St. Patricks "Gift" To Ireland

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:

"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."

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.

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.

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.

In referring to the obsessions of Bossuet, the English historian Buckle observes:

"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."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

Is The Bible Valuable?

The following letter is from Dr. Ellsworth Huntington, Research Associate of Geography, Yale University:

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.

Your attitude drives people like myself in the opposite direction from what you intend.

Sincerely yours, Ellsworth Huntington

Dear Doctor Huntington: Thank you for your gracious communication and candid criticism.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Again assuring you of my appreciation of your letter, I am,
Sincerely yours, Woolsey Teller

Sociological Pipe Dreams

"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."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

If you can believe that, you can believe anything the preachers tell you about a heavenly paradise.

Bigotry: Ally of Religion

ORVILLE PRESCOTT, book commentator for the New York Times, in reviewing the late Mr. Gustavus Myers' "History Of Bigotry in the United States", opens his article, with the following remark:
"In every man there is an element of cruelty and bigotry that can be aroused by appeals to fear and self-interest if controls of religion, idealism, and codes of character are once relaxed".

Here Mr. Prescott presents a diagnosis of bigotry that is remote from the facts: he presupposes that religion itself offers a restraint on bigotry, and that once its "controls" are: "relaxed" men become bigots. He is hopelessly wrong, both from the evidence of history and from the evidential nature of bigotry itself. Bigotry is defined in Funk and Wagnalls' Dictionary as "obstinate and intolerant attachment to a creed". The man who is "religious". and not a bigot is merely one who does not take his religion too seriously or seriously enough; he is restrained from bigotry, not by religion, but by lack of it. Let him become thoroughly obsessed by the idea that his religion is divinely inspired, its teachings undeniably true, and all other religions false and an affront to God, and he will flare into a fanatic at the first opportunity, He is restrained from asserting his bigotry through acts of violence only when he is not in power. Give him power to suppress the opinions of others and he will become intolerant of those who flout or question his creed. Zealotry in religion has never been restrained by religion; it is, on the contrary, religion itself which is responsible for the`fanatic's bigotry and intolerance.

If these religious "controls" of which Mr. Prescott speaks were anything but a myth, they would have manifested themselves conspicuously during that period of history when Christianity was at the zenith of its power. 'Instead, what do we find? A thousand years of bigotry and tyranny under the banner of the Cross, with liberty of thought suppressed; and humanity groaning under the yoke of unspeakable barbarism. History shows, if it shows us anything, that the most religious ages have been the most bigoted and cruel, and that intolerance flourished and brutality triumphed in direct ratio to the increase of religion and the power and influence of the Church. Where, in the eyes of Mr. Prescott, were his alleged religious restraints during the days of the Spanish Inquisition, the burning of Bruno, and our own Christian witch hunts in America? Where were they when a Pope of Rome struck off a medallion in commemoration of a butchery of Protestants? Where, indeed, were they during the Dark Ages of Christian despotism, when the sword, the rack, and the faggot raged against heresy? Precisely where they always are to be found when religious fanaticism and intolerance break loose: in the pious imagination of those who preach that religion is a boon to the race.

Mr. Prescott knows this, of course, as a well-informed literary man.. But how can one who is writing for the New York Times or any other newspaper say frankly and bluntly that Christianity breeds bigotry? He can't. To so much as intimate that Christianity is a breeding-hole for bigotry would antagonize the Christian mob. And so, instead, we are treated to his rhapsodical little sop that religion serves as a brake on bigotry. His judicious readers will smile, knowing how panicky our press becomes when an archbishop frowns and how expedient it is for our Four Freedom editors and freedom-from-fear newspapers to conciliate the saps. Alone in his study, with history books around him, he can, laugh it off by himself.

The book is advertised as 'the whole shocking story of bigotry in America". It isn't the complete story, nor even, the half of it. It isn't even an authentic or carefully compiled record. It is a garbled and uncritical approach to the subject of bigotry, with everything lumped together and indiscriminately labeled bigotry which criticizes or attacks the major religious faiths. Prof. Samuel F.B. Morse's "propaganda against Jesuits and Catholicism", for example, is classified as "bigotry". Anyone acquainted with the criminal record of the Roman Catholic Church and the long history of the political intrigues and cunning of the Jesuits, has read history in vain if he can temporize with any attempt to exonerate the scoundrelisms of the Church. Every humbuggery and sanctified fraud which goes under the name of religion is a victim of "bigotry" according to Mr. Myers, if it is criticized or opposed. He has succeeded merely in presenting a badly digested mass of data and labeling it "bigotry". As to the book under review, Mr. Prescott observes:

