The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume V Part 19

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of science. They admit that four-footed birds did not exist in the days of Moses. In fact, the only way they can avoid the unscientific statements of the Bible, is to a.s.sert that the writers simply used the common language of their day, and used it, not with the intention of teaching any scientific truth, but for the purpose of teaching some moral truth. As a matter of fact, we find that moral truths have been taught in all parts of this world. They were taught in India long before Moses lived; in Egypt long be- fore Abraham was born; in China thousands of years before the flood. They were taught by hundreds and thousands and millions before the Garden of Eden was planted.

It would be impossible to prove the truth of a revelation simply because it contained moral truths.

If it taught immorality, it would be absolutely certain that it was not a revelation from an infinitely good being. If it taught morality, it would be no reason for even suspecting that it had a divine origin. But if the Bible had given us scientific truths; if the ignorant Jews had given us the true theory of our solar system; if from Moses we had learned the nature of light and heat; if from Joshua we had learned something of electricity; if the minor pro-

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phets had given us the distances to other planets; if the orbits of the stars had been marked by the barbarians of that day, we might have admitted that they must have been inspired. If they had said any- thing in advance of their day; if they had plucked from the night of ignorance one star of truth, we might have admitted the claim of inspiration; but the Scriptures did not rise above their source, did not rise above their ignorant authors--above the people who believed in wars of extermination, in polygamy, in concubinage, in slavery, and who taught these things in their "sacred Scriptures."

The greatest men in the scientific world have not been, and are not, believers in the inspiration of the Scriptures. There has been no greater astronomer than Laplace. There is no greater name than Humboldt. There is no living scientist who stands higher than Charles Darwin. All the professors in all the religious colleges in this country rolled into one, would not equal Charles Darwin. All the cow- ardly apologists for the cosmogony of Moses do not amount to as much in the world of thought as Ernst Haeckel. There is no orthodox scientist the equal of Tyndall or Huxley. There is not one in this country the equal of John Fiske. I insist, that the

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foremost men to-day in the scientific world reject the dogma of inspiration. They reject the science of the Bible, and hold in utter contempt the astronomy of Joshua, and the geology of Moses.

Mr. Talmage tells us "that Science is a boy and "Revelation is a man." Of course, like the most he says, it is substantially the other way. Revelation, so-called, was the boy. Religion was the lullaby of the cradle, the ghost-story told by the old woman, Superst.i.tion. Science is the man. Science asks for demonstration. Science impels us to investigation, and to verify everything for ourselves. Most pro- fessors of American colleges, if they were not afraid of losing their places, if they did not know that Christians were bad enough now to take the bread from their mouths, would tell their students that the Bible is not a scientific book.

I admit that I have said:

1. That the Bible is cruel.

2. That in many pa.s.sages it is impure.

3. That it is contradictory.

4. That it is unscientific.

Let me now prove these propositions one by one.

First. The Bible is cruel.

I have opened it at random, and the very first

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chapter that has struck my eye is the sixth of First Samuel. In the nineteenth verse of that chapter, I find the following:

"And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because "they had looked into the ark of the Lord; even he "smote of the people fifty thousand and three-score "and ten men."

All this slaughter was because some people had looked into a box that was carried upon a cart. Was that cruel?

I find, also, in the twenty-fourth chapter of Second Samuel, that David was moved by G.o.d to number Israel and Judah. G.o.d put it into his heart to take a census of his people, and thereupon David said to Joab, the captain of his host:

"Go now through all the tribes of Israel, from "Dan even to Beersheba, and number ye the people, "that I may know the number of the people."

At the end of nine months and twenty days, Joab gave the number of the people to the king, and there were at that time, according to that census, "eight hundred thousand valiant men that drew the "sword," in Israel, and in Judah, "five hundred "thousand men," making a total of thirteen hundred thousand men of war. The moment this census was

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taken, the wrath of the Lord waxed hot against David, and thereupon he sent a seer, by the name of Gad, to David, and asked him to choose whether he would have seven years of famine, or fly three months before his enemies, or have three days of pestilence. David concluded that as G.o.d was so merciful as to give him a choice, he would be more merciful than man, and he chose the pestilence.

Now, it must be remembered that the sin of taking the census had not been committed by the people, but by David himself, inspired by G.o.d, yet the people were to be punished for David's sin. So,, when David chose the pestilence, G.o.d immediately killed "seventy thousand men, from Dan even to "Beersheba."

