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THE NECESSITY OF ATHEISM
_By_
DR. D. M. BROOKS
FREETHOUGHT PRESS ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1933_
BY FREETHOUGHT PRESS ASSOCIATION
_Dedicated to_
JOSEPH LEWIS IN AMERICA
AND
CHAPMAN COHEN IN ENGLAND
OF WHOM
IT MAY BE SAID:
_"How often it has happened that one man, standing at the right point of
view, has descried the truth, and, after having been denounced and
persecuted by all others, they have eventually been constrained to adopt
his declarations!"_--(DRAPER.)
_For the old Gods came to an end long ago. And verily it was a good and
joyful end of Gods!
They did not die lingering in the twilight--although that lie is told!
On the contrary, they once upon a time laughed themselves to death!
That came to pass when, by a God himself, the most ungodly word was
uttered, the word: "There is but one God! Thou shalt have no other Gods
before me."
An old grim beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself thus.
And then all Gods laughed and shook on their chairs and cried: "Is
Godliness not just that there are Gods, but no God?"
Whoever hath ears let him hear._
_"Thus Spake Zarathrustra"_--FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE ix
I. THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 21
II. THE KORAN, THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS 31
III. THE PROPHETS MOHAMMED, JESUS,
AND MOSES CHARLATANS OR VICTIMS
OF MENTAL AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 65
IV. SOUNDNESS OF A FOUNDATION FOR A
BELIEF IN A DEITY 94
V. THE PERSISTENCE OF RELIGION 115
VI. RELIGION AND SCIENCE 120
VII. RELIGION AND MEDICINE 126
VIII. RELIGION AND ASTRONOMY 148
IX. RELIGION AND GEOGRAPHY 151
X. RELIGION AND CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS 154
XI. RELIGION AND GEOLOGY, PHILOLOGY,
AND EVOLUTION 157
XII. RELIGION AND WITCHCRAFT 163
XIII. RELIGION AND MORALITY 193
XIV. CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 211
XV. CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY 214
XVI. CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR 224
XVII. RELIGION AND WOMAN 242
XVIII. THE PHILOSOPHERS AND THE GREAT
ILLUSION 251
XIX. THE DOOM OF RELIGION; THE NECESSITY
OF ATHEISM 269
XX. CONTEMPORARY OPINION 309
PREFACE
Plain speaking is necessary in any discussion of religion, for if the
freethinker attacks the religious dogmas with hesitation, the orthodox
believer assumes that it is with regret that the freethinker would
remove the crutch that supports the orthodox. And all religious beliefs
are "crutches" hindering the free locomotive efforts of an advancing
humanity. There are no problems related to human progress and happiness
in this age which any theology can solve, and which the teachings of
freethought cannot do better and without the aid of encumbrances.
Havelock Ellis has stated that, "The man who has never wrestled with his
early faith, the faith that he was brought up with and that yet is not
truly his own--for no faith is our own that we have not arduously
won--has missed not only a moral but an intellectual discipline. The
absence of that discipline may mark a man for life and render all his
work ineffective. He has missed a training in criticism, in analysis, in
open-mindedness, in the resolutely impersonal treatment of personal
problems, which no other training can compensate. He is, for the most
part, condemned to live in a mental jungle where his arm will soon be
too feeble to clear away the growths that enclose him, and his eyes too
weak to find the light." The man who has allowed his mental capacities
to clear his way through the dense underbrush of religious dogma finds
that he has emerged into a purer and healthier atmosphere. In the
bright light of this mental emancipation a man perceives the falsities
of all religions in their historic, scientific, and metaphysical
aspects. The healthier mental viewpoint holds up to scorn and discards
the reactionary religious philosophy of morals, and the sum total of his
conclusions must be that religion is doomed; and doomed in this modern
day by its absolute irrelevance to the needs and interests of modern
life. And this not only by the steadily increasing army of freethinkers,
but by the indifference and neglect of those who still cling to the fast
slipping folds of religious creeds--- the future freethinkers.
