HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
Charles Bradlaugh, 1889
As an unbeliever, I ask leave to plead that humanity has
been a real gainer from scepticism, and that the gradual and
growing rejection of Christianity--like the rejection of the
faiths which preceded it--has in fact added, and will add, to
man's happiness and well-being. I maintain that in physics
science is the outcome of scepticism, and that general progress
is impossible without scepticism on matters of religion. I mean
by religion every form of belief which accepts or asserts the
supernatural. I write as a Monist, and use the word "nature" as
meaning all phenomena, every phenomenon, all that is necessary
for the happening of any and every phenomenon. Every religion is
constantly changing, and at any given time is the measure of the
civilization attained by what Guizot described as the -juste
milieu- of those who profess it. Each religion is slowly but
certainly modified in its dogma and practice by the gradual
development of the peoples amongst whom it is professed. Each
discovery destroys in whole or part some theretofore cherished
belief. No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is
rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion die; dead
religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs: the decay
is long and--like the glacier march--is perceptible only to the
careful watcher by comparisons extending over long periods. A
superseded religion may often be traced in the festivals,
ceremonies, and dogmas of the religion which has replaced it.
Traces of obsolete religions may often be found in popular
customs, in old wives' stories, and in children's tales.
It is necessary, in order that my plea should be understood,
that I should explain what I mean by Christianity; and in the
very attempt at this explanation there will, I think, be found
strong illustration of the value of unbelief. Christianity in
practice may be gathered from its more ancient forms, represented
by the Roman Catholic and the Greek Churches, or from the various
Churches which have grown up in the last few centuries. Each of
these Churches calls itself Christian. Some of them deny the
right of the others to use the word Christian. Some Christian
Churches treat, or have treated, other Christian Churches as
heretics or unbelievers. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants
in Great Britain and Ireland have in turn been terribly cruel one
to the other; and the ferocious laws of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, enacted by the English Protestants against
English and Irish Papists, are a disgrace to civilization. These
penal laws, enduring longest in Ireland, still bear fruit in much
of the political mischief and agrarian crime of to-day. It is
only the tolerant indifference of scepticism that, one after the
other, has repealed most of the laws directed by the Established
Christian Church against Papists and Dissenters, and also against
Jews and heretics. Church of England clergymen have in the past
gone to great lengths in denouncing nonconformity; and even in
the present day an effective sample of such denunciatory bigotry
may be found in a sort of orthodox catechism written by the Rev.
F. A. Gace, of Great Barling, Essex, the popularity of which is
vouched by the fact that it has gone through ten editions. This
catechism for little children teaches that "Dissent is a great
sin," and the Dissenters "worship God according to their own evil
and corrupt imaginations, and not according to his revealed will,
and therefore their worship is idolatrous." Church of England
Christians and Dissenting Christians, when fraternizing amongst
themselves, often publicly draw the line at Unitarians, and
positively deny that these have any sort of right to call
themselves Christians.
In the first half of the seventeenth century Quakers were
flogged and imprisoned in England as blasphemers; and the early
Christian settlers in New England, escaping from the persecution
of Old World Christians, showed scant mercy to the followers of
Fox and Penn. It is customary, in controversy, for those
advocating the claims of Christianity, to include all good done
by men in nominally Christian countries as if such good were the
result of Christianity, while they contend that the evil which
exists prevails in spite of Christianity. I shall try to make
out that the ameliorating march of the last few centuries has
been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I quite
concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as
infidels by the pious of one century are frequently claimed as
saints by the pious of a later generation.
What, then, is Christianity? As a system or scheme of
doctrine, Christianity may, I submit, not unfairly be gathered
from the Old and New Testaments. It is true that some Christians
to-day desire to escape from submission to portions, at any rate,
of the Old Testament; but this very tendency seems to me to be
part of the result of the beneficial heresy for which I am
pleading. Man's humanity has revolted against Old Testament
barbarism, and therefore he has attempted to dissociate the Old
Testament from Christianity. Unless Old and New Testaments are
accepted as God's revelation to man, Christianity has no higher
claim than any other of the world's many religions, if no such
claim can be made out for it apart from the Bible. And though it
is quite true that some who deem themselves Christians put the
Old Testament completely in the background, this is, I allege,
because they are out-growing their Christianity. Without the
doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, Christianity, as a
religion, is naught; but unless the story of Adam's fall is
accepted, the redemption from the consequences of that fall
cannot be believed. Both in Great Britain and in the United
States the Old and New Testaments are forced on the people as
part of Christianity; for it is blasphemy at common law to deny
the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be of divine
authority; and such denial is punishable with fine and
imprisonment, or even worse. The rejection of Christianity
intended throughout this paper is therefore the rejection of the
Old and New Testaments as being of divine revelation. It is the
rejection alike of the authorized teachings of the Church of Rome
and of the Church of England, as these may be found in the Bible,
the creeds, the encyclicals, the prayer book, the canons and
homilies of either or both of these Churches. It is the
rejection of the Christianity of Luther, of Calvin, and of Wesley.
A ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that
the progress and civilization of the world are due to
Christianity; and the discussion is complicated by the fact that
many eminent servants of humanity have been nominal Christians,
of one or other of the sects. My allegation will be that the
special services rendered to human progress by these exceptional
men have not been in consequence of their adhesion to
Christianity, but in spite of it, and that the specific points of
advantage to human kind have been in ratio of their direct
opposition to precise Biblical enactments.
A. S. Farrar says [in "Critical History of Free Thought"]
that Christianity "asserts authority over religious belief in
virtue of being a supernatural communication from God, and claims
the right to control human thought in virtue of possessing sacred
books, which are at once the record and the instrument of the
communication, written by men endowed with supernatural
inspiration." Unbelievers refuse to submit to the asserted
authority, and deny this claim of control over human thought;
they allege that every effort at freethinking must provoke
sturdier thought.
Take one clear gain to humanity consequent on
unbelief--i.e., in the abolition of slavery in some countries, in
the abolition of the slave trade in most civilized countries, and
in the tendency to its total abolition. I am unaware of any
religion in the world which in the past forbade slavery. The
professors of Christianity for ages supported it; the Old
Testament repeatedly sanctioned it by special laws; the New
Testament has no repealing declaration. Though we are at the
close of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, it is only
during the past three-quarters of a century that the battle for
freedom has been gradually won. It is scarcely a quarter of a
century since the famous emancipation amendment was carried to
the United States Constitution. And it is impossible for any
well-informed Christian to deny that the abolition movement in
North America was most steadily and bitterly opposed by the
religious bodies in the various States. Henry Wilson, in his
"Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America"; Samuel J. May, in
his "Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict"; and J.
Greenleaf Whittier, in his poems, alike are witnesses that the
Bible and pulpit, the Church and its great influence, were used
against abolition and in favour of the slave-owner. I know that
Christians in the present day often declare that Christianity had
a large share in bringing about the abolition of slavery, and
this because men professing Christianity were abolitionists. I
plead that these so-called Christian abolitionists were men and
women whose humanity, recognizing freedom for all, was in this in
direct conflict with Christianity. It is not yet fifty years
since the European Christian powers jointly agreed to abolish the
slave trade. What of the effect of Christianity on these powers
in the centuries which had preceded? The heretic Condorcet
pleaded powerfully for freedom whilst Christian France was still
slave-holding. For many centuries Christian Spain and Christian
Portugal held slaves. Porto Rico freedom is not of long date:
and Cuban emancipation is even yet newer. It was a Christian
King, Charles V, and a Christian friar, who founded in Spanish
America the slave trade between the Old World and the New. For
some 1800 years, almost, Christians kept slaves, bought slaves,
sold slaves, bred slaves, stole slaves. Pious Bristol and godly
Liverpool less than 100 years ago openly grew rich on the
traffic. During the ninth century Greek Christians sold slaves
to the Saracens. In the eleventh century prostitutes were
publicly sold as slaves in Rome, and the profit went to the
Church.
It is said that William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, was a
Christian. But at any rate his Christianity was strongly diluted
with unbelief. As an abolitionist he did not believe Leviticus
xxv. 44-6; he must have rejected Exodus xxi. 2-6; he could not
have accepted the many permissions and injunctions by the Bible
deity to his chosen people to capture and hold slaves. In the
House of Commons on 18th February, 1796, Wilberforce reminded
that Christian assembly that infidel and anarchic France had
given liberty to the Africans, whilst Christian and monarchic
England was "obstinately continuing a system of cruelty and
injustice."
Wilberforce, whilst advocating the abolition of slavery,
found the whole influence of the English Court, and the great
weight of the Episcopal Bench, against him. George III, a most
Christian king, regarded abolition theories with abhorrence, and
the Christian House of Lords was utterly opposed to granting
freedom to the slave. When Christian missionaries some sixty-two
years ago preached to Demerara negroes under the rule of
Christian England, they were treated by Christian judges, holding
commission from Christian England, as criminals for so preaching.
