by Robert Ingersoll
In the estimation of good orthodox Christians I am a criminal,
because I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters,
husbands, wives, and lovers the consolations naturally arising from a belief in
an eternity of grief and pain. I want to tear, break, and scatter to the winds
the God that priests erected in the fields of innocent pleasure -- a God made of
sticks called creeds, and of old clothes called myths. I shall endeavor to take
from the coffin its horror, from the cradle its curse, and put out the fires of
revenge kindled by an infinite fiend.
Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the
glare of Hell?
Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice,
immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler [jailer] hardens, debases, and pollutes
even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the universe,
no good being can be perfectly happy.
Against the heartlessness of the Christian religion every grand
and tender soul should enter solemn protest. The God of Hell should be held in
loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens eternal pain should be hated,
not loved -- cursed, not worshiped. A heaven presided over by such a God must be
below the lowest hell. I want no part in any heaven in which the saved, the
ransomed and redeemed will drown with shouts of joy the cries and sobs of hell
-- in which happiness will forget misery, where the tears of the lost only
increase laughter and double bliss.
The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality, fear,
cowardice, and revenge. This idea testifies that our remote ancestors were the
lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves, only from mouths filled with
cruel fangs, only from hearts of fear and hatred, only from the conscience of
hunger and lust, only from the lowest and most debased could come this most
cruel, heartless and bestial of all dogmas.
Our barbarian ancestors knew but little of nature. They were
too astonished to investigate. They could not divest themselves of the idea that
everything happened with reference to them; that they caused storms and
earthquakes; that they brought the tempest and the whirlwind; that on account of
something they had done, or omitted to do, the lightning of vengeance leaped
from the darkened sky. They made up their minds that at least two vast and
powerful beings presided over this world; that one was good and the other bad;
that both of these beings wished to get control of the souls of men; that they
were relentless enemies, eternal foes; that both welcomed recruits and hated
deserters; that both demanded praise and worship; that one offered rewards in
this world, and the other in the next. The Devil has paid cash -- God buys on
credit.
Man saw cruelty and mercy in nature, because he imagined that
phenomena were produced to punish or to reward him. When his poor hut was torn
and broken by the wind, he thought it a punishment. When some town or city was
swept away by flood or sea, he imagined that the crimes of the inhabitants had
been avenged. When the land was filled with plenty, when the seasons were kind,
he thought that he had pleased the tyrant of the skies.
It must he remembered that both gods and devils were supposed
to be presided over by the greatest God and the greatest Devil. The God could
give infinite rewards and could inflict infinite torments. The Devil could
assist man here; could give him wealth and place in this world, in consideration
of owning his soul hereafter. Each human soul was a prize contended for by these
deities. Of course this God and this Devil had innumerable spirits at their
command, to execute their decrees. The God lived in heaven and the Devil in
hell. Both were monarchs and were infinitely jealous of each other. The priests
pretended to be the agents and recruiting sergeants of this God, and they were
duly authorized to promise and threaten in his name; they had power to forgive
and curse. These priests sought to govern the world by force and fear. Believing
that men could be frightened into obedience, they magnified the tortures and
terrors of perdition. Believing also that man could in part be influenced by the
hope of reward, they magnified the joys of heaven. In other words, they promised
eternal joy and threatened everlasting pain. Most of these priests, born of the
ignorance of the time, believed what they taught. They proved that God was good,
by sunlight and harvest, by health and happiness; that he was angry, by disease
and death. Man, according to this doctrine, was led astray by the Devil, who
delighted only in evil. It was supposed that God demanded worship; that he loved
to be flattered; that he delighted in sacrifice; that nothing made him happier
than to see ignorant faith upon its knees; that above all things he hated and
despised doubters and heretics, and that he regarded all investigation as
rebellion.
Now and then believers in these ideas, those who had gained
great reputation for learning and sanctity, or had enjoyed great power, wrote
books, and these books after a time were considered sacred. Most of them were
written to frighten mankind, and were filled with threatenings and curses for
unbelievers and promises for the faithful. The more frightful the curses, the
more extravagant the promises, the more sacred the books were considered. All of
the gods were cruel and vindictive, unforgiving and relentless, and the devils
were substantially the same. It was also believed that certain things must be
accepted as true, no matter whether they were reasonable or not; that it was
pleasing to God to believe a certain creed, especially if it happened to be the
creed of the majority. Each community felt it a duty to see that the enemies of
God were converted or killed. To allow a heretic to live in peace was to invite
the wrath of God. Every public evil -- every misfortune -- was accounted for by
something the community had permitted or done. When epidemics appeared, brought
by ignorance and welcomed by filth, the heretic was brought out and sacrificed
to appease the vengeance of God. From the knowledge they had -- from their
premises -- they reasoned well. They said, if God will inflict such frightful
torments upon us here, simply for allowing a few heretics to live, what will he
do with the heretics? Of course the heretics would be punished forever. They
knew how cruel was the barbarian king when he had the traitor in his power. They
had seen every horror that man could inflict on man. Of course a God could do
more than a king. He could punish forever. The fires he would kindle never could
be quenched. The torments he would inflict would be eternal. They thought the
amount of punishment would be measured only by the power of God.
