The Necessity of Atheism Part 9

It is no longer necessary for children to choke to death with diphtheria. Yellow fever, and small pox in civilized countries are, or could be, wiped from the face of the earth. Malaria is controlled; tuberculosis will shortly be a rarity; typhoid fever and cholera have been eradicated wherever there is sanitation; erysipelas can be controlled; hydrophobia prevented; childbirth fever has lost its tremendous mortality; teta.n.u.s can be checked; syphilis and gonorrhea can be controlled; diabetes and pernicious anemia can be controlled; surgery is reclaiming vast mult.i.tudes and restoring to useful and happy lives thousands who would have hitherto died. So much has been done; but it is especially true that there is as much, at least, yet to be done. But all this has been achieved so recently. What might not have been won had not the minds of men been polluted from infancy, warped by the first professional holy men, the religionists, the priests? Had the idea of a supernatural force been allowed to die in the Dark Ages, as it surely would have, as man's mind expanded and developed, humanity would today find itself more advanced on the road to progress. But as it was, the myth of religion was foisted on the superst.i.tious brain, and man resigned himself to his fate, and lived in such a manner as to please this hypothetical supernatural being. The inevitable result was the abject misery, both material and spiritual, of Europe during the period when the Church was in absolute control.

If this myth and mystification had died with the dead ages, as it should have done, what a fitter place to live in this world would be today!

Consider the needless misery and the agony of those who died of the various plagues; and think of the advanced stage of medicine of Alexandria, three hundred years before the Christian era, where the physicians were welcomed to the famous library by the emperors. The state gave them their livelihood and their duties were to advance medicine by study and research. Anatomy was studied and dissection was allowed. With the coming of Christianity, the remnants of this library were destroyed, and with them went all progress in that field. If such had been the enlightened state in Egypt three hundred years before Christianity appeared, then why had not science made the same progress then as it does now? Because, to the knowledge stored in the library at Alexandria had not been added a progression of learning, a continued process of research; if this had not been halted by Christianity, how much vaster would our achievements be today?

It was not necessary for all of those millions to have been the victims of plagues, of inquisitions, of witchcraft burnings, of religious persecutions and wars. The sorrow and pain brought to untold numbers throughout the centuries could have been prevented; and would have been if man had been interested in the welfare of his fellowmen instead of the glorification of an almighty being. Future generations may well declare religion to have been the curse of humanity. The Church had cursed the human intellect by cursing the doubts which are the necessary consequence of its exercise. She had cursed even the moral faculty by a.s.serting the guilt of honest error.

Medicine which has for its sole objects the alleviation of man's sufferings, to cure them when possible, to relieve more often the pains and ills which make this life a living h.e.l.l, what might it not have accomplished ages ago had religion not interfered with its progress?

Whatever cures are known, and preventions that are practiced now, could have been common knowledge centuries ago. And what of the mult.i.tudes that perished who might have been saved, and what of the misery which might have been prevented, had not this curse fallen upon man?

Since 1906, there have been only five deaths from yellow fever in the United States. Outbreaks of cholera and plague are unknown. In former years, puerperal fever took the lives of from five to fifty of each one hundred parturient mothers. At present, an average of one out of 1250 mothers dies of this infection following childbirth. Deaths from many diseases are less than one-tenth of their former number. These include wound infections, diphtheria, scarlet fever, malaria, dysentery, typhoid, small pox, and many dietary and metabolic diseases. Since 1880, the medical sciences have accomplished a total net saving of human life from all diseases which, if equally distributed among the population, would add sixteen years to the life span of each person. In 1880, the average duration of human life, that is, the average age at which death occurred, was 41.78 years. In 1925, the average duration of life was 58.29 years. In other words, those born at this time live on the average 16.5 years longer than those born at any time prior to 1880. In a population of 120,000,000 this would mean a total of 1,920,000,000 additional years of life. Such a figure is as difficult to conceive of as are the interstellar s.p.a.ces. This is one contribution, numerically expressed, which medical science and its offspring, preventive medicine, have made to humanity in the short s.p.a.ce of fifty years.

Indeed if, as the religionists believe, there is a G.o.d, he could not have punished his subjects more than by instilling in them the "dementia religiosa." If the Church had not taught that the sum total of all knowledge was contained in the Bible, and prohibited, on pain of death and confiscation of property, the promulgation of any discoveries, men would have reasoned as they are accustomed to at the present day, and we would not be 2000 years behind in all branches of learning.

