. No one was allowed to differ from the church, or to even contradict a priest. Had Presbyterianism maintained its ascendancy, Scotland would have been peopled by savages today. The revengeful spirit of Calvin took possession of the Puritans and caused them to redden the soil of the New World with the brave blood of honest men. Clinging to the five points of Calvin, they too established governments in accordance with the teachings of the Old Testament. They too attached the penalty of death to the expression of honest thought. They too believed their church supreme and exerted all their power to curse this continent with a spiritual despotism as infamous as it was absurd. They believed with Luther that universal toleration is universal error, and universal error is universal hell. Toleration was denounced as a crime. Fortunately for us civilization has had a softening effect upon the Presbyterian church. To the ennobling influence of the arts and science the savage spirit of Calvinism has in some slight degree succumbed. True the old creed remains substantially as it was written, but by a kind of tacit understanding it has come to be regarded as a relic of the past. The cry of heresy has been growing fainter and fainter and as a consequence the ministers of that denomination have ventured now and then to express doubts as to the damnation of infants and the doctrine of total depravity. The fact is the old ideas became a little monotonous to the people. The fall of man, the scheme of redemption and irresistible grace began to have a familiar sound. The preachers told the old stories while the congregation slept. Some of the ministers became tired of these stories themselves. The five points grew dull and they felt that nothing short of irresistible grace could bear this endless repetition. The outside world was full of progress and in every direction men advanced while the church anchored to a creed idly rotted at the shore. Other denominations imbued some little with the spirit of investigation were springing up on every side while the old Presbyterian Ark rested on the ararat of the past filled with the theological monsters of another age. Lured by the splendors of the outer world, tempted by the achievements of science, longing to feel the throw and beat of the mighty march of the human race, a few of the ministers of this conservative denomination were compelled by irresistible sense to say a few words in harmony with the splendid ideas of today. These utterances have upon several occasions so nearly awakened some of the members that rubbing their eyes, they have feebly inquired whether these grand ideas were not somewhat heretical. These ministers found that just in proportion as their orthodoxy decreased, their congregations increased. Those who dealt in the pure unadulterated article found themselves demonstrating the five points to a less number of heroes than they had points. Stung to madness by this bitter truth, this galling contrast, this harassing fact, the really orthodox have raised the cry of heresy and expect with this cry to seal the lips of honest men. One of these ministers and one who has been enjoying the luxury of a little honest thought and the real rapture of expressing it has already been indicted and is about to be tried by the Presbytery of Illinois. He has been charged first with speaking in an ambiguous language in relation to that dear old doctrine of the fall of man, with having neglected to preach that most comforting and consoling truth, the eternal damnation of the soul. Surely that man must be a monster who could wish to blot this blessed doctrine out and rob earth's wretched children of this blissful hope. Who can estimate the misery that has been caused by this most infamous doctrine of eternal punishment? Think of the lives it has blighted, of the tears it has caused, of the agony it has produced. Think of the millions who have been driven to insanity by this most terrible of dogmas. This doctrine renders God the basest and most cruel being in the universe. Compared with him, the most frightful deities of the most barbarous and degraded tribes are miracles of goodness and mercy. There is nothing more degrading than to worship such a God. Lower than this, the soul can never sink. If the doctrine of eternal damnation is true, let me have my portion in hell rather than in heaven with a God infamous enough to inflict eternal misery upon any of the sons of men. Second, with having spoken a few kind words of Robert Collier and John Stuart Mill, I have the honor of a slight acquaintance with Robert Collier. I have read with pleasure some of his exquisite productions. He has a brain full of the dawn, the head of a philosopher, the imagination of a poet, and the sincere heart of a child. Is a minister to be silenced because he speaks fairly of a noble and candid adversary? Is it a crime to compliment a lover of justice, an advocate of liberty, one who has devoted his life to the elevation of man, the discovery of truth, and the promulgation of what he believed to be right? Can that tongue be palsied by a presbytery that praises a self-denying and heroic life? Is it a sin to speak a charitable word over the grave of John Stuart Mill? Is it heretical