"The largest portion of this book describes the various scurrilous, false, defamatory and sometimes riotous and murderous attacks made upon Catholicism during the nineteenth century". Nothing is said, it seems, in this supposed "history" of bigotry in America, concerning the scurrilous, false, defamatory and sometimes riotous and murderous attacks made by Catholicism. Not a line is devoted to the condemnation of Catholic fanaticism and intolerance, which here in America would justify a substantial volume by itself. Such treatment of Catholic infamy is quite beyond the range of a lop-sided and biasly conceived examination of bigotry. "The whole shocking story of bigotry in America has not yet been written. It will take another Lecky or Lea,or another Gibbon or Buckle, or perhaps a John Bagnell Bury, writing with high-mindedness and integrity and a judicial regard for facts, to write a real history of bigotry in America. Perhaps it may some day be written by Joseph McCabe. Not one, but several volumes could be written on Catholic bigotry right here in America. Catholicism's braggadocio claim to rule by divine right (observe how even in nominal Catholic countries people scorn the "infallibility" of the Pope and laugh right in the Catholic Fuehrer's face!); its incitements to mob action against every form of heresy; its vicious denunciations of ex-priests and of Catholics who secede from the Church; its ranting Coughlinites; its lobbying and political thimble-rigging in matters of State; its Index Expurgatorius; its systematic pollution and suppression of scientific truth; its-bombastic encyclicals against our public schools; its purgatorial swindle; its colossal gall and pompous pronouncements on matters of which it is as ignorant as Paddy's pig, stamp it as an insidious institution, totalitarian in character and governed by the same goose-step regimentation and "big lie" policy that makes the Nazi regime execrable in the eyes of every decent American. A "History of Bigotry in the United States" which fails to indict the Vatican Dictatorship is no history at all.

After devoting "the largest portion" of his book to the chronicling of what Mr. Prescott calls "anti-Catholic bigotry", Mr. Myers turns to the ever-present problem of the Jews, which throughout history, in every age and dime, has been a persistent one. "Next to the bigotry of American anti-Catholicism," says his reviewer,"comes that of anti-Semitism." No doubt, Mr. Myers has extended his theme here by devoting a generous amount of space to the Chosen People of God, and given even fresh material and a new impetus to those who would establish another Wailing Wall in America. But if he had anywhere hinted in his book that there is bigotry among the Jews, or that Judaism is an intolerant and narrow-minded cult, steeped in clannishness and cunning and with a history of cruelty and cupidity behind it, he could have established for his book an all-time reputation for historical accuracy. But such things just aren't mentioned by our truth-loving, run-of-the-mill sleuth-hounds and haters of bigotry. So out went a substantial part of the record, with three or four chapters less for Mr. Myers to worry about in planning his "history" of bigotry. As for the "age-long martyrdom" of the Jew, it is, as the Jewish writer Benjamin DeCasseres remarks; a "pure racial whine. He has not been butchered and oppressed anymore than Christian has butchered and oppressed Christian". For the most part, Christian bigotry has been no harder on the Jew than on anybody else and less of a hardship than to the outspoken freethinker who has defied the Church. It is the atheist who has borne the full brunt of Catholic and Protestant bigotry, along with the bigotry of Judaism. This, of course, is something which Mr. Myers does not mention.

From all indications the book is not likely to occupy an exalted place of honor in the field of historical criticism. It can hardly aspire to this distinction, since it is largely a scissors-and-paste record, presented in scrap-book style, and for all its seventeen years of preparation, "dull and tedious as literature". Not even Mr. Prescott is over-impressed by it, for, in summing up the work, he calls it "a mediocre job of organization" and "a sloppy one of writing'". These apparently are not the least of its recommendations. It is a Guggenheim Foundation book, sponsored in part by institutional funds, which means, of course, that meticulous care was taken to see that nothing was said in it to provoke the anger or roil the bigotry of the major religious faiths. The three great humbugs, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism, are treated with almost kid-glove daintiness, as if they were the Innocent victims of bigotry rather than its outstanding promoters. Each, in its own way, has instilled into followers the pious delusion that outside itself there is no salvation and that heresy is iniquitous to God.

