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pamphlets
^or the Peop/e
No* 11
DEITY AND
DESIGN
CHAPMAN COHEN
sa
THE PIONEER PRESS
�Deity and Design
The one certain thing about the history of the
human intellect is that it runs from ignorance to1
knowledge. Man begins knowing nothing of his own
nature or of the nature of the world in which he is
living. He continues acquiring a little knowledge
here and there, with his vision broadening and his
understanding deepening as his knowledge increases?
Had man commenced with but a very small fraction
of the knowledge he now possesses, the present state
of the human mind would be very different from what
it is. But the method by which knowledge is acquiredis of the slowest. It is by way of what is called trial
and error. Blunders are made rapidly, to be cor
rected slowly; some of the most primitive errors are
not, on a general scale, corrected even to-day. Man
begins by belieying, on what appears to be sound
evidence, that the earth is flat, only to discover later
that it is a sphere. He believes the sky to be a solid
something and the heavenly bodies but a short
distance away. His conclusions about himself are
as fantastically wrong' as those he makes about'the
world at large. He mistakes the nature of the
diseases from which he suffers, and the causes of the
things in which he delights. He is as ignorant of the
nature of birth as he is of the cause of death.
Thousands of generations pass before he takes the
first faltering steps along the road of verifiable
knowledge, and hundreds of thousands of genera
tions have not sufficed to wipe out from the human
intellect the influence of man’s primitive blunders.
Prominent among these primitive misunderstand
ings is the belief that man is surrounded by hosts of
�DEITY AND DESIGN
3
mysterious ghostly agencies that are afterwards
given human form. These ghostly beings form the
raw material from which the gods Of the various
religions are made, and they flourish best where
knowledge is least. Of this there can be no question.
Atheism, the absence of belief in gods, is a com
paratively late phenomenon in history. It is the
belief in gods that begins by being universal. And
even among civilised peoples it is the least en
lightened who are most certain about the existence
of the gods. The religious scientist or philosopher
says: “ I believe ”; the ignorant believer says: “ I
know.”
Now it would indeed be strange if primitive man
was right on the one thing concerning which exact
knowledge is not to be gained, and wrong about all
other things on which knowledge has either been, or
bids fair to be, won. All civilized peoples reject the
world-theories that the savage first formulates. Is it
credible that with regard to gods he was at once and
unmistakably correct ?
It is useless saying that we do not accept the gods
of the primitive world. In form, no; in essence, yes.
The fact before us is that all ideas of gods can be
traced to the earliest stages of human history. We
have changed the names of the gods and their
characteristics; we even worship them in a way that
is often different from the primitive way; but there
is an unbroken line of descent linking the gods of the
most primitive peoples to those of modern man. We
reject the world of the savage; but we still, in our
churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, per
petuate the theories he built upon that world.
In this pamphlet I am not concerned with all the
so-called evidences that are put forth to prove the
existence of a God. I say “ so-called evidences,”
because they are not grounds upon which the belief
in God rests; they are mere excuses- why that belief
�I
4
I
DEITY AND DESIGN
should be retained. Ninety per cent, of believers in
God would not understand these “ proofs.” Roman
Catholic propagandists lately, as one of the adver
tisements of the Church, have been booming the
arguments in favour of a God as stated by Thomas
Aquinas. But they usually preface their exposition—
which is very often questionable-—by the warning
that the subject is difficult to understand. In the case
of Roman Catholics I think we might well raise the
percentage of those who do not understand the argu
ments to ninety-five per cent. In any case these
metaphysical, mathematical, and philosophic argu
ments do not furnish the grounds upon which anyone
believes in God. They are, as I have just said,
nothing more than excuses framed for the purpose of
hanging on to it. The belief in God is here because
it is part of our social inheritance. We are born into
an environment in which each newcomer finds the
belief in God established, backed up by powerful
institutions, with an army of trained advocates com
mitted to its defence and to .the destruction of every
thing that tends to weaken the belief. And behind
-all are the countless g’enerations during which the
belief in God lived on man’s ignorance and fear.
In spite of the alleged “ proofs ” of the existence
of God, belief in him, or it, does not grow in strength
or certaintv. These proofs do not prevent the
number of avowed disbelievers increasing to such an
extent that, whereas after Christians proclaiming for
several generations that Atheism—real Atheism—does
not exist, the defenders of godism are now shriek
ing ag'ainst the g’rowing' number of Atheists, and
there is a call to the religious world to enter upon a
crusade against Atheism. The stage in which heresy
meant little more than an exchange of one god for
another has passed. It has become a case of accept
ance or rejection of the idea of God, and the growth
is with those who reject. This is not the way in which proofs, real proofs,
operate. A theory may have to battle long for
�DEITY AND DESIGN
5
general or growing acceptance, but it grows pro
vided it can produce evidence in its support. A
hypothesis is stated, challenged, discussed, and
finally rejected or accepted. On the question of the
hypothesis of God the longer it is discussed the. less
it is believed. No wonder that the ideal attitude of
the completely religious should be “ on the knee,”
with eyes closed and mouths full of nothing but
petitions and grossly fulsome praise. That is also
the reason why every religious organization in the
world is so keen upon capturing the child. The cry
is : “ If we lose the child we lose everything ”—which
is another way of saying that if we cannot implant a
belief in God before the child is old enough to under
stand something of what it is being told, the belief
may have to be given up altogether. Keep the idea
of God away from the child and it will grow up an
Atheist.
If there is a God, the evidence for his existence
must be found in this world. We cannot start with
another world and work back to this one. That is
why the argument from design in nature is really
fundamental to the belief in deity. It is implied in
every argument in favour of Th.eism, although
nowadays, in its simplest and most honest form, it is
not so popular as it was. But to ordinary men and
women it. is still the decisive piece of evidence in
favour of the existence of a God. And when ordinary
men and women cease to believe in God, the class of
religious philosophers who spend their time seeing
by what subtleties of thought and tricks of language
they can make the belief in deity appear intellectually
respectable will cease to function.
But let it be observed that we are concerned with
the existence of God only. We are not concerned
with whether he is good or bad; whether his alleged
designs are commendable or not. One often finds
people saying they cannot’ believe there is a God
�6
DEITY AND DESIGN
because the works of nature are not cast in a benevo
lent mould. That has nothing to do with the essen- '
tial issue, and proves only that Theists cannot claim
a monopoly of defective logic. We 'are concerned
with whether nature, in whole, or in part, shows any
evidence of design.
My case is, first, the argument is fallacious in its
structure; second, it assumes -all that it sets out to
prove, and begs the whole question by the language
employed; and, third, the case against design in *
nature is, not merely that the evidence is inadequate,
but that the evidence produced is completely irrele
vant. If the same kind of evidence were produced in
a court of law, there is not a judge in the country who
would not dismiss it as having nothing whatever to
do with the question at issue. I do not say that the
argument from design, as stated, fails to convince;
I say that it is impossible to produce an\> kind of
evidence that could persuade an impartial mind to
believe in it.
The argument from design professes to be one
from analogy. John Stuart Mill, himself without a
belief in God, thought the argument to be of a
genuinely scientific character. The present Dean of
St. Paul’s, Dr Matthews, says that “ the argument
from design employs ideas which everyone possesses
and thinks he understands; and, moreover, it sbems
evident to the simplest intelligence that if God exists
he must be doing something, and therefore must be
pursuing some ends and carrying out some purpose.”
(The Purpose of God, p. 13.) And Immanuel Kant <
said the argument from design was the oldest, the
clearest and the best adapted to ordinary human
reason. But as Kant proceeded to smash the argu
ment into smithereens, it is evident that he had not a
very flattering opinion of the quality of the reason
displayed by the ordinary man.
But what is professedly an argument from analogy
turns out to offer no analogy at all. A popular Non
conformist preacher, Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, whose
�DEITY AND DESIGN
7
book, Why do Men Suffer? might be taken as a fine
text-book of religious foolishness, repeats the old
argument that if we were to find a number of letters
so arranged that they formed words we should infer
design in the arrangement. Agreed, but that is
obviously because we know that letters and words
and the arrangement of words are due to the design
of man. The argument here is from experience.
We infer that a certain conjunction of signs are de
signed because we know beforehand that such thing's
are designed. But in the case of nature we have no
such experience on which to build. We do not know
that natural objects are made, we know of no one
who makes natural objects. More, the very division
of objects into natural and artificial is an admission
that natural objects are not, ftrima fade, products of
design at all. To constitute an analogy we need to
have the same knowledge that natural objects are
manufactured as we have that man’s works are
manufactured. Design is not found in nature; it is
assumed. As Kant says, reason admires a wonder
created by itself.
The Theist cannot move a step in his endeavour to
prove design in nature without being guilty of the
plainest of logical blunders. It is illustrated in the
very lang'uage employed. Thus, Dr. Matthews cites
a Roman Catholic priest as saying, “ The adapta
tion of means to ends is an evident sign of an intelli
gent cause. Now nature offers on every side
instances of adaptations of means to ends, hence it
follows that nature is the work of an intelligent
cause.” Dr. Matthews does riot like this way of
putting the case, but his own reasoning shows that
he is objecting more to the argument being stated
plainly and concisely rather than to its substance.
Nowadays it is dangerous to make one’s religious
reasoning so plain that everyone can understand the
language used.
Corisider. Nature, we are told, shows endless
�8
DEITY AND DESIGN
adaptations of means to ends.' But nature shows
nothing of the kind—or, at least, that is the point to
be proved, and it must not be taken for granted. If
nature is full of adaptation of means to ends, then
there is nothing further about which to dispute. For
adaptation means the conscious adjustment of things
or conditions to a desired consummation. To adapt
a thing is to make it fit to do this or that, to serve
this or that purpose. We adapt our conduct to the
occasion, our language to the person we are address
ing, planks of w’ood to the purpose we have in mind,
and so forth. So, of course, if nature displays an
adaptation of means to ends, then the case for an
adapter is established.
But nature show's nothing of the kind. What
nature provides is processes and results. That and
nothing* more. The structure of an animal and its re
lation to its environment, the outcome of a chemical
combination, the falling of rain, the elevation of a
mountain, these things, with all other natural
phenoipena, do not show an adaptation of means
to ends, they show simply a process and its result.
Nature exhibits the universal phenomenon of causa
tion, and that is all. Processes and results looked
like adaptations of means to ends so long as the
movements of nature were believed to be the expres
sion of the will of the gods. But when natural
phenomena are regarded as the inevitable product of
the properties of existence, such terms as “ means ”
and “ ends ” are at best misleading', and in actual
practice often deliberately dishonest. The situation
was well expressed by the late W. H. Mallock : —
When we consider the movements of the starry
heavens to-day, instead of feeling it to be wonderful that
these are absolutely regular, we should feel it to be.
wonderful if they were ever anything else. We realize that
the stars are not bodies which, unless they are made to
move uniformly, would be floating in space motionless, or
moving across it in random courses. We realize that they
are bodies which, unless they moved uniformly, would not
be bodies at all, and would exist neither in movement nor in
�DEITY AND DESIGN
9
rest. We realize that order, itistead of being the marvel
of the universe, is the indispensable condition of its
existence—that it is a physical platitude, not a divine
paradox.
But there are still many who continue to marvel at
the wisdom of God in so planning the universe that
big rivers run by great towns, and that death comes
at the end of life instead of in the middle of it.
Divest the pleas of such men as the Rev. Dr.
Matthews Qf their semi-philosophic jargon, reduce
his illustrations to homely similes, and he is marvel
ling- at the wisdom of God who so planned things
that the two extremities of a piece of wood should
come at the ends instead of in the middle.
The trick is, after all, obvious. The Theist takes
terms that can apply to sentient life alone, and
applies them to the universe at large. He talks about
means, that is, the deliberate planning to achieve
certain ends, and then says that as there are meads
there must be ends. Having, unperceived, placed the
rabbit in the hat, he is able to bring it forth to the
admiration of his audience. The so-called adapta
tion of means to ends—properly, the relation of pro
cesses to results—is not something that can be picked
out from phenomena as a whole as an illustration of
divine wisdom; it is an expression of a universal
truism. The product implies the process because it
is the sum of the power of the factors expressed by
it. It is a physical, a chemical, a biological platitude.
I have hitherto followed the lines marked out by
the Theist in his attempt to prove that there exists a
“ mind ” behind natural phenomena, and that the
universe as we have it is, at least generally, an
evidence of a plan designed by this “ mind.” I have
s also, pointed out that the only datum for such a con
clusion is the universe we know-. We must take that
as a starting point. We can get neither behind it nor
beyond it. We cannot start with God and deduce the
�7
IO
DEITY AND DESIGN
i
universe from his existence; we must start with the
world as we know it, and deduce God from the
world. And we can only do this by likening the uni
verse as a product that has come into existence as
part of the design of God, much as a table or a
wireless-set comes into existence as part of the
planning of a human “ mind.” But the conditions
for doing this do not exist, and it is remarkable that
in many cases critics of the design argument should
so often have criticized it as though it were incon
clusive. But the true line of criticism, the criticism
that is'absolutely fatal to the design, argument is that
there is no logical possibility of deducing design
from a study of natural phenomena. And there is no
other direction in which we can look for proof. The
Theist has never yet managed to produce a case for
design which upon examination might not rightly
be dismissed as irrelevant to the point at issue.
In what way can we set about proving that a thing
is a product of design ? We cannot do this by show
ing that a process ends in a result, because every
process ends in a result, and in every case the result
is an expression of the process. If I throw a brick,
it matters not whether the' brick hits a man on the
head and kills him, or if it breaks a window, or
merely falls to the ground without hurting anyone or
anything. In each case the distance the brick travels,
the force of the impact on the head, the window, or
the ground, remains the same, and not the most
exact knowledge of these factors would enable any
one to say whether the result following the throwing
of the brick was. designed or not. Shakespeare is
credited with having written a play called King Lear.
But whether Shakespeare sat down with the de
liberate intention of .writing Lear, or whether the
astral body of Bacon, or someone else, took posses
sion of the body of Shakespeare during the writing
of Lear, makes no difference whatever to the result.
Again, an attendant on a sick man is handling a
number of bottles, some of which contain medicine.
