SO FAR as we know, man is the author of all books. If a book had been
found on the earth by the first man, he might have regarded it as the
work of God; but as men were here a good while before any books were
found, and as man has produced a great many books, the probability is
that the Bible is no exception.
Most nations, at the time the Old Testament was written, believed in
slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and religious persecution;
and it is not wonderful that the book contained nothing contrary to such
belief. The fact that it was in exact accord with the morality of its
time proves that it was not the product of any being superior to man.
"The inspired writers" upheld or established slavery, countenanced
polygamy, commanded wars of extermination, and ordered the slaughter
of women and babes. In these respects they were precisely like the
uninspired savages by whom they were surrounded. They also taught and
commanded religious persecution as a duty, and visited the most trivial
offences with the punishment of death. In these particulars they were in
exact accord with their barbarian neighbors. They were utterly ignorant
of geology and astronomy, and knew no more of what had happened than of
what would happen; and, so far as accuracy is concerned, their history
and prophecy were about equal; in other words, they were just as
ignorant as those who lived and died in nature's night.
Does any Christian believe that if God were to write a book now, he
would uphold the crimes commanded in the Old Testament? Has Jehovah
improved? Has infinite mercy-become more merciful? Has infinite wisdom
intellectually-advanced? Will any one claim that the passages upholding
slavery have liberated mankind; that we are indebted for our modern
homes to the texts that made polygamy a virtue; or that religious
liberty found its soil, its light, and rain in the infamous verse
wherein the husband is commanded to stone to death the wife for
worshiping an unknown god?
The usual answer to these objections is that no country has ever been
civilized without the Bible.
The Jews were the only people to whom Jehovah made his will directly
known,--the only people who had the Old Testament. Other nations were
utterly neglected by their Creator. Yet, such was the effect of the Old
Testament on the Jews, that they crucified a kind, loving, and perfectly
innocent man. They could not have done much worse without a Bible. In
the crucifixion of Christ, they followed the teachings of his Father.
If, as it is now alleged by the theologians, no nation can be civilized
without a Bible, certainly God must have known the fact six thousand
years ago, as well as the theologians know it now. Why did he not
furnish every nation with a Bible?
As to the Old Testament, I insist that all the bad passages were written
by men; that those passages were not inspired. I insist that a being of
infinite goodness never commanded man to enslave his fellow-man, never
told a mother to sell her babe, never established polygamy, never
ordered one nation to exterminate another, and never told a husband to
kill his wife because she suggested the worshiping of some other God.
I also insist that the Old Testament would be a much better book with
all of these passages left out; and, whatever may be said of the rest,
the passages to which attention has been drawn can with vastly more
propriety be attributed to a devil than to a god.
Take from the New Testament all passages upholding the idea that belief
is necessary to salvation; that Christ was offered as an atonement for
the sins of the world; that the punishment of the human soul will go
on forever; that heaven is the reward of faith, and hell the penalty of
honest investigation; take from it all miraculous stories,--and I admit
that all the good passages are true. If they are true, it makes no
difference whether they are inspired or not. Inspiration is only
necessary to give authority to that which is repugnant to human reason.
Only that which never happened needs to be substantiated by miracles.
The universe is natural.
The church must cease to insist that the passages upholding the
institutions of savage men were inspired of God. The dogma of the
atonement must be abandoned. Good deeds must take the place of faith.
The savagery of eternal punishment must be renounced. Credulity is not
a virtue, and investigation is not a crime. Miracles are the children
of mendacity. Nothing can be more wonderful than the majestic, unbroken,
sublime, and eternal procession of causes and effects.
Reason must be the final arbiter. "Inspired" books attested by miracles
cannot stand against a demonstrated fact. A religion that does not
command the respect of the greatest minds will, in a little while,
excite the mockery of all. Every civilized man believes in the liberty
of thought. Is it possible that God is intolerant? Is an act infamous in
man one of the virtues of the Deity? Could there be progress in heaven
without intellectual liberty? Is the freedom of the future to exist only
in perdition? Is it not, after all, barely possible that a man acting
like Christ can be saved? Is a man to be eternally rewarded for
believing according to evidence, without evidence, or against evidence?
Are we to be saved because we are good, or because another was virtuous?
Is credulity to be winged and crowned, while honest doubt is chained and
damned?
Do not misunderstand me. My position is that the cruel passages in
the Old Testament are not inspired; that slavery, polygamy, wars of
extermination, and religious persecution always have been, are, and
forever will be, abhorred and cursed by the honest, the virtuous, and
the loving; that the innocent cannot justly suffer for the guilty,
and that vicarious vice and vicarious virtue are equally absurd; that
eternal punishment is eternal revenge; that only the natural can happen;
that miracles prove the dishonesty of the few and the credulity of the
many; and that, according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, salvation does not
depend upon belief, nor the atonement, nor a "second birth," but that
these gospels are in exact harmony with the declaration of the great
Persian: "Taking the first footstep with the good thought, the second
with the good word, and the third with the good deed, I entered
paradise."
The dogmas of the past no longer reach the level of the highest thought,
nor satisfy the hunger of the heart. While dusty faiths, embalmed and
sepulchered in ancient texts, remain the same, the sympathies of men
enlarge; the brain no longer kills its young; the happy lips give
liberty to honest thoughts; the mental firmament expands and lifts; the
broken clouds drift by; the hideous dreams, the foul, misshapen children
of the monstrous night, dissolve and fade.
Robert G. Ingersoll.