_Question_. Will a time ever come when political campaigns will
be conducted independently of religious prejudice?
_Answer_. As long as men are prejudiced, they will probably be
religious, and certainly as long as they are religious they will
be prejudiced, and every religionist who imagines the next world
infinitely more important than this, and who imagines that he gets
his orders from God instead of from his own reason, or from his
fellow-citizens, and who thinks that he should do something for
the glory of God instead of for the benefit of his fellow-citizens
--just as long as they believe these things, just so long their
prejudices will control their votes. Every good, ignorant, orthodox
Christian places his Bible above laws and constitutions. Every
good, sincere and ignorant Catholic puts pope above king and
president, as well as above the legally expressed will of a majority
of his countrymen. Every Christian believes God to be the source
of all authority. I believe that the authority to govern comes
from the consent of the governed. Man is the source of power, and
to protect and increase human happiness should be the object of
government. I think that religious prejudices are growing weaker
because religious belief is growing weaker. And these prejudices
--should men ever become really civilized--will finally fade away.
I think that a Presbyterian, to-day, has no more prejudice against
an Atheist than he has against a Catholic. A Catholic does not
dislike an Infidel any more than he does a Presbyterian, and I
believe, to-day, that most of the Presbyterians would rather see
and Atheist President than a pronounced Catholic.
_Question_. Is Agnosticism gaining ground in the United States?
_Answer_. Of course, there are thousands and thousands of men who
have now advanced intellectually to the point of perceiving the
limit of human knowledge. In other words, at last they are beginning
to know enough to know what can and cannot be known. Sensible men
know that nobody knows whether an infinite God exists or not.
Sensible men know that an infinite personality cannot, by human
testimony, be established. Sensible men are giving up trying to
answer the questions of origin and destiny, and are paying more
attention to what happens between these questions--that is to say,
to this world. Infidelity increases as knowledge increases, as
fear dies, and as the brain develops. After all, it is a question
of intelligence. Only cunning performs a miracle, only ignorance
believes it.
_Question_. Do you think that evolution and revealed religion are
compatible--that is to say, can a man be an evolutionist and a
Christian?
_Answer_. Evolution and Christianity may be compatible, provided
you take the ground that Christianity is only one of the links in
the chain, one of the phases of civilization. But if you mean by
Christianity what is generally understood, of course that and
evolution are absolutely incompatible. Christianity pretends to
be not only the truth, but, so far as religion is concerned, the
whole truth. Christianity pretends to give a history of religion
and a prophecy of destiny. As a philosophy, it is an absolute
failure. As a history, it is false. There is no possible way by
which Darwin and Moses can be harmonized. There is an inexpressible
conflict between Christianity and Science, and both cannot long
inhabit the same brain. You cannot harmonize evolution and the
atonement. The survival of the fittest does away with original sin.
_Question_. From your knowledge of the religious tendency in the
United States, how long will orthodox religion be popular?
_Answer_. I do not think that orthodox religion is popular to-day.
The ministers dare not preach the creed in all its naked deformity
and horror. They are endeavoring with the vines of sentiment to
cover up the caves and dens in which crawl the serpents of their
creed. Very few ministers care now to speak of eternal pain. They
leave out the lake of fire and brimstone. They are not fond of
putting in the lips of Christ the loving words, "Depart from me,
ye cursed." The miracles are avoided. In short, what is known as
orthodoxy is already unpopular. Most ministers are endeavoring to
harmonize what they are pleased to call science and Christianity,
and nothing is now so welcome to the average Christian as some work
tending to show that, after all, Joshua was an astronomer.
_Question_. What section of the United States, East, West, North,
or South, is the most advanced in liberal religious ideas?
_Answer_. That section of the country in which there is the most
intelligence is the most liberal. That section of the country
where there is the most ignorance is the most prejudiced. The
least brain is the most orthodox. There possibly is no more
progressive city in the world, no more liberal, than Boston.
Chicago is full of liberal people. So is San Francisco. The brain
of New York is liberal. Every town, every city, is liberal in the
precise proportion that it is intelligent.
_Question_. Will the religion of humanity be the religion of the
future?
_Answer_. Yes; it is the only religion now. All other is
superstition. What they call religion rests upon a supposed relation
between man and God. In what they call religion man is asked to
do something for God. As God wants nothing, and can by no possibility
accept anything, such a religion is simply superstition. Humanity
is the only possible religion. Whoever imagines that he can do
anything for God is mistaken. Whoever imagines that he can add to
his happiness in the next world by being useless in this, is also
mistaken. And whoever thinks that any God cares how he cuts his
hair or his clothes, or what he eats, or whether he fasts, or rings
a bell, or puts holy water on his breast, or counts beads, or shuts
his eyes and says words to the clouds, is laboring under a great
mistake.
_Question_. A man in the Swaim Court Martial case was excluded as
a witness because he was an Atheist. Do you think the law in the
next decade will permit the affirmative oath?
_Answer_. If belief affected your eyes, your ears, any of your
senses, or your memory, then, of course, no man ought to be a
witness who had not the proper belief. But unless it can be shown
that Atheism interferes with the sight, the hearing, or the memory,
why should justice shut the door to truth?
In most of the States of this Union I could not give testimony.
Should a man be murdered before my eyes I could not tell a jury
who did it. Christianity endeavors to make an honest man an outlaw.
Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that
it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by
a belief in God. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been
expressed.
_Question_. Do you think that bigotry would persecute now for
religious opinion's sake, if it were not for the law and the press?
_Answer_. I think that the church would persecute to-day if it
had the power, just as it persecuted in the past. We are indebted
for nearly all our religious liberty to the hypocrisy of the church.
The church does not believe. Some in the church do, and if they
had the power, they would torture and burn as of yore. Give the
Presbyterian Church the power, and it would not allow an Infidel
to live. Give the Methodist Church the power and the result would
be the same. Give the Catholic Church the power--just the same.
No church in the United States would be willing that any other
church should have the power. The only men who are to be angels
in the next world are the ones who cannot be trusted with human
liberty in this; and the man who are destined to live forever in
hell are the only gentlemen with whom human liberty is safe. Why
should Christians refuse to persecute in this world, when their
God is going to in the next?
--_Mail and Express_, New York, January 12, 1885.