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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY /
WHY AM I
AN AGNOSTIC?
PRICE TWOPENCE.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
2 Newcastle-street, Farringdon-street, E.C.
1902.
�WORKS BY
The Late R. G. INGERSOLL
The House of Death.
Funeral Orations and
Addresses, is.
Mistakes of Moses, is.
Cloth, 2s. 6d.
The Devil. 6d.
Superstition. 6d.
Shakespeare. 6d.
The Gods. 6d.
The Holy Bible. 6d.
Reply
to
Gladstone.
With an Introduction by
G. W. Foote. 4d.
Rome or Reason ?
A
Reply to Cardinal Man
ning. 4d.
Crimes against Criminals
3dOration on Walt Whit
man.
3d.
Oration on Voltaire. 3d.
Abraham Lincoln. 3d.
Paine the Pioneer. 2d.
Humanity’s
Debt
to
Thomas Paine. 2d.
Ernest Renan and Jesus
Christ. 2d.
Three Philanthropists.
2d.
Love the Redeemer. 2d.
The Ghosts. 3d.
What Must I do to be
Saved ? 2d.
What is Religion ? 2d.
Is Suicide a Sin ? 2d.
Last Words on Suicide.
2d.
God and the State. 2d.
Faith and Fact.
Reply
to Dr. Field. 2d.
God and Man.
Second
reply to Dr. Field. 2d.
The Dying Creed. 2d.
The Limits of Tolera
tion.
A
Discussion
with the Hon. F. D.
Coudert and Gov. S. L.
Woodford. 2d.
Household of Faith. 2d.
Art and Morality. 2d.
Do I Blaspheme ? 2d.
Social Salvation. 2d.
Marriage and Divorce.
2d.
Skulls. 2d.
The Great Mistake, id.
Live Topics, id.
Myth and Miracle, id.
Real Blasphemy, id.
Why am I an Agnostic ? 2d.
Christ and
Miracles.
id.
Creeds and Spirituality.
id.
The Christian Religion.
3d-
Orders to the amount of 5s. and ibpwards sent post free.
London:
THE FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING Co., Ltd.,
2 Newcastle Street, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ?
------- ♦-------
The same rules or laws of probability must govern in
religious questions as in others. There is no subject—
and can be none—concerning which any human being is
under any obligation to believe without evidence. Neither
is there any intelligent being who can, by any possibility,
be flattered by the exercise of ignorant credulity. The
man who, without prejudice, reads and understands the
Old and Old Testaments will cease to be an orthodox
Christian. The intelligent man who investigates the
religion of any country without fear and without pre
judice will not and cannot be a believer.
Most people, after arriving at the conclusion that
Jehovah is not God, that the Bible is not an inspired
book, and that the Christian religion, like other religions,
is the creation of man, usually say : “ There must be a
Supreme Being, but Jehovah is not his name, and the
Bible is not his word. There must be somewhere an
over-ruling Providence or Power.”
This position is just as untenable as the other. He
who cannot harmonise the cruelties of the Bible with the
goodness of Jehovah, cannot harmonise the cruelties of
Nature with the goodness and wisdom of a supposed
Deity. He will find it impossible to account for pesti
lence and famine, for earthquake and storm, for slavery,
for the triumph of the strong over the weak, for the
countess victories of injustice. He will find it impos
sible to account for martyrs—for the burning of the good,
the noble, the loving, by the ignorant, the malicious, and
the infamous.
How can the Deist satisfactorily account for the
sufferings of women and children ? In what way will
�4
he justify religious persecution—the flame and sword of
religious hatred ? Why did his God sit idly on his
throne and allow his enemies to wet their swords in the
blood of his friends ?
Why did he not answer the
prayers of the imprisoned, of the helpless ? And when
he heard the lash upon the naked back of the slave, why
did he not also hear the prayer of the slave ? And when
children were sold from the breasts of mothers, why was
he deaf to the mother’s cry ?
It seems to me that the man who knows the limita
tions of the mind, who gives the proper value to human
testimony, is necessarily an Agnostic. He gives up the
hope of ascertaining first or final causes, of comprehend
ing the supernatural, or of conceiving of an infinite
personality. From out the words Creator, Preserver,
and Providence, all meaning falls.
The mind of man pursues the path of least resistance,
and the conclusions arrived at by the individual depend
upon the nature and structure of his mind, on his experi
ence, on hereditary drifts and tendencies, and on the
countless things that constitute the difference in minds.
