The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.

1896
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I

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of
habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our
garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned
by our surroundings.

Environment is a sculptor -- a painter.

If we had been born in Constantinople, the most of us would
have said: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his
prophet." If our parents had lived on the banks of the Ganges, we
would have been worshipers of Siva, longing for the heaven of
Nirvana.

As a rule, children love their parents, believe what they
teach, and take great pride in saying that the religion of mother
is good enough for them.

Most people love peace. They do not like to differ with their
neighbors. They like company. They are social. They enjoy traveling
on the highway with the multitude. They hate to walk alone.

The Scotch are Calvinists because their fathers were. The
Irish are Catholics because their fathers were. The English are
Episcopalians because their fathers were, and the Americans are
divided in a hundred sects because their fathers were. This is the
general rule, to which there are many exceptions. Children
sometimes are superior to their parents, modify their ideas, change
their customs, and arrive at different conclusions. But this is
generally so gradual that the departure is scarcely noticed, and
those who change usually insist that they are still following the
fathers.

It is claimed by Christian historians that the religion of a
nation was sometimes suddenly changed, and that millions of Pagans
were made into Christians by the command of a king. Philosophers do
not agree with these historians. Names have been changed, altars
have been overthrown, but opinions, customs and beliefs remained
the same. A Pagan, beneath the drawn sword of a Christian, would
probably change his religious views, and a Christian, with a

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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.

scimitar above his head, might suddenly become a Mohammedan, but as
a matter of fact both would remain exactly as they were before --
except in speech.

Belief is not subject to the will. Men think as they must.
Children do not, and cannot, believe exactly as they were taught.
They are not exactly like their parents. They differ in
temperament, in experience, in capacity, in surroundings. And so
there is a continual, though almost imperceptible change. There is
development, conscious and unconscious growth, and by comparing
long periods of time we find that the old has been almost
abandoned, almost lost in the new. Men cannot remain stationary.
The mind cannot be securely anchored. If we do not advance, we go
backward. If we do not grow, we decay. If we do not develop, we
shrink and shrivel.

Like the most of you, I was raised among people who knew --
who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They had no
doubts. They knew that they had the truth. In their creed there was
no guess -- no perhaps. They had a revelation from God. They knew
the beginning of things. They knew that God commenced to create one
Monday morning, four thousand and four years before Christ. They
knew that in the eternity -- back of that morning, he had done
nothing. They knew that it took him six days to make the earth --
all plants, all animals, all life, and all the globes that wheel in
space. They knew exactly what he did each day and when he rested.
They knew the origin, the cause of evil, of all crime, of all
disease and death.

They not only knew the beginning, but they knew the end. They
knew that life had one path and one road. They knew that the path,
grass-grown and narrow, filled with thorns and nettles, infested
with vipers, wet with tears, stained by bleeding feet, led to
heaven, and that the road, broad and smooth, bordered with fruits
and flowers, filled with laughter and song and all the happiness of
human love, led straight to hell. They knew that God was doing his
best to make you take the path and that the Devil used every art to
keep you in the road.

They knew that there was a perpetual battle waged between the
great Powers of good and evil for the possession of human souls.
They knew that many centuries ago God had left his throne and had
been born a babe into this poor world -- that he had suffered death
for the sake of man -- for the sake of saving a few. They also knew
that the human heart was utterly depraved, so that man by nature
was in love with wrong and hated God with all his might.

At the same time they knew that God created man in his own
image and was perfectly satisfied with his work. They also knew
that he had been thwarted by the Devil, who with wiles and lies had
deceived the first of human kind. They knew that in consequence of
that, God cursed the man and woman; the man with toil, the woman
with slavery and pain, and both with death; and that he cursed the
earth itself with briers and thorns, brambles and thistles. All
these blessed things they knew. They knew too all that God had done
to purify and elevate the race. They knew all about the Flood --
knew that God, with the exception of eight, drowned all his

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children -- the old and young -- the bowed patriarch and the
dimpled babe -- the young man and the merry maiden -- the loving
mother and the laughing child -- because his mercy endureth
forever. They knew too, that he drowned the beasts and birds --
everything that walked or crawled or flew -- because his loving
kindness is over all his works. They knew that God, for the purpose
of civilizing his children, had devoured some with earthquakes,
destroyed some with storms of fire, killed some with his
lightnings, millions with famine, with pestilence, and sacrificed
countless thousands upon the fields of war. They knew that it was
necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that
there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the
atoning blood of Jesus Christ.

All who doubted or denied would be lost. To live a moral and
honest life -- to keep your contracts, to take care of wife and
child -- to make a happy home -- to be a good citizen, a patriot,
a just and thoughtful man, was simply a respectable way of going to
hell.

God did not reward men for being honest, generous and brave,
but for the act of faith. Without faith, all the so-called virtues
were sins. and the men who practiced these virtues, without faith,
deserved to suffer eternal pain.

All of these comforting and reasonable things were taught by
the ministers in their pulpits -- by teachers in Sunday schools and
by parents at home. The children were victims. They were assaulted
in the cradle -- in their mother's arms. Then, the schoolmaster
carried on the war against their natural sense, and all the books
they read were filled with the same impossible truths. The poor
children were helpless. The atmosphere they breathed was filled
with lies -- lies that mingled with their blood.

In those days ministers depended on revivals to save souls and
reform the world.

In the winter, navigation having closed, business was mostly
suspended. There were no railways and the only means of
communication were wagons and boats. Generally the roads were so
bad that the wagons were laid up with the boats. There were no
operas, no theaters, no amusement except parties and balls. The
parties were regarded as worldly and the balls as wicked. For real
and virtuous enjoyment the good people depended on revivals.

The sermons were mostly about the pains and agonies of hell,
the joys and ecstasies of heaven, salvation by faith, and the
efficacy of the atonement. The little churches, in which the
services were held, were generally small, badly ventilated, and
exceedingly warm. The emotional sermons, the sad singing, the
hysterical amens, the hope of heaven, the fear of hell, caused many
to lose the little sense they had. They became substantially
insane. In this condition they flocked to the "mourner's bench" --
asked for the prayers of the faithful -- had strange feelings,
prayed and wept and thought they had been "born again." Then they
would tell their experience -- how wicked they had been -- how evil
had been their thoughts, their desires, and how good they had
suddenly become.

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They used to tell the story of an old woman who, in telling
her experience, said: -- "Before I was converted, before I gave my
heart to God, I used to lie and steal, but now, thanks to the grace
and blood of Jesus Christ, I have quit 'em both, in a great
measure."

Of course all the people were not exactly of one mind. There
were some scoffers, and now and then some man had sense enough to
laugh at the threats of priests and make a jest of hell. Some would
tell of unbelievers who had lived and died in peace.

When I was a boy I heard them tell of an old farmer in
Vermont. He was dying. The minister was at his bed-side -- asked
him if he was a Christian -- if he was prepared to die. The old man
answered that he had made no preparation, that he was not a
Christian -- that he had never done anything but work. The preacher
said that he could give him no hope unless he had faith in Christ,
and that if he had no faith his soul would certainly be lost.

The old man was not frightened. He was perfectly calm. In a
weak and broken voice he said: "Mr. Preacher, I suppose you noticed
my farm. My wife and I came here more than fifty years ago. We were
just married. It was a forest then and the land was covered with
stones. I cut down the trees, burned the logs, picked up the stones
and laid the walls. My wife spun and wove and worked every moment.
We raised and educated our children -- denied ourselves. During all
these years my wife never had a good dress, or a decent bonnet. I
never had a good suit of clothes. We lived on the plainest food.
Our hands, our bodies are deformed by toil. We never had a
vacation. We loved each other and the children. That is the only
luxury we ever had. Now I am about to die and you ask me if I am
prepared. Mr. Preacher, I have no fear of the future, no terror of
any other world. There may be such a place as hell -- but if there
is, you never can make me believe that it's any worse than old
Vermont."

So, they told of a man who compared himself with his dog. "My
dog," he said, "just barks and plays -- has all he wants to eat. He
never works -- has no trouble about business. In a little while he
dies, and that is all. I work with all my strength. I have no time
to play. I have trouble every day. In a little while I will die,
and then I go to hell. I wish that I had been a dog."

Well, while the cold weather lasted, while the snows fell, the
revival went on, but when the winter was over, when the steamboat's
whistle was heard, when business started again, most of the
converts "backslid" and fell again into their old ways. But the
next winter they were on hand, ready to be "born again." They
formed a kind of stock company, playing the same parts every winter
and backsliding every spring.

