The Necessity of Atheism Part 22

ALBERT EINSTEIN

I do not believe we can have any freedom at all in the philosophical sense, for we act not only under external compulsion, but also by inner necessity.... I cannot imagine a G.o.d who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modelled after our own, a G.o.d, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.

LUTHER BURBANK

Our lives as we live them are pa.s.sed on to others, whether in physical or mental forms tinging all future lives forever. This should be enough for one who lives for truth and service to his fellow pa.s.sengers on the way. No avenging Jewish G.o.d, no satanic devil, no fiery h.e.l.l is of any interest to him. The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead. Every normal human being has ideals, one or many, to look up to, to reach up to, to grow up to. Religion refers to the sentiments and feelings; science refers to the demonstrated everyday laws of nature. Feelings are all right, if one does not get drunk on them. Prayer may be elevating if combined with works, and they who labor with head, hands, or feet have faith and are generally quite sure of an immediate and favorable reply.

Those who take refuge behind theological barbed wire fences, quite often wish they could have more freedom of thought, but fear the change to the great ocean of scientific truth as they would a cold bath plunge.

SIR ARTHUR KEITH

Certainly the creative power which is at work bears no resemblance to the personal G.o.d postulated by the Hebrews, and the modern man of science cannot fit Him into the scheme of the world as he knows it. He has to try to reconceive G.o.d, and when he has done so, nothing but an unsatisfying abstraction is left. It is unsatisfying because even the greatest men of science, although they possess the intellects of giants, have still the hearts of children. And children cling to that which is endowed with a human shape and has been given the warmth of living flesh.

H. LEVY

A structure of absolute moral and religious beliefs erected initially as beyond criticism, imposed upon a changing society from above rather than emerging from below, has no affinity with science, whatever personal solace and comfort it may provide, for it a.s.sumes that the facts of life, including the material facts of the world, can be compa.s.sed within a rigidly prescribed framework. It has taken several centuries of history for the scientific movement to be emanc.i.p.ated from just these cramping human a.s.sumptions. The writings of many scientists show, alas, that the emanc.i.p.ation has not yet been completed.

J. B. S. HALDANE

We know very little about what may be called the geography of the invisible world. The religions, if I may continue the metaphor, have covered the vacant s.p.a.ces of its map with imaginary monsters; the philosophies have ruled them with equally imaginary parallels of lat.i.tude. But both have affirmed, in opposition to the so-called practical man, that the meaning of the visible world is to be found in the invisible. That has been the secret of their success. They have failed when they tried either to describe the details of the visible world or to dictate the details of conduct in it. The churches are half empty today because their creeds are full of obsolete science, and their ethical codes are suited to a social organization far simpler than that of today.

HOWARD W. HAGGARD, M. D.

When in the fifth century the Roman Empire fell at the hands of the barbarians, rational medicine ceased altogether in Europe. Although the Christian religion survived, the Christian theology of that time denied liberty of conscience and taught superst.i.tions and dogma. It was bitterly hostile to the scientific spirit. All knowledge necessary to man's salvation, physical as well as spiritual, was to be found in the Bible as the Church interpreted the Bible. Since the teachings of the Church were supposed to be sufficient for all needs, there was no excuse for observations and experimental investigations. The inquisitive spirit was wholly suppressed, the rigorous methods of Greek logic were for many centuries lost from European civilization, and intelligent thought was replaced by revelation, speculation, tradition, and subservience to the written word of the Bible, to the writings of saints, and later, in medical matters, to the work of Galen. The theological beliefs of the time became the controlling influence in Western civilization.

HARRY ELMER BARNES

There has never been any religious crisis of this kind before, and any attempt at exact comparisons with the past are here bound to be misleading and distorting. Even the extreme a.s.sailant of pagan religions, like Lucretius, had no basis for the critical att.i.tude as the contemporary sceptic. The bitter attack of Lucretius upon supernatural religion was based mainly upon a.s.sumptions and intuitions, as incapable of proof at the time as were the most extreme pietistic views of his age. Today the situation has been profoundly altered. Contemporary science, especially astrophysics, renders the whole set of a.s.sumptions underlying the anthropomorphic and geocentric supernaturalism of the past absolutely archaic and preposterous. Our scientific knowledge has undermined the most precious tales in the holy books of all peoples. The development of biblical criticism has discredited the dogma of direct revelation and unique nature of the Hebrew Bible. Textual scholarship has been equally devastating to the sacred scriptures which form the literary basis of the other world religions. It avails one nothing to deny these things, for they are actually undeniable. We must face the implied intellectual revolution honestly and see what is to be done about it.

