"THE SCIENCE OF THEOLOGY."
ALL the sciences--except Theology--are eager for facts--hungry for the
truth. On the brow of a finder of a fact the laurel is placed.
In a theological seminary, if a professor finds a fact inconsistent with
the creed, he must keep it secret or deny it, or lose his place. Mental
veracity is a crime, cowardice and hypocrisy are virtues.
A fact, inconsistent with the creed, is denounced as a lie, and the
man who declares or announces the fact is a blasphemer. Every professor
breathes the air of insincerity. Every one is mentally dishonest. Every
one is a pious fraud. Theology is the only dishonest science--the only
one that is based on belief--on credulity,--the only one that abhors
investigation, that despises thought and denounces reason.
All the great theologians in the Catholic Church have denounced reason
as the light furnished by the enemy of mankind--as the road that leads
to perdition. All the great Protestant theologians, from Luther to
the orthodox clergy of our time, have been the enemies of reason. All
orthodox churches of all ages have been the enemies of science. They
attacked the astronomers as though they were criminals--the geologists
as though they were assassins. They regarded physicians as the enemies
of God--as men who were trying to defeat the decrees of Providence.
The biologists, the anthropologists, the archaeologists, the readers of
ancient inscriptions, the delvers in buried cities, were all hated by
the theologians. They were afraid that these men might find something
inconsistent with the Bible.
The theologians attacked those who studied other religions. They
insisted that Christianity was not a growth--not an evolution--but
a revelation. They denied that it was in any way connected with any
natural religion.
The facts now show beyond all doubt that all religions came from
substantially the same source--but there is not an orthodox Christian
theologian who will admit the facts. He must defend his creed--his
revelation. He cannot afford to be honest. He was not educated in an
honest school. He was not taught to be honest. He was taught to believe
and to defend his belief, not only against argument but against facts.
There is not a theologian in the whole world who can produce the
slightest, the least particle of evidence tending to show that the Bible
is the inspired word of God.
Where is the evidence that the book of Ruth was written by an inspired
man? Where is the evidence that God is the author of the Song of
Solomon? Where is the evidence that any human being has been inspired?
Where is the evidence that Christ was and is God? Where is the evidence
that the places called heaven and hell exist? Where is the evidence that
a miracle was ever wrought?
There is none.
Theology is entirely independent of evidence.
Where is the evidence that angels and ghosts--that devils and gods
exist? Have these beings been seen or touched? Does one of our senses
certify to their existence?
The theologians depend on assertions. They have no evidence. They
claim that their inspired book is superior to reason and independent of
evidence.
They talk about probability--analogy--inferences--but they present no
evidence. They say that they know that Christ lived, in the same way
that they know that Caesar lived. They might add that they know Moses
talked with Jehovah on Sinai the same way they know that Brigham Young
talked with God in Utah. The evidence in both cases is the same,--none
in either.
How do they prove that Christ rose from the dead? They find the account
in a book. Who wrote the book? They do not know. What evidence is this?
None, unless all things found in books are true.
It is impossible to establish one miracle except by another--and that
would have to be established by another still, and so on without end.
Human testimony is not sufficient to establish a miracle. Each human
being, to be really convinced, must witness the miracle for himself.
They say that Christianity was established, proven to be true, by
miracles wrought nearly two thousand years ago. Not one of these
miracles can be established except by impudent and ignorant
assertion--except by poisoning and deforming the minds of the ignorant
and the young. To succeed, the theologians invade the cradle, the
nursery. In the brain of innocence they plant the seeds of superstition.
They pollute the minds and imaginations of children. They frighten the
happy with threats of pain--they soothe the wretched with gilded lies.
This perpetual insincerity stamps itself on the face--affects every
feature. We all know the theological countenance,--cold, unsympathetic,
cruel, lighted with a pious smirk,--no line of laughter--no dimpled
mirth--no touch of humor--nothing human.
This face is a rebuke, a reprimand to natural joy. It says to the happy:
"Beware of the dog"--"Prepare for death." This face, like the fabled
Gorgon, turns cheerfulness to stone. It is a protest against pleasure--a
warning and a threat.
You see every soul is a sculptor that fashions the features, and in this
way reveals itself.
Every thought leaves its impress.
The student of this science of theology must be taught in youth,--in
his mother's arms. These lies must be sown and planted in his brain the
first of all. He must be taught to believe, to accept without question.
He must be told that it is wicked to doubt, that it is sinful to
inquire--that Faith is a virtue and unbelief a crime.
In this way his mind is poisoned, paralyzed. On all other subjects he
has liberty--and in all other directions he is urged to study and think.
