Men, Women, and Gods; and Other Lectures — John Shaqi
Men, Women, and Gods; and Other LecturesGardener, Helen H. (Helen Hamilton)
Religion
Men, Women, and Gods; and Other Lectures
Gardener, Helen H. (Helen Hamilton)
Free thought
I want to help make it so that they will dare to speak. I want to do
what I can to make it so that a mother won't have to evade the questions
of her children about the Bible.
CREEDS.
I am sometimes asked, "What do you propose to give in place of this
comforting faith? It makes people so happy. You take away all this
blessing and you give no other in its place. What is your creed?"
It has never seemed to me that a creed was the staff of life. Man cannot
live by creeds alone. I should not object, however, to one that should
read something like this:
I believe in honesty.
I believe that a Church has no right to teach what it does not know.
I believe that a clean life and a tender heart are worth more to this
world than all the faith and all the gods of Time.
I believe that this world needs all our best efforts and earnest
endeavors twenty-four hours every day.
I believe that if our labors were needed in another world we should be
in another world; so long as we are in this one I believe in making the
best and the most of the materials we have on hand.
I believe that fear of a god cripples men's intellects more than any
other influence. I believe that Humanity needs and should have all our
time, efforts, love, worship, and tenderness.
I believe that one world is all we can deal with at a time.
I believe that, if there is a future life, the best possible preparation
for it is to do the very best we can here and now.
I believe that love for our fellow-men is infinitely nobler, better, and
more necessary than love for God.
I believe that men, women, and children need our best thoughts, our
tenderest consideration, and our earnest sympathy.
I believe that God can get on just as well without any of these as with
them. If he wants anything he can get it without our assistance. It
is people with limitations, not gods without limitations, who need and
should have our aid.
I believe that it is better to build one happy home here than to invest
in a thousand churches which deal with a hereafter.
If a life that embraces this line of action does not fit a man for
heaven, and if faith in vicarious atonement will, then such a heaven is
not worth going to, and its god would be unworthy to make a good man's
acquaintance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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