One man, finding himself in the midst of mysterious phe
nomena, comes to the conclusion that all is the result of
design; that back of all things is an infinite personality
—that is to say, an infinite man ; and he accounts for all
that is by simply saying that the universe was created
and set in motion by this infinite personality, and that it
is miraculously and supernaturally governed and pre
served. This man sees with perfect clearness that matter
could not create itself, and therefore he imagines a creator
of matter. He is perfectly satisfied that there is design
in the world, and that, consequently, there must have
been a designer. It does not occur to him that it is
necessary to account for the existence of an infinite
personality. He is perfectly certain that there can be
no design without a designer, and he is equally certain
that there can be a designer who was not designed.
The absurdity becomes so great that it takes the place
of a demonstration. He takes it for granted that matter
was created, and that its creator was not. He assumes
�5
that a creator existed from eternity, without cause, and
created what is called “matter” out of nothing; or,
whereas there was nothing, this creator made the some
thing that we call substance.
Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of an
infinite personality ? Can it imagine a beginning-less
being, infinitely powerful and intelligent ? If such a
being existed, then there must have been an eternity
during which nothing did exist except this being;
because, if the universe was created, there must have
been a time when it was not, and back of that there
must have been an eternity during which nothing but
an infinite personality existed. Is it possible to imagine
an infinite intelligence dwelling for an eternity in infinite
nothing ? How could such a being be intelligent ?
What was there to be intelligent about ? There was
but one thing to know—namely, that there was nothing
except this being ? How could such a being be
powerful ? There was nothing to exercise force upon.
There was nothing in the universe to suggest an idea.
Relations could not exist—except the relation between
infinite intelligence and infinite nothing.
The next great difficulty is the act of creation. My
mind is so that I cannot conceive of something being
created out of nothing. Neither can I conceive of any
thing being created without a cause. Let me go one
Stop further. It is just as difficult to imagine something
being created with, as without, a cause. To postulate a
cause does not in the least lessen the difficulty. In spite
of all, this lever remains without a fulcrum. We cannot
conceive of the destruction of substance. The stone can
be crushed to powder, and the powder can be ground to
such a fineness that the atoms can only be distinguished
by the most powerful microscope, and we can then
imagine these atoms being divided and subdivided again
and again ; but it is impossible for us to conceive of the
annihilation of the least possible imaginable fragment of
the least atom of which we can think. Consequently,
the mind can imagine neither creation nor destruc
tion. From this point it is very easy to reach the
�6
generalisation that the indestructible could not have
been created.
These questions, however, will be answered 'by each
individual according to the structure of his mind, accord
ing to his experience, according to his habits of thought,
and according to his intelligence or his ignorance, his
prejudice or his genius.
Probably a very large majority of mankind believe in
the existence of supernatural beings, and a majority of
what are known as civilised nations, in an infinite per
sonality. In the realm of thought majorities do not
determine.
Each brain is a kingdom, each mind is a
sovereign.
The universality of a belief does not even tend to
prove its truth. A large majority of mankind have
believed in what is known as God, and an equally large
majority have as implicitly believed in what is known
as the Devil. These beings have been inferred from
phenomena. They were produced for the most part by
ignorance, by fear and by selfishness. Man in all ages
has endeavored to account for the mysteries of life and
death, of substance, of force, for the ebb and flow of
things, for earth and star. The savage, dwelling in his
cave, subsisting on roots and reptiles, or on beasts that
could be slain with club and stone, surrounded by count
less objects of terror, standing by rivers, so far as he
knew, without source or end, by seas with but one shore,
the prey of beasts mightier than himself, of diseases
strange and fierce, trembling at the voice of thunder,
blinded by the lightning, feeling the earth shake beneath
him, seeing the sky lurid with thev olcano’s glare—fell
prostrate and begged for the protection of the Unknown.
In the long night of savagery, in the midst of pesti
lence and famine, through the long and dreary winters,
crouched in dens of darkness, the seeds of superstition
were sown in the brain of man. The savage believed,
and thoroughly believed, that everything happened in
reference to him ; that he by his actions could excite the
anger, or by his worship placate the wrath, of the
Unseen. He resorted to flattery and prayer. To the
�7
best of his ability, he put in stone, or rudely carved in
wood, his idea of this God. For this idol he built a hut,
a hovel, and at last a cathedral. Before these images
he bowed, and at these shrines, whereon he lavished his
wealth, he sought protection for himself and for the ones
he loved. The few took advantage of the ignorant many.
They pretended to have received messages from the
Unknown. They stood between the helpless multitude
ajnd the gods. They were the carriers of flags of truce.
