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DR. D. M. BROOKS
DR. D. M. BROOKS
FREETHOUGH PRESS ASSOCIATION NEW YORK "How often it has happened that one man, standing at the right point of view, has descried the truth, and, after having been denounced and persecuted by all others, they have eventually been constrained to adopt his declarations!" —( Draper. ) For the old Gods came to an end long ago. And verily it was a good and joyful end of Gods! They did not die lingering in the twilight—although that lie is told! On the contrary, they once upon a time laughed themselves
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PREFACE
PREFACE
Plain speaking is necessary in any discussion of religion, for if the freethinker attacks the religious dogmas with hesitation, the orthodox believer assumes that it is with regret that the freethinker would remove the crutch that supports the orthodox. And all religious beliefs are "crutches" hindering the free locomotive efforts of an advancing humanity. There are no problems related to human progress and happiness in this age which any theology can solve, and which the teachings of freethough
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
To early man, the gods were real in the same sense that the mountains, forests, or waterfalls which were thought to be their homes were real. For a long time the spirits that lived in drugs or wines and made them potent were believed to be of the same order of fact as the potency itself. But the human creature is curious and curiosity is bold. Hence, the discovery that a reported god may be a myth. Max Carl Otto . The geologists estimate that the age of the earth is somewhere between 80 and 800
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
The Jews emerge into history, not a nation of keen spiritual aspirations and altruistic ethics, but that pagan people, worshipping rocks, sheep and cattle, and spirits of caves and wells, of whom the Old Testament, tending towards its higher ideal, gives fragmentary but convincing evidence . James T. Shotwell . Consider Jahveh. Cruel god of a horde of nomadic invaders settling in a land of farmers, he had his images, ranging in elaboration from an uncut mazzebah or asherah, to a golden bull. He
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
The prophet or seer is a man of strong imaginative powers, which have not been calmed by education. The ideas which occur to his mind often present themselves to his eyes and ears in corresponding sights and sounds.... Prophets have existed in all countries and at all times; but the gift becomes rare in the same proportion as people learn to read and write . Winwood Reade . Religious apologists are forever reminding us that we must interpret both the lives and the works of their prophets and rec
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
It is better to bury a delusion and forget it than to insult its memory by retaining the name when the thing has perished . F. H. Bradley. A thousand miraculous happenings have been honoured by the testimony of the ancients, which in later times under a more exacting and sceptical scrutiny can no longer be believed. Inherent in man's nature is his disposition to be gulled.... Emotion is encouraged to supplant cool reason, fanaticism to supplant tolerance. Not by such means can our race be saved
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
We believe what we believe, not because we have been convinced by such and such arguments, but because we are of such and such a disposition. C. E. M. Joad. The mind of the ordinary man is in so imperfect a condition that it requires a creed; that is to say, a theory concerning the unknown and the unknowable in which it may place its deluded faith and be at rest. Winwood Reade. Generations followed and what had been offered as hypothetical theological suppositions were through custom and traditi
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
Science, then, commands our respect, not on the basis that its present assumptions and deductions are absolutely and for all time true, but on the ground that its method is for all time true—the method of discovery, the method of observation, research, experimentation, comparison, examination, testing, analysis and synthesis. Maynard Shipley , "The War on Modern Science." In the bare three and one-half centuries since modern science began, the churches had conducted an unremitting crusade agains
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
Now, when physiologists study the living brain of an ape, they have no grounds for supposing that they are dealing with a dual structure. The brain is not a tenement inhabited by a spirit or soul. The spirit or soul is but a name for the manifestations of the living brain. The leading neurologists of the world are agreed that the same is true of the human brain. It was only when they abandoned the dual conception—an inheritance from the dark ages of medicine—that they began to understand the dis
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
In the early Church, astronomy, like other branches of science, was looked upon as futile, since the New Testament taught that the earth was soon to be destroyed and new heavens created. The heavenly bodies were looked upon by the theologians as either living beings possessing souls, or as the habitation of the angels. However, as time passed, the geocentric doctrine, the doctrine that the earth is the center of the universe and that the sun and planets revolve about it, was the theory that held
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
The ancient Greeks, especially the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle, had evolved theories of the earth's sphericity, which, while vague, were basic for subsequent accurate ideas that developed later. When Christianity sprang into existence Eusebius, St. John Chrysostom, and Cosmos evolved a complete description of the earth. They considered the earth as a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas, as a kind of house, with heaven as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor. To t
