If the Bible is true, man is a special creation, and if man is a special creation, millions of facts must have conspired, millions of ages ago, to deceive the scientific world of to-day.
If the Bible is true, slavery is right, and the world should go back to the barbarism of the lash and chain. If the Bible' is true, polygamy is the highest form of virtue. If the Bible is true, nature has a master, and the miraculous is independent of and superior to cause and effect. If the Bible is true, most of the children of men are destined to suffer eternal pain. If the Bible is true, the science known as astronomy is a collection of mistakes—the telescope is a false witness, and light is a luminous liar. If the Bible is true, the science known as geology is false and every fossil is a petrified perjurer.
The defenders of orthodox creeds should have the courage to candidly answer at least two questions: First, Is the Bible inspired? Second, Is the Bible true? And when they answer these questions, they should remember that if the Bible is true, it needs no inspiration, and that if not true, inspiration can do it no good.—North American Review, August, 1888.
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC?
I.
"With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls."
THE same rules or laws of probability must govern in religious questions as in others. There is no subject—and can be none—concerning which any human being is under any obligation to believe without evidence. Neither is there any intelligent being who can, by any possibility, be flattered by the exercise of ignorant credulity. The man who, without prejudice, reads and understands the Old and New Testaments will cease to be an orthodox Christian. The intelligent man who investigates the religion of any country without fear and without prejudice will not and cannot be a believer.
Most people, after arriving at the conclusion that Jehovah is not God, that the Bible is not an inspired book, and that the Christian religion, like other religions, is the creation of man, usually say: "There must be a Supreme Being, but Jehovah is not his name, and the Bible is not his word. There must be somewhere an over-ruling Providence or Power."