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Suppose then, that I do read this Bible honestly, fairly, and when I get through I am compelled to say, “The book is not true.” If this is the honest… - Robert Green Ingersoll
" "Suppose then, that I do read this Bible honestly, fairly, and when I get through I am compelled to say, “The book is not true.” If this is the honest result, then you are compelled to say, either that God has made no revelation to me, or that the revelation that it is not true, is the revelation made to me, and by which I am bound. If the book and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and the brain do not agree? Either God should have written a book to fit my brain, or should have made my brain to fit his book.
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About Robert Green Ingersoll
Robert Green Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899) was a lawyer, a Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator of the United States during the Golden Age of Freethought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism. He was nicknamed "The Great Agnostic".
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Alternative Names:
Robert Ingersoll
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The Great Agnostic
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Robert G. Ingersoll
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Additional quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll
It was Uncle Dan who first broke down my faith in the Bible stories, by reading Robert Ingersoll to me. "What a poor idea Noah must have had of ventilation!" I can remember him saying. "How could all those people and animals possibly have stayed alive in the Ark if the only time they had any air was when the one window was opened for the dove to fly out!" I was so fascinated both by Ingersoll's flowing beautiful language and his ideas, that I began to read everything of his I could lay my hands on. Ingersoll, known as "the great agnostic," was attacked by orthodox ministers all over the country. He had been a colonel in the Civil War and as a leading Republican lawyer could have held high political office. But his fearless agnostic lectures made this impossible. His writings were widely read for a generation and greatly influenced American thinking. No other orator except Debs has ever appealed to me as did Ingersoll. Deb's analogies and imagery were so like those of Ingersoll that people sometimes said he copied Ingersoll. This, of course, was not true, but Debs did soak himself in Ingersoll's writings before speaking and quoted Ingersoll frequently. Ingersoll, to be sure, knew nothing of the class struggle. His chief concern was to free people's minds of superstition-he was a revolutionary in religion only.
When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power: — 'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted.' This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God.
When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other, swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that
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When we take into consideration the fact that the Rev. Mr. Dixon is a minister and believes that he is called upon to deliver to the people a divine message, I do not wonder that he makes the following assertion: “If God could choose Balaam’s ass to speak a divine message, I do not see why he could not utilize the Colonel.” It is natural for a man to justify himself and to defend his own occupation. Mr. Dixon, however, will remember that the ass was much superior to the prophet of God, and that the argument was all on the side of the ass. And, furthermore, that the spiritual discernment of the ass far exceeded that of the prophet. It was the ass who saw the angel when the prophet’s eye was dim.
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