Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest


Ingersoll's Lecture on Talmagian Theology (Third lecture)


We must judge people somewhat by their creeds. Mr. Talmage is a Calvinist, and he therefore regards every human being who has been born only once as totally depraved. He thinks that God never made a single creature that didn't deserve to be damned the minute He finished him. So every one who opposes Mr. Talmage is infamous. The generosity of an agnostic is meanness, his honesty is larceny and his love is hate. Talmage is a consistent follower of Calvin and Knox, and a consistent worshiper of the Jehovah of the ancient Jews. I oppose not him, but his creed, because it tends to crush out the natural tendencies in men to joyousness and goodness. There is something good in every human being, and there is something bad. There are no perfect saints and no totally bad persons. There is the seed of goodness in every human heart and the capacity for improvement in every human soul. Isn't it possible for a man who acts like Christ to be saved, whatever be his belief? Cannot a soul be infinitely generous? And can any God damn such a soul? If Mr. Talmage's creed be true, nearly all the great and glorious men of the past are burning today. If it be true, the greatest man England has produced in 100 years is in hell. The world is poorer since I spoke here last, for Darwin has passed away. He was a true child of nature—one who knew more about his mother than any other child she had. Yet he was not a Calvinist. He did not get his inspiration from any book, but from every star in the heavens, from the insect in the sunbeam, from the flowers in the meadows, and from the everlasting rocks.

If the doctrine of the Calvinists is true, what right had any one to ask an unbeliever to fight for his country in the civil war? What right has a believer to buy an unbelieving substitute, when some day he will look over the edge of heaven, and pointing downward, would say to a friend, "that is my substitute blistering there"?

Mr. Talmage says that my mind is poisoned, and that the reason why all infidels' minds are poisoned is that they don't believe the Jew bible. Let us see whether it is worth believing. I deny that an infinitely merciful God would protect slavery or would uphold polygamy, which pollutes the sweetest words in language. I will not believe that God told men to exterminate their fellow-men, to plunge the sword into women's breasts and into the hearts of tender babes. I am opposed to the Jew bible because it is bad. I don't deny that there are many good passages in it, nor that among all the thorns there are some roses. I admit that many Christians are doing all they can to idealize the frightful things in the old testament. It is the protest of human nature. Now, they tell me that this book is inspired. Let us see what inspired means. If it means anything, it is that the thoughts of God, through the instrumentality of men, constitute this Jew bible, and that these thoughts were written. Now just suppose that some voice whispered in your ear, how would you know it was God's? How did these gentlemen of old know it was God who was talking to them? If anyone now told you that God whispered in his ear, you wouldn't believe him. Why? Because you know him. Why are we asked to believe those ancient gentlemen? Because we don't know them. Another reason, according to Mr. Talmage, why the Jew bible is inspired, is that prophecies in it have been fulfilled. How do we know that the prophecies were not fulfilled before they were written? They are so vague that you can't tell what was prophesied. If you will read the Jew bible carefully, you will see that there was not a line, not a word, prophesying the coming of Christ. Catholics were right in saying that if the Jew bible was to be kept in awe it must be kept from the people. Protestants are wrong in letting the people read it.