From his mother's arms he goes to the Sunday school. His poor little
mind is filled with miracles and wonders. He is told about a God who
made the world and who rewards and punishes. He is told that this God
is the author of the Bible--that Christ is his son. He is told about
original sin and the atonement, and he believes what he hears. No
reasons are given--no facts--no evidence is presented--nothing
but assertion. If he asks questions, he is silenced by more solemn
assertions and warned against the devices of the evil one. Every Sunday
school is a kind of inquisition where they torture and deform the minds
of children--where they force their souls into Catholic or Protestant
moulds--and do all they can to destroy the originality, the
individuality, and the veracity of the soul. In the theological seminary
the destruction is complete.
When the minister leaves the seminary, he is not seeking the truth.
He has it. He has a revelation from God, and he has a creed in exact
accordance with that revelation. His business is to stand by that
revelation and to defend that creed. Arguments against the revelation
and the creed he will not read, he will not hear. All facts that are
against his religion he will deny. It is impossible for him to be
candid. The tremendous "verities" of eternal joy, of everlasting pain
are in his creed, and they result from believing the false and denying
the true.
Investigation is an infinite danger, unbelief is an infinite offence
and deserves and will receive infinite punishment. In the shadow of this
tremendous "fact" his courage dies, his manhood is lost, and in his fear
he cries out that he believes, whether he does or not.
He says and teaches that credulity is safe and thought dangerous. Yet he
pretends to be a teacher--a leader, one selected by God to educate his
fellow-men.
These orthodox ministers have been the slanderers of the really great
men of our century. They denounced Lyell, the great geologist, for
giving facts to the world. They hated and belittled Humboldt, one of the
greatest and most intellectual of the race. They ridiculed and derided
Darwin, the greatest naturalist, the keenest observer, the best judge
of the value of a fact, the most wonderful discoverer of truth that the
world has produced.
In every orthodox pulpit stood a traducer of the greatest of
scientists--of one who filled the world with intellectual light.
The church has been the enemy of every science, of every real thinker,
and for many centuries has used her power to prevent intellectual
progress.
Ministers ought to be free. They should be the heralds of the ever
coming day, but they are the bats, the owls that inhabit ruins, that
hate the light. They denounce honest men who express their thoughts, as
blasphemers, and do what they can to close their mouths. For their Bible
they ask the protection of law. They wish to be shielded from laughter
by the Legislature. They ask that the arguments of their opponents
be answered by the courts. This is the result of a due admixture of
cowardice, hypocrisy and malice.
What valuable fact has been proclaimed from an orthodox pulpit? What
ecclesiastical council has added to the intellectual wealth of the
world?
Many centuries ago the church gave to Christendom a code of laws,
stupid, unphilosophic and brutal to the last degree.
The church insists that it has made man merciful and just. Did it do
this by torturing heretics--by extinguishing their eyes--by flaying them
alive? Did it accomplish this result through the Inquisition--by the
use of the thumb-screw, the rack and the fagot? Of what science has the
church been the friend and champion? What orthodox church has opened its
doors to a persecuted truth? Of what use has Christianity been to man?
They tell us that the church has been and is the friend of education.
I deny it. The church founded colleges not to educate men, but to
make proselytes, converts, defenders. This was in accordance with the
instinct of self-preservation. No orthodox church ever was, or ever
will be in favor of real education. A Catholic is in favor of enough
education to make a Catholic out of a savage, and the Protestant is in
favor of enough education to make a Protestant out of a Catholic, but
both are opposed to the education that makes free and manly men.
So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on
alms. All beggars teach that others should give.
So, they tell us that the church has built hospitals. This is not true.
Men have not built hospitals because they were Christians, but
because they were men. They have not built them for charity--but in
self-defence.
If a man comes to your door with the smallpox, you cannot let him in,
you cannot kill him. As a necessity, you provide a place for him. And
you do this to protect yourself. With this Christianity has had nothing
to do.
The church cannot give, because it does not produce. It is claimed that
the church has made men and women forgiving. I admit that the church has
preached forgiveness, but it has never forgiven an enemy--never. Against
the great and brave thinkers it has coined and circulated countless
lies. Never has the church told, or tried to tell, the truth about an
honest foe.
The church teaches the existence of the supernatural. It believes in
the divine sleight-of-hand--in the "presto" and "open sesame" of the
Infinite; in some invisible Being who produces effects without causes
and causes without effects; whose caprice governs the world and who can
be persuaded by prayer, softened by ceremony, and who will, as a reward
for faith, save men from the natural consequences of their actions.
