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Hell
THE idea of a hell was born of revenge and brutality on the one side, and cowardice on the other. In my judgment the American people are too brave, too charitable, too generous, too magnanimous, to believe in the infamous dogma of an eternal hell. I have no respect for any human being who believes in it. I have no respect for any man who preaches it. I have no respect for the man who will pollute the imagination of childhood with that infamous lie. I have no respect for the man who will add to the sorrows of this world with the frightful dogma. I have no respect for any man who endeavours to put that infinite cloud, that infinite shadow, over the heart of humanity.
- GenresReligionNonfiction
28 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
About the author
Robert G. Ingersoll
995 books331 followers"On August 11, 1833, was born the greatest and noblest of the Western World; an immense personality, -- unique, lovable, sublime; the peerless orator of all time, and as true a poet as Nature ever held in tender clasp upon her loving breast, and, in words coined for the chosen few, told of the joys and sorrows, hopes, dreams, and fears of universal life; a patriot whose golden words and deathless deeds were worthy of the Great Republic; a philanthropist, real and genuine; a philosopher whose central theme was human love, -- who placed 'the holy hearth of home' higher than the altar of any god; an iconoclast, a builder -- a reformer, perfectly poised, absolutely honest, and as fearless as truth itself -- the most aggressive and formidable foe of superstition -- the most valiant champion of reason -- Robert G. Ingersoll." - Herman E. Kittredge
Robert Green Ingersoll, who became the best known advocate of freethought in the 19th-century, was born in Dresden, N.Y. The son of an impoverished itinerant pastor, he later recalled his formative church experiences: "The minister asked us if we knew that we all deserved to go to hell, and we all answered 'yes.' Then we were asked if we would be willing to go to hell if it was God's will, and every little liar shouted 'Yes!'" He became an attorney by apprenticeship, and a colonel in the Civil War, fighting in the Battle of Shiloh. In 1867, Ingersoll was appointed Illinois' first Attorney General. His political career was cut short by his refusal to halt his controversial lectures, but he achieved national political fame for his thrilling nomination speech for James G. Blaine for president at the national convention of the Republican Party in 1876. Ingersoll was good friends with three U.S. presidents. The distinguished attorney was known and admired by most of the leading progressives and thinkers of his day.
Ingersoll traveled the continent for 30 years, speaking to capacity audiences, once attracting 50,000 people to a lecture in Chicago—40,000 too many for the Exposition Center. His repertoire included 3 to 4-hour lectures on Shakespeare, Voltaire and Burns, but the largest crowds turned out to hear him denounce the bible and religion. He initially settled in Peoria, Illinois, then in Washington, D.C., where he successfully defended falsely accused men in the "Star Route" scandal, the most famous political trial of the 19th century. Religious rumors against Ingersoll abounded. One had it that Ingersoll's son was a drunkard who more than once had to be carried away from the table. Ingersoll wrote: "It is not true that intoxicating beverages are served at my table. It is not true that my son ever was drunk. It is not true that he had to be carried away from the table. Besides, I have no son!"
During the Civil War he was commissioned as Colonel and commander of the 11th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, and was captured near Corinth, Mississippi. Although soon released, he still made time to treat his Confederate captors to a rousing anti slavery speech.
He hoped for but was never awarded a Cabinet post. The Republicans were afraid of his unorthodox religious views. He was told that he could progress politically if he hid his religious views, but Ingersoll refused on the charge that withholding information from the public would be immoral.
He strongly advocated equal rights for blacks and women. He defended Susan B. Anthony from hecklers when she spoke in Peoria; when every hotel in the city refused to house Frederick Douglass, he welcomed him into his home.
More: https://ffrf.org/news/day/dayitems/it...
http://infidels.org/library/historica...
http://www.robertgreeningersoll.org/8-2/
http://www.positiveatheism.org/tochin...
http://www.philosopedia.org/index.php...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G...
Robert Green Ingersoll, who became the best known advocate of freethought in the 19th-century, was born in Dresden, N.Y. The son of an impoverished itinerant pastor, he later recalled his formative church experiences: "The minister asked us if we knew that we all deserved to go to hell, and we all answered 'yes.' Then we were asked if we would be willing to go to hell if it was God's will, and every little liar shouted 'Yes!'" He became an attorney by apprenticeship, and a colonel in the Civil War, fighting in the Battle of Shiloh. In 1867, Ingersoll was appointed Illinois' first Attorney General. His political career was cut short by his refusal to halt his controversial lectures, but he achieved national political fame for his thrilling nomination speech for James G. Blaine for president at the national convention of the Republican Party in 1876. Ingersoll was good friends with three U.S. presidents. The distinguished attorney was known and admired by most of the leading progressives and thinkers of his day.