to pay a just and graceful tribute to departed worth? Must the true presbyterian violate the sanctity of the tomb, dig open the grave, and ask his God to curse the silent dust? Is presbyterianism so narrow that it conceives of no excellence, of no purity of intention, of no spiritual and moral grandeur outside of its barbaric creed? Does it still retain within its stony heart all the malice of its founder? Is it still warming its fleshless hands at the flames that consume Servetus? Does it still glory in the damnation of infants? And does it still persist in emptying the cradle in order that perdition may be filled? Is it still starving the soul and famishing the heart? Is it still trembling and shivering, crouching and crawling before its ignorant confession of faith? Had such men as Robert Collier and John Stuart Mill been present at the burning of Servetus, they would have extinguished the flames with their tears. Had the Presbytery of Chicago been there, they would have quietly turned their backs, solemnly divided their coattails, and warmed themselves. Third, with having spoken disparagingly of the doctrine of predestination, if there is any dogma that ought to be protected by law, predestination is that doctrine. Surely it is a cheerful, joyous thing to one who is laboring, struggling and suffering in this weary world, to think that before he existed, before the earth was, before a star had glittered in the heavens, before a ray of light had left the quiver of the sun, his destiny had been irrevocably fixed, and that for an eternity before his birth he had been doomed to bear eternal pain. Fourth, with having failed to preach the efficacy of vicarious sacrifice, suppose a man had been convicted of murder and was about to be hanged, the governor acting as the executioner, and suppose just as the doomed man was to suffer death, someone in the crowd should step forward and say, I am willing to die in the place of that murderer, he has a family and I have none, and suppose further that the governor should reply, come forward young man your offer is accepted, a murder has been committed and somebody must be hung, and your death will satisfy the law just as well as the death of the murderer. What would you then think of the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice? This doctrine is a consummation of two outrages, forgiving one crime and committing another. Fifth, with having inculcated a phase of the doctrine commonly known as evolution or development, the church believes and teaches the exact opposite of this doctrine. According to the philosophy of theology, man has continued to degenerate for six thousand years, to teach that there is that in nature which impels to higher forms and grander ends is heresy of course. The deity will damn Spencer and his evolution, Darwin and his origin of species, Baston and his spontaneous generation, Huxley and his protoplasm, Tyndall and his prayer gauge, and will save those and those only who declare that the universe has been cursed from the smallest atom to the grandest star, that everything tends to evil and to that only, and that the only perfect thing in nature is the Presbyterian confession of faith. Sixth, with having intimated that the reception of Socrates and Penelope at heaven's gate was, to say the least, a trifle more cordial than that of Catherine II. Penelope, waiting patiently and trustfully for her lord's return, delaying her suitors while sadly weaving and unweaving the shroud of laertes, is the most perfect type of wife and woman produced by the civilization of Greece. Socrates whose life was above reproach and whose death was beyond all praise stands today in the estimation of every thoughtful man at least the peer of Christ. Catherine II assassinated her husband. Stepping upon his corpse, she mounted the throne. She was the murderous of Prince Ivan, the grand nephew of Peter the Great, who was imprisoned for eighteen years, and who, during all that time, saw the sky but once. Taken all in all, Catherine was probably one of the most intellectual beasts that ever wore a crown. Catherine, however, was the head of the Greek church. Socrates was a heretic, and Penelope lived and died without having once heard of particular redemption or irresistible grace. Seventh, with repudiating the idea of a call to ministry and pretending that men were called to preach as they were to the other avocations of life. If this doctrine is true, God, to say the least of it, is an exceedingly poor judge of human nature. It is more than a century since a man of true genius has been found in an orthodox pulpit. Every minister is heretical just to the extent that his intellect is above the average. The Lord seems to be satisfied with mediocrity, but the people are not. An old deacon wishing to get rid of an unpopular preacher advised him to give up the ministry and turn his attention to something else. The preacher replied that he could not conscientiously desert the pulpit as he had a call to the ministry. To which the deacon replied, that may be so, but it's mighty unfortunate for you that when God called you to preach he forgot to call anybody to hear you. There is nothing more stupidly egotistic than the claim of the clergy that they are in some divine sense set apart to the service of the Lord, that they have been chosen and sanctified, that there is an infinite difference between them and persons employed in secular affairs. They teach us that all other professions must take care of themselves, that God allows anybody to be a doctor, a lawyer, a statesman, soldier, or artist, that the motts and coopers, the man's fields and marshals, the Wilberforces and Sumners, the Angelos and Ruffaels, were never honored by a call. These chose their professions and won their laurels without the assistance of the Lord. All these men were left free to follow their own inclinations, while God was busily engaged selecting and calling priests, rectors, elders, ministers, and exorters. 