The slip-shoddiness of the book is at once apparent to anyone acquainted with the larger aspects of bigotry in America. Imagine an historian writing a "History of Bigotry in the United States" and failing to feature Catholic bigotry as the most insidious of all! Bigotry, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish, is of religious origin, and so satiates its malevolence by a blind zeal to wipe out opposing opinion by coercion or suppression. It finds its most powerful expression when allied with government.

Where could more flagrant bigotry be found than in the recent seizure and impounding of freethought books imparted from England, which just now is a matter of court action by The Truth Seeker? Mr. Prescott, of course, as a newspaper reader, could hardly have known about this, as our daily press contracted a violent case of throat paralysis when the matter was brought to its attention. But what are American liberties and freedom of the press to the post-war glories promised by the New Deal bureaucracy?

Whitewashing The Infamous

A NUMBER of lectures delivered by Sir. Richard Gregory during his recent visit to this country have been incorporated in a book entitled "Religion in Science and Civilization". As works from Dr. Gregory's pen are deserving of serious attention, I procured the volume, .anticipating that it would measure up to the high standard of his studies in pure science. It did--in all respects save in those portions which treat of the conflict between science and religion. Here, unfortunately, the author loses the historical perspective.

The book, for the most part, in dealing with religion, takes a conciliatory attitude. It is written more in the "appeasement" tempo of a Chamberlain than in the vigorous manner of a Churchill telling the enemy where to get off. Unconsciously, perhaps, though nevertheless with fatal concessions to reactionary beliefs, Dr. Gregory engages in dainty flirtations with the forces of regression; for some unaccountable reason, he hopes to save Christianity from the stigma of being opposed to science.

"The mistake has been, and still is," says Dr. Gregory, "to make the conflict between Christianity and science instead of between obscurantism and enlightenment.

The mistake here is in thinking of Christianity as anything but obscurantism at its worst. If science is opposed to "obscurantism" (as Dr. Gregory holds it is), then science is in deadly conflict with Christianity. Nothing can nullify the fact that without the miracles of Jesus, the claim that he was the Son of God, that he died for men's sins, that he raised persons from the dead, and that only he can salvage us from damnation, the Church is meaningless. Science is in conflict with these ideas as clearly as it is with the claim that Father Divine is God or that the Pope is "infallible".

What is Christianity, in substance, but the reputed doctrines of Jesus? Jesus, if the Gospel stories are true, rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. Is there anything in science today, as known to Dr. Gregory, to support these fantastic teachings? Positively not; Dr. Gregory is aware, as an astronomer and a physicist, that they clash with science; he need only note that they are Christian doctrines hopelessly in conflict with biological and astronomical knowledge.

Works such as Draper's "History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion" and White's "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom" says Dr. Gregory, "are melancholy reading today, for they are largely concerned with problems and influences which no longer exist, though at the time they evoked bitter discussion."

It will be time enough to talk about these books being out of date when the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England go out of business. If there is "melancholy reading today", it is furnished by that type of writer who is blissfully unaware of the mountainous mass of nonsense preached in Christian churches and of the singular devotion which thousands of our clergy display in their work of muddling science.

Dr. Gregory clearly recognizes the fact that "crude and cruel conceptions of religion" are still held by large Christian communities; and are believed to be justified by literal interpretations of Biblical texts." This being so, how can he contend that these are not Christian doctrines or that they are not in conflict with science? It is just here that ill-considered thought leads him to the conclusion that the battle is over, that the works of Draper and White, depicting the struggle, are antiquated and unworthy of consideration at this time. Quite the opposite is true; seldom has there been greater need to emphasize the fact that Christianity and science are irreconcilable enemies, that a Munich peace-pact is out of the question, and that war must go on until one side or the other is vanquished.

The "crude and cruel teachings" against which Dr. Gregory protests are accepted today because they are found in the Bible and form a part of Christian church dogma. Hell is as hot a place today in Roman Catholic theology as ever before; if it simmers in Church of England circles, it is because some churchmen are becoming ashamed of the "gnashing-of-teeth" doctrine taught by the Hell-teaching Jesus. The Church of Rome still employs its purgatory racket over vast areas of the earth; Protestant Christianity still mulcts the public with the idea that it possesses a book of divine "revelation" and has something to offer in the way of personal "salvation" beyond the grave. The swindle goes on in all branches of the Christian Church.

"The tendency among enlightened leaders in the Church of England," writes Dr. Gregory, "is to ask for nothing more than belief in a Supreme Being.... These are advanced views, and professing Christians condemn them as almost blasphemous."