�DEITY AND DESIGN
II
others a deadly poison. Instead of giving- his patient
the medicine, the poison is administered and the
patient dies. An inquest is held, and whether the
poison was given deliberately, or, as we say, by
accident, there is the same sequence of cause and
effect, of process and result. So one might multiply
the illustrations indefinitely. No one observing the
sequences could possibly say whether any of these
unmistakable results were designed or not. One
cannot in any of these cases logically infer design.
The material for such a decision is not present.
Yet' in each of these cases named we could prove
design by producing, evidence of intention. If when
throwing the brick I intended to kill the man, I am
guilty of murder. If I intend to poison, I am also
guilty of murder. If there existed in the mind of
Shakespeare a conception of the plan of Lear before
writing, and if the play carried out that intention,
then the play was designed. In every case the essen
tial fact, without a knowledge of which it is im
possible' logically to assume design, is a knowledge
of intention. We must know what was intended, and
we must-then compare the result with the intention,
and note the measure of agreement that exists be
tween the two. It is not enough to say that one man
threw the brick, and that, if it had not been, thrown,
the other would not have been killed. It is not
enough to say if the poison had not been given the
patient would not have died. And it certainly is not
enough to argue that the course of events can be
traced from the time the brick left the hands of the
first man until it struck the second one. That, as I
have said, remains true in any case. The law is in
sistent that in such cases the intent must be estab
lished ; and in this matter the law acts with scientific
' and philosophic wisdom.
Now in all the cases mentioned, and they are, of
course, merely “ samples from bulk,” we look for
design ■ because we know that men do write plays,
men do poison other men, and men do throw things
�12
DEITY AND DESIGN
at each other with the purpose of inflicting bodily
injury. We are using what is known, as a means of
tackling, for the time being, the unknown. But our
knowledge of world-builders, or universe designers,
is not on all-fours with the cases named. We know
nothing whatever about them, and therefore cannot
reason from what is known to what is unknown in
the hopes of including the unknown in the category
of the known.
Second, assuming there to be a God, we have no
means of knowing what his intentions were when he
made the world—assuming that also. We cannot
know what his intention was, and we cannot con
trast that intention with the result. On the known
facts, assuming God to exist, we have no means of
deciding whether the world we have is part of his
design or not. He might have set about creating
and intended something different. You cannot, in
short, start with a physical, with a natural fact, and
reach intention. Yet if we are to prove purpose we
must begin with intention, and having a knowledge
of that see how far the product agrees with the
design. It is the marriage of a psychical fact with a
physical one that alone can demonstrate intention,
or design. Mere agreement of the “ end ” with the
“ means ” proves nothing at all. The end is the
means brought to fruition. The fundamental objec
tion to the argument from design is that it is
completely irrelevant.
The belief in God is not therefore based on the
perception of design in nature. Belief in design in
nature is based upon the belief in God. Things are
as they are whether there is a God or not. Logically,
to believe in design one must start with God. He, or
it, is not a conclusion but a datum. You may begin'
by assuming a creator, and then sayi he did .this or
that; but you cannot logically say that because
certain things exist, therefore there is a God who
made them. God is an assumption, not a conclusion.
�DEITY AND DESIGN
13
And it is an assumption that explains nothing. If I
may quote from my book, Theism or Atheism:—
To warrant a logical belief ■ in design, in nature, three
things are essential. First, one must assume that God
exists. Second, one must take it for granted that one has
a knowledge of the intention in the mind of the deity before
the alleged design is brought into existence.. Finally, one
must be able to compare the result with the intention and
demonstrate their agreement.
But the impossibility of
knowing the finst two is apparent. And without the first
two the third is of no value whatever. For we have no
means of reaching the first except through the third. And
until we get to the first we cannot make use of- the third.
We are thus in a hopeless impasse. No examination of
nature can lead back to God because we lack the necessary
starting point. All the volumes that have been written and all
the sermons that have been preached depicting the wisdom
of organic structures are so much waste of time and breath.
They prove nothing, and can prove nothing. They assume
at the beginning all they require at the end. Their God
ds not something reached by way of inference. It is some
thing assumed at the very outset.
Finally, if there be a designing mind behind or in
nature, then we have a right to expect unity. The
products of the design should, so to speak, dovetail
into each other. A plan implies this. A gun so de
signed as to kill the one who fired it and the one at
whom it was aimed would be evidence only of the
action of a lunatic or a criminal. When we say we
find evidence of a design we at least imply the
presence of an element of unity. What do we find ?
Taking' the animal world as a whole, what strikes
the observer, even the religious observer, is the fact
of the antagonisms existing in nature. These are so
obvious that religious opinion invented a devil in
order to account for them. And one of the argu
ments used by religious people to justify the belief in
a future life is that God has created another world
in which the injustices and blunders of this life may
be corrected.
For his case the Theist requires co-operative
�14
DEITY AND DESIGN
action in nature. That does exist among the social
animals, but only as regards the individuals within
the group, and even there in a very imperfect form.
But taking animal life, I do not know of any instance
where it can truthfully be said that different species
of animals are designed so as to help each other. It
is probable that some exceptions to this might be
found in the relations between insects and flowers,
but the animal world certainly provides none. The
carnivora not only live on the herbivora, but they
live, when and where they can, on each other. And
God, if we may use Theistic language, prepares for
this, by, on the one hand, so equipping the one that
it may often seize its prey, and the other, that it may
often escape. And when we speak of a creation that
brings an animal into greater harmony with its en
vironment, it must not be forgotten that the greater
harmony, the perfection of the “ adaptation ” at
which the Theist is lost in admiration, is often the
condition of the destruction of other animals. If
each were equally well adapted one of the competing
species would die out. If, therefore, we are to look
for design in nature we can, at most, see only the
manifestations of a mind that takes a delight in
destroying on the one hand what has been built upon
the other.
There is also the myriads of parasites, as clear
evidence of design as anything, that live by the infec
tion and. the destruction of forms of life “ higher ”
than their own. Of the number of animals born only
a very small proportion can evbr hope to reach
maturity. If we reckon the number of spermatozoa
that are “ created ” then the number of those that
live are ridiculously small. The number would be
one in; millions.
Is there any difference when we come to man ?
With profound egotism the Theist argues that the
process of evolution is justified because it has pro
duced him. But with both structure and feeling
there is the same suicidal fact before us. Of the
�DEITY AND DESIGN
15
human structure it would seem that for every step
man has taken away from mere animal nature God
has laid a trap and provided a penalty. If man will
walk upright then he must be prepared for a greater
liability to hernia. If he will live in cities he must
pay the price in a greater liability to tuberculosis.
If he will leave his animal brothers behind him, he
must bear reminders of them in the shape of a use
less coating otf hair that helps'to contract various
diseases, a rudimentary second stomach that pro
vides the occasion for appendicitis, rudimentary
“ wisdom teeth ” that give a chance for mental
disease. It has been calculated that man carries
about with him over one hundred rudimentary
structures, each absorbing- energy and giving
nothing in return.
So one might go on. Nature taken from the point
of view most favourable to the Theist gives us rro
picture of unified design. Put aside the impossi
bility of providing a logical case for the inferring of
design in nature, it remains that the only conception
we can have oif a designer is, as W. H. Mallock, a
staunch Roman Catholic, has said, that of “a
scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi-impotent mon
ster . . . kicking his heels in the sky, not perhaps
bent on mischief, but indifferent to the fact that he
is causing it.”
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Deity and design
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Cohen, Chapman [1868-1954]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Series title: Pamphlets for the People
Series number: No. 11
Notes: "Issued for the Secular Society Limited." Date of publication from KVK. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Pioneer Press
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[1912]
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N140
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Deism
Free thought
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English
God
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A
REFUTATION OF DEISM
IN
A
DIALOGUE
BY
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
With an Introduction by G. W. Foote.
PRICE FOUUPENC E.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C,
1890.
�LONDON :
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. TOOTH,
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C,
�EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION.
On the twenty-fifth of March, 1811, a young student was
expelled from University College, Oxford. He had committed
an unpardonable sin. After avoiding the ordinary offences,
such as drinking, gambling, and debauching girls, he had fallen
into the enormity of thinking for himself. His opinions were
atheistic, and he had written a pamphlet on The Necessity of
Atheism. For this terrible crime the college authorities
expelled him, giving him till “ early to-morrow morning ” to
quit the place he had polluted.
That young student was Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was then
in his nineteenth year. Two years later he printed a private
edition of Queen Mab. Early in the same year (1814) he
published through Schulze and Dean, of 13 Poland Street, a
pamphlet entitled A Refutation of Deism, which is reprinted
in the following pages.
Shelley’s object was to attack both natural and revealed
religion. The method he adopted in this pamphlet was not
lacking in astuteness. Theosophus assails Christianity in the
name of reason, and Eusebes demonstrates that the difficulties
of Theism are as great as those of the creed founded upon the
Bible. It is a bold extension of the logical method pursued by
Bishop Butler in his famous Analogy, and, considering Shelley’s
age, it is conducted with great ability. The style is rather
stiff, as youthful prose is apt to be; but although something is
sacrificed to sonorousness, there is no sacrifice of perspicuity
to ornament. Shelley lost no time in cultivating simplicity of
statement, with the result that his mature prose, even when
dealing with metaphysical topics or the subtlest qualities of
poetry, was as lucid as it was beautiful.
This pamphlet does not escape the malignant zeal of Mr.
J. C. Jeafferson, who has accumulated all that Philistinian
�iv.
Editor’s Introduction.
industry could discover or distort against the poet of Atheism,
and called it The Real Shelley. He allows that “ the style
contrasts favorably ” with Shelley’s “ earlier prose writings,”
and speaks of “ the author’s adroit handling of his two argu
mentative puppets.” But he falls foul of the Preface, which
he regards as excelling everything of the kind “ in the whole
range of English literature” in “mis-statements and false
suggestions.” Were it not for Shelley’s “ want ” of that quality,
Mr. Jeafferson would “ suspect him of grim humor in making
the arguments for Atheism proceed from a Christian’s mouth.”
But the real “ want ” is in Mr. Jeafferson himself. There is
not, as a matter of fact, a single false statement in Shelley’s
preface. What he says is true as far as it goes, and is precisely
what Hume says in other words at the close of the Essay on
Miracles and in many other parts of his sceptical writings.
Mr. Jeafiferson seems ignorant of the nature of irony. One is
tempted to exclaim with Hamlet—“ How absolute the knave is I
We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.”
Mr. Jeafferson is of opinion that Shelley’s pamphlet should
have been called “ A Dialogue for the Fuller Demonstration of
the Necessity of Atheism.” But as he . admits that this would
have prevented its being read, an ordinary person will be apt
to think that Shelley was wiser than his critic. Those who
did read the pamphlet, being fit to read it, could be under no
mistake as to the writer’s purpose.
No one but Mr. Jeafferson has ever accused Shelley of
timidity. He who advocated Atheism in prose and verse, and
drew upon himself the hatred of the religious world, adopted
the method of this pamphlet in order to avoid a persecution for
blasphemy I Such is the incredible paradox of Mr. Jeafferson,
and its absurdity is only equalled by its dishonesty. Mr.
Jeafferson appears to approve the Blasphemy Laws, under
which men suffered ferocious sentences in the early part of
this century, and he censures Shelley for not tempting their
tender mercies. That a persecutor should be enamored of his
Inquisition is intelligible, but when he gravely reproves a
heretic for not laying an information against himself, he
simply invites derision.
G. W. Foote.
�Eusebes and Theosophus.
EUSEBES.
O Theosophtts, I have long regretted and observed the strange
infatuation which has blinded your understanding. It is not
without acute uneasiness that I have beheld the progress of
your audacious scepticism trample on the most venerable insti
tutions of our forefathers, until it has rejected the salvation
which the only begotten Son of God deigned to proffer in
person to a guilty and unbelieving world. To this excess, then,
has the pride of the human understanding at length arrived ?
To measure itself with Omniscience ! To scan the intentions
of Inscrutability !
You can have reflected but superficially on this awful and
important subject. The love of paradox, an affectation of
singularity, or the pride of reason has seduced you to the
barren and gloomy paths of infidelity. Surely you have
hardened yourself against the truth with a spirit of coldness
and cavil.
Have you been wholly inattentive to the accumulated
evidence which the Deity has been pleased to attach to the
revelation of his will ? The ancient books in which the
advent of the Messiah was predicted, the miracles by which
its truth has been so conspicuously confirmed, the martyrs who
have undergone every variety of torment in attestation of its
veracity ? You seem to require mathematical demonstration
in a case which admits of no more than strong moral proba
bility. Surely the merit of that faith which we are required
to repose in our Redeemer would be thus entirely done away.
Where is the difficulty of according credit to that which is
perfectly plain and evident? How is he entitled to a recom
pense who believes what he cannot disbelieve ?
When there is satisfactory evidence that the witnesses of
the Christian miracles passed their lives in labors, dangers,
and sufferings, and consented severally to be racked, burned,
and strangled, in testimony of the truth of their account, will
it be asserted that they were actuated by a disinterested desire
�6
A Refutation of Deism.
of deceiving others ? That they were hypocrites for no end
hut to teach the purest doctrine that ever enlightened the
world, and martyrs without any prospect of emolument or
fame ? The sophist, who gravely advances an opinion thus
absurd, certainly sins with gratuitous and indefensible per
tinacity.
The history of Christianity is itself the most indisputable
proof of those miracles by which its origin was sanctioned to
the world. It is itself one great miracle. A few humble men
established it in the face of an opposing universe. In less than
fifty years an astonishing multitude was converted, as
*
Suetonius, Pliny,f Tacitus,J and Lucian attest; and shortly
afterwards thousands who had boldly overturned the altars,
slain the priests and burned the temples of Paganism, were
loud in demanding the recompense of martyrdom from the
hands of the infuriated heathens Not until three centuries
after the coming of the Messiah did his holy religion incorporate
itself with the institutions of the Roman Empire, and derive
support from the visible arm of fleshly strength. Thus long
without any assistance but that of its Omnipotent author,
Christianity prevailed in defiance of incredible persecutions,
and drew fresh vigor from circumstances the most desperate
and unpromising. By what process of sophistry can a rational
being persuade himself to reject a religion, the original pro
pagation of which is an event wholly unparalleled in the sphere
of human experience ?