8. With having doubted that God was the author of the 109th Psalm, the portion of that Psalm which carries with it the clearest and most satisfactory evidences of inspiration, and which has afforded almost unspeakable consolation to the Presbyterian church, is as follows. Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned, and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg. Let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hated, and let the strangers spoil his labour. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him. Neither let there be none to favour his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let their name be blotted out. But do thou for me, O God, the Lord, for thy name's sake. Because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me. I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth. Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to inspire this prayer. Think of one infamous enough to answer it. Had this inspired psalm been found in some temple erected for the worship of snakes, or in the possession of some cannibal king, written with blood upon the dried skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony between its surroundings and its sentiments. No wonder that the author of this inspired psalm coldly received Socrates and Penelope, and reserved his sweetest smiles for Catherine II. Ninth, with having said that the battles in which the Israelites engaged with the approval and command of Jehovah surpassed in cruelty those of Julius Caesar. Was it Julius Caesar who said, And the Lord our God delivered him before us, and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people, and we took all his cities, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones of every city, we left none to remain. Did Julius Caesar send the following report to the Roman Senate? And we took all his cities at that time. There was not a city which we took not from them, three score city, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Arginbashan. All these cities were thinced with high walls, gates, and bars. Besides unwalled towns, a great many, and we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon, king of Hesbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city. Did Caesar take the city of Jericho, and utterly destroy all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old? Did he smite all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings, and leave none remaining that breathed, as the Lord God had commanded? Search the records of the whole world, find out the history of every barbarous tribe, and you can find no crime that touched a lower depth of infamy than those the Bible's God commanded and approved. For such a God I have no words to express my loathing and contempt, and all the words in all the languages of man would scarcely be sufficient. Away with such a God, give me Jupiter rather, with Io and Europa, or even Siva and his skulls and snakes, or give me none. Tenth, with having repudiated the doctrines of total depravity. What a precious doctrine is that of the total depravity of the human heart. How sweet it is to believe that the lives of all the good and great were continual sins and perpetual crimes, that the love a mother bears her child is in the sight of God a sin, that the gratitude of the natural heart is simple meanness, that the tears of pity are impure, that for the unconverted to live and labour for others is an offence to heaven, that the noblest aspirations of the soul are low and groveling in the sight of God, that man should fall upon his knees and ask forgiveness simply for loving his wife and child, and that even the act of asking forgiveness is in fact a crime. Surely it is a kind of bliss to feel that every woman and child in the wide world, with the exception of those who believe the five points, or some other equally cruel creed, and such children as have been baptized, ought at this very moment to be dashed down to the lowest glowing gulf of the hell. Take from the Christian the history of his own church, leave that entirely out of the question, and he has no argument left with which to substantiate the total depravity of man. A minister once asked an old lady, a member of his church, what she thought of a doctrine of total depravity, and the dear old soul replied that she thought it a mighty good doctrine if the Lord would only give the people grace enough to live up to it. 11. With having doubted the perseverance of the