tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43754204774468751592024-03-08T17:31:57.127-08:00Essays of an Atheist by Woolsey Teller, ©1945Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-3519300799835448902012-03-30T19:43:00.000-07:002019-09-02T00:23:41.754-07:00Main Index<table style="float: right; width: 310px">
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<td style="text-align: center;"> <img style="border-width: 0px;" src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/essays/obituary-woolsey-teller.jpg" alt="Woolsey Teller Obituary" width="310" height="565" /> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1954/03/12/archives/woolsey-teller-64-atheist-leader-dies.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Woolsey Teller, 64, Atheist Leader, Dies. New York Times</a>, March 12, 1954.</td>
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<p><strong>"Essays of an Atheist"</strong><br /> by Woolsey Teller<br /> ©1945 by The Truth Seeker Company, Inc.</p>
<p>"I never knew real contentment and satisfaction of mind until I had completely shaken myself free from all Christian ideals.<br /> To me they are all fantastic and untrue. It is extraordinary that they continue to be preached and accepted by so many - because to practice them is impossible."<br /> - Sir Buckston Browne, F.R.C.S., LL.D.</p>
<p>"As I see it, the supernatural has no support in science, it in incompatible with science, it is frequently an active foe of science. It is unnecessary for the good life."<br /> - Dr. A.J. Carlson, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Science, Feb. 27, 1931).</p>
<p>"These essays, originally published in The Truth Seeker, have been saved from a journalistic existence (as nearly as anything written for a monthly publication can be saved from oblivion in a world of ruthless extinctions) by its editor, Charles Smith, my publisher and companion in arms for many years, who, being a born crusader, has decided to give them an extended lease of life between covers. …Whether one agrees or disagrees with the opinions expressed in this volume is of small moment; what really matters is the degree to which a writer stimulates others to independent research and a reappraisal of conventional doctrines. After all, one must be judged, not by his errors, but by his batting average. If he can keep the mistakes down to a minimum and the score high, he will be contributing in some small way to a better understanding of life and its problems."<br /> -Woolsey Teller</p>
<h4>CONTENTS</h4>
<ol>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/preface-essays-of-atheist-by-woolsey.html">PREFACE</a> <br />Preface by Woolsey Teller</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/futility-of-philosophy.html">The Futility of Philosophy</a> <br />...critiques varied famed philosophers throughout history, detailing some of the absurdities and nonsense found in some of their quotes.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/mysticism-in-modern-physics.html">Mysticism in Modern Physics</a> <br />...aimed to dis-spell misconceptions about the atom.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/muddlers-of-science.html">Muddlers of Science</a> <br />...aims to discredit fictitional theories of the day, about atomic particles and Physics.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/christian-cowardice-and-atheist-courage.html">Christian Cowardice and Atheist Courage</a> <br />Woolsey Teller gives his review of the old saying ''No Atheists in Foxholes''.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/froth-and-fraud-in-fundamentalism.html">Froth and Fraud in Fundamentalism</a> <br />...explores the questions related to science and religion, creation vs evolution, Noah's Flood, Jonah and other issues.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/christianity-and-insanity.html">Christianity and Insanity</a> <br />... discusses in depth on the History of Christianity, and the belief in demon possession, and the abuses that occurred against the insane.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/sea-gulls-and-christian-gullibility.html">Sea Gulls and Christian Gullibility</a> <br />... written during WWII, questioning the 'miracle' that a Seagull was delivered by Providence, to save men stranded at Sea.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/atheism-and-jesuit-duplicity.html">Atheism-and Jesuit Duplicity</a> <br />... Teller addresses his critics at a Jesuit Journal, on the poor conditions of many Catholics, and their lack of freedom to be individuals.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/christianity-and-astrology.html">Christianity and Astrology</a> <br />... the history of astrology, prophecy, and superstition within the Bible, and throughout the History of Christian Church.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/whitewashing-infamous.html">Whitewashing the Infamous</a> <br />... on the ongoing controversy about Science and Religion, including criticism on historical suppression of science and freethinking.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/bigotry-ally-of-religion.html">Bigotry: Ally of Religion</a> <br />... criticizing the claim bigotry is kept under control, through religion, but the author points out how bigotry at its worst, was when religion was at its zenith.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/sociology-in-slumberland.html">Sociology in Slumberland</a> <br />... discussing how the world would be more peaceful, for all, without religious bigotry and intolerance.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/ape-ancestry-of-man.html">The Ape Ancestry of Man</a> <br />... discusses the question whether Darwin really meant man descended from ape, or is merely a cousin of apes, including quotes by Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel and others.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/monkeying-with-darwin.html">Monkeying with Darwin</a> <br />... criticizing a museum for displaying a sign misleading the public to believe that Darwin did not teach man came from Old World Monkeys.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/hamstringing-health-seekers.html">Hamstringing the Health Seekers</a> <br />... criticizes the overwhelming pressure to look good and have a perfect body, emphasizing on the need to build the mind, more than the body.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/humanism-new-religion.html">Humanism -- A New Religion</a> <br />... answers, from his perspective, what Humanism is, and what Humanists believe.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/egoism-and-altruism-considered.html">Egoism and Altruism Considered</a> <br />... in his perspective, explains the reason people do good, is motivated by self-interest.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/christianity-and-einstein.html">Christianity and Einstein</a> <br />... discusses the subject of Albert Einstein and his particular views on God, Spirituality and Science.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/fictional-biography-and-thomas-paine.html">"Fictional Biography" and Thomas Paine</a> <br />... defends the reputation of Thomas Paine against a fictional biography about the Founding Father.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/atheism-of-astronomy-reply-to-critics.html">A Reply to Critics</a> <br />... response to his critics, after publication of his book "The Atheism of Astronomy". <br />
<h4>BRIEFER COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS</h4>
</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/hill-billy-book.html">A Hill-Billy Book</a> <br />... responding to a Fundamentalist, who published "The Bible Defeats Atheism", after the Rimmer Trial, on science and religion.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/sociological-pipe-dreams.html">Sociological Pipe-Dreams</a> <br />... on Sociology, and its futility to predict human behavior.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/is-bible-valuable.html">Is the Bible Valuable?</a> <br />... discussion between Woolsey Teller and a Geography Researcher, Yale University, asking if the Bible is a valuable book.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/that-jonah-stuff-again.html">That Jonah Stuff Again</a> <br />... commentary on the story of Jonah and the Whale, and a Chicago University Professor who presumably crawled into the belly of a Sperm Whale.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/chameleonic-christianity.html">Chameleonic Christianity</a> <br />... criticizes a claim by a Christian, that the WWII was being fought to preserve Christian values.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/st-patricks-gift-to-ireland.html">St. Patrick's "Gift" to Ireland</a> <br />... criticizing Saint Patrick's contribution of Christianity to Ireland.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/dr-gregory-and-religion.html">Dr. Gregory and Religion</a> <br />... criticizes Sir Richard Gregory, President of the British Association, for his views on religion being a necessity for morality.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/sideline-criticism.html">Sideline Criticism</a> <br />... his personal view on the Historicity of Jesus, and his lack of belief that Jesus performed miracles.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/our-gun-powder-survival.html">Our Gun-Powder Survival</a> <br />... commentary about mathematical probabilities relating to the fear that "the human race may drive itself to extinction" by war.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/super-sensory-superstition.html">Super-Sensory Superstition</a> <br />... skeptical viewpoint, about a documented case in the 1940's, of a Clairvoyant who could read symbols on cards, at a distance.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/telepathy-vulgar-delusion.html">Telepathy: a Vulgar Delusion</a> <br />... ghosts, poltergeists, telepathy and telekinesis, which include a critical comparison between science and superstition.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/politicians-and-prayer.html">Politicians and Prayer</a> <br />... commentary during World War II, on the futility of prayers offered up by politicians.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/non-kosher-tax-payer-speaks.html">A Non-Kosher Tax-Payer Speaks</a> <br />... on kosher killing, and the government protecting the practice, through the Bureau of Kosher Enforcement.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/kosher-killing-cruelty.html">Kosher-Killing Cruelty</a> <br />... on a trial that took place in the 1940s, on the issue of kosher killing. The author describes it as cruelty to animals.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/flouting-bill-of-rights.html">Flouting the Bill of Rights</a> <br />... a proposed Bill, which would prohibit citizens from criticizing any religion, treading on rights of freedom of press and speech.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/evolution-implies-atheism.html">Evolution Implies Atheism</a> <br />... discusses evolution, and the seemingly non-intelligent randomness in nature.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/molasses-or-vinegar.html">Molasses or Vinegar?</a> <br />... on atheists who fear to call themselves atheists, encouraging fellow atheists to be aggressive with their beliefs.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/columnist-barks-up-wrong-tree.html">A Columnist Barks up the Wrong Tree</a> <br />... criticizing a newspaper reporter for his defense of the Catholic Church.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/fallacy-of-free-will.html">The Fallacy of Free Will</a> <br />... discusses free will, and the doubts that people are guided by religious beliefs, but more by environmental conditioning.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/miracle-joint-at-lourdes.html">The Miracle Joint at Lourdes</a> <br />... on the Lourdes Shrine, where people report miraculous healing. Briefly explains the history, and the fallacies of this famed shrine.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/vivisection-euthenasia-and-cremation.html">Vivisection, Euthanasia, and Cremation</a> <br />... in support of animal experimentation, euthanasia, and cremation.</li>
<li><a href="http://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/miscellaneous-notes.html">Miscellaneous Notes</a> <br />... collection of thoughts responding to current issues of the day, relating to the discrepancies between science, spirituality and religion.</li>
</ol>
<center><em>Essays of an Atheist by Woolsey Teller</em>, ©1945, The Truth Seeker Company, Inc. <br /> Transcription to web provided by Sharon Mooney. Original publication, courtesy of the library owned by David Mooney.</center>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-24846753686184789092012-03-29T19:58:00.000-07:002019-09-02T00:23:56.445-07:00Preface - Essays of an Atheist by Woolsey Teller<p>AS prefaces are usually written last and as few persons ever read them, I have reserved all the innocuous things I can think of for this section of my book. Here you will find no assault on time-honored sanctuaries, no treading on pious toes, no trampling on well-kept lawns, and pretty flower-beds with their signs, "Keep Off". All this has been done in the pages ahead.</p>
<p>These essays, originally published in The Truth Seeker, have been saved from a journalistic existence (as nearly as anything written for a monthly publication can be saved from oblivion in a world of ruthless extinctions) by its editor, Charles Smith, my publisher and companion in arms for many years, who, being a born crusader, has decided to give them an extended lease of life between covers. Revised and enlarged, they stand as a heterogeneous offering on sundry topics.</p>
<p>To my numerous friends, scattered in four continents, who, by their cordial letters and valuable criticisms, have encouraged me in my work, a thousand thanks. To my enemies, a thousand thanks as well. Without their stimulating opposition, these articles would never have been written.</p>
<p>Whether one agrees or disagrees with the opinions expressed in this volume is of small moment; what really matters is the degree to which a writer stimulates others to independent research and a reappraisal of conventional doctrines.</p>
<p>After all, one must be judged, not by his errors,but by his batting average. If he can keep the mistakes down to a minimum and the score high, he will be contributing in some small way to a better understanding of life and its problems.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-59190375236278820092012-03-26T12:50:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:24:14.848-07:00Miscellaneous Notes<p>IN an article dealing with "Mysticism in Science", in The Scientific Monthly for February, 1943, Dr. R.S. Underwood, Professor of Mathematics, Texas Technological College, gives an intellectual drubbing to those who, in the name of mathematics, invent a terminology that, because of its dual meaning, is misleading to the public.</p>
<p>He castigates those who, calling "time" a dimension, give the impression that our three-dimensional space is unreal or has been shattered by mathematical equations.</p>
<p>"It is this change of meaning which allows us to speak of 'time' as a dimension; and it is still true that, outside of useless and metaphysical speculation, there are three and only three dimensions of 'space'. The fourth dimension of mystic significance is an nonsensical as the fourth corner of a tin triangle." And he states: "My objection is solely to the terminology which implies that old-fashioned 'three-space' is a simpleton's illusion and an artificial shackle."</p>
<p>The algebraic devices which the mathematician uses to extend the boundaries of his calculations often lead people to imagine that he has obliterated our three-dimensional world and has nullified Euclidean geometry. It is this trickery which Dr. Underwood condemns:"To help his thinking, and heedless of the fraud he is perpetrating, he denies that he has gone out of geometry, and he begins to talk mystically of such things as "hyper-spheres' whose intersections with planes are spheres. Neither he nor any one else can draw pictures of such monstrosities. Intoxicated with his verbiage, he begins to see Alice-in-Wonderland 'four-space' on the horizon . . . "</p>
<p>Three-dimensional space is here to stay regardless of the trick patter and ambiguous nomenclature of the mathematicians. We still build three-dimensional houses, know that straight parallel lines do not meet, and that "space" does not "bend back upon itself" like a contortionist in a side show.</p>
<p>As Dr. Underwood observes, it is this "straining for weird and meaningless conclusions which spring from the accidental implications of unfortunate technical terms" that causes confusion and introduces "mysticism" into science.</p>
<hr style="width: 50%; height: 1px;" align="left" />
<p>DOES mathematics, the science of accurate calculation, lead to accuracy in thinking? Many say "yes"; this unregenerated plebian says "No". Some of the world's most illustrious "screwballs" in matters of religion have been excellent mathematicians.</p>
<p>Tycho Brahe and Kepler both believed in astrology. "Tycho Brahe was from his fifteenth year devoted to astrology," says Morris Jastrow, "and adjoining his observatory at Uranienburg the astronomer-royal of Denmark had a laboratory built in order to study alchemy, and it was only a few years before his death that he finally abandoned astrology." Kepler "peopled the planets with souls and genii", and put "an astrological interpretation on the disappearance of the brilliant star of 1572, which Tycho had observed."</p>
<p>Mathematicians of distinction have consulted mediums, talked and walked, arm in arm, with ghosts, and believed in haunted houses. Nothing in mathematics can prevent a man from being or becoming superstitious. There is no reason why a Christian Scientist cannot learn trigonometry or master calculus. A man who has invented a bomb-sight or calculated an eclipse may, for all we know, be eating his Savior at this minute, or be carrying a St. Christopher medal on the steering wheel of his car.</p>
<p>Our Patent Office in Washington was once glutted with hundreds of models of perpetual motion machines invented by mathematical geniuses; today our Government refuses to issue patents for perpetual motion.</p>
<p>Newton, great mathematician though he was, was a tyro at thinking outside his specialized field. He prattled piously about the Book of Revelation, which Jefferson called "the ravings of a maniac."</p>
<p>Distinguished mathematicians believe in "curved space", tell us that parallel lines meet, and that a moving yard stick will become shorter if it travels at sufficient speed. You can become a midget or even shrink to nothing if you run fast enough.</p>
<p>Eddington, who can tell you the exact number of electrons in the universe (count them yourself if you do not accept his figures), writes religious rubbish with the solemnity of a country parson. His "Science and the Unseen World", which I keep on a shelf marked "Junk", contains this enlightening sentence: "It is well that there should be some to advise us whether our spiritual bread contains the right kind of vitamins." If Eddington knows what he is talking about a tenth of the time, he is doing well, and my tribute to his intelligence is more than generous.</p>
