The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 11 (of 12): Dresden Edition—MiscellanyIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 11 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Miscellany
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
I took the ground, and I still take the ground, that there is nothing
in the Constitution that cannot on occasion be enforced by the army and
navy--that is to say, that cannot be defended and enforced by the sword.
Suppose God is acknowledged in the Constitution, and somebody denies the
existence of this God--what are you to do with him? Every man elected to
office must swear or affirm that he will support the Constitution. Can
one who does not believe in this God, conscientiously take such oath, or
make such affirmation?
The effect, then, of such a clause in the Constitution would be to
drive from public life all except the believers in this God, and this
providence. The Government would be in fact a theocracy and would resort
for its preservation to one of the old forms of religious persecution.
I took the ground in my article, and still maintain it, that all
intelligent people know that no one knows whether there is a God or not.
This cannot be answered by saying, "that nearly all intelligent men in
every age, including our own, have believed in God and have held that
they had rational grounds for such faith." This is what is called a
departure in pleading--it is a shifting of the issue. I did not say that
intelligent people do not believe in the existence of God. What I did
say is, that intelligent people know that no one knows whether there is
a God or not.
It is not true that we know the conditions of thought. Neither is it
true that we know that these conditions are unconditioned. There is no
such thing as the unconditioned conditional. We might as well say that
the relative is unrelated--that the unrelated is the absolute--and
therefore that there is no difference between the absolute and the
relative.
The Bishop says we cannot know the relative without knowing the
absolute. The probability is that he means that we cannot know the
relative without admitting the existence of the absolute, and that we
cannot know the phenomenal without taking the noumenal for granted.
Still, we can neither know the absolute nor the noumenal for the reason
that our mind is limited to relations.
CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALS.
* "An Address delivered before the State Bar Association at
Albany, N. Y., January 1, 1890."
IN this brief address, the object is to suggest--there being no time to
present arguments at length. The subject has been chosen for the reason
that it is one that should interest the legal profession, because that
profession to a certain extent controls and shapes the legislation of
our country and fixes definitely the scope and meaning of all laws.
Lawyers ought to be foremost in legislative and judicial reform, and
of all men they should understand the philosophy of mind, the causes of
human action, and the real science of government.
It has been said that the three pests of a community are: A priest
without charity; a doctor without knowledge, and, a lawyer without a
sense of justice.
I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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