My principal objections to orthodox religion are two: slavery here and hell hereafter.
Men and women desire each other, and this desire is a condition of civilization, progress, and happiness, and of everything of real value. But there is this profound difference in the sexes: in man this desire is the foundation of love, while in woman love is the foundation of this desire.
That church teaches that infinite innocence was sacrificed for me! I do not want it! I do not wish to go to heaven unless I can settle by the books, and go there because I ought to go there. I have said, and I say again, I do not wish to be a charity angel. I have no ambition to become a winged pauper of the skies.
If you say to a man: “Eighteen hundred years ago the dead were raised,” he will reply: “Yes, I know that.” And if you say: “A hundred thousand years from now all the dead will be raised,” he will probably reply: “I presume so.” But if you tell him: “I saw a dead man raised to-day,” he will ask, “From what madhouse have you escaped?
There is not the slightest danger of women becoming too intellectual or knowing too much. Neither is there any danger of men knowing too much. At least, I know of no men who are in immediate peril from that source.
If what is known as the Christian Religion is true, nothing can be more wonderful than the fact that Matthew, Mark and Luke say nothing about “salvation by faith;” that they do not even hint at the doctrine of the atonement, and are as silent as empty tombs as to the necessity of believing anything to secure happiness in this world or another.
Nobody ever saw anybody who had seen anybody who had heard of anybody that had ever seen anybody that had ever seen one of the original Hebrew manuscripts.
You have no idea how many men are spoiled by what is called education. For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. If Shakespeare had graduated at Oxford, he might have been a quibbling attorney, or a hypocritical parson.
Christ never wrote a solitary word of the New Testament – not one word. There is an account that he once stooped and wrote something in the sand, but that has not been preserved. He never told anybody to write a word.
I never will, I never can, worship a God who upholds the institution of slavery. Such a God I hate and defy. I neither want his heaven, nor fear his hell.
Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.
Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to help make others so.
The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the rights of others, the robbers of the poor, those who put wages below the living point, the ministers who make people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain; these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering and the helpless down to death.
In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he believes in some Being superior to himself?
The idea that an infinite God, creator of all worlds, came to this grain of sand, learned the trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put him to death that he might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few believers from the consequences of his own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and natural brain.
Life is not the same to all – to some a blessing, to some a curse, to some not much in any way.
It does not occur to him that it is necessary to account for the existence of an infinite personality. He is perfectly certain that there can be no design without a designer, and he is equally certain that there can be a designer who was not designed.
How fortunate it is for us all that it is somewhat unnatural for a human being to obey. Universal obedience is universal stagnation; disobedience is one of the conditions of progress.
When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf.
Death is liberty, absolute and eternal.
The real question is, can we prevent the ignorant, the poor, the vicious, from filling the world with their children?