It was Spinoza who remarked that, "The proper study of a wise man is not
how to die but how to live." Religious creeds can but teach how man
should live, so that when he dies, he may be assured of salvation; and
the important thing is not what he does to help his fellow men while he
is living, but how closely he lives in conformity to a reactionary code
of dogmas. Religion has always aimed to smooth the sufferer's passage to
the next world, not to save him for this world.
Freethought has dethroned the gods from the pedestal, and has replaced,
not an empty idol, but an _ideal_, the ideal of a man who is his own
god.
It has become increasingly apparent that what men have hitherto
attributed to the gods are nothing but the ideals they value and grope
for in themselves. The ideal of the freethinker, the conception that
places the supreme worth of human life in the expanding horizon of man's
usefulness to man, is forever menaced by the supernaturalism of the
theist which manifests itself in the multifarious religious sects that
are the most active and constant menace to civilization and to mankind
today. That religion in the past has produced suffering incalculable and
has been the greatest obstacle in the advance of secular knowledge is a
fact too well attested to by history to be denied by any sincere and
unbiased intelligent man. That today it constitutes a cultural lag, an
active menace to the best interests of humanity and the last refuge of
human savagery, is the contention of the freethinker.
The conception of the God-idea as held by society in general stands in
the same position as the vermiform appendix does to the anatomy of man.
It may have been useful in some way thousands of years ago, but today it
constitutes a detriment to the well-being of the individual without
offering any compensatory usefulness. Agree or disagree with this
contention you may, but only when you are made aware of the facts that
can be brought to the aid of this conviction. Just as the fundamental
principle of justice is outraged when a man or an institution is
condemned by jurist or popular opinion when an opportunity is not given
to present the facts on both aspects of the case, just so is no man
justified in making a decision between theism and atheism until he
becomes acquainted with both sides of the controversy. Freethought but
asks a hearing and the exercise of the unbiased reason of the man who
has not hitherto been made aware of its contentions.
In the religious revolution of this twentieth century, the battle ground
is squarely seen to be between supernaturalism and secularism. Although
the supernaturalists are well entrenched and fortified, it is well to
remember that it is the man with vision who finally prevails. The time
has passed when the freethinker could be held up to the community as an
example of a base and degraded individual. No manner of pulpit drivel
can delude even the unthinking masses to this misconception. The
freethinker is today the one who beholds the vision, and this vision
does not transcend the natural. It is a vision that is earth-bound; a
vision it may be called, since it leaps the boundary of the present and
infers for him what the future of a secular organization of the entire
constituency of humanity will bring forth. This vision is but a product
of his scientific armamentarium and is the means by which he is assured
of victory over the well-entrenched and fortified position of the
supernaturalists who are still creed-bound to use antiquated and useless
weapons. The supernaturalist's armamentarium of God, Bible, Heaven,
Hell, Soul, Immortality, Sin, The Fall and Redemption of Man, Prayer,
Creed, and Dogma, leave as much impression on the mind of intelligent
man as would an arrow against a battleship. And the comparison is apt,
the supernaturalists have made full use of force, be it in physical
warfare or in mental coercion. The freethinker has as much use for
physical force and war as he has for mental coercion; both are abhorrent
to him.
_Supernaturalism vs. Secularism_--that, and that alone is the field of
argument. The supernaturalist, be he the fundamentalist of whatever
denomination, or the more advanced modernist, is as tenaciously clinging
to the transcendental, to revelation, to the infallibility of the Bible,
if not in all respects at least in some (although this is a
contradiction _per se_), to the interdisposition of a deity in the
affairs of mankind, as were his ancestors of five hundred years ago. In
these aspects as well as in the armamentarium enumerated above, the
supernaturalists are agreed and are making their last stand.