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

To be thoroughly religious, one must, I believe, be sorely disappointed.

One's faith in G.o.d increases as one's faith in the world decreases. The happier the man, the farther he is from G.o.d.

RUPERT HUGHES

It is important that the truth be known. Is religion, is church membership a help to virtue? The careless will answer without hesitation, "Yes!" Of course. The statistics, when they are not smothered, cry, "No!"

HU SHIH

On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death and decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or for worse, lives on in the immortality of the Larger Self; that to live for the sake of the species and posterity is religion of the highest kind; and that those religions which seek a future life either in Heaven or in the Pure Land, are selfish religions.

DR. FRANKWOOD E. WILLIAMS

In these difficult times we are told that we should go to the temple, that we should get in touch with G.o.d. We do not need the temple. We do not need to get in touch with "G.o.d." We need to get in touch with each other.

WILLIAM FLOYD

This Bible bears every evidence of being a book like every other book, conceived by man, written by man, altered by man, translated by man, printed by man, but--and this is where it differs from every other book--the Bible is swallowed by man. And it has disagreed with him; man has not digested it properly through lack of sufficient dissection of its parts. It has been taken with a spiritual sauce that has disguised its real flavor. Anything in the Bible, no matter how raw, is taken as G.o.d's food. It is used to demonstrate problems of diet which do not provide a balanced ration; it is accepted by the gullible though contradicted by the revelations of Geology, Astronomy, Anthropology, Zoology, and Biology. Taken as prescribed by the doctors of divinity, the Bible is a poisonous book.

LLEWELYN POWYS

The idea of an incarnation of G.o.d is absurd: why should the human race think itself so superior to bees, ants, and elephants as to be put in this unique relation to its maker? Christians are like a council of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung hill croaking and squeaking, "For our sakes was the world created."

THEODORE DREISER

And why again, composed though we may be of this, that, and the other proton, electron, etc., etc., why should we not in some way be able to sense why we are as we are--a.s.sembled as we are of the same ultimate atoms and doing as we do? Why? Good G.o.d--surely in the face of all this sense of aliveness and motion, and this and that, there should be some intimation of WHY? But no--none.

UPTON SINCLAIR

It is a fact, the significance of which cannot be exaggerated, that the measure of the civilization which any nation has attained is the extent to which it has curtailed the power of inst.i.tutionalized religion. There are a score of great religions in the world, each with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and h.e.l.ls. Each has its thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of "true believers"; each d.a.m.ns all the others, with more or less heartiness, and each is a mighty fortress of Graft.

_The Middle Guard_

_It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary that you should salt your truth that it will no longer quench thirst_?

NIETZSCHE.

ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

Indeed, history, down to the present day, is a melancholy record of the horrors which can attend religion: human sacrifice, and, in particular, the slaughter of children, cannibalism, sensual orgies, abject superst.i.tion, hatred as between races, the maintenance of degrading customs, hysteria, bigotry, can all be laid at it's charge. Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

ROBERT ANDREWS MILLIKAN

The anthropomorphic G.o.d of the ancient world--the G.o.d of human pa.s.sions, frailties, caprices, and whims is gone, and with him the old duty to propitiate him, so that he might be induced to treat you better than your neighbor. Can anyone question the advance that has been made in diminishing the prevalence of these medieval, essentially childish, and essentially selfish ideas? The new G.o.d is the G.o.d of law and order; the new duty, to know that order and to get into harmony with it, to learn how to make the world a better place for mankind to live in, not merely how to save your individual soul. However, once destroy our confidence in the principle of uniformity, our belief in the rule of law, and our effectiveness immediately disappears, our method ceases to be dependable, and our laboratories become deserted.