SECTION X
Chapter 9. Robert Ingersoll

--"Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to
   be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others happy."

--"The man who invented the telescope found out more about heaven than the
   closed eyes of prayer ever discovered."

--"Being satisfied that the supernatural does not exist, man should turn
   his entire attention to the affairs of this world, to the facts of nature.
   And, first of all, he should avoid waste--waste of energy, waste of wealth."

--"It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality
   enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.

   Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899) was known during his lifetime as America's
leading champion of freethought. He was also considered to be the greatest 
orator of his day. His defense of skepticism had a profound effect on all 
those who heard his popular lectures or read his works. He had many admirers.-- 
Walt Whitman said of him, "America don't know how proud she ought to be of 
Ingersoll."  Another admirer, Mark Twain, wrote of Ingersoll, "I doubt 
America has anything quite equal" to him. Some of his admirers were religious-- 
such as Vice President Adlai Stevenson and the Reverend Moncure Conway, who 
respected his integrity and sense of justice.  Among people Ingersoll included 
as personal friends were Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, Eugene Degs, Frederick 
Douglas, and Margaret Sanger.

  Robert Ingersoll was not an atheist, as he had hope for life after death.  
Yet, he vigorously attacked the religious establishment--whom he believed 
enslaved mankind by their threats of eternal hell fire. He denounced the 
cruelties and monstrosities perpetrated in the Old Testament, either directly 
or in God's name. This included the destruction of the entire world except 
for Noah's ark; Joshua's extermination of peaceful tribes that were in the 
way of expansion; and Elisha's miraculous summoning of bears to tear up a 
gang of boys who had made fun of his bald head. Ingersoll ridiculed the 
Genesis stories of creation, Noah's ark, and Jonah the whale-- by pointing 
out biblical and scientific inconsistencies. He eloquently spoke of the 
horrors that had occurred over the centuries in the form of wars and 
persecution--all done in the name of religion.

   Many attribute the liberalization of Protestant theology in America
(which occurred by the turn of the twentieth century) to have been strongly
influenced by Ingersoll's popular attacks on conservative religious
doctrines. Ingersoll attacked the doctrines of everlasting punishment in
hell. For example, Ingersoll questioned how an all-good God could inflict
cruel tortures for minor transgressions.  He questioned the literal
acceptance of all stories of the Bible (such as the story of Noah's Ark,
etc).

  During the twentieth century, the old-fashioned "fire and brimstone"
sermons on hell, had all but vanished from the more moderate to liberal
Protestant pulpits. (Of course, these have always remained popular among
ultra-conservative/fundamentalist congregations.)

  Ingersoll had been a Protestant priest for a number of years, before
turning against the conservative dogma commonly taught to Christian
believers of his day. According to Ingersoll, Christian theologians:

 "must show that misery fits the good for heaven, while happiness prepares 
  the bad for hell; that the wicked get all their good things in this life, 
  and the good all their evil; that in this world God punishes the people 
  he loves, and in the next, the ones he hates; that happiness makes us 
  bad here, but not in heaven; that pain makes us good here, but not in 
  hell.  No matter how absurd these things may appear to the carnal mind,
  they must be preached and they must be believed.  If they were reasonable,
  there would be no virtue in believing...To believe without evidence or in
  spite of it, is accounted as righteousness to the sincere and humble
  Christians."

   Ingersoll passionately upheld what were then very liberal views for
his times.  He spoke out against prejudice towards Jews, Indians, and blacks,
arguing at one point that "Any government that makes a distinction on account
of color is a disgrace to the age in which we live."  He championed such
causes as rights for women and children, the humane treatment of prisoners,
and liberal divorce laws. (For example, there was one controversial case where
a woman's husband had blinded her in a fit of rage, and some religious leaders
had questioned her moral right to divorce her husband).

  Robert Ingersoll led an exemplary lifestyle, making it difficult for
his enemies to personally attack him.--He was a corporate lawyer and a perfect
family man.  He lived a virtuous life untainted by any financial or sexual
scandal.  He adored children and preached love and kindness.  According to
Thomas Edison, "I think that Ingersoll had all the attributes of a perfect
man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed... I cannot help
thinking that the intention of the Supreme Intelligence that rules the world
is to ultimately make such a type of man universal.

