The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—DiscussionsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Discussions
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Did Jehovah believe in the innocence of thought and the liberty of
expression? Kindness is found with true greatness. Tyranny lodges only
in the breast of the small, the narrow, the shriveled and the selfish.
Did Jehovah teach and practice generosity? Was he a believer in
religious liberty? If he was and is, in fact, God, he must have known,
even four thousand years ago, that worship must be free, and that he who
is forced upon his knees cannot, by any possibility, have the spirit of
prayer.
Let me call your attention to a few passages in the thirteenth chapter
of Deuteronomy:
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or
the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice
thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods,... thou shalt
not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity
him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him; but thou
shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to
death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone
him with stones, that he die."
Is it possible for you to find in the literature of this world more
awful passages than these? Did ever savagery, with strange and uncouth
marks, with awkward forms of beast and bird, pollute the dripping walls
of caves with such commands? Are these the words of infinite mercy? When
they were uttered, did "righteousness and peace kiss each other"? How
can any loving man or woman "encircle the name of Jehovah"--author of
these words--"with profoundest reverence and love"? Do I rebel because
my "constitution is warped, impaired and dislocated"? Is it because of
"total depravity" that I denounce the brutality of Jehovah? If my heart
were only good--if I loved my neighbor as myself--would I then see
infinite mercy in these hideous words? Do I lack "reverential calm"?
These frightful passages, like coiled adders, were in the hearts of
Jehovah's chosen people when they crucified "the Sinless Man."
Jehovah did not tell the husband to reason with his wife. She was to
be answered only with death. She was to be bruised and mangled to a
bleeding, shapeless mass of quivering flesh, for having breathed an
honest thought.
If there is anything of importance in this world, it is the family, the
home, the marriage of true souls, the equality of husband and wife--the
true republicanism of the heart--the real democracy of the fireside.
Let us read the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis:
"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire
shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
Never will I worship any being who added to the sorrows and agonies of
maternity. Never will I bow to any God who introduced slavery into every
home--who made the wife a slave and the husband a tyrant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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