The Christian Bible is full of miracles. The Christian Religion is
founded on miracles.
No rationalist believes in miracles. Therefore no rationalist can accept
the Christian Religion.
If you discard "Creation" and accept evolution; if you discard
"revelation" and accept evolution; if you discard miracles and accept
natural law, there is nothing left of the Christian Religion but the
life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
And when one sees that all religions and all ethics, even the oldest
known, have, like all language and all science and all philosophy and
all existing species of animals and plants, been slowly evolved from
lower and ruder forms; and when one learns that there have been many
Christs, and that the evidence of the life of Jesus is very slight,
and that all the acts and words of Jesus had been anticipated by other
teachers long before the Christian era, then it is borne in upon one's
mind that the historic basis of Christianity is very frail. And when one
realises that the Christian theology, besides being borrowed from
older religions, is manifestly opposed to reason and to facts, then one
reaches a state of mind which entitles the orthodox Christian to call
one an "Infidel," and to make it "unpleasant" for one to the glory of
God.
That is the position in which I stand at present, and it is partly to
vindicate that position, and to protest against those who feel as I feel
being subjected to various kinds of "unpleasantness," that I undertake
this Apology.