The morality of the Christian religion is as original and
sublime, as its miracles and mysteries are unlike all other
portents. A patient acquiescence in injuries and violence; a
passive submission to the will of sovereigns; a disregard of
those ties by which the feelings of humanity have ever been
bound to this unimportant world; humility and faith are
doctrines neither similar nor comparable to those of any other
system.§ Friendship, patriotism, and magnanimity; the heart
that is quick in sensibility, the hand that is inflexible in execu
tion : genius, learning and courage, are qualities which have
engaged the admiration of mankind, but which we are taught
by Christianity to consider as splendid and delusive vices.
I know not why a Theist should feel himself more inclined*
§
* Judcei, impulsore Chrestofurbantes,facile eomprimuntur.—Suet, in Tib.
Affecti suppliciis Christiani, genus liominum superstitionis novce et
maleficcB.—Id. in Nerone.
f Multi omnis cetatis utriusque sexus etiam; neque enirn civitates tantum,
sed vicos etiam et agros superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est.—Plin.
Epist.
I Tacit. Annal L. xv., sect. xlv.
§ See the Internal Evidence of Christianity; see also Paley’s Evidences,
vol. ii., p. 27.
�A Refutation of Deism.
7
to distrust the historians of Jesus Christ than those of
Alexander the Great. What do the tidings of redemption
contain which render them peculiarly obnoxious to discredit ?
It will not be disputed that a revelation of the Divine will is
a benefit to mankind. It will not be asserted that even under
*
the Christian revelation, we have too clear a solution of the
vast enigma of the Universe, too satisfactory a justification of
the attributes of God. When we call to mind the profound
ignorance in which, with the exception of the Jews, the philo
sophers of antiquity were plunged; when we recollect that
men, eminent for dazzling talents and fallacious virtues, Epi
curus, Democritus, Piiny, Lucretius,f Euripides, and innumer
able others, dared publicly to avow their faith in Atheism with
impunity, and that the Theists, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras and
Plato, vainly endeavored by that human reason, which is truly
incommensurate to so vast a purpose, to establish among
philosophers the belief in one Almighty God, the creator and
preserver- of the world; when we recollect that the multitude
were grossly and ridiculously idolatrous, and that the magi
strates, if not Atheists, regarded the being of a God in the
light of an abstruse and uninteresting speculation ; j when we
add to these considerations a remembrance of the wars and the
oppressions, which about the time of the advent of the Messiah,
desolated the human race, is it not more credible that the
Deity actually interposed to check the rapid progress of human
deterioration, than that he permitted a specious and pestilent
imposture to seduce mankind into the labyrinth of a deadlier
superstition ? Surely the Deity has not created man immortal,
and left him for ever in ignorance of his glorious destination.
If the Christian Religion is false, I see not upon what founda
tion our belief in a moral governor of the universe, or our
hopes of immortality can rest.
Thus then the plain reason of the case, and the suffrage of
the civilised world, conspire with the more indisputable sugges
tions of faith, to render impregnable that system which has
been so vainly and so wantonly assailed. Suppose, however,
it were admitted that the conclusions of human reason and the
lessons of worldly virtue should be found, in the detail, incon
gruous with Divine Revelation; by the dictates of which would
* Paley’s Evidences, vol. i., p. 3.
f Plin. Nat. His. Cap. de Deo., Euripides, Bellerophon, Frag. xxv.
Ihinc igitur terrorem animi, tenebrasque necesse est
Non radii soils, neque lucida tela diei
Discutient, sed natures species ratioque:
Pnncipium hinc cujus nobis exordia sumet,
Nullam rem nihilo gigni divinitus unquam.
Luc. de Rer. Nat. Lib. 1 [w. 147-151].
J See Cicero de Natura Deorum.
�$
A Refutation of Deism.
it become us to abide ? Not by that which errs whenever it is
employed, but by that which is incapable of error: not by the
ephemeral systems of vain philosophy, but by the word of
God, which shall endure for ever.
Reflect, 0 Theosophus, that if the religion you reject be
true, you are justly excluded by the benefits which result from
a belief in its efficiency to salvation. Be not regardless, there
fore, I entreat you, of the curses so emphatically heaped upon
infidels by the inspired organs of the will of God: the fire
which is never quenched, the worm that never dies. I dare
not think that the God in whom I trust for salvation, would
terrify his creatures with menaces of punishment which he
does not intend to inflict. The ingratitude of incredulity is,
perhaps, the only sin to which the Almighty cannot extend
his mercy without compromising his justice. How can the
human heart endure, without despair, the mere conception of
so tremendous an alternative? Return, I entreat you, to that
tower of strength which securely overlooks the chaos of the
conflicting opinions of men. Return to that God who is your
creator and preserver, by whom alone you are defended from
the. ceaseless wiles of your eternal enemy. Are human insti
tutions so faultless that the principle upon which they are
fonnded.may strive with the voice of God? Know that faith
is superior to reason, in as much as the creature is surpassed
by the Creator: and that whensoever they are incompatible,
the suggestions of the latter, not those of the former, are to
be questioned.
Permit me to exhibit in their genuine deformity the errors
which are seducing you to destruction. State to me with
candor the train of sophisms by which the evil spirit has
deluded your understanding. Confess the secret motives of
your disbelief; suffer me to administer a remedy to your intel
lectual disease. I fear not the contagion of such revolting
sentiments : I fear only lest patience should desert me before
you have finished the detail of your presumptuous credulity.
THEOSOPHUS.
I am not only prepared to confess, but to vindicate my
sentiments. I cannot refrain, however, from premising, that
in this controversy I labor under a disadvantage from which
you are exempt. You believe that incredulity is immoral, and
regard him as an object of suspicion and distrust whose creed
is incongruous with your own. But truth is the perception of
the agreement or disagreement of ideas. I can no more con
ceive that a man who perceives the disagreement of any ideas
should be persuaded of their agreement that he should over
come a physical impossibility. The reasonableness or the
�A Refutation of Deism.
9
•folly of the articles of our creed is therefore no legitimate
object of merit our demerit; our opinions depend not on
-the will, but on the understanding.
If I am in error (and the wisest of us may not presume to
deem himself secure from all illusion) that error is the con
sequence of the prejudices by which I am prevented, of the
ignorance, by which I am incapacitated from forming a correct
estimation of the subject. Remove those prejudices,dispel that
ignorance, make truth apparent, and fear not the obstacles that
remain to be encountered. But do not repeat to me those
terrible and frequent curses, by whose intolerance and cruelty
I have so often been disgusted in the perusal of your sacred
books. Do not tell me that the All-Merciful will punish me
for the conclusions of that reason by which he has thought fit
to distinguish me from the beasts that perish. Above all,
refrain from urging considerations drawn from reason, to
degrade that which you are thereby compelled to acknowledge
as the ultimate arbiter of the dispute. Answer my objections
as I engage to answer your assertions point by point, word by
word.
You believe that the only and ever-present God begot a Son
whom he sent to reform the world, and to propitiate its sins;
you believe that a book, called the Bible, contains a true
account of this event, together with an infinity of miracles and
prophecies which preceded it from the creation of the world.
Your opinion that these circumstances really happened appears
to me, from some considerations which I will proceed to state,
destitute of rational foundation.
To expose all the inconsistency, immorality and false
pretensions which I perceive in the Bible, demands a minute
ness of criticism at least as voluminous as itself. I shall con
fine myself, therefore, to the confronting of your tenets with
those primitive and general principles which are the basis of
-all moral reasoning.
In creating the Universe, God certainly proposed to himself
the happiness of his creatures. It is just, therefore, to con
clude that he left no means unemployed, which did not involve
an impossibility, to accomplish this design. In fixing a
■residence for this image of his own Majesty, he was doubtless
■careful that every occasion of detriment, every opportunity of
evil, should be removed. He was aware of the extent of his
powers, he foresaw the consequences of his conduct, and
-doubtless modelled his being consentaneously with the world
•of which he was to be the inhabitant, and the circumstances
which were destined to surround him.
The account given by the Bible has but a faint concordance
with the surmises of reason concerning this event.
�10
A Refutation of Deism.
According to this book, God created Satan, who, instigated
by the impulses of his nature, contended with the Omnipotent
for the Throne of Heaven. After a contest for the empire, in
which God was victorious, Satan was thrust into a pit of burn
ing sulphur. On man’s creation, God placed within his reach
a tree whose fruit he forbade him to taste, on pain of death;
permitting Satan, at the same time, to employ all his artifice to
persuade this innocent and wondering creature to transgress
the fatal prohibition.
The first man yielded to this temptation; and to satisfy
Divine Justice the whole of his posterity must have been
eternally burned in hell, if God had not sent his only Son on
earth, to save those few whose salvation had been foreseen
and determined before the creation of the world.
God is here represented as creating man with certain
passions and powers, surrounding him with certain circum
stances, and then condemning him to everlasting torments
because he acted as omniscience had foreseen, and was such as
omnipotence had made him. For to assert that the Creator is
the author of all good, and the creature the author of all evil,
is to assert that one man makes a straight line and a crooked
one, and that another makes the incongruity.
*
Barbarous and uncivilised nations have uniformly adored,
under various names, a God of which themselves were the
model: revengeful, bloodthirsty, grovelling and capricious.
The idol of a savage is a demon that delights in carnage. The
steam of slaughter, the dissonance of groans, the flames of a
desolated land, are the offerings which he deems acceptable,
and his innumerable votaries throughout the world have made
it a point of duty to worship him to his taste.h The Phenicians,
the Druids, and the Mexicans have immolated hundreds at the
shrines of their divinity, and the high and holy name of God
has been in all ages the watchword of the most unsparing
massacres, the sanction of the most atrocious perfidies.
But I appeal to your candor, 0 Eusebes, if there exist a record
of such grovelling absurdities and enormities so atrocious, a
picture of the Deity so characteristic of a demon as that which
the sacred writings of the Jews contain. I demand of you,
whether as a conscientious Theist you can reconcile the con
duct which is attributed to the God of the Jews with your
conceptions of the purity and benevolence of the divine
nature.
The loathsome and minute obscenities to which the inspired
writers perpetually descend, the filthy observances which God
is described as personally instituting^ the total disregard of
* Hobbes.
f See Preface to Le Bon Sens.
�A Refutation of Deism.
11
truth and contempt of the first principles of morality, mani
fested on the most public occasions by the chosen favorites of
Heaven, might corrupt, were they not so flagitious as to
disgust.
When the chief of this obscure and brutal horde of assassins
asserts that the God of the Universe was enclosed in a box of
shittim wood,* “ two feet long and three feet wide,”f and
brought home in a new cart, I smile at the impertinence of so
shallow an imposture. But it is blasphemy of a more hideous
and unexampled nature to maintain that the Almighty God
expressly commanded Moses to invade an unoffending nation;
and, on account of the difference of their worship, utterly to
destroy every human being it contained, to murder every
infant and unarmed man in cold blood, to massacre the captives,
to rip up the matrons, and to retain the maidens alone for
concubinage and violation. J At the very time that philosophers
xxiii. Heyne, speaking of the opinions entertained of the Jews by ancient
poets and philosophers, says:—Meminit quidem superstitionis Judaicce
Horatius, verurn ut earn risu exploders!—Heyn. ad. Virg. Poll, in Arg.
* 1 Sam. chap, v., 8.
f Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.
f Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the
Lord’s side ? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered
themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, Thus saith the
Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and
out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay everyman his brother,
and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. And the chil
dren of Levi did according to the word of Moses : and there fell of the
people on that day twenty-three thousand men (Exodus xxxii., 26.)
And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses ;
and they slew all the males. And the children of Israel took all the
women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all
their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. And they burned
all their huts wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with
fire. And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the con
gregation, went forth to meet them without the camp. And Moses was
[wroth] with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands,
and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle. And Moses said
unto them, Have ye saved, all the women alive ? behold, these caused the
children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass
against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the
congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little
ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all
the women-children, that have not known a man by lying with him, KEEP
alive for yourselves (Numbers xxxi., 7-18.)
And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon, king of Heshbonj
utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city (Deutiii., 6.)
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and
woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and ass, with the edge of the
sword (Joshua.)
So Joshua fought against Debir, and utterly destroyed all the souls
�12
A Refutation of Deism.
of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece
those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and
luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak
and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a mur
derer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God’s own
heart ? _ A wretch, at the thought of whose unparalleled
•enormities the sternest soul must sicken in dismay! An
unnatural monster, who sawed his fellow beings in sunder,
harrowed them to fragments under harrows of iron, chopped
them to pieces with axes, and burned them in brick-kilns,
because they bowed before a different and less bloody idol
than his own. It is surely no perverse conclusion of an
infatuated understanding that the God of the Jews is not the
benevolent author of this beautiful world.
The conduct of the Deity in the promulgation of the Gospel,
appears not to the eye of reason more compatible with his
immutability and omnipotence than the history of his actions
under the law accords with his benevolence.
You assert that the human race merited eternal reprobation
because their common father had transgressed the divirm com
mand, and that the crucifixion of the Son of God was the only
sacrifice of sufficient efficacy to satisfy eternal justice. But it
is no less inconsistent with justice and subversive of morality
that millions should be responsible for a crime which they had
no share in committing, than that, if they had really committed
it, the crucifixion of an innocent being could absolve them from
moral turpitude. Ferretne ulla civitas latorem istiusmodi
legis, ut condemnaretur filius, aut nepos, si pater aut avus
deliquisset ? Certainly this is a mode of legislation peculiar to
a state of savagness and anarchy; this is the irrefragable logic
of tyranny and imposture.
The supposition that God has ever supernaturally revealed
his will to man at any other period than the original creation
of the human race, necessarily involves a compromise of his
benevolence. It assumes that he withheld from mankind a
benefit which it was in his power to confer. That he suffered
his creatures to remain in ignorance of truths essential to their
happiness and salvation. That during the lapse of innumerable
ages, every individual of the human race had perished without
redemption, from an universal stain which the Deity at length
descended in person to erase. That the good and wise of all
that were therein : he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that
breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded (Joshua, chap, x.)