The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in
earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers.
To them science was the name of a vague dread -- a dangerous enemy.
They did not know much, but they believed a great deal. To them
hell was a burning reality -- they could see the smoke and flames.
The Devil was no myth. He was an actual person. a rival of God, an

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WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC.

enemy of mankind. They thought that the important business of this
life was to save your soul -- that all should resist and scorn the
pleasures of sense, and keep their eyes steadily fixed on the
golden gate of the New Jerusalem. They were unbalanced, emotional,
hysterical, bigoted, hateful, loving, and insane. They really
believed the Bible to be the actual word of God -- a book without
mistake or contradiction. They called its cruelties, justice -- its
absurdities, mysteries -- its miracles, facts, and the idiotic
passages were regarded as profoundly spiritual. They dwelt on the
pangs, the regrets, the infinite agonies of the lost, and showed
how easily they could be avoided, and how cheaply heaven could be
obtained. They told their hearers to believe, to have faith, to
give their hearts to God, their sins to Christ, who would bear
their burdens and make their souls as white as snow.

All this the ministers really believed. They were absolutely
certain. In their minds the Devil had tried in vain to sow the
seeds of doubt.

I heard hundreds of these evangelical sermons -- heard
hundreds of the most fearful and vivid descriptions of the tortures
inflicted in hell, of the horrible state of the lost. I supposed
that what I heard was true and yet I did not believe it. I said:
"It is," and then I thought: "It cannot be."

These sermons made but faint impressions on my mind. I was not
convinced.

I had no desire to be "converted," did not want a "new heart"
and had no wish to be "born again."

But I heard one sermon that touched my heart, that left its
mark, like a scar, on my brain.

One Sunday I went with my brother to hear a Free Will Baptist
preacher. He was a large man, dressed like a farmer, but he was an
orator. He could paint a picture with words.

He took for his text the parable of "the rich man and
Lazarus." He described Dives, the rich man -- his manner of life,
the excesses in which he indulged, his extravagance, his riotous
nights, his purple and fine linen, his feasts, his wines, and his
beautiful women.

Then he described Lazarus, his poverty, his rags and
wretchedness, his poor body eaten by disease, the crusts and crumbs
he devoured, the dogs that pitied him. He pictured his lonely life,
his friendless death.

Then, changing his tone of pity to one of triumph -- leaping
from tears to the heights of exultation -- from defeat to victory
-- he described the glorious company of angels, who with white and
outspread wings carried the soul of the despised pauper to Paradise
-- to the bosom of Abraham.

Then, changing his voice to one of scorn and loathing, he told
of the rich man's death. He was in his palace, on his costly couch,

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the air heavy with perfume, the room filled with servants and
physicians. His gold was worthless then. He could not buy another
breath. He died, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in
torment.

Then, assuming a dramatic attitude, putting his right hand to
his ear, he whispered, "Hark! I hear the rich man's voice. What
does he say? Hark! 'Father Abraham! Father Abraham! I pray thee
send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and
cool my parched tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.'"

"Oh, my hearers, he has been making that request for more than
eighteen hundred years. And millions of ages hence that wail will
cross the gulf that lies between the saved and lost and still will
be heard the cry: 'Father Abraham! Father Abraham! I pray thee send
Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger. in water and cool my
parched tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.'"

For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain --
appreciated "the glad tidings of great joy." For the first time my
imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian horror.
Then I said: "It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is true,
I hate your God."

From that day I have had no fear, no doubt. For me, on that
day, the flames of hell were quenched. From that day I have
passionately hated every orthodox creed. That Sermon did some good.

II

From my childhood I had heard read, and read the Bible myself.
Morning and evening the sacred volume was opened and prayers were
said. The Bible was my first history, the Jews were the first
people, and the events narrated by Moses and the other inspired
writers, and those predicted by prophets were the all important
things. In other books were found the thoughts and dreams of men,
but in the Bible were the sacred truths of God.

Yet in spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no
love for God. He was so saving of mercy, so extravagant in murder,
so anxious to kill, so ready to assassinate, that I hated him with
all my heart. At his command, babes were butchered, women violated,
and the white hair of trembling age stained with blood. This God
visited the people with pestilence -- filled the houses and covered
the streets with the dying and the dead -- saw babes starving on
the empty breasts of pallid mothers, heard the sobs, saw the tears,
the sunken cheeks, the sightless eyes, the new made graves, and
remained as pitiless as the pestilence.

This God withheld the rain -- caused the famine, saw the
fierce eyes of hunger -- the wasted forms, the white lips, saw
mothers eating babes, and remained ferocious as famine.

