The Necessity of Atheism Part 19

The Egyptian trinities are well known: thus, from Amun by Maut proceeds Khonso; from Osiris by Isis proceeds Horus; from Neph by Sate proceeds Anouke. The Egyptians had propounded the dogma that there had been divine incarnations, the fall of man, and redemption.

In India, centuries before Christianity, we find the Hindu trinity; Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. In the Inst.i.tutes of Manu, a code of civil law as well as religious law, written about the ninth century before Christ, is found a description of creation, the nature of G.o.d, and rules for the duty of man in every station of life from the moment of birth to death.

Professor James T. Shotwell when speaking of paganism reminds us, "Who of us can appreciate antique paganism? The G.o.ds of Greece or Rome are for us hardly more than the mutilated statues of them in our own museums; pitiable, helpless objects before the scrutiny and comments of a pa.s.sing crowd. Venus is an armless figure from the Louvre; Dionysos does not mean to us divine possession, the gift of tongues, or immortality; Attis brings no salvation. But to antiquity the 'pagan'

cults were no mockery. They were as real as Polynesian heathenism or Christianity to-day." (_James T. Shotwell_: "_The Religious Revolution of To-day._")

It is seen, therefore, that from time immemorial, man does not discover his G.o.ds, _but invents them_. He invents them in the light of his experience and endows them with capacities that indicate the stage of man's mental development.

Religion is not the product of civilized man. Man inherits his G.o.d just as he inherits his physical qualities. The idea of a supernatural being creating and governing this earth is a phantom born in the mind of the savage. If it had not been born in the early stages of man's mental development, it surely would not come into existence now. History proves that as the mind of man expands, it does not discover new G.o.ds, but that it discards them. It is not strange, therefore, that there has not been advanced a new major religious belief in the last 1300 years. All modern religious conceptions, no matter how disguised, find their origin in the fear-stricken ignorance of the primitive savage.

A Christian will admit that the G.o.ds of others are man-made, and that their creed is similar to the wors.h.i.+p of the savage. He looks at their G.o.ds with the vision of a civilized being; but when he looks at his own G.o.d, he forgets his civilization, he relapses centuries of time, and _his_ mental viewpoint is that of the savage.

Christianity, with its primitive concepts, can make its adherents firm in the belief of great monstrosities. When its adherents believed that the Bible sanctioned the destruction of heretics and witches, they were certainly doing things from a Christian standpoint. It was this standpoint that justified an embittered denunciation of evolution at one time and then recanting, adopted it as a part of the Bible teaching.

When the Spaniards blotted out an entire civilization in South America, when Catholics butchered Protestants, or Protestants butchered Catholics, they were all justified from the Christian standpoint.

Man has been living on this planet some 500,000 years. Jesus appeared less than 2000 years ago to save mankind. What of those countless millions of men that died before Christ came to save the world from d.a.m.nation? If the Christian creed, that except a man believes in the Lord Jesus Christ he cannot be saved, is maintained, then it must be that those millions of human beings who lived before Christ and had no chance to believe, are in h.e.l.l-fire.

It is probable that one of the factors that turned primitive man's attention away from his cruel and short, earthly existence to the thought of a more lengthy and less cruel existence in a hereafter, was the extreme uncertainty and short duration of his own life. And this primitive trend of thought that turns man's mind from the here and now to a contemplation of a mythical hereafter persists to this day, produces the same slavish resignation. This false release from the actualities const.i.tute a mental aberration which we see in the hysterical and weak-minded. When such an individual is confronted by problems that tax his mental strength, if that individual has not strength of mind to reason and to persevere so that he overcomes his environmental difficulties, he will seek an avenue of escape in a fanciful existence which the physician recognizes in hysteria and certain forms of mental disease. So, throughout the ages, man has sought release from the realities of his existence into a fanciful and pleasantly delusional flight into a hereafter. "There is no salvation in that sickly obscurantism which attempts to evade realities by confusing itself about them. Safety lies only in clarity and the struggle for the light. No subliminal nor fringe of consciousness can rank in the intellectual life beside the burning focal center where the rays of knowledge converge. The hope must be in following reason, not in thwarting it. To turn back from it is not mysticism, it is superst.i.tion.

No; we must be prepared to see the higher criticism destroy the historicity of the most sacred texts of the Bible, psychology a.n.a.lyze the phenomena of conversion on the basis of adolescent pa.s.sion, anthropology explain the genesis of the very idea of G.o.d. An where _we_ can understand, it is a moral crime to cherish the un-understood.