But there has never been an advance in science of widespread importance, which in some manner endangered some mouldy religious concept, that the Church has not bitterly opposed; an advance which in time has proven of inestimable good for all mankind. (A glance at the history of human progress will reveal scores of such instances.) The opposition to medicine, as previously noted, is only one of many examples which might have been chosen. In proportion, as the grasp of theology upon education tightened, medicine declined, and in proportion, as the grip relaxed, medicine developed.

CHAPTER VIII

RELIGION AND ASTRONOMY

In the early Church, astronomy, like other branches of science, was looked upon as futile, since the New Testament taught that the earth was soon to be destroyed and new heavens created.

The heavenly bodies were looked upon by the theologians as either living beings possessing souls, or as the habitation of the angels. However, as time pa.s.sed, the geocentric doctrine, the doctrine that the earth is the center of the universe and that the sun and planets revolve about it, was the theory that held the highest respect.

Copernicus, in 1543, was first to bring clearly before the world the then astounding theory that the earth and planets revolve about the sun.

But not until he was on his deathbed did he dare to publish it, for he well knew the opposition with which it would be met. Even then he published it with an apologetic lie by a friend Osiander, that Copernicus had propounded the doctrine of the earth's movement not as a fact, but as a hypothesis.

"Thus was the greatest and most enn.o.bling, perhaps, of scientific truths--a truth not less enn.o.bling to religion than to science--forced in coming before the world, to sneak and crawl." (_White: "History of Warfare of Science with Theology."_)

During the next seventy years the matter slumbered, until Galileo upheld the Copernican doctrine as the truth, and proved it to be the truth by his telescope. Immediately the Church condemned the statements of Copernicus and forbade Galileo to teach or discuss them. All books which affirmed the motion of the earth were forbidden, and to read the work of Copernicus was declared to risk d.a.m.nation. All branches of the Protestant Church, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican, vied with each other in denouncing the Copernican doctrine.

One man, Giordano Bruno dared to a.s.sert the truth in the hearing of the Papacy. For this heresy he was hunted from land to land, finally trapped in Venice, imprisoned at Rome, burned alive, and his ashes scattered to the winds!

Against Galileo, the war against the Copernican theory was concentrated.

His discoveries were declared to be deceptions, and his announcements blasphemy when, in 1610, he announced that his telescope had revealed the moons of the planet Jupiter.

In 1615, Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition at Rome, and forced to promise that he would "relinquish altogether the opinion that the sun is the center of the world, and immovable, and that the earth moves, nor henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever verbally or in writing."

Pope Paul V solemnly rendered the decree that "the doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture."

The climax of this instance of the infallibility of the Church occurred when in his seventieth year Galileo was again brought before the Inquisition; he was forced to abjure under threats of torture and imprisonment by command of Pope Urban a truth which, in this day, is taken for granted by the youngest of children. Galileo was then kept in exile for the rest of his days, died, and was buried ign.o.bly, apart from his family, without fitting ceremony, without monument or epitaph.

As late as 1873 there was published, in St. Louis, a work by a president of a Lutheran teachers' seminary in which he stated that the earth is the princ.i.p.al body of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that the sun and moon only serve to light it.

Astronomy brings forth a n.o.ble array of men who have, by their intense desire for the truth, persevered against the Church, and in spite of the vilest opposition of that Church, brought to the attention of man laws that have given a meaning and order to our universe.

Copernicus escaping persecution only by death; Bruno burned alive; Galileo imprisoned; Kepler reviled, and Newton bitterly attacked. In this manner has religion aided astronomy!

CHAPTER IX

RELIGION AND GEOGRAPHY

The ancient Greeks, especially the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle, had evolved theories of the earth's sphericity, which, while vague, were basic for subsequent accurate ideas that developed later.

When Christianity sprang into existence Eusebius, St. John Chrysostom, and Cosmos evolved a complete description of the earth. They considered the earth as a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas, as a kind of house, with heaven as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor. To the north of the earth was a great mountain; at night the sun was pushed into a pit and pulled out again in the morning, with heaven as a loft and h.e.l.l as a cellar. In the Atlantic Ocean, at some unknown distance from Europe, was one of the openings into h.e.l.l, into which a s.h.i.+p sailing to this point, would tumble. The terror of this conception was one of the chief obstacles of the great voyage of Columbus. Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Zwingli held to the opinion that a great firmament, or floor, separated the heavens from the earth; that above it were the waters and angels, and below it, the earth and man.