Ingersoll traveled the continent for 30 years, speaking to capacity audiences, once attracting 50,000 people to a lecture in Chicago—40,000 too many for the Exposition Center. His repertoire included 3 to 4-hour lectures on Shakespeare, Voltaire and Burns, but the largest crowds turned out to hear him denounce the bible and religion. He initially settled in Peoria, Illinois, then in Washington, D.C., where he successfully defended falsely accused men in the "Star Route" scandal, the most famous political trial of the 19th century. Religious rumors against Ingersoll abounded. One had it that Ingersoll's son was a drunkard who more than once had to be carried away from the table. Ingersoll wrote: "It is not true that intoxicating beverages are served at my table. It is not true that my son ever was drunk. It is not true that he had to be carried away from the table. Besides, I have no son!"
During the Civil War he was commissioned as Colonel and commander of the 11th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, and was captured near Corinth, Mississippi. Although soon released, he still made time to treat his Confederate captors to a rousing anti slavery speech.
He hoped for but was never awarded a Cabinet post. The Republicans were afraid of his unorthodox religious views. He was told that he could progress politically if he hid his religious views, but Ingersoll refused on the charge that withholding information from the public would be immoral.
He strongly advocated equal rights for blacks and women. He defended Susan B. Anthony from hecklers when she spoke in Peoria; when every hotel in the city refused to house Frederick Douglass, he welcomed him into his home.
More: https://ffrf.org/news/day/dayitems/it...
http://infidels.org/library/historica...
http://www.robertgreeningersoll.org/8-2/
http://www.positiveatheism.org/tochin...
http://www.philosopedia.org/index.php...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 20, 2024
The idea of hell was born of revenge and brutality…I have no respect for any human being who believes in it. I have no respect for any man who preaches it. I have no respect for the man who will pollute the imagination of childhood with that infamous lie. I have no respect for the man who will add to the sorrows of this world with the frightful dogma. I have no respect for any man who endeavors to put that infinite cloud, that infinite shadow, over the heart of humanity.
Robert Green Ingersoll was a kind of superstar in post Civil War America. He had been a colonel in the war, and was a major kingmaker in the post war Republican Party. But his greatest fame was as a public lecturer. In that age before tv, film, or even radio, spending a night at the lecture hall listening to captivating public speakers was a major entertainment, and Ingersoll was a rockstar on the lecture circuit. He filled halls all across America speaking on the fallacies of scripture and the faults of faith. They called him the Great Agnostic.
While Ingersoll attacked the Bible and the Christian faith in general, pointing out their absurdity, contradictions, and barbaric tenants (including Old Testament genocides, support of slavery, and mistreatment of women and children) the refrain he returned to most often was of the horrendous and hideous doctrine of eternal hellfire — a punishment meted out for simply lacking faith in patently absurd doctrines. Ingersoll condemned and denied this belief, and heaped scorn on those who would propagate it.
They say God has a right to damn me because he made me. I deny it.
I will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I will go to hell with my reason rather than to heaven without it.
Ingersoll reminded his audiences that it is men who make religions and their dogmas, that there is nothing inspired about them. This was a message some were ready to hear, as mainline Protestants Churches of the time were beginning to modernize their doctrines, a fact Ingersoll noted:
We are making religions today. That is to say, we are changing them, and the religion of today is not the religion of one year ago. What changed it? Science has done it; education and the growing heart of man has done it. And just to the extent that we become civilized ourselves, will we improve the religion of our fathers.
He went on to remind his audience that the idea of biblical inspiration was at the root of these ancient, barbaric doctrines:
But I am told now, we all are told, that this Bible is the foundation of civilization; I say that this Bible is the foundation of hell, and we shall never get rid of the dogma of hell until we get rid of the idea that this is an inspired book.
And Ingersoll proceeded to demonstrate how ridiculous and irrational was the idea of an infinite being who could be offended by and wish to punish his finite subjects:
I say here tonight that you cannot commit a sin against an infinite being. I can sin against my brother or my neighbor, because I can injure them. There can be no sin where there is no injury. Neither can a finite being commit infinite sin.