At the court of heaven they presented the cause of man,
and upon the labor of the deceived they lived.
The Christian of to-day wonders at the savage who
bowed before his idol; and yet it must be confessed that
the god of stone answered prayer and protected his
worshippers precisely as the Christian’s God answers
prayer and protects his worshippers to-day.
My mind is so that it is forced to the conclusion that
substance is eternal; that the universe was without
beginning and will be without end ; that it is the one
eternal existence; that relations are transient and
evanescent; that organisms are produced and vanish;
that forms change—but that the substance of things is
from eternity to eternity. It may be that planets are
born and die, that constellations will fade from the
infinite spaces, that countless suns will be quenched—
but the substance will remain.
The questions of origin and destiny seem to be beyond
the powers of the human mind.
Heredity is on the side of superstition.
All our
ignorance pleads for the old. In most men there is
a feeling that their ancestors were exceedingly good and
brave and wise, and that in all things pertaining to
religion their conclusions should be followed. They
believe that their fathers and mothers were of the best,
and that that which satisfied them should satisfy their
children. With a feeling of reverence they say that
the religion of their mother is good enough and
pure enough and reasonable enough for them.
In
this way the love of parents and the reverence
for ancestors have unconsciously bribed the reason
�8
and put out, or rendered exceedingly dim, the eyes of
the mind.
There is a kind of longing in the heart of the old to
live and die where their parents lived and died—a ten
dency to go back to the homes of their youth. Around
the old oak of manhood grow and cling these vines.
Yet it will hardly do to say that the religion of my
mother is good enough for me, any more than to say the
geology, or the astronomy, or the philosophy of my
mother is good enough for me. Every human being is
entitled to the best he can obtain ; and if there has been
the slightest improvement on the religion of the mother,
the son is entitled to that improvement, and he should
not deprive himself of that advantage by the mistaken
idea that he owes it to his mother to perpetuate, in a
reverential way, her ignorant mistakes.
If we are to follow the religion of our fathers and
mothers, our fathers and mothers should have followed
the religion of theirs. Had this been done, there could
have been no improvement in the world of thought.
The first religion would have been the last, and the
child would have died as ignorant as the mother.
Progress would have been impossible, and on the graves
of ancestors would have been sacrificed the intelligence
of mankind.
We know, too, that there has been the religion of the
tribe, of the community, and of the nation, and that
there has been a feeling that it was the duty of every
member of the tribe or community, and of every citizen
of the nation, to insist upon it that the religion of that
tribe, of that community, of that nation, was better than
that of any other.
We know that all the prejudices
against other religions, and all the egotism of nation and
tribe, were in favour of the local superstition. Each
citizen was patriotic enough to denounce the religions of
other nations and to stand firmly by his own. And
there is this peculiary about man : he can see the absur
dities of other religions while blinded to those of his own.
The Christian can see clearly enough that Mohammed
was an imposter. He is sure of it, because the people
�9
of Mecca who were acquainted with him declared that
he was no prophet; and this declaration is received by
Christians as a demonstration that Mohammed was not
inspired.
Yet these same Christians admit that the
people of Jerusalem who were acquainted with Christ
rejected him ; and this rejection they take as proof
positive that Christ was the Son of God.
The average man adopts the religion of his country,
or, rather, the religion of his country adopts him. He is
dominated by the egotism of race, the arrogance of
nation, and the prejudice called patriotism. He does
not reason—he feels.
He does not investigate—he
believes.
To him the religions of other nations are
absurd and infamous, and their gods monsters of
ignorance and cruelty. In every country this average
man is taught, first, that there is a supreme being ;
second, that he has made known his will; third, that he
will reward the true believer ; fourth, that he will punish
the unbeliever, the scoffer and the blasphemer; fifth,
that certain ceremonies are pleasing to his god; sixth,
that he has established a church; and seventh, that
priests are his representatives on earth. And the average
man has no difficulty in determining that the god of his
nation is the true God ; that the will of this true God is
contained in the sacred scriptures of his nation ; that he
is one of the true believers, and that the people of other
nations—that is, believing other religions—are scoffers ;
that the only true church is the one to which he belongs;
and that the priests of his country are the only ones who
have had or ever will have the slightest influence with
this true God. All these absurdities to the average man
seem self-evident propositions; and so he holds all the
other creeds in scorn, and congratulates himself that he
is a favourite of the one true God.
