Atheism
by Joseph Lewis, 1930
from Atheism and Other
Addresses
also appeared in The Little Blue Book 1599 as
An Atheist Speaks Out
This address on Atheism was delivered at a Symposium on "Present Religious Tendencies", held at the Community Church, 34th Street and Park Avenue, New York City, on the Evening of April 20th, 1930. The other speakers were Mr. Stanley High, Editor of the Christian Herald, and Reverend Charles Francis Potter, Minister, First Humanist Society of New York. Reverend John Haynes Holmes, minister of the Community Church, was Chairman. |
"Is
it to the interest of a man to be a boy all his life?"
--
Thomas Paine
Both of my colleagues on this platform have been especially
trained to espouse the cause they have presented tonight.
Both were trained to be ministers of religion.
And although only one of them still occupies the pulpit,
the other is the editor of a religious magazine.
Both have faithfully fulfilled their training. And it would
be unusual if that were not the case.
We cannot expect a man trained to be a carpenter to be able
to carve statues like a Rodin. We cannot expect a man trained to be a
bricklayer to be able to paint pictures like a Rembrandt.
If by some chance we find one who possesses a natural
talent, and is able to rise above the level of his training, that exception
only proves the rule.
I was never trained to espouse the cause of Atheism.
I came to accept Atheism as the result of independent
thought and self-study. And although as a child I was instructed in the
religion of my parents, I never came under the spell of religious training long
enough to so warp my mentality as not to be able to see any other viewpoint.
I came to my conclusions after a full analysis and an
impartial consideration of the various religious creeds and the different
systems of philosophy.
In my study of the different fields of thought, I found no
philosophy that contained so many truths, and inspired one with so much
courage, as Atheism.
Atheism equips us to face life, with its multitude of
trials and tribulations, better than any other code of living that I have yet
been able to find.
It is grounded in the very roots of life itself,
Its foundation is based upon Nature, without superfluities
and false garments.
It stands unadorned, requiring nothing but its own nudity
to give it strength, and charm and beauty.
No sham or shambles are attached
to it.
Atheism Rises Above Creeds
Atheism rises above creeds and puts Humanity upon one
plane.
There can be no "chosen people" in the Atheist
philosophy.
There are no bended knees in Atheism;
No supplications, no prayers;
No sacrificial redemptions;
No "divine" revelations;
No washing in the blood of the lamb;
No crusades, no massacres, no holy wars;
No heaven, no hell, no purgatory;
No silly rewards and no vindictive punishments;
No christs, and no saviors;
No devils, no ghosts and no gods.
Atheism breaks down the barriers of nationalities and like
"one touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
Systems of religion make people clannish and bigoted.
Their chief aim and interest in life is to gather together
and pick out the faults of others and reveal their secret hatred of those who
do not believe as they do.
Atheism is Mental Freedom
Atheism is a vigorous and a courageous philosophy.
It is not afraid to face the problems of life, and it is
not afraid to confess that there are problems yet to be solved.
It does not claim that it has solved all the questions of
the universe, but it does claim that it has discovered the approach and learned
the method of solving them.
It has dedicated itself to a passionate quest for the
truth.
It believes that truth for truth's sake is the highest
ideal. And that virtue is its own reward.
It believes that love of humanity is a higher ideal than a
love of God. We cannot help God, but we can help mankind. "Hands that help
are better far than lips that pray." Praying to God is humiliating;
worshipping God degrading.
It believes with Ingersoll, when he said: "Give me the
storm and tempest of thought and action rather than the dead calm of ignorance
and faith. Banish me from
Atheism is a self-reliant philosophy.
It makes a man intellectually free. He is thrilled to
enthusiasm by his mental emancipation and he faces the universe without fear of
ghosts or gods.
It teaches man that unless he devotes his energies and
applies himself whole-heartedly to the task he wishes to achieve, the
accomplishment will not be made.
It warns him that any reliance upon prayers or
"divine" help will prove a bitter disappointment.
To the philosophy of Atheism
belongs the credit of robbing Death of its horror and its terror.
If Atheism writes upon the blackboard of the Universe a
question mark, it writes it for the purpose of stating that there is a question
yet to be answered
Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem
while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and
consider the matter solved?