You might think that these Gilded Age lectures of Ingersoll are simply quaint artifacts of a past age, no longer necessary in our more enlightened world where nearly all mainline Protestant Churches have softened their dogmas, and even the Catholic Church de-emphasizes the more barbaric ancient doctrines. But that is ignoring the fact that one of the largest religious contingents active in America today are the Fundamentalist Evangelicals. They still hold as literal the inspiration of the Bible and the reality of a literal and eternal hell. They are extremely active in American politics and support the most despotic of candidates, espousing a Christian Nationalism that would put all of us back under the thumb of those who would see us in hell. We would do well to remember the words of Voltaire:
”Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Unfortunately, we all should still be reading and heeding the words of the Great Agnostic.
Robert Green Ingersoll was a kind of superstar in post Civil War America. He had been a colonel in the war, and was a major kingmaker in the post war Republican Party. But his greatest fame was as a public lecturer. In that age before tv, film, or even radio, spending a night at the lecture hall listening to captivating public speakers was a major entertainment, and Ingersoll was a rockstar on the lecture circuit. He filled halls all across America speaking on the fallacies of scripture and the faults of faith. They called him the Great Agnostic.
While Ingersoll attacked the Bible and the Christian faith in general, pointing out their absurdity, contradictions, and barbaric tenants (including Old Testament genocides, support of slavery, and mistreatment of women and children) the refrain he returned to most often was of the horrendous and hideous doctrine of eternal hellfire — a punishment meted out for simply lacking faith in patently absurd doctrines. Ingersoll condemned and denied this belief, and heaped scorn on those who would propagate it.
They say God has a right to damn me because he made me. I deny it.
I will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I will go to hell with my reason rather than to heaven without it.
Ingersoll reminded his audiences that it is men who make religions and their dogmas, that there is nothing inspired about them. This was a message some were ready to hear, as mainline Protestants Churches of the time were beginning to modernize their doctrines, a fact Ingersoll noted:
We are making religions today. That is to say, we are changing them, and the religion of today is not the religion of one year ago. What changed it? Science has done it; education and the growing heart of man has done it. And just to the extent that we become civilized ourselves, will we improve the religion of our fathers.
He went on to remind his audience that the idea of biblical inspiration was at the root of these ancient, barbaric doctrines:
But I am told now, we all are told, that this Bible is the foundation of civilization; I say that this Bible is the foundation of hell, and we shall never get rid of the dogma of hell until we get rid of the idea that this is an inspired book.
And Ingersoll proceeded to demonstrate how ridiculous and irrational was the idea of an infinite being who could be offended by and wish to punish his finite subjects:
I say here tonight that you cannot commit a sin against an infinite being. I can sin against my brother or my neighbor, because I can injure them. There can be no sin where there is no injury. Neither can a finite being commit infinite sin.
You might think that these Gilded Age lectures of Ingersoll are simply quaint artifacts of a past age, no longer necessary in our more enlightened world where nearly all mainline Protestant Churches have softened their dogmas, and even the Catholic Church de-emphasizes the more barbaric ancient doctrines. But that is ignoring the fact that one of the largest religious contingents active in America today are the Fundamentalist Evangelicals. They still hold as literal the inspiration of the Bible and the reality of a literal and eternal hell. They are extremely active in American politics and support the most despotic of candidates, espousing a Christian Nationalism that would put all of us back under the thumb of those who would see us in hell. We would do well to remember the words of Voltaire:
”Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Unfortunately, we all should still be reading and heeding the words of the Great Agnostic.
Want to Read
April 11, 2012Ingersoll is a genius and the perfect antidote to hellfire and brimstone theology that shackled the minds of countless people for centuries, and continues to instill fear in the hearts of children to this day. I wish more people were familiar with his writings. Every time I read his lectures I feel another part of me is released from my own past of fear, shame, intellectual stagnation, and bad psychology resulting from my particular religious indoctrination. His unvarnished criticism of religious doctrines that kill the soul and his clarion call to reasonable and free thinking are dangerously wonderful.
April 12, 2024
In this short essay, Ingersoll uses passages from the Bible and cold hard logic to explain why he cannot assent to orthodox Christian religions.
August 21, 2024
Very interesting!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews