On reading the opening remarks, the Martian exclaims, "This earthling plainly tells us at the beginning that he will make his theories fit in with his conclusion! He informs us that he does not seek the truth, no matter where it may lead, but he only deems it necessary to fit ideas, no matter how distorted, in order that the final conclusion will simulate what he deliberately sets out to prove."
Mr. Belloc's statement, "How many men will agree that wanton cruelty, treason to family or the state, falsehood for private gain, breach of faith, are admirable?" strikes the Martian as absurd when viewed in the light of the historical annals of the Church itself. Mr. Belloc's creed must have considered these very vices as virtues, judging from the actions of his Church.
In calling the Roman Catholic Church the witness to revelation, the author continues with, "Yet, that it should suffer from men's hatred and persecution." If God has divinely ordained this institution as His Church on earth, and in His omnipotence and omniscience allows this Church to be hated, then how do the religionists assume that their god is a god of love? The author tells us that He is a god of hate, such a god as was conceived of by the barbarians and the Hebrews—cruel, vengeful, and monstrous. Does not this apologist confuse his god with his devil? Then again, has it not occurred to this apologist that he is in all futility attempting to prove something which is a contradiction within itself? If God is, and is benevolent, is it not logical to assume (since the theologians assume all sorts of attributes to this deity) that he would not have constructed the minds of men when He created them so as to desire to doubt His being; would not have tortured the minds of men with cruel doubt as to His existence?
If He is omnipotent, it would have been just as easy to instill into the minds of men only the strongest desire to believe in His reality; and even that would not be necessary had He so arranged matters that by His everlasting presence He would reveal Himself or His deeds to man in such a conclusive manner that even the feeblest of intellects could not doubt His existence.
If He is omniscient, as the parable asserts, that not a hair falls from the head of man, not a sparrow dies without His knowledge, it must therefore be apparent that He created man with the foreknowledge that man would doubt His existence. This is a contradiction in itself.
The Martian notes that in the entire length of the work not a reference is made to the time-worn theological defense, "the revelation" which the Church has always claimed for its scriptures.
Appended as an afterthought, as an apology, as it were, for the philosophical defense and not the theological, the Jesuit father reminds the reader of its messiah, Jesus and the New Testament. The Jesuit states, "The New Testament writings, considered merely as trustworthy historical documents, inform us that—" but at this point the Martian interrupted the speaker, for the audacity of any learned man terming the New Testament writings "historical" was beyond his comprehension. It brought forcibly to his attention the great change which the apologies for the Church had undergone, and the new methods which they assumed. The old theological defense of the deity was gone; not even philosophy was deemed strong enough support for the present day. How the Church had fallen! The Church which had persecuted, anathematized, burned, and tortured the scientist, the geologist, the astronomer, the geographer, the biologist, the chemist, and the physician; this same Church in its last extremus, casts aside theology as its weapon and its appeal to the minds of the sceptics whom they aim to convert. The Church casts aside its own theology, having learned by bitter experience and recanting of opinions, bulls, and infallible statements by infallible popes, and now succumbs to the opinions it has formerly anathematized. In the present age the Church calls science to its aid, and utterly disregards its obsolete theology which it still practices, and attempts, by means of the misinterpretation of scientific facts and statements of a few men such as Eddington and Jeans, to force science into some illogical and unscientific concordance with the conception of a supreme being.
Ironically it occurs to the Martian that the shades of Hypatia, Bruno, Galileo, Copernicus, Vanini, Darwin, and the vast numbers of Waldenses, Albigenses, Huguenots, Jews, and the victims of the Inquisition and the Witch Hunt, must, as they contemplate the present tactics of that Holy Institution, the Church, find some consolation in the depths of that hell to which the Church consigned them. The Martian logically deduces that by employing science for its defense, the Church admits the impotence of "divine revelation," in this age, to convince even its own adherents of the problematical existence of a divine being. Theology is no longer recognized as authoritative even by theologians!
Will the theologians now discard their theology based on the supernatural, and build a system of theology based on science? Is this all that is left to the theologian: that he must use the pitiful "Theology of Gaps"? That is, wherever there are gaps in scientific knowledge, the theologians insert their idea of God! This is but the replacing of the question mark with a meaningless label.