What's God Got to Do With It?: Robert Ingersoll on Free Thought, Honest Talk and the Separation of Church and State

by Robert G. Ingersoll

Ingersoll grew up immersed in the full intensity of religious fundamentalism:

for him, from a very early age, religion was all snare and delusion — an affront to reason, a divider of humanity, something to combat with every bit of strength at one’s disposal.

The religion that has to be supported by law is not only without value, but a fraud and curse. The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket is hardly worth making. A prayer that must have a cannon behind it better never be uttered.

We have retired the gods from politics. We have found that man is the only source of political power, and that the governed should govern. We have disfranchised the aristocrats of the air and have given one country to mankind.

The Feudal system was supposed to be in accordance with the divine plan. The people were not governed by intelligence, but by threats and promises, by rewards and punishments.

The people were created to support thrones and altars. Their destiny was to toil and obey — to work and want.

And if there is to be an acknowledgment of God in the Constitution, the question naturally arises as to which God is to have this honor.

Intelligent people know that no one knows whether there is a God or not. The existence of such a Being is merely a matter of opinion.

Is it possible to flatter the Infinite with a constitutional amendment? The Confederate States acknowledged God in their constitution, and yet they were overwhelmed by a people in whose organic law no reference to God is made.

For many years priests have attempted to give to our Government a religious form. Zealots have succeeded in putting the legend upon our money: “In God We Trust”; and we have chaplains in the army and navy, and legislative proceedings are usually opened with prayer. All this is contrary to the genius of the Republic, contrary to the Declaration of Independence, and contrary really to the Constitution of the United States.

If God is allowed in the Constitution, man must abdicate. There is no room for both. If the people of the great Republic become superstitious enough and ignorant enough to put God in the Constitution of the United States, the experiment of self-government will have failed, and the great and splendid declaration that “all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” will have been denied, and in its place will be found this: All power comes from God; priests are his agents, the people are their slaves.

the Supreme Being took a rib, or as the French would call it, a cutlet, out of this man, and from that he made a woman. And considering the amount of raw material used, I look upon it as the most successful job ever performed.

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 lids there is nothing but humiliation and shame for her. She is regarded as the property of man. She is made 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. The gospel is too pure to be spoken by her polluted lips. Woman should learn in silence.

Nothing can be more absurd than the idea that we can do something to please or displease an infinite Being. If our thoughts and actions can lessen or increase the happiness of God, then to that extent God is the slave and victim of man.

In all ages reason has been regarded as the enemy of religion. Nothing has been considered so pleasing to the Deity as a total denial of the authority of your own mind.

The man who practiced every virtue, but failed to believe, was execrated. Nothing so outrages the feelings of the church as a moral unbeliever — nothing so horrible as a charitable Atheist.

Every church pretends to have found the exact truth. This is the end of progress. Why pursue that which you have? Why investigate when you know?

Anything that can be learned is hardly worth knowing. The present is considered of no value in itself. Happiness must not be expected this side of the clouds, and can only be attained by self-denial and faith; not self-denial for the good of others, but for the salvation of your own sweet self.

The doubter, the investigator, the Infidel, have been the saviors of liberty.

The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and common stones compared with Shakespeare’s glittering gold and gleaming gems.

I compared Zeno, Epicurus and Socrates, three heathen wretches who had never heard of the Old Testament or the Ten Commandments, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, three favorites of Jehovah, and I was depraved enough to think that the Pagans were superior to the Patriarchs — and to Jehovah himself.

The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn — the less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything.

#tmyk

The highest possible conception of consistency is to be true to the knowledge of today, without the slightest reference to what your opinion was years ago.

I believe that man came up from the lower animals. When I first heard of that doctrine I did not like it.

The Catholic now objects to being taxed to support a school in which his religion is not taught. He is not satisfied with the school that says nothing on the subject of religion. He insists that it is an outrage to tax him to support a school where the teacher simply teaches what he knows. And yet this same Catholic wants his church exempted from taxation, and the tax of an Atheist or of a Jew increased, when he teaches in his untaxed church that the Atheist and Jew will both be eternally damned! Is it possible for impudence to go further?

In my judgment, theaters have done more to civilize mankind than churches; that is to say theaters have done something to civilize mankind — churches nothing. The effect of all superstition has been to render man barbarous. I do not believe in the civilizing effects of falsehood.

Do not imagine for a moment that I think people who disagree with me are bad people. I admit, and I cheerfully admit, that a very large proportion of mankind, and a very large majority, a vast number are reasonably honest. I believe that most Christians believe what they teach; that most ministers are endeavoring to make this world better. I do not pretend to be better than they are. It is an intellectual question. It is a question, first, of intellectual liberty, and after that, a question to be settled at the bar of human reason. I do not pretend to be better than they are. Probably I am a good deal worse than many of them, but that is not the question. The question is: Bad as I am, have I the right to think? And I think I have for two reasons: First, I cannot help it. And secondly, I like it.

They say to me: “What do you propose? You have torn this down, what do you propose to give us in place of it?” I have not torn the good down. I have only endeavored to trample out the ignorant, cruel fires of hell.

I believe in the gospel of Good Living. You cannot make any god happy by fasting. Let us have good food, and let us have it well cooked — and it is a thousand times better to know how to cook than it is to understand any theology in the world.

Can I get an amen?

I had rather think of those I have loved, and lost, as having returned to earth, as having become a part of the elemental wealth of the world — I would rather think of them as unconscious dust, I would rather dream of them as gurgling in the streams, floating in the clouds, bursting in the foam of light upon the shores of worlds, I would rather think of them as the lost visions of a forgotten night, than to have even the faintest fear that their naked souls have been clutched by an orthodox god.