<p>Whitehead is so "profound" (another word for muddy) that no two of his disciples can understand him alike. It is doubtful whether Whitehead himself knows from one page to the next what he is driving at.</p>
<p>All of which shows that a knowledge of mathematics does not lead to accuracy -- except in mathematics.</p>
<hr style="width: 50%; height: 1px;" align="left" />
<p>ONE cannot expect too much from "liberal" clergymen who are only partly out of the woods.</p>
<p>John Haynes Holmes values reason -- even extols it -- but in a sermon preached in Community Church doubts if it is "enough" or "if it can lead us to all truth". Man, says he, "possesses other faculties than those of reason" and "there are fields of experience into which reason cannot enter at all," such as "art, music, literature, and the miracle of love." These, he thinks, belong to a world of mysticism.</p>
<p>The man who can enjoy a beautiful painting, the melodious sounds of a well-played violin, thrill at fine writing or enjoy the reactions he feels in the play of his affections, is no more living in a "mystic" world than the crap-shooter who gets exhilaration from throwing dice. It is a world, not above or beyond reason, but one in which the uses of reason are not required. No one has to reason why he likes pleasant experiences more than unpleasant ones, and since "art, music, literature, and the miracle of love" furnish, for the most part, pleasant sensations, there is no need for the application of reason.</p>
<p>The Rev. Dr. Holmes, in separating his world of material strata from his world of pleasant sensations, is like a man trying to detach a candle from its flame. A man can enjoy a sunset or a beautiful painting without stopping to ask himself why an atmospheric condition or a particular arrangement of paint on canvas is giving him pleasure. If, however, he is insistent in the matter, he can apply his reason here as soundly as he can in any other field. There are reasons why the farmer likes the country and dislikes the city, why some prefer billiards to golf, why some men prefer one form of personal gratification to another. Reason can be applied to Mr. Holmes' "mystic" world, if an explanation is required.</p>
<p>"Art, music, literature, and the miracle of love" are part of the material world, and depend on sinews, nerves and glandular secretions for appreciation and expression. There is nothing "mystic" about them.</p>
<hr style="width: 50%; height: 1px;" align="left" />
<p>SOMEWHERE in a book of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Fosdick, there is a reference to "dirt going it blind," as descriptive of the universe under a materialistic interpretation. Materialists accept the phrase as accurately descriptive of cosmic activities, even though the clergyman meant to be funny.</p>
<p>After all, there is more merit in "dirt going it blind" than in a deity "going it" daffy. An intelligent being who did what the universe does would be put down for either an irresponsible dolt or an irascible brute. What possible excuse can a theologian offer for his God running amuck?</p>
<p>Was it Dr. Fosdick's deity or was it "dirt going it blind" that destroyed Lisbon in 1755? When that city, by an earthquake and a tidal wave, was reduced almost instantly to a heap of ruins, and 30,000 to 40,000 persons were killed, were there intelligent forces or "blind" forces at work?</p>
<p>Is it a deity or is it "dirt going it blind" that turns out billions of pestilential germs, billions of mosquitoes, billions of flies, and billions of ticks? Is it deity or "dirt" that turns out parasitical worms?</p>
<p>Theism is absurd, and any attempt to refine it, to make it look respectable adds to the absurdity. And nothing is more absurd than clergymen themselves "going it blind"</p>
<hr style="width: 50%; height: 1px;" align="left" />
<p>K.B. TRACY,M.D., a Fundamentalist of Portland, Maine, has just published the second part of his "Bible and Science Tracy versus Teller" leaflet. Part II is quite as Fundamentalistically sound as Part I.</p>
<p>Dr. Tracy rejects man's animal origin, scorns Pithecanthropus erectus, and says that evolution is false because dogs and cats do not breed together. Evidently, he will not be convinced of the truth of evolution until he sees a cat-dog kitten or a dog-cat puppy on his doorstep. Evolutionists, says he, "have many theories or guesses and :imaginations, especially crack-brain imagination". As for women having children by ghosts, "we have a record in the Holy Bible", says he, "where human women gave birth to children from angels, and the children were giants". This Dr. Tracy accepts with no suspicion that anyone was crack-brained here. And "it is going to be just too bad for Mr. Teller, and all others who do not [accept the Virgin Birth], when they meet Jesus Christ as their judge at the coming judgment bar of God Almighty".</p>
<p>Dr. Tracy is troubled over the Bryan poser of how a black cow, eating green grass, can give "white" milk "that forms yellow butter". If you cannot explain this bit of color change, there must be a God.</p>
<p>Cows (whether black, white, brown, or mottled) all give "white" milk. This is because milk is composed of tiny globules of fat in a casein solution. The color of the animal's skin has no more to do with the "whiteness" of the milk than the color of a steamship's hull has to do with the color of the smoke that comes out of the ship's funnels.</p>
<p>The coloring matter that makes plants "green" is called "chlorophyll". This pigment loses its tinting qualities through chemical change. Grass, during the process of digestion, changes "color" inside the cow, as it does when it is cut down in a meadow and turns into hay.</p>
<p>Fundamentalists are funny people. If black cows gave black milk, brown cows brown milk, and mottled cows mottled milk, it would be hailed as evidence of "design" But let all cows, of various colors, give only "white" milk,:and we are asked to admire the wisdom of God.</p>
<hr style="width: 50%; height: 1px;" align="left" />
<p>WHAT is the matter with the "Scientific American"? Has it gone "soft"?</p>
<p>In a recent issue is a milk-and-mush editorial, which is almost apologetic in tone on the Subject of astrology. The writer, A. G. Ingalls, calls astrology a "pseudo-science," but believes one should not be too harsh in offering criticism. It is "not good psychology," he thinks, "to label the astrologers fakes and frauds, as some have." And why not? What is the proper "psychology" to use when men propagate "fakes and frauds"? And when have those who attack science been over-choice in the niceties of language?</p>
<p>If astrology, with its phony charts, is not a flimflam game on the part of its sponsors, we do not know what it is.</p>
<p>Besides, thinks Mr. Ingalls, we cannot be positive about anything. "There is not and never has been any way to distinguish positively between truth and error." If there is not, then it is a mistake to call the Sun a star for fear it may be a comet--or the Brooklyn Bridge. And how can Mr. Ingalls be sure that astrology is not a science? Writers who play around in this loose manner are "just talking."</p>
<p>And, as if this were not enough soft-soaping for one issue of the paper, the "Scientific American" treats Spiritualism with a gentle hand.</p>
<p>"We want," say its editors, "to know if such things as phantoms, ghosts, spirits, or vampires actually visit us." If a magazine published in the interest of science does not already know that these things do not exist (and is willing to say so), it should move to Haiti and change its name to the "Voodoo Monthly." It will learn there all that is possible to know about ghosts and vampires.</p>
<p>As to its desire to "investigate the supernatural," one must be a bit skeptical. The books which the "Scientific American" recommends to its readers on its "Psychic Phenomena" page, are not the kind that are apt to fumigate the minds of those who have a hankering for spookology. One could hardly do worse if he followed the book listings in Spiritualistic papers.</p>
<p>A NEW freak idea, outdoing telepathy, about which some of you will be hearing, is "teleportation." In this you do not "telepath" your thoughts to someone else, but send anything you want by merely "thinking" it to the desired destination. By this method you can "teleport" a carload of pig iron from Pittsburgh to 'Frisco, or a shipment of machine guns to the Far East. We can see where railroads and steamships will soon go out of business if "teleportation" works.</p>
<p>Except by the Spiritualists (who can swallow anything), Mrs. Guppy's flight over the chimney tops of London is looked upon with scorn, but how can her trip through the air be compared with the "teleportation" of a herd of elephants or a fleet of battleships?</p>
<p>Yet the idea is not strictly new. Jesus Christ, standing on a mountain top, "thought" himself to heaven, and apparently has never thought of "thinking" himself back. If he does not watch out, some pious teleporters will be "thinking" him back to earth, whether he would come or not.</p>
<p>"Teleportation" may be good, but it does not compare with our own concoction, "Telenihilation," by which a nation at war will be able to "think" its enemies into falling down dead.</p>
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<p>THOSE who admire Celestial Wisdom should turn to the termite. Here is a wood-boring insect that pursues its work of destruction without regard for the property rights of others or for esthetic values. I have seen, in tropical countries, beautiful and costly furniture destroyed in a short time.</p>
<p>In the United States alone, the annual damage is estimated at $40,000,000. This is not a large or impressive figure according to New Deal standards, but this is because we have only 58 species of termites engaged in this particular kind of boring from within. Europe is relatively free, with only two species of termites out of a world-total of 1,800 species.<br />Procreation is well provided for, and the termite, says Dr. Victor W. von Hagen (Scientific Monthly, July, 1942), "outrivals in fecundity any other terrestrial animal".</p>
<p>An African termite queen (living from 10 to 40 years) lays 6,000 to 7,000 eggs and day and may produce as many as 100,000,000 eggs during her productive life. True, not all eggs are hatched, as God, in his infinite capacity to preserve values, has seen fit to produce animals to feed upon the termites. Birds, frogs, lizards, and snakes help Providence to undo on the one hand what it has ordained on the other. Yet the termite does exceedingly well in spite of its numerous enemies.</p>
<p>"The termite organization", says Dr. von Hagen, "has been successful, and it has survived for millions of years", thus having, we may note, under the guidance of Providence, a somewhat longer lineage than the Ancient Order of Hibernians.</p>
<p>Someone has been quoted as saying that God must love the common man because he made so many of them. How much more, on the basis of numbers, must he love the termite. There is, of course no accounting for tastes.</p>
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<p>AUTUMN foliage is now taking on its gorgeous coloration, and we will hear again the pious murmur:<br />"There must be a God!"</p>
<p>Nothing is said of the hot, dreary wastes of desert sand, or of the dull monotony of polar ice. It is enough that some Divine Artist enlivens our November leaves with bright and vivid colors. So, at least, the theist believes.</p>
<p>The green of summer has turned to orange, red, and rust, but it is a momentary splendor, followed by falling leaves and the killing blast of winter. Cold-winds and frost kill the leaves and strip the entire tree bare. As it is, there is nothing in God's program but a burst of color ending in crumpled leaves and bare trees,</p>
<p>It is a simple matter to science, this change of leaf coloration. "The yellow and orange pigments are less complex, chemically", writes Dr. Edwin B. Matzke, Department of Botany, Columbia University, "than the green chlorophylls, and they are also more stable. When the weather gets cold in the Fall, the green colors, which break down more easily, tend to disappear, and then the yellow and orange, which have been present all along but masked by the others, become visible."</p>
<p>Cold destroys the green pigment, "chlorophyll", quicker than the yellow pigment in the leaves and the "anthocyanins", which give them their flaming reds. It is merely a matter of the green pigment being less durable than the others when subjected to cold. There is no artist in the case, merely a change of color as simple as a man's hair turning from black to gray.</p>
<p>But the theist, who sees everything that isn't so, will continue to imagine a Master Painter with a brush and paint pot in his hand going the rounds when the Autumn weather arrives.</p>
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<p>THE Roman Catholic Church is unique in many ways, but in none more than in its claim to material sovereignty. It is the only religion in the world that issues currency, prints postage stamps, and exchanges envoys to and from foreign powers. It is the only one, moreover, that maintains an army.</p>
<p>This army, small as it is, has recently been increased, as we learn from a news dispatch to the New York Times :<br />"For the first time, in seventy-three years--since 1870 -- the Palatine Guard of the Vatican today was ordered outside Vatican territory into Rome to protect Vatican possessions . . . It was announced that the Pontifical Military Guard, approximately 800 men of all services, had been augmented by another 2,500 all of whom are armed with the most modern equipment, replacing their principally symbolic halberts of peace days."</p>
<p>Tiny as this armed force is, it is nevertheless a symbol of Catholic sovereignty and temporal power, and may be enlarged, if, when, and as (in the language of legal documents) circumstances require.</p>
<p>Vatican City is a sovereign state, with subjects in all parts of the globe, residing in foreign states, but nevertheless subject to the jurisdiction and laws of the Papal Dictatorship. It is totalitarian in form, and has at its head a Supreme Dictator, who is accountable to no one but God, is himself infallible in faith and morals, and in matters of difference between his state and others must be regarded as always right in the eyes of his subjects.</p>
<p>The Pope can do no wrong, never makes a mistake, and knows always what is best for his subjects abroad, and demands at all times unqualified obedience!</p>
<p>Just now he is denouncing "atrocities", having never heard of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion of Jews from Spain, and the burning of heretics, all of which his Church sponsored, and is moving heaven and earth (which won't move) to stop the war. By talking to the air in a reverent manner he hopes to bring hostilities to a close, and when the war ends, as all wars eventually do, he will know that he played a tremendous part in the bringing about of peace, and everyone who eats his Jesus regularly, or as faithfully as he does his spinach, will think so, too. As for the politicians--leave it to them to tell the world how much we owe to Ratti of the Vatican.</p>
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<p>"Israel as a nation has achieved no distinction whatever and has made no contribution whatever to human civilization. As a nation in the past, Israel was not one whit different from numerous other little and equally insignificant nations. And nothing whatever suggests that, restored to national existence, Israel would be aught different from the many little insignificant, racial states which struggle desperately to maintain and to justify their national existence.''</p>
<p>No, it is not an "anti-Semite" speaking. It is Dr. Julian Morgenstern, President of Hebrew Union College, who is merely stating what every scholar knows who is not stultified by the ridiculous claims of Israelite propaganda.</p>
<p>S. Margoshes, who quotes the passage in an editorial in the Jewish newspaper "The Day", is highly incensed that a distinguished Jew should talk this way and labels the statement a "downright falsehood". "It was," says he, "under the Jewish State, that is, during the Jewish Nationhood in Palestine, that most of the books of the Bible were produced"--as if this were something of which to be proud.</p>
<p>It is to the holy book of the Jews that we owe most of our current superstitions, and if there is cause for rejoicing in this, Mr. Margoshes' ideas of gratitude differ from our own. The book is the worst contribution that semi-barbarism has given to the world.</p>
<p>Because of the Bible, science was throttled for hundreds of years, Galileo was made to recant, Spinoza was cursed by the synagogue and ostracized by Jews, and heretics died at the stake. Its pages are proof of the fact that the ancient Israelites were an ignorant and superstitious tribe, who believed in polygamy, human slavery, and animal sacrifice, and groveled in the basest superstitions. So long as the harem-king Solomon, the profligate David, and the rape-inspiring Moses are heroes of the Bible, there can be no incentive for a higher pattern of behavior.</p>
<p>The modern Jew who wishes to play a useful part in the life of the community will do well to discard Judaism, by forgetting the superstitions of the past, none of which has contributed either to his own enlightenment or to the progress of the world.</p>
<p>Dr. Morgenstern is correct and, while orthodox Jews may howl at him, he has placed his finger on the sore spot of Jewish life. Israel--we repeat his words--"has made no contribution whatever to human civilization."</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-59514819517139612482012-03-26T12:46:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:24:32.362-07:00Vivisection, Euthenasia and Cremation<p>I HOLD in contempt those writers who decry vivisection, ignorant as they are that animal experimentation, under proper supervision, has contributed vastly to surgical and medical knowledge. It is better to experiment on lower forms of life than on human beings; better that rabbits, cats, and rats be sacrificed for the lessening of human misery than that knowledge stand still and humanity suffer.</p>
<p>The vivisectionist is the real and far-sighted humanitarian, who believes that the alleviation of human pain is infinitely desirable even if it must be procured at the expense of some pain to the lower animals.</p>
<p>Darwin, one of the kindest and most humane of men, wrote: "I quite agree that it [vivisection] is justifiable for real investigation on physiology." And again: "It is certain that physiology can progress only by experiments on living animals."</p>
<p>To the maudlin sentimentalists who wallow in remonstrances against vivisection, I recommend a reading of the article, "Vivisection" in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.</p>
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<p>NO society can consider itself civilized unless it practices euthenasia. We mercifully shoot or chloroform animals which have broken a spine or which are otherwise hopelessly stricken, but we are afraid to put out of their misery those human beings who suffer from some incurable disease. It is thought nobler in our present civilization to have such persons endure a slow and agonizing death.</p>