And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah, and
took it. And he brought forth the people therein, and put them under
saws, and under harrows of iron, and made them pass through the brick
kiln; this did he also unto all the children of Ammon (2 Sam. xii., 29.)
�A Refutation of Deism.
13
ages, involved in one common fate with the ignorant and.
wicked, have been tainted by involuntary and inevitable error
which torments infinite in duration may not avail to expiate.
In vain will you assure me with amiable inconsistency that
the mercy of God will be extended to the virtuous, and that
the vicious will alone be punished. The foundation of the
Christian Religion is manifestly compromised by a concession
of this nature. A subterfuge thus palpable plainly annihilates
the necessity of the incarnation of God for the redemption of
the human race, and represents the descent of the Messiah as
a gratuitous display of Deity, solely adapted to perplex, to
terrify and to embroil mankind.
It is sufficiently evident that an omniscient being never con
ceived the design of reforming the world by Christianity.
Omniscience would surely have foreseen the inefficacy of that
I system, which experience demonstrates not only to have been
utterly impotent in restraining, but to have been most active
in exhaling the malevolent propensities of men. During the
period which elapsed between the removal of the seat of
empire to Constantinople in 328, and its capture by the Turks
in 1453, what salutary influence did Christianity exercise upon
that world which it was intended to enlighten ? Never before
was Europe the theatre of such ceaseless and sanguinary
wars; never were the people so brutalised by ignorance and
debased by slavery.
I will admit that one prediction of Jesus Christ has been
indisputably fulfilled. I come not to bring peace upon earth but
§ a sword. Christianity indeed has equalled Judaism in the
I. atrocities, and exceeded it in the extent of its desolation.
I festivalsmillions of men, women, and children, have been killed
Eleven of sacrifice, poisoned, tortured, assassinated, and
I pillaged in the spirit in the Religion burned to and for thepublic
in battle, butchered of their sleep, of Peace, death at glory
rof the most merciful God.
............................. ~
‘
’
In vain will you tell me that these terrible effects flow not
1
1| from Christianity, but from the abuse of it. No such excuse
ri will avail to palliate the enormities of a religion pretended to be
i>| divine. A limited intelligence is only so far responsible for
t the effects of its agency as it foresaw, or might have foreseen
I them ; but Omniscience is manifestly chargeable with all the
consequence of its conduct. Christianity itself declares that
3
J I the worth of the tree is to be determined by the quality of its
it I fruit. Tlie extermination of infidels ; the mutual persecutions
»| of hostile sects; the midnight massacres and slow burning of
11 thousands, because their creed contained either more or less
i: than the orthodox standard, of which Christianity has been the
immediate occasion; and the invariable opposition which
�14
A Refutation of Deism.
philosophy has ever encountered from the spirit of revealed
religion, plainly show that a very slight portion of sagacity was
sufficient to have estimated at is true value the advantages of
that belief to which some Theists are unaccountably attached.
You lay great stress upon the originality of the Christian
system of morals. If this claim be just, either your religion
must be false, or the Deity has willed that opposite modes of
conduct should be pursued by mankind at different times,
under the same circumstances; which is absurd.
The doctrine of acquiescing in the most insolent despotism ;
of praying for and loving our enemies ; of faith and humility,
appears to fix the perfection of the human character in that
abjectness and credulity which priests and tyrants of all ages
have found sufficiently convenient for their purposes. It is
evident that a whole nation of Christians (could such an
anomaly maintain itself a day) would become, like cattle, the
property of the first occupier. It is evident that ten highway
men would suffice to subjugate the world if it were composed
ef slaves who dared not to resist oppression.
The apathy to love and friendship, recommended by your
creed, would, if attainable, not be less pernicious. This
enthusiasm of anti-social misanthropy, if it were an actual
rule of conduct, and not the speculation of a few interested
persons, would speedily annihilate the human race. A total
abstinance from sexual intercourse is not perhaps enjoined,
but is strenuously recommended, and was actually practised
*
to a frightful extent by the primitive Christians.!
The penalties inflicted by that monster Constantine, the first
Christian Emperor, on the pleasures of unlicensed love, are so
iniquitously severe, that no modern legislator could have
affixed them to the most atrocious crimes J This cold-blooded
and hypocritical ruffian cut his son’s throat, strangled his wife,
murdered his father-in-law and his brother-in-law, and main
tained at his court a set of bloodthirsty and bigoted Christian
priests, one of whom was sufficient to excite the one half of
the world to massacre the other
I am willing to admit that some few axioms of morality,
which Christianity has borrowed from the philosophers of
Greece and India, dictate, in an unconnected state, rules of
conduct w orthy of regard ; but the purest and most elevated
lessons of morality must remain nugatory, the most probable
* Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote to me ; it is good for a
man not to touch a woman.
_
_
I say, therefore, to the unmarried and widows, _ it is good for them if
they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry ; it
is better to marry than burn (1 Cor., chap, vii.)
.
..
f See Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, vol. ii., p. 210. J Ibid, vol. n., p. 269.
�A Refutation of Deism.
15
inducements to virtue must fail of their effect, so long as the
slightest weight is attached to that dogma which is the vital
essence of revealed religion.
Belief is set up as the criterion of merit or demerit; a man is
to be judged not by the purity of his intentions but by the
orthodoxy of his creed; an assent to certain propositions, is to
outweigh in the balance of Christianity the most generous and
elevated virtue.
But the intensity of belief, like that of every other passion,
is precisely proportioned to the degrees of excitement. A
graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities of
propositions to approach to the test of the senses, would be a
just measure of the belief which ought to be attached to them;
and but for the influence of prejudice or ignorance this
invariably is the measure of belief. That is believed which is
apprehended to be true, nor can the mind by any exertion
avoid attaching credit to an opinion attended with over
whelming evidence. Belief is not an act of volition, nor can
it be regulated by the mind ; it is manifestly incapable therefore
of either merit or criminality. The system which assumes a
false criterion of moral virtue must be as pernicious as it is
absurd. Above all it cannot be divine, as it is impossible that
the Creator- of the human mind should be ignorant of its
primary powers.
The degree of evidence afforded by miracles and prophecies
in favor of the Christian Religion is lastly to be considered.
Evidence of a more imposing and irresistible nature is
required in proportion to the remoteness of any event from
the sphere of our experience. Every case of miracles is a
contest of opposite improbabilities, whether it is more contrary
to experience that a miracle should be true, or that the story
on which it is supported should be false : whether the immut
able laws of this harmonious world should have undergone
violation, or that some obscure Greeks and Jews should have
conspired to fabricate a tale of wonder.
The actual appearance of a departed spirit would be a cir
cumstance truly unusual and portentous ; but the accumulated
testimony of twelve old women that a spirit had appeared is
neither unprecedented nor miraculous.
It seems less credible that the God whose immensity is un
circumscribed by space, should have committed adultery with
a carpenter’s wife, than that some bold knaves or insane dupes
had deceived the credulous multitude.
*
We have perpetual
and mournful experience of the latter : the former is yet under
dispute. History affords us innumerable examples of the pos
* See Paley's Evidences, vol. i., chap. i.
�16
A Refutation of Deism.
sibility of the one : Philosophy has in all ages protested against
the probability of the other.
Every superstition can produce its dupes, its miracles and
its mysteries; each is prepared to justify its peculiar tenets by
an equal assemblage of portents, prophecies and martyrdoms.
Prophecies, however circumstantial, are liable to the same
objection as direct miracles : it is more agreeable to experience
that the historical evidence of the prediction really having
preceded the event pretended to be foretold should be false, or
that a lucky conjuncture of events should have justified the
conjecture of the prophet, than that God should communicate
to a man the discernment of future events. I defy you to
*
produce more than one instance of prophecy in the Bible,,
wherein the inspired writer speaks so as to be understood,
wherein his prediction has not been so unintelligible and
obscure as to have been itself the subject of controversy
among Christians.
That one prediction which I expect is certainly most explicit
and circumstantial. It is the only one of this nature which
the Bible contains. Jesus himself here predicts his own
arrival in the clouds to consummate a period of supernatural
desolation, before the generation which he addressed should
pass away f Eighteen hundred years have past, and no such
event is pretended to have happened. This single plain
prophecy, thus conspicuously false, may serve as a criterion of
those which are more vague and indirect, and which apply in
a hundred senses to a hundred things.
Either the pretended predictions in the Bible were meant to
be understood, or they were not. If they were, why is there
any dispute concerning them : if they were not, wherefore
were they written at all ? But the God of Christianity spoke
to mankind in parables, that seeing they might not see, and
hearing they might not understand
The Gospels contain internal evidence that they were not
written by eye-witnesses of the event which they pretend to
record. The Gospel of St. Matthew was plainly not written
* See the Controversy of Bishop Watson and Thomas Paine. Paine’s
Criticism on the 19th chapter of Isaiah.
t Immediately after the tribulation of these days shall the sun bedarkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall
from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken : and then
shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven : and then shall all the
tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in
the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his
angel with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his
elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Verily I
say unto you, this generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled
(Matt. chap, xxiv.)
�17
A Refutation of Deism.
until some time after the taking of Jerusalem, that is, at least
forty years after the execution of Jesus Christ: for he makes
Jesus say that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed
upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood
of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the altar
and the temple Now Zacharias, son of Barachias, was assas
*
sinated between the altar and the temple by a faction of
zealots during the siege of Jerusalem.f
You assert that the design of the instances of supernatural
interposition which the Gospel records was to convince man
kind that Jesus Christ was truly the expected Redeemer. But
it is as impossible that any human sophistry should frustrate
the manifestation of Omnipotence, as that Omniscience should
fail to select the most efficient means of accomplishing its
design. Eighteen centuries have passed and the tenth part of
the human race have a blind and mechanical belief in that
Redeemer, without a complete reliance on the merits of whom,
their lot is fixed in everlasting misery : surely if the Christian
system be thus dreadfully important its Omnipotent author
would have rendered it incapable of those abuses from which
it has never been exempt, and to which it is subject in common
with all human institutions, he would not have left it a matter
of ceaseless cavil or complete indifference to the immense
majority of mankind. Surely some more conspicuous evidences
of its authenticity would have been afforded than driving out
devils, drowning pigs, curing blind men, animating a dead body
and turning water into wine. Some theatre worthier of the
transcendent event, than Judaea, would have been chosen, some
historians more adapted by their accomplishments and their
genius to record the incarnation of the immutable God. The
Humane Society restores drowned persons; every empiric can
cure every disease ; drowning pigs is no very difficult matter,
and driving out devils was far from being an original or an
unusual occupation in Judaea. Do not recite these stale
absurdities as proofs of the divine origin of Christianity.
If the Almighty has spoken, would not the Universe have
been convinced? If he had judged the knowledge of his will
to have been more important than any other science to man
kind, would he not have rendered it more evident and more
clear ?
Now, 0 Eusebes, have I enumerated the general grounds
of my disbelief of the Christian Religion. I could have collated
its Sacred Writings with the Brahminical record of the early
ages of the world, and identified its institutions with the
ancient worship of the Sun. I might have entered into an
* See Matthew xxiii., 35.
j- Josephus.
B
�18
A Refutation of Deism.
elaborate comparison of the innumerable discordances which
exist between the inspired historians of the same event.
Enough, however, has been said to vindicate me from the
charge of groundless and infatuated scepticism. I trust, there
fore, to your candor for the consideration, and to your logic for
the refutation, of my arguments.
EUSEBES.
I will not dissemble, 0 Theosophus, the difficulty of solving
your general objections to Christianity, on the grounds of
human reason. I did not assist at the councils of the Almighty
when he determined to extend his mercy to mankind, nor can
I venture to affirm that it exceeded the limits of his power to
have afforded a more conspicuous or universal manifestation
of his will.
But this is a difficulty which attends Christianity in common
with the belief in the being and attributes of God. This whole
scheme of things might have been, according to our partial
conceptions, infinitely more admirable and perfect. Poisons,
earthquakes, disease, war, famine and venomous serpents;
slavery and persecution are the consequences of certain causes,
which according to human judgment might well have been
dispensed with in arranging the economy of the globe.
Is this the reasoning which the Theist will choose to employ ?
Will he impose limitations on that Deity whom he professes to
regard with so profound a veneration ? Will he place his God
between the horns of a logical dilemma which shall restrict
the fulness either of his power or his bounty ?
Certainly he will prefer to resign his objections to Chris
tianity than pursue the reasoning upon which 1 hey are found,
to the dreadful conclusions of cold and dreary Atheism.
I confess that Christianity appears not unattended with
difficulty to the understanding which approaches it with a
determination to judge its mysteries by reason. I will ever
*
confess that the discourse, which you have just delivered, ought
to unsettle any candid mind engaged in a similar attempt. The
children of this world are wiser in their generation than the
children of light.
But if I succeed in convincing you that reason conducts to
conclusions destructive of morality, happiness, and the hope
of futurity, and inconsistent with the very existence of human
society, I trust that you will no longer confide in a director so
dangerous and faithless.
I require you to declare, 0 Theosophus, whether you would
[* Qy. ? even.]
�A Refutation of Deism.
19
embrace Christianity or Atheism, if no other systems of belief
shall be found to stand the touchstone of inquiry.
THEOSOPHUS.
I no not hesitate to prefer the Christian system, or indeed any
system of religion, however rude and gross, to Atheism. Here
we truly sympathise; nor do I blame, however I may feel
inclined to pity, the man who in his zeal to escape this gloomy
faith, should plunge into the most abject superstition.
The Atheist is a monster among men. Inducements, which
are omnipotent over the conduct of others, are impotent for
him. His private judgment is his criterion of right and wrong.
He dreads no judge but his own conscience, he fears no hell
but the loss of his self-esteem. He is not to be restrained by
punishments, for death is divested of its terror, and whatever
enters into his heart to conceive, that will he not scruple to
execute. Iste non timet omnia providentem et cogitantem, et
animadvertentem, et omnia ad se pertinere putantem, curiosum,
et plenum negotii Deum.
