Future generations will regard the men who accept the Christian
superstitions either as simple or dishonest.
We are forced to doubt the sanity or sincerity of people who profess to
believe in the doctrine of the trinity, in a “begotten Son of God,” in
miraculous conception, in the resurrection of the body, in the Bible as
the word of God, in miracles, and in heaven and hell. We ask
ourselves:—Are men intelligent who believe these things, or do they merely
profess to believe them, and are dishonest? We cannot reconcile faith in
the Christian superstitions with mental soundness and good sense.
What is there in Nature to suggest any of the Christian doctrines? Does
not everything we know, everything we have seen, everything we have
experienced, deny and disprove the Christian superstitions? Why, then, do
people accept them? We find no one that acts as though Christianity were
true, no one who lives as though hell were under his feet and liable at
any moment to pull him down to eternal damnation. We find men spending all
their energies in trying to get the good things of earth, just as though
they were told to do so by God, instead of commanded not to lay up
treasures upon earth, etc.
It is one of the serious problems of the age to know how to deal with
Christians. They are, as a rule, respectable and decent; they have good
manners generally, and they eat and drink, dress and talk, live and die
very much as other people, and yet they profess a faith that is absurd and
foolish and that has no foundation in fact or philosophy.
We like to think well of our fellow-beings, and we would like to think
well of Christians, but we cannot do so as long as they pretend to believe
what a person of intelligence, of good sense, cannot believe. Are
Christians honest? Perhaps they think so, but have they ever really
examined their belief in the light of the knowledge of the twentieth
century? If they will do this, we do not see how they can longer profess
to be Christians, if they are honest.
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When men are hungry roast mutton is better than the lamb that taketh away
wrath.
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If a man can look in the mirror of his own soul without shame, he can look
the whole world in the face without a blush.