The secularists, the opinion of the theists to the contrary, are also
agreed. It matters not what a man calls his mental process; be he
infidel, sceptic, rationalist, agnostic, or atheist; he is firm in the
conviction that religions of all varieties are rapidly sinking into the
limbo of all other ancient superstitions. To him it is but a matter of
time for the inevitable crumbling and disappearance of these
superstitions, and the time involved is directly proportional to the
ease and rapidity with which scientific knowledge is disseminated to men
who have the mental capacity to understand the value of this knowledge
and its utter destruction of all forms of supernaturalism. When man
becomes fully cognizant of the fact that all the knowledge acquired by
the human race has been the result of human inquiry, the result of
reasoning processes, and the exercise of mind alone, then secularism
will have overcome the long night of supernaturalism. And it is this
mental attitude of secularism that proceeds with an ever accelerated
rapidity to overcome the problems that confront humanity by substituting
human inquiry for divine revelation. Thus this attitude of man to
proceed through life dependent only on his own resources will expand and
strengthen his mentality by doing away with the inferiority complex of
the God-idea. This vision of man, the master of his own destinies, the
searcher for truth and the shaper of a better life for the only
existence that he knows anything about, this reliance of _man upon man_,
and without the supposed interference of any god, constitutes atheism in
its broadest and true sense.
Science and reason, the constituents of secularism, are the mortal
enemies of supernaturalism. Secularism, however, is at a disadvantage at
this stage of our mental development, since it is approached only by the
calm light of the intellect. And intellect can but make an appeal to
reason. If the seeds of these appeals fall on the fertile minds of
mentally advanced humanity, they will flourish; if they fall on the
barren ground of creed-bound minds, they take no root. Recognition of
facts and honest deductions are not natural to the human mind. As far as
religious matters are concerned, the vast majority of men have not
reached a mental maturity; they are still in the infantile state where
they have not as yet learned that the sequences of events are not to be
interrupted by their desires. The easier path lies in the giving way to
the unstable emotions. The primitive instincts are for emotion and for
loose imaginings, and these are the provinces of supernaturalism.
Supernaturalism arouses the stupid interests and the brutish passions,
and from these are born the bitter fruits of ignorance and hatred. The
secularist is one in whom the intellect is passionate, and the passions
cold. The supernaturalist on the other hand reverses the order, and in
him the passions are active and the intellect inert. In each man there
dwells a tyrant who creates for him a deity materialized out of these
factors of ignorance and fear. It is science and reason which must
destroy for him this monstrous apparition. But, as yet, there is no
indication that our mental development in relation to social progress
has made the great strides that our purely material progress has made.
The twentieth century man utilizes and enjoys the material benefits of
his century, but his mental progress lies bound and drugged by the
viewpoints of 2000 years ago.
Sir Leslie Stephen has declared, "How much intellect and zeal runs to
waste in the spasmodic efforts of good men to cling to the last fragment
of decaying systems, to galvanize dead formulae into some dim semblance
of life! Society will not improve as it might when those who should be
leaders of progress are staggering backward and forward with their eyes
passionately reverted to the past. Nay, we shall never be duly sensitive
to the miseries and cruelties which make the world a place of torture
for so many, so long as men are encouraged in the name of religion to
look for a remedy, not in fighting against surrounding evils, but in
cultivating aimless contemplations of an imaginary ideal. Much of our
popular religion seems to be expressly directed to deaden our sympathies
with our fellow men by encouraging an indolent optimism; our thoughts of
the other world are used in many forms as an opiate to drug our minds
with indifference to the evils of this; and the last word of half of our
preachers is, 'dream rather than work.'"
There is always a great deal of discrepancy between that which is best
for the gods and that which is best for the individual and for society
in general. One cannot serve man perfectly and the traditional gods as
well. It is, therefore, the contention of freethinkers that if man had
given to the service of man all that he had given to the gods in the
past, our present stage of civilization would be much in advance of
where it is today.