This dark and terrible doctrine was surely the abortion of
some blind speculator’s brain ; some strange and hideous per
version of intellect, some portentous distortion of reason.
There can surely be no metaphysician sufficiently bigoted to
his own system to look upon this harmonious world, and
dispute the necessity of intelligence ; to contemplate the design
and deny the designer; to enjoy the spectacle of this beautiful
Universe and not feel himself instinctively persuaded to
gratitude and adoration. What arguments of the slightest
plausibility can be adduced to support a doctrine rejected
alike by the instinct of the savage and the reason of the sage ?
I readily engage, with you, to reject reason as a faithless
guide, if you can demonstrate that it conducts to atheism. So
little, however, do I mistrust the dictates of reason, concerning
a supreme being, that I promise, in the event of your success,
io subscribe the wildest and most monstrous creed which you
can devise. I will call credulity, faith; reason, impiety; the
dictates of the understanding shall be the temptations of the
Devil, and the wildest dreams of the imagination the infallible
inspirations of Grace.
ECJSEBES.
Let me request you then to state, concisely, the grounds of
your belief in the being of a God. In my reply I shall endeavor
to controvert your reasoning, and shall hold myself acquitted
by my zeal for the Christian religion, of the blasphemies which
I must utter in the progress of my discourse.
�20
A Refutation of Deism.
THEOSOPHUS.
I will readily state the grounds of my belief in the being of
a God. You can only have remained ignorant of the obvious
proofs of this important truth, from a superstitious reliance
upon the evidence afforded by a revealed religion. The reason
ing lies within an extremely narrow compass; quicquid enirn
nos veil meliores vol beatiores facturum est, aut in aperto, aut
in proximo posuit natura.
From every design we justly infer a designer. If we
examine the structure of a watch, we shall readily confess the
existence of a watchmaker. No work of man could possibly
have existed from all eternity. From the contemplation of any
product of human art we conclude that there was an artificer
who arranged its several parts. In like manner, from the
marks of design and contrivance exhibited in the Universe, we
are necessitated to infer a designer, a contriver. If the parts of
the Universe have been designed, contrived and adapted, the
existence of a God is manifest.
But design is sufficiently apparent. The wonderful adapta
tion of substances which act to those which are acted upon;
of the eye to light, and of light to the eye; of the ear . to
sound, and of sound to the ear; of every object of. sensation
to the sense which it impresses prove that neither blind chance
nor undistinguishing necessity has brought them into being.
The adaptation of certain animals to certain climates, the
relation borne to each other by animals and vegetables, and by
different tribes of animals; the relation, lastly, between man
and the circumstances of his external situation are so many
demonstrations of DeityAll is order, design and harmony, so far as we can descry
the tendency of things, and every new enlargement of our
views, every new display of the material world, affords a new
illustration of the power, the wisdom and the benevolence
of God
r
.
The existence of God has never been the topic of popular
dispute. There is a tendency to devotion, a thirst for reliance
on supernatural aid inherent in the human, mind. Scarcely
any people, however barbarous, have been discovered who do
not acknowledge with reverence and awe the supeinatuial
causes of the natural effects which they experience. They
worship, it is true, the vilest and most inanimate substances,
but they firmly confide in the holiness and power of these
symbols, and thus own their connection with what they can
neither see nor perceive.
.
If there is motion in the Universe, there is a God * lhe
* See Dugald Stewart’s Outlines oj Moral Philosophy., and Paleys
Natural Theology.
�A Refutation of Deism.
21
power of beginning motion is no less an attribute of mind than
sensation or thought. Wherever motion exists it is evident
that mind has operated. The phenomena of the Universe
indicate the agency of powers which cannot belong to inert
matter.
Everything which begins to exist must have a cause : every
combination conspiring to an end implies intelligence.
EUSEBES.
Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred.
The matter in controversy is the existence of design in the
Universe, and it is not permitted to assume the contested pre
mises and thence infer the matter in dispute. Insidiously to
employ the words contrivance, design and adaptation before
these circumstances are made apparent in the Universe, thence
justly inferring a contriver, is a popular sophism against which
it behoves us to be watchful.
To assert that motion is an attribute of mind, that matter is
inert, that every combination is the result of intelligence, is
also an assumption of the matter in dispute.
Why do we admit design in any machine of human con
trivance ? Simply because innumerable instances of machines
having been contrived by human art are present to our mind,
because we are acquainted with persons who could construct
such machines; but if, having no previous knowledge of any
artificial contrivance, we had accidentally found a watch upon
the ground, we should have been justified in concluding that
it was a thing of Nature, that it was a combination of matter
with whose cause we were unacquainted, and that any attempt
to account for the origin of its existence would be equally pre
sumptuous and unsatisfactory.
The analogy which you attempt to establish between the
contrivances of human art and the various existences of the
Universe, is inadmissible. We attribute these effects to human
intelligence, because we know beforehand that human intelli
gence is capable of producing them. Take away this know
ledge, and the grounds of our reasoning will be destroyed.
Our entire ignorance, therefore, of the Divine Nature leaves
this analogy defective in its most essential point of comparison.
What consideration remains to be urged in support of the
creation of the Universe by a supreme Being? Its admirable
fitness for the production of certain effects, that wonderful
consent of all its parts, that universal harmony by whose
changeless laws innumerable systems of worlds perform their
stated revolutions, and the blood is driven through the veins
of the minutest animalcule that sports in the corruption of an
insect’s lymph: on this account did the Universe require an
�A Refutation of Deism.
intelligent Creator, because it exists producing invariable
effects, and inasmuch as it is admirably organised for the pro
duction of these effects, so the more did it require a creative
intelligence.
Thus have we arrived at the substance of your assertion,
“ That whatever exists, producing certain effects, stands in
need of a Creator, and the more conspicuous is its fitness for
the production of these effects, the more certain will be our
conclusion that it would not have existed from eternity, but
must have derived its origin from an intelligent Creator.”
In what respect then do these arguments apply to the
Universe, and not apply to God? From the fitness of the
Universe to its end you infer the necessity of an intelligent
Creator. But if the fitness of the Universe to produce certain
effects be thus conspicuous and evident, how much more
exquisite fitness to his end must exist in the Author of this
Universe? If we find great difficulty from its admirable
arrangement in conceiving that the Universe has existed from
all eternity, and to resolve this difficulty suppose a Creator,
how much more clearly must we perceive the necessity of this
very Creator’s creation whose perfections comprehend an
arrangement far more accurate and just.
The belief of an infinity of creative and created Gods, each
more eminently requiring an intelligent author of his being
than the foregoing, is a direct consequence of the premises
which you have stated. The assumption that the Universe is
a design, leads to a conclusion that there are [an] infinity of
creative and created Gods, which is absurd. It is impossible
indeed to prescribe limits to learned error, when philosophy
relinquishes experience and feeling for speculation.
Until it is clearly proved that the Universe was created, we
may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity.
In a case where two pi’opositions are diametrically opposite,
the mind believes that which is less incomprehensible : it is
easier to suppose that the Universe has existed, from all
eternity than to conceive an eternal being capable of creating
it. If the mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an
alleviation to increase the intolerability of the burthen ?
A man knows, not only that he now is, but that there was a
time when he did not exist; consequently there must have
been a cause. But we can only infer from effects causes
exactly adequate to those effects. There certainly is a genera
tive power which is effected by particular instruments; we
cannot prove that it is inherent in these instruments, nor is
the contrary hypothesis capable of demonstration. We admit
that the generative power is incomprehensible, but to suppose
that the same effects are produced by an eternal Omnipotent
�A Refutation of Deism.
23
and Omniscient Being, leaves the cause in the same obscurity,
but renders it more incomprehensible.
We can only infer from effects causes exactly adequate to
those effects. An infinite number of effects demand an infinite
number of causes, nor is the philosopher justified in supposing
a greater connection or unity in the latter than is perceptible in
the former. The same energy cannot be at once the cause of
the serpent and the sheep ; of the blight by which the harvest
is destroyed, and the sunshine by which it is matured; of the
ferocious propensities by which man becomes a vic.tim to him
self, and of the accurate judgment by which his institutions
are improved. The spirit of our accurate and exact philosophy
is outraged by conclusions which contradict each other so
glaringly.
The greatest, equally with the smallest motions of the
Universe, are subjected to the rigid necessity of inevitable
laws. These laws are the unknown causes of the known
effects perceivable in the Universe. Their effects are the
boundaries of our knowledge, their names the expressions of
our ignorance. To suppose some existence beyond or above
them, is to invent a second and superfluous hypothesis to
account for what has already been accounted for by the laws of
motion and the properties of matter. I admit that the nature
of these laws is incomprehensible, but the hypothesis of a
Deity adds a gratuitous difficulty, which so far from alleviating
those which it is adduced to explain, requires new hypotheses
for the elucidation of its own inherent contradictions.
The laws of attraction and repulsion, desire and aversion,
suffice to account for every phenomenon of the moral and
physical world. A precise knowledge of the properties of any
object, is alone requisite to determine its manner of action.
Let the mathematician be acquainted with the weight and
volume of a cannon ball, together with the degree of velocity
and inclination with which it is impelled, and he will accurately
delineate the course it must describe, and determine the force
with which it will strike an object at a given distance. Let
the influencing motive, present to the mind of any person be
given, and the knowledge of his consequent conduct will result.
Let the bulk and velocity of a comet be discovered, and the
astronomer, by the accurate estimation of the equal and
contrary actions of the centripetal and centrifugal forces, will
justly predict the period of its return.
The anomalous motions of the heavenly bodies, their unequal
velocities and frequent aberrations, are corrected by that gra
vitation by which they are caused. The illustrious Laplace
has shown that the approach of the Moon to the Earth, and
the Earth to the Sun, is only a secular equation of a very long
�24
A Refutation of Deism.
period, which has its maximum and minimum. The system of
the Universe then is upheld solely by physical powers. The
necessity of matter is the ruler of the world. It is vain philo
sophy which supposes more causes than are exactly adequate
to explain the phenomena of things. Hypotheses non jingo:
quicquid enim ex phcenomenis non deducitur, hypothesis
vocanda est; et hypotheses vel metaphysicce, vel physicoe, vel
qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicce, in philosophia locum
non habent.
You assert that the construction of the animal machine, the
fitness of certain animals to certain situations, the connection
between the organs of perception and that which is perceived;
the relation between everything which exists, and that which
tends to preserve it in its existence, imply design. It is
manifest that if the eye could not see, nor the stomach digest,
the human frame could not preserve its present mode of exist
ence. It is equally certain, however, that the elements of its
composition, if they did not exist in one form, must exist in
another; and that the combinations which they would form,
must so long as they endured, derive support for their peculiar
mode of being from their fitness to the circumstances of their
situation.
It by no means follows that because a being exists, perform
ing certain functions, he was fitted by another being to the
performance of these functions. So rash a conclusion would
conduct, as I have before shown, to an absurdity; and it
becomes infinitely more unwarrantable from the consideration
that the known laws of matter and motion, suffice to unravel,
even in the present imperfect state of moral and physical
science, the majority of those difficulties which the hypothesis
of a Deity was invented to explain.
Doubtless no disposition of inert matter, or matter deprived
of qualities, could ever have composed an animal, a tree, or
even a stone. But matter deprived of qualities, is an abstrac
tion, concerning which it is impossible to form an idea.
Matter, such as we behold it, is not inert. It is infinitely active
and subtile. Light, electricity and magnetism are fluids not
surpassed by thought itself in tenuity and activity: like
thought they are sometimes the cause and sometimes the effect
of motion; and, distinct as they are from every other class of
substances with which we are acquainted, seem to possess
equal claims with thought to the unmeaning distinction of
immateriality.
The laws of motion and the properties of matter suffice to
account for every phenomenon, or combination of phenomena
exhibited in the Universe. That certain animals exist in
certain climates, results from the consentaneity of their frames
�A Refutation of Deism.
25
to the circumstances of their situation : let these circumstances
be altered, to a sufficient degree, and the elements of their
composition must exist in some new combination no less
resulting than the former from those inevitable laws by which
the Universe is governed.
It is the necessary consequence of the organisation of man,
that his stomach should digest his food: it inevitably results
also from his gluttonous and unnatural appetite for the flesh of
animals that his frame be diseased and his vigor impaired ;
but in neither of these cases is adaptation of means to end to
be perceived. Unnatural diet, and the habits consequent upon
its use are the means, and every complication of frightful
•disease is the end, but to assert that these means were adapted
to this end by the Creator of the world, or that human caprice
can avail to traverse the precautions of Omnipotence, is absurd.
These are the consequences of the properties of organised
matter; and it is a strange perversion of the understanding to
argue that a certain sheep was created to be butchered and
devoured by a certain individual of the human species, when
the conformation of the latter, as is manifest to the most
superficial student of comparative anatomy, classes him with
those animals who feed on fruits and vegetables.
*
The means by which the existence of an animal is sustained,
requires a designer in no greater degree than the existence
itself of the animal. If it exists, there must be means to
support its existence. In a world where omne mutatur nihil
interit, no organised being can exist without a continual separa
tion of that substance which is incessantly exhausted, nor can
this separation take place otherwise than by the invariable
laws which result from the relations of matter. We are in
capacitated only by our ignorance from referring every phe
nomenon, however unusual, minute or complex, to the laws of
motion and the properties of matter; and it is an egregious
offence against the first principles of reason to suppose an
immaterial creator of the world, in quo omnia moventur serf,
sine mutud passione: which is equally a superfluous hypo
thesis in the mechanical philosophy of Newton and a useless
■excrescence on the inductive logic of Bacon.
What then is this harmony, this order which you maintain to
have required for its establishment, what it needs not for its
maintenance, the agency of a supernatural intelligence ? Inas
much as the order visible in the Universe requires one cause,
■so does the disorder whose operation is not less clearly apparent,
* See Cuvier Logons d’Anat.
Bees’ Cyclopedia, art. Man.
Comp. tom. iii., p. 169, 373, 448, 465, 480.
