You
have noticed that the human
being is a curiosity. In times
past he has had (and worn out
and flung away) hundreds and
hundreds of religions; today
he has hundreds and hundreds
of religions, and launches
not fewer than three new ones
every year. I could enlarge
that number and still be within
the facts.
One
of his principle religions
is called the Christian. A
sketch of it will interest
you. It sets forth in detail
in a book containing two million
words, called the Old and New
Testaments. Also it has another
name -- The Word of God. For
the Christian thinks every
word of it was dictated by
God -- the one I have been
speaking of.
It
is full of interest. It has
noble poetry in it; and some
clever fables; and some blood-drenched
history; and some good morals;
and a wealth of obscenity;
and upwards of a thousand lies.
This
Bible is built mainly out of
the fragments of older Bibles
that had their day and crumbled
to ruin. So it noticeably lacks
in originality, necessarily.
Its three or four most imposing
and impressive events all happened
in earlier Bibles; all its
best precepts and rules of
conduct came also from those
Bibles; there are only two
new things in it: hell, for
one, and that singular heaven
I have told you about.
What
shall we do? If we believe,
with these people, that their
God invented these cruel things,
we slander him; if we believe
that these people invented
them themselves, we slander
them. It is an unpleasant dilemma
in either case, for neither
of these parties has done us
any harm.
For
the sake of tranquility, let
us take a side. Let us join
forces with the people and
put the whole ungracious burden
upon him -- heaven,
hell, Bible and all. It does
not seem right, it does not
seem fair; and yet when you
consider that heaven, and how
crushingly charged it is with
everything that is repulsive
to a human being, how can we
believe a human being invented
it? And when I come to tell
you about hell, the stain will
be greater still, and you will
be likely to say, No, a man
would not provide that place,
for either himself or anybody
else; he simply couldn't.
That
innocent Bible tells about
the Creation. Of what -- the
universe? Yes, the universe.
In six days!
God
did it. He did not call it
the universe -- that name is
modern. His whole attention
was upon this world. He constructed
it in five days -- and then?
It took him only one day to
make twenty million suns and
eighty million planets!
What
were they for -- according
to this idea? To furnish light
for this little toy-world.
That was his whole purpose;
he had no other. One of the
twenty million suns (the smallest
one) was to light it in the
daytime, the rest were to help
one of the universe's countless
moons modify the darkness of
its nights.
It
is quite manifest that he believed
his fresh-made skies were diamond-sown
with those myriads of twinkling
stars the moment his first-day's
sun sank below the horizon;
whereas, in fact, not a single
star winked in that black vault
until three years and a half
after that memorable week's
formidable industries had been
completed.[**] then
one star appeared, all solitary
and alone, and began to blink.
Three years later another one
appeared. The two blinked together
for more than four years before
a third joined them. At the
end of the first hundred years
there were not yet twenty-five
stars twinkling in the wide
wastes of those gloomy skies.
At the end of a thousand years
not enough stars were yet visible
to make a show. At the end
of a million years only half
of the present array had sent
their light over the telescopic
frontiers, and it took another
million for the rest to follow
suit, as the vulgar phrase
goes. There being at that time
no telescope, their advent
was not observed.
For
three hundred years, now, the
Christian astronomer has known
that his Deity didn't make
the stars in those tremendous
six days; but the Christian
astronomer does not enlarge
upon that detail. Neither does
the priest.
In
his Book, God is eloquent in
his praises of his mighty works,
and calls them by the largest
names he can find -- thus indicating
that he has a strong and just
admiration of magnitudes; yet
he made those millions of prodigious
suns to light this wee little
orb, instead of appointing
this orb's little sun to dance
attendance upon them. He mentions
Arcturus in his book -- you
remember Arcturus; we went
there once. It is one of the
earth's night lamps! -- that
giant globe which is fifty
thousand times as large as
the earth's sun, and compares
with it as a melon compares
with a cathedral.
However,
the Sunday school still teaches
the child that Arcturus was
created to help light this
earth, and the child grows
up and continues to believe
it long after he has found
out that the probabilities
are against it being so.
According
to the Book and its servants
the universe is only six thousand
years old. It is only within
the last hundred years that
studious, inquiring minds have
found out that it is nearer
a hundred million.
During
the Six Days, God created man
and the other animals.
He
made a man and a woman and
placed them in a pleasant garden,
along with the other creatures.
they all lived together there
in harmony and contentment
and blooming youth for some
time; then trouble came. God
had warned the man and the
woman that they must not eat
of the fruit of a certain tree.
And he added a most strange
remark: he said that if they
ate of it they should surely
die. Strange, for the reason
that inasmuch as they had never
seen a sample death they could
not possibly know what he meant.
Neither would he nor any other
god have been able to make
those ignorant children understand
what was meant, without furnishing
a sample. The mere word could
have no meaning for them, any
more than it would have for
an infant of days.
Presently
a serpent sought them out privately,
and came to them walking upright,
which was the way of serpents
in those days. The serpent
said the forbidden fruit would
store their vacant minds with
knowledge. So they ate it,
which was quite natural, for
man is so made that he eagerly
wants to know; whereas the
priest, like God, whose imitator
and representative he is, has
made it his business from the
beginning to keep him from
knowing any useful thing.
Adam
and Eve ate the forbidden fruit,
and at once a great light streamed
into their dim heads. They
had acquired knowledge. What
knowledge -- useful knowledge?
No -- merely knowledge that
there was such a thing as good,
and such a thing as evil, and
how to do evil. they couldn't
do it before. Therefore all
their acts up to this time
had been without stain, without
blame, without offense.