If there is anything in the discussion to follow that may seem
irreverent to the reader, the author wishes to call attention that he
has but presented well substantiated facts. It is not only his opinion
that he is voicing, but it is the facts as he has found them recorded in
the researches of numerous sincere men. Finally, it is the conviction of
all freethinkers that, as Professor James H. Leuba has stated, "It is,
furthermore, essential to intellectual and moral advances that the
beliefs that come into existence should have free play. Antagonistic
beliefs must have the chance of proving their worth in open contest. It
is this way scientific theories are tested, and in this way also,
religious and ethical conceptions should be tried. But a fair struggle
cannot take place when people are dissuaded from seeking knowledge, or
when knowledge is hidden."
The cultivation of the intellect is a duty that is imposed on all men.
Even those who still cling to the dying beliefs must admit the force of
what Winwood Reade said, "To cultivate the intellect is therefore a
religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the
religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that
it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall."
When the principles of freethought shall have dispelled the intellectual
cloud of the God-idea and the vanishing dream of a heaven which has too
long drawn men's eyes away from this earth, then, and then only, will
these words of Cicero have widespread meaning:
"Men were born for the sake of men, that each should assist the
others."
THE NECESSITY OF ATHEISM
CHAPTER I
THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
_To early man, the gods were real in the same sense that the
mountains, forests, or waterfalls which were thought to be their
homes were real. For a long time the spirits that lived in drugs or
wines and made them potent were believed to be of the same order of
fact as the potency itself. But the human creature is curious and
curiosity is bold. Hence, the discovery that a reported god may be a
myth._
MAX CARL OTTO.
The geologists estimate that the age of the earth is somewhere between
80 and 800 millions of years; that the Neanderthal race existed for more
than 200,000 years; that between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago, as the
Fourth Glacial Period softened towards more temperate conditions, a
different human type came upon the scene and exterminated Homo
Neanderthalensis. These first "true men" descended from some more
ape-like progenitors and are classed by ethnologists with the same
species as ourselves, and with all human races subsequent to them under
one common, specific term, Homo Sapiens.
The age of cultivation began with the neolithic phase of human affairs
about 10,000 or 12,000 years ago; about 6000 or 7000 years ago men began
to gather into the first towns and to develop something more than the
loose-knit tribes which had hitherto been their highest political
organization. Altogether, there must have elapsed about 500,000 years
from the earliest ape-like human stage of life on this planet to the
present time.
It necessarily follows that the age of our present civilization is by no
means that which the Bible stipulates, but is merely an atom in the vast
space-time of this earth. The reason for this disparity is that with the
development of the mind of man throughout the ages there was conceived
also his self-made religious systems, based on a subjective
interpretation of the universe, and not on an objective one, devoid of
emotional bias.
"Primitive man did not understand the natural cause of shadows, echoes,
the birth and death of vegetable and animal organisms. Of this ignorance
religion was born, and theology was evolved as its art of expression."
(_Draper._)
Our story takes us back some twelve thousand years to neolithic man.
Squatting in his rude hovel or gloomy cave, he listens to the sounds of
a storm without. The howling of the wind, the flashes of lightning, and
crashing of thunder give rise to that elemental emotion--fear. Fear was
always with him, as he thought of the huge stones that fell and crushed
him, and the beasts which were so eager to devour him. All things about
him seemed to conspire for his death: the wind, lightning, thunder, rain
and storm, as well as the beasts and falling trees; for in his mind he
did not differentiate animate from inanimate objects. Slowly, through
his groping mind there evolved the thought, due to past experience, that
he could not contend with these things by physical force, but must
subdue them with magic; his magic consisted of the beating of crude
drum-like instruments, dances, and the mumbling of words.
Upon falling asleep he dreams, and awakening, he finds that he is still
in the same place where he had lain the night before. Yet, he is certain
that during the night he had traveled to his favorite wood and killed an
animal whose tender flesh he was still savoring. Since the conception
of a dream was as yet foreign to him, the logical conclusion he arrived
at was that he had both a body and a spirit. If he possessed a body and
a spirit, then all things about him, he reasoned, must likewise possess
a similar spirit. Some spirits, he felt, were friendly; some, hostile to
him. The hostile spirits were to be feared; but that powerful factor,
"hope," had at last entered into his mind, and he hoped to be able to
win them over to the camp of friendly spirits.