<p>It has been the practice of the church to fight euthanasia on the ground that we must wait until God "calls us home".</p>
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<p>CREMATION is the clean, quick, sanitary method for the disposal of human remains. It permit the immediate disintegration of decomposing flesh, reducing, in a short time, to ashes and gas that which, if left to itself, must slowly decay. Esthetically, a crematory ending is infinitely superior to sealing a body in a casket and allowing it slowly to rot.</p>
<p>Opposition to the practice is largely of a religious character, based on the belief of a bodily resurrection, or on the false and pernicious sentiment that the act of burning human remains is "disrespectful" to the deceased.</p>
<p>Cremation is thus opposed by the Roman Catholic Church: "She holds it unseemly (says the Catholic Encyclopedia) that the human body, once the living temple of God . . . should finally be subjected to a treatment that piety, conjugal and fraternal love, or even mere friendship seem to revolt against as inhuman." Hell fire and damnation are not revolting to this tender-hearted church, but cremation is.</p>
<p>A Catholic by the name of O'Hara, writing on cremation in the Brooklyn Tablet, speaks of "the harrowing ordeal of destruction of the body by fire." He apparently does not know that dead bodies do not feel.</p>
<p>When, in its Inquisitional days, the Catholic Church committed living bodies to the flame, it did not talk about the "harrowing ordeal" of torturing individuals by fire. The burning of heretics alive was a Christian act, and everyone in the Church from the Pope down, glorified the faggot and the stake. Why, then, should O'Hara get excited now over reducing a dead body to ashes in a modern crematorium?</p>
<p>The disposal of human remains by the sanitary method of cremation, instead of by dressing them up in Sunday clothes and leaving them to rot in the ground, is the difference between science on the one side and medieval vulgarism on the other. Cremation has everything in its favor against the process of slow putrefaction, for in a few hours, it reduces 97 per cent of the body's weight to gas and 3 per cent to ash.</p>
<p>Moreover, when have Catholics expressed any moral indignation over the "harrowing ordeal" of roasting individuals in Hell-fire forever? It is beautiful, think Catholics, for their Heavenly Father to commit his children to eternal torture, but burning a dead body racks their moral nature. They are shocked beyond measure at the thought of burning a corpse.</p>
<p>If the anti-cremationist, Mr. O'Hara, is deeply concerned over the way men handle dead bodies, he may test his reflexes by reading the following from the ex-priest, Joseph McCabe :--<br />"In the year 896 there was witnessed in Rome a scene which fitly inaugurated one hundred and fifty years of such degradation as has never fallen upon any other religious organization in history. Stephen VI became Pope, after a bloody contest of the various factions. He ordered the body of one of his predecessors, Formosus, who had been several weeks buried, to be brought to the papal palace. The stinking corpse was clothed in the pontifical garments and propped in the throne. The august representative of Christ and the Holy Ghost, the channel of God's mercy to the human race, gathered his 'cardinals' (the name was already in use) and bishops round the ghastly object, and they vented upon it a fury such as one would hardly expect savages to show to a corpse. In the end they cut three fingers from the right hand of the putrid body, and flung it into the Tiber."</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-48886764020700372762012-03-26T12:42:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:25:00.194-07:00The Miracle Joint At Lourdes<p>AN INDIGNANT physician called on the telephone the other day to tell us of an article in "Liberty" magazine for Feb. 21, 1942, dealing with the miracle shrine at Lourdes.</p>
<p>The article affects a skeptical air, yet is written in that familiar there-may-be-something-to-it style common in popular journalism, and is nicely calculated to tap religious gullibility. The author, Morris Markey, speaks of himself as "not a Catholic" but as "an agnostic". Any Catholic priest could have written the same kind of trash.</p>
<p>One of the "cures" mentioned by Mr. Markey is that of a Mlle. Delot, who had "a large cancer of the stomach" which was "inoperable and incurable". Immersed in the icy water at Lourdes, the lady "felt a moment of almost unbearable pain, and then suddenly felt herself glow with health. She cried out that she was cured." On examination, "her cancer had completely disappeared and had been replaced by healthy tissue."</p>
<p>The miracle shrine at Lourdes is just another Catholic fake. If the water had any medicinal properties (we leave its "miraculous" qualities to the dodos of superstition), what would be easier than to ship some of it to America for use in Catholic hospitals? Why should Catholic doctors here waste time with medicine?</p>
<p>According to Mr. Markey, "the cures most often reported are tuberculosis, blindness, cancer, and paralysis." If this be true, then why has not the Catholic Church shown a little decency by sending some of the famous water here for President Roosevelt's bath? We have just had a great national drive for funds to fight infantile paralysis, and here is a steady stream of "miraculous" water said to be flowing at the rate of a thousand gallons a day. If it will cure "blindness", too, a few buckets at least could be spared to put on the sightless eyes of some in our midst. As for cancer, why all our present research if the Catholic Church has a cure? A hundred and fifty thousand victims die of this dreaded disease each year in our own country alone.</p>
<p>Boiled down, what do the facts about Lourdes reveal? Merely that out of the millions of sick who are said to have visited the famous shrine (Catholics report as many as 55,000 in a single day), only an insignificant fraction, a pitiful handful, are even so much as "reported" cured. The vast bulk come away as sick as they arrived. And who "reports" the alleged cures? The priestly custodians of the Grotto and a few Catholic doctors whose faith in saints and miracles is greater than their understanding of science. There is not a reputable body of physicians today that would endorse the sacred joint.</p>
<p>"Only a very small percentage of the sick are cured," writes the Rev. Francis Woodlock, S.J., in a pamphlet issued by the Paulist Fathers. "Those who seem to have most faith have been passed over . . . Some big pilgrimages have no cures to record; at least one small pilgrimage [we are not told whether it consisted of 300, 30, or only 3 persons] had all its sick cured." And here we come to the most curious point of all, the phony "origin" of the water itself.</p>
<p>According to Catholic "tradition", the shrine was established by the Virgin Mary, who appeared, in a vision, to a poor and sickly peasant child, wandering in the woods. The child, Bernadette Soubirous, on seeing the "vision," rushed back to tell her priest what she had seen. The "beautiful Lady" wanted a church.</p>
<p>Bernadette (so the story runs) was bidden by the Virgin to scrape the hard, dry ground with her fingers and instantly water gushed forth, which soon became a steady stream. And did the Blessed Mother reward the sickly child? She did--by keeping her corpse from decay for thirty years after it was entombed. But in life, the water had failed to cure Bernadette of her chronic sickness. "She was from her birth till her death," says the Jesuit Francis Woodlock, "a constant invalid from asthma."</p>
<p>Yet what can one expect from the Neglectful Virgin, who, in answers to prayers, turns away pain-racked victims and "big pilgrimages" of sufferers who come to her shrine in the hope of being cured?</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-76795315709011468472012-03-26T12:38:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:25:17.498-07:00The Fallacy of Free Will<p>A RE-READING, once a year, of Mark Twain's "What is Man?" might save some of our social uplifters from becoming confused and uttering nonsense on the subject of free will. The book is a materialistic and mechanistic interpretation of human behavior, written by a master craftsman. The brain, says Twain, "is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will power."</p>
<p>We are led to this remark after reading the "Official Statement of Priniciples of the Humanist Society of Friends," in which the following lines occur:</p>
<p>"Religious humanism then, is the broader sense, carries with it a definite faith in man as the director of his fate, founded upon the latest scientific conception of the universe and man's place in it."</p>
<p>Man is no more "the director of his fate" than the alley cat or the family gold fish, for he is subject, in every thing he does, to the laws of inheritance and to the chemical make-up of his bodily mechanism. He cannot transcend his biological limitations or rise above his inherent abilities.</p>
<p>There are thousands of ambitious persons today who would like to write with the ease and grace of Shakespeare, paint like Meissonier, sing like Caruso, play chess like Capablanca, possess the sparkling wit and genius of Voltaire. Then why don't they? Because, in spite of Henley's famous fallacy, "I am the captain of my soul," they cannot do what they would like to do: they are merely mess-boys, not captains, on their voyage through life. No matter how much they try, they are unable to touch the tiller of their lives or guide themselves to port.</p>
<p>But our pep-talk Humanists and "success" psychologists love to tell us that we can do whatever we "will" to do. Theirs is the chatter of the visionary, which would have even the moron believe he is "the director of his fate".</p>
<p>If the world ever wakes up - I am not at all convinced that it will - it will realize that human conduct is governed more by glandular secretions than by pretty preachments and "moral" platitudes. The rake, the pyromaniac, the swindler, the miser, the glutton, the hypochondriac are rarely amenable to sentimental slogans. The bully respects no one but the one who knocks him down. He is no more susceptible to "moral suasion" than the sluggard, the liar, and the cheat. Those who respond to "moral niceties" are those who have been conditioned to respond in that way. The "reformed" criminal is generally one who has discovered (in his own case, at least) that crime "does not pay". Those who find it does, keep merrily on, cracking safes until caught by the police. The pickpocket who "accepts" Jesus at last is usually the one who has grown gray in the art and lost his deftness at snatching watches. Criminals are generally religious, but our penal records show how little these men are influenced by a "fear" of God. Sunday school lessons, pulpit sermons, and threats of hell are rarely restraining forces in the lives of the religious criminal.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-34375722776673541112012-03-26T12:34:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:25:44.238-07:00A Columnist Barks Up The Wrong Tree<p>GEORGE E. SOKOLSKY, who writes for the New York Sun, hasn't an Irish name, yet he defends the Roman Catholic Hierarchy with the ardot of a Hibernian. Says Mr. Sokolsky:</p>
<p>"The Catholic Church needs no defense by me. It has survived for nearly two thousand years because it represents a discipled morality based upon the laws of God. Naturally the Church intervenes whenever a question of faith and morals arises."</p>
<p>Apparently Mr. Sokolsky has yet to learn that "the laws of God" are what the priests tell us they are. Often enough they express the wil of pious hoodlums. The expulsion of Jews from Spain, and the torturing of heretics by the Catholic Church were a part of "the laws of God" as decreed by the Vatican and executed by the "disciplined morality" of Roman Catholic priests. It was the Church's "disciplined morality" that gave us the Spanish Inquisition and such holy fete days as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the burnings of thousands at the stake. As for long-time "survivals", the cockroach has existed longer than the Church, and may even thrive long after Vatican City is a heap of dust. Under "the laws of God" it has existed for more millions of years than the Church can boast of in terms of centuries.</p>
<p>Sokolsky's pious flare-up and moral indignation at those who criticize Catholicism is a bit strained, coming from one who is "not a Catholic". He cannot "fathom" an article in the New Republic, which, mild though it is, hands the Catholic Church a well-deserved rebuke. We must be ready, says the article to which Mr. Sokolsky objects, "to take on in rough-and-tumble political combat those Catholics who attempt to coerce newspapers and producers of plays and pictures and public officials."</p>
<p>And why shouldn't we be ready to do this very thing? Those who blackmail or intimidate newspapers, lobby for special priveleges, hijack columnists like Sokolsky, and brow-beat public officials who stand in the way of the Church, are as beneficial to America as an importation of Asiatic rats. Would Mr. Sokolsky have us believe that he is actually in favor of Catholics who "coerce" newspapers?</p>
<p>The "disciplined morality" which the Catholic Church demands would make a Gestapo agent blush. Before me is a booklet bearing the saccharine title, "Assist the Souls in Pergatory", issued by a Benedictine convent and distributed to the faithful in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Quite properly, it bears the "nihil obstat" and "imprimatur" of high functionaries of the Church. On page 6 is a bit of sadistic doctrine which may give even Mr. Sokolsky the creeps:</p>
<p>"Purgatory punishes, by tortures unknown to earth, the slightest stains of sin remaining upon the soul after death, and while punishing, purifies the soul from those stains. No human tongue can describe the intense pain which the suffering souls must endure in the process of purification. The Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, says: 'The least pain in purgatory is greater than the greatest suffering in this world.' And elsewhere he adds: 'The same fire torments the reprobate in hell and the just in pergatory.'"</p>
<p>The pamphlet next proceeds to tell us that Purgatory "is not a place of eternal pain, but will end at the last judgment" and that many souls are punished from twenty to sixty years and some "even longer". "The learned St. Robert Bellarmine and others held the opinion that there are some souls who will have to suffer in purgatory until the end of time", and "to the suffering souls, hours seem as years, and years as centuries."</p>
<p>And there is no relief, no respite from the torments in this torture chamber of God? There is, of course: you can give your "offerings" to the priest for the saying of masses for the dead, and so lighten the agony of those who plead to you: "Hasten, for we suffer unspeakable pains!"</p>
<p>Here at work are the same despicable institution, the same swindling priesthood, the same gang of divinely-ordained brigands holding their captive "souls" for ransom, in the manner of a Mongolian bandit or a Chicago kidnapper threatening to torture your loved one if your do not come across. And it works, works beautifully, this extortion, among the poor, benighted numskulls who have been intimidated by the Church. Only by bulldozing and terrorization does the Catholic Church flourish.</p>
<p>Heretofore, Mr. Sokolsky's forte has been in ferreting our political and bureaucratic abuses. Should he ever be looking about for another target on which to concentrate his remarkably fine talent for blasting at strongholds of corruption, he will find it readily enough in the day-to-day intrigues and political machinations of the Roman Catholic Church, whose subversive and coercive tactics are thoroughly known to every well-informed man. It is unthinkable, however, that he can ever engage in this type of writing for the New York Sun, whose attitude and editorial policy are Catholic and whose opinions, in all matters touching religion, are, from first to last, hog-tired by the Church. But if he cannot assail Catholic corruption himself, he should at least lay off those who do, and leave to others the rougher work he cannot do himself.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-60547388237838133022012-03-26T12:28:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:26:05.078-07:00Molasses or Vinegar?<p>FREETHINKERS are familiar with the pattern of reasoning employed by Mr. X. Here is a man, cultured and refined, who after discarding Christianity, has reasoned himself to the point where he can say, God is "not a fact". Yet he fears, or should we say, avoids the logical label. "I still say I am not an atheist and that I believe in God."</p>
<p>And why? Because B, a pious friend of his, thinks that atheists are scoundrels, and Mr. X believes he must cater to this numbskull to be a "regular fellow". And Mr. X says that I "overrate honesty". Maybe I do; but I have never underrated it.</p>
<p>But why should Mr. X kotow to B because B thinks that atheists are cutthroats and will steal his silverware? Why doesn't Mr. X enlighten B, if he can, or, better still, tell him to "go jump in the lake"? Are there no better men among whom he can be "a regular fellow"?</p>
<p>Mr. X says "atheist" is an offensive label and he will not bear it. If men had not taken on offensive labels in the past, where would we be today? Men have gone to the stake for even advocating "poetic" atheism like Mr. X's. But they made it "respectable" for those who came later.</p>
<p>I do not ask Mr. X to be "a martyr" or even a "militant rationalist" -- it is a matter of temperament -- but he might at least avoid the supercilious mannerism he displays to those who have made his liberties possible. "Truth needs no martyr", says he. Truth needs "martyrs" today as it never did before.</p>
<p>And who is the "mental undertaker" but he who buries the truth because he is unwilling "to take a stigma" on behalf of truth? Who is the "mental undertaker" but he who, having discovered that God is "not a fact", refuses to tell B about it and buries his convictions in order to be "a regular fellow"?</p>
<p>"God is a poem", says Mr. X. God is no more a poem than it is prose, or the arc of a circle, or a barn door. God is a word that stands for an invisible being in the sky, who, according to the Bible, will punish those who say he is "not a fact".</p>
<p>If our neighbors, says Mr. X, "seek knowledge in nature, in time they will see as deeply as we do." But will they? can he be sure about this? "Our neighbors" read delightful books on biology and astronomy, visit the Planetarium, join nature study clubs, hike to the country, study bugs, listen to "Information Please" -- and still swallow the Christian creed: still believe that Jesus rose from the dead and will greet them in heaven! Left to themselves, how many will reason themselves out of superstition? How many neighbors does Mr. X know who will agree with him that God is "not a fact"?</p>