But
now they could do evil -- and
suffer for it; now they had
acquired what the Church calls
an invaluable possession, the
Moral Sense; that sense which
differentiates man from the
beast and sets him above the
beast. Instead of below the
beast -- where one would suppose
his proper place would be,
since he is always foul-minded
and guilty and the beast always
clean-minded and innocent.
It is like valuing a watch
that must go wrong, above a
watch that can't.
The
Church still prizes the Moral
Sense as man's noblest asset
today, although the Church
knows God had a distinctly
poor opinion of it and did
what he could in his clumsy
way to keep his happy Children
of the Garden from acquiring
it.
Very
well, Adam and Eve now knew
what evil was, and how to do
it. They knew how to do various
kinds of wrong things, and
among them one principal one
-- the one God had his mind
on principally. That one was
the art and mystery of sexual
intercourse. To them it was
a magnificent discovery, and
they stopped idling around
and turned their entire attention
to it, poor exultant young
things!
In
the midst of one of these celebrations
they heard God walking among
the bushes, which was an afternoon
custom of his, and they were
smitten with fright. Why? Because
they were naked. They had not
known it before. They had not
minded it before; neither had
God.
In
that memorable moment immodesty
was born; and some people have
valued it ever since, though
it would certainly puzzle them
to explain why.
Adam
and Eve entered the world naked
and unashamed -- naked and
pure-minded; and no descendant
of theirs has ever entered
it otherwise. All have entered
it naked, unashamed, and clean
in mind. They have entered
it modest. They had to acquire
immodesty and the soiled mind;
there was no other way to get
it. A Christian mother's first
duty is to soil her child's
mind, and she does not neglect
it. Her lad grows up to be
a missionary, and goes to the
innocent savage and to the
civilized Japanese, and soils
their minds. Whereupon they
adopt immodesty, they conceal
their bodies, they stop bathing
naked together.
The
convention miscalled modesty
has no standard, and cannot
have one, because it is opposed
to nature and reason, and is
therefore an artificiality
and subject to anybody's whim,
anybody's diseased caprice.
And so, in India the refined
lady covers her face and breasts
and leaves her legs naked from
the hips down, while the refined
European lady covers her legs
and exposes her face and her
breasts. In lands inhabited
by the innocent savage the
refined European lady soon
gets used to full-grown native
stark-nakedness, and ceases
to be offended by it. A highly
cultivated French count and
countess -- unrelated to each
other -- who were marooned
in their nightclothes, by shipwreck,
upon an uninhabited island
in the eighteenth century,
were soon naked. Also ashamed
-- for a week. After that their
nakedness did not trouble them,
and they soon ceased to think
about it.
You
have never seen a person with
clothes on. Oh, well, you haven't
lost anything.
To
proceed with the Biblical curiosities.
Naturally you will think the
threat to punish Adam and Eve
for disobeying was of course
not carried out, since they
did not create themselves,
nor their natures nor their
impulses nor their weaknesses,
and hence were not properly
subject to anyone's commands,
and not responsible to anybody
for their acts. It will surprise
you to know that the threat
was carried out. Adam and Eve
were punished, and that crime
finds apologists unto this
day. The sentence of death
was executed.
As
you perceive, the only person
responsible for the couple's
offense escaped; and not only
escaped but became the executioner
of the innocent.
In
your country and mine we should
have the privilege of making
fun of this kind of morality,
but it would be unkind to do
it here. Many of these people
have the reasoning faculty,
but no one uses it in religious
matters.
The
best minds will tell you that
when a man has begotten a child
he is morally bound to tenderly
care for it, protect it from
hurt, shield it from disease,
clothe it, feed it, bear with
its waywardness, lay no hand
upon it save in kindness and
for its own good, and never
in any case inflict upon it
a wanton cruelty. God's treatment
of his earthly children, every
day and every night, is the
exact opposite of all that,
yet those best minds warmly
justify these crimes, condone
them, excuse them, and indignantly
refuse to regard them as crimes
at all, when he commits
them. Your country and mine
is an interesting one, but
there is nothing there that
is half so interesting as the
human mind.
Very
well, God banished Adam and
Eve from the Garden, and eventually
assassinated them. All for
disobeying a command which
he had no right to utter. But
he did not stop there, as you
will see. He has one code of
morals for himself, and quite
another for his children. He
requires his children to deal
justly -- and gently -- with
offenders, and forgive them
seventy-and-seven times; whereas
he deals neither justly nor
gently with anyone, and he
did not forgive the ignorant
and thoughtless first pair
of juveniles even their first
small offense and say, "You
may go free this time, and
I will give you another chance."
On
the contrary! He elected to
punish their children,
all through the ages to the
end of time, for a trifling
offense committed by others
before they were born. He is
punishing them yet. In mild
ways? No, in atrocious ones.
You
would not suppose that this
kind of Being gets many compliments.
Undeceive yourself: the world
calls him the All-Just, the
All-Righteous, the All-Good,
the All-Merciful, the All-Forgiving,
the All-Truthful, the All-Loving,
the Source of All Morality.
These sarcasms are uttered
daily, all over the world.
But not as conscious sarcasms.
No, they are meant seriously:
they are uttered without a
smile.
-
- **NOTE: It takes the light of the
nearest star (61 Cygni) three
and a half years to come
to the earth, traveling at
the rate of 186,000 miles
per second. Arcturus had
been shining 200 years before
it was visible from the earth.
Remoter stars gradually became
visible after thousands and
thousands of years. -- The
Editor [M. T.]
|