Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.Ingersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
I have got another. I think we came from the lower animals. I am not
dead sure of it, but think so. When I first read about it I didn't
like it. My heart was filled with sympathy for those people who have
nothing to be proud of except ancestors. I thought how terrible it
will be upon the nobility of the old world. Think of their being
forced to trace their ancestry back to the Duke Orang-Outang or to the
Princess Chimpanzee. After thinking it all over I came to the
conclusion that I liked that doctrine. I became convinced in spite of
myself. I read about rudimentary bones and muscles. I was told that
everybody had rudimentary muscles extending from the ear into the
cheek. I asked: "What are they?" I was told: "They are the remains of
muscles; that they became rudimentary from the lack of use." They went
into bankruptcy. They are the muscles with which your ancestors used
to flap their ears. Well, at first, I was greatly astonished, and
afterward I was more astonished to find they had become rudimentary.
How can you account for John Calvin unless we came up from the lower
animals? How could you account for a man that would use the extremes
of torture unless you admit that there is in man the elements of a
snake, of a vulture, a hyena, and a jackal? How can you account for the
religious creeds of today? How can you account for that infamous
doctrine of Hell, except with an animal origin? How can you account
for your conception of a God that would sell women and babes into
slavery?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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