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
I make a distinction between the members and the creed of that church. I
know many who are a thousand times better than the creed--good, warm and
splendid friends of mine. I would do anything in the world for them. And
I have said to them a hundred times, "You are a thousand times better
than your creed." But when you come down to the doctrine of the
damnation of infants, it is the deformity of deformities. The editor
of this paper is engaged in giving the world the cheerful doctrines of
fore-ordination and damnation--those twin comforts of the Presbyterian
creed, and warning them against the frightful effects of reasoning in
any manner for themselves. He regards the intellectually free as the
lowest, the vilest and the meanest, as men who wish to sin, as men
who are longing to commit crime, men who are anxious to throw off all
restraint.
My friends, every chain thrown from the body puts an additional
obligation upon the soul. Every man who is free, puts a responsibility
upon his brain and upon his heart. You, who never want responsibility,
give your souls to some church. You, who never want the feeling that you
are under obligation to yourselves, give your souls away. But if you are
willing to feel and meet responsibility; if you feel that you must give
an account not only to yourselves but to every human being whom you
injure, then you must be free. Where there is no freedom, there can be
no responsibility.
It is a mystery to me why the editors of religious papers are so
malicious, why they endeavor to answer argument with calumny. Is it
because they feel the sceptre slowly slipping from their hands? Is it
the result of impotent rage? Is it because there is being written upon
every orthodox brain a certificate of intellectual inferiority?
This same editor assures his readers that what I say is not worth
answering, and yet he devotes column after column of his journal to that
very purpose. He states that I am no speaker, no orator; and upon the
same page admits that he did not hear me, giving as a reason that he
does not think it right to pay money for such a purpose. Recollect, that
in a religious paper, a man who professes honesty, criticises a statue
or a painting, condemns it, and at the end of the criticism says that he
never saw it. He criticises what he calls the oratory of a man, and at
the end says, "I never heard him, and I never saw him."
As a matter of fact, I have never heard of any of these gentlemen who
thought it necessary to hear what any man said in order to answer him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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