<p>"As a courtesy to believers -- as good manners", says Mr. X, rationalists should so interpret God as not to offend "believers". "Courtesy"! "Good manners"! When did Christian bigots ever know the meaning of these words?</p>
<p>Does Mr. X know nothing of Christian literature: its scurrilities and lies about freethinkers; its deathbed "recantations"; its Billy Sundy gutterisms? Did he never hear of its maliciousness against Paine, Ingersoll and Voltaire? Has he never seen the splenetic and dyspeptic tracts issued by Christian "Truth" societies? "Good manners"! "Courtesy"! I smile. And I smile again when I am asked to be tender to the religious feelings of others. Not being a Christian, I do not turn the other cheeks. I am out -- and out openly -- to smack Christianity.</p>
<p>Mr. X finds "the atheistic ideal unreasonable because it is intolerant and doctrinaire; because it seeks to compel everybody to think in the same way". What does he mean by "compel"? Did any atheist ever "compel" him to say that God is "not a fact"? Where is the intolerance of atheism? Is the advocacy of atheism any different than the advocacy of any other doctrine? No one is compelled to be an atheist except by conviction.</p>
<p>But people are frequently "compelled" -- outwardly, at least - to be Christians. Isn't Mr. X afraid of Mr. B? Who is the "intolerant" one here but the bigoted Mr. B? He has sealed Mr. X's lips and made him hide his conviction that God is "not a fact". "Tolerance and good will are virtues", says Mr. X. Why doesn't he tell it to Mr. B?</p>
<p>Mr. X dislikes the title of my book, because it contains the word "Atheism". Yet that title has not debarred the book from prominent libraries. It is in the Congressional Library and the British Museum, in the libraries of Harvard and Yale. I have heard from men who have read it in as far away places as India, New Zealand, and Australia. A member of Parliament wrote to tell me he had read it in the Tasman Sea. And it had brought me intimate and flattering letters from men of the highest rank in the scientific world. I would not exchange these letters for a bag of gold. And I would not exchange them for the approbation and friendship of Mr. X's acquaintance, the bigoted Mr. B.</p>
<p>Let us forget my "poetic touches". I am not a poet. I merely gather and interpret facts and would not -- unless I were a Lucretius -- think of resorting to poetic imagery as a medium of expression. Those who read me will have to be content with the bluntness of my prose.</p>
<p>It is not often that I toss my personal correspondence into the spot-light of an open discussion, but Mr. X's second letter of criticism, like his first communication, published in the August, 1942, issue offers material that is, I believe, of general interest to rationalists. Because of this, and because the Truth Seeker is tolerant enough to grant a hearing to those who oppose its views, his letter appears.</p>
<p>Here is a man of amiable disposition who sees no justification for a militant attack on religious doctrines, especially when these doctrines are held by "nice" people, whose feelings may be hurt by sharp criticism.</p>
<p>I must remind Mr. X that it was he, not I, who introduced the character Mr. B, the religious blackguard who thinks that all atheists are cutthroats and will steal his silverware. Now he introduces another character, the well-mannered, gentle-minded believer, to whom we must assume "a mental attitude of kindness and tolerance".</p>
<p>The kindest service one man can render another is to help him dispel his illusions. Whenever I think of the great rationalists who have made our own age possible, I invariably recall the words of Professor Bury concerning Voltaire: "When a man has the talent to attack with effect falsehood, prejudice, and imposture, it is his duty, if there are any social duties, to use it." Voltaire accomplished his work, and accomplished it well, yet "no writer has ever roused more hatred in Christendom than Voltaire." But what does Christian "hatred" matter so long as men's minds are freed from superstition? And what is more gratifying to a man than to feel that he has been a little helpful to others in their struggle for enlightenment? One of the most gratifying letters I ever received was from a stranger who had studied for the ministry, and wrote: "I surely intend to look you up if only to grasp you hand and thank you for writing a book that really freed my mind of the absurd God-idea." Such a letter compensates for all the rancorous and embittered letters I receive from God's elect.</p>
<p>I have, throughout my life, been the recipient of many kindnesses from some who call themselves "Christians". But I have found that these kindnesses increase as their religious faith decreases. I am today, for example, a member of a society in England through the sponsorship of a clergyman of the established Church. He is more interested in science than in the crumbling creed of Christianity.</p>
<p>Mr. X is sorry that I have never met any "nice" believers, those who are different from the bigoted Mr. B. But I have. I have met them in their own homes -- and in mine -- and, on several occasions, have addressed them at their own church forums. On one occasion they were so nice that they wanted to oust their pastor for inviting me to speak. He had told me beforehand, in the privacy of his study, what he was up against. I was merely a "chestnut puller" for one who was sickened by their smug complacency and utter ignorance in matters of religion. He had tried the "soft" way, the delicate approach; now he wanted to "shake them up". He did -- but it almost cost him his pulpit job. They were all refined people, the kind that treat you with marked "tolerance" and courtesy when you address them from a platform, then take it out on their pastor's hide the moment you are gone.</p>
<p>Religion, by its very nature, cannot remain long tolerant of disbelief. The Truth Seeker through the years has often opened its pages to religionists, but where is the Christian journal today that will publish an article on atheism or a criticism of Christianity written by an atheist? "Tolerance", Mr. X, is not grounded in religious soil.</p>
<p>Militant rationalism is founded on solid experience. It does not expect to "make over" the world, but denies expediency of round-about, half-way measures. A proposition is either true or false. If God is "not a fact", He doesn't exist. Saying that God "is a poem", as Mr. X does, gets nowhere. Fuzzy language never helped to clear anyone's mind.</p>
<p>"I credit my liberties largely to Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno, Newton, Halley, Darwin, Huxley, and Haeckel", says Mr. X, but "not one of these called himself an atheist."</p>
<p>A man may eat beef all his life, without writing: "I am a beef eater." So with many of those who, by their life work, have rejected or undermined theism without calling themselves "atheists". These men, one and all, upset the apple-cart of faith. Because they did so, theism became, more and more, a discredited idea.</p>
<p>Copernicus and Galileo were "believing Catholics", says Mr. X. If they were, the Church didn't think so. It made a hell on earth for the first, and made the second recant, under threat of torture. Galileo was condemned by the Inquisition as "vehemently suspected of heresy". Does Mr. X think that either of these men could have long gone around with a placard on his neck, reading: "I am an atheist"?</p>
<p>As for Bruno . . . why dwell on the gruesome details? He was an atheist, fiery to the point of what Mr. X calls "hornet-minded". He paid for it with his life, and the whole world is indebted to him. "Mingled with his allegorical philosophy," says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "are the most vehement attacks upon the established religion."</p>
<p>Newton did write "a religious book" (full of trash), but to which is Mr. X indebted: what Newton wrote on Bible prophecies or what he wrote on calculus? Mr. X, I understand, is a mathematician interested in astronomy. What did he ever get from Newton on the subject of religion? M. Biot has shown that Newton's theological writings were "the productions of his dotage." Newton's scientific discoveries helped to cripple theology.</p>
<p>Newton's friend, Edmund Halley, never wrote anything on religion, but he was refused the Savalian professorship at Oxford, says McCabe, "on the express ground of his rationalist opinions". He talked too much, it seems, and incurred the wrath of the gentle Mr. B. "That he was an infidel in religious matters," says Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary, "seems as generally allowed as it appears unaccountable."</p>
<p>Darwin (who never gave much attention to the subject of religion) fluctuated, in late life, between a tenuous theism and a solid atheism. In his lucid moments, he wrote atheistically : "The old argument from design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows."</p>
<p>Huxley (notwithstanding his shuffling "agnosticism") no more believed in God than I do myself. He wrote: "I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, Atheist and infidel."</p>
<p>Haeckel was an atheist in spite of his pantheistic phraseology and poetic imagery. Says the Encyclopaedia Britannica (article "Haeckel"): "Haeckel was led to deny the immortality of the soul, the freedom of the will, and the existence of a personal God." This is the inevitable conclusion for anyone who has read Haeckel's writings. "The notion of a personal God," wrote he, "has entirely disappeared from anogics [the inorganic world], while it still persists, in defiance of all pure reason, in the vitalistic and teleological school of biology." Haeckel, like Darwin and Huxley, rejected the idea of "design" in nature. He was, moreover, a militant rationalist and was friendly to The Truth Seeker.</p>
<p>Ingersoll not only smacked the church, and smacked it hard, but, in a letter to Dr. Field, called himself "an atheist". (The full text of his letter is before me.) In his last public address, he said: "If matter and force are from and to eternity, it follows as a necessity that no God exists." He also said: "Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery."</p>
<p>To claim, as Mr. X does, that "Paine and Ingersoll were not of the Truth Seeker party" is mere shambling. It is even more: it is inexcusable in an educated man. Both these men were anti-Christian, both rejected the Bible, both scorned the shams and lies that this paper scorns. Ingersoll was not only a reader of The Truth Seeker but a contributor to its columns.</p>
<p>Paine professed a belief in God, but his "deism" never got him anywhere with the religious crowd. Those who love their neighbors as they do themselves did nothing but blacken his memory. It is the freethinkers who have kept his memory green and his books in print. What Christian outfit ever published "The Age of Reason"? For publishing this book, Eaton, a freethinker, "was condemned to eighteen months' imprisonment and to stand in the pillory once a month." Richard Carlile, another freethinker, spent three years in prison for publishing the work. They had offended Mr. B, the bigoted blockhead to whom Mr. X thinks we should show "a mental attitude of kindness and toleration".</p>
<p>"The relatively few men who meanly attacked Paine and Ingersoll are dead now, and I don't worry about their successors", says Mr. X. That's just the trouble: he should. Their "successors" have just succeeded in blocking a statue to Paine in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Mr. X should trouble himself about this, as he does about the "martyrs" who made his liberties possible. The man who sponsored American Independence is dead, also. Erecting a statue to him would merely offend Mr. B and Christians like him. We must be nice to them, not give them offense. "The crime of ingratitude", wrote James Monroe, in a letter to Paine, "has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain, our national character." But it has. And Christian bigots are responsible for the stain.</p>
<p>Mr. X pleads for "kindness and tolerance" in presenting our views. "Kindness and tolerance" to whom? To the raw, insufferable gang that makes up our church racketeers, living on the plight of frightened men and women, starved in understanding and bedraggled in the rags of superstition? Come out of your complacency, Mr. X, and be "a regular fellow" among atheists. There is work to be done.</p>
<p>And my forte "is sedition", says Mr. X. Well, some of us are glad to be "seditionists", mindful, at least, that there are things worth fighting for in this whirligig world, among them the overthrow of superstition, with all its degrading and demoralizing doctrines. It is the "sedition" of rationalism that is helping men to think sanely in an insane world and lighten the load of popular ignorance. Whoever contributes to this effort, is conferring a benefit on others that far transcends the simple niceties and conventional kindness of the Ella Wheeler Wilcox creed.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-64766931861511079682012-03-26T11:34:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:26:20.408-07:00Evolution Implies Atheism<p>WHAT a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel, works of nature.<br />-- Charles Darwin</p>
<p>MAN, the highest form of evolutionary development is contesting his very existence against a world of deadly bacteria. Evolution produced the microbe as well as man. What intelligence is there in that? Would the reader use his intelligence to produce the cholera germ? And would he employ it to the point of turning out these filthy germs by the trillions?</p>
<p>Man plans. He would not, if he wished to make a human head, consume millions of years experimenting on the skulls of fishes. But that is how evolution works. Dr. W.K. Gregory of the American Museum of Natural History traces the evolution of the human face "from fish to man." It is a long drawn out, round-about process that no intelligent being would adopt. Time means nothing in evolution -- nor the result. There are, in the United States alone, a quarter of a million insane persons in public and private institutions. That is mental evolution after untold ages of cosmic evolution. Any man, if he had his way, could do better than that. Surely he would not, to demonstrate his goodness and wisdom, work overtime on infantile paralysis germs. Only forces blind to immediate and ultimate results could evolve such beings. Evolution means Atheism.</p>
<p>And man -- what of his evolution? Geologic ages spent in trees! An anthropoid ape walking on all fours, with ape brain and ape behavior and time as nothing in the long-drawn stretch of human evolution!</p>
<p>Human intelligence makes oxcarts before it makes automobiles, but it does not keep on making oxcarts after it has learned to make automobiles. Evolution is still busy turning out apes and billions of creatures far less lovely than the apes -- and doesn't know why. Priests in pulpits and monkeys in tree-tops still chatter nonsense after billions of years of evolution. No wonder Winwood Reade calls man's historic struggle upward "the martyrdom of man".</p>
<p>Piously-minded scientists who assure us that there is no conflict between religion and science are talking foolishness. If man is descended from an ape, he is not descended from Adam. There never was a first man any more than there was a first horse, a first cow, or a first stringbean. By slow stages our present forms of life have evolved from lower forms. Every biologist is aware than man's ancestry goes back to primitive apes and fishes. He was not made after the manner of the Bible fairy-tale. The cultured Chinese gentleman of today knows he is not descended from an original pair of Jewish parents.</p>
<p>Man did not come into the world ready-made; and his ancestral line must extend back by necessity to the lowest and most simple form of life. There can be no break in evolution, even in thought. It is impossible to imagine a point in man's evolution where one can say: "Man started here." The stages through which he passed have been long and varied and his own identity as a human individual must be imperceptibly blended in the ape form from which he emerged. As is scientifically known, man needlessly repeats in his embryonic development the successive stages of his animal descent. Sire Arthur Keith very forcibly remarks: 'What should we think of a builder who in the erection of a palace insisted on 'recapitulating' all the evolutionary stages which lie between a hut and a palace? A Builder behind evolution would be a stupid anarchist.</p>
<p>If mind is the highest development of life, and reason the highest expression of mind, there is little to be proud of. The substantial thinking of the world is done by less than one per cent of the population. Man, is spite of education, in spite of opportunities, in spite of progress, is chained to the past. The human brain is still dominated by the impressions of the cave and the jungle.</p>
<p>Most of us, mentally, are still living in the trees, even if we do walk upright. Beneath the veneer of "civilization," there is a solid, sordid mass of primitive psychology. We continue, in the name of justice, to break necks on the gallows and to fight like wolves. We settle our international differences by the methods of the gangster. That's evolution, with all its backward-dragging, disgusting hangovers from primitive culture. There are vestigial thoughts as well as vestigial organs. Man shares them all, because there is no supervising "intelligence" to eradicate them. Evolution spells Atheism -- a godless universe.</p>
<p>Evolution knows no moral feeling. The earth is a gory battle ground, where the weakest animals go to the wall in a pitiless struggle of tooth and claw. Evolution, century after century, repeats its own follies, by bringing into existence billions of the lowest types of life when it might produce only the highest; continues the production of useless and harmful organs; turns out beings, some of which live for only a day or an hour, or sometimes for only a few seconds. It is a ruthless, blundering, non-moral process, without a glimmer of guidance behind it.</p>
<p>"We must get rid of the great moral governor, or head director. He is a fiction of our brains." So wrote the American naturalist, John Burroughs. He had studied close to nature and knew there is no Kindly Eye, no Heavenly Father, back of the universe. "All the forces of nature are going their own way; man avails himself of them, or catches a ride as best he can. If he keeps his seat, he prospers; if he misses his hold and falls he is crushed."</p>
<p>There is not a third-rate intelligence on earth that could not, after ten minutes' contemplation, devise a better scheme of things. Man's life is largely consumed in improving his surroundings and adjusting the blunders of nature. Daily, hourly, he must employ his wits to untangle the snares of unthinking nature. It would take an intelligence below the level of a moron to carry on evolutionary processes as commonly observed. It has taken evolution, unguided by intelligence, countless ages to develop the simple, unattractive flower known as the wild rose. Evolution, with man's intelligence behind it, has, in a relatively short period of time, changed this simple flower, by artificial selection, into the glorious, multi-petalled American Beauty. That was intelligence behind evolution. Man has not only produced new species of flowers from wayside weeds, but given scent to odorless lilies and eliminated the thorns from raspberry and blackberry bushes. He has been able to evolve a spineless cactus, which, breeding true, now furnishes the desert with food for cattle. He has, by applying his intelligence to evolution, done in a short period of time that which evolution might have accomplished only after millions of years - or never at all. He has speeded up those processes which, under natural evolution, drag along hopelessly or reach an ultimate utility only after thousands of failures and unfavorable adaptations.</p>
