The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 12 (of 12): Dresden Edition—MiscellanyIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 12 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Miscellany
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
I would like to have all corporal punishment abolished, and I would also
like to see the money that is given to charity distributed by charity
and by intelligence. I hope all these institutions will be overhauled.
I hope all places where people are pretending to take care of the poor
and for which they collect money from the public, will be visited, and
will be visited unexpectedly and the truth told.
In my judgment there is some better way. I think every hospital,
every asylum, every home for waifs and orphans should be supported by
taxation, not by charity; should be under the care and control of the
State absolutely.
I do not believe in these institutions being managed by any individual
or by any society, religious or secular, but by the State. I would no
more have hospitals and asylums depend on charity than I would have the
public school depend on voluntary contributions.
I want the schools supported by taxation and to be controlled by the
State, and I want the hospitals and asylums and charitable institutions
founded and controlled and carried on in the same way. Let the property
of the State do it.
Let those pay the taxes who are able. And let us do away forever with
the idea that to take care of the sick, of the helpless, is a charity.
It is not a charity. It is a duty. It is something to be done for our
own sakes. It is no more a charity than it is to pave or light the
streets, no more a charity than it is to have a system of sewers.
It is all for the purpose of protecting society and of civilizing
ourselves.
SPAIN AND THE SPANIARDS.
SPAIN has always been exceedingly religious and exceedingly cruel. That
country had an unfortunate experience. The Spaniards fought the Moors
for about seven hundred or eight hundred years, and during that time
Catholicism and patriotism became synonymous. They were fighting the
Moslems. It was a religious war. For this reason they became intense in
their Catholicism, and they were fearful that if they should grant the
least concession to the Moor, God would destroy them. Their idea was
that the only way to secure divine aid was to have absolute faith, and
this faith was proved by their hatred of all ideas inconsistent with
their own.
Spain has been and is the victim of superstition. The Spaniards expelled
the Jews, who at that time represented a good deal of wealth and
considerable intelligence. This expulsion was characterized by infinite
brutality and by cruelties that words can not express. They drove
out the Moors at last. Not satisfied with this, they drove out the
Moriscoes. These were Moors who had been converted to Catholicism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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