In this manner, man passed from the stage of contending against the
spirits to one of placating them. It was believed that certain men
carried more favor with the spirits than others, and these became the
original priests, called the "Shamans."
Another expedient for warding off evil spirits was by means of the
fetish. The primitive fetish was an object containing an active friendly
spirit, which, if worn by the individual, protected him from the evil
spirits. In a short while the manufacture of fetishes became a sacred
profession, and the men who were thought to fashion the best ones became
the professional holy men of the period, the priests.
At first, idols were used to drive away the evil spirits, and then, the
conception changed to one of attracting the good spirits to man. From
the individual fetish man passed to tribal ones, which in their first
form were huge boulders and trees.
As the primitive mind gained cunning, it slyly smeared the surface of
the idol with oily substances, hoping that the spirit, like some wild
beast, would come and lick, be gratified, and remain in the idol. When
some favorable signs denoted that a good spirit had entered into the
idol, it was regularly smeared with oils and then blood, in the hope
that the spirit would be pleased sufficiently to remain there
permanently. As time went on, it became a custom, a rite, and the
spirit having performed to the satisfaction of the tribe, ways were
invented to manifest their gratitude. Instead of smearing the idol with
blood, it was thought more fitting that an animal be killed and offered
to the good spirit contained within the idol. In this manner arose the
beginning of "sacrifice." It was at this time, when man began to
persuade the idols or spirits to do things for his benefit that religion
began.
Slowly, slowly, down through the ages, as the mind of man progressed,
his self-made religious conceptions advanced. He now worshiped idols,
and these idols were his gods. The Celts, the Babylonians, the Greeks,
the Romans, all had their idols. All were certain that their gods were
the true ones, and that the others were all inferior and even false
gods. But, is the modern worshipper who is contemptuous of the ancients
very different from them?
The centuries pass by, and in their wake is man's self-conceived
religion. Now, some men take the prerogative in the manufacture of
religion, and there evolve Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism,
Confucianism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism, all inspired, all
supernatural, and with their myriads of followers who believed and still
believe that theirs is the only true creed.
Very recently, in the time-scale of our development, man adopted the
methods of "Big Business," and the religion of many gods and idols,
polytheism, has given way to one Supreme God, monotheism. Man found that
it made for simplicity and saved his valuable time if he worshiped one
god, instead of obeying the hitherto many. The "Chosen People" took it
upon themselves to bring the next divinely concocted conception of a
Supreme God, and they manufactured the creed of Judaism.
After many years, a rift arose among the Jews, and the sectarians were
defeated and expelled. Foiled in their first object, they cast aside
the laws of Moses and offered the Hebrew religion without the Hebrew
ceremonies to the Greek and Roman world. Jesus was the man who prepared
the way for this remarkable event.
When Mohammed conceived the divine conception that he would follow in
the footsteps of his brother-prophets, Moses and Jesus, the latest of
the major religions was revealed.
At the present time, the Hebrews and Christians, although worshiping the
same Jehovah, are disputing with each other, and indeed, amongst
themselves, with regard to the various attributes, amorous pursuits, and
lineal descendants of the Godhead. Jehovah himself appears to be on the
decline and his unity is steadily disintegrating into a paradoxical
trinity. But we are progressing, for in 1300 years no new prophet has
arisen, and no new divine revelation is perturbing our race; the old
ones, however, are causing quite enough disturbance.
It would be of value for the modern religionist who believes that the
worship of a deity in our own age is far removed from the worship of an
idol by our savage ancestors, to retrace his steps and compare the
savage mind worshiping his particular idol and a so-called civilized
mind of today worshiping his deity.