If the average Christian had been born in Turkey,
he would have been a Mohammedan; and if the
average Mohammedan had been born in New England
and educated at Andover, he would have regarded the
damnation of the heathen as the “ tidings of great
j°y-”
�IO
Nations have eccentricities, peculiarities, and halluci
nations, and these find expression in their laws, customs,
ceremonies, morals, and religions. And these are in
great part determined by soil, climate, and the countless
circumstances that mould and dominate the lives and
habits of insects, individuals, and nations. The average
man believes implicitly in the religion of his country,
because he knows nothing of any other and has no desire
to know. It fits him because he has been deformed to
fit it, and he regards this fact of fit as an evidence of its
inspired truth.
Has a man the right to examine, to investigate, the
religion of his own country—the religion of his father
and mother ? Christians admit that the citizens of all
countries not Christian have not only this right, but that
it is their solemn duty. Thousands of missionaries are
sent to heathen countries to persuade the believers in
other religions not only to examine their superstitions,
but to renounce them, and to adopt those of the mission
aries. It is the duty of a heathen to disregard the
religion of his country and to hold in contempt the creed
of his father and of his mother. If the citizens of heathen
nations have the right to examine the foundations of
their religion, it would seem that the citizens of Christian
nations have the same right. Christians, however, go
further than this; they say to the heathen: You must
examine your religion, and not only so, but you must
reject it; and, unless you do reject it, and, in addition to
such rejection, adopt ours, you will be eternally damned.
Then these same Christians say to the inhabitants of a
Christian country: You must not examine; you must
not investigate; but whether you examine or, you must
believe, or you will be eternally damned.
If there be one true religion, how is it possible to
ascertain which of all the religions the true one is ?
There is but one way. We must impartially examine
the claims of all. The right to examine involves the
necessity to accept or reject. Understand me, not the
right to accept or reject, but the necessity. From this
conclusion there is no possible escape. If, then, we
�II
have the right to examine, we have the right to tell the
conclusion reached.
Christians have examined other
religions somewhat, and they have expressed their opinion
with the utmost freedom—that is to say, they have
denounced them all as false and fraudulent, have called
their gods idols and myths, and their priests impostors.
The Christian does not deem it worth while to read
the Koran. Probably not one Christian in a thousand
ever saw a copy of that book. And yet all Christians
are perfectly satisfied that the Koran is the work of an
impostor. No Presbyterian thinks it is worth his while
to examine the religious systems of India; he knows
that the Brahmins are mistaken, and that all their
miracles are falsehoods. No Methodist cares to read
the life of Buddha, and no Baptist will waste his time
Studying the ethics of Confucius. Christians of every
sort and kind take it for granted that there is only one
true religion, and that all except Christianity are abso
lutely without foundation. The Christian world believes
that all the prayers of India are unanswered ; that all
the sacrifices upon the countless altars of Egypt, of
Greece, and of Rome were without effect. They believe
that all these mighty nations worshipped their gods in
vain ; that their priests were deceivers or deceived ; that
their ceremonies were wicked or meaningless ; that their
temples were built by ignorance and fraud, and that no
god heard their songs of praise, their cries of despair,
their words of thankfulness; that on account of their
religion no pestilence was stayed ; that the earthquake
and volcano, the flood and storm, went on their ways of
death—while the real God looked on and laughed at
their calamities and mocked at their fears.
We find now that the prosperity of nations has
depended, not upon their religion, not upon the goodness
or providence of some god, but on soil and climate and
commerce, upon the ingenuity, industry, and courage of
the people, upon the development of the mind, on the
spread of education, on the liberty of thought and
action ; and that in this mighty panorama of national
life reason has built and superstition has destroyed.
�12
Being satisfied that all believe precisely as they must,
and that religions have been naturally produced, I have
neither praise nor blame for any man. Good men have
had bad creeds, and bad men have had good ones.
Some of the noblest of the human race have fought and
died for the wrong. The brain of man has been the
trysting-place of contradictions. Passion often masters
reason, and “ the state of man, like to a little kingdom,
suffers then the nature of an insurrection.”
In the discussion of theological or religious questions,
we have almost passed the personal phase, and we are
now weighing arguments instead of exchanging epithets
and curses. They who really seek for truth must be the
best of friends. Each knows that his desire can never
take the place of fact, and that, next to finding truth,
the greatest honor must be won in honest search.
We see that many ships are driven in many ways by
the same wind. So men, reading the same book, write
many creeds and lay out many roads to heaven. To the
best of my ability, I have examined the religions of
many countries and the creeds of many sects. They
are much alike, and the testimony by which they are
substantiated is of such a character that to those who
believe is promised an eternal reward. In all the sacred
books there are some truths, some rays of light, some
words of love and hope. The face of savagery is some
times softened by a smile—the human triumphs and the
heart breaks into song. But in these books are also
found the words of fear and hate, and from their pages
crawl serpents that coil and hiss in all the paths of men.
