The Agnostic's Position
Some avowed Liberal writers are engaged in abusing the Agnostic. One looks upon him as a fool, while another considers him a hypocrite. One pities him for his ignorance, the other abuses him for confessing it. I side with the Agnostic. I sit down with the ignorant. I take my place in the class of “I-don't-know.” The difference between people is this: Some don't know, and some don't know that they don't know, and the rest won't admit that they don't know.
It seems to me that the Agnostic's position is an honest one. He is asked the question; Is there a future life for man? What shall he answer? If he does not know whether there is not, why should he not say so? To say: I believe there is, is not an answer to the question. He must say, I know, or, I do not know. On this question are we not all Agnostics?
The foolish and cruel notion that a wife is to obey her husband has sent more women to the grave than to the courts for a divorce.
Orthodoxy
There is as much perfumery in petroleum as there is righteousness in orthodoxy. Its dead theology and make-believe piety have no value only to the priest. Orthodoxy survives only by right of possession. Turn it out of the churches and it would never re-enter them. The church to-day is a hospital for sick dogmas. Every Christian doctrine is a cripple; not one can walk or stand alone. Orthodoxy has put a false valuation on things. It calls a man good who goes to church, offers a prayer in public and accepts the Bible as the word of God; it calls a man bad who stays at home and enjoys himself with his family on Sunday, who eats without asking God to bless his food, and who does not expect to go to heaven on the vicarious railroad.
The thirty-nine articles of orthodoxy are only the ashes of the mind.