The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IV Part 14

What I say is that every honest teacher of the supernatural has been and is an unconscious enemy of the human race.

What is the philosophy of the church--of those who believe in the supernatural?

Back of all that is--back of all events--Christians put an infinite Juggler who with a wish creates, preserves, destroys. The world is his stage and mankind his puppets. He fills them with wants and desires, with appet.i.tes and ambitions--with hopes and fears--with love and hate.

He touches the springs. He pulls the strings--baits the hooks, sets the traps and digs the pits.

The play is a continuous performance.

He watches these puppets as they struggle and fail. Sees them outwit each other and themselves--leads them to every crime, watches the births and deaths--hears lullabies at cradles and the fall of clods on coffins. He has no pity. He enjoys the tragedies--the desperation--the despair--the suicides. He smiles at the murders, the a.s.sa.s.sinations,--the seductions, the desertions--the abandoned babes of shame. He sees the weak enslaved--mothers robbed of babes--the innocent in dungeons--on scaffolds. He sees crime crowned and hypocrisy robed.

He withholds the rain and his puppets starve. He opens the earth and they are devoured. He sends the flood and they are drowned. He empties the volcano and they perish in fire. He sends the cyclone and they are torn and mangled. With quick lightnings they are dashed to death.

He fills the air and water with the invisible enemies of life--the messengers of pain, and watches the puppets as they breathe and drink. He creates cancers to feed upon their flesh--their quivering nerves--serpents, to fill their veins with venom,--beasts to crunch their bones--to lap their blood.

Some of the poor puppets he makes insane--makes them struggle in the darkness with imagined monsters with glaring eyes and dripping jaws, and some are made without the flame of thought, to drool and drivel through the darkened days. He sees all the agony, the injustice, the rags of poverty, the withered hands of want--the motherless babes--the deformed--the maimed--the leprous, knows the tears that flow--hears the sobs and moans--sees the gleam of swords, hears the roar of the guns--sees the fields reddened with blood--the white faces of the dead.

But he mocks when their fear cometh, and at their calamity he fills the heavens with laughter. And the poor puppets who are left alive, fall on their knees and thank the Juggler with all their hearts.

But after all, the G.o.ds have not supported the children of men, men have supported the G.o.ds. They have built the temples. They have sacrificed their babes, their lambs, their cattle. They have drenched the altars with blood. They have given their silver, their gold, their gems. They have fed and clothed their priests--but the G.o.ds have given nothing in return. Hidden in the shadows they have answered no prayer--heard no cry--given no sign--extended no hand--uttered no word. Unseen and unheard they have sat on their thrones, deaf and dumb--paralyzed and blind. In vain the steeples rise--in vain the prayers ascend.

And think what man has done to please the G.o.ds. He has renounced his reason--extinguished the torch of his brain, he has believed without evidence and against evidence. He has slandered and maligned himself.

He has fasted and starved. He has mutilated his body--scarred his flesh--given his blood to vermin. He has persecuted, imprisoned and destroyed his fellows. He has deserted wife and child. He has lived alone in the desert. He has swung-censers and burned incense, counted beads and sprinkled himself with holy water--shut his eyes, clasped his hands--fallen upon his knees and groveled in the dust--but the G.o.ds have been silent--silent as stones.

Have these cringings and crawlings--these cruelties and absurdities--this faith and foolishness pleased the G.o.ds?

We do not know.

Has any disaster been averted--any blessing obtained? We do not know.

Shall we thank these G.o.ds?

Shall we thank the church's G.o.d?

Who and what is he?

They say that he is the creator and preserver of all that has been--of all that is--of all that will be--that he is the father of angels and devils, the architect of heaven and h.e.l.l--that he made the earth--a man and woman--that he made the serpent who tempted them, made his own rival--gave victory to his enemy--that he repented of what he had done--that he sent a flood and destroyed all of the children of men with the exception of eight persons--that he tried to civilize the survivors and their children--tried to do this with earthquakes and fiery serpents --with pestilence and famine. But he failed. He intended to fail. Then he was born into the world, preached for three years, and allowed some savages to kill him. Then he rose from the dead and went back to heaven.

He knew that he would fail, knew that he would be killed. In fact he arranged everything himself and brought everything to pa.s.s just as he had predestined it an eternity before the world was. All who believe these things will be saved and they who doubt or deny will be lost.

Has this G.o.d good sense?

Not always. He creates his own enemies and plots against himself.