There is the rub; it is precisely because "advanced views" are condemned by "professing Christians" that we have the conflict.

Who but "professing Christians" today fight evolution and the Darwinian doctrine of our monkey descent? I can assure Dr. Gregory, on the best of authority, that a delegation of Catholic priests once called at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, to protest against its exhibit in the Hall of the Age of Man. It was a Christian attempt to intimidate its officials into withdrawing the exhibit.

Again, I can assure Dr. Gregory that, at Christmas time each year, the mythical "Star of Bethlehem" is played, up in an imbecilic exhibit at our Planetarium in New York, against the better judgment of its officials. Christians "like" it---and flock to get in. They cannot distinguish between stars shown in juxtaposition, shining brightly as a single Star, and the fake luminary in the Bible.that "went before them" and "stood over" a stable. The teachings of Jewish folklore still have most of our Christian population gaping at the stars with the intelligence of Cows.

It is useless to point out that some high-ups in the Church of England would be satisfied with just a simple faith in God on the part of their congregations. If they were, what would become of all the religious trappings, the mystical pomp, the anointing with oil, the miraculous element in Church rituals? Whatever may be the private beliefs of high churchmen concerning the Fall, the Virgin Birth, the Redemption, the Resurrection and the Ascension of Jesus; it is the Church which is responsible for indoctrinating the multitude with these silly beliefs; it is too late now for the clergy to pull from under; they must ride along on the wave of infantile belief which Christianity is responsible for and which now, as before, constitutes the rank-and-file faith of those who looked to them for cultural leadership. Having filled them with superstition, the Church can survive only by keeping them that way; it will collapse like a house of cards once the people learn that they have been grossly deceived by Bible legends and mythology.

My learned friend Dr. M. Davidson of London, who reviews the book in "The Journal of the British Astronomical Association," very aptly observes, "It is difficult to see how Christianity could build a civilization and culture full of material wealth and rich in scientific attainments; it has never been able to do so, and there are good reasons for the view that the spread of Christianity undermined the foundations of the old Roman Empire."

There is no question that Dr. Davidson is right. The downfall of pagan Rome was followed by a thousand years or more of Christian "civilization," the like of which the World may hope never to see again. It was an era of moral debasement and intellectual coma in which the human animal reached an all-time low in cultural prostration. From the days of Constantine to the time it burned Vanini at the stake, Christianity marks the most brutalized period in the history of the world.

Christianity gave us the Dark Ages and the honors of the Holy Inquisition. If all "the loving kindness" which the pulpit prates about as of Christian origin could be put in a balance, it would weigh as nothing against the abysmal ignorance and stark brutality engendered by the Church. Who, by searching history, can find a glimmer of satisfaction in the dark days of Christianity's "triumph," with its bestial autos-da-fe, its witchcraft epidemics, its unspeakable atrocities?

In educated circles, Christianity is doomed. In the inner sanctum of scholarship it has failed to withstand even the serious onslaught of critical churchmen. Its doctrines have been riddled by science. On every side, it has been battered to a pulp by historical criticism. Those who wish to snatch a few crumbs of comfort from the debacle, can do so only by stooping intellectually, by truckling to the gutter level of popular ignorance. Only the political vote-snatcher and the tent revivalist will sink that low.

Christianity has never ceased to be an impediment to the world, fighting every advance in science and still standing as a recrudescence of crass superstition. The Bible still teaches the same nonsense it did in the days of Draper and White. Whether it is believed in today as much as it was before, is beside the point: the lip-service still goes on and it is this lip-service that makes for substantial opposition to the teachings of science. The obsession of Bible worship and Jesus adoration still has many of our professors frozen in their chairs; they dare not treat it, at least in public, with anything but Obsequious flattery or fawning servility.

Fundamentalism, both Catholic and Protestant, still exerts an enormous pressure on public and press. It is a bold editor or a careless politician who will utter a peep against entrenched Christianity. In spite of cultural progress, the rabble rules. Legislation is frequently enacted in deference to the mob. In some states of the Union it is illegal to teach the evolution of man in our public schools.

