The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. / Interviews

by Robert Green Ingersoll

Answer. There is one thing that it is impossible for me to comprehend. Why should any one, when convinced that Christianity is a superstition, have or feel a sense of loss? Certainly a man acquainted with England, with London, having at the same time something like a heart, must feel overwhelmed by the failure of what is known as Christianity. Hundreds of thousands exist there without decent food, dwelling in tenements, clothed with rags, familiar with every form of vulgar vice, where the honest poor eat the crust that the vicious throw away. When this man of intelligence, of heart, visits the courts; when he finds human liberty a thing treated as of no value, and when he hears the judge sentencing girls and boys to the penitentiary—knowing that a stain is being put upon them that all the tears of all the coming years can never wash away—knowing, too, and feeling that this is done without the slightest regret, without the slightest sympathy, as a mere matter of form, and that the judge puts this brand of infamy upon the forehead of the convict just as cheerfully as a Mexican brands his cattle; and when this man of intelligence and heart knows that these poor people are simply the victims of society, the unfortunates who stumble and over whose bodies rolls the Juggernaut—he knows that there is, or at least appears to be, no power above or below working for righteousness—that from the heavens is stretched no protecting hand. And when a man of intelligence and heart in England visits the workhouse, the last resting place of honest labor; when he thinks that the young man, without any great intelligence, but with a good constitution, starts in the morning of his life for the workhouse, and that it is impossible for the laboring man, one who simply has his muscle, to save anything; that health is not able to lay anything by for the days of disease—when the man of intelligence and heart sees all this, he is compelled to say that the civilization of to-day, the religion of to-day, the charity of to-day—no matter how much of good there may be behind them or in them, are failures.

A few years ago people were satisfied when the minister said: "All this will be made even in another world; a crust-eater here will sit at the head of the banquet there, and the king here will beg for the crumbs that fall from the table there." When this was said, the poor man hoped and the king laughed. A few years ago the church said to the slave: "You will be free in another world, and your freedom will be made glorious by the perpetual spectacle of your master in hell." But the people—that is, many of the people—are no longer deceived by what once were considered fine phrases. They have suffered so much that they no longer wish to see others suffer and no longer think of the suffering of others as a source of joy to themselves. The poor see that the eternal starvation of kings and queens in another world will be no compensation for what they have suffered there. The old religions appear vulgar and the ideas of rewards and punishments are only such as would satisfy a cannibal chief or one of his favorites.

Question. Do you think the Christian religion has made the world better?

Answer. For many centuries there has been preached and taught in an almost infinite number of ways a supernatural religion. During all this time the world has been in the care of the Infinite, and yet every imaginable vice has flourished, every imaginable pang has been suffered, and every injustice has been done. During all these years the priests have enslaved the minds, and the kings the bodies, of men. The priests did what they did in the name of God, and the kings appeal to the same source of authority. Man suffered as long as he could. Revolution, reformation, was simply a re- action, a cry from the poor wretch that was between the upper and the nether millstone. The liberty of man has increased just in the proportion that the authority of the gods has decreased. In other words, the wants of man, instead of the wishes of God, have inaugurated what we call progress, and there is this difference: Theology is based upon the narrowest and intensest form of selfishness. Of course, the theologian knows, the Christian knows, that he can do nothing for God; consequently all that he does must be and is for himself, his object being to win the approbation of this God, to the end that he may become a favorite. On the other side, men touched not only by their own misfortunes, but by the misfortunes of others, are moved not simply by selfishness, but by a splendid sympathy with their fellow-men.

Question. Christianity certainly fosters charity?

Answer. Nothing is more cruel than orthodox theology, nothing more heartless than a charitable institution. For instance, in England, think for a moment of the manner in which charities are distributed, the way in which the crust is flung at Lazarus. If that parable could be now retold, the dogs would bite him. The same is true in this country. The institution has nothing but contempt for the one it relieves. The people in charge regard the pauper as one who has wrecked himself. They feel very much as a man would feel rescuing from the water some hare-brained wretch who had endeavored to swim the rapids of Niagara—the moment they reach him they begin to upbraid him for being such a fool. This course makes charity a hypocrite, with every pauper for its enemy.

Mrs. Ward compelled Robert Elsmere to perceive, in some slight degree, the failure of Christianity to do away with vice and suffering, with poverty and crime. We know that the rich care but little for the poor. No matter how religious the rich may be, the sufferings of their fellows have but little effect upon them. We are also beginning to see that what is called charity will never redeem this world.

The poor man willing to work, eager to maintain his independence, knows that there is something higher than charity—that is to say, justice. He finds that many years before he was born his country was divided out between certain successful robbers, flatterers, cringers and crawlers, and that in consequence of such division not only he himself, but a large majority of his fellow-men are tenants, renters, occupying the surface of the earth only at the pleasure of others. He finds, too, that these people who have done nothing and who do nothing, have everything, and that those who do everything have but little. He finds that idleness has the money and that the toilers are compelled to bow to the idlers. He finds also that the young men of genius are bribed by social distinctions —unconsciously it may be—but still bribed in a thousand ways. He finds that the church is a kind of waste-basket into which are thrown the younger sons of titled idleness.

Question. Do you consider that society in general has been made better by religious influences?

Answer. Society is corrupted because the laurels, the titles, are in the keeping and within the gift of the corrupters. Christianity is not an enemy of this system—it is in harmony with it. Christianity reveals to us a universe presided over by an infinite autocrat—a universe without republicanism, without democracy—a universe where all power comes from one and the same source, and where everyone using authority is accountable, not to the people, but to this supposed source of authority. Kings reign by divine right. Priests are ordained in a divinely appointed way—they do not get their office from man. Man is their servant, not their master.