During the time that the sphericity of the earth was still undecided, another question arose that was considered of far greater importance, namely, the conception of the antipodes and the problem of deciding whether human beings existed on the earth's opposite side. It was Lactantius who asked, "Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? That the crops and trees grow downward? That the rains and snow and hail fall upwards toward the earth? I am at a loss as to what to say of those, who, when they have once erred, steadily persevere in their folly, and defend one vain thing by another."

St. Augustine insisted that men could not be allowed by the Almighty to live there, since, if they did, they could not see Christ at His second coming, descending through the air.

In the eighth century, a Bishop Virgil of Salzburg dared to a.s.sert that there were men living in the antipodes. He was strongly attacked by St.

Boniface of Germany, who appealed to Pope Zachary for a decision. The Pope, as the infallible teacher of Christendom, made the following response: He declared it, "Perverse, iniquitous, and against Virgil's soul." And again another infallible statement by the infallible Pope Zachary became a doctrine of the Church.

In Italy, in 1316, Peter of Abano, famous as a physician, promulgated the opposite view to that of the Church, for which he was persecuted by the Inquisition, and barely escaped with his life. In 1327, Cecco d'Ascoli, an astronomer, was burned alive at Florence for daring to a.s.sert that men lived in the antipodes.

The difficulties that beset Columbus are well known. How he was hounded both in Portugal and in Spain by the clergy; and even after his discovery of America, the Papacy still maintained its theory of the flatness of the earth and the nonsense of the antipodes. Pope Alexander VI and Pope Julius II attempted to settle the disputes between Spain and Portugal by drawing some remarkable maps that may still be found; but no one dares to disturb the quiet of the ridiculous bulls that the popes issued on this dispute.

In 1519 Magellan made his famous voyage and proved the earth to be round and that men actually lived in the antipodes. But the force of ecclesiastical stultification was so great, as it is today, that men still believed the opposite view for two hundred years after the voyage of Magellan.

CHAPTER X

RELIGION AND CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS

The establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution of theology, arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for more than 1500 years. The work begun by Aristotle and carried on to such a high state of relative perfection by Archimedes, was stifled by the early Christians. An atmosphere was then created in which physical science could not grow. The general belief derived from the New Testament was that the end of the world was at hand, and the early Church Fathers poured contempt upon all investigators of the science of nature.

Then, too, for science there was established an insurmountable barrier, in that the most careful inductions of science from ascertained facts must conform to the view of nature given in the myth and legends of the Bible. For 1500 years science was forced to confine itself to a system of deducing scientific truth from scriptural texts. It was the accepted word of the clergy that science was futile and dangerous which led to the discrediting of Roger Bacon's works.

In 1163 Pope Alexander III forbade the study of physics to all ecclesiastics, which of course, in that age, meant prohibition of all such scientific studies to the only persons likely to follow them.

Roger Bacon was first to practice extensively the experimental method of science. Through his researches the inventions of clocks, lenses, and the formula for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and bis.m.u.th were brought to light. Bitterly attacked by the clergy, he attempted to defend himself by stating that much which was ascribed to demons resulted from natural means. This statement but added fuel to the flame.

For in 1278 the authorities of the Franciscan Order a.s.sembled at Paris, solemnly condemned Bacon's teachings, and the general of the Franciscans, Jerome of Ascoli, afterwards Pope, threw him into prison, where he remained for fourteen years. At the age of eighty, he was released from prison declaring, "Would that I had not given myself so much trouble for the love of science."

"Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the world had ecclesiasticism allowed the gift. He held the key to treasures which would have freed mankind from ages of error and misery. With his discoveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the world have gained! Nor was the wrong done to that age alone; it was done to this age also.... Thousands of precious lives shall be lost, tens of thousands shall suffer discomfort, privations, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken dealing with Roger Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth." (_White: "Warfare of Science."_)

Centuries afterwards, for stating the same claim, namely, that much which was attributed to demons, resulted from natural causes, Cornelius Agrippa, Weyer, Flade, Loos, Bekker, and a mult.i.tude of other investigators and thinkers, suffered confiscation of property, loss of position, and even torture and death.

In the latter half of the sixteenth century, John Baptist Porta, who was the first to show how to reduce the metallic oxides and thus laid the foundation of several important industries, was summoned to Rome by Pope Paul II, and forbidden to continue his researches.