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
Such a statement is a white flag. The warrior eludes the combat when he
cries out that it is a "metaphysical question." He deserts the field and
throws down his arms when he admits that "no revelation has lifted the
veil between time and eternity." Again I ask, why were the Jewish people
as wicked, cruel, and ignorant with a revelation from God, as other
nations were without? Why were the worshipers of false deities as brave,
as kind, and generous as those who knew the only true and living God?
How do you explain the fact that while Jehovah was waging wars of
extermination, establishing slavery, and persecuting for opinion's sake,
heathen philosophers were teaching that all men are brothers, equally
entitled to liberty and life? You insist that Jehovah believed in
slavery and yet punished the Egyptians for enslaving the Jews. Was your
God once an abolitionist? Did he at that time "denounce Christ for not
agreeing with him"? If slavery was a crime in Egypt, was it a virtue
in Palestine? Did God treat the Canaanites better than Pharaoh did
the Jews? Was it right for Jehovah to kill the children of the people
because of Pharaoh's sin? Should the peasant be punished for the king's
crime? Do you not know that the worst thing that can be said of Nero,
Caligula, and Commodus is that they resembled the Jehovah of the Jews?
Will you tell me why God failed to give his Bible to the whole world?
Why did he not give the Scriptures to the Hindu, the Greek, and Roman?
Why did he fail to enlighten the worshipers of "Mammon" and Moloch, of
Belial and Baal, of Bacchus and Venus? After all, was not Bacchus as
good as Jehovah? Is it not better to drink wine than to shed blood?
Was there anything in the worship of Venus worse than giving captured
maidens to satisfy the victor's lust? Did "Mammon" or Moloch do anything
more infamous than to establish slavery? Did they order their soldiers
to kill men, women, and children, and to save alive nothing that had
breath? Do not answer these questions by saying that "no veil has been
lifted between time and eternity," and that "we have no right to rejudge
the justice of God."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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