For my part, I prefer the books that inspiration has
not claimed. Such is the nature of my brain that
Shakespeare gives me greater joy than all the prophets
of the ancient world. There are thoughts that satisfy
the hunger of the mind. I am convinced that Humboldt
knew more of geology than the author of Genesis; that
Darwin was a greater naturalist than he who told the
story of the Flood ; that Laplace was better acquainted
with the habits of the sun and moon than Joshua could
have been, and that Haeckel, Huxley, and Tyndal
�13
know more about the earth and stars, about the history
of man, the philosophy of life—more that is of use, ten
thousand times—than all the writers of the sacred books.
I believe in the religion of reason—the gospel of this
world ; in the development of the mind, in the accumu
lation of intellectual wealth, to the end that man may
free himself from superstitious fear, to the end that he
may take advantage of the forces of nature to feed and
clothe the world.
Let us be honest with ourselves. In the presence of
countless mysteries; standing beneath the boundless
heaven sown thick with constellations; knowing that
each grain of sand, each leaf, each blade of grass, asks
of every mind the answerless question ; knowing that
the simplest thing defies solution ; feeling that we deal
with the superficial and the relative, and that we are for
ever eluded by the real, the absolute—let us admit the
limitations of our minds, and let us have the courage
and the candor to say: We do not know.
The Christian religion rests on miracles. There are
no miracles in the realm of science. The real philo
sopher does not seek to excite wonder, but to make that
plain which was wonderful. He does not endeavor to
astonish, but to enlighten. He is perfectly confident
that there are no miracles in nature. He knows that
the mathematical expression of the same relations,
contents, areas, numbers and proportions must forever
remain the same. He knows that there are no miracles
in chemistry; that the attractions and repulsions, the
loves and hatreds, of atoms are constant. Under like
conditions, he is certain that like will always happen ;
that the product has been and forever will be the same ;
that the atoms or particles unite in definite, unvarying
proportions—so many of one kind mix, mingle, and
harmonise with just so many of another, and the surplus
will be forever cast out.
There are no exceptions.
Substances are always true to their natures. They
have no caprices, no prejudices, that can vary or control
their action. They are “ the same yesterday, to-day,
and forever.”
�i4
In this fixedness, this constancy, this eternal integrity,
the intelligent man has absolute confidence. It is use
less to tell him that there was a time when fire would
not consume the combustible, when water would not
flow in obedience to the attraction of gravitation, or that
there ever was a fragment of a moment during which
substance had no weight.
Credulity should be the servant of intelligence. The
ignorant have not credulity enough to believe the actual,
because the actual appears to be contrary to the evidence
of their senses. To them it is plain that the sun rises
and sets, and they have not credulity enough to believe
in the rotary motion of the earth—that is to say, they
have not intelligence enough to comprehend the absur
dities involved in their belief, and the perfect harmony
between the rotation of the earth and all known facts.
They trust their eyes, not their reason. Ignorance has
always been and always will be at the mercy of appear
ance. Credulity, as a rule, believes everything except
the truth. The semi-civilised believe in astrology, but
who could convince them of the vastness of astronomical
spaces, the speed of light, or the magnitude and number
of suns and constellations ? If Hermann and Humboldt
could have appeared before savages, which would have
been regarded as a god ?
When men knew nothing of mechanics, nothing of
correlation of force, and of its indestructibility, they
were believers in perpetual motion. So when chemistry
was a kind of sleight-of-hand, or necromancy, something
accomplished by the aid of the supernatural, people
talked about the transmutation of metals, the universal
solvent, and the philosopher’s stone. Perpetual motion
would be a mechanical miracle; and the transmutation
of metals would be a miracle in chemistry; and if we
could make the result of multiplying two by two five,
that would be a miracle in mathematics.
No one
expects to find a circle the diameter of which is just
one-fourth of the circumference.
If one could find
such a circle then there would be a miracle in
geometry.
�i5
In other words, there are no miracles in any science.
The moment we understand a question or subject, the
miraculous necessarily disappears. If anything actually
happens in the chemical world, it will under like condi
tions happen again. No one need take an account of
this result from the mouths of others: all can try the
experiment for themselves. There is no caprice, and no
accident.
