Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - LatestIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
I find that the myth of the virgin mother is universal. The virgin
mother is the earth. I find also in countries the idea of a trinity.
In Egypt I find Isis, Osiris, and Horus. This idea prevailed in
Central America among the Aztecs. We find the myth of the judgment
almost universal. I imagine men have seen so much injustice here that
they naturally expect that there must be some day of final judgment
somewhere. Nearly every theist is driven to the necessity of having
another world in which his god may correct the mistakes he has made in
this. We find on the walls of Egyptian temples pictures of the
judgment; the righteous all go on the right hand, and those unworthy on
the left. The myth of the sun god was universal. Agni was the sun god
of the Hindoos. He was called the most generous of all gods, yet he
ate his own father and mother. Baldur was another sun god; he was a
sun myth. Hercules was a sun god, and so was Samson. Jonah, too, was
a sun god, and was swallowed by a fish. So was Hercules, and a
wonderful thing is that they were swallowed in about the same place,
near Joppa. Where did the big fish go? When the sun went down under
the earth, it was thought to be followed by the fish, which was said to
swallow it, and carry it safely through the under world. The sun thus
came to be represented as the body of a woman with the tail of a fish,
and so the mermaid was born. Another strange thing is that all the sun
gods were born near Christmas. The myth of Red Riding Hood, was known
among the Aztecs. The myth of eucharist came from the story of Ceres
and Bacchus. When the cakes made by the product of the field were
eaten, it was the body of Ceres, and when the wine was drank it was the
blood of Bacchus. From this idea the eucharist was born. There is
nothing original in christianity. Holy water! Another myth. The
Hindoos imagined that the water had its source in the throne of God.
The Egyptians thought the Nile sacred. Greece was settled by Egyptian
colonies, and they carried with them the water of the Nile, and when
any one died the water was sprinkled on him. Finally Rome conquered
Greece physically, but Greece conquered Rome intellectually. This is
the myth of holy water, and with it grew up the idea of baptism, and I
presume that that is as old as water and dirt. The cross is another
universal symbol. There was once an ancient people in Italy before the
Romans, before the Etruscans. They faded from the world, and history
does not even know the name of that nation. We find where they buried
the ashes of their dead, and we find chiseled, hundreds of years before
Christ, the cross, a symbol of a hope of another life. We find the
cross in Egypt, in the cylinders from Babylon, and, more than that, we
find them in Central America. On the temples of the Aztecs we find the
cross, and on it a bleeding, dying god. Our cross was built in the
middle ages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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