�26
A Refutation of Deism.
demand another. Order and disorder are no more than
modifications of our own perceptions of the relations which
subsist between ourselves and external objects, and if we are
justified in inferring the operation of a benevolent power from
the advantages attendant on the former, the evils of the latter
bear equal testimony to the activity of a malignant principle,,
no less pertinacious in inducing evil out of good, than the
other is unremit ing in procuring good from evil.
If we permit our imagination to traverse the obscure regions
of possibility, we may doubtless imagine, according to the
complexion of our minds, that disorder may have a relative
tendency to unmingled good, or order be relatively replete with
exquisite and subtile evil. To neither of these conclusions,
which are equally presumptuous and unfounded, will it become
the philosopher to assent. Order and disorder are expressionsdenoting our perceptions of what is injurious or beneficial te
ourselves, or to the beings in whose welfare we are compelled
to sympathise by the similarity of their conformation to our
own?
A beautiful antelope panting under the fangs of a tiger, a
defenceless ox, groaning beneath the butcher’s axe, is a spectacle
which instantly awakens compassion in a virtuous and un
vitiated breast. Many there are, however, sufficiently hardened
to the rebukes of justice and the precepts of humanity, as to
regard the deliberate butchery of thousands of their species,
as a theme of exultation and a source of honor, and to consider
any failure in these remorseless enterprises as a defect in the
system of things. The criteria of order and disorder are as
various as those beings from whose opinions and feelings they
result.
Populous cities are destroyed by earthquakes, and desolated
by pestilence. Ambition is everywhere devoting its millions
to incalculable calamity. Superstition, in a thousand shapes,
is employed in brutalising and degrading the human species,
and fitting it to endure without a murmur the oppression of
its innumerable tyrants. All this is abstractedly neither good
nor evil, because good and evil are words employed to designate
that peculiar state of our own perceptions resulting from the
encounter of any object calculated to produce pleasure or pain.
Exclude the idea of relation, and the words good and evil aredeprived of import.
Earthquakes are injurious to the cities which they destroy,,
beneficial to those whose commerce was injured by their pros
perity, and indifferent to others which are too remote to be
affected by their influence. Famine is good to the corn
merchant, evil to the poor, and indifferent to those whose
See Godwin’s Political Justice., vol. i., p. 449.
�A Refutation of Deism.
27
fortunes can at all times command a superfluity. Ambition is
evil to the restless bosom it inhabits, to the innumerable
victims who are dragged by its ruthless thirst for infamy to
expire in every variety of anguish, to the inhabitants of the
country it depopulates, and to the human race whose improve
ment it retards ; it is indifferent with regard to the system of
the Universe, and is good only to the vultures and the jackals
that track the conqueror’s career, and to the worms who feast
in security on the desolation of his progress. It is manifest
that we cannot reason with respect to the universal system
from that which only exists in relation to our own perceptions.
You allege some considerations in favor of a Deity from the
universality of a belief in his existence.
The superstitions of the savage and the religion of civilised
Europe appear to you to conspire to prove a first cause. I
maintain that it is from the evidence of revelation alone that
this belief derives the slightest countenance.
That credulity should be gross in proportion to the ignorance
of the mind which it enslaves, is in strict consistency with the
principles of human nature. The idiot, the child, and the
savage, agree in attributing their own passions and propen
*
sities to the inanimate substances by which they are either
benefited or injured. The former become gods and the latter
demons ; hence prayers and sacrifices, by the means of which
the rude theologian imagines that he may confirm the benevo
lence of the one, or mitigate the malignity of the other.
He has averted the wrath of a powerful enemy by supplications
and submission ; he has secured the assistance of his neighbor
by offerings; he has felt his own anger subside before the
entreaties of a vanquished foe, and has cherished gratitude for
the kindness of another. Therefore does he believe that the
elements will listen to his vows. He is capable of love and
hatred towards his fellow beings, and is variously impelled by
those principles to benefit or injure them. The source of his
error is sufficiently obvious. When the winds, the waves and
the atmosphere, act in such a manner as to thwart or forward
his designs, he attributes to them the same propensities of
whose existence within himself he is conscious when he is
instigated by benefits to kindness, or by injuries to revenge.
The bigot of the woods can form no conception of beings
possessed of properties differing from his own : it requires
indeed, a mind considerably tinctured with science, and
enlarged by cultivation to contemplate itself, not as the centre
and model of the Universe, but as one of the infinitely various
multitude of beings of which it is actually composed.
There is no attribute of Qod which is not either borrowed
* See Southey’s History of Brazil, p. 255.
�28
A Refutation of Deism.
from the passions and powers of the human mind, or which is
not a negation. Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence,
Infinity, Immutability, Incomprehensibility and Immateriality
are all words which designate properties and powers peculiar
to organised beings, with the addition of negations, by which
the idea of limitation is excluded.
*
That the frequency of a belief in God (for it is not universal)
should be any argument in its favor, none to whom the innu
merable mistakes of men are familiar, will assert. It is among
men of genius and science that Atheism alone is found, but
among these alone is cherished an hostility to those errors
with which the illiterate and vulgar are infected.
How small is the proportion of those who really believe in
God, to the thousands who are prevented by their occupations
from ever bestowing a serious thought upon the subject, and
the millions who worship butterflies, bones, feathers, monkeys,
calabashes and serpents. The word God, like other abstrac
tions, signifies the agreement of certain propositions rather
than the presence of any idea. If we found our belief in the
existence of God on the universal consent of mankind, we are
duped by the most palpable of sophisms. The word God
cannot mean at the same time an ape, a snake, a bone, a cala
bash, a Trinity, and a Unity. Nor can that belief be accounted
universal against which men of powerful intellect and spotless
virtue have in every age protested. Non pudet igitur physicum, id est speculatorem venatoremque naturae, ex animis
vonsuetudine imbutis petere testimonium veritatis ?
Hume has shown, to the satisfaction of all philosophers, that
the only idea which we can form of causation is derivable^
from the constant conjunction of objects, and the consequent
inference of one from the other. We denominate that pheno
menon the cause of another which we observe with the fewest
■exceptions to precede its occurrence. Hence it would be
inadmissible to deduce the being of a God from the existence
of the Universe; even if this mode of reasoning did not
conduct to the monstrous conclusion of an infinity of creative
and created Gods, each more eminently requiring a Creator
than its predecessor.
If Power! be an attribute of existing substance, substance
could not have derived its origin from power. One thing
cannot be at the same time the cause and the effect of another.
The word power expresses the capability of anything to be or
act. The human mind never hesitates to annex the idea of
* See Le. System# de la Nature. This book is one of the most eloquent
vindications of Atheism.
[f Printed deniable.']
+ For a very profound disquisition on this subject, see Sir William
Drummond’s Academical Questions, chap, i., p. 1.
�A Refutation of Deism.
29
power to any object of its experience. To deny that power is
the attribute of being is to deny that being can be. If power
be an attribute of substance, the hypothesis of a God is a
superfluous and unwarrantable assumption.
Intelligence is that attribute of the Deity, which you hold to
be most apparent in the Universe. Intelligence is only known
to us as a mode of animal being. We cannot conceive intelli
gence distinct from sensation and perception, which are attri
butes to organised bodies. To assert that God is intelligent, is
to assert that he has ideas ; and Locke has proved that ideas
result from sensation. Sensation can exist only in an organised
body, an organised body is necessarily limited both in extent
and operation. The God of the rational Theosophis is a vast
and wise animal.
You have laid it down as a maxim that the power of begin
ning motion is an attribute of mind as much as thought and
sensation.
Mind cannot create, it can only perceive. Mind is the
recipient of impressions made on the organs of sense, and
without the action of' external objects we should not only be
deprived of all knowledge of the existence of mind, but totally
incapable of the knowledge of anything. It is evident, there
fore, that mind deserves to be considered as the effect rather
than the'cause of motion. The ideas which suggest them
selves too are prompted by the circumstances of our situation,
these are the elements of thought, and from the various com
binations of these our feelings, opinions, and volitions inevit
ably result.
That which is infinite necessarily includes that which is
finite. The distinction therefore between the Universe and
that by which the Universe is upheld, is manifestly erroneous.
To devise the word God, that you may express a certain portion
of the universal system, can answer no good purpose in philo
sophy. In the language of reason, the words God and Universe
are synonymous. Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta sunt,
imo, quia natures potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia,
artem est nos catemus Dei potentiam non intelligere quatenus
causas naturales ignoramus ; adeoque stulte ad eandam Dei
potentiam recurritur, quando rei alicujus, causarn naturalem,
sive est, ipsam Dei potentiam ignoramus .
*
Thus from the principles of that reason to which you so
rashly appealed as the ultimate arbiter of our dispute, have I
shown that the popular arguments in favor of the being of a
God are totally destitute of color. I have shown the absurdity
of attributing intelligence to the cause of those effects which
* Spinoza, Tract. Theologico.-Pol., chap, i., p. 14.
�30
J. Refutation of Deism.
we perceive in the Universe, and the fallacy which lurks in
the argument from design. I have shown that order is no more
than a peculiar manner of contemplating the operation of
necessary agents, that mind is the effect, not the cause of
motion, that power is the attribute, not the'origin of being. I
have proved that we can have no evidence of the existence of
a God from the principles of reason.
You will have observed, from the zeal- with which I have
urged arguments so revolting to my genuine sentiments, and
conducted to a conclusion in direct contradiction to that faith
which every good man must eternally preserve, how little I
am inclined to sympathise with those of my religion who have
pretended to prove the existence of God by the unassisted
light of reason. I confess that the necessity of a revelation
has been compromised by treacherous friends to Christianity,
who have maintained that the sublime mysteries of the being
of a God and the immortality of the soul are discoverable from
other sources than itself.
I have proved that on the principles of that philosophy to
which Epicurus, Lord Bacon, Newton, Locke and Hume were
addicted, the existence of God is a chimera.
The Christian Religion then, alone, affords indisputable
assurance that the world was created by the power and is pre
served by the Providence of an Almighty God, who in justice
has appointed a future life for the punishment .of the vicious
and the remuneration of the virtuous.
Now, 0 Theosophus, I call upon you to decide between
Atheism and Christianity ; to declare whether you wilt pursue
your principles to the destruction of the bonds of civilised
society, or wear the easy yoke of that religion which proclaims
“ peace upon earth, goodwill to all men.”
THEOSOPHUS.
I am not prepared at present, I confess, to reply clearly to your
unexpected arguments. I assure you that no considerations,
however specious, should seduce me to deny the existence of
my Creator.
I am willing to promise that if, after mature deliberation,
the arguments which you have advanced in favor of Atheism
should appear incontrovertible, I will endeavor to adopt so
much of the Christian scheme as is consistent with my persuaion of the goodness, unity and majesty of God.
�LIBERTY and NECESSITY
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And a Biographical Introduction by J. M. WHEELEN.
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�
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A refutation of deism in a dialogue
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Shelley, Percy Bysshe [1792-1822.]
Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
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Deism
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Deism
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
COL. INGERSOLL’S AMERICAN SECULAR LECTURES.
Personal Deism Denied.
BY
COL ROBERT G. INGERSOLL,
MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL OF FREE THOUGHT IN AMERICA.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
Manchester : Abel Heywood & Son, 56 & 58, Oldham Street.
London : Truelove, 256, High Holborn
�COL. INGERSOLL’S LECTURES,
Cheap Edition, One Penny Each.
1.
Mistakes of Moses.
2.
Ghosts.
8.
Hereafter.
4.
Hell.
5.
What must we do to be saved ?
6.
Heretics and Heresies.
The above six, bound in wrapper, price 6d.
7.
Ingersoll’s Reply to Talmage.
8.
Skulls.
9.
Gods : part I.
10.
Gods : part II.
11.
Personal Deism Denied.
12, Intellectual Development.
The above Six, bound in wrapper. 6d., or the twelve price One Shilling.
By post Is. 2d.
BISHOPSGATE INSTITUTE
REFERENCE LIBRARY
No.
1991
Classification ......... ..................
�PERSONAE DEISM DENIED.
HOEVER attacks the prevailing religious opinions of his time
must, in his turn, expeeW) b® attacked. We have not yet out
grown the barbarism that »gument can be answered by
HI
personal abuse. The religious world of to-day has not yet
outgrown the belief that you have to answer every argument
not by showing it is bad, but by showing that the man who makes it is
bad. It makes no difference whether the maker of an arithmetic turned
out to be a rascal or not, we should still have to believe that ten times
ten is a hundred. I expected to be attacked, and I have not been disap
pointed I had always supposed religion taught men to love their
enemies, or, at least, treat their friends decently, but I never knew or a
minister who ever loved me, or who could forgive me. In return, I only
want them to act so that I won’t have to forgive them. I don t pretend
to love my enemies, for I find it hard work to love my friends and if 1
have the same feelings towards my enemies as'towards my friends, I
have no humanity in me. I deny that any man is under obligation to
love his enemies. I believe in returning good for good, and for evil
Confucius’ doctrine, exact justice without any admixture of revenge.
All I ask of the Christian world is simply to tell the truth, but that is a
good deal more than they will ever do. There was a time when false
hood from the pulpit smote like a sword, but now it has become almost
m innocent amusement. Lying is now the last weapon left in the
arsenal of Theology. They say I am in favour of too much liberty, but
I am only in favour of justice, liberty, society. You can t make men
good by slavery ; there is no regeneration in the chain. You can t make
a man honest by tying his hands behind him. Good laws don t make
good people, but good people make good laws. There was no reformation
in force or in fear. You might scare a man so that he would not do _ a
thing but you could not scare him so that he would not want to do it.
All the laws in the world won’t change the disposition of a human being.
It has been charged against me by the Rev. Joseph Cook, that I am in
favour of the dissemination of obscene literature.