(_James T. Shotwell_: "_The Religious Revolution of Today._") Religious beliefs are clearly mental aberrations from which it is high time that the progress of knowledge should lead to a logical cure. Man is steadily overcoming and conquering his environment; the uncertainty of life and cruelty are much diminished as compared with the past ages, but man has not as yet fully utilized the means of an emanc.i.p.ating measure from his mental enslavement and fear of his environment."

Chapman Cohen, in his "Theism or Atheism," clearly states: "We know that man does not discover G.o.d, he invents him, and an invention is properly discarded when a better instrument is forthcoming. To-day, the hypothesis of G.o.d stands in just the same relation to the better life of to-day as the fire drill of the savage does to the modern method of obtaining a light. The belief in G.o.d may continue awhile in virtue of the lack of intelligence of some, of the carelessness of others, and of the conservative character of the ma.s.s. But no amount of apologizing can make up for the absence of genuine knowledge, nor can the flow of the finest eloquence do aught but clothe in regal raiment the body of a corpse."

Religion arose as a means of explanation of natural phenomena at a time when no other explanation of the origin of natural phenomena had been ascertained. G.o.d is always what Spinoza called it, "the asylum of ignorance." When causes are unknown, G.o.d is brought forward; when causes are known, G.o.d retires into the background. In an age of ignorance, G.o.d is active; in an age of science, he is impotent. History attests this fact.

"The single and outstanding characteristic of the conception of G.o.d at all times, and under all conditions is that it is the equivalent of ignorance. In primitive times it is ignorance of the character of the natural forces that leads to the a.s.sumption of the existence of G.o.ds, and in this respect the G.o.d idea has remained true to itself throughout.

Even to-day, whenever the principle of G.o.d is invoked, a very slight examination is enough to show that the only reason for this being done is our ignorance of the subject before us." (_Chapman Cohen._)

The belief in G.o.d is least questioned where civilization is lowest; it is called into the most serious question where civilization is most advanced. It is clear that had primitive man known what we know today about nature, the G.o.ds would never have been born.

"The suspicious feature must be pointed out that the belief in G.o.d owes its existence, not to the trained and educated observation of civilized times, but to the uncritical reflection of the primitive mind. It has its origin there, and it would indeed be remarkable, if, while in almost every other direction the primitive mind showed itself to be hopelessly wrong, in its interpretation of the world in this particular respect, it has proved itself to be altogether right." (_Chapman Cohen._)

All intelligent men admit that human welfare depends upon our knowledge and our ability to harness the forces of nature. "I myself," writes Llewelyn Powys, "do not doubt that the good fortune of the human race depends more on science than on religion. In all directions the bigotry of the churches obstructs amelioration ... as long as the majority of men rely upon supernatural interference, supernatural guidance, from a human point of view all is likely to be confusion.... Trusting in G.o.d rather than in man it is in the nature of these blind wors.h.i.+ppers to oppose every advance of human knowledge. It was they who condemned Galileo, who resisted Darwin and who to-day deride the doctrines of Freud." Science has given us an account of the operation of the universe _sans_ G.o.d, and investigation has also given us a clear conception of the evolution of all religious beliefs from the crude conceptions of the savage to the but little altered form of the modern conception.

"If we are to regard the G.o.d idea as an evolution which began in the ignorance of primitive man, it would seem clear that no matter how refined or developed the idea may become, it can rest on no other or sounder basis than which is presented to us in the psychology of primitive man. Each stage of theistic belief grows out of the proceeding stage, and if it can be shown that the beginning of this evolution arose in a huge blunder, I quite fail to see how any subsequent development can convert this unmistakable blunder into a demonstrable truth."

(_Chapman Cohen._)

Men of today are trying to force themselves to believe that there must be something true in that which had been believed by so many great and pious men of old. But it is in vain; intellect has outgrown faith. They are aware of the fallacy of their opinions, yet angry that another should remind them of it. And these men who today are secretly sceptics, are loudest in their public denunciation of others who publicly announce their scepticism. In ancient Greece, when the philosophers came into prominence, Zeus was superseded by the air, and Poseidon by the water; in modern times, all hitherto supernatural events are being explained by physical laws. Plato regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the public faith although he full well knew the absurdities of that faith.

Today, there are many Platos that hold to the same conviction. The freethinkers hold to the view of Xenophanes who denounced the public faith as an ancient blunder which had been converted by time into a national imposture. All religion is a delusion which transfers the motives and thoughts of men to those who are not men. No ecclesiastic has as yet offered a satisfactory answer as to why there has been a marvelous disappearance of the working of miracles, and why human actions alone are now to be seen in this world of ours.

