The Christian religion in which we were brought up, teaches that to believe is a virtue, and—not to believe is a crime. Is it true? If I were to say to you, "You must believe that George Washington was the first president of America," would you deserve any credit for believing it? The evidence is so overwhelming that you cannot help but believe it. There is no virtue in believing in a statement which cannot be reasonably doubted.
But suppose I were to say "'You must also believe that George Washington invented the theory of evolution." Could you be blamed for refusing to credit a statement which there is no evidence to establish? You believe in the first statement because it agrees with the facts, you object to the second because it does not agree with the facts. In other words, you believe or question according to the nature or force of the evidence.
It is precisely the same with religion. The priest says "God made the world in six days." If he can prove it we have to believe it. If he can not prove it, we are not to be blamed for saying "not proven." The priest says Jesus was born of a Virgin. We don't deny it—we ask for evidence. If a doctrine or proposition should be accepted as true in the absence of convincing evidence, why then is not Mohammedanism as true as Christianity? Why is not a bit of blue glass as good as a God? To believe intelligently, one must have evidence; to believe blindly, one religion is as good as another.
The existence of God has always been disputed and is still in dispute today. A hundred books are written to prove his existence; a hundred others question his existence. A great thinker in the eighteenth century said "That which is the subject of eternal dispute cannot be a foundation for anything." The scientist, therefore, in striving to separate morality from theology (for it is theology and not true religion that we object to) is rendering a great service to the cause of righteousness. He is removing morality from the sphere of uncertainty and controversy into the air and light of day.
But it is not about the existence of God alone that there is uncertainty; there is misunderstanding and disagreement also about his character. It is not enough to say there is a God,—we must agree about his character. Yet that question is even more in dispute than his existence. If the mere belief in a God is enough, why is not the Mohammedan God enough? The Christian god has a son, and you cannot approach him except through his son. The Mohammedan god has no son. How can they be the same being? The god of the Christian believes in the atoning blood of Christ. The Mohammedan god repudiates such an idea. How can they be the same being? What are we going to do,—if we associate morality with a being whose character is in dispute? Are they the friends of the moral life, who perplex our conscience with conundrums? Even when we have decided that the Mohammedan god is no god at all, and agreed upon our own deity, are we sure that his character as represented to us is calculated to encourage the moral life? That is an important point. What do we know about the character of God except what the priests tell us, and what we read in their books about him.
Now, I wish to make an explanation. It is not the first time I have been compelled to make it either. It is very unpleasant to say unpopular things. To stand up here and say the things which make me appear sacrilegious and blasphemous in the eyes of the respectable majority is not, I assure you, a pleasure; it is a sacrifice. But I have undertaken the work and I must do it.
The character of God as painted for us in the Bible is not calculated, in my humble opinion, to encourage the moral life. The god of the Jewish and Christian scriptures is not a moral being. He does not live up to his profession. He violates his own commandments. I do not say this hastily or carelessly,—I have studied the question. Take the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Jehovah breaks that commandment a hundred times, if the Bible is reliable. No sooner had Moses descended from Mt. Sinai, with the Ten Commandments, than God urged him to get the Jews to kill one another, and fifty thousand were slain in one passion. The repeated commandment of God to the Jews to exterminate their neighbors,—to put men, women and children to the edge of the sword, would indicate that he did not mean to live up to his profession.
In the same way he commands "Thou shalt not steal," and then tells his people how they may spoil their neighbors, destroy their altars and temples and seize their lands.
He says "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and then commands his soldiers to capture the daughters of the Gentiles and keep them forcibly.
He says "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and on every page in the Old Testament, everything base is said of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, whose character modern research has vindicated, and it has been proved that their civilization was far in advance of that of their accusers.