My advice to all Agnostics is to keep their children from the orthodox Sunday schools, from the orthodox churches, from the poison of the pulpits.
Teach your children the facts you know. If you do not know, say so. Be as honest as you are ignorant. Do all you can to develop their minds, to the end that they may live useful and happy lives.
Strangle the serpent of superstition that crawls and hisses about the cradle. Keep your children from the augurs, the soothsayers, the medicine-men, the priests of the supernatural. Tell them that all religions have been made by folks and that all the "sacred books" were written by ignorant men.
Teach them that the world is natural. Teach them to be absolutely honest. Do not send them where they will contract diseases of the mind—the leprosy of the soul. Let us do all we can to make them intelligent.
WHAT WOULD YOU SUBSTITUTE FOR THE BIBLE AS A MORAL GUIDE?
* Written for The Boston Investigator.
YOU ask me what I would "substitute for the Bible as a moral guide.".
I know that many people regard the Bible as the only moral guide and believe that in that book only can be found the true and perfect standard of morality.