When Cook made that statement he wrote across his reputation the
» word liar. When he said that, he knew he lied wilfully and malignantly,
and every man who repeated the slander knew that he lied, and every
religious editor who put it in his paper knew that he lied. With one or
two exceptions I never knew an honest editor of a religious paper ; if
truth was red-hot it would never scorch them. I am simply in favour of
allowing to the Literature of Science the same rights exactly in the
yia.ils of the U. S. as is allowed to the Literature of Superstition. I
despise beyond the power of speech the man who would read or circulate
W
�a book, the tendency of which would be to leave a stain on that fairest
of all flowers, the heart of a girl or boy. The Rev. Joseph Cook is said
to have spent a year in an insane asylum ; that is the way I account for
this lie of his. His friends made two mistakes, they were a little too
slow in putting him in, and a little too fast in letting him out. If any
orthodox clergyman will read to his congregation certain passages in the
Bible that I will select, I will pay him $100 in gold. There wouldn’t be
a lady left in the church, and if a» man stayed, it would be to chastise
the man for insulting the women. I believe in keeping the family pure,
and men who are trying to blacken my reputation are not fit to blacken
my shoes. It is one of my arguments against a personal God that such
men exist, an infinitely wise God would never have produced them.
Nearly everybody is afraid to express his thoughts on thesubject of God.
They imagine there is some kind of being up yonder who would be filled
with wrath at some poor human being who dared to express his best
thoughts. Can you injure this God ? No. Why ? Because he is infinite.
What do you mean by that ? Conditionless. How can you injure a man?
Only by changing his condition. If there is a God who is conditionless,
you can’t possibly change his conditions, because he hasn’t any; there
fore you can’t interfere with him in any way. You can’t commit a
single sin against him ; therefore, you need have no fear. I can say my
say fearlessly, and so can every other man. But all these hundreds of
years the clergy have been telling the people there is such a crime as
blasphemy. There is a personal God up there that made the world.
He made you, and you ought to go down on your knees and thank him.
Thank him for what ? Ought the beggar to thank him, who is starving
in the midst of plenty ? Ought the man who is born under some des
potism and has to toil hard year after year, yet never sees a decent dress
on his wife, nor takes a decent meal ? Ought the woman whose husband
is a drunkard ? Ought the poor invalid who is a slave to some hereditary
disease ? Ought the one who is born deformed ? Ought the millions of
poor slaves to thank God ? Let us be honest! Ought the black man to
thank God for having made the white man mean enough to hate him
because he was black ? Ought the poor widow who lives in misery and
destitution ? Ought the man who is forced to enter the army of a despot
against his will ? If you credit God with every thing that is good, let
us keep a double set of books, so as to keep the accounts straight on the
other side and debit him with everything that is bad.
Suppose we go to some strange island of 100,000 inhabitants, we see
a gentleman there who tells us all about it. Who do you have for your
governor 1 An infinite being. Does he know everything ? Everything.
Can he do just what he wants ? Exactly. After a little while I see
some men dragging a woman along, tearing her child from her, and
the poor woman shrieking in agony. I ask, what are they going to do
with that woman ? They are going to burn her. Does your governor
know of it ? Oh yes, he knew of it the moment they intended to do it.
Could he have stopped it ? Perfectly easy. Is that woman an enemy of
his? Oh no, just the opposite ; she prays and thanks him morn, noon
and night, and she will do it in the midst of the flame and smoke. Are
�5
the men. who are burning her his friends ? No. they are his enemies.
Such is the God that governs this world. Suppose the next man who
tried to commit a murder should drop dead ; suppose the hand of the
next man who raised it to strike his wife a cruel blow should fall
paralyzed at his side ; suppose the next man who tried to commit any
crime should fall to the ground, how many crimes do you think would
be committed when that state of things came round generally ? Not
many. Is it possible any intelligent person really believes there is some
Being who interferes with the affairs of this world ? I read extracts
from two sermons the other day. How I came to do it I don’t know, but
I did it. One was a sermon by the Rev. Mr. Moody on the subject of
prayer, urging upon people to pray that portion of the Lord’s prayer,
“ Thy will be done,” as if it was necessary to coax God to have his own
way. He says in his sermon, there was a poor woman who had an ex
ceedingly sick child ; the doctor told her it couldn’t live. Oh ! said the
mother, I can’t consent that my darling child should die. She prayed to
God such a prayer that it was almost a prayer of rebellion, “I can’t spare
my child, oh, God, spare it to me.” She didn’t want God’s will done, but
her own. God heard her prayer and saved the child, but when it
got well it was an idiot, and the poor woman had to watch over and take
care of that child 15 long years, and the moral of the story is, how much
better it would have been to let God kill that child when he wanted to.
Js there any one here who believes in such a God as that ? Yet this
doctrine is preached from almost every pulpit in the world. I read in
another paper a sermon by the Rev. De Witt Talmage about Dreams,
that God still appears to men in dreams. Just think of it! An infinite
being catching some poor fellow asleep and going at him.
According to this story there was a poor old woman that had the
rheumatism, and another woman nearly as poor that hadn’t got rheu
matism, and the woman without rheumatism used to wait on the other
and take care of her. All at once the one without the rheumatism died.
Then the other old lady said, where am I going to get anything to eat ?
That night God left his throne, after having given directions about
winding up the sun and the moon, and came to this old woman in a
dream. He took her out of her house and carried her to where there was
a large mountain of bread on the right hand and a large mountain of
butter on the left hand. When I read that I said to myself, what a good
place to start a political party. God said to the poor woman—all these
provisions belong to your father ; do you think he will allow one of his
children to starve ? And the reverend gentleman says that the next day
.a man was in some mysterious way moved to go to the old lady, and,
seeing her destitution, he took pity on her and took care of her till she
•died. Is it possible there is a being who interferes with the affairs of
this world, and interfered to feed that poor woman ! Then why don’t he
feed hundreds and thousands of others ? Why show her mountains of
bread and butter, and allow millions to die of famine in other parts of
the world ? Look at that terrible famine in China, which might have
been prevented by a slight change in the wind. If God had changed the
wind that would have changed the direction of the clouds, and they
�6
would have gone over all that parched-up district and emptied themselves
upon it, and there would have been plenty. But God didn’t change the
wind, and the clouds emptied into the sea. What would you think of a
gardener who had an immense barrel of water in his garden, and when
the ground got parched and the flowers and fruit were all dying from
drought, took a pail of water from the barrel, carried it round the garden
and emptied it into the barrel again. That is what God did to China
when he allowed the clouds to empty themselves into the sea. Has God
ever interfered in the affairs of this world ? This is an all-important
question, for upon it depends the question whether we have any human
right at all. If there is an infinite being who does everything to suit
himself, we have no rights and can’t have any. Let him go on and do
what he likes, we needn’t trouble ourselves any more because we can't
alter his plans.
No one ever interfered to prevent slavery in any country—at anytime
or in any place. No one ever interfered to prevent any other form of
human oppression or wrong. Hence you can’t start a religion without a
miracle. You must show that the facts of nature have been changed.
Hence they have always proved that point, that there is a God who inter
feres with the affairs of this world. But admit that he is infinite and it
matters not whether you pray to him or not. It makes no difference
what you do. It is like trying to lift yourself by the straps of your boots ;
it is no good but you get good exercise from it. So it is with prayer.
Let us go back to the time when society was first formed, a long time
ago. Blackstone and Locke have always taken the ground that society
was first formed by contract. I don’t believe it. They write as though
they supposed the trees formed groves by contract ; that animals formed
themselves in flocks and herds by agreement. How did men originally
come to act together ? By contract ? No. By necessity ? Yes. V/hep
men first formed themselves into society, they were not equal to the
beasts. The latter were superior, and that is the reason why men at
first worshipped beasts. No man ever worshipped anything that he
didn’t believe his superior. Let us get to the foundation of this idea of
worship. When man first looked upon the lion he saw an animal that
had greater strength than he. When he saw the serpent climb without
hands, run without feet, and live apparently without food, it struck him
with awe ; when he saw the powerful eagle flying against the storms and
gazing at the blazing sun, he saw something that was superior to him.
He didn’t know how they got their living. He was filled with wonder
and admiration, and the result was that he began to worship beasts, and
made gods out of lions, snakes, and eagles. The story of the serpent in
the garden of Eden and of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, are but
reminiscences of an old serpent worship. Almost all kinds of animals
were deified. The old Jews themselves, including Moses, worshipped
Jehovah in the form of a bull. That accounts for the “horns on the
altar.” They not only worshipped that God but many others. Even in
the time of Solomon and Jeraboam there were thirty temples in which
other gods were worshipped besides Jehovah, After men found out
that one animal by itself was not their superior they began to make gods
�7
composed of several animals. They took the lion for strength, the eagle
for swiftness, and the serpent for cunning, or long life, making together
an animal that could not be killed. Take the Mexican Indians. What
is their name for God ? Stone spirit. One who wore an armour of stone.
Where did they get that idea from ? The armadillo that could not be
pierced with their arrows ; something they could not kill. I want to
convince you all, as we go along, that we manufacture these gods our
selves, and everyone of them is a poor job. After men got through
worshipping beasts, simple and compound, they began worshipping man,
the beastial qualities in man as well as the good ones. The gods were
first beasts, then men. Right here let me tell you that there is not a
person in this house who can think of God except in the form of man.
Why ? Because that is the highest intellectual form you are acquainted
with. You can’t think of God on four legs or as a woman. Why ? Be
cause man made all religions. We haven’t yet become civilized enough
to worship a principle.
If we worshipped God as a woman I should be more apt to join some
church myself. Now having traced the origin of God, the next question
is—does God interfere in the affairs of this world, for upon this depends
the great question of human rights. The savage has always believed it.
When his poor hut was blown down he thought God was mad with him
Or with one of his neighbours. Just think of the infinite maker of every
world getting mad at the poor savage and pulling up his house. I _ tell
you this world has been mightily abused, and it almost makes one die of
pity to read its religious history. The priest said—You will have to em
ploy me. I have influence. I am a lobbyist in the legislature of heaven.
The priest said to the poor fellow—Divide with me. That was the com
mencement of slavery. The next point was to teach that God would
hold a whole community responsible for what one man did There could
not be a meaner principle. They then taught that this God wanted to
be worshipped, and a fine temple must be built to worship him in ; that
an infinite Being likes to see men go down on their knees and thank him.
How gratifying would it be to us to have the millions of little animalculas everywhere around us go down on their knees to us ! Since God
demanded worship, there must be some order to it, and certain gentle
men knew just what this being wanted, and just the kind of ceremony
that would suit him. Hence the church, and all these religious
mummeries. All at once some terrible calamity would befall that
Community. Then what 1 Somebody has insulted God : has not brought
his sacrifice, has not killed his sheep. Let us hunt him up and kill him
and then our God will be appeased. They went so far as to say without
the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins ; and they would
sacrifice to God the one they loved best. Think of that man in Pocasset,
Mass., who read the old and new testament so carefully and believingly
that he killed his own child as a sacrifice. And no wonder either, if he
believed those books. God told Abraham to take his son Isaac and kill him;
Abraham started off to do the inhuman Work and was just going to kill his
gon when God fortunately stopped him in the nick of time. Jephtha made a
bargain with God that if God would let him whip his enemies, he would
�8
sacrifice the first thing that greeted him on his return. The prayer was
granted and as he neared his home, a company of girls met him, and at their
head was his own daughter. He sacrificed her. That man in Mass., hav
ing read these beautiful stories-—infamous lies I call them■—made. up
his mind God wanted him to sacrifice one of his children. If God told
me to sacrifice one of my children to him, I wouldn’t do it though I
knew it was God who demanded it. I would say to Him, dash me to the
lowest depths of hell, and I will go there rather than have the blood of
my darling on my hands. This man only followed the example of
God himself who sacrificed his own Son. I say there never was, and
never will be a God who demands a sacrifice. Could it make any in-,
finite Being any better to g’ive up to him that which you love most. It
is simply insanity. The next step taken by the priest was to teach not
only that all religion came from God, but all political power came from
God also—that God had made priests to tell people what to believe, and
kings to tell them what to do. Only a little time back we found kings
claiming that they reigned by divine right. The Bible says, “ Be subject
to the powers that be, because they are ordained of God.’- I deny it.
If that doctrine had been carried out, there never would have been any
revolution in the world from that day to this. All political power com es
from God, said the priest, consequently if a man said a word against the
king, or one of his nobles, he was a traitor to the Divine Being. The
altar and throne fitted each other like the upper and lower jaw of a
hyena, and crushed liberty under foot. Just so long as men believed
political power came from God, they were cringing slaves, and the men
who taught such a doctrine were themselves hypocrites and tryants.
After a while people began to think that after all, political power
didn’t always come from God. The kings, however, kept on taking a
little more and a little more, and the people grew more and more
wretched and downtrodden, till finally they said, Power does not come
from God, and in 1776 our fathers retired God from politics altogether.
They said power comes only from the consent of the governed, and not
from God. The true source of power is the will of the people. We are
not going above the clouds to look for authority. Did our fathers under
stand religious liberty ? Only two or three of them. How then did
they come to leave God out of the Constitution 1 The colonies were not
in favour of religious liberty; the pilgrim fathers were not. They left
England for conscience sake ; they wanted the right to worship God as
they thought best, and went over to Holland. There they had to
worship God according to their conscience, but other people also had
the right to worship in a different way and to preach different doctrines,
so the pilgrims came over here. They left England to escape persecu
tion, and left Holland to get away from religious liberty. When they
got over they were ready to kill all those who differed from them.
How then did they come to frame a Constitution without God ? Be
cause no three States had the same religion, and they could not agree
upon which religion should be the bride of the State, which church
should be married to the Constitution, so each church, rather than see
some other church the bride of the State, was willing to see the State a
�9
■bachelor, and God was left out in the cold. It was all owing to the
meanness and jealousy of these churches, that we have got a Constitu
tion with no superstition in it There are some lunatics even now-adays who want to put God in the Constitution. I am opposed to it. If
you get one infinite Being in, there will be no room for other folks, and I
don’t think God himself would feel much complimented by being put
there. These men had no idea of human rights, for they believed that
God would hold a community responsbile for the deeds of some indi
vidual. When the train of cars went down recently in Scotland the
pulpit resounded with talk about Divine Judgments for violating the
Sabbath. One of the passengers was a sailor coming home to see his
widow mother, to take care of her in her declining years. Just think of
God killing that man for crossing that bridge on a Sunday. Imagine
some rosy-cheeked little boy in a boat on Sunday fishing. At the end of
their lines are fastened pin hooks, and an Infinite Being descends and
keels over their boats because it is Sunday.