It is admitted, at least by the Protestant world, that
the age of miracles has passed away, and, consequently,
miracles cannot at present be established by miracles ;
they must be substantiated by the testimony of wit
nesses who are said by certain writers—or, rather, by
uncertain writers—to have lived several centuries ago ;
and this testimony is given to us, not by the witnesses
themselves, not by persons who say that they talked
with those witnesses, but by unknown persons who did
not give the sources of their information.
The question is : Can miracles be established except
by miracles ? We know that the writers may have been
mistaken. It is possible that they may have manufac
tured these accounts themselves. The witnesses may
have told what they knew to be untrue, or they may
have been honestly deceived, or the stories may have
been true as first told. Imagination may have added
greatly to them, so that after several centuries of accre
tion a very simple truth was changed to a miracle.
We must admit that all probabilities must be against
miracles, for the reason that that which is probable
cannot by any possibility be a miracle. Neither the
probable nor the possible, so far as man is concerned,
can be miraculous. The probability therefore says that
the writers and witnesses were either mistaken or dis
honest.
We must admit that we have never seen a miracle
ourselves, and we must admit that, according to our
experience, there are no miracles. If we have mingled
with the world we are compelled to say that we have
known a vast number of persons—including ourselves—
to be mistaken, and many others who have failed to tell
�the exact truth. The probabilities are on the side of our
experience, and, consequently, against the miraculous ;
and it is a necessity that the free mind moves along the
path of least resistance.
The effect of testimony depends on the intelligence
and honesty of the witness and the intelligence of him
who weighs. A man living in a community where the
supernatural is expected, where the miraculous is sup
posed to be of almost daily occurrence, will, as a rule,
believe that all wonderful things are the result of super
natural agencies. He will expect providential inter
ference, and, as a consequence, his mind will pursue
the path of least resistance, and will account for all
phenomena by what to him is the easiest method. Such
people, with the best intentions, honestly bear false
witness. They have been imposed upon by appear
ances, and are victims of delusion and illusion.
In an age when reading and writing were substantially
unknown, and when history itself was but the vaguest
hearsay handed down from dotage to infancy, nothing
was rescued from oblivion except the wonderful, the
miraculous. The more marvellous the story, the greater
the interest excited. Narrators and hearers were alike
ignorant and alike honest. At that time nothing was
known, nothing suspected, of the orderly course of nature
—of the unbroken and unbreakable chain of causes and
effects. The world was governed by caprice. Every
thing was at the mercy of a being, or beings, who were
themselves controlled by the same passions that dominate
man. Fragments of facts were taken for the whole, and
the deductions drawn were honest and monstrous.
It is probably certain that all the religions of the
world have been believed, and that all the miracles have
found credence in countless brains ; otherwise they could
not have been perpetuated. They were not all born of
cunning. Those who told were as honest as those who
heard. This being so, nothing has been too absurd for
human credence.
All religions, so far as I know, claim to have been
miraculously founded, miraculously preserved, and mira-
�i7
culously propagated. The priests of all claimed to have
messages from God, and claimed to have a certain
authority, and the miraculous has always been appealed
to for the purpose of substantiating the message and
the authority.
If men believe in the supernatural, they will account
for all phenomena by an appeal to supernatural means
or power. We know that formerly everything was
accounted for in this way except some few simple things
with which man thought he was perfectly acquainted.
After a time men found that under like conditions like
would happen, and as to those things the supposition of
Supernatural interference was abandoned ; but that inter
ference was still active as to all the unknown world. In
other words, as the circle of man’s knowledge grew,
supernatural interference withdrew, and was active only
just beyond the horizon of the known.
Now, there are some believers in universal special
providence™that is, men who believe in perpetual inter
ference by a supernatural power, this interference being
for the purpose of punishing or rewarding, of destroying
or preserving, individuals and nations.
Others have abandoned the idea of providence in
ordinary matters, but still believe that God interferes on
great occasions and at critical moments, especially in
the affairs of nations, and that his presence is manifest
in great disasters. This is the compromise position.
These people believe that an infinite being made the
universe and impressed upon it what they are pleased to
call “ laws,” and then left it to run in accordance with
those laws and forces ; that as a rule it works well, and
that the divine Maker interferes only in cases of accident,
pr at moments when the machine fails to accomplish the
original design.
There are others who take the ground that all is
natural; that there never has been, never will be, never
can be, any interference from without, for the reason
that Nature embraces all, and that there can be no
without or beyond.
The first class are Theists pure and simple; the
�i8
second are Theists as to the unknown, Naturalists as to
the known; and the third are Naturalists without a
touch or taint of superstition.
What can the evidence of the first class be worth ?