The church denies the eternal, inexorable sequence of events.
What Good has the Church Accomplished?
It claims to have preached peace because its founder said, "I came not
to bring peace but a sword."
It claims to have preserved the family because its founder offered a
hundred-fold here and life everlasting to those who would desert wife
and children.
So, it claims to have taught the brotherhood of man and that the gospel
is for all the world, because Christ said to the woman of Samaria that
he came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and declared that
it was not meet to take the bread of the children and cast it unto dogs.
In the name of Christ, who threatened eternal revenge, it has preached
forgiveness.
Of what Use are the Orthodox Ministers?
They are the enemies of pleasure. They denounce dancing as one of
the deadly sins. They are shocked at the wickedness of the waltz--the
pollution of the polka. They are the enemies of the theatre. They
slander actors and actresses. They hate them because they are rivals.
They are trying to preserve the sacredness of the Sabbath. It fills them
with malice to see the people happy on that day. They preach against
excursions and picnics--against those who seek the woods and the sea,
the shadows and the waves. They are filled with holy wrath against
bicycles and bloomers. They are opposed to divorces. They insist that
for the glory of God, husbands and wives who loathe each other should
be compelled to live together. They abhor all works of fiction, and love
the Bible. They declare that the literary master-pieces of the world are
unfit to be read. They think that the people should be satisfied with
sermons and poems about death and hell. They hate art--abhor the marbles
of the Greeks, and all representations of the human form. They want
nothing painted or sculptured but hands, faces and clothes. Most of the
priests are prudes, and publicly denounce what they secretly admire and
enjoy. In the presence of the nude they cover their faces with their
holy hands, but keep their fingers apart. They pretend to believe in
moral suasion, and want everything regulated by law. If they had the
power, they would prohibit everything that men and women really enjoy.
They want libraries, museums and art galleries closed on the Sabbath.
They would abolish the Sunday paper--stop the running of cars and all
public conveyances on the holy day, and compel all the people to enjoy
sermons, prayers and psalms.
These dear ministers, when they have poor congregations, thunder against
trusts, syndicates, and corporations--against wealth, fashion and
luxury. They tell about Dives and Lazarus, paint rich men in hell and
beggars in heaven. If their congregations are rich they turn their guns
in the other direction.
They have no confidence in education--in the development of the
brain. They appeal to hopes and fears. They ask no one to think--to
investigate. They insist that all shall believe. Credulity is the
greatest of virtues, and doubt the deadliest of sins.
These men are the enemies of science--of intellectual progress. They
ridicule and calumniate the great thinkers. They deny everything that
conflicts with the "sacred Scriptures." They still believe in the
astronomy of Joshua and the geology of Moses. They believe in the
miracles of the past, and deny the demonstrations of the present. They
are the foes of facts--the enemies of knowledge. A desire to be happy
here, they regard as wicked and worldly--but a desire to be happy in
another world, as virtuous and spiritual.
Every orthodox church is founded on mistake and falsehood. Every good
orthodox minister asserts what he does not know, and denies what he does
know.
What are the Orthodox Clergy Doing for the Good of Mankind?
Absolutely nothing.
What harm are they doing?
On every hand they sow the seeds of superstition. They paralyze the
minds, and pollute the imaginations of children. They fill their hearts
with fear. By their teachings, thousands become insane. With them,
hypocrisy is respectable and candor infamous.
They enslave the minds of men. Under their teachings men waste and
misdirect their energies, abandon the ends that can be accomplished,
dedicate their lives to the impossible, worship the unknown, pray to the
inconceivable, and become the trembling slaves of a monstrous myth born
of ignorance and fashioned by the trembling hands of fear.
Superstition is the serpent that crawls and hisses in every Eden and
fastens its poisonous fangs in the hearts of men.
It is the deadliest foe of the human race.
Superstition is a beggar--a robber, a tyrant.
Science is a benefactor.
Superstition sheds blood.
Science sheds light.
The dear preachers must give up the account of creation--the Garden of
Eden, the mud-man, the rib-woman, and the walking, talking, snake. They
must throw away the apple, the fall of man, the expulsion, and the gate
guarded by angels armed with swords. They must give up the flood and the
tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues. They must give up Abraham
and the wrestling match between Jacob and the Lord. So, the story of
Joseph, the enslavement of the Hebrews by the Egyptians, the story of
Moses in the bullrushes, the burning bush, the turning of sticks into
serpents, of water into blood, the miraculous creation of frogs, the
killing of cattle with hail and changing dust into lice, all must be
given up. The sojourn of forty years in the desert, the opening of the
Red Sea, the clothes and shoes that refused to wear out, the manna,
the quails and the serpents, the water that ran up hill, the talking of
Jehovah with Moses face to face, the giving of the Ten Commandments, the
opening of the earth to swallow the enemies of Moses--all must be thrown
away.
