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Ingersoll on WHICH WAY, from the Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3, Lecture 8

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II. ALL Christians know that all the gods, except Jehovah, were created by man; that they were, and are, false, foolish and monstrous; that all the heathen temples were built and all their altars erected in vain; that the sacrifices were wasted, that the priests were hypocrites, that their prayers were unanswered and that the poor people were deceived, robbed and enslaved. But after all, is our God superior to the gods of the heathen? We can ask this question now because we are prosperous, and prosperity gives courage. If we should have a few earthquakes or a pestilence we might fall on our knees, shut our eyes and ask the forgiveness of God for ever having had a thought. We know that famine is the friend of faith and that calamity is the sunshine of superstition. But as we have no pestilence or famine, and as the crust of the earth is reasonably quiet, we can afford to examine into the real character of our God. It must be admitted that the use of power is an excellent test of character. Would a good God appeal to prejudice, the armor, fortress, sword and shield of ignorance? to credulity, the ring in the priest-led nose of stupidity? to fear, the capital stock of imposture, the lever of hypocrisy? Would a good God frighten or enlighten his children? Would a good God appeal to reason or ignorance, to justice or selfishness, to liberty or the lash? To our first parents in the Garden of Eden, our God said nothing about the sacredness of love, nothing about children, nothing about education, about justice or liberty. After they had violated his command he became ferocious as a wild beast. He cursed the earth and to Eve he said:—"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Thy husband shall rule over thee." Our God made love the slave of pain, made wives serfs, and brutalized the firesides of the world. Our God drowned the whole world, with the exception of eight people; made the earth one vast and shoreless sea covered with corpses. Why did he cover the world with men, women and children knowing that he would destroy them? Why did he not try to reform them? Why would he create people, knowing that they could not be reformed? Is it possible that our God was intelligent and good? After the flood our God selected the Jews and abandoned the rest of his children. He paid no attention to the Hindoos, neglected the Egyptians, ignored the Persians, forgot the Assyrians and failed to remember the Greeks. And yet he was the father of them all. For many centuries he was only a tribal God, protecting the few and despising the many. Our God was ignorant, knew nothing of astronomy or geology. He did not even know the shape of the earth, and thought the stars were only specks. He knew nothing of disease. He thought that the blood of a bird that had been killed over running water was good medicine. He was revengeful and cruel, and assisted some of his children to butcher and destroy others. He commanded them to murder men, wives and children, and to keep alive the maidens and distribute them among his soldiers. Our God established slavery—commanded men to buy their fellow-men, to make merchandise of wives and babes. Our God sanctioned polygamy and made wives the property of their husbands. Our God murdered the people for the crimes of kings. No man of intelligence, no one whose brain has not been poisoned by superstition, paralyzed by fear, can read the Old Testament without being forced to the conclusion that our God was, a wild beast. If we must have a god, let him be merciful. Let us remember that "the quality of mercy is not strained." Let us remember that when the sword of Justice becomes a staff to support the weak, it bursts into blossom, and that the perfume of that flower is the only incense, the only offering, the only sacrifice that mercy will accept. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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