saints I suppose the real meaning of this doctrine is that Presbyterians are just as sure of going to heaven as all other folks are of going to hell. The real idea being that it all depends upon the will of God and not upon the character of the person to be damned or saved, that God has the weakness to send Presbyterians to paradise and the justice to doom the rest of mankind to eternal fire. It is admitted that no unconverted brain can see the least of sense in this doctrine, that it is abhorrent to all who have not been the recipients of a new heart, that only the perfectly good can justify the perfectly infamous. It is contended that the saints do not persevere of their own free will, that they are entitled to no credit for persevering, but that God forces them to persevere, while on the other hand every crime is committed in accordance with the secret will of God who does all things for his own glory. Compared with this doctrine there is no other idea that has ever been believed by man that can properly be called absurd. As to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, I wish with all my heart that it may prove to be a fact. I really hope that every saint, no matter how badly he may break on the first quarter nor how many shoes he may cast at the half-mile pole, will foot it bravely down the long home stretch and win eternal heaven by at least a neck. Twelfth with having spoken and written somewhat lightly of the idea of converting the heathen with doctrinal sermons. Of all the failures of which we have any history or knowledge, the missionary effort is the most conspicuous. The whole question has been decided here in our own country and conclusively settled. We have nearly exterminated the Indians, but we have converted none. From the days of John Elliot to the execution of the last Marduk, not one Indian has been the subject of irresistible grace or particular redemption. The few red men who roam the western wilderness have no thought or care concerning the five points of Calvin. They are utterly oblivious to the great and vital truths contained in the 39 articles, the Seybrook platform, and the resolutions of the evangelical alliance. No Indian has ever scalped another on account of his religious belief. This of itself shows conclusively that the missionaries have had no effect. Why should we convert the heathen of China and kill our own? Why should we send missionaries across the sea and soldiers over the plains? Why should we send bibles to the east and muskets to the west? If it is impossible to convert Indians who have no religion of their own, no prejudice for or against the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, how can we expect to convert a heathen who has a religion, who has plenty of gods and bibles and prophets and Christs, and who has a religious literature far grander than our own? Can we hope with the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den to rival these stupendous miracles of India? Is there anything in our Bible as lofty and loving as the prayer of the Buddhist? Compare your confession of faith with the following. Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation. Never enter into final peace alone. But forever and everywhere will I live and strive for the universal redemption of every creature throughout all worlds. Until all are delivered, never will I leave the world of sin, sorrow, and struggle, but will remain where I am. Think of sending an average Presbyterian to convert a man who daily offers this tender, this infinitely generous and incomparable prayer. Think of reading the 109th Psalm to a heathen who has a Bible of his own in which is found this passage. Blessed is the man and beloved of all the gods who is afraid of no man and of whom no man is afraid. Why should you read even the New Testament to a Hindu when his own Krishna has said, if a man strike thee and in striking drop his staff, pick it up and hand it to him again? Why send a Presbyterian to a Sufi who says, better one moment of silent contemplation and inward love than seventy thousand years of outward worship? Whosoever would carelessly tread one worm that crawls on earth, that heartless one is darkly alienate from God, but he that living embraces all things in his love to live with him God bursts all bounds above below. Why should we endeavor to thrust our cruel and heartless theology upon one who prays this prayer? O God, show pity toward the wicked, for on the good thou hast already bestowed thy mercy by having created them virtuous. Compare this prayer with the curses and cruelties of the Old Testament, with the infamies commanded and approved by the being whom we are taught to worship as a God and with the following tender product of Presbyterianism. It may seem absurd to human wisdom that God should harden, blind, and deliver up some men to a reprobate sense, that he should first deliver them over to evil and then condemn them for that evil. But the believing spiritual man sees no absurdity in all this, knowing that God would never be a wit less good, even though he should destroy all men. Of all the religions that have been produced by the egotism, the malice, the ignorance, and ambition of man, Presbyterianism is the most