The Asylum of Ignorance
Does not the word "God" only confuse and make
more difficult the solution by assuming a conclusion that is utterly groundless
and palpably absurd?
"God," said Spinoza,
"is the Asylum of Ignorance."
No better description has ever been uttered.
Shelley said God was a hypothesis, and, as such, required
proof. Can any minister of any denomination of any religion supply that proof?
Facts and not merely opinions are what we want.
Emotionalism is not a substitute for the truth.
If Atheism is sometimes called a "negative"
philosophy, it is because the conditions of life make a negative philosophy
best suited to meet the exigencies of existence, and only in that sense can it
be called negative.
Some ministers of religion ignorantly call Atheism a
negative philosophy because Atheism must first destroy the monumental ignorance
and the degrading superstition with which religion, throughout the ages, has so
shamelessly stultified the brain of man.
A negative attitude in life is sometimes essential to
proper conduct.
Life itself very often depends upon negation.
It is a negative attitude when we are cautious about
overeating. It is a negative attitude when we do not indulge our appetites, or
give vent to our impulses.
And on many occasions I have seen illustrated editorials
sermonizing upon the fact that the hardest word in our language to pronounce is
the word "NO!"
It is only when we have the courage to say NO to certain
temptations that we can avoid the consequences that are the results of
following those temptations.
Progress also very often consists in negation.
Man finds himself in a universe utterly unprepared and
poorly equipped to face the facts and conditions of life.
He must overcome the illusions and the deceptive forces
that are forever present in Nature.
When the light of intelligence first came into the
mentality of man, he found himself in a world that was a wilderness; a world
reeking with pestilence and populated with shrieking beasts and brutal and
savage people.
No wonder that Man's distorted intellect gave rise to a
series of ideas concerning God that makes one shudder at their hideousness.
His primitive imagination conceived gods of a multitude of
heads, of grotesque parts, of several bodies, of numberless eyes and legs and
arms.
In order that man may think clearly and rationally upon the
facts of life, all these concepts must be destroyed.
That is only one of the tasks of Atheism.
"To free a man from error is to give, not take
away," said Schopenhauer.
New Gods -- What For?
Some of our present-day humanists, emancipated to the
degree that they no longer accept deities like "Jehovah," cry for a
new concept of God. They want something to put in the place of what has been
taken away.
Do they want also a substitute for Hell?
And what would be their answer to this question, "If
the Devil should die would God make another?"
They are like children crying for the moon.
Will anyone be so good as to tell me what we need a new
concept of God for? Haven't we had gods enough? Hasn't it been task enough to
get rid of the conglomeration that has already plagued the human race?
I plead that we no longer contaminate heaven with these
hideous creatures and frightful monsters of religious hallucinations.
Destructive of Superstition
Ministers also take delight in saying that Atheism is
dogmatic and destructive.
If Atheism is called dogmatic it is because dogmatism is
the law of nature.
A fact is the most stubborn thing in the world. Matter
insists upon occupying space all by itself and motion will continue in motion
regardless of the opinions concerning it.
Time does not stop to listen to prayers.
"The Moving Finger writes;
and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."
And Atheism is destructive in the same sense that
Atheism is destructive in the same sense that Galileo was a
destroyer, when he corrected the erroneous conception, induced by false
theological ideas, concerning the existence of only one moon, when he discovered
the satellites of Jupiter.
And so throughout the history of intellectual progress is
this attitude true. Call it negative, call it dogmatic, call it destructive,
call it what you will. It is the main spring of progress.
Is a physician destructive when he cures a patient of
disease?
A Cure for Mental Disorder
The human race has suffered for centuries and is still
suffering from the mental disorder known as religion, and Atheism is the only
physician that will be able to effect a permanent
cure.
No wonder the great Buckle was prompted to say:
"Every great reform which has been effected
has consisted, not in doing something new, but in undoing something old."
But what hypocrisy it is on the part of ministers of
religion to call Atheism a negative philosophy, when their own Ten Commandments
are a series of "Thou shalt nots" --
But Atheism is also an aggressive and a militant and a
constructive philosophy.
It is interested in the HERE and NOW.
It finds problems enough here that require immediate
solution and does not fly to others that it knows not of.
Man Must Help Himself
Atheism cannot sit idly by and watch injustice perpetrated,
nor permit the exploitation of the weak by the strong.