The savage prayed to his idol, that is, he _begged_. He begged the idol
to watch over his flock or his fields. The modern prays, that is he begs
of his idol, his deity, to prosper his business, to guard his life, and,
as one of my "super-devout" acquaintances recently informed me, on the
eve of an important golf match, for the Deity to give him endurance; in
other words, "to cut down his golf score."
The savage voiced his incantations; the modern sings hymns, that is he
flatters. There is still a great deal of the charlatanry of the magician
in the construction of the houses of prayer, with the sunlight shut out
and only filtering through the leaded and multi-colored panes, the
semidarkness, the solemnity, the rise and swell of the organ; all things
combined to overcome the senses, to play upon the emotions, and to
subdue the reason.
The savage made sacrifices to his idols, that is, he paid tribute,
chiefly out of fear, but partly in the hope of getting something better
in return. The modern does not offer human or animal sacrifice, it is
true; but it must be borne in mind that the wealth of the savage
consisted of his sheep, oxen, oils, and wines, not money. Today, the
devout offer a sacrifice of money to the Deity. We are all familiar with
the requests of religious institutions for gifts, which nearly always
finish with the phrase, "And the Lord will repay you many fold." In
other words, sacrifice part of your worldly goods to the idol, and he
will repay with high interest. He will give in return long life and much
riches. The savage was afraid to utter the real name of his god, it was
taboo. The modern says, "Take not the name of the Lord in vain." Even
today, the followers of Moses consider it taboo to utter the name of
Jehovah except in prayer.
The present-day methods of worship are no different from those of the
savage; the method of supplication has changed with the advance of the
years, but the fundamental ideas at the base of all worship are just as
crude today as they were 4000 years ago. Primitive man was no more a
fetishist than is the modern Catholic. The latter still wears medals and
images suspended from the neck and pinned to the inner clothing.
Moreover, a survey of the various religions extant indicates that the
religious factor is no less prevalent today than it was in primitive
societies.
In Greenland, one finds, that through nearly all of its vast area
religion has no place, but that is chiefly the result of its being
largely uninhabited. In Alaska, the population is for the most part
Catholic, although the natives are animists. In Canada, 33 per cent are
Catholic, the rest are mainly Protestant. In the United States, 20 per
cent are Catholic, 3.5 per cent are Jewish, and the remainder are
Protestants. Mexico, Central and South America, are almost entirely
Roman Catholic. In Europe, Russia was until recently dominantly Greek
Orthodox; the Scandinavian peninsula, the English Isles, and Central
Europe are dominantly Protestant, while France, Portugal, Spain, Italy,
and the rest of the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea are
Catholic. The rest of the continent is divided between Jews and
Mohammedans. In Asia, the entire vast area of Siberia is only sparsely
settled and its religions include Animism, Taoism, and Christianity. In
China, we find the land of three truths, Confucianism, Taoism, and
Buddhism. India, Tibet, and Burma are dominated by Hinduism and
Buddhism; Arabia, Persia, and the rest of the continent are Mohammedan.
In Japan, there are the Shintoists. The East Indies, where the
population is native, are Animistic. In Australia, the dominant religion
is Protestantism. In North Africa, the west coast inhabitants are
Mohammedans, while the Abyssinians are Christians. There are some Coptic
Christians, in Egypt, while in the Congo and South African countries
down to the Cape Settlements, the natives are Animists. The Cape
Settlements themselves are Protestants.
More concretely, it is estimated that 10.7% of the inhabitants of the
globe are Protestants; 16.2% are Catholics; 7.1% are Greek Orthodox; 10%
are Animists; 1.4% are Shintoists; 18.2% are Confucians and Taoists;
12.8% are Hindus; 8.4% are Buddhists; 13.4% are Moslems; and 1.8% are
Hebrews and unclassified sects. Truly, a religious babel! and 10% of all
the inhabitants of the globe, about the same number of people who
profess to Protestantism, are Animists. This is the lowest stage of
primitive religion, and millions of humans are still quagmired in the
sloth of a primitive faith which once must have been the faith of all
human beings.
The Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, will readily agree that the
animism, the fetishism, and idolatry of the savage were man-made foolish
beliefs. They can readily perceive that there was nothing supernatural,
nothing revealed, in such beliefs; but they do not realize that to him,
in his infantile development, the fetish and the idol were just as
supernatural and superior as the modern conception of a Supreme Being.
In each age man creates his god, in his own image, and within the
confines of his own mental development. The mind of man has expanded so
that it has conquered more and more of his environment; it has grown and
wrested from nature those secrets which constitute his civilization.
Along with this has progressed the conception of a deity, but only to a
certain extent. The mind has embellished the outward appearance of its
gods, consolidated them, and built upon them intricate systems of
theology, upon which feed vast hordes of clergy; but the basic
conception, the fundamental principle, that there must be something
supernatural to explain something which we cannot explain at the present
moment, that conception still drugs the mind of man. Primitive man did
not understand the meaning of lightning, thunder, shadows, echoes, etc.,
and he placed these among the supernatural phenomena. The modern mind
explains these phenomena, understands the laws governing their
production. Yet, it is this same modern mind which persists in going
back to our savage ancestors and their mental sloth, by attributing the
myriads of phenomena which still elude its present stage of mental
development, to a particular idol, this time, a Supreme Being.
Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism,
Zoroastrianism, Hebrewism, Mohammedanism, Christianity--which is the
true religion?
Let us suppose for a moment that an inhabitant of Mars, if there be
such, were by a "miracle" to be transported to this earth and endowed
with the mental capacity of the average inhabitant of the earth (a thing
which perhaps would not be so flattering to our guest), were to be
approached by a zealot of each one of these faiths, who hoped to convert
this stranger to its ranks. Since the factor of coercion by force of
environment to which each of these earthlings was subject would
naturally be absent, the Martian would be in a position to make a fair
choice. How much would the visitor be impressed by the statements of the
Christian, Mohammedan, or Jew, when advised that unless he embraced
their particular creed, he would be damned to eternal torture in their
particular Hell?
If a Christian were to accost him and endeavor to put the fear of God
into him, and if our visitor, being from Mars, already knew that of the
world's population, only about 27 per cent are Christians, and the other
73 per cent are Non-Christians, is it logical to suppose that he would
ever be convinced that an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, Supreme
Being would select only one quarter of his children whom he had created
for redemption, with the infallible knowledge that nearly three-quarters
of them would be confined to Hell for not believing what He could have
made them believe if He were truly omnipotent, omniscient, and
benevolent? Would he not rather reply that on his planet such a "Father"
who would select some of his children for rewards, and maliciously
torture his other children, would not be designated as a God but a
Devil? Were the Martian to be further informed that each one of God's
children was represented in actual figures by hundreds of millions and
that these have been living on the planet Earth for hundreds of
thousands of years, and were the visitor to contemplate the vast
incomprehensible number of souls that have been confined to Hell by such
a father, might he not cut his visit short? He would be apt to repeat
with James Mill, "Think of a being who would make a Hell, who would
create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge and therefore
with the intention that the great majority of them should be consigned
to horrible and everlasting torment." I believe that our guest would
assert that if such a Being actually existed and demanded worship, he
would certainly have revealed his true belief to the first man Adam, and
therefore saved his children an inestimable amount of suffering.
Were the visitor to be further pressed by the zealot with the vision of
eternal hell, I believe he would retort that there is no reason for God
to punish those who doubt or deny faith in His existence, since it is
His own doing; and if He desired each one of His children to worship Him
according to the precepts of a certain creed, He surely would have
instilled that creed into man's make-up together with the rest of his
characteristics. Undoubtedly, He would not esteem any creed which damned
the human intellect by cursing the doubts which are the necessary
consequence of its exercise, or the creed which cursed the moral faculty
by asserting the guilt of honest error.
If our visitor would but glance at the history, the evolution, of
religious beliefs, he would realize and soundly assert that all
religions are human in their origins, erroneous in their theories, and
ridiculous in their threats and rewards.