A handbook of Freethought

by Unknown

The story seems to imply many contradictions which are not explicitly expressed. For Adam and Eve must have been moral beings to have understood the supposed commands of God. If they were moral then they already knew what good and evil was. The way in which this primitive couple acquired knowledge reminds one of the description of the creation of the sun. In the first chapter of this wonderful book, we find light created, and on the fourth day afterward the sun is made. This is reversing the order of cause and effect, as in this effect comes before cause. There is this explanation, however, that the world was new and had not got fairly into working order.

In the case of Adam and Eve, we have no such explanation to offer. We find them from the very first moment, rational beings, and of course having a knowledge of good and evil; but the historian who gives us the account, declares that they came into the possession of knowledge not by virtue of their brains; but because of their eating of certain fruit. The effect is made to be the cause.

There is only one way out of the dilemma. The writer described things “as they seemed rather than as they are.”

Even so great a man as the Hon. W. E. Gladstone has to betake himself to specious arguments in attempting to refute the testimony of science when opposed to Genesis. His logic is kindred to that quoted from Smith’s Bible Dictionary, wherein the writer says of the author of Genesis that he “describes things as they appear, rather than as they are.” Mr. Gladstone in the “Order of Creation,” says:

Proceeding, on what I hold to be open ground, to state my own idea of the key to the meaning of the Mosaic record (Genesis), I suggest that it was intended to give moral, and not scientific instruction to those for whom it was written.

Who was it that “intended to give moral, and not scientific instruction?” If it was the author of Genesis who intended it for only moral instruction, then it cannot be claimed to be a revelation from God; but if on the other hand it was God who intended to give only moral instruction, then he is responsible for making the author of Genesis record that which is not true. What a sight for gods and men! To see the ex-premier of England pettifogging at the bar of Reason for a dying, nay dead superstition; for certainly Genesis as a revelation is dead so far as reason and science are concerned.

But this hostility to knowledge instituted in the garden of Eden has been perpetuated through all the ages. Faith has been held up as the all-important virtue, as by it the priests could get the people to believe anything. Somewhere Goethe says, “Belief is not the beginning but the end of knowledge.” In the early days of the church it was found necessary to abandon reason. The world had too many philosophers who stood prepared to expose the superstitions which set themselves up with authority. The injunction given to and heeded by chiefly the low and ignorant was, “Do not examine; only believe and thy faith will make thee blessed.” “Wisdom is a bad thing in life, foolishness is to be preferred.” But this sentiment was older than that date, for we find in the writings of Paul the same teaching, “If any man among you seemeth to be wise, let him become a fool that he may be wise.” At another time he insists that, “We are fools for Christ’s sake.”

My advice is to eat of the fruit of knowledge, and have your eyes opened to the truth no matter what it is. It may be that some delusive Santa Claus may fade away in the distance before your clearer vision. Let it go. Nothing is so expensive as error. Seek to know the truth, and struggle to throw off such prejudices as tempt you to fashion truth to your own intellectual myopia or moral obliquities. Eat and become more truly a man; eat and become more beautifully a woman.

“And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life I have given every herb for meat.”

This writer never visited a menagerie. His knowledge of the habits of the animal kingdom are as innocent as if he had never sought for knowledge, had never examined natural history, or else he would have known that such animals as lions, tigers, and wolves could not feed on grass. The vultures of the air do not live upon seeds or hay, but must have fish or flesh. Daniel going into a den of lions fed on hay, would be about as brave as a milk maid’s going into the stall to milk a cow. We cannot conjecture what state of mind the Mosaic cosmogonist could have been in when he described the lion as a herbivorous animal. It is so wide a departure from the most common knowledge of the habits of animals that our confidence in the accuracy of the historian is greatly shaken.