These good preachers must admit that blowing horns could not throw down
the walls of a city, that it was horrible for Jephthah to sacrifice his
daughter, that the day was not lengthened and the moon stopped for the
sake of Joshua, that the dead Samuel was not raised by a witch, that
a man was not carried to heaven in a chariot of fire, that the river
Jordan was not divided by the stroke of a cloak, that the bears did not
destroy children for laughing at a prophet, that a wandering soothsayer
did not collect lightnings from heaven to destroy the lives of innocent
men, that he did not cause rain and make iron float, that ravens did not
keep a hotel where preachers got board and lodging free, that the shadow
on a dial was not turned back ten degrees to show that a king was going
to recover from a boil, that Ezekiel was not told by God how to prepare
a dinner, that Jonah did not take cabin passage in a fish--and that all
the miracles in the old Testament are not allegories, or poems, but just
old-fashioned lies. And the dear preachers will be compelled to admit
that there never was a miraculous babe without a natural father, that
Christ, if he lived, was a man and nothing more. That he did not cast
devils out of folks--that he did not cure blindness with spittle and
clay, nor turn water into wine, nor make fishes and loaves of bread out
of nothing--that he did not know where to catch fishes with money in
their mouths--that he did not take a walk on the water--that he did
not at will become invisible--that he did not pass through closed
doors--that he did not raise the dead--that angels never rolled stones
from a sepulchre--that Christ did not rise from the dead and did not
ascend to heaven.
All these mistakes and illusions and delusions--all these miracles and
myths must fade from the minds of intelligent men.
My dear preachers, I beg you to tell the truth. Tell your congregations
that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. Tell them that nobody
knows who wrote the five books. Tell them that Deuteronomy was not
written until about six hundred years before Christ. Tell them that
nobody knows who wrote Joshua, or Judges, or Ruth, Samuel, Kings, or
Chronicles, Job, or the Psalms, or the Song of Solomon. Be honest,
tell the truth. Tell them that nobody knows who wrote Esther--that
Ecclesiastes was written long after Christ--that many of the prophecies
were written after the events pretended to be foretold had happened.
Tell them that Ezekiel and Daniel were insane. Tell them that nobody
knows who wrote the gospels, and tell them that no line about Christ
written by a contemporary has been found. Tell them it is all guess--and
may be, and perhaps. Be honest. Tell the truth, develop your brains, use
all your senses and hold high the torch of Reason.
In a few years the pulpits will be filled with teachers instead of
preachers--with thoughtful, brave, and honest men. The congregations
will be civilized--intellectually honest and hospitable.
Now, most of the ministers insist that the old falsehoods shall
be treated with reverence--that ancient lies with long white
beards--wrinkled and bald-headed frauds--round-shouldered and toothless
miracles, and palsied mistakes on crutches, shall be called allegories,
parables, oriental imagery, inspired poems. In their presence the
ungodly should remove their hats. They should respect the mould and moss
of antiquity. They should remember that these lies, these frauds, the
miracles and mistakes, have for thousands of years ruled, enslaved, and
corrupted the human race.
These ministers ought to know that their creeds are based on imagined
facts and demonstrated by assertion.
They ought to know that they have no evidence,--nothing but promises
and threats. They ought to know that it is impossible to conceive of
force existing without and before matter--that it is equally impossible
to conceive of matter without force--that it is impossible to conceive
of the creation or destruction of matter or force,--that it is
impossible to conceive of infinite intelligence dwelling from eternity
in infinite space, and that it is impossible to conceive of the creator,
or creation, of substance.
The God of the Christian is an enthroned guess--a perhaps--an inference.
No man, and no body of men, can answer the questions of the Whence and
Whither. The mystery of existence cannot be explained by the intellect
of man.
Back of life, of existence, we cannot go--beyond death we cannot see.
All duties, all obligations, all knowledge, all experience, are for this
life, for this world.
We know that men and women and children exist. We know that happiness,
for the most part, depends on conduct.
We are satisfied that all the gods are phantoms and that the
supernatural does not exist.
We know the difference between hope and knowledge, we hope for happiness
here and we dream of joy hereafter, but we do not know. We cannot
assert, we can only hope. We can have our dream. In the wide night our
star can shine and shed its radiance on the graves of those we love. We
can bend above our pallid dead and say that beyond this life there are
no sighs--no tears--no breaking hearts.