This question is answered by reading the history of those
nations that believed thoroughly and implicitly in the
supernatural. There is no conceivable absurdity that
was not established by their testimony. Every law or
every fact in nature was violated. Children were born
without parents; men lived for thousands of years;
others subsisted without food, without sleep ; thousands
and thousands were possessed with evil spirits, controlled
by ghosts and ghouls ; thousands confessed themselves
guilty of impossible offences, and in courts, with the
most solemn forms, impossibilities were substantiated by
the oaths, affirmations, and confessions of men, women,
and children.
These delusions were not confined to ascetics and
peasants, but they took possession of nobles and kings;
of people who were at that time called intelligent; of
the then educated. No one denied these wonders, for
the reason that denial was a crime punishable generally
with death. Societies, nations, became insane—victims
of ignorance, of dreams, and, above all, of fears. Under
these conditions human testimony is not, and cannot be,
of the slightest value. We now know that nearly all of
the history of the world is false, and we know this
because we have arrived at that phase or point of intel
lectual development where and when we know that
effects must have causes, that everything is naturally
produced, and that, consequently, no nation could ever
have been great, powerful, and rich, unless it had the
soil, the people, the intelligence, and the commerce.
Weighed in these scales, nearly all histories are found
to be fictions.
The same is true of religions.
Every intelligent
American is satisfied that the religions of India, of
Egypt,
Greece and Rome, of the Aztecs, were and are
false, and that all the miracles on which they rest are
mistakes.
Our religion alone is excepted.
Every
�i9
intelligent Hindoo discards all religions and all miracles
except his own. The question is When will pceple see
the defects in their own theology as clearly as they
perceive the same defects in every other ?
All the so-called false religions were substantiated by
miracles, by signs and wonders, by . prophets and
martyrs, precisely as our own. Our witnesses are no
better than theirs, and our success is no greater. If
their miracles were false, ours cannot be true. Nature
was the same in India as in Palestine.
One of the corner-stones of Christianity is the mir
acle of inspiration, and this same miracle lies at the
foundation of all religions.
How can the fact of. in
spiration be established ?
How could even the inspired
man know that he was inspired ? If he was influenced
to write and did write, and did express thoughts and
facts that to him were absolutely new, on subjects about
which he had previously known nothing, how could
he know that he had been influenced by an infinite being ?
And if he could know, how could he convince others ?
What is meant by inspiration ? Did the one inspired
set down only the thoughts of a supernatural being ?
Was he simply an instrument, or did his personality
color the message received and given ? Did he.mix his
ignorance with the divine information, his prejudices and
hatreds with the love and justice of the deity ? If God
told him not to eat the flesh of any beast that dieth of
itself, did the same infinite being also tell him to sell this
meat to the stranger within his gates ?
A man says that he is inspired—that God appeared to
him in a dream, and told him certain things. Now, the
things said to have been communicated may have been
good and wise; but will the fact that the communication
is good or wise establish the inspiration ? If, on the
other hand, the communication is absurd or wicked., will
that conclusively show that the man was not inspired ?
Must we judge from the communication ? In other
words, is our reason to be the final standard ?
How could the inspired man know that the communi
cation was received from God ? If God in reality should
�20
appear to a human being, how could this human bein°know who had appeared ? By what standard would he
judge . Upon this question man has no experience ; he
is not familiar enough with the supernatural to know
gods even if they exist. Although thousands have pre
tended to receive messages, there has been no message
m which there was, or is, anything above the invention
0 ,man< There are just as wonderful things in the unin
spired as in the inspired books, and the prophecies of the
heathen have been fulfilled equally with those of the
Judaean prophets. If, then, even the inspired man cannot certainly know that he is inspired, how is it possible
for him to demonstrate his inspiration to others ? The
last solution of this question is that inspiration is a mir
acle about which only the inspired can have the least
knowledge, or the least evidence, and this knowledge and
this evidence not of a character to convince even the
inspired.
There is certainly nothing in the Old or the New
Testament that could not have been written by unin
spired human beings. To me there is nothing of any
particular value in the Pentateuch. I do not know of a
solitary scientific truth contained in the five books com
monly attributed to Moses. There is not, as far as I
know, a line in the book of Genesis calculated to make a
human being better. The laws contained in Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are for the most
part puerile and cruel. Surely there is nothing in any of
these books that could not have been produced by unin
spired . men. Certainly there is nothing calculated to
excite intellectual admiration in the book of Judges or in
the wa.rs of Joshua ; and the same may be said of Samuel,
Chronicles, and Kings. The history is extremely childish,
full of repetitions, of useless details, without the slightest
philosophy, without a generalisation born of a wide sur
vey. Nothing is known of other nations; nothing im
parted of the slightest value; nothing about education,
discovery, or invention. And these idle and stupid
annals are interspersed with myth and miracle, with
flattery for kings who supported priests, and with curses
�21
and denunciations for those who would not hearken to
the voice of the prophets. If all the historic books of
the Bible were blotted from the memory of mankind,
nothing of value would be lost.