<p>To be sure, there are countless facts in nature which imply Atheism independent of evolution and regardless of whether one creature or structure has evolved from another. The "cruelty" of the cat, the spider, or the tiger would be just as "cruel" -- and would imply Atheism -- even if these creatures had always been exactly what they are now. But there are other fats based upon an understanding of evolution that supplement ordinary observation of natural phenomena. Without the slightest knowledge of evolution, one might wonder at the ease and rapidity with which our "Heavenly Father," by means of an earthquake in Lisbon, wiped out 60,000 of his children in six minutes; but when this same Intelligence, in a burst of infinite wisdom, takes 3,000,000 years to change a four-toed extremity into a hoof (as in the evolution of the horse's foot) we are led to marvel, not so much at the Deity's stupidity as at the asininity of the pious dolts who teach the existence of a god.</p>
<p>The God idea cannot be reconciled with our knowledge of evolution. Belief in a Ghost directing the universe must be discarded along with the belief in witchcraft, the sanctity of the snake-dance, and the rituals of voodooism.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-61447792336472157162012-03-26T11:25:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:26:36.083-07:00Flouting the Bill of Rights<p>GAG-LAW is always being demanded by religious bigots. The Lynch Bill (a similar bill has been introduced by Representative Dickstein), now pending before Congress, would stifle freedom of the press and liberty of opinion on a national scale by debarring from the mails all printed matter or expression of opinion "offensive" to any religious group.</p>
<p>The bill is appropriately named. It would "lynch" those who express any criticisms of religion, or who in any way attack religious doctrines or creeds. To laugh at the story of Adam and Eve, or to ridicule the myth that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, or that Joshua made the sun stand still, would be a violation of law. To criticize Jewish doctrines and beliefs or the Jewish sacred writings would be tantamount to going to jail. Under the Lynch Bill, anything that "offends" a religious or racial group is considered a crime.</p>
<p>The Postmaster General, Frank C. Walker, and Solicitor of the Postoffice Department, Vincent M. Miles, are both rightfully opposing the bill, on the ground that it would violate the principle of free speech and would be unconstitutional. The American Civil Liberties Union has voiced its opposition.</p>
<p>Who are behind this bill? First, politicians who are ready to scrap our American Bill of Rights and nullify our freedoms for the sake of votes. Secondly, for the most part, religious bigots, who do not want their religion criticized, and who would bar by law any discussion of "religious" or "racial" questions. They are the usual line-up of fanatics who would like to stifle opinion by inquisitional methods and thumb-screw legislation.</p>
<p>No decent-minded individual, least of all the believer in liberty, wishes to see any group "persecuted" because of its religion. But there is a vast difference between "persecution" of a group and "criticism" of its religion. Criticism is not persecution, and those who confuse one with the other are obscuring the issue and striving to obtain immunity from criticism. The sponsors of the bill are deliberately plotting to penalize those who, in any way, hold up a religion to ridicule, by converting the Post Office into a modern Star Chamber.</p>
<p>The Lynch Bill is sponsored for the ostensible purpose of doing away with "racial" and "religious" animosities. But so long as the Jews consider themselves "the Chosen People of God" and a more "favored" race than all others on the face of the globe, they will be inviting antagonism from other religious groups. Catholics and Protestants do not consider themselves any less "favored" in the eyes of God than the Jews. On the contrary, Christians are convinced, according to their doctrine of salvation, that non one can be "saved" who does not accept "the Lord Jesus Christ". The Jews, by rejecting Jesus Christ, are considered "lost".</p>
<p>One would think that a people who had suffered at the hands of the Catholic inquisition, who had been expelled from Spain by the Roman Catholic Church, and who throughout Christian Europe had been relegated to the Ghetto and the slums, would welcome their asylum in America and be the last to back legislation that penalizes opinion. But it is too much to expect that religion can engender anything else but bigotry and intolerance.</p>
<p>"Little need be added", writes S. Margoshes, editor of the leading Jewish New York daily newspaper, "The Day", "except to urge all those who want the Lynch Bill to emerge from the stage of a mere controversy and into the phase of actual legislation, to write or wire their respective Congressmen to help in the passage of the bill. Nothing is now so important, if the bill is to be passed, as pressure from the citizens back home."</p>
<p>Backing of the Bill is well represented by orthodox Jews, who think they are being "persecuted" whenever their superstitions are attacked, and who are always ready to raise the hue and cry of "anti-Semitism" whenever one speaks disparagingly of Judaism. They would, if entrenched in power, enact a Spanish Inquisition in America and throttle our press by vicious legislation such as that which is embodied in the Lynch Bill.</p>
<p>If there is any "un-Americanism" in our midst, it is that which would penalize opinion, gag freedom of the press, and drag in the gutter the very fundamentals embodied in our Bill of Rights.</p>
<p>These rights cannot be suffered to be lost even in a time of war. Our Supreme Court has wisely ruled:</p>
<p>"The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government."</p>
<p>Since the war began, we have been told, over and over again, in magazines, in sermons, and in syndicated articles, that "there are no atheists in fox-holes." Atheists are not asking that anyone be put in jail for circulating this stupid lie. But let someone state that "there are no Jews in foxholes" and the Lynch Bill provisions would be instantly invoked. Bigotry and fanaticism are always ready to use the secular arm.</p>
<p>America is a land of free criticism, not of Oriental despotism. We criticize here and lampoon even the President of the United States. Those who can't stand criticism or who are "offended" by it, should get out and stay out until they have learned what freedom of the press means.</p>
<p>Under the Lynch Bill, Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" could be barred from the mails because it is "offensive" to Jews. Mark Twain's book ridiculing Christian Science could be barred, also, because it "offends" a particular religious group. Voltaire's gibes at the Roman Catholic Church "offend" Catholics. Anyone who spoke disrespectfully of Voodooism, laughed at Fundamentalists, or called Catholicism a fraud and a fake and its Purgatory a "racket" could be clapped in jail. To tell the Jews that their religious rituals are silly and their holy book a humbug, would constitute a crime. Any criticism of any superstition would be "offensive" to some particular group and automatically condemned.</p>
<p>"Minority" groups are no more entitled to immunity from criticism than "majority" groups. Under our basic American laws, there is no Sacred Cow in America, nor are the American people, in the manner of the Hindu, obliged to accept one and venerate its dung. Controversial questions must be decided in the free air of open discussion.</p>
<p>What controversial question can't be construed as "offensive" to some particular group? The Lynch Bill would reduce us to talking about the weather. When that time comes America may as well scrap its Constitution.</p>
<p>In the Library of Congress, one may find hundreds of books which criticize Judaic doctrines and practices and reject the "sacred" history of the Jews. It would be interesting to watch, under the Lynch Bill, how the Post Office would handle these "objectionable" books if they were committed to the mail.</p>
<p>It would be interesting, too, to observe how the Postmaster General would handle the Catholic prayer books now being sent to our men overseas, which, in no very complimentary language, calls the Jews "the synagogue of Satan." This book, printed at Government expense and distributed to Catholics in the military service, would be barred from the mails by the very Government tat sponsors its distribution.</p>
<p>The Lynch Bill is a nefarious proposal to stifle freedom of opinion and freedom of the press. It will be a terrible thing for our boys fighting abroad to come back to America after Hitler has been trounced and find our liberties being sabotaged at home.</p>
<p>"Today", wrote the Attorney General, "we are at war with the great Axis powers, and with their little satellites. This war will test whether the free democracies can endure and whether their people can remain free."</p>
<p>Our "national unity" in the prosecution of the war is not helped by flouting the Constitution or by nullifying our right to voice our domestic differences on controversial questions. No subject under the Sun is taboo in a free State. Those who would throttle the press and block the path of free expression by setting up a Postal Gestapo for the crushing of ideas hostile to their own are the real Hitlerites in America.</p>
<p>"Men", wrote Voltaire, "will not cease to be persecutors, until they have ceased to be absurd."</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-62513360709605822592012-03-26T11:21:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:26:54.430-07:00Kosher Killing Cruelty<p>PAINE'S writings often put his publishers in jail and booksellers behind bars, principally because Paine had a flair for diction that could rattle people's teeth. Most writers are satisfied if they can raise their reader's brow.</p>
<p>I never supposd that anything I might put in print would precipitate a street riot or cause a man's arrest. But it happened, nevertheless, from a simple little leaflet protesting against cruelty to animals. In a world of kaleidoscopic surprises, we live to learn. The man who reprinted an item of mine from The Truth Seeker and distributed it on the streets of New York was not only assaulted by religionists but spent a night in jail.</p>
<p>The Kosher Killing Court Case, with its victory for Mr. Nathan Schwarz, the distributor of the leaflet, did not end as the kosher crowd wished. Here I shall touch briefly on one aspect of the trial.</p>
<p>The Jewish "expert" who testified on the witness stand that kosher killings are not cruel was careful to avoid all references to the slaughter of the animals higher than domestic fowl. He might as well have talked about the "merciful" process of making kosher salt. Chickens, he assured the Court, showed only muscular reactions in flapping about and suffered no pain. But this does not apply to higher forms of life or "red-blooded" animals such as cattle and sheep. Bleeding a cow or a lamb to death without first stunning it involves a lingering death. Anyone will be convinced of this who has seen animals bleed to death and spew their gore.</p>
<p>Kosher killings are cruel and barbaric, and, except for religious sanction, would not be tolerated in a civilized community.</p>
<p>We do not put our worst murderers to death by cutting their throats and watching them bleed. If bleeding a cow to death is an instantaneous and painless way of slaughtering an animal, then there should be no objection on the part of Orthodox Jews if kosher methods were employed for the disposal of Jewish criminals. Why not, if bleeding is "painless", have kosher killings of condemned criminals, with a rabbi on hand to slit the throats of orthodox Jews?</p>
<p>But when has Judaism ever been considerate of domestic animals?</p>
<p>Animal sacrifice and bloody atonements are part of Judaic ritual.</p>
<p>"And King Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty and two thousand oxen, and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God." (2 Chron. vii , 5).</p>
<p>Here is a religious slaughter of 142,000 dumb creatures to glorify a bloody Jehovah.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-13455505460510397432012-03-26T11:04:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:27:08.603-07:00A Non-Kosher Tax-Payer Speaks<p>KOSHER "laws" are wholly religious, and those who observe them are governed by doctrines of a particular creed. Why, then, should non-kosher citizens be taxed for the support of government-mandated bureaus established for the purpose of regulating and enforcing these Jewish "laws"? It is an imposition to expect the tax-payer to pay for the up-keep of a religious enforcement bureau.</p>
<p>If kosher slaughter-houses, butcher-shops, and other food establishments cannot be trusted by the Jews themselves in the matter of kosher killings and selling of food and food accessories, it is no part of the American tax-payer's obligation to be burdened with the expense of maintaining state-supported agencies for the enforcement of these "laws", which are distinctly religious.</p>
<p>Yet non-kosher citizens are being taxed today for the up-keep of the Bureau of Kosher Enforcement, operated by our State Department of Agriculture and Markets. This office maintains a staff for the express purpose of enforcing the observance of Jewish orthodox laws, by inspecting kosher premises, conducting investigations, and pressing convictions in cases of kosher violations. Such a bureau is a travesty on the American principle of the separation of State and Church.</p>
<p>Visit a non-kosher slaughter-house and witness the humane method used in killing the animals: they are first made unconscious by a blow on the head before their throats are slit. In kosher slaughter-houses, the animal is not stunned but allowed to bleed slowly and painfully to death.</p>
<p>This cruel practice is a hideous survival of an ancient religious rite and a disgrace to civilization. Those who sanction it are governed by the idea that it is a "sin" to eat meat in which there is any blood. Millions of people today eat blooded meats and are healthy and stronger for it. Only a blind and superstitious attachment to rabbinical teachings maintains this infamy.</p>
<p>And to carry out this needless cruelty to animals, in order that no blood shall remain in the carcass, the people are taxed to pay for the up-keep of a government maintained bureau for the enforcement of kosher "laws".</p>
<p>Kosher killings not only entail an act of wanton cruelty to animals, but by involving the State in their enforcement, violate an American principle and impose a rank injustice on non-kosher tax-payers. If a religious cult wishes to impose certain "laws" on its adherents and maintain agencies for enforcement, let it do so out of its own funds and not at the expense of the tax-payers.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-6029862905192023892012-03-26T10:58:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:27:26.292-07:00Politicians and Prayer<p>THANKSGIVING DAY has come and gone, millions of prayers have been said, and--believe it or not--the war goes on. God, if he heard his petitioners, gave them the blind stare. The reason there wa no response may be simply stated. The Heavenly Father, who is said to be interested in our welfare, does not exist.</p>
<p>A God that can hear prayers for the cessation of war should be able to hear the blast of bombshells, the cries of helpless aged and infants, the groans of the wounded lying in snow-drifts or on hot desert sands. If he hears their cries and does not act, it is because he is quite willing to wait until one side or the other has exausted itself. He is like a father watching his two children knifing each other and twiddling his thumbs.</p>
<p>On Thanksgiving Day, high government functionaries prayed to God, rolled their eyes like geese, sang silly hymns, and behaved like 12th Century numskulls anathematizing a comet. They knew, if they knew anything, that their antics in church would not change the course of the war, or prevent a single enemy bullet from reaching its mark. They knew that for long days to come the holocaust would go on, regardless of their mumblings to God.</p>
<p>Politicians are not always of the first order of intelligence, but none of them can be so dumb as not to observe, time and time again, that prayers are useless. Most of them, by now, must necessarily realize that praying for peace is like spitting in the wind. If prayers could stop the war, the world would be at peace.</p>
<p>The several "freedoms" for which we claim to be fighting are beautiful enough in themselves, but what good is freedom alone, or own own Bill of Rights, if it leads to nothing more than the liberty of men to make asses of themselves? Something more necessary to raise the thinking standards of a people.</p>
<p>And to whom do our political leaders pray for moral guidance and help? To the "Ruler of the Universe", of course, to the one who, if he existed, is responsible for the thousands of criminal assaults to which man has been subjected since he emerged from the ape. If there be a God, who but he sends the lighting's bolt, the avalance and the tidal-wave, the cyclone and the typhoon, the famine and the drought? If the Pearl Harbor attack was an act of "treachery", what is to be said about the eruption of Mont Pelee, the earthquake at Lisbon, the Galveston Flood? What is the "treachery" of the Japs compared to God's assaults on humanity in a single tidal-wave or hurricane, which, in the twinkling of an eye, wipes out an entire community? What can compare with the "sneak punch" of the volcano whose boiling lava descends on innocent noncombatants in the dead of night? God, in his conduct toward men, has descended to acts of violence for which we hang criminals. If the Nazis ever resort to that much-feared means of warfare, the spreading of disease germs, they will be merely following in the footsteps of God, who has been carrying on a never-ending "germ war" against us since early times. "If, indeed, there were a judgment day", remarks Winwood Reade, "it woul be for man to appear at the bar, not as a criminal, but as an accuser."</p>
<p>Our praying politicians present an inglorious spectacle in our national life, because they show to what levels our government leaders will descend in order to curry favor with the custodians of superstition.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-45221005230134920882012-03-26T10:53:00.002-07:002019-09-02T00:27:41.393-07:00Telepathy: A Vulgar Delusion<p>FOR years, the Psychical Research Societies have been lending countenance and an air of respectability to the grossest superstitions: belief in ghosts, clairvoyance, haunted houses, poltergeists, apports, ectoplasm, premonitions of the dying, and other sordid delusions.</p>