We are witnessing today what happened in the Roman empire during the decline of polytheism. Draper states: "Between that period during which a nation has been governed by its imagination, and that in which it submits to reason, there is a melancholy interval. The const.i.tution of man is such that, for a long time after he has discovered the incorrectness of the ideas prevailing around him, he shrinks from openly emanc.i.p.ating himself from their dominion, and, constrained by the force of circ.u.mstances, he becomes a hypocrite, publicly applauding what his private judgment condemns. Where a nation is making this pa.s.sage, so universal do these practices become that it may be truly said hypocrisy is organized. It is possible that whole communities might be found living in this deplorable state."

And, indeed, in our own country we are witnessing an example of this very thing. Religion has led to widespread hypocrisy. Our religious influences have created a race of men mentally docile and obedient to the dictates of tyrannical ecclesiasticism. It has created a fear of truth, and our minds are still brutish and puerile in our methods of reasoning. Credulity has led to stultification, and stultification of the mind is the bitter fruit which we have been reaping for thousands of years.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of men and women in these United States that give lip-service to their creed, but deep in the recesses of their minds a small voice cries to them and shames them, for as soon as they reason, they become sceptics. How can we know the actual number of earthlings that are sceptics? It is impossible in our present state of development. Religious persecution today is just as active as it was during the Middle Ages. Surely, a man is not burned at the stake for his scepticism in this age; but is he not done to death? If the grocer, the butcher, the doctor, the lawyer, the scholar, the business man, were to boldly announce his scepticism, what would happen to him?

The answer is well known to all. Immediately, each of his religious customers would take it upon himself to act as a personal inquisition.

The sceptic would be shunned socially, he would be ignored, his wares would be sought after elsewhere, and he would suffer. His wife, his family, his children, would suffer with him, for our economic scheme makes the would-be sceptic dependent upon the whims of the majority believers. He is forced to hold his tongue, or else is tortured. Are not the wants of his family, the hunger, and ostracism torture? Thus thousands are forced into hypocrisy. Many others, although they have outgrown all fear of the G.o.d of orthodoxy, the fear of the G.o.d of social pressure remains.

There are embodied in all creeds three human impulses: fear, conceit, and hatred; and religion has given an air of respectability to these pa.s.sions. Religion is a malignant disease born of fear, a cancer which has been eating into the vitals of everything that is worth while in our civilization; and by its growth obstructing those advances which make for a more healthful life.

Morally and intellectually, socially and historically, religion has been shown to be a pernicious influence. Some of these influences falling into these cla.s.sifications have been considered in previous chapters.

The modern Christian, in his amusing ignorance, a.s.serts that Christianity is now mild and rationalistic, ignoring the fact that all its so-called mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.

"Historically, churches have stood on the side of the powers that be.

They have defended slavery or have held their tongues about it. They have maintained serfdom and kept serfs. They have opposed every movement undertaken for the liberation of the ma.s.ses of men; the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity are the creations of the camps of their enemies, of the rationalists of the eighteenth century, and the liberals and socialists of the nineteenth century. They have defended and condoned the industrial exploitation of children. They have fought bitterly the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. They have justified unjust war.

They have fought with book and bill and candle and f.a.got every new great step in the advancement of science from gravitation to evolution.

Wardens, ever since Constantine gave the schools of antiquity into the keeping of the Christian bishops, of the education of the people, they have fought with all their power the establishment of free public schools and the spread of literacy and knowledge among the people."

(_Horace M. Kallen: "Why Religion."_)

If Christianity has made any progress in the a.s.similation of doctrines that are less barbarous than heretofore, they have been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as a result of the onslaught of freethinkers.

Throughout the ages, when a thinking man had questioned the how and why of any secular problem, so long as that problem had no direct or indirect bearing upon religion, or upon any branch of knowledge that was a.s.sumed to be infallibly foretold in the Bible, that man was unmolested.

The problems falling into the above cla.s.sification were extremely small due to the strongly defended theological lunacy that a.s.serted itself in the declaration that all knowledge both spiritual and material was contained in the Bible as interpreted by the Church.

Man, however, when he broached his religious doubts, was regarded as the most sinful of beings, and it was forbidden him to question and yield to the conclusions that his mind evolved.

Think of the irony and tragedy of this self-enslavement of the human mind! There is one characteristic that man prides himself as having apart from all lower animals, his ability to reason and to think. Is it his superior musculature and brute strength that has placed man upon his present pinnacle of advanced civilization, or is it his mental development, his mind, that has taught him to harness the forces of nature? Has not his mind so co-*ordinated his movements that he has enslaved those forces of nature to be his aid? And yet, if mind is one thing that has enabled man to pull himself out of the mora.s.s of brute life, why has it been that man himself has been so persistently decrying and degrading the efforts of that mind?

