Individuality: From 'The Gods and Other Lectures' — John Shaqi
Individuality: From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'Ingersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Individuality: From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought; Individuality
It is said that some of the Indian tribes place the heads of their
children between pieces of bark until the form of the skull is
permanently changed. To us this seems a most shocking custom; and yet,
after all, is it as bad as to put the souls of our children in the
strait-jacket of a creed? to so utterly deform their minds that they
regard the God of the bible as a being of infinite mercy, and
really consider it a virtue to believe a thing just because it seems
unreasonable? Every child in the Christian world has uttered its
wondering protest against this outrage. All the machinery of the Church
is constantly employed in corrupting the reason of children. In every
possible way they are robbed of their own thoughts and forced to accept
the statements of others. Every Sunday school has for its object the
crushing out of every germ of individuality. The poor children are
taught that nothing can be more acceptable to God than unreasoning
obedience and eyeless faith, and that to believe God did an impossible
act, is far better than to do a good one yourself. They are told that
all religions have been simply the John-the-Baptists of ours; that all
the gods of antiquity have withered and shrunken into the Jehovah of the
Jews; that all the longings and aspirations of the race are realized in
the motto of the Evangelical Alliance, "Liberty in non-essentials;" that
all there is, or ever was, of religion can be found in the apostles'
creed; that there is nothing left to be discovered; that all the
thinkers are dead, and all the living should simply be believers; that
we have only to repeat the epitaph found on the grave of wisdom; that
grave-yards are the best possible universities, and that the children
must be forever beaten with the bones of the fathers.
It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his
companions, during' all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only
ambition is to obey. He certainly would now and then be tempted to make
the same remark made by an English gentleman to his poor guest. The
gentleman had invited a man in humble circumstances to dine with him.
The man was so overcome with the honor that to everything the gentleman
said he replied "Yes." Tired at last with the monotony of acquiescence,
the gentleman cried out, "For God's sake, my good man, say 'No,' just
once, so there will be two of us."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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