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
_Answer._ Without calling in question the perfect sincerity of Father
Fransiola, I think his statement is exactly the wrong end to. I do not
think that reason should be guided by faith; I think that faith should
be guided by reason. After all, the highest possible conception of faith
would be the science of probabilities, and the probable must not be
based on what has not happened, but upon what has; not upon something
we know nothing about, but the nature of the things with which we are
acquainted. The foundation we must know something about, and whenever we
reason, we must have something as a basis, something secular, something
that we think we know. About these facts we reason, sometimes by
analogy, and we say thus and so has happened, therefore thus and so may
happen. We do not say thus and so _may_ happen, therefore something else
_has_ happened. We must reason from the known to the unknown, not from
the unknown to the known. This Father admits that if you do not allow a
man to reason you crush his manhood. At the same time he says faith must
govern reason. Who makes the faith? The church. And the church tells the
man that he must take the faith, reason or no reason, and that he
may afterward reason, taking the faith as a fact. This makes him an
intellectual slave, and the poor devil mistakes for liberty the right
to examine his own chains. These gentlemen endeavor to satisfy their
prisoners by insisting that there is nothing beyond the walls.
_Question_. You criticise the church for not encouring the poor to
mingle with the rich, and yet you defend the right of a man to choose
his own company. Are not these same distinctions made by non-confessing
Christians in real life, and will not there always be some greater,
richer, wiser, than the rest?
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