Ingersoll's Views on Religion
by Dr. Gordon Stein and Al Seckel


Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) was America's foremost orator and atheist. Many of his lectures were devoted to the hypocrisy in religious belief. Thought provoking lectures, such as "Some Mistakes of Moses", "The Gods", and "The Devil", caused great alarm among the clergy, who wasted no time in slandering and libeling Ingersoll. To this Ingersoll responded, "People who love their enemies should, at least, tell the truth about their friends. Should it turn out that I am the worst man in the whole world, the story of the flood will remain just as improbable as before, and the contradictions of the Pentateuch will still demand an explanation".

Ingersoll's lectures drew thousands at a time, mostly because of his liberal wit, his great oratorical style, and his daring in attacking some of society's sacred cows. Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Walt Whitman attended his lectures frequently.

The influence of Ingersoll on history is subtle, yet profound. Through his wit and great wisdom he opened many people's eyes about the speculative basis of religious belief. He assured the clergy that the bible and religious dogma and superstition would no longer be immune from legitimate criticism. Even though his words were voiced a hundred years ago, they still have as much relevance today as he did then.

God
"Each nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. Each god was intensely patriotic, and detested all nations but his own."

"No god was ever in advance of the age that created him."

"A being who has the power to prevent it and yet allows thousands and millions of his children to starve, who devours them with earthquakes, who allows whole nations to be enslaved, cannot--in my judgment--be implicitly depended upon to do justice in another world."

"An honest god is the noblest work of man."

The poor African that pours out his heart to his deity of stone is on an exact religious level with the robed priest who supplicates his god. The same mistake, the same superstition, bends the knees and shuts the eyes of both. Both ask for supernatural aid, and neither has the slightest thought of the absolute uniformity of nature."

I believe in the religion of humanity. It is far better to love our fellow men than to love god. We can help them; we cannot help him."

The Bible
"The people were taught that the record (Bible) was inspired, and therefore true. They were not taught that it was true, and therefore inspired. After all, the real question is not whether the Bible is inspired, but whether it is true. If the Bible is really true, the claim of inspiration need not be urged, and if it is not true, its inspiration can hardly be established. As a matter of fact, the truth does not need to be inspired. Where truth ends, where probability stops, inspiration begins. A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth does not need the assistance of a miracle. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe because it is the product of all the other facts. A lie will fit nothing except another lie made for the express purpose of fitting it."

"As long as woman regards the Bible as the charter of her rights, she will be the slave of man. The Bible was not written by a woman. Within its lies there is nothing but humiliation and shame for her. She is regarded as the property of man. She is mad to ask forgiveness for becoming a mother. She is as much below her husband as her husband is below Christ. She is not allowed to speak (in the churches). The gospel is too pure to be spoken by her polluted lips. Women should learn in silence."

"Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading Bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires and clothing will. To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons."

"If Christ, in fact, said, 'I came not to bring peace but a sword', it is the only prophecy in the New Testament that has been literally fulfilled."

MIRACLES
"Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows."

Believers in miracles should never endeavor to explain them. There is but one way to explain anything, and that is to account for it by natural agencies. The moment you explain a miracle, it disappears."

"If we read in the annals of China that several thousand years ago, five thousand people were fed on one sandwich, and that several sandwiches were left over after the feast, there are few intelligent men who would credit the statement. But many intelligent people, reading a like story in Hebrew, or in Greek, or in a mistranslation from either o those languages, accept the story without a doubt."

Religious Persecution
"It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and despise each other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or the Trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other, seems beyond the comprehension of man, and yet in all countries where Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact extent of their powers."

"Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising, unreasoning, aggressive and insolent. Christianity has held all other creeds and forms in infinite contempt, divided the world into enemies and friends, and verified the awful declaration of its founder, a declaration that wet with blood the sword he came to bring, and made the horizon of a thousand years lurid with the faggots' flames."

"When science was in its infancy, religion tried to strangle it in its cradle."

"The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each other on account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about botany, and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father and mother. It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about."

Some Mistakes Of Moses
"Let us admit what we know to be true; that Moses was mistaken about a thousand things; that the story of creation is not true; that the Garden of Eden is a myth; that the serpent and the tree of knowledge, and the fall of man are but fragments of old mythologies, lost and dead; that woman was not made out of a rib; that serpents never had the power of speech; that the story of the flood and ark is not exactly true; that the tower of Babel is a mistake that the confusion of tongues is a childish thing; that the origin of the rainbow is a foolish fancy; that Methuselah did not live nine hundred and sixty nine years; that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is somewhat improbable; that burning brimstone never fell like rain; that Lot's wife was not changed into chloride of sodium; that Jacob did not, in fact, put his hip out of joint wrestling with God; that a belief in Pharoah's dreams is not essential to salvation; that is makes but little difference whether the rod of Aaron was changed to a serpent or not; that all of the wonders said to have been performed in Egypt, the greatest is that anybody ever believed the absurd accountŠ(The) Pentateuch are not the words of God, but simply "some mistakes of Moses."

"It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being than the (Old Testament) God. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust tyrant, sincere in hatred, promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous; -- such is the god of the Pentateuch."

"If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of god. if the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame"

Morality
"The Bible is not inspired in its morality, for the reason that slavery is not moral, that polygamy is not good, that wars of extermination are not merciful, and that nothing can be more immoral than to punish the innocent on account of the sins of the guilty;"

"I prefer to make no being responsible. I prefer to say: If the naked are to be clothed, man must clothe them; if the hungry are starving, man must feed them. I prefer to rely on human endeavor, upon human intelligence, upon the heart and brain of man. There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help. In vain the shipwrecked cry to God. In vain the imprisoned ask for liberty and light -- the world moves on, and the heavens are deaf, dumb, and blind. The frost freezes, the fire burns, slander smites, wrong triumphs, the good suffer, and prayer dies upon the lips of faith."

"Man should think, he should use all of his senses; he should examine; he should reason. The man who cannot think is less than a man; the man who will not think is a traitor to himself; the man who rears to think is superstition's slave."

"Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is -- not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends even, but that they treat those who differ with them with simple fairness. We do not wish to be forgiven but we wish Christians to so act that we will not have to forgive them."



REFERENCES:
1) Ingersoll, R.G. Some Mistakes of Moses. New York: Freethought Press Association, 1945.
2) Ingersoll, R.G. The Works. New York: Dresden Publishing Co., 1900. 12 volumes.
3) Larson, Orvin. American Infidel: Robert G. Ingersoll. New York: Citadel Press, 1962.
4) Warren, Sidney. American Freethought, 1860-1914. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943.