The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 08 (of 12): Dresden Edition—InterviewsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 08 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Interviews
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
The world belongs to the human race. There is to be no war in this
country on religious opinions, except a war of words--a conflict
of thoughts, of facts; and in that conflict the hosts of superstition
will go down. They may not be defeated to-day, or to-morrow, or
next year, or during this century, but they are growing weaker day
by day.
This priest, McGlynn, has the courage to stand up against the
propaganda. What would have been his fate a few years ago? What
would have happened to him in Spain, in Portugal, in Italy--in any
other country that was Catholic--only a few years ago? Yet he
stands here in New York, he refuses to obey God's vicegerent; he
freely gives his mind to an archbishop; he holds the holy Inquisition
in contempt. He has done a great thing. He is undoubtedly an
honest man. He never should have been a Catholic. He has no
business in that church. He has ideas of his own--theories, and
seems to be governed by principles. The Catholic Church is not
his place. If he remains, he must submit, he must kneel in the
humility of abjectness; he must receive on the back of his independence
the lashes of the church. If he remains, he must ask the forgiveness
of slaves for having been a man. If he refuses to submit, the
church will not have him. He will be driven to take his choice--
to remain a member, humiliated, shunned, or go out into the great,
free world a citizen of the Republic, with the rights, responsibilities,
and duties of an American citizen.
I believe that Dr. McGlynn is an honest man, and that he really
believes in the land theories of Mr. George. I have no confidence
in his theories, but I have confidence that he is actuated by the
best and noblest motives.
_Question_. Are you to go on the lecture platform again?
_Answer_. I expect to after a while. I am now waiting for the
church to catch up. I got so far ahead that I began almost to
sympathize with the clergy. They looked so helpless and talked in
such a weak, wandering, and wobbling kind of way that I felt as
though I had been cruel. From the papers I see that they are busy
trying to find out who the wife of Cain was. I see that the Rev.
Dr. Robinson, of New York, is now wrestling with that problem. He
begins to be in doubt whether Adam was the first man, whether Eve
was the first woman; suspects that there were other races, and that
Cain did not marry his sister, but somebody else's sister, and that
the somebody else was not Cain's brother. One can hardly over-
estimate the importance of these questions, they have such a direct
bearing on the progress of the world. If it should turn out that
Adam was the first man, or that he was not the first man, something
might happen--I am not prepared to say what, but it might.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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