Our fathers had no idea of religious liberty in their time, and their
descendants to-day have not. In many States a man cannot testify in
a court of justice because he doesn’t believe in their God. If my wife
and child were killed before my eyes and I took their corpses into court
I would not be permitted to say who did it. This is not only depriving
me of testimony, but it deprives the State of testimony. I can’t believe
in a personal God in any land where there is injustice; where innocence
is not safe, where honest men toil and rogues ride in carriages, where
hypocrisy is crowned and sincerity degraded. I can’t conceive of this
world being governed by an infinite being. If any good is to be done,
man has got to do it. We must depend on ourselves. We must not con
sider the lilies of the field—we must sow the field and reap and harvest
the crops ourselves.
I want to show you the extent to which the church has gone. Reli
gion has never relied upon argument. Protestantism never gained
an inch of soil except at the mouth of the cannon or the point of the
sword; the smallest island in the seas has never been taken by Catholic
or Protestant except at the point of the bayonet. Religion of love has
always been shot into nations. Who are the most warlike nations in
the world to-day ? Christian nations. Who invent the best guns and
greatest cannon for killing human beings ? Christian nations. Does
any one of you wish to become a millionaire and famous for the rest of
his fife ? Then invent a cannon that will blow more Christian brains
into froth than the best cannon will, and your fortune is made, and your
name will become famous. In the last eight years the national debts of
Christendom have increased over §6,000,000,000. What Catholic nation
is the most orthodox to-day ? Spain. And is there any meaner nation ?
What next ? Portugal. What next ? Italy, the land covered with
brigands, every one of whom carries an image of the Virgin Mary or
some favourite saint, and who crosses himself with holy water in the
cathedral before he starts on his brigand work. What next ? Ireland,
poor Ireland, crushed beneath the heels of oppression for hundreds of
years. Why ? Simply because her oppressor was of a different religion.
�10
It is religion which, has reduced Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand-organ,,
and Ireland to exile. What is the most orthodox Protestant nation to
day? Scotland; and in 1877 there were 12,000 women arrested in
Glasgow for drunkenness. What nation is the most infidel to-day ?
France. Which is the most prosperous country in Europe to-day?
France.
Go with me to Siberia. Who are these poor creatures drawing
waggons on their hands and knees. Girls of sixteen, seventeen and
eighteen or twenty ! what are they there for 1 For having said a word
in favour of human liberty. That is all. Do you blame the lovers or
parents of these girls if they endeavoured to send a bullet to the heart
of the Czar who allows such brutality ? In such a case my sympathies
are closed around the point of the dagger. I have said that in many of
our States an infidel is not allowed to testify in a court of justice. Let
me prove it. [The lecturer here read extracts from the laws or con
stitutions of the various States in support of his assertion. J In alluding
to the judgment day, he said: Won’t the orthodox be happy on that
day ? I want to show you a little picture I got from the old church
where Shakspeare was buried, giving a description of the judgment
day. About fifty fellows are coming out of their graves, and little devils
grabbing them by their heels. There was a great cauldron with about
twenty fellows in it, and devils pouring boiling pitch into it; five or
six more were hung upon hooks by their tongues. Right in the other
corner were some saints, and I never saw such a self-satisfied grin on
any person’s face in my life. They seemed to say to the sinner, “ How
now, Mr. Smartie, what did I' tell you 1 ” I believe there are lots of
clergymen in the United States willing to die to see me in hell. I once
read a little poem, translated from the Persian, of a good man who
worked for seven long years in acts of charity" and then mounted the
steps of heaven and knocked at the gate. Who is there ? cried a voice.
Thy slave, O God ! No answer. Again he toiled seven long years, in
acts of charity and piety, and again ascended to the gate and knocked.
Who is there 1 Thy servant, O God. No answer. Again he went back
and toiled seven more years, and then mounted to the gates of heaven
and knocked. Who is there 1 Thyself, O God 1 The gate opened and he
entered heaven. The next great thing for us to do is to get God out of
religion. Just so long as God is in religion there will be popes, car
dinals, priests, clergy, cathedrals, and churches, and all these religious
creeds coming down from high for men to swallow. There will be no
religious liberty until man himself is the source of religion, and hu
manity takes the place of superstition. I want to take a “ d ” from
the name of the devil, so as to make it evil, and I want to stick an “ o ”
into the word God, so that it will be the supreme good that men will
worship in the future. When we do that, there will be perfect religious
liberty, and not till then. Hell is rapidly cooling off, and a man will
have to take his overcoat with him. The liberty of man is asserting
itself, and will eventually become the religion of the world.
�RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE.
Lecture by Col, R. G. INGERSOLL, at Pittsburgh Opera House,
October 4th, 1879.
THE SABBATH—PREACHERS.
“Tr-'rOW anybody ever came to the conclusion that there was any
LI God who demanded that you should feel sorrowful and miser'
gTf j able and bleak one-seventh of the . time is beyond my
r(rl comprehension. Neither can I conceive how they can say
one-seventh of the time is holy. That day is the
most sacred day on which the most good has been done for mankind.
Now, there was a time among the Jews, when if a man violated
the Sabbath, they would kill him. They said, God told them to
do it. I think they were mistaken. If not, if any God did tell them to
kill him, then I think he was mistaken. I hope the time will come
when every man can spend the Sabbath just as he pleases, provided he
does not interfere with the happiness of others. I would fight just as
earnestly that the Christian may go to church as that the infidel
may have the right to spend his Sabbath as he wishes. Are the people
who go to church the only good people ? Are there not a good many
bad people who go to church ? Not a bank in Pittsburgh will lend a
dollar to the man who belongs to the church, without security,
quicker than to the man who don’t go to church. Now, I believe
that all laws upon the statute-book should .be enforced. I do not
blame anybody in this town. I am perfectly willing that every preacher
in this town should preach. They are employed to preach,, and to
preach a certain doctrine, and if they don’t preach that doctrine they
will be turned out. I have no objection to that. But I want the
same privilege to express my views, and what is the. difference,
whether the man pays the day he goes in, or pays for it the week
before by subscription ?
What would the church people think if the theatrical people should
attempt to suppress the churches ? What harm would it do to have an
�12
opera here to-night? It would elevate us tnore than to hear ten
thousand sermons on the world that never dies. There is more
practical wisdom in one of the plays of Shakespeare than in all
the sacred books ever written. What wrong would there be to see one
of those grand plays on Sunday ? There was a time when the church
Wmld
all°W you to cook on SundaY You had to eat your victuals
WaS a ^me they thought the more miserable you feel the
better God feels. There are sixty odd thousand preachers in the United
States. Some people regard them as a necessary evil; some as an un
necessary evil. There are sixty odd thousand churches in the United
States ; and it does seem to me that with all the wealth on their
side; with Providence on their side ; with all these advantages they
ought to let us at least have a right to speak our thoughts.
RIGHT AND WRONG.
Col. Ingersoll next entered into his argument on the origin of
religion, referring to the first impressions of the savage. Havingenunciated these views.
c
“ The history of the world shows me that the right has not always
prevailed. . When you see innocent men chained to the stake and the
flames licking their flesh, it is natural to ask, why does God permit this ?
If you see a man in prison with the chains eating into his flesh simply
for loving God, you’ve got to ask why does not a just God interfere?
You’ve got to meet this; it won’t do to say that it will all come out for
the best. That may do very well for God, but it’s awful hard on the
man. Where was the God that permitted slavery for two hundred
years in these United States?
The history of the world shows
that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was
done, man did it.
“But there was a time when there was a'drought, and this tribe of
savages with their false notions of religion, said somebody has been
wicked.
Somebody has been lecturing on Sunday.
Then the
tribe hunted out the wicked man.
They said you’ve got to stop.
We cannot allow you to continue your wickedness, which brings
punishment upon the whole of us. What is the reason they allow me
■to speak to-night ? Because the Christians are not as firm in their
belief now as they were a thousand years ago. The luke-warmness and
hypocricy of Christians now permit me to speak to-night. If they felt
■as they did a thousand years ago, they would kill me. So religious
persecution was born of the instinct of self-defence.
DUTY TO GOD—DUTY TO MAN.
Is there any duty we owe to God ? Can we help him ? Can we add
to his glory and happiness ? They tell me this God is infinitely wise—I
cannot add to his wisdom; infinitely happy—I cannot add to his
�13
happiness. What can I do ? May be he wants me to make prayers
that won’t be answered. I cannot see any relation that can exist
between the finite and the infinite. I acknowledge that I am under
obligations'to my fellow-man. We owe duties to our fellow-man. And
what ? Simply to make them happy.
The only good is happiness; and the only evil is. misery, or
unhappiness. Only those things are right that tend to increase the
happiness of man ; only those things are wrong which tend to increase
the misery of man. That is the basis of right and wrong. There
never would have been the idea of wrong’ except that man can inflict
suffering upon others. Utility, then, is the basis of the idea of right
and wrong.
The church tells us that this world is a school to prepare us for
another, that it is a place to build up character. Well, if that is the
only way character can be developed it is bad for children who die
before they get any character. What would you think of a school
master who would kill half his pupils the first day ?
THE BIBLE.
Now, I read the Bible, and I find that God so loved this world
that he made up His mind to damn the most of us.
I have
read this book, and what shall I say of it ? I believe it is generally
better to be honest. Now, I don’t believe the Bible. Had I not better
say so ? They say that if you do, you will regret it, when you come to die.
If that be true, I know a great many religious people who will have no
cause to regret it—they don’t tell their honest convictions about the
Bible. There are two great arguments of the church—the great man
argument and the death-bed. They say the religion of your fathers is good
enough. Why should a father object to your inventing a better plough
than he had ? They say to me, do you know more than all theologians
dead ? Being a perfectly modest man, I say I think I do. Now we have
come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think. Would
God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly. Would he give me
brains and make it a crime to think ? Any God that would damn one
of his children for the expression of his honest thought, wouldn’t make
a decent thief. When I read a book and don’t believe it, I ought to say
so. I will do so and take the consequence like a man.
THE CONSTITUTION.
Col. Ingersoll next gave his views of the Puritans, declared that
they left Holland to escape persecution, and came here to persecute
others. He referred to the persecutions heaped upon those of other
religious belief by the Puritans, paid the Catholics the compliment to
say that Maryland, which they ruled, was the first colony to enact a law
tolerating religious views not held by themselves, and went on to
explain that God was never mentioned in the Constitution of the
�14
United States because each colony had a different religious belief, and
each sect preferred to have God not mentioned at all than to having
another religious belief than their own recognised. “ In 1776,” said the
speaker, “our forefathers retired God from politics. They said all
power comes from the people. They kept God out of the constitution,
and allowed each State to settle the question for itself.”
The present laws of different States were next reviewed, so far as
they relate to the prevention of infidels giving testimony and to religious
intolerance in any way, and these features were all branded and
discussed as a gigantic evil.
The lecture was attentively listened to by the immense audience
from beginning to the end, and the speaker’s most blasphemous flights
were the most loudly applauded.
�E. C. INGERSOLL’S FUNERAL.
A very affecting scene was -witnessed at the funeral of Ebon C.
Ingersoll in Washington, June 2, 1879.
His brother Robert had
prepared an address to be read on the occasion, but when the large
company of friends had gathered, and the time came, the feelings of the
man overcame him. He began to read his eloquent characterization of
the dead man, but his eyes at once filled with tears. He tried ro hide
them behind his eye-glasses, but he could not do it. and finally he bowed
his head upon the man’s coffin in uncontrollable grief. It was only after
some delay, and the greatest of self-mastery, that Robert was able to
finish reading his address, which was as follows :
COL. R. G. INGERSOLL’S FUNERAL ORATION.
My Friends : I am going to do that which the dead often promised
he would do for me. The loved and loving brother, husband, father,
friend, died where manhood’s morning almost touches noon, and while
the shadows still were falling toward the west. He had not passed on
life’s highway the stone that marks the highest point, but being weary
for the moment he laid down by the wayside, and, using a burden for a
pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still.
While yet in love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to
silence and pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the
happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing
every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the
billows roar, a sunken ship.
For whether in mid-sea or among the
breakers of a farther shore, a wreck must mark at last the end of each
and all. And every life, no matter if its very hour is rich with love,
and every moment jewelled with a joy, will at its close become a
tragedy, as sad, and deep and dark as can be woven of the ward and woof
of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of
life was oak and rock, but in the sunshine he was love and flower. He
was the friend of all heroic souls that climbed the heights and left all
superstitions here below, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning
of a.grander day. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form and
music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, and with a willing
hand gave alms ; with loyal heart and with the purest hand he faithfully
discharged all public trusts. He was a worshipper of liberty and a friend
�16
of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote the words ;
“For justice all place a temple and all season summer.” He believed
that happiness was the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only
worshipper, humanity the only religion and love the priest. He added
to the sum of human joy, and everyone for whom he did some loving
service to bring a blossom to his grave he would sleep to-niglt beneath
a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and
barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the
heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of a wailing
cry. From . the voiceless lips of the un-replying dead there comes no
word ; but in night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear
the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here when dying, mistaking
the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his
latest breath, “I am better now.” Let us believe, in spite of doubts
and dogmas and tears and fears that these dear words are true of all the
countless dead. And now, to you who have been chosen from among
the many men he loved to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his
sacred trust. Speech cannot contain our love. There was—there is—no
gentler, stronger, manlier man.
Abel Heywood & Son, Printers, Oldham Street, Manchester,
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Personal deism denied
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Manchester; London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Series title: Col. Ingersoll's American secular lectures
Series number: No. 11
Notes: Stamp inside front cover: Bishopsgate Institute Reference Library, 21 Nov. 1991. No. 58a in Stein checklist. List of Ingersoll's lectures inside front cover. Contents: Personal Deism Denied -- Religious Intolerance (lecture by Col. R.G. Ingersoll at Pittsburgh Opera House, October 4th, 1879 -- E.C. Ingersoll's Funeral. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Abel Heywood & Son; Truelove
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[188?]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N385
Subject
The topic of the resource
Deism
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Personal deism denied), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Deism
NSS
Religious Tolerance