hideous. But what shall I say more, for the time would fail me to tell of civilianism, of a model trinity, and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost? Upon these charges a minister is to be tried here in Chicago, in this city of pluck and progress, this marvel of energy and this miracle of nerve. The cry of heresy here sounds like a wail from the dark ages, a shriek from the inquisition, or a groan from the grave of Calvin. Another effort is being made to enslave a man. It is claimed that every member of the church has solemnly agreed never to outgrow the creed, that he has pledged himself to remain an intellectual dwarf. Upon this condition the church agrees to save his soul, and he hands over his brains to bind the bargain. Should a fact be found inconsistent with the creed, he binds himself to deny the fact and curse the finder. With scraps of dogmas and crumbs of doctrine he agrees that his soul shall be satisfied forever. What an intellectual feast the confession of faith must be! It reminds one of the dinner described by Sidney Smith, where everything was cold except the water and everything sour except the vinegar. Every member of a church promises to remain Orthodox, that is to say stationary. Growth is heresy. Orthodox ideas are the feathers that have been molded by the eagle of progress. They are the dead leaves under the majestic palm, while heresy is the bud and blossom at the top. Imagine a vine that grows at one end and decays at the other. The end that grows is heresy. The end that rots is Orthodox. The dead are Orthodox, and your cemetery is the most perfect type of a well-regulated church. No thought, no progress, no heresy there. Slowly and silently, side by side, the satisfied members peacefully decay. There is only this difference. The dead do not persecute. And what does a trial for heresy mean? It means that the church says to a heretic, Believe as I do, or I will withdraw my support. I will not implore you. I will pursue you until your garments or rags, until your children cry for bread, until your cheeks are furrowed with tears. I will hunt you to the very portals of the tomb, and then my God will do the rest. I will not imprison you. I will not burn you. The law prevents my doing that. I helped make the law not, however, to protect you, nor deprive me of the right to exterminate you, but in order to keep other churches from exterminating me. A trial for heresy means that the spirit of persecution still lingers in the church, that it still denies the right of private judgment, that it still thinks more of a creed than truth, that it is still determined to prevent the intellectual growth of man. It means that churches are shambles in which are bought and sold the souls of men. It means that the church is still guilty of the barbarity of opposing thought with force. It means that if it had the power, the mental horizon would be bounded by a creed, that it would bring again the whips and chains and dungeon keys, the rack and faggot of the past. But let me tell the church it lacks the power. There has been and still are too many men who own themselves, too much thought, too much knowledge for the church to grasp again the sword of power. The church must abdicate for the egg lawn of superstition science has a message from truth. The heretics have not thought and suffered and died in vain. Every heretic has been and is a ray of light. Not in vain did Voltaire, that great man, point from the foot of the Alps the finger of scorn at every hypocrite in Europe. Not in vain were the splendid utterances of the infidels, while beyond all price are the discoveries of science. The church has impeded but it has not and it cannot stop the onward march of the human race. Heresy cannot be burned nor imprisoned nor starved. It laughs at presbyteries and synods at ecumenical councils and the impotent thunders of Sinai. Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual new world, the unknown sea toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to new thoughts. Heresy is a cradle, orthodoxy, a coffin. Why should a man be afraid to think and why should he fear to express his thoughts? Is it possible that an infinite deity is unwilling that man should investigate the phenomena by which he is surrounded? Is it possible that a god delights in threatening and terrifying men? What glory, what honor and renown a god must win in such a field? The ocean raving at a drop, a star envious of a candle, the sun jealous of a firefly. Go on, presbyteries and synods, go on. Thrust the heretics out of the church. That is to say, throw away your brains. Put out your eyes. The infidels will thank you. They are willing to adopt your exiles. Every deserter from your camp is a recruit for the army of progress. Cling to the ignorant dogmas of the past. Read the 109th Psalm. Glote over the slaughter of mothers and babes. Thank God for total depravity. Shower your honors upon hypocrites, and silence every minister who is touched with that heresy called genius. Be true to your history. Turn out the astronomers, the geologists, the naturalists, the chemists, and all the honest scientists. With a whip of scorpions, drive them all out. We want them all. Keep the ignorant, the