A Christian commissioned officer, member of the Established
Church of England, signed the auction notices for the sale of
slaves as late as the year 1824. In the evidence before a
Christian court-marital, a missionary is charged with having
tended to make the negroes dissatisfied with their condition as
slaves, and with having promoted discontent and dissatisfaction
amongst the slaves against their lawful masters. For this the
Christian judges sentenced the Demerara abolitionist missionary
to be hanged by the neck till he was dead. The judges belonged
to the Established Church; the missionary was a Methodist. In
this the Church of England Christians in Demerara were no worse
than Christians of other sects; their Roman Catholic Christian
brethren in St. Domingo fiercely attacked the Jesuits as
criminals because they treated negroes as though they were men
and women, in encouraging "two slaves to separate their interest
and safety from that of the gang," whilst orthodox Christians let
them couple promiscuously and breed for the benefit of their
owners like any other of their plantation cattle. In 1823 the
Royal Gazette (Christian) of Demerara said: "We shall not suffer
you to enlighten our slaves, who are by law our property, till
you can demonstrate that when they are made religious and knowing
they will continue to be our slaves."
When William Lloyd Garrison, the pure-minded and most
earnest abolitionist, delivered his first anti-slavery address in
Boston, Massachusetts, the only building he could obtain, in
which to speak, was the infidel hall owned by Abner Kneeland, the
"infidel" editor of the Boston Investigator, who had been sent to
gaol for blasphemy. Every Christian sect had in turn refused Mr.
Lloyd Garrison the use of the buildings they severally
controlled. Lloyd Garrison told me himself how honoured deacons
of a Christian Church joined in an actual attempt to hang him.
When abolition was advocated in the United States in 1790,
the representative from South Carolina was able to plead that the
Southern clergy "did not condemn either slavery or the slave
trade"; and Mr. Jackson, the representative from Georgia, pleaded
that "from Genesis to Revelation" the current was favourable to
slavery. Elias Hicks the brave abolitionist Quaker, was
denounced as an Atheist, and less than twenty years ago a
Hicksite Quaker was expelled from one of the Southern American
Legislatures because of the reputed irreligion of these
abolitionist "Friends."
When the Fugitive Slave Law was under discussion in North
America, large numbers of clergymen of nearly every denomination
were found ready to defend this infamous law. Samuel James May,
the famous abolitionist, was driven from the pulpit as
irreligious, solely because of his attacks on slave-holding.
Northern clergymen tried to induce "silver tongued" Wendell
Phillips to abandon his advocacy of abolition. Southern pulpits
rang with praises for the murderous attack on Charles Sumner.
The slayers of Elijah Lovejoy were highly reputed Christian men.
Guizot, notwithstanding that he tries to claim that the
Church exerted its influence to restrain slavery, says ("European
Civilization," vol. i., p.110): "It has often been repeated that
the abolition of slavery among modern people is entirely due to
Christians. That, I think, is saying too much. Slavery existed
for a long period in the heart of Christian society, without its
being particularly astonished or irritated. A multitude of
causes, and a great development in other ideas and principles of
civilization, were necessary for the abolition of this iniquity
of all iniquities." And my contention is that this "development
in other ideas and principles of civilization" was long retarded
by Governments in which the Christian Church was dominant. The
men who advocated liberty were imprisoned, racked, and burned, so
long as the Church was strong enough to be merciless.
The Rev. Francis Minton, Rector of Middlewich, in his recent
earnest volume ("Capital and Wages," p. 19) on the struggles of
labour, admits that "a few centuries ago slavery was acknowledged
throughout Christendom to have the divine sanction.... Neither
the exact cause, nor the precise time of the decline of the
belief in the righteousness of slavery, can be defined. It was
doubtless due to a combination of causes, one probably being as
indirect as the recognition of the greater economy of free
labour. With the decline of the belief the abolition of slavery
took place."
The institution of slavery was actually existent in
Christian Scotland in the seventeenth century, where the white
coal workers and salt workers of East Lothian were chattels, as
were their negro brethren in the Southern States thirty years
since; they "went to those who succeeded to the property of the
works, and they could be sold, bartered, or pawned" (Perversion
of Scotland," p. 197). "There is," says J. M. Robertson, "no
trace that the Protestant clergy of Scotland ever raised a voice
against the slavery which grew up before their eyes. And it was
not until 1799, after republican and irreligious France had set
the example, that it was legally abolished."