These ideas were not only prevalent in what are called
barbarous times, but they are received by the religious world of today.
No death could be conceived more horrible than that produced by
flames. To these flames they added eternity, and hell was produced. They
exhausted the idea of personal torture.
By putting intention behind what man called good, God was
produced. By putting intention behind what man called bad, the Devil was
created. Leave this "intention" out, and gods and devils fade away.
If not a human being existed the sun would continue to shine,
and tempests now and then would devastate the world; the rain would fall in
pleasant showers, and the bow of promise would adorn the cloud; violets would
spread their velvet bosoms to the sun, and the earthquake would devour; birds
would sing, and daisies bloom, and roses blush, and the volcanoes would fill the
heavens with their lurid glare; the procession of the seasons would not be
broken, and the stars would shine just as serenely as though the world was
filled with loving hearts and happy homes. But in the olden time man though
otherwise. He imagined that he was of great importance. Barbarians are always
egotistic. They think that the stars are watching them; that the sun shines on
their account; that the rain falls for them and that gods and devils are really
troubling themselves about their poor and ignorant souls.
In those days men fought for their God as they did for their
king. They killed the enemies of both. For this their king would reward them
here, and their God hereafter. With them it was loyalty to destroy the disloyal.
They did not regard God as a vague "spirit," nor as an "essence" without body or
parts, but as a being, a person, an infinite man, a king, the monarch of the
universe, who had garments of glory for believers and robes of flame for the
heretic and infidel.
Do not imagine that this doctrine of hell belongs to
Christianity alone. Nearly all religions have had this dogma for a cornerstone.
Upon this burning foundation nearly all have built. Over the abyss of pain rose
the glittering dome of pleasure. This world was regarded as one of trial. Here a
God of infinite wisdom experimented with man. Between the outstretched paws of
the Infinite the mouse, man, was allowed to play. Here man had the opportunity
of hearing priests and kneeling in temples. Here he could read and hear read the
sacred books. Here he could have the example of the pious and the counsels of
the holy. Here he could build churches and cathedrals. Here he could burn
incense, fast, wear haircloth, deny himself all the pleasures of life, confess
to priests, count beads, be miserable one day in seven, make creeds, construct
instruments of torture, bow before pictures and images, eat little square pieces
of bread, sprinkle water on the heads of babes, shut his eyes and say words to
the clouds, and slander and defame all who have the courage to despise
superstition, and the goodness to tell their honest thoughts. After death,
nothing could be done to make him better. When he should come into the presence
of God, nothing was left except to damn him. Priests might convert him here, but
God could do nothing there, -- all of which shows how much more a priest can do
for a soul than its creator; how much more potent is the example of your average
Christian than that of all the angels, and how much superior earth is to heaven
for the moral development of the soul. In heaven the Devil is not allowed to
enter. There all are pure and perfect, yet they cannot influence a soul for
good.
Only here, on the earth, where the Devil is constantly active,
only where his agents attack every soul, is there the slightest hope of moral
improvement.
Strange! that a world cursed by God, filled with temptations
and thick with fiends, should be the only place where hope exists, the only
place where man can repent, the only place where reform is possible. Strange
that heaven, filled with angels and presided over by God, is the only place
where reformation is utterly impossible! Yet these are the teachings of all the
believers in the eternity of punishment.
Masters frightened slaves with the threat of hell, and slaves
got a kind of shadowy revenge by whispering back the threat. The poor have
damned the rich and the rich the poor. The imprisoned imagined a hell for their
gaolers; the weak built this place for the strong; the arrogant for their
rivals; the vanquished for their victors; the priest for the thinker, religion
for reason, superstition for science.
All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the
cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable,
grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word -- Hell.
For the nourishment of this dogma cruelty was soil, ignorance
was rain, and fear was light.
Christians have placed upon the throne of the universe a God of
eternal hate. I cannot worship a being whose vengeance is boundless, whose
cruelty is shoreless, and whose malice is increased by the agonies he
inflicts.
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