superstitious, the bigoted, and the writers of charges and specifications. Keep them and keep them all. Repeat your pious platitudes in the drowsy ears of the faithful, and read your Bible to heretics, as kings read some forgotten riot act to stop and stay the waves of revolution. You are too weak to excite anger. We forgive your efforts, as the sun forgives a cloud, as the air forgives the breath you waste. How long, oh, how long will man listen to the threats of God and shut his ears to the splendid promises of nature? How long, oh, how long will man remain the cringing slave of a false and cruel creed? By this time, the world should know that the real Bible has not yet been written, but is being written, and that it will never be finished until the race begins its downward march or ceases to exist. The real Bible is not the work of inspired men, nor prophets, nor apostles, nor evangelists, nor of Christ. Every man who finds a fact adds, as it were, a word to this great book. It is not attested by prophecy, by miracles, or by signs. It makes no appeal to faith, to ignorance, to credulity of fear. It has no punishment for unbelief, and no reward for hypocrisy. It appears to men in the name of demonstration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of being read, of being investigated and understood. It does not pretend to be holy or sacred. It simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all and implores every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth with its heart of fire and crowns of snow, with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas, with its every wave and cloud, with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars shining in the infinite abysses are the eternal witnesses of its truth. End of Ingersoll's lecture on heretics and heresies. This is a LibriVox recording read for you by Ted DeLorm in Fort Mill, South Carolina on July 11th, 2009. Section 20 Ingersoll's lecture on the Bible 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 the Bible, from the book, Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, Volume 2. The true Bible appeals to man in the name of demonstration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of being read, of being contradicted, of being investigated and understood. It does not pretend to be holy or sacred. It simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all and implores every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth with its heart of fire and crowns of snow, with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas, with its every wave and cloud, with its every leaf and bud and flower confirms its every word. And the solemn stars shining in the infinite abysses are the external witnesses of its truth. I will tell you what I mean by inspiration. I go and look at the sea and the sea says something to me. It makes an impression upon my mind. That impression depends first upon my experience, secondly upon my intellectual capacity. Another looks upon the same sea. He has a different brain. He has had a different experience. He has different memories and different hopes. The sea may speak to him of joy and to me of grief and sorrow. The sea cannot tell the same thing to two beings because no two human beings have had the same experience. So when I look upon a flower or a star or a painting or a statue, the more I know about sculpture, the more that statue speaks to me. The more I have had a human experience, the more I have read the greater brain I have, the more the star says to me. In other words, nature says to me all that I am capable of understanding. Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to inspire this prayer in the 109th Psalm. Think of one infamous enough to answer it. Had this inspired Psalm been found in some temple erected for the worship of snakes or in the possession of some cannibal king written with blood upon the dried skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony between its surroundings and its sentiments. Now I read the Bible and I find that God so loved this world that he made up his mind to damn the 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. The Bible was the real persecutor. The Bible burned heretics, built dungeons, founded the Inquisition and trampled upon the liberties of men. How long, oh how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, oh how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death? The believers in the Bible are loud in their denunciation of what they are pleased to call the immoral literature of the world. Yet few books have been published containing more moral filth than this inspired word of God. These stories are not redeemed by a single flash of wit or humor. They never rise above the dull details of stupid vice. For one, I cannot afford to soil my pages with extracts from them, and all such portions of the scriptures I leave to be examined, written upon, and explained by the clergy. Clergymen may know some way by which they can extract honey from these flowers. Until these passages are expunged from the Old Testament, it is not a fit book to be read by either old or young. It contains pages that no minister in the United States would read to his congregation