Take further the gain to humanity consequent on the
unbelief, or rather disbelief, in witchcraft and wizardry. Apart
from the brutality by Christians towards those suspected of
witchcraft, the hindrance to scientific initiative or experiment
was incalculably great so long as belief in magic obtained. The
inventions of the past two centuries, and especially those of the
eighteenth century, might have benefited mankind much earlier and
much more largely, but for the foolish belief in witchcraft and
the shocking ferocity exhibited against those suspected of
necromancy. After quoting a large number of cases of trial and
punishment for witchcraft from official records in Scotland, J.
M. Robertson says: "The people seem to have passed from cruelty
to cruelty precisely as they became more and more fanatical, more
and more devoted to their Church, till after many generations the
slow spread of human science began to counteract the ravages of
superstition, the clergy resisting reason and humanity to the
last."
The Rev. Mr. Minton ("Capital and Wages," pp. 15, 16)
concedes that it is "the advance of knowledge which has rendered
the idea of Satanic agency through the medium of witchcraft
grotesquely ridiculous." He admits that "for more than 1,500
years the belief in witchcraft was universal in Christendom," and
that "the public mind was saturated with the idea of Satanic
agency in the economy of nature." He adds: "If we ask why the
world now rejects what was once so unquestioningly believed, we
can only reply that advancing knowledge has gradually undermined
the belief."
In a letter recently sent to the Pall Mall Gazette against
modern Spiritualism, Professor Huxley declares "that the older
form of the same fundamental delusion--the belief in possession
and in witchcraft--gave rise in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth centuries to persecutions by Christians of innocent
men, women, and children, more extensive, more cruel, and more
murderous than any to which the Christians of the first three
centuries were subjected by the authorities of pagan Rome." And
Professor Huxley adds: "No one deserves much blame for being
deceived in these matters. We are all intellectually handicapped
in youth by the incessant repetition of the stories about
possession and witchcraft in both the Old and the New Testaments.
The majority of us are taught nothing which will help us to
observe accurately and to interpret observations with due
caution."
The English Statute Book under Elizabeth and under James was
disfigured by enactments against witchcraft passed under pressure
from the Christian Churches, which Acts have been repealed only
in consequence of the disbelief in the Christian precept, "Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live." The statute I James I, c. 12,
condemned to death "all persons invoking any evil spirits, or
consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding,
or rewarding any evil spirit," or generally practising any
"infernal arts." This was not repealed until the eighteenth
century was far advanced. Edison's phonograph would 280 years
ago have ensured martyrdom for its inventor; the utilization of
electric force to transmit messages around the world would have
been clearly the practice of an infernal art. At least we may
plead that unbelief has healed the bleeding feet of Science, and
made the road free for her upward march.
Is it not also fair to urge the gain to humanity which has
been apparent in the wiser treatment of the insane, consequent on
the unbelief in the Christian doctrine that these unfortunates
were examples either of demoniacal possession or of special
visitation of deity? For centuries under Christianity mental
disease was most ignorantly treated. Exorcism, shackles, and the
whip were the penalties rather than the curatives for mental
maladies. From the heretical departure of Pinel at the close of
the last century to the position of Maudsley to-day, every step
illustrates the march of unbelief. Take the gain to humanity in
the unbelief not yet complete, but now largely preponderant, in
the dogma that sickness, pestilence, and famine were
manifestations of divine anger, the results of which could
neither be avoided nor prevented. The Christian Churches have
done little or nothing to dispel this superstition. The official
and authorized prayers of the principal denominations, even
to-day, reaffirm it. Modern study of the laws of health,
experiments in sanitary improvements, more careful applications
of medical knowledge, have proved more efficacious in preventing
or diminishing plagues and pestilence than have the intervention
of the priest or the practice of prayer. Those in England who
hold the old faith that prayer will suffice to cure disease are
to-day termed "peculiar people," and are occasionally indicted
for manslaughter when their sick children die, because the
parents have trusted to God instead of appealing to the resources
of science.
