The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 07 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Discussions — John Shaqi
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 07 (of 12): Dresden Edition—DiscussionsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 07 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Discussions
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
This gentleman also says that infidelity has done nothing for the world
in the development of the arts and sciences. Does he not know that
nearly every man who took a forward step was denounced by the church as
a heretic and infidel? Does he not know that the church has in all ages
persecuted the astronomers, the geologists, the logicians? Does he not
know that even to-day the church slanders and maligns the foremost men?
Has he ever heard of Tyndall, of Huxley? Is he acquainted with John
W. Draper, one of the leading minds of the world? Did he ever hear of
Auguste Comte, the great Frenchman? Did he ever hear of Descartes, of
Laplace, of Spinoza? In short, has he ever heard of a man who took a
step in advance of his time?
Orthodoxy never advances. When it advances, it ceases to be orthodoxy
and becomes heresy. Orthodoxy is putrefaction. It is intellectual
cloaca; it cannot advance. What the church calls infidelity is simply
free thought. Every man who really owns his own brain is, in the
estimation of the church, an infidel.
There is a paper published in this city called _The Occident_. The
Editor has seen fit to speak of me, and of the people who have assembled
to hear me, in the lowest, vilest and most scurrilous terms possible.
I cannot afford to reply in the same spirit. He alleges that the people
who assemble to hear me are the low, the debauched and the infamous.
The man who reads that paper ought to read it with tongs. It is a
Presbyterian sheet; and would gladly treat me as John Calvin treated
Castalio. Castalio was the first minister in the history of Christendom
who acknowledged the innocence of honest error, and John Calvin followed
him like a sleuth-hound of perdition. He called him a "dog of Satan;"
said that he had crucified Christ afresh; and pursued him to the very
grave. The editor of this paper is still warming his hands at the fire
that burned Servetus. He has in his heart the same fierce hatred of
everything that is free. But what right have we to expect anything good
of a man who believes in the eternal damnation of infants?
There may have been sometime in the history of the world a worse
religion than Old School Presbyterianism, but if there ever was, from
cannibalism to civilization, I have never heard of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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