I claim that it is impossible to prove that any being exists who can do, or ever does, anything outside of the regular processes of Nature, and therefore that the word "God," which has always meant such a being, should be dropped. I would have no objection to the current use of the word "God" if that use were harmless, but it is very far from that. It is a word that every despot conjures with to keep the people in ignorance and subjection. It is a word that crafty politicians use in carrying out their schemes of bribery and plunder.
The same thing applies to the word "heaven." It is impossible to show that there is any such place, and the word is used as a bribe to the poor to keep them quiet under injustice. I do not see how there can be a life after death, but if there is it will not be any better because we are poor and undeveloped in this world, and therefore immortality should be a reason rather for discontentment among the poor than for submission to injustice.
As an atheist, I object to a God who is for every tyrannical ruler and against the rebels that he imprisons, tortures and slays; who is for the idle landlord and usurer and against the workers; who is for the purse-proud prelate and against the people; who is for the boodle politician and against the happiness of the many; who is for the white exploiter and against the simple colored man; who is for the rich profiteer and against the petty burglar and pickpocket.
If I am told there is no such God as this, I reply that there is, or there is none. The God of every Christian creed is the God of the rulers, the God of the idle rich. There never has been any other God known to the world. This is the God that the church now worships and always has worshiped.
There are forces in Nature that we do not yet understand, and therefore should not name. But they can only help us as we learn what they are and how to use them. It is therefore neither our duty nor our privilege to pray, nor can any good be thus achieved. It is for us to observe, to think, and to examine the pretensions of the privileged. It is for us to understand that there is no God to raise our wages, and no heaven to compensate us for our poverty and all the misery it entails in this world.
"Said the parson, 'Be content; Pay your tithes due, pay your rent; They that earthly things despise Shall have mansions in the skies, Though your back with toil be bent,' Said the parson, 'be content.'
"Then the parson feasting went With my lord who lives by rent; And the parson laughed elate For my lord has livings great, They that earthly things revere May get bishop's mansions here.
"Be content! Be content! Till your dreary life is spent, Lowly live and lowly die, All for mansions in the sky! Castles here are much too rare, All may have them—in the air!"