The gods, and other lectures by Robert Green Ingersoll
Excerpt:
Each nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. Each god was intensely patriotic and detested all nations but his own.
All these gods demanded praise, flattery, and worship. Most of them were pleased with, sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine perfume. All these gods have insisted upon having a vast number of priests, and the priests have always insisted upon being supported by the people, and the principal business of these priests has been to boast about their god and to insist that he could easily vanquish all the other gods put together.
These gods have been manufactured after numberless models, and according to the most grotesque fashions. Some have a thousand arms, some a hundred heads, some are adorned with necklaces of living snakes, some are armed with clubs, some with sword and shield, some with bucklers, and some have wings as a cherub; some were invisible, some would show themselves entirely, and some would only show their backs; some were jealous, some were foolish, some turned themselves into men, some into swans, some into bulls, some into doves, and some into Holy Ghosts, and made love to the beautiful daughters of men. Some were married — all ought to have been —: and some were considered as old bachelors from all eternity. Some had children, and the children were turned into gods and worshipped as their fathers had been.
Most of these gods were revengeful, savage, lustful, and ignorant. As they generally depended upon their priests for information, their ignorance can hardly excite our astonishment. These gods did not even know the shape of the worlds they had created but supposed them perfectly flat. Some thought the day could be. lengthened by stopping the sun, that the blowing of horns could throw down the walls of a city, and all knew so little of the real nature of the people they had created, that they commanded the people to love them. Some were so ignorant as to suppose that man could believe just as he might desire, or as they might command, and that to be governed by observation, reason, and experience was a foulest and damninor sin. None of these gods could give a true account of the creation of this little earth.
All were woefully deficient in geology and astronomy. As a rule, they were the most miserable legislators, and as executives, they were far inferior to the average of American presidents. These deities have demanded the most abject and degrading obedience. In order to please them, man must lay his very face in the dust. Of course, they have always been partial to the people who created them, and have generally shown their partiality by assisting those people to rob and destroy others and to ravish their wives and daughters.
Contents:
The gods -- Humboldt -- Thomas Paine -- Individuality -- Heretics and heresies
With: The ghosts and other lectures / by Robert G. Ingersoll. New York: C. P. Farrell, 1892 -- Some mistakes of Moses / by Robert G. Ingersoll -- 10th ed. -- New York: C. P. Farrell, 1892 -- What must we do to be saved? : a lecture / by Robert G. Ingersoll. New York: C. P. Farrell, 1892 -- Six interviews with Robert G. Ingersoll on six sermons by the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D.D., to which is added a Talmagian catechism. New York: C.P. Farrell, 1892 -- Crimes against criminals: an address / by Robert
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