Its ideal is the establishment of justice -- man-made
justice, even though it be.
If man waited for God to feed him he would starve to death.
Atheism believes in education. It believes in telling the
facts of life and revealing the truths as they are discovered regardless of
whose opinions it shocks. It is ever ready and willing to accept the new and
discard the old. Atheism does not believe that man's mission on earth is to
love and glorify God, but it does believe in living this life so that when you
pass on, the world will be better for your having lived.
That is the ideal that now inspires more hearts to help
humanity in its upward march than ever before in the history of the human race.
That is the ideal that inspired Shelley, that inspired
Voltaire, and Humboldt, and Garibaldi; that inspired Mark Twain, and John
Burroughs, and Luther Burbank. That is the ideal that inspires Sir Arthur
Keith, Albert Einstein and Thomas A. Edison.
If man wants help he must abandon his appeals to God. They
will prove only "echoes of his wailing cries."
The Evolution of Ideas
Atheism does not place any trust in God. The inscription on
our coins is a lie.
It was not long since when a person who denied the
existence of a personal god, who refused to accept the Bible as a divine
revelation, who branded as absurd that Christ was miraculously conceived, who
characterized as a delusion the resurrection, and who stigmatized as a myth
immortality of the soul, was charged by ministers of religion with being an
Atheist.
Thomas Paine was called a "filthy little atheist"
upon evidence that he did not even approximate this.
To call oneself anything but a Freethinker or an Atheist
after the denials of these religious premises is to belie one's own words.
We do not intend to let the clergy, to suit their fancy or
their moods, give us our definition of Atheism.
It may be perfectly satisfactory for the editors of the
Encyclopedia Britannica to commission a clergyman to write upon Atheism, but
that is no reason why we should accept him as an authority.
If a clergyman knew enough about Atheism to write with
authority upon the subject he would no longer remain a clergyman.
The rejection of religion and the denial of God has been
the definition of Atheism from time immemorial. We have accepted it in the
past, and we accept it today. We do not intend to compromise upon a single
point.
If religionists have advanced to our position, it is they
who must accept our banner.
Piety Condemns Thought
Have we so soon forgotten the Scopes Trial when Evolution
was denied a place in the school curriculum because it was branded as godless;
when all Evolutionists were charged with being blasphemous atheists?
Atheism has given to the human race the intellectual
monarchs of the world.
When the great
The Steps of Skepticism
When the Chemist went into his laboratory and discovered
the indestructibility of matter, he was called an Atheist because he proved the
impossibility of a Creator.
When the Astronomer pointed his telescope to the sky and
explored the regions of unlimited space, he was called an Atheist because he
found no god within the confines of space an no heaven
within the region of his explorations.
When the Geologist determined the age of the earth through
its rock and soil and formations, he was called an Atheist because he too
destroyed a belief in the Special six-day creation and repudiated the biblical
cosmogony.
When the Historian went back to ancient and prehistoric
times and discovered civilizations of high ethical and moral culture, of
intellectual achievements that are still an amazement
to us, he was called an Atheist because he exposed the myth of Adam, uncovered
the mistakes of Moses, and branded with the epithet of fraud the commands of
Jehovah.
When the Physician sought to alleviate the pain and
suffering of Man, he was called an Atheist because he refused to accept the
existence of disease as a special visitation of a vengeful god.
Even the discovery of anesthesia, the most humane of all of
man's accomplishments, was branded as an impious intrusion, and an effort to
circumvent and defeat the so-called will of this monstrous creature. And
Timothy Dwight, a gentleman, once president of
Every Scientist who refuses to be held back by narrow
theological limitations, and searches Nature for her secrets, becomes an
Atheist, the Millikans, the Osborns, and the Pupins to the contrary
notwithstanding.
That electrical wizard, a Prometheus himself, the late
Charles P. Steinmetz, said that Atheism was the ultimate philosophy of the
scientists.
"Where there are three students of nature there are
two Atheists," is an old saying.
Ingersoll's High Ideal
In this age and generation no one need cloak his Atheism
with some garment of so-called "religious respectability."
Charles Bradlaugh's and Robert G. Ingersoll's fight to make
Atheism respectable has fortunately come to pass.