The answer is, that religion has provided the shackles and securely and jealously enslaved the mind. With the aid of his religious beliefs man has been ensnared into a mental prison in which he has been an all too willing captive. Surely it is easier to believe than to think.

Napoleon, himself a sceptic, was cognizant of this slave philosophy.

"What is it," he is reported to have asked, "that makes the poor man think it is quite natural that there are fires in my castle when he is dying of cold? That I have ten coats in my wardrobe while he goes naked?

That at each of my meals enough is served to feed his family for a week?

It is simply religion, which tells him that in another life I shall be only his equal, and that he actually has more chance of being happy than I. Yes, we must see to it that the doors of the churches are open to all, and that it does not cost the poor man much to have prayers said on his tomb."

How well the ecclesiastical psychologists have grasped this fact, and how well they have fas.h.i.+oned a strong chain for the mind out of this weakness of human minds!

Church and government have been well aware of this psychology, and have fought constantly the spread of Freethought literature to the ma.s.ses.

Professor Bury, in his "History of Freedom of Thought," speaking of England, tells us, "If we take the cases in which the civil authorities have intervened to repress the publication of unorthodox opinions during the last two centuries, we find that the object has always been to prevent the spread of free thought among the ma.s.ses."

Think but a moment how well the above is borne out by the att.i.tude of the Church in the stand that it took during the Middle Ages, when she prohibited the reading of the Bible by any person except her clergy.

When she prohibited the printing of all books except those that she approved of; books that minutely agreed in all details with the phantastic fables of her Bible were the only ones allowed to be printed.

The Church also strenuously objected to the printing of Bibles in the languages of the ma.s.ses. That most efficient shackle to the mind, that precept that there was no knowledge, whether material or spiritual, that was not contained in the Bible, how strenuously the Church upheld that doctrine!

And in our own day, the ridiculous a.s.sumption that "mysteries" (a special form of ignorance) are the special province of the Church.

Considering these few examples as well as all ecclesiastical endeavor, no rational mind can escape the fact that that primeval curse, religion, has had for its object, down through the centuries, the s.a.d.i.s.tic desire to enslave and trample on the mind of man. It has been a defensive measure on the part of the Church, for she well recognizes that once the mind is free, it will free itself of the shackles of religion also.

Nor is this all. I execrate the enslavement of the mind of our young children by the ecclesiastics. Is anything so pitiful to behold as the firm grasp that the Church places on the mind of the youngest of children? Children at play, children of four and five years of age, will be heard to mention with fearful tones various religious rites, such as baptism and confirmation, and to perform in their manner these rites with their dolls. Fear! Fear! instilled into the minds of the impressionable children! Think of the degradation that the ecclesiastics practice when they insist that from the time a child is out of its infancy its instruction shall be placed in their hands. They take the most precious possession of man, his mind, and mould it to their desire.

The mind of a child is plastic, it is like a moist piece of clay and they mould it and form it to their desire. Warped and poured into the ecclesiastic mould of fear, the mind of the child becomes set and fixed with the years. Then it is too late for rational thinking, as far as religious matters go, the mind of the adult is firmly set in the form that the ecclesiastic has fas.h.i.+oned for him in his youth. It is impossible for the adult so taught to reason clearly and rationally concerning his religion; the mould is too strong, the clay has set, reason cannot penetrate into that hardened form. That is why it is almost impossible for the adult who has been exposed to this mental moulding from his infancy to break away from the fears and superst.i.tions learned on his mother's knee.

If Christianity, Hebrewism, Mohammedanism, or any other creed is true, its truth must be more apparent at the age of twenty-five than it is at the age of five. Why does the ecclesiastic not leave off his advances until the child reaches a mature age, an age when he can reason? Then, if theism is true, he can accept it with a reasoning mind, not a blindly faithful mind. The theist realizes, however, that belief is at one pole, reason at the other. Belief, creed, religion, are ideations of the primitive mind and the mind of the child; reason is the product of mature thought. Schopenhauer remarked that, "The power of religious dogma when inculcated early is such as to stifle conscience, compa.s.sion, and finally every feeling of humanity."

It is an undeniable fact that if the clergy would but leave their tainted hands off the minds of our children until they would have reached a mature age, there would be no religious instinct. Religious instinct is a myth. Give me but two generations of men who have not been subjected to this religious influence in childhood, and there will be a race of atheists.

The ecclesiastic has from earliest times taken the standpoint that the ma.s.ses of people are of crude susceptibility and clumsy intelligence, "sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery; and religion provides the only means of proclaiming and making them feel the high import of life." (_Schopenhauer._) Thus the theist is led to the conclusion that the end justifies the means.