for any reward whatever. There are chapters that no gentleman would read in the presence of a lady. There are chapters that no father would read to his child. There are narratives utterly unfit to be told, and the time will come when mankind will wonder that such a book was ever called inspired. But as long as the Bible is considered as the work of God, it will be hard to make all men too good and pure to imitate it, and as long as it is imitated, there will be vile and filthy books. The literature of our country will not be sweet and clean until the Bible ceases to be regarded as the production of a God. In the days of Thomas Paine, the Church believed and taught that every word in the Bible was absolutely true. Since his day, it has been proven false in its cosmogony, false in its astronomy, false in its chronology, false in its history, and so far as the Old Testament is concerned, false in almost everything. There are but few if any scientific men who apprehend that the Bible is literally true. Who on earth at this day would pretend to settle any scientific question by a text from the Bible? The old belief is confined to the ignorant and zealous. The Church itself will before long be driven to occupy the position of Thomas Paine. I love any man who gave me or helped to give me the liberty I enjoy tonight. I love every man who helped put our flag in heaven. I love every man who has lifted his voice in all the ages for liberty, for a chainless body, and a fetterless brain. I love every man who has given to every other human being every right that he claimed for himself. I love every man who thought more of principle than he did of position. I love the men who have trampled crowns beneath their feet that they might do something for mankind. The best minds of the Orthodox world today are endeavoring to prove the existence of a personal deity. All other questions occupy a minor place. You are no longer asked to swallow the Bible whole, whale, Jonah, and all. You are simply required to believe in God and pay your purant. There is not now an enlightened minister in the world who will seriously contend that Samson's strength was in his hair or that the necromancers of Egypt could turn water into blood and pieces of wood into serpents. These follies have passed away. For my part I would infinitely prefer to know all the results of scientific investigation than to be inspired as Moses was. Supposing the Bible to be true, why is it any worse or more wicked for free thinkers to deny it than for priests to deny the doctrine of evolution or the dynamic theory of heat? Why should we be damned for laughing at Samson and his foxes while others holding the nebular hypothesis in utter contempt go straight to heaven? Now when I come to a book, for instance, I read the writings of Shakespeare, Shakespeare, the greatest human being who ever existed upon this globe. What do I get out of him? All that I have since enough to understand. I get my little cup full. Let another read him who knows nothing of the drama, who knows nothing of the impersonation of passion. What does he get from him? Very little. In other words, every man gets from a book, a flower, a star, or the sea what he is able to get from his intellectual development and experience. Do you then believe that the Bible is a different book to every human being that receives it? I do. Can God then, through the Bible, make the same revelation to two men? He cannot. Why? Because the man who reads is the man who inspires. Inspiration is in the man and not in the book. The real oppressor, enslaver, and corruptor of the people is the Bible. That book is the chain that binds the dungeon that holds the clergy. That book spreads the pall of superstition over the colleges and schools. That book puts out the eyes of science and makes honest investigation a crime. That book unmans the politician and degrades the people. That book fills the world with bigotry, hypocrisy, and fear. Volumes might be written upon the infinite absurdity of this most incredible, wicked, and foolish of all the fables contained in that repository of the impossible called the Bible. To me it is a matter of amazement that it ever was for a moment believed by any intelligent human being. Is it not infinitely more reasonable to say that this book is the work of man, that it is filled with mingled truth and error, with mistakes and facts, and reflects too faithfully perhaps the very form and pressure of its time? If there are mistakes in the Bible, certainly they were made by man. If there is anything contrary to nature, it was written by man. If there is anything immoral, cruel, heartless, or infamous, it certainly was never written by a being worthy of the adoration of mankind. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind. The man who now regards the Old Testament as in any sense a sacred or inspired book is, in my judgment, an intellectual and moral deformity. There is in it so much that is cruel, ignorant, and ferocious that it is to me a matter of amazement that it was ever thought to be the work of a most merciful deity. 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. Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning. About the meaning of this book called a revelation there have been ages of war and centuries of sword and flame. If written by an infinite God he must have known that these results must follow and thus knowing he must be responsible for all. Pain thought the barbarities of the Old Testament inconsistent with what he deemed the real character of God. He believed that murder, massacre, and indiscriminate slaughter had never been commanded by the deity. He regarded much of the Bible as childish, unimportant, and foolish. The scientific world entertains the same spirit in which he had attacked the pretensions of kings. He used the same weapons. All the pump in the world could not make him cower. His reason knew no holy of holies except the abode of truth. Nothing can be clearer than that Moses received from the Egyptians the principal parts of his narrative, making such changes and additions as were necessary to satisfy the peculiar superstitions of his own people. According to the theologians God the father of us all wrote a letter to his children. The children have always differed somewhat as to the meaning of this letter. In consequence of these honest difficulties these brothers began to cut out each other's hearts. In every land where this letter from God has been read the children to whom and for whom it was written have been filled with hatred and malice. They have imprisoned and murdered each other and the wives and children of each other. In the name of God every possible crime has been committed. Every conceivable outrage has been perpetrated. Brave men, tender and loving women, beautiful girls and prattling babes have been exterminated in the name of Jesus Christ. The church has burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy and all this because it was commanded by a book. A book that men had been taught implicitly to believe long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book, to examine it even was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven either in this world or in the next. All that is necessary as it seems to me to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention, of barbarian invention, is to read it. Read it as you would any other book. Think of it as you would any other. Get the bandage of reverence from your eyes. Drive from your heart the phantom of fear. Push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition. Then read the Holy Bible and you will be amazed that you ever for one moment supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity to be the author of such ignorance and such atrocity. Whether the Bible is false or true is of no consequence in comparison with the mental freedom of the race. Salvation through slavery is worthless. Salvation from slavery is inestimable. As long as man believes the Bible to be infallible, that book is his master. The civilization of this century is not the child of faith, but of unbelief, the result of free thought. What man who ever thinks can believe that blood can appease God and yet our entire system of religion is based on that belief. The Jews pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals and according to the Christian system the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few. It is hard to conceive how any sane man can read the Bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration. The Bible was originally written in the Hebrew language and the Hebrew language at that time had no vowels in writing. It was written entirely with consonants and without being divided into chapters and verses and there was no system of punctuation whatever. After you go home tonight write an English sentence or two with only consonants close together and you will find it will take twice as much inspiration to read it as it did to write it. The real Bible is not the result of inspired men nor prophets nor evangelists nor Christs. The real Bible has not been written but is being written. Every man who finds a fact adds a word to this great book. The bad passages in the Bible are not inspired. No God ever ordered a soldier to sheath his sword in the breast of a mother. No God ever ordered a warrior to butcher a smiling, prattling babe. No God ever upheld tyranny. No God ever said be subject to the powers that be. No God endeavored to make man a slave and woman a beast of burden. There are thousands of good passages in the Bible. Many of them are true. There are in it wise laws, good customs, some lofty and splendid things and I do not care whether they are inspired or not so they are true. But what I do insist upon is that the bad is not inspired. There is no hope for you. It is just as bad to deny hell as it is to deny heaven. Professor Swing says the Bible is a poem. Dr. Ryder says it is a picture. The Garden of Eden is pictorial, a pictorial snake and a pictorial woman I suppose and a pictorial man and maybe it was a pictorial sin and only a pictorial atonement. Man must learn to rely on himself. Reading Bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter but houses fire 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. End of section 20 Ingersoll's lecture on the Bible. This is a LibriVox recording read for you by Ted DeLorm on July 17, 2009 in Fort Mill, South Carolina.