The conflict between religion and science is as deadly today as ever before. Tell the average group of Christians that they are descended from an ape, and see how far you get; they will deny their animal ancestry with more vehemence than if they are told they are descended from barbarians, or that their grandparents were horse-thieves. No one knows this better than our American paleontologist, Dr. W. K. Gregory, "Imagine the effect," says he, "of telling one-hundred-percent Americans that they are not the descendants of the god-like Adam but are sons and daughters of Dryopithecus, or of some nearly allied genus of anthropoid apes that lived in the Miocene age; --and that before that they had long tails and ate grubs and beetles !"

Every Catholic today is taught by his Church to believe that evolution is false. In its article on "Adam," the Catholic Encyclopaedia (Vol. 1, Rev. ed., 1936) teaches that the first man was created in an adult state. This is good biblical doctrine--and in conflict with science.

Dr. Gregory is as much interested in the social sciences as in the science of the stars. In what way, then, can the teachings of Jesus lead to the betterment of the world? Where would we be today if we followed the maudlin dictum of Jesus: "Resist not evil"? Our pacifists, our turn-the-other-cheekers, and our sentimental poltroons would have us face the aggressions of Hitler with the Christian doctrine of non-resistance. In judicial affairs, too, where would Christianity lead? No judge, sitting on the bench, could mete but justice if he took Jesus seriously, for fear of the teaching: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." No society, believing in Divine Providence and the crazy Jesus teaching of "take no thought for your life, what ye shall.eat or what ye shall drink" could survive for long. Such a teaching, if put into practice, would reduce a country to impecunious vagrants and tramps. Of what use is it to teach people to pray for what they want, on the promise that their prayers will be answered or that they will be clothed like the lilies of the field ?

The historian Buckle well recognized the futility of prayer, "We still see," said he, "the extraordinary spectacle of prayers offered up in our churches for dry weather or for wet weather; a superstition which to future ages will appear as childish as the feelings of pious awe with which our fathers regarded the presence of a Comet, or the approach of an eclipse."

Has the Church of England improved since Buckle wrote It has not. Its clergy still call for national days of prayer for the winning of the war, when every thoughtful Englishman knows the absurdity of prayer; yet the hypocrisy goes on as if the repetition of the act will in some way alter events. Only the final campaign, of course, will determine which side wins the conflict. Yet what would the Archbishop of Ganterbury do, for his £15,000 per year, if prayer were ditched?

Our medicine-men in America are not different from their British brethren of the cloth, Here prayers are offered up with the same degree of silly genuflection for the triumph of our arms; our last prayers for Peace were immediately followed by the Pearl Harbor disaster and the loss of Manila. Yet we are asked to assume a respectful attitude toward the leaders of the Church and of an institution whose charlatanism and appeal to magic belong to a medieval age.

Dr. Gregory commands an influential and honored position in the world of science. All the greater, therefore, is his obligation to make clear the attitude of science in relation to Christianity. Surely, as an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association of England, he is conversant with the literature of rationalism and of the tremendous part it has played in the long-drawn-out struggle between science and religion. He cannot, by any conceivable intent, wish to palliate, much less conceal, the debasing influence that Christianity has exerted in its befuddlement of the world and its enslavement of mankind. Yet his disposition, here and there, to defend the.indefensible, or to look the other way while the battle is on, is hardly in accordance with his own standards of scientific precision.

Dr. John W. Draper (whose book Dr. Gregory feels is tragically out of date) fully realized the struggle that is before us--a struggle that must enlist the very finest fiber of intellectual soldiery. And, no one, by natural endowment, belongs more fully to that army than Dr. Gregory himself.

"As to the issue of the coming conflict," wrote Dr. Draper, "can any one doubt? Whatever is resting on fiction and fraud will be overthrown. Institutions that organize impostures and spread delusions must show what right they have to exist. Faith must render an account of herself to Reason. Mysteries must give plate to facts. Religion must relinquish that imperious, that domineering position which she has so long maintained against Science. There must be absolute, freedom of thought."

These are the words of one whose intellectual vision permitted him to see the conflict as a whole a conflict that is still with us, and which by the spread of culture, can end only in the demolition of Christianity.

Years ago, writing in the "Fortnightly Review", Viscount Morley stated the outcome with singular precision :-

"You have so debilitated the minds of men and women that many a generation must come and go before Europe can throw off the yoke of your superstition. But we promise you they shall be years of strenuous battle . . . The great ship of your church, once so stout and fair, has become a skeleton ship; it is a phantom hulk with warped planks and sere canvas; and you who work it are not more than the ghosts of dead men; and at the hour when you seem to have reached the bay, down your ship will sink like lead or stone to the deepest bottom."