"And when the angel stretched out his hand upon "Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of "the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the "people, It is enough; stay now thine hand."

Was this cruel?

Why did a G.o.d of infinite mercy destroy seventy thousand men? Why did he fill his land with widows and orphans, because King David had taken the cen- sus? If he wanted to kill anybody, why did he not kill David? I will tell you why. Because at that

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time, the people were considered as the property of the king. He killed the people precisely as he killed the cattle. And yet, I am told that the Bible is not a cruel book.

In the twenty-first chapter of Second Samuel, I find that there were three years of famine in the days of David, and that David inquired of the Lord the reason of the famine; and the Lord told him that it was because Saul had slain the Gibeonites. Why did not G.o.d punish Saul instead of the people? And David asked the Gibeonites how he should make atonement, and the Gibeonites replied that they wanted no silver nor gold, but they asked that seven of the sons of Saul might be delivered unto them, so that they could hang them before the Lord, in Gibeah.

And David agreed to the proposition, and thereupon he delivered to the Gibeonites the two sons of Rizpah, Saul's concubine, and the five sons of Michal, the daughter of Saul, and the Gibeonites hanged all seven of them together. And Rizpah, more tender than them all, with a woman's heart of love kept lonely vigil by the dead, "from the beginning of har- "vest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, "and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon "them by day, nor the beast of the field by night."

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I want to know if the following, from the fifteenth chapter of First Samuel, is inspired:

"Thus saith the Lord of hosts; I remember that "which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for "him in the way when he came up from Egypt. Now "go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that "they have, and spare them not, but slay both man "and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, "camel and a.s.s."

We must remember that those he was commanded to slay had done nothing to Israel. It was something done by their forefathers, hundreds of years before; and yet they are commanded to slay the women and children and even the animals, and to spare none.

It seems that Saul only partially carried into exe- cution this merciful command of Jehovah. He spared the life of the king. He "utterly destroyed all the "people with the edge of the sword," but he kept alive the best of the sheep and oxen and of the fat- lings and lambs. Then G.o.d spake unto Samuel and told him that he was very sorry he had made Saul king, because he had not killed all the animals, and because he had spared Agag; and Samuel asked Saul: "What meaneth this bleating of sheep in mine "ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?"

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Are stories like this calculated to make soldiers merciful?

So I read in the sixth chapter of Joshua, the fate of the city of Jericho: "And they utterly destroyed "all that was in the city, both man and woman, "young and old, and ox, and sheep, and a.s.s, with the "edge of the sword. And they burnt the city with "fire, and all that was therein." But we are told that one family was saved by Joshua, out of the general destruction: "And Joshua saved Rahab, the harlot, "alive, and her father's household, and all that she "had." Was this fearful destruction an act of mercy?

It seems that they saved the money of their victims: "the silver and gold and the vessels of bra.s.s "and of iron they put into the treasury of the house "of the Lord."

After all this pillage and carnage, it appears that there was a suspicion in Joshua's mind that somebody was keeping back a part of the treasure.

Search was made, and a man by the name of Achan admitted that he had sinned against the Lord, that he had seen a Babylonish garment among the spoils, and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels' weight, and that he took them and hid

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them in his tent. For this atrocious crime it seems that the Lord denied any victories to the Jews until they found out the wicked criminal. When they dis- covered poor Achan, "they took him and his sons "and his daughters, and his oxen and his a.s.ses and "his sheep, and all that he had, and brought them unto "the valley of Achor; and all Israel stoned him with "stones and burned them with fire after they had "stoned them with stones."

After Achan and his sons and his daughters and his herds had been stoned and burned to death, we are told that "the Lord turned from the fierceness of "his anger."

And yet it is insisted that this G.o.d "is merciful, "and that his loving-kindness is over all his works."

In the eighth chapter of this same book, the infi- nite G.o.d, "creator of heaven and earth and all that is "therein," told his general, Joshua, to lay an ambush for a city--to "lie in wait against the city, even be- "hind the city; go not very far from the city, but be "ye all ready." He told him to make an attack and then to run, as though he had been beaten, in order that the inhabitants of the city might follow, and thereupon his reserves that he had ambushed might rush into the city and set it on fire. G.o.d Almighty

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