It is certainly a clear gain to astronomical science that
the Church which tried to compel Galileo to unsay the truth has
been overborne by the growing unbelief of the age, even though
our little children are yet taught that Joshua made the sun and
moon stand still, and that for Hezekiah the sun-dial reversed its
record. As Buckle, arguing for the morality of scepticism, says
("History of Civilization," vol. i, p. 345): "As long as men
refer the movements of the comets to the immediate finger of God,
and as long as they believe that an eclipse is one of the modes
by which the deity expresses his anger, they will never be guilty
of the blasphemous presumption of attempting to predict such
supernatural appearances. Before they could dare to investigate
the causes of these mysterious phenomena, it is necessary that
they should believe, or at all events that they should suspect,
that the phenomena themselves were capable of being explained by
the human mind."
As in astronomy so in geology, the gain of knowledge to
humanity has been almost solely in measure of the rejection of
the Christian theory. A century since it was almost universally
held that the world was created 6,000 years ago, or, at any rate,
that by the sin of the first man, Adam, death commenced about
that period. Ethnology and Anthropology have only been possible
in so far as, adopting the regretful words of Sir W. Jones,
"intelligent and virtuous persons are inclined to doubt the
authenticity of the accounts delivered by Moses concerning the
primitive world."
Surely it is clear gain to humanity that unbelief has sprung
up against the divine right of kings, that men no longer believe
that the monarch is "God's anointed" or that "the powers that be
are ordained of God." In the struggles for political freedom the
weight of the Church was mostly thrown on the side of the tyrant.
The homilies of the Church of England declare that "Even the
wicked rulers have their power and authority from God," and that
"such subjects as are disobedient or rebellious against their
princes disobey God and procure their own damnation." It can
scarcely be necessary to argue to the citizens of the United
States of America that the origin of their liberties was in the
rejection of faith in the divine right of George III.
Will any one, save the most bigoted, contend that it is not
certain gain to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible
doctrine that eternal torment is the probable fate of the great
majority of the human family? Is it not gain to have diminished
the faith that it was the duty of the wretched and the miserable
to be content with the lot in life which providence had awarded
them?
If it stood alone it would be almost sufficient to plead as
justification for heresy the approach towards equality and
liberty for the utterance of all opinions achieved because of
growing unbelief. At one period in Christendom each Government
acted as though only one religious faith could be true, and as
though the holding, or at any rate the making known, any other
opinion was a criminal act deserving punishment. Under the one
word "infidel," even as late as Lord Coke, were classed together
all who were not Christians, even though they were Mohammedans,
Brahmins, or Jews. All who did not accept the Christian faith
were sweepingly denounced as infidels and therefore "hors de la
loi." One hundred and forty-five years since, the
Attorney-General, pleading in our highest court, said (Omychund
v. Barker, I Atkyns 29): "What is the definition of an infidel?
Why, one who does not believe in the Christian religion. Then a
Jew is an infidel." And English history for several centuries
prior to the Commonwealth shows how habitually and most
atrociously Christian kings, Christian courts, and Christian
churches persecuted and harassed these infidel Jews. There was a
time in England when Jews were such infidels that they were not
even allowed to be sworn as witnesses. In 1740 a legacy left for
establishing an assembly for the reading of the Jewish scriptures
was held to be void (D'Costa v. D'Pays, Amb.228) because it was
"for the propagation of the Jewish law in contradiction to the
Christian religion." It is only in very modern times that
municipal rights have been accorded in England to Jews. It is
barely thirty years since they have been allowed to sit in
Parliament. In 1851 the late Mr. Newdegate in debate (3 Hansard
cxvi. 381) objected "that they should have sitting in that House
an individual who regarded our Redeemer as an impostor." Lord
Chief Justice Raymond has shown (I Lord Raymond's reports 282,
Wells v. Williams) how it was that Christian intolerance was
gradually broken down. "A Jew may sue at this day, but
heretofore he could not; for then they were looked upon as
enemies, but now commerce has taught the world more humanity."
Lord Coke treated the infidel as one who in law had no right
of any kind, with whom no contract need be kept, to whom no debt
was payable. The plea of alien infidel as answer to a claim was
actually pleaded in court as late as 1737 (Ramkissenseat v.
Barker, I Atkyns, 51). In a solemn judgment, Lord Coke says (7
Coke's reports, Calvin's case): "All infidels are in law
"perpetui inimici"; for between them, as with the devils whose
subjects they be, and the Christian, there is perpetual
hostility." Twenty years ago the law of England required the
writer of any periodical publication of pamphlet under sixpence
in price to give sureties for L800 against the publication of
blasphemy. I was the last person prosecuted in 1868 for
non-compliance with that law, which was repealed by Mr.
