I don't know, do you?Ricker, Marilla M. (Marilla Marks)
Religion
I don't know, do you?
Ricker, Marilla M. (Marilla Marks)
Agnosticism; Free thought
What is left of Christianity? Who wrote the Christian Bible? The
smallest child in a Sunday School would answer the question by saying
"God," but the most learned person on the globe would say, "I do
not know." It is being admitted by thinking persons that answers to
religious questions possess nothing more than a religious value. When
a person is graduated from a Sunday School he is wiser than he will be
after he has lived forty years, provided he learns anything by living.
"God" is a term used to express what man does not know, but it does
not seem to me necessary to assign to the Bible divine authorship, as
it can be accounted for on other grounds. It is certain that men and
women have written books. It is not certain that there is a God and,
if so, that he has written a book. If man could write the Bible, there
seems to be no need for God to do so. It is a fact that no one knows
who wrote a word of the Bible, and yet it will require many more years
to kill the foolish superstition that God inspired certain men to write
this book.
Nothing grows slower than truth, and nothing faster than superstition.
Falsehood was never known to commit suicide. Unknown men wrote the
Christian Bible, not an unknown God.
* * * * *
Not many years ago I saw that a teacher in the Holyoke (Massachusetts)
High School was dismissed for saying that Jesus was one of a family of
ten. Jesus is a word that paralyzes the mental faculties. As to the
accuracy of the statement we have only the Gospels for authority. At
any rate, if Matthew and Mark are reliable he had four brothers and
sisters.
In Matthew xiii: 54 we read: "Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not
his mother called Mary, and his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon,
and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?"
Mark confirms Matthew about the size of Mary's family.
I tried to learn something concerning this case, but silence a yard
wide lay all about it. I fancy the teacher was silenced in some way.
Leastwise I could learn nothing.
It doesn't take much to silence a teacher, or it didn't fifty years
ago, especially if she were dependent upon teaching for her bread and
butter, which I was.
I, at one time, tried to substitute one of Ralph Waldo Emerson's books
to be read in school in the morning instead of the Christian Bible. I
was informed by one of the committee that the Bible must be read every
morning and the Ten Commandments repeated. The next morning I selected
the "truthful" and startling account of Jonah whilst he was sojourning
at the Submarine Hotel. I at that time made up my mind that if I were
ever financially independent I'd say what I thought concerning the
Christian religion, and no one doubts that I've done so.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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