It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or
worship, or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really
civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in
abhorrence and contempt.

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But in the old days the good people justified Jehovah in his
treatment of the heathen. The wretches who were murdered were
idolaters and therefore unfit to live.

According to the Bible, God had never revealed himself to
these people and he knew that without a revelation they could not
know that he was the true God. Whose fault was it then that they
were heathen?

The Christians said that God had the right to destroy them
because he created them. What did he create them for? He knew when
he made them that they would be food for the sword. He knew that he
would have the pleasure of seeing them murdered.

As a last answer, as a final excuse, the worshipers of Jehovah
said that all these horrible things happened under the "old
dispensation" of unyielding law, and absolute justice, but that now
under the "new dispensation," all had been changed -- the sword of
justice had been sheathed and love enthroned. In the Old Testament,
they said. God is the judge -- but in the New, Christ is the
merciful. As a matter of fact, the New Testament is infinitely
worse than the Old. In the Old there is no threat of eternal pain.
Jehovah had no eternal prison -- no everlasting fire. His hatred
ended at the grave. His revenge was satisfied when his enemy was
dead.

In the New Testament, death is not the end, but the beginning
of punishment that has no end. In the New Testament the malice of
God is infinite and the hunger of his revenge eternal.

The orthodox God, when clothed in human flesh, told his
disciples not to resist evil, to love their enemies, and when
smitten on one cheek to turn the other, and yet we are told that
this same God, with the same loving lips, uttered these heartless,
these fiendish words; "Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire,
prepared for the devil and his angels."

These are the words of "eternal love."

No human being has imagination enough to conceive of this
infinite horror.

All that the human race has suffered in war and want, in
pestilence and famine, in fire and flood, -- all the pangs and
pains of every disease and every death -- all this is as nothing
compared with the agonies to be endured by one lost soul.

This is the consolation of the Christian religion. This is the
justice of God -- the mercy of Christ.

This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the
implacable enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in
eternal pain has been the real persecutor. It founded the
Inquisition, forged the chains, and furnished the fagots. It has
darkened the lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible
as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless

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thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It
subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed
men to fiends and banished reason from the brain.

Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in
every orthodox creed.

It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is
the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a
public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind.
Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite
of malice, hatred, and revenge.

Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence
of its creator, God.

While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with
all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this
infinite lie.

Nothing gives me greater joy than to know that this belief in
eternal pain is growing weaker every day -- that thousands of
ministers are ashamed of it. It gives me joy to know that
Christians are becoming merciful, so merciful that the fires of
hell are burning low -- flickering, choked with ashes, destined in
a few years to die out forever.

For centuries Christendom was a madhouse. Popes, cardinals,
bishops, priests, monks and heretics were all insane.

Only a few -- four or five in a century were sound in heart
and brain. Only a few, in spite of the roar and din, in spite of
the savage cries, heard reason's voice. Only a few in the wild rage
of ignorance, fear and zeal preserved the perfect calm that wisdom
gives.

We have advanced. In a few years the Christians will become --
let us hope -- humane and sensible enough to deny the dogma that
fills the endless years with pain. They ought to know now that this
dogma is utterly inconsistent with the wisdom, the justice, the
goodness of their God. They ought to know that their belief in
hell, gives to the Holy Ghost -- the Dove -- the beak of a vulture,
and fills the mouth of the Lamb of God with the fangs of a viper.

In my youth I read religious books -- books about God, about
the atonement -- about salvation by faith, and about the other
worlds. I became familiar with the commentators -- with Adam Clark,
who thought that the serpent seduced our mother Eve, and was in
fact the father of Cain. He also believed that the animals, while
in the ark, had their natures' changed to that degree that they
devoured straw together and enjoyed each other's society -- thus
prefiguring the blessed millennium. I read Scott, who was such a
natural theologian that he really thought the story of Phaeton --
of the wild steeds dashing across the sky -- corroborated the story
of Joshua having stopped the sun and moon. So, I read Henry and

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MacKnight and found that God so loved the world that he made up his
mind to damn a large majority of the human race. I read Cruden, who
made the great Concordance, and made the miracles as small and
probable as he could.

I remember that he explained the miracle of feeding the
wandering Jews with quails, by saying that even at this day immense
numbers of quails crossed the Red Sea, and that sometimes when
tired, they settled on ships that sank beneath their weight. The
fact that the explanation was as hard to believe as the miracle
made no difference to the devout Cruden.

To while away the time I read Calvin's Institutes, a book
calculated to produce, in any natural mind, considerable respect
for the Devil.

I read Paley's Evidences and found that the evidence of
ingenuity in producing the evil, in contriving the hurtful, was at
least equal to the evidence tending to show the use of intelligence
in the creation of what we call good.

You know the watch argument was Paley's greatest effort. A man
finds a watch and it is so wonderful that he concludes that it must
have had a maker. He finds the maker and he is so much more
wonderful than the watch that he says he must have had a maker.
Then he finds God, the maker of the man, and he is so much more
wonderful than the man that he could not have had a maker. This is
what the lawyers call a departure in pleading.

According to Paley there can be no design without a designer
-- but there can be a designer without a design. The wonder of the
watch suggested the watchmaker, and the wonder of the watchmaker,
suggested the creator, and the wonder of the creator demonstrated
that he was not created -- but was uncaused and eternal.

We had Edwards on The Will, in which the reverend author shows
that necessity has no effect on accountability -- and that when God
creates a human being, and at the same time determines and decrees
exactly what that being shall do and be, the human being is
responsible, and God in his justice and mercy has the right to
torture the soul of that human being forever. Yet Edwards said that
he loved God.

The fact is that if you believe in an infinite God, and also
in eternal punishment, then you must admit that Edwards and Calvin
were absolutely right. There is no escape from their conclusions if
you admit their premises. They were infinitely cruel, their
premises infinitely absurd, their God infinitely fiendish, and
their logic perfect.

And yet I have kindness and candor enough to say that Calvin
and Edwards were both insane.

We had plenty of theological literature. There was Jenkyn on
the Atonement, who demonstrated the wisdom of God in devising a way
in which the sufferings of innocence could justify the guilty. He
tried to show that children could justly be punished for the sins

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of their ancestors, and that men could, if they had faith, be
justly credited with the virtues of others. Nothing could be more
devout, orthodox, and idiotic. But all of our theology was not in
prose. We had Milton with his celestial militia with his great and
blundering God, his proud and cunning Devil -- his wars between
immortals, and all the sublime absurdities that religion wrought
within the blind man's brain.

The theology taught by Milton was dear to the Puritan heart.
It was accepted by New England and it poisoned the souls and ruined
the lives of thousands. The genius of Shakespeare could not make
the theology of Milton poetic. In the literature of the world there
is nothing, outside of the "sacred books," more perfectly absurd.

We had Young's Night Thoughts, and I supposed that the author
was an exceedingly devout and loving follower of the Lord. Yet
Young had a great desire to be a bishop, and to accomplish that end
he electioneered with the king's mistress. In other words, he was
a fine old hypocrite. In the "Night Thoughts" there is scarcely a
genuinely honest, natural line. It is pretence from beginning to
end. He did not write what he felt, but what he thought he ought to
feel.

We had Pollok's Course of Time, with its worm that never dies,
its quenchless flames, its endless pangs, its leering devils, and
its gloating God. This frightful poem should have been written in
a madhouse. In it you find all the cries and groans and shrieks of
maniacs, when they tear and rend each other's flesh. It is as
heartless, as hideous, as hellish as the thirty-second chapter of
Deuteronomy.

We all know the beautiful hymn commencing with the cheerful
line: "Hark from the tombs, a doleful sound." Nothing could have
been more appropriate for children. It is well to put a coffin
where it can be seen from the cradle. When a mother nurses her
child, an open grave should be at her feet. This would tend to make
the babe serious, reflective, religious and miserable.

God hates laughter and despises mirth. To feel free,
untrammeled, irresponsible, joyous, -- to forget care and death --
to be flooded with sunshine without a fear of night -- to forget
the past, to have no thought of the future, no dream of God, or
heaven, or hell -- to be intoxicated with the present -- to be
conscious only of the clasp and kiss of the one you love -- this is
the sin against the Holy Ghost.

But we had Cowper's poems. Cowper was sincere. He was the
opposite of Young. He had an observing eye, a gentle heart and a
sense of the artistic. He sympathized with all who suffered -- with
the imprisoned, the enslaved, the outcasts. He loved the beautiful.
No wonder that the belief in eternal punishment made this loving
soul insane. No wonder that the "tidings of great Joy" quenched
Hope's great star and left his broken heart in the darkness of
despair.

We had many volumes of orthodox sermons, filled with wrath and
the terrors of the judgment to come -- sermons that had been
delivered by savage saints.