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
The establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution of theology, arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for more than 1500 years. The work begun by Aristotle and carried on to such a high state of relative perfection by Archimedes, was stifled by the early Christians. An atmosphere was then created in which physical science could not grow. The general belief derived from the New Testament was that the end of the world was at hand, and the early Church Fathers poured co
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
The human race has suffered three grave humiliations: when Copernicus showed that the earth was not the center of the universe; when Darwin proved that man's origin was not the result of direct creation; when Freud explained that man was not the master of his own thoughts or actions . Llewelyn Powys . In the writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers are found the germinal concepts of geological truths. But as Christianity took control of the world instead of a steady progression of knowledge
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
Better that a man's body should be destroyed than his soul. The worst death of the soul is freedom to err . St. Augustine. It would be hard to calculate the perilous import of so treacherous an utterance, an utterance the latent sentiment of which has been responsible for I know not how much human agony. Menacing indeed to human happiness was such a claim, and in the course of time when the corporate body of the church became all-powerful in Christendom, it put into tyrannical practice what had
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
The current religion is indirectly adverse to morals, because it is adverse to the freedom of the intellect. But it is also directly adverse to morals by inventing spurious and bastard virtues. Winwood Reade , "Martyrdom of Man." It had been formerly asserted by theologians that our moral laws were given to man by a supernatural intuitive process. However, Professor E. A. Westermarck's "Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas," and similar researches, give a comprehensive survey of the moral i
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
"Instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it; we may look in vain for any period since Constantine in which the clergy as a body exerted themselves to repress the military spirit, or to prevent or abridge a particular war with an energy at all comparable to that which they displayed in stimulating the fanaticism of the Crusades, in producing the atrocious massacres of the Albigenses, in embittering the religious contests that f
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
Nothing during the American struggle against the slave system did more to wean religious and God-fearing men and women from the old interpretation of Scripture than the use of it to justify slavery. Andrew Dickson White . The Christian Church has had the audacity, in modern times, to proclaim that it had abolished slavery and the slave trade. It is difficult to understand how any "righteous" man could make that contention remembering that it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century tha
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
The mortgage which the peasant has on heavenly property guarantees the mortgage of the bourgeois on the farms. Marx . The same Christ, the same Buddha, the same Isaiah, can stand at once for capitalism and communism, for liberty and slavery, for peace and war, for whatever opposed or clashing ideals you will. For the life and the power of a church is in the persistent identity of its symbols and properties. Meanings change anyhow, but things endure. The rock upon which a church is founded is not
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
She was the first in the transgression therefore keep her in subjection. Fierce is the dragon and cunning the asp; but woman has the malice of both. St. Gregory of Nazianzum . Thou art the devil's gate, the betrayer of the tree, the first deserter of the Divine Law. Tertullian . What does it matter whether it be in the person of mother or sister; we have to beware Eve in every woman. How much better two men could live and converse together than a man and a woman. St. Augustine . No gown worse be
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
But the powers of man, so far as experience and analogy can guide us, are unlimited; nor are we possessed of any evidence which authorizes us to assign even an imaginary boundary at which the human intellect will, of necessity, be brought to a stand. Buckle . There has been an effort made in certain religious publications to imply that there is a dearth of thought and thinkers beyond the pale of theism. The subsequent examination of the theological beliefs of great minds will show that there has
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
One should recall the charge of atheism directed against the keenest thinkers of antiquity and the greatest of its moral reformers. But what was personal and incidental in the past, depending largely upon the genius and inspiration of seers and leaders, has now become a social movement, as wide as science . James T. Shotwell . The drift from God is a movement of events, a propulsion of vital experience, not a parade of words to be diverted by other words . Max Carl Otto . In the Babylonian and A
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Let us make no mistake—great minds are skeptical.... The strength and the freedom which arise from exceptional power of thought express themselves in skepticism.... A mind which aspires to great things and is determined to achieve them is of necessity skeptical . Nietzsche . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped i
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