<p>Now comes Mr. W.H. Salter, Hon. Secretary of the British Society for Psychical Research, and, in an "answer" to the unanswerable argument of Surgeon-Rear Admiral Charles M. Beadnell in the Literary Guide for September, 1943, makes a plea for that vulgar delusion: telepathy.</p>
<p>We are no more impressed by the "big names" that have defended telepathy than by the "big names" (Gladstone, the Duke of Argyle, and Mary Pickford) who have defended Christianity. We are interested solely in facts.</p>
<p>For years, this writer (as a matter of "duty" to himself) wasted a precious lot of time studying the reports of the P.R.S.<br />In no series of papers are to be found more self-evidential material of downright dishonesty, outright lying, and a silly esteem for every type of voodoo enchantment and jungle witchcraft than these papers reveal. They are a disgrace to intelligence.</p>
<p>"No psychical researcher professes to know everything about telepathy," says Mr. Salter. Now, isn't that nice of him? If they knew anything at all about telepathy, they would put it to work, not in the Society's "proceedings" or in Sunday supplements, but in the world of practical demonstration.</p>
<p>When Marconi told the world he could send messages without the use of wires, he proved it. Today a billion-dollar industry is build on wireless telegraphy. How much is invested in telepathy? Today, after 60 years of "investigation", telepathy can't erect a single sending and receiving station. There isn't a banking house in the world -- and bankers are quick to grasp at anything that will "work" -- which would back a telepathy station or risk a German mark on any of the thought-transference didos of the psychical researchers.</p>
<p>After 60 years of telepathy, we still use the telephone and the telegraph, write millions of letters a year, and spend a billion dollars in needless postage when we could just as well be "thinking" our thoughts to others. Even Mr. Salter must convey his thoughts to us by means of the printed page.</p>
<p>Hans Driesch and Charles Richet were no more qualified to pass judgement on the "evidence" of telepathy than anyone who can analyze and think. They were, by temperament, less qualified, in fact, than thousands of scientific workers who reject telepathy and whose critical judgment is not impaired by a predisposition to swallow anything. If pressed to prove it, I will show that both Driesch and Richet were, in these matters, gullible fools.</p>
<p>Psychological research societies can exist only so long as they are able to feed on current superstitions. They thrive on credulity. Where would they be today if there were no victims of hallucinations, religious neurotics, ghost-chasing crackpots, hysterical subjects, and psychopathic "visionaries" on whom to base their reports? Long ago, Joseph Jastrow made a remark that is as valid today as when it was written: Create a belief in anything and the "facts" will create themselves. There are thousands of Christian Scientists today (not to mention a slough of Spiritualists) who will testify to whatever is required. Is Mr. Salter so naive as to believe that men will not lie?</p>
<p>"The imposing mass of evidence has convinced almost everyone who has studied it that telepathy occurs," says Mr. Salter. But has it? We haven't heard that the British Association or the American Association for the Advancement of Science has gone on record as endorsing telepathy.</p>
<p>When they do, telepathy will have made its first progress in sixty years.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-36205711984095945182012-03-26T10:48:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:27:58.928-07:00Super-Sensory Superstition<p>THE high jinks of the telepathy advocates have reached a new high, and promise to go higher, through the discovery, in London, of a man whose feats in "thought transference" have baffled observers.</p>
<p>The new wonder-worker is known as B.S., and what he cannot do in reading five little cards at a distance wouldn't interest a professional card sharp. So at least we gather from the Extra-sensory-perceptionists.</p>
<p>Waldemar Kaempffert, who writes for the New York Times and swallows this stuff, describes the experiments in an item entitled, "A London Subject Shows Ability to Penetrate the Future."</p>
<p>"The tests", says he, "consisted in asking B.S. to identify which of five cards, each with a different animal picture on it, was being looked at by a sender in an adjoining room. With certain senders B.S. achieved significantly high scores, well above chance, and did so quite consistently from session to session. With other senders he could get nothing. The most curious thing about B.S. was that with certain senders he would get ahead of the actual card selected and call the one which was to be selected next."</p>
<p>You are supposed to believe all this, of course, as accomplished by "telepathy", and to dismiss at once, as vulgar and crude, any thoughts you may entertain about conniving and confederates. Cheating, as you know, has never happened, or cannot happen in "psychical research". The record is as lily-white as a black sheep.</p>
<p>Be it remembered that B.S., the arch-telepathist, can do his stunts only with "certain senders" -- with other senders "he could get nothing". Do not ask why. The "certain senders" may know more about the matter than they care to reveal. There is always a chance to follow a pre-arranged order of cards.</p>
<p>And why should only five measley "animal" cards be used? Why not a 52 deck? If "certain senders" can transmit a thought image to B.S., why not a heart or a spade? Yet this stuff is called "precognition or prophecy". The list of fancy names the ESP publicity experts use has not run out.</p>
<p>It would be amusing, as our friend Joseph Rinn suggested on a similar occasion, to substitute, without the telepathists knowing it, the original pack of picture cards with a deck of blank-faced cards, and watch him call off "symbols" that weren't there!</p>
<p>This, by the way, would be a super type of supersensitivity in extra sensory perception - - seeing "symbols" that aren't on the cards.</p>
<p>We suggest for this the name of Super-super-Clairvoyance.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-62112096672571325922012-03-23T00:00:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:28:13.006-07:00Our Gun Powder Survival<p>THE end of the human race has been variously discussed, from a fanatic invasion from Mars to our extinction by a comet or a collision with another celestial body.</p>
<p>Now come two individuals, a statesman and an historian, and gravely tell us that wars will extinguish the human race. It is utter moonshine.</p>
<p>Lord Halifax, British ambassador to Washington, delivers himself of this poppycock:</p>
<p>"If the nations fail after this war to make the most of their opportunties to forge a lasting peace, the human race may come perilously near to self-extermination."</p>
<p>Mr. H.G. Wells, even more dramatically than Lord Halifax, states:</p>
<p>"If man does not adjust himself very soon to the changes his inventions have wrought in his environment, he will disappear as a species."</p>
<p>Here we have plain rhetoric, with no semblance to anything but the sloppiest thinking. What Lord Halifax and H.G. Wells fail to note is that the human race can breed faster than it can exterminate its members by sword and cannon.</p>
<p>In spite of the fact that wars have been going on from earliest recorded time, that they are getting bigger and and more technical in each succeeding age, and that global conflicts are now the order of the day, the population of the world has steadily increased. There are more people on the globe today than when Caesar conquered Gaul. How long do you think it would take 2,000,000,000 individuals, quarreling by means of gun-powder, to obliterate themselves?</p>
<p>War, as a blood-letting process, is less deadly than disease. Cancer, tuberculosis, and heart disease exact a bigger toll than war. In 1940, these three diseases caused the death of 610,525 persons. This is more than our total casualties in World War I. We survive these afflications as we survive our losses on the battlefield.</p>
<p>Our total casualties in World War I were 364,800. This is equal to the population of a city the size of Indianapolis. We survived World War I, as did every other nation that engaged in it, and had, at the last census, a total population of 131,669,275, the largest in our history. Not even the vaquished nations were obliterated. Germany came back for more, full of fight and fury, and made a nasty mess of things, as she is likely to do again, in World War 3 or even in World War 20, if she finds an opportunity.</p>
<p>Total American casualties in the present World War, as reported, July, 1944, were 299,474. This is about one-seventh the number of persons born each year. How long, at this rate, do you think it will take our enemies to wipe out the United States?</p>
<p>And what of other countriess fighting in this war? There are 457, 836,475 Chinese. Japan has been at war with China for the past seven years and hasn't even begun to scratch the surface of Chinese obliteration. Yet we are told that the human race will be exterminated by war.</p>
<p>What, too, of India with its population of 388,997,955? Even the bubonic plague and cholera and a high death rate (India is estimated to lose a million inhabitants annually from tuberculosis alone) have not prevented India from increasing its population. That unhappy land, with its cobras and religion, now has 54,000,000 more inhabitants than it had 50 years ago.</p>
<p>You cannot kill off the human race by wars. If you could, it would have been extinguished long ago.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-78705934692038030872012-03-22T23:55:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:28:28.470-07:00Sideline Criticism<p>I HAVE never given serious thought or essential study to what is caled the "historicity of Jesus" question, and what is here said must be discounted from that angle. Nevertheless, I have formed an opinion from the Gospels themselves, which lead me to believe that there isn't an historical rag to wrap around Jesus. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John strike me as what Mr. McCabe might felicitously call "amateur historians".</p>
<p>Regarding these four Gospels, Prof. John B. Bury (rated, I think correctly, by Mr. McCabe as "first of recent British historians") states: "The result is that it can no longer be said that for the life of Jesus there is the evidence of eye-witnesses." And why have we only four Gospels in the Bible testifying to Jesus instead of a dozen or more? Because Irenaeus, the real founder of the Canon, was explicit in the matter: there are four quarters of the earth, four universal winds, and animals have four legs. This bright boy of the Church should have added one more: a roller skate has four wheels.</p>
<p>Personally, I have never cared two straws whether Jesus lived or not. Nor do I care two straws now. I judge the Gospel stories on their face and read them as I do Aesop's Fables. I am not interested whether a particular fox or bull-frog, mentioned by Aesop, really existed or not. Jesus' existence, or Buddha's, or the existence of Solomon's thirty-second wife can be wrangled over by those who like this sort of thing; for me, I think of the three emperors of ancient China, Fu-hi, Shon-nung and Huang-ti, of whom it is said by Frederick Hirth, Professor of Chinese in Columbia University: "Although we have no reason to deny their existence, the details recorded concerning them contain enough in the way of improbabilities to justify us in considering them as mythical creations. The chronology, too, is apparently quite fictitious." Like Jesus, these three seem to be living in a world of hot air.</p>
<p>What essential difference does it make whether a man named Jesus lived or not? Suppose he did? Does it help Christianity? And if he didn't, what then? One thing is certain: No one (whether his name was Jesus, Jake or Tweedledee) ever did the things that Jesus is said to have done in the four Gospels. One doesn't have to be a trained historian, a certified public accountant, a professional rag-picker, or the seventh-son of a seventh-son, to know this, and I, for one, being a rather perverse individual, reject, on the evidence of the Gospel stories themselves, the whole silly mess as a pack of lies.</p>
<p>Whether some one by the name of Jesus once lived and had a lot of mythology built up around him, is a matter for special students to decide; whether the Gospel Jesus grew out of a solar myth, or out of the mountains on the moon, or from the blue grass of Kentucky, is for them also. It is, to me, all immaterial. I am concerned only with the Gospel story itself: is it true?</p>
<p>This we know: Jesus was not the first individual who is said to have performed miracles. The woods are full of these birds, so why all the dawdling over whether this particular Jew lived or not? The foundations of Christianity rest on the claim that an individual named Jesus performed certain miracles, in proof of his divinity, but since miracles do not happen in nature, the whole scheme of Christian theology, from this fact alone, is rotten to the roots. Jesus or no Jesus, the story is false on its face.</p>
<p>The Historicus-McCabe discussion in The Truth Seeker (Sept., 1944) has now reached a point of petty bickering where even the tyro may step in. I myself have learned nothing from it except that each side has its line-up of "authorities". Authorities in what? Intelligent men who are able to grasp and understand a subject are "authorities" for me. And I personally don't care whether the "authority" is a cab-driver on the side or a professional square-cap. A good part of our ignorance today is traceable to our academic stuffed shirts, and philosophical jitter-bugs. McCabe's very impressive list of professional historians who he says are all on his side, in support of an historical Jesus, becomes less impressive when we remember his own words, that professors of history, being professors, are not in a position to be "candid" in the matter. As for the "early rabbis", I would as soon rely on their testimony concerning Jesus as I would on their statements concerning the historicity of Noah's Ark and Balaam's ass. When has this bunch of sanctified prevaricators been other than a hotch-potch of amateur historians?</p>
<p>On the other hand, Historicus, I think, has missed a fine opportunity to enlighten us all. I was awaiting some unfolding of the theme itself, an exposition of the myth theory, rather than an attempt to show that his "authorities" have the other side's "authorities" groggy on the ropes. Maybe they have, but no one would learn how it came about by reading the article. But what does it matter? Man or myth, Jesus never did the wonders imputed to him.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, what is a mere sideliner like myself to do? Go to the movies, perhaps watch Mickey Mouse, and wonder whether there ever was a real mouse like that in real life.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-13744909048976564302012-03-22T23:51:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:29:34.565-07:00Dr. Gregory and Religion<p>A LETTER from Sir Richard Gregory, President of the British Association, has just come to hand, in which that genial personality discusses some of the points raised in a recent article of mine dealing with his book. Readers may recall that I criticized the work for its concessions to religion.</p>
<p>Dr. Gregory states that he wishes to be classed among the "freethinkers," even though he may not be, as he himself puts it, a "militant rationalist." In spite of all that can be said against religion, he still feels that something of "ethical" value may be salvaged from the wreck. This he would preserve by cultivating the "moral" teachings of our leading cults.</p>
<p>Dr. Gregory is not concerned, he says, with what men "worship" so long as it develops in them an appreciation of the virtues and strengthens their moral fiber. But is not this "appreciation" often developed in religionists at the expense of the intellect and by the sacrifice of that which is essential to the stability of character -- a regard for truth?</p>
<p>Our own concern in a particular creed is not whether it teaches a few moral platitudes, prates "goodness," or talks about loving one's neighbor, but whether it is, in its fundamental principles, true or false. A religion may have some good teachings in it and still be basically untrue and an influence for evil. Mohammedanism, for example, is against the drinking of intoxicating liquors (a moral teaching which Irish Catholics might profitably observe), but are its teachings on a hundred other questions anything but false and confusing to the intellect?</p>
<p>No end of examples may be found in which religious "morals" corrupt conduct. A Christian Scientist, for example, may be a "well-meaning" father, a kind husband, and a loyal friend, but what good does it do his stricken child if he abandons it to diphtheria because his "religious scruples" are against the employment of medical science? What benefit does the child derive from hearing that "God is Love" if it is neglected and left to the germs? Does not religious "morality" here result in a criminal act against the child?</p>
<p>Are there Christian teachings worthy of salvaging? There are precious few. For the most part Christian morality is perniciously false. The man who followed most of the preachments of Jesus would be a fool. Resist not evil. Take no thought for the morrow as to what you shall eat and what you shall wear. Sell all you have and give to the poor. If any man sue you at law and take away your coat, give him your trousers too. If smitten on one cheek, turn the other. Judge not, that you be not judged. Love your enemies. What man, professing these doctrines today, ever follows them? The simple fact is that they are not "moral" teachings but sanctified stupidities. They do not build character, they destroy it; and few Christians are such indolent dolts as to think of observing them. All the bland assurance we get about their lofty sentiments is pulpit rubbish.</p>
<p>Add to these the crazy notions of Jesus concerning demonology, hell-fire burnings and "gnashing of teeth," and blood-drinking rituals and you have a religion viler than voodoo itself. Strip Jesus, if you will, of his well-proved mythological character, and all you have left is a deluded and mentally sick man.</p>
<p>Can one say that the Christian religion, with all its infamous history, its sanguinary oppressions, and its nightmare theology has made the world finer? Dr. Gregory knows better. The groans from the Inquisition, the cries of tortured men and women, the butcheries of scientists and heretics belie that claim. Christianity has been tried -- and convicted by the decency of the world.</p>
<p>To sum up, no one has more aptly put the matter, in one sentence, than Dr. Gregory himself:</p>
<p>"Christian teachers claim that worship of a supernatural Being is essential to promote high ethical ideals, but I need scarcely say that I do not accept this view."</p>
