SHOULD parents, who are Infidels, unbelievers or Atheists, send their
children to Sunday schools and churches to give them the benefit of
Christian education?
Parents who do not believe the Bible to be an inspired book should
not teach their children that it is. They should be absolutely honest.
Hypocrisy is not a virtue, and, as a rule, lies are less valuable than
facts.
An unbeliever should not allow the mind of his child to be deformed,
stunted and shriveled by superstition. He should not allow the child's
imagination to be polluted. Nothing is more outrageous than to take
advantage of the helplessness of childhood to sow in the brain the seeds
of falsehoods, to imprison the soul in the dungeon of Fear, to teach
dimpled infancy the infamous dogma of eternal pain--filling life with
the glow and glare of hell.
No unbeliever should allow his child to be tortured in the orthodox
inquisitions. He should defend the mind from attack as he would the
body. He should recognize the rights of the soul. In the orthodox Sunday
schools, children are taught that it is a duty to believe--that evidence
is not essential--that faith is independent of facts and that religion
is superior to reason. They are taught not to use their natural
sense--not to tell what they really think--not to entertain a doubt--not
to ask wicked questions, but to accept and believe what their teachers
say. In this way the minds of the children are invaded, corrupted and
conquered. Would an educated man send his child to a school in which
Newton's statement in regard to the attraction of gravitation was
denied--in which the law of falling bodies, as given by Galileo, was
ridiculed--Kepler's three laws declared to be idiotic, and the rotary
motion of the earth held to be utterly absurd?
Why then should an intelligent man allow his child to be taught the
geology and astronomy of the Bible? Children should be taught to seek
for the truth--to be honest, kind, generous, merciful and just. They
should be taught to love liberty and to live to the ideal.
Why then should an unbeliever, an Infidel, send his child to an orthodox
Sunday school where he is taught that he has no right to seek for the
truth--no right to be mentally honest, and that he will be damned for
an honest doubt--where he is taught that God was ferocious,
revengeful, heartless as a wild beast--that he drowned millions of his
children--that he ordered wars of extermination and told his soldiers
to kill gray-haired and trembling age, mothers and children, and to
assassinate with the sword of war the babes unborn?
Why should an unbeliever in the Bible send his child to an orthodox
Sunday school where he is taught that God was in favor of slavery
and told the Jews to buy of the heathen and that they should be their
bondmen and bondwomen forever; where he is taught that God upheld
polygamy and the degradation of women?
Why should an unbeliever, who believes in the uniformity of Nature, in
the unbroken and unbreakable chain of cause and effect, allow his child
to be taught that miracles have been performed; that men have gone
bodily to heaven; that millions have been miraculously fed with manna
and quails; that fire has refused to burn clothes and flesh of men; that
iron has been made to float; that the earth and moon have been stopped
and that the earth has not only been stopped, but made to turn the other
way; that devils inhabit the bodies of men and women; that diseases have
been cured with words, and that the dead, with a touch, have been made
to live again?
The thoughtful man knows that there is not the slightest evidence that
these miracles ever were performed. Why should he allow his children to
be stuffed with these foolish and impossible falsehoods? Why should
he give his lambs to the care and keeping of the wolves and hyenas of
superstition?
Children should be taught only what somebody knows. Guesses should not
be palmed off on them as demonstrated facts. If a Christian lived in
Constantinople he would not send his children to the mosque to be taught
that Mohammed was a prophet of God and that the Koran is an inspired
book. Why? Because he does not believe in Mohammed or the Koran. That is
reason enough. So, an Agnostic, living in New York, should not allow his
children to be taught that the Bible is an inspired book. I use the word
"Agnostic" because I prefer it to the word Atheist. As a matter of fact,
no one knows that God exists and no one knows that God does not exist.
To my mind there is no evidence that God exists--that this world is
governed by a being of infinite goodness, wisdom and power, but I do
not pretend to know. What I insist upon is that children should not be
poisoned--should not be taken advantage of--that they should be treated
fairly, honestly--that they should be allowed to develop from the inside
instead of being crammed from the outside--that they should be taught
to reason, not to believe--to think, to investigate and to use their
senses, their minds.
Would a Catholic send his children to a school to be taught that
Catholicism is superstition and that Science is the only savior of
mankind?
Why then should a free and sensible believer in Science, in the
naturalness of the universe, send his child to a Catholic school?
Nothing could be more irrational, foolish and absurd.
My advice to all Agnostics is to keep their children from the orthodox
Sunday schools, from the orthodox churches, from the poison of the
pulpits.
Teach your children the facts you know. If you do not know, say so. Be
as honest as you are ignorant. Do all you can to develop their minds, to
the end that they may live useful and happy lives.
Strangle the serpent of superstition that crawls and hisses about
the cradle. Keep your children from the augurs, the soothsayers, the
medicine-men, the priests of the supernatural. Tell them that all
religions have been made by folks and that all the "sacred books" were
written by ignorant men.
Teach them that the world is natural. Teach them to be absolutely
honest. Do not send them where they will contract diseases of the
mind--the leprosy of the soul. Let us do all we can to make them
intelligent.