Another argument of Mr. Talmage for the inspiration of the bible is that the Jews have been kept as a wandering, persecuted race to fulfill the prophecies of the old testament. I don't believe an infinitely merciful God would persecute a race for thousands of years to use them as witnesses. Christian hate has not allowed the Jews to earn a [living?] or at least to practice a profession, and now, by a kind of poetic justice, the Jews control the money of the world. Emperors go to their bankers with hats in hand and beg them to discount their notes. This is because God has cursed the Jews. Only a little while ago Christians have robbed Hebrews, stripped them naked, turned them into the streets, and pointed to them as a fulfillment of divine prophecy. If you want to know the difference between some Jews and some Christians compare the address of Felix Adler with the sermon of the Rev. Dr. Talmage. Mr. Talmage thinks that the light of every burning Jewish home in Russia throws light upon the gospel. Every wound in a Jewish breast is to him a mouth to proclaim the divine inspiration of the bible. Every Jewish maiden violated is another fulfillment of God's holy word. What do these horrid persecutions prove, except the barbarity of Christians? Next it is said that martyrs prove the truth of the bible. Mr. Talmage affirms that no man ever died cheerfully for a lie. Why, men have gone cheerfully to their death for believing that a wafer was God's flesh. Thousands have died for their belief in Mohammed. Men have died because they believed in immersion. Either Mr. Talmage is a Catholic, a Mohammedan, a Baptist, or else he believes that these thousands died for lies. Every religion has had its martyrs, and every religion cannot be true. Then it is said that miracles prove the inspiration of the bible. But it is impossible by the human senses to establish a violation of nature's laws. When the Hebrews threw down sticks before Pharaoh, and they became snakes, did he believe? No; because he was there. After the Jews had been lead through the desert and had been fed with bread rained from heaven, had been clothed in indestructible pantaloons, and had quenched their thirst with water that followed them over mountains and through sands; when they saw Jehovah wrapped in the smoke of Sinai they still had more faith in a calf that they could make than anything Jehovah could give them. It was so with the miracles of Christ. Not twenty people were converted by one of them. In fact, human testimony cannot substantiate a miracle. Take the miracle about the bears which ate the children who laughed at the bald-headed old prophet. What do you suppose Mr. Talmage would say that meant? Why, first, that children ought to respect preachers, and second, that God is kind to animals. Nearly every miracle in the old testament is wrought in the interest of slavery, polygamy, creed or lust. I wish by denying them to rescue the reputation of Jehovah from the assaults of the bible.

Who are the witnesses to the truth of the narratives of the Jews' bible? Eusebius was one. He lived in the reign of Constantine, and said that the tracks of Pharaoh's chariots could be seen—perfectly preserved in the sands of the Red sea. He was the man who forged the passage in Josephus which speaks about the coming of Christ. Good witness, isn't he. Another one was Polycarp. We don't know much about him. He suffered martyrdom in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and when the fire wouldn't burn and he looked like gold through it, a heathen was so mad about it that he ran his sword through Polycarp. The blood gushed out and quenched the fire, while the martyr's soul flew up to heaven in the form of a dove. And that's all we know about Polycarp. To know how much reliance should be placed upon the judgment of such trustworthy witnesses, we should look at what some of their beliefs were. They thought that the world was flat; that the phoenix story was true; that the stars had souls and sinned; and one said there were four gospels because there were four winds and four corners of the earth. He might have added that it was also because a donkey has four legs.

So far as the argument drawn from the sufferings of the martyrs is concerned, the speaker said that thousands upon thousands of men had died as cheerfully in defense of the koran as Christians had died in defense of the bible. Their heroic suffering simply proved that they were sinners in their beliefs, not that those beliefs were true. This argument, as advanced by Mr. Talmage, proves too much. Every religion on the face of the globe has had its martyrs, but all religions cannot be true. Men do die cheerfully for falsehoods when they believe them to be true.

[The question of miracles was discussed at some length, and Col. Ingersoll declared it was impossible to establish by any human evidence that a miracle had ever been performed.]

Pharaoh was not convinced by the alleged miracle performed by Aaron, of turning a stick into a serpent. Why? Because he was there, and no such miracle was ever done. No twenty people were convinced by the reported miracles of Christ, and yet people of the nineteenth century were coolly asked to be convinced on hearsay by miracles which those who are supposed to have seen them refuse to credit. It won't do. The laws of nature never have been interrupted, and they never will be. All the books in the universe will never convince a thinking man that miracles have been performed.

[The lecture was sprinkled throughout with the satirical wit for which Col. Ingersoll is famous, and concluded by the enumeration of a long list of "unscientific" facts and events recorded in the bible.]




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