<p>If morality, then, as Dr. Gregory maintains, is quite independent of a belief in God and can be practiced without it, why need we bother to retain religion? If the virtues can be sustained without the incubrances of superstition, why leave the religious structure standing as a perpetual eye-sore and disfigurement to civilization?</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-78922129680100175072012-03-22T23:46:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:30:01.303-07:00St. Patricks "Gift" To Ireland<p>WHOEVER got the assignment to prepare the editorial on St. Patrick's for the New York Times on March 17, did a perfect job of rhetorical gush-writing for the Catholic Church. If the patron saint of Ireland were with us in the flesh it is doubtful whether he would recognize himself as the hero of the following blurb:</p>
<p>"Today, perhaps, as we recall again his gift of Christianity to Ireland that was to preserve the treasure of ancient civilization when the foundations of older Rome had fled, he may seem our contemporary in a stricken world."</p>
<p>Setting aside the sloppy diction of the editorial (we have heard of "foundations" that "crumble" and "collapse", but never of those that are known to have "fled"), we may remark that there is nothing in St. Patrick's life to suggest that he was interested in the preservation of "ancient civilization". What he was concerned about was preaching an Asiatic creed which he believed would save men from the wrath of God and eternal damnation.</p>
<p>If Christianity is St. Patrick's "gift" to Ireland, the noted saint should be burned in effigy by every self-respecting Hibernian. What he brought to Ireland was the hang-over of an abominable superstition, hatched in ancient Israel by an insufferable tribe of Bedouin barbarians, whose culture for the most part, as measured even by the standards of the time, was abysmally low.</p>
<p>St. Patrick's "gift" to Ireland was a hodgepodge of mythology and ignorance which he had imbibed as a child. In early life, infused with Christian fervor and beholding visions, he sought to displace the religion of the Druids with the religion of Christ. Like Jacques Bossuet, a French bishop and historian of a later period, St. Patrick saw in the sacred delusions of a Semitic tribe a divine revelation which was to redeem the world.</p>
<p>In referring to the obsessions of Bossuet, the English historian Buckle observes:</p>
<p>"Because Bossuet had been taught that the Jews are the chosen people of God, he under the title of Universal History, almost confines his attention to them, and treats this obstinate and ignorant race as if they formed the pivot upon which the affairs of the universe had been made to turn. His idea of a universal history excludes those nations who were the first to reach civilization, and to some of whom the Hebrews owed the scanty knowledge which they subsequently acquired. He says little of the Persians, and less of the Egyptians; nor does he even mention that far greater people between the Indus and the Ganges, whose philosophy formed one of the elements of the school of Alexandria, whose subtle speculations anticipated all the efforts of European metaphysics, and whose sublime inquiries, conducted in their own exquisite language, date from a period when the Jews, stained with every variety of crime, were a plundering and vagabond tribe, wandering on the face of the earth, raising their hand against every man, and ever man raising his hand against them."</p>
<p>How different might have been the history of Ireland if St. Patrick's "gift" had come from the pagan world, with its rich treasures of literature and learning. The classical culture of the Greek and Roman civilizations, with its love of knowledge and inquiry, its appreciation of art and drama, its unsurpassable glorification of wisdom and intellectual liberty would have raised the Emerald Isle to something less pathetic than a broken reed among the nations of the world. Intellectually pauperized, Ireland has suffered more from her venal priesthood and groveling superstition than from her plagues and famines.</p>
<p>If Irishmen had a tenth of the wit and sense of humor they are said to have (there is, I understand, a little Irish somewhere along the line of my antecedents), they would have long ago laughed the Catholic Church out of existence, ridiculed its ludicrous and asinine doctrines, its crass stupidities, its priestly arrogance. They would have scorned the idea that a small and obscure cult, masquerading as the elite of heaven, had been favored by the Almighty with a divine revelation while they, the Irish, were left to gather the crumbs of Hebraic tradition.</p>
<p>St. Patrick, if he existed (and there is considerable controversy among scholars as to whether or not he lived), is anything but a commanding figure in the pages of history and would hardly have called for laudation by the Times had it not been for journalistic expediency. He was not a scholar, a thinker, even a man of moderate culture; his alleged "Confessions" stamp him as an intellectual nonentity, possessed of enough fanatical zeal and muscular vigor to instill an Oriental superstition into the social blood stream of an alien people. "Various charges," says the Encyclopedia Britannica, "had been brought against him by his enemies, among them that of illiteracy, the truth of which is borne out by the crudeness of his style, and is fully admitted by the writer himself."</p>
<p>But a saint does not have to be literate to meet religious standards; it is enough that he have "spiritual insight," a flair for the mystical, the ability to see and converse with spooks. If he has these, he will not only fulfill, as St. Patrick did, the requirements of the Church, but merit the awe and adoration of its insatiable dupes. His emotional instability will more than compensate for anything he may lack in intellectual experience.</p>
<p>Our venerable New York Times could have done better than laud a vulgar superstitionist. If it wished to pay tribute to Irish glory and intelligence, it could have signaled out worthy individuals, such as Tyndall, the scientist, Bury, the historian, and the scholar, Joseph McCabe. These men, born in Ireland and interested in preserving the treasures of civilization, will be remembered in cultural circles long after Patrick, the pious ignoramus, is buried in oblivion.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-47968108566905712412012-03-22T23:42:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:30:14.787-07:00Chameleonic Christianity<p>SIR RICHARD GREGORY, in a letter to the London Times, punctures the pretentiousness of those who claim that this war, with its world-wide ramifications, is being waged to preserve Christianity. After pointing out that "Mohammedans, Buddhists, Hindus, Parsees, Jews, and other non-Christians, as well as many attached to no particular religious faith, are joined in world fellowship in the cause for which the United Nations are fighting", he adds, "it is, therefore, disconcerting - to say the least - to represent the war as a world conflict between Christianity and paganism".</p>
<p>There are numerous reasons, of course, why we and our allies have joined together in war to crush the opposition, but one thing is certain: the United Nations are fighting to preserve the doctrine that an ancient Jew was born of a virgin, turned water into wine, was crucified on a cross, was buried and rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven like an English Spitfire on its way to Hamburg. Whatever the various reasons are for our united war effort, they do not include the idea that our national existence depends on believing that a Palestinian vagrant fed a multitude of Semites on a few loaves of bread and a few fishes, and had enough left over to fill several bushel baskets.</p>
<p>As for Christianity and its absurd Bible, whoever heard of a modern gentleman picking up a gun, or of a nation going to war in order to prove that a herd of swine, in Judaic times, was possessed by demons? The United Nations are as little concerned in the "truths" of Christianity as they are in the exploits of Jack and the Beanstalk.</p>
<p>What these United Nations are fighting for, as Dr. Gregory points out, is for their own ways of life, their own social ideas, and for self-preservation. They are not sending their youth into battle or spending their substance for the mythology of the Bible. There are, for example, over 400,000,000 Chinese allied with us in the prosecution of the war. These "heathens" are not fighting to defend the Christian religion, nor are they, like Catholic Italy, fighting on the side of Hitler.</p>
<p>But leave it to Christianity to bedeck itself in stolen plumage. After blocking the cultural progress of the world for hundreds of years, it now poses as the champion of civilization, when, in plain truth, its behavior has been like that of the chameleon, changing colors and blending with the background whenever it is expedient. Let a people gather a few crumbs of culture in spite of Christianity and Christianity will claim the credit.</p>
<p>Christianity upheld slavery for over a thousand years, yet no sooner was emancipation achieved than it posed as "the black man's friend". It spat on woman suffrage, then, when woman's rights were won, it posed as the "liberator" of women. It fought tooth and nail the doctrine of evolution, but now assures us (from "liberal" pulpits, at least) that there never was any "real" conflict between science and religion. It opposed anesthesia in child-birth; it now proclaims it as God's "gift" to womankind. Before the war, it worshiped "the Prince of Peace"; it is now singing the song, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition".</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-25058274104736938122012-03-22T23:35:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:30:28.244-07:00That Jonah Stuff Again<p>A STORY which went the rounds recently in newspapers served by the Associated Press told of a certain college professor who had crawled "into a whale," in order to prove that one of these animals could have swallowed Jonah. The New York Times captioned the item: "Scientist Crawls Through a Whale (Dead) and Says that Story of Jonah Could Be True." The account was embellished with all the fanciful trimmings of an imaginative reporter.</p>
<p>Doubting the veracity of the account as it appeared in the press, we wrote to the professor himself and received the following reply:--</p>
<p>The University of Chicago<br />Department of Pharmacology</p>
<p>Dear Mr. Teller:</p>
<p>All newspaper accounts dealing with my crawling through the gullet of a whale are grossly exaggerated. I merely replied to a question from a reporter. I was asked whether it was possible for a whale to swallow a human being, and my reply was that in my judgment it was possible for a large sperm whale to swallow an object the size of a human being. I did not go through the gullet into the stomach.</p>
<p>One day at the whaling station, we had a thin strip of a gullet from a sperm whale. I slipped this tissue over me, and felt convinced that there was room enough in the gullet of a large sperm whale for a human being to pass.<br />Yours very truly, E.M. Geiling</p>
<p>For every one who reads Dr. Geiling's denial of having crawled into the belly of a whale, there will be 100,000 persons who will remember the newspaper report, and tell us how a college professor once duplicated the Jonah trip.</p>
<p>Sperm whales have sharp teeth and tear their food to pieces before swallowing. Chunks of giant cuttlefish found in the bodies of these animals show mutilation by the dentition and corrosion by the acids of the stomach. A prophet intent on staying three days and three nights in the stomach of a sperm whale would have to watch his step before even approaching the gullet.</p>
<p>As to the size of the gullet, there is a vast difference between slipping "a thin strip" of the gullet over one's shoulders and crawling through that same gullet before it is removed from the body. Body tissues detached from their surrounding parts can be stretched and inflated much more readily than they can in their normal state. We are still waiting to see some good Fundamentalist crawl into the stomach of a whale -- and live. And this goes for either a living or a dead whale.</p>
<p>Mark Twain once remarked that a lie can travel half way around the world before truth can put its trousers on. It may be that this applies to running down newspaper reports of man-eating whales and the constant reiteration of Jonah yarns.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-11874794917019490852012-03-22T23:30:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:31:06.478-07:00Is The Bible Valuable?<p>The following letter is from Dr. Ellsworth Huntington, Research Associate of Geography, Yale University:</p>
<p>Dear Mr. Teller: I have read with interest you article in The Truth Seeker. Your purpose is good but I doubt whether you are using a wise method. It seems to me that you go as far in one direction as the Fundamentalists do in the other. To speak as though the Bible were a perfectly worthless book, full of mistakes and expressing merely man's attempts to solve some of the world's great problems, it nevertheless contains numerous extremely beautiful and valuable sayings. Moreover, as an historical record, it is of extreme value. This is true no matter whether its ideas about God and the future life are true or false.</p>
<p>Your attitude drives people like myself in the opposite direction from what you intend.</p>
<p>Sincerely yours, Ellsworth Huntington</p>
<p>Dear Doctor Huntington: Thank you for your gracious communication and candid criticism.</p>
<p>As one who greatly admires your work in science and who holds you in deep respect, may I ask you to consider two or three points?</p>
<p>I try to keep as far away from Fundamentalism as I can get. I should dislike to think that any opinion of mine is driving persons like yourself "in the opposite direction". That would be toward Fundamentalism, the lowest rung in the intellectual ladder. I cannot think of any disservice worse than that.</p>
<p>You think it "absurd" that I call the Bible a "worthless book". I thought my statement would be understood in its relative sense. I was commenting on the Fundamentalist claim that the Bible is a book of knowledge. No doubt, even "worthless" things can be considered of value in some particular way. Clam shells can be made into buttons and garbage into perfume. The worthlessness of the Bible consists of its disregard of truth. I was not considering its value to rabbis and priests or to students of mythology.</p>
<p>You are doubtless correct in stating that the Bible contains some "beautiful and valuable sayings". I must dissent, however, from your opinion that they are "numerous". I doubt whether you could copy as many as six typewritten pages of wise sayings from the Bible. Try it sometime when you have nothing better to do. And for every sensible passage you find you will run across hundreds that are rubbish or worse. My King James version contains 1,159 pages of closely printed text. A book of that size, on science or history, which could not show more than several typewritten pages of good, solid material in it, does not rate high.</p>
<p>If a fruit grower were to sell you a barrel of apples in which all but three or four were rotten, you would be justified, I think, in writing him. "You have sent me a barrel of bad apples." You would not qualify your complaint by stating, "I am delighted with the barrel of apples you sent me, because there are several good ones in it." The same for the Bible. A few sensible sayings do not offset the hundreds of errors, stupidities, brutalities, vulgarisms, and downright crackpot ideas taught in the Bible. It is a literary curiosity -- not a book of wisdom. And its influence has been to stifle knowledge and foster superstition. It is responsible for science having been gagged for centuries.</p>
<p>Experience has taught me that those who talk most about the beauty and wisdom of the Bible are those who read it least. Few persons take the trouble to read the book through. How many men of science have read the Bible from cover to cover? Of those you know, how many have studied it, reflected on its content, given it close and critical thought? How many have done more than parrot phrases they learned at their mothers' knee? The average scientist gives less thought to the Bible than he does to his billiards, bowling or bridge. And why shouldn't he? He is engaged in highly specialized study, and can't be bothered about what the ancient Jews thought about ghosts or what tribe they should butcher next.</p>
<p>I must dissent from your opinion that "as an historical record" the Bible is "of extreme value." In what way is it valuable? Is the story of creation a record of fact? Did the Garden of Eden exist? Was there a Flood? Is there any truth in the silly miracles related about Jesus? Do you yourself take any stock in Biblical science? History is the record of events. If the stories related from tradition are in conflict with archaeological records, they are not history. The chronology of the Bible does not check with the historical records of antiquity. As the Encyclopaedia Brittanica observes, "the methods of chronological computations adopted by the Assyrians were particularly exact" and there are marked "discrepancies" between these recrods and the stories of the Bible. Folklore and old wives' tales make up the greater part of the book. Many Biblical characters never lived. I agree with Joseph McCabe that "the Old Testament is a forgery." The "New", with its fabrications and falsities, is just as bad. History is not written in these way these books were compiled. I hold it absurd for anyone to pick up the Bible and say "Here is history."</p>
<p>Again assuring you of my appreciation of your letter, I am,<br />Sincerely yours, Woolsey Teller</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-39830285021256689482012-03-22T23:26:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:31:20.499-07:00Sociological Pipe Dreams<p>"IT must be realized once and for all, writes Dr. A.G. Keller, Professor of the Science of Society, Yale University, "that as yet nothing worthy of the name of science exists within the societal range. Every candid student knows that 'sociology' languishes in a well-deserved disrepute."</p>
<p>This should be apparent to anyone who has given serious thought to the question. It should be particularly clear at this time, when our social salvationists and post-war planners are plotting the future of the world. It is their intention to regulate the future by official proclamation.</p>
<p>As a science, sociology is a little better than alchemy. With all its statistical and historical data, it cannot predict what Mr. Hitler will do next, what the United Nations will do after the war, who will doubt-cross whom, what political factions will rise to power, and who will arrive with the next best smile and radio voice. Not knowing this, it cannot foretell what the social set-up will be one year from tomorrow.</p>