Nothing lives, except in accordance with his will, and yet the devils do not die.

What is the matter with this G.o.d? Well, sometimes he is foolish--sometimes he is cruel and sometimes he is insane.

Does this G.o.d exist? Is there any intelligence back of Nature? Is there any being anywhere among the stars who pities the suffering children of men?

We do not know.

Shall we thank Nature?

Does Nature care for us more than for leaves, or gra.s.s, or flies?

Does Nature know that we exist? We do not know.

But we do know that Nature is going to murder us all.

Why should we thank Nature? If we thank G.o.d or Nature for the sunshine and rain, for health and happiness, whom shall we curse for famine and pestilence, for earthquake and cyclone--for disease and death?

III.

IF we cannot thank the orthodox churches--if we cannot thank the unknown, the incomprehensible, the supernatural--if we cannot thank Nature--if we can not kneel to a Guess, or prostrate ourselves before a Perhaps--whom shall we thank?

Let us see what the worldly have done--what has been accomplished by those not "called," not "set apart," not "inspired," not filled with the Holy Ghost--by those who were neglected by all the G.o.ds.

Pa.s.sing over the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans, their poets, philosophers and metaphysicians--we will come to modern times.

In the 10th century after Christ the Saracens--governors of a vast empire--"established colleges in Mongolia, Tartary, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Morocco, Fez and in Spain." The region owned by the Saracens was greater than the Roman Empire. They had not only colleges--but observatories. The sciences were taught. They introduced the ten numerals--taught algebra and trigonometry--understood cubic equations--knew the art of surveying--they made catalogues and maps of the stars--gave the great stars the names they still bear--they ascertained the size of the earth--determined the obliquity of the ecliptic and fixed the length of the year. They calculated eclipses, equinoxes, solstices, conjunctions of planets and occultations of stars.

They constructed astronomical instruments. They made clocks of various kinds and were the inventors of the pendulum. They originated chemistry--discovered sulphuric and nitric acid and alcohol.

"They were the first to publish pharmacopoeias and dispensatories.

"In mechanics they determined the laws of falling bodies. They understood the mechanical powers, and the attraction of gravitation.

"They taught hydrostatics and determined the specific gravities of bodies.

"In optics they discovered that a ray of light did not proceed from the eye to an object--but from the object to the eye."

"They were manufacturers of cotton, leather, paper and steel.

"They gave us the game of chess.

"They produced romances and novels and essays on many subjects.

"In their schools they taught the modern doctrines of evolution and development." They antic.i.p.ated Darwin and Spencer.

These people were not Christians. They were the followers, for the most part, of an impostor--of a pretended prophet of a false G.o.d. And yet while the true Christians, the men selected by the true G.o.d and filled with the Holy Ghost were tearing out the tongues of heretics, these wretches were irreverently tracing the orbits of the stars. While the true believers were flaying philosophers and extinguishing the eyes of thinkers, these G.o.dless followers of Mohammed were founding colleges, collecting ma.n.u.scripts, investigating the facts of nature and giving their attention to science. Afterward the followers of Mohammed became the enemies of science and hated facts as intensely and honestly as Christians. Whoever has a revelation from G.o.d will defend it with all his strength--will abhor reason and deny facts.

But it is well to know that we are indebted to the Moors--to the followers of Mohammed--for having laid the foundations of modern science. It is well to know that we are not indebted to the church, to Christianity, for any useful fact.

It is well to know that the seeds of thought were sown in our minds by the Greeks and Romans, and that our literature came from those seeds.

The great literature of our language is Pagan in its thought--Pagan in its beauty--Pagan in its perfection. It is well to know that when Mohammedans were the friends of science, Christians were its enemies.

How consoling it is to think that the friends of science--the men who educated their fellows--are now in h.e.l.l, and that the men who persecuted and killed philosophers are now in heaven! Such is the justice of G.o.d.

The Christians of the Middle Ages, the men who were filled with the Holy Ghost, knew all about the worlds beyond the grave, but nothing about the world in which they lived. They thought the earth was flat--a little dishing if anything--that it was about five thousand years old, and that the stars were little sparkles made to beautify the night.

The fact is that Christianity was in existence for fifteen hundred years before there was an astronomer in Christendom. No follower of Christ knew the shape of the earth.

The earth was demonstrated to be a globe, not by a pope or cardinal--not by a collection of clergymen--not by the "called" or the "set apart,"