When religion expresses a nobler sentiment than that
contained in these words of Ingersoll's, then, and only then, might it assume a
superior attitude. He said:
"Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you
will, I intend to so treat my children that they can come to my grave and
truthfully say, 'He who sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain. From his
lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind
word.'"
Compare that statement with the words of Jesus Christ when
he said that if a man hate not his mother and his
father, his brother and his sister, his wife and his children, he cannot become
his disciple, and then decide whose mantle you prefer to wear!
The Decline of Theism
In our own day we see a revolution taking place in the
ranks of religion. We see the liberating force of the great Freethinkers of the
past having their effects upon our generation by the breaking of the chains of
superstition that have enslaved mankind to a degrading religion.
Our fight today is no longer against Theism. The arguments
that were used by Freethinkers more than a century ago are now being used by
the liberal minister against his more orthodox brother.
Who can deny that progress has been made when ministers
themselves repudiate Theism?
Who today would expose himself to public ridicule and
defend Theism in the face of its history and its record?
It has perverted the mentality of man and has caused him
outrageously to abuse his own life.
In the name of God and for the love of God, Hell, in all
its fury, was let loose upon the earth.
No wonder Theism Is being
repudiated and disowned.
The liberal minister will have none of it.
Like Caesar, "but yesterday it might have stood
against the world, but now lies it here and none so poor as to do it
reverence."
Even in our theological colleges, we see the impossibility
of trying to harness a man of intelligence with the bridle of Theism, and as
the result of this impossible combination, there is a widespread repudiation of
religion and all that it stands for.
We are witnessing a period of intellectual honesty that
does credit even to ministers of religion. There is a positive and an
aggressive advance towards the ideals of Freethought.
The Death of Myths
And the time is not far distant when a minister who takes
money for prayers for the repose of the so-called soul of man, will be charged
with misrepresentation and fraud just as others are now being apprehended for
similar schemes of deception.
When a minister today makes a public declaration that he
can no longer believe in the Virgin Birth, the resurrection of Christ, in the
inspiration of the Scriptures; acknowledges that Moses was very often mistaken,
and can find no justification for the existence of a personal god, the brass
band plays and the flags wave for his "great courage," while as a
matter of fact these things have been so obvious to us that we look with pity
upon people who still believe them.
Full Way with Truth
We have no applause for those who have stolen the thunder
from the leaders of Freethought only to cloak it in a garment of so-called
"liberal religion."
We are encouraged at the progress they have made, but
unless they come the full way, they must be watched with the same vigilance and
fought with the same force as the Calvins and Knoxes.
Halfway measures will never do. They invariably prove
futile.
What a complete revolution has taken place when people must
make apologies for their religious beliefs, and give symbolical interpretations
to the incomprehensible ravings of insane men! When they must deny and reject
the beliefs that were but a few decades ago so tyrannically imposed upon the
people and for which unnumbered thousands suffered the penalty of torture and
death!
The Bondage of Beliefs
Is the modern trend to perpetuate religion, or is it doomed
to occupy the same place in history as the institution of slavery? And how apt
is that comparison of religion with slavery!
Throughout the ages religion has imprisoned and chained and
stultified the brain of man, just as the institution of slavery has bound arid
manacled and torn the limbs of man!
And when efforts were made to abolish the hateful
institution of slavery there were many who by their compromises only prolonged
its existence.
And the efforts of those today who
are compromising with religion and making apologies for its past crimes, are
only prolonging its existence and making more difficult the task to eradicate
this blot upon civilization.
They are interfering with the removal of the worst obstacle
that has ever blocked the intellectual progress of
Humanizing Reason
A rose may smell as sweet by any other name, and religion
will be just as obnoxious under any other title.
There are some who claim that religion can be humanized,
but how can we humanize something that does not admit of humanization?
How can we humanize ignorance, superstition and brutality?
Can we humanize the thumb-screw, the rack, and the auto da fé?
If we could humanize religion then the dream of the
alchemist will have come true.
If we could humanize religion then truly base metal can be
converted into gold.
Humanism and Unitarianism differ only in degree and not in
kind from Catholicism and Presbyterianism. The great trouble with the liberal
Unitarian, the Modernist, and the Humanist is that we do not know where they
stand. Their attachment to religion as an element of respectability is still an
enigma. Their so-called emancipation from the fetishes and superstitions of
their more orthodox brethren is more apparent than real.