Gladstone in 1869. Up till the 23rd December, 1888, an infidel
in Scotland was allowed to enforce any legal claim in court only
on condition that, if challenged, he denied his infidelity. If
he lied and said he was a Christian, he was accepted, despite his
lying. If he told the truth and said he was an unbeliever, then
he was practically an outlaw, incompetent to give evidence for
himself or for any other. Fortunately all this was changed by
the Royal assent to the Oaths Act on 24th December. Has not
humanity clearly gained a little in this struggle through
unbelief?
For more than a century and a half the Roman Catholic had in
practice harsher measure dealt out to him by the English
Protestant Christian than was even during that period the fate of
the Jew or the unbeliever. If the Roman Catholic would not take
the oath of abnegation, which to a sincere Romanist was
impossible, he was in effect an outlaw, and the "jury packing" so
much complained of to-day in Ireland is one of the habit
survivals of the old bad time when Roman Catholics were thus by
law excluded from the jury box.
The "Scotsman" of January 5th, 1889, notes that in 1860 the
Rev. Dr. Robert Lee, of Greyfriars, gave a course of Sunday
evening lectures on Biblical Criticism, in which he showed the
absurdity and untenableness of regarding every word in the Bible
as inspired: and it adds: "We well remember the awful
indignation such opinions inspired, and it is refreshing to
contrast them with the calmness with which they are now received.
Not only from the pulpits of the city, but from the press
(misnamed religious) were his doctrines denounced. And one
eminent U.P. minister went the length of publicly praying for
him, and for the students under his care. It speaks volumes for
the progress made since then, when we think in all probability
Dr. Charteris, Dr. Lee's successor in the chair, differs in his
teaching from the Confession of Faith much more widely than Dr.
Lee ever did, and yet he is considered supremely orthodox,
whereas the stigma of heresy was attached to the other all his
life."
And this change and gain to humanity is due to the gradual
progress of unbelief, alike inside and outside the Churches.
Take from differing Churches two recent illustrations: The late
Principal Dr. Lindsay Alexander, a strict Calvinist, in his
important work on "Biblical Theology," claims that "all the
statements of Scripture are alike to be deferred to as presenting
to us the mind of God." Yet the Rev. Dr. of Divinity also says"
"We find in their writings [i.e., in the writings of the sacred
authors] statements which no ingenuity can reconcile with what
modern research has shown to be the scientific truth--i.e., we
find in them statements which modern science proves to be
erroneous."
At the last Southwell Diocesan Church of England Conference
at Derby, the Bishop of the Diocese presiding, the Rev. J. G.
Richardson said of the Old Testament that "it was no longer
honest or even safe to deny that this noble literature, rich in
all the elements of moral or spiritual grandeur, given--so the
Church had always taught, and would always teach--under the
inspiration of Almighty God, was sometimes mistaken in its
science, was sometimes inaccurate in its history, and sometimes
only relative and accommodatory in its morality. It assumed
theories of the physical world which science had abandoned and
could never resume; it contained passages of narrative which
devout and temperate men pronounced discredited, both by external
and internal evidence; it praised, or justified, or approved, or
condoned, or tolerated, conduct which the teaching of Christ and
the conscience of the Christian alike condemned."
Or, as I should urge, the gain to humanity by unbelief is
that "the teaching of Christ" has been modified, enlarged,
widened, and humanized, and that "the conscience of the
Christian" is in quantity and quality made fitter for human
progress by the ever-increasing additions of knowledge of these
later and more heretical days.
***********************************************************************
* *
* American Atheists website: http://www.atheists.org *
* PO Box 140195 FTP: ftp://ftp.atheists.org *
* Austin, TX 78714-0195 *
* Voice: (512) 458-1244 Dial-THE-ATHEIST: *
* FAX: (512) 467-9525 (512) 458-5731 *
* *
* Atheist Viewpoint TV: avtv@atheists.org *
* Info on American Atheists: info@atheists.org, *
* & American Atheist Press include your name and mailing address *
* AANEWS -Free subscription: aanews-request@listserv.atheists.org *
* and put "info aanews" in message body *
* *
* This text may be freely downloaded, reprinted, and/other *
* otherwise redistributed, provided appropriate point of *
* origin credit is given to American Atheists. *
* *
***********************************************************************
Return to The Skeptic Tank's main Index page.
The views and opinions stated within this web page are those of the
author or authors which wrote them and may not reflect the views and
opinions of the ISP or account user which hosts the web page. The
opinions may or may not be those of the Chairman of The Skeptic Tank.