Robert Ingersoll described his religion as one of reason:

  "To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the
  suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits--To
  love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to
  wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and
  child and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in
  nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts
  that genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to cultivate
  courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the
  splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words, to discard error,
  to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate
  hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn before the night, to do
  the best that can be done and then to be resigned--this is the religion of
  reason, the creed of science."

  As noted above, Robert Ingersoll was not born an agnostic, but reached
his decision to become one after reading freethinking and scientific
literature.  He describes his reaction below, upon "HIS" realization that
the established religions were "not" true:

   "When I become convinced that the Universe is natural--that all the
  ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul,
  into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom.
  The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with
  light, and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust.  I was no
  longer a servant, a serf, or a slave.  There was for me no master in all the
  wide world--not even in infinite space.  I was free--free to think, to
  express my thoughts--free to live my own ideal--free to spread imagination's
  wings --free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope--free to judge and
  determine for myself--free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all
  the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous
  legends of the past--free from popes and priests--free from all the
  "called" and "set apart"--free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies--
  free from the fear of eternal pain--free from the winged monsters of the
  night--free from devils, ghosts, and gods.  For the first time I was free.
  There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought--no air, no
  space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings--no chains for my
  limbs--no lashes for my back--no fires for my flesh--no master's frown or
  threat--no following another's steps--no need to bow, or cringe, or
  crawl, or utter lying words.  I was free.  I stood erect and fearlessly,
  joyously, faced all worlds.

  And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went
  out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the
  liberty of hand and brain--for the freedom of labor and thought--to those
  who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound
  with chains--to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs--to those whose
  bones were crushed, whose flesh were scarred and torn--to those by fire
  consumed--to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts
  and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men.  And then I vowed to grasp
  the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light  might conquer
  darkness."

  A gifted speaker, even his enemies conceded Ingersoll to be one of the
most powerful orators of his time. (Some claimed, that he would probably
have had a promising career as a politician, had he not chosen the cause
of freethought instead.) Not surprisingly, Ingersoll's views created for
him many enemies.  He experienced blacklisting, was threatened with criminal
prosecution and his mail brought him threats of assassination.

  Ingersoll lead an extremely active life, championing the cause of freethought,
through numerous debates and newspaper articles.(Because of the controversy
he generated, newspapers loved to quote him). He died in 1899 at the age of
sixty-six of natural causes, after having lived what was considered by him
to be a very fulfilled and meaningful life.

Below I have included some of his more famous sayings:

* "If we had been born in India, ... we should have believed in a god
   with three heads instead of three gods with one head, as we do now."

*  "An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going
    in partnership with State Legislatures."

*  "It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as
    sharply upon political as upon theological questions; and when that
    day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of
    power, this government will be destroyed."

*  "It is not easy to account for an infinite God making people so low in
    the scale of intellect as to require a revelation.  Neither is it easy
    to perceive why, if a revelation was necessary for all, it was made only
    to a few."

*  "Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do NOT know about
    nature."

*   "Hands that help are better far than lips that pray."

When questioned once if he feared death, he replied:

*   "I do not fear death any more than I fear sleep".

    and,  
     
*   "I am immortal in that I cannot recollect when I did not exist, and
   there will never be a time when I shall remember that I do not exist."

Regarding his belief in immortality, some of Ingersoll's sayings include:

    "I do not say that man is not immortal.  All I say is that there is no
    evidence that he lives again, and no demonstrations that we do not.  It
    is better to ignorantly hope than to dishonestly affirm.

*   "If we are immortal, it is a fact of nature, and that fact does not
     depend on bibles, on christs, priests, or creeds.

*   Someone asked Confucious about another world, ad his reply was: "How
    should I know anything about another world when I know so little of this?"

*   "If only Christians go to heaven and all others go to hell, it seems to
    me that there will be a thousand times more misery in the next world than
    in this."
  
*  Good deeds are never childless.  A noble life is never lost.  A virtuous
   action does not die.

(most quotes taken from THE BEST OF ROBERT INGERSOLL, edited by Roger E. Greeley, Prometheus Books, 1983)