Before the Board of Education of this city some years ago,
when the proposal was made to permit children to receive religious training on
public school time, the most fanatical supporter and most vehement proponent of
this scheme was a Unitarian Minister.
He loudly decried the fact that our children were being
"deprived" of a religious education. He stood side by side and
shoulder to shoulder with Monsignor Lavelle of St. Patrick's Cathedral and the
late Bishop Burch of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Defense of Pious Fake
This minister was terribly perturbed because he was afraid
our children would grow up without some knowledge of the story of Adam and Eve;
that they would not be acquainted with Jonah's sojourn in the belly of the
whale, or of the miraculous conversation of Baalam and his Ass.
And while Freethinkers were making an effort for the
newspapers publicly to state, on their behalf, that they had offered a thousand
dollars reward for the evidence of one authentic cure that took place at the
grave of the consumptive priest, Father Patrick Powers, buried in the cemetery
at Malden, Massachusetts, Charles Francis Potter was making a declaration from
the platform of his Humanist pulpit, concerning these so-called cures, that
"there was something in it."
If it is Mr. Potter's contention that auto-suggestion has
accomplished beneficial results in patients suffering from mental disorders,
our answer is that we heartily approve of the application of mental therapy in
such cases, but do not believe that it should be administered in a grave yard!
By his public statement he condoned this shameful
exploitation of thousands of credulous people who were making a weary
pilgrimage, at the sacrifice of their health, to this latest fraudulent
undertaking of the church.
Immediately following Mr. Potter's statement, Gardner
Jackson, writing in the Nation, exposed this pious fraud. Mr. Jackson
very significantly showed the close blood relationship between the
superintendent of the cemetery and Cardinal O'Connell of
In our opinion, it was the duty of every American to use
his efforts to prevent the establishment in this country of so barefaced a
fraud as the establishment of a shrine similar to that of
If to condone such a disgraceful exhibition as a gesture of
compromise with religion is a sample of Humanism, then we want none of it!
Church Parasitism
And even John Haynes Holmes, for whom I have the highest
personal regard, and who stands at the forefront of the liberal ministers of
this country, cannot be pardoned for his advocacy of exempting church property
from taxation. He claims that churches increase the property value of the
surrounding buildings and permit the maximum of air and light.
I say that if you make a park out of the land upon which
the church stands, you will accomplish all that Mr. Holmes claims for the church, and one thing more. It will do away with the evil of
the church and free the country of these institutions of superstition and
houses of stultification.
But with the advent of the skyscraper building on church
property even this argument falls to the ground. The present tendency of the
church is to get "under cover" of an income-producing apartment house
or office building.
Let us replace the churches of this city with a system of
parks and we will make
Society has no right, through the instrumentality of its
government, to exempt from taxation a single institution, while a member of the
community is without food and shelter.
The church may be successful in convincing a person that
the more he suffers here the less he will suffer hereafter, but we are
concerned with putting food into his stomach, clothes on his back, and shelter
over his head now.
One may believe what he will as long as he is well fed and
protected from the elements, but the moment he falls below that condition he is
actually deprived of food necessary to life by the church that does not pay
taxes.
In reality it is actually stealing food from one who starving.
It is like a miser counting his gold while poverty is
knocking at his bolted door.
To delude a man into believing that the more he gives of
the possessions of this life for the imaginary benefits to be enjoyed in a
mythical one is to perpetrate upon him a monstrous and unforgivable fraud.
Every steeple that rises above a church is a dagger thrust
into the heart of Humanity. It has proved so in the past. And by the past, we
judge the future.
Present Trend Atheistic
The situation today is not whether the present trend in
religion, with its impossible premises and its still more impossible articles
of belief, leads to a compromise with science, or whether it should be
liberalized into a respectable harmony with the pace set by education and the
progress made by man, but whether its complete eradication must be accomplished
so that it may no longer hamper man in his search for the truth nor be an
obstacle in his path toward his ultimate mastery of the forces of Nature.
Only when a man ceases to be a child, only when he
emancipates himself completely from the fetishes of religion, and gives up his
silly and childish ideas concerning the existence of God, will he be able to
rise to that commanding position and station in life when he can be truly
called a Man!