Is it possible that the writer or writers of First and
Second Kings were inspired, and that Gibbon wrote
“ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ” without
supernatural assistance ? Is it possible that the author
of Judges was simply the instrument of an infinite God,
while John W. Draper wrote “ The Intellectual Develop
ment of Europe ” without one ray of light from the other
world ? Can we believe that the author of Genesis had
to be inspired, while Darwin experimented, ascertained,
and reached conclusions for himself?
Ought not the work of a God to be vastly superior to
that of a man ? And if the writers of the Bible were in
reality inspired, ought not that book to be the greatest
of books?
For instance, if it were contended that
certain statues had been chiselled by inspired men, such
statues should be superior to any that uninspired man
has made. As long as it is admitted that the Venus de
Milo is the work of man, no one will believe in inspired
sculptors—at least until a superior statue has been found.
So in the world of painting. We admit that Corot was
uninspired. Nobody claims that Angelo had super
natural assistance. Now, if some one should claim
that a certain painter was simply the instrumentality of
God, certainly the pictures produced by that painter
should be superior to all others.
I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human
being to conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work
of God, and that the tragedy of “ Lear ” was the work
of an uninspired man. We are all liable to be mistaken,
but the Iliad seems to me a greater work than the book
of Esther, and I prefer it to the writings of Haggai and
Hosea. ^Eschylus is superior to Jeremiah, and Shakes
peare rises immeasurably above all the sacred books of
the world.
It does not seem possible that any human being ever
tried to establish a truth—anything that really happened
�22
by what is called a miracle. It is easy to understand
how that which was common became wonderful by accre
tion—by things added, and by things forgotten—and it is
easy to conceive how that which was wonderful became
by accretion what was called supernatural. But it does
not seem possible that any intelligent, honest man ever
endeavored to prove anything by a miracle.
As a matter of fact, miracles could only satisfy people
who demanded no evidence; else how could they have
believed the miracle ? It also appears to be certain that,
even if miracles had been performed, it would be im
possible to establish that fact by human testimony. In
other words, miracles can only be established by miracles,
and in no event could miracles be evidence except to
those who were actually present; and in order for
miracles to be of any value, they would have to be
perpetual. It must also be remembered that a miracle
actually performed could by no possibility shed any light
on any moral truth, or add to any human obligation.
If any man has ever been inspired, this is a secret
miracle, known to no person, and suspected only by the
man claiming to be inspired. It would not be in the
power of the inspired to give satisfactory evidence of that
fact to anybody else.
The testimony of man is insufficient to establish the
supernatural. Neither the evidence of one man nor of
twelve can stand when contradicted by the experience
of the intelligent world. If a book sought to be proved
by miracles is true, then it makes no difference whether
it was inspired or not ; and if it is not true, inspiration
cannot add to its value.
The truth is that the Church has always—unconsci
ously, perhaps—offered rewards for falsehood. It was
founded upon the supernatural, the miraculous, and it
welcomed all statements calculated to support the foun
dation. It rewarded the traveller who found evidences
of the miraculous, who had seen the pillar of salt into
which the wife of Lot had been changed, and the tracks
of Pharoah’s chariots on the sands of the Red Sea. It
heaped honors on the historian who filled his pages with
�23
the absurd and the impossible. It had geologists and
astronomers of its own, who constructed the earth and
the constellations in accordance with the Bible. With
sword and flame it destroyed the brave and thoughtful
men who told the truth. It was the enemy of investiga
tion and of reason. Faith and fiction were in partner
ship.
To-day the intelligence of the world denies the mira
culous. Ignorance is the soil of the supernatural. The
foundation of Christianity has crumbled, has disappeared,
and the entire fabric must fall. The natural is true.
The miraculous is false.
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Victorian Blogging
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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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Dublin Core
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Title
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Why am I an agnostic?
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's advertisements inside front cover and on back cover. No. 93d in Stein checklist.
Publisher
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Freethought Publishing Company
Date
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1902
Identifier
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N413
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Agnosticism
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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 (Why am I an agnostic?), 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>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Agnosticism
NSS