<p>History is full of ups and downs and violent upheavals. Civiliations are never secure, and rarely endure for long. You cannot be sure that there will never be another maniac in Germany with global ambitions, or another balcony-boy in Rome to bloat and brag, or that an Asiatic horde may not rise in might and overwhelm the world. Since we cannot be sure of these things, what are catch-phrases with in the light of experience? "History shows us", says the Rockefeller Foundation Report for 1942, "that it is possible to lose a civilization even while armies and navies are triumphant."</p>
<p>The course of a star can be predicted for the next thousand years, but you can no more predict the mass movements of men from one year to another, or even from one week to the next, than you can predict the way a jumping-bean will hop. What, then is the value of all the ephemeral big-talk and blue-print plannings for the future of the race? Something more than political resolutions and portfolio promises govern the future. Pretty slogans and fireside chats are not enough.</p>
<p>With 10,000 years of human history behind us, we have not yet learned to eliminate war, to slough off our animal heritage, or to settle our differences amicably. We are still, in spite of our veneer, as primitively brutal as ever, and will revert to savagery when our fighting fibers are tapped. Yet even now, while we are engaged in the bloodiest kill-fest in history, we are told that freedom from fear, and freedom from want, and freedom from tyranny and oppression are just around the corner. The things you fear are soon to be eliminated at an international conference by the stroke of a pen.</p>
<p>If you can believe that, you can believe anything the preachers tell you about a heavenly paradise.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-73902423925981944102012-03-22T23:22:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:31:38.478-07:00A Hill-Billy Book<p>A PAMPHLET by James E. Bennet, entitled "The Bible Defeats Atheism", has just come to my notice. It purports to be "A Story of the Famous Harry Rimmer Trial as told by the Attorney for the Defendant", but anyone who attended the hearing would hardly recognize the proceedings from Mr. Bennet's garbled account. His batting average, in the matter of mis-statement, is almost perfect.</p>
<p>Mr. Bennet's pamphlet deserves a high rating in Fundamentalist circles. Culturally, it belongs in the Jurassic Age, when animals had thirty-ton bodies and three ounce brains.</p>
<p>As for Mr. Bennet himself, he is more to be pitied than scorned, for his the type of individual one will find teaching Bible classes at Babbitt's Corners. He is probably the victim of his Sunday school days. Believe it or not, I once attended Sunday school, too, and, at the age of ten, won a prize for writing a religious essay. It must have been a masterpiece. If I had it today, I would offer it to Mr. Bennett as a model for Sunday school writing.</p>
<p>Like his pal-in-Jesus, Rimmer, Mr. Bennett is an all-out Fundamentalist. He will employ any kind of statement that will bolster his faith. The Rot of Ages is the rock for him.</p>
<p>His spelling is atrocious. He writes "Lyall" for Lyell, "Santa Clause" for Santa Claus, twice refers to Henry Fairfield "Osbourn", and misspells G. Elliot Smith's name. He does manage, however, to spell God correctly a great many times, probably from long practice. His familiarity with scientific names and terms gives one a shudder.</p>
<p>His diction is abominable. If you are a stickler for even ordinary decent English, try this sentence: "If the canary one thousand years ago was today a horse, or some other animal, that would be evolution". Or, better still, how do you like this grammar: These exhibits, seen by children in museums, "are made by man as in his opinion they think evolution might have occurred".</p>
<p>Like Harry Rimmer, Mr. Bennet is interested in science only when it irritates his piety. "I believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice. I do not have to argue about it. If you do not believe, then you prove that I am wrong, if you can . . . I believe that man became a sinner through the disobedience of Adam . . . I get great joy and comfort from my belief."</p>
<p>He probably does. But he gets even greater joy from telling the Fundamentalists how he flabbergasted the plaintiff's witnesses. All of us were just snowed under by his amazing erudition. Mr. Floyd's "swell bunch of anti-Bible witnesses" were ground to dust by his clever questioning, and sat blanched and bewildered before his profound knowledge. He knew more about the Bible, it seems, than Major Joseph Wheless, the plaintiff's attorney the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, the Rev. Charles Francis Potter, Rabbi Baruch Braunstein, and the rest of us put together. He thinks so, anyway. And what does Christian meekness matter if it sometimes slips a cog and becomes cocky?</p>
<p>Not all of us, of course, can be as bright and as scholarly as Mr. Bennet. He talks about "hunks of gas", not knowing that "hunks" applies to solids, can't keep his verbs straight ("each of which flatly contradict the other"), and refers to the deer family as "cervidoe" instead of cervidae. But what does it matter? Those for whom the book is written will never know the difference. God gave us the Bible, didn't he, and ain't that enough? And didn't he give us Jesus Christ? And what have you atheists got to put in their place?</p>
<p>Scientifically, he is an ace investigator and something of a zoologist. "I rather regretted the fact that they did not offer more proof, because I had been studying up on the subject as far as I could and was convinced that the ark was large enough to hold the prescribed cargo." And he agrees with Mr. Rimmer: "You could get two of every species of insect on the hides of two good-sized elephants, and they would not, therefore, occupy any additional space in the ark."</p>
<p>As for geology, "most all present-day scientists have completely discredited the theory of the record of the rocks".</p>
<p>As for the formation of clouds, it came about in this way: "I showed how God pushed the clouds further back and made what the aviators call a 'ceiling' between the clouds and the substance of the earth, and God called it a 'firmament' and men call this cloudy ceiling 'heaven'.</p>
<p>Half the pamphlet is devoted to me, and if it weren't for the source, I might feel a bit flattered. "There were," says Bennet, "179 typed pages of the official record, being 25 lines to the page, and the testimony of Mr. Teller actually covered about eighty pages." If there is any merit in this, it lies in the opportunity I had, for four hours on the witness stand, to testify for science and against the Bible to a packed court room. Every hamlet in America, reached by the Associated and United Press, heard of the Floyd-Rimmer case. And though highly colored and distorted, the reports let every hick know that the Bible had been kicked around in a municipal court.</p>
<p>"The Judge, a Hebrew in his thirties," says Mr. Bennet, "was a very bright lawyer and a good judge." He was. He reprimanded Mr. Bennet for getting too personal with me, and extended me a compliment at the end of the trial. I do not recall that Mr. Bennet was complimented by the Court.</p>
<p>And by way of accuracy, let it be stated that the Court did not pass on the scientific evidence presented, as stated by Mr. Bennet. It passed on the question whether Mr. Rimmer should be held responsible for a certain advertisement in a New York newspaper, offering a reward of a thousand dollars for errors in the Bible. But what do Fundamentalists care for trifling details like these? The fact that Rimmer ducked responsibility for the ad closed the case. The Fundamentalists won by running away.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-01.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375420477446875159.post-83163698938873388852012-03-22T23:17:00.001-07:002019-09-02T00:31:54.754-07:00Atheism of Astronomy: A Reply to Critics<p>SINCE "The Atheism of Astronomy" was published many letters of comment and criticism have reached the Truth Seeker. Some of these were printed in the paper, and I am extremely grateful to Editor Smith, as well as to the various contributions who have helped to widen the scope of the discussion.</p>
<p>Some of the letters which have reached me privately express a deep interest in the subject of astronomy. Some are very illuminating on the behavior patterns of mankind--and some very religious. One, from an exotic female, I am told, can only be construed as a burning love letter, proposing that I accept Jesus, through her. I had no idea that a simple work of mine, defending "gross'' materialism and a godless universe, should have caused such a "spiritual" awakening and religious fervor in one of my readers. Others, as pathetic as this, seem more interested in the salvation of my soul than the facts I discussed. Still another, hopeless of my future, has already consigned me to regions close to the core of the earth. Communications like these have been conveniently filed in the wastebasket for future consideration.</p>
<p>Rabbi Ahron Opher, of the Hebrew Tabernacle, Washington Heights, New York City, who wrote me concerning "The Atheism of Astronomy," calls attention to the theories of "Keppler," "Genes," and "Ettington" as likely to refute its arguments. The way these learned doctors of Judaism toss the names of scientific men about. (and misspell them) is enough to make a freshman groan.</p>
<p>Rabbis of today get their wisdom from the ancient Jews, whose knowledge of the world was below that of the not very over-bright Egyptians. Says the historian Buckle: "Science properly so called, the Egyptians had none; and as to their wisdom, it was considerable enough to distinguish them from the barbarous nations like the old Hebrews, but it was inferior to that of the Greeks, and it was of course immeasurably below that of modern Europe."</p>
<p>Kosher knowledge today is canned ignorance from the past.</p>
<p>I propose here to consider some of the more recent issues raised by several of my critics. Among these is the question as to whether or not there are likely to be other worlds inhabited like the earth.</p>
<p>One writer argues that since millions of stars can be seen merely as tiny points of light, there may be planets, unseen through the telescope, circling about them. He is entitled to his "may". We know enough, however, of our planets close at hand, the peculiarity of their origin, and their requirements for the sustentation of life, to accept a conclusion other than that planetary existence is a minor occurrence, and that life, as we know it here, is as nothing at all in the stellar depths. Those who believe in a "well-populated" universe will have to "populate" billions upon billions of "white hot" stars.</p>
<p>Some find it difficult to believe that life is a rare occurrence in the universe and that the earth is probably the only inhabited planet of our system. It is their contention that such a "unique" situation is counter to the "expectancy" one would look for among so many worlds. They seem to think that physical and chemical forces, operative everywhere, must necessarily bring into existence things very much alike through to the universe, and that we should always find duplications. This is definitely not so.</p>
<p>One does not have to look far into space to confirm this. Nature can be as sparing and restricted in some of its activities as lavish in others. There are many "rare" occurences in nature. Such as the evolution of a Darwin or a Shakespeare out of so much human scum. Since our earth began there has been only one age of Reptiles. The dinosaur was "unique" among all forms of life. Among the multitudinous species of plants and flowers, "Dionaea muscipula," a distinctive type, is found only in one tiny corner of the globe. The kangaroo is a native of Australia -- and nowhere else.</p>
<p>The manatee is restricted to a few tropical waters, the gorilla to small areas in Africa. The rarity of planets and the scarcity of life in space are in no way startling to one who takes a long range view of things. It is a view which is definitely warranted by the findings of astronomy, which show that what happens at one point in space does not have to be duplicated elsewhere. The sun is an exceptional star, and its planets are an exceptional "birth."</p>
<p>As to the question, Whence comes intelligence?, it will be found answered in any good text-book on organic evolution. Intelligence, both in the race and in the individual, gradually develops with the brain and the nervous system. It is a physiological activity which manifests itself in a large part of the biological world, including man. It is not a mysterious subject at all, except to those who like to indulge in a "tyranny of words." And it is readily comprehensible, I believe, to any individual who is not too deeply absorbed in contemplating Plymouth Rock and in asking why, if matter really thinks, rocks cannot "acquire knowledge?</p>
<p>Psychology, true to its ancient heritage, is still dominated by a vast amount of Hottentot ignorance. Psychologists of the mystic school still talk of the mind as a ghost. What cannot be picked up and weighed on a butcher's scale must be a "spirit". They cannot seem to grasp that a motion of matter in the skull, or a vibration in the nerveganglia of the brain cannot be taken out of one's head and tossed on scales. They are as obsessed with a belief in spirit possession as the "benighted" savage, who, seeing a watch for the first time, concludes there is a ghost inside. The savage sees a "spirit" in the watch case, the mystic sees a "spirit" in his head.</p>
<p>The spirit mongers can no more comprehend the mechanistic character of the brain and its material functioning than they can comprehend the implications of materialism in their broader aspects. Life, they think, must be a dreary, meaningless affair without a recognition of "spirit." Being muddled on the one hand, they are sure to be muddled on the other. They are as quickly disturbed over a godless universe as a ghostless brain.</p>
<p>One critic marvels how a materialist, facing the "dismal" picture I have drawn, should "so shuffle the faculties of his mind" as to preserve his "poise" and "equanimity." I have seen, perhaps, a fair share of the grim side of life. But I see no reason why any man, unless his nerves are shattered or he faces some unbearable afffiction, should jump off a dock or turn on the gas. No one need become panic stricken merely because there is no paternal intelligence in the sky. Life can be made an interesting adventure in solving human problems and mastering the art of living. That art consists, in part, of cultivating one's intelligence and helping others to rise from the slough of ignorance and superstition.</p>
<p>If any one should be dejected and disheartened by the evils of the world, it is he who, having accepted belief in a guiding "intelligence," is compelled to witness the cruel behavior and callous indifference of his "Heavenly Father." It is the Christian who, praying to be relieved from an excruciating cancer, gets nothing in return but a celestial slap in the face, who should feel his despondency most. It is the theist, not the atheist, who should be tempted to slit his own throat. That is something our pedagogical theists and blackboard "psychologists" will never understand.</p>
<p>Certainly nothing I have put into words could offer a more "melancholy" picture of things as they are than that presented in the mass hysteria caused by our recent "invasion" by monsters from Mars. The radio broadcasters simply over-estimated, as I have done myself too often, the average intelligence of the race. It was the "spiritually-minded," who are said to derive "poise" and "equanimity" from their convictions, who were most easily demoralized, and who fled to their churches like flocks of frightened geese. If had they known more about Mars and less about "spiritual" matters, they would have probably enjoyed the radio entertainment.</p>
<p>Those who talk of: the dreariness and drabness of existence for the materialist, deceive themselves. Such jargon as that we must search for understanding in the depths of infinite reality" belongs to the age of priests. The materialist can be, and generally is, the highest cultivator of the finer things of life. He is better able to appreciate the cultural and esthetic values of life precisely because his eyes are open and he can think more clearly. In the fine arts and, in science, in music and drama, he generally excels. Lucretius, the greatest of didactic poets, was a materialist. So, too, was Holbach, whose home, indeed, was "one of the chief social centers of culture in Europe." Haeckel, who believed in neither God nor immortality, was an artist of high rank, whose hundreds of drawings of marine life in color would have made him famous independent of his accomplishments in the biological field. Buchner, whose "Force and Matter" rocked the religious world took time off from scientific pursuits to write exquisite verse. Vogt so lived that he, was "a brilliant man, of exceptional culture" whose "standard of conduct was rigorous'' and "humanitarian zeal intense." It was the teaching of Diderot, says Bury, "that man's energies should be devoted to making the earth pleasant." Girard, the philanthropist, put this into practice by founding a university and giving away millions to the poor. In brief, the zest for life and the cultivation of character will not be dulled because, of the discovery that there is no one in the clouds interested in our welfare.</p>
<p>Those who look for a moral crack-up under materialism, or for an era of gloom, should turn again to the pages of history. Under "spiritual" influences men became morbid, sour, and cruel. And it was precisely the most "spiritual" ages which contributed most to the destruction of man's happiness. Buckle, writing of the Scotch Kirk and its influence, says:<br /> "Cheerfulness, especially when it rose to laughter, was to be guarded against. . . . Smiling, provided it stopped short of laughter, might occasionally be allowed; still, being a carnal pastime, it was a sin to smile on Sunday. Even on weekdays, those who were most imbued with religious principles hardly ever smiled, but sighed, groaned and wept.... A Christian had no business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself. On Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting others and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the people that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish."</p>
<p>Of what significance, therefore, are fulminations against materialism? The plea that we acknowledge a "spirit" within and accept an "intelligence" in the clouds is Sunday school prattle. Man has progressed morally, and grown culturally, in proportion as he has abandoned these ideas. The closer we stick to matter the more we understand the workings of the universe. Culture has been advanced by ditching the ghosts.</p>
<p>What has "spirituality" to offer? The age of "spirituality" and ghost worship marks the most degrading and bloody period of man's existence. Those who sought culture in the "depths of infinite reality" by glorifying "spirit" and degrading matter usually ended up by burning one another at the stake. It was a sordid age, when pious scoundrelism prevailed and fanaticism ran amuck. No tragedy has equaled the dark ages of religion, when "spirituality" triumphed and materialism was crushed.</p>
<p>These things will never come again if men learn to think.</p>
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