The New Gospel

Every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery … has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world.  I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

We believe first and foremost what makes us feel that we are fine fellows …:  If he is an Englishman, he thinks of Shakespeare and Milton, or of Newton and Darwin … If he is a Frenchman, he congratulates himself on the fact that for centuries France has led the world in culture, fashions, and cookery.  If he is a Russian, he reflects that he belongs to the only nation which is truly international … But these are not the only matters on which he has to congratulate himself.  For is he not an individual of the species homo sapiens.   Alone among the animals he has an immortal soul, and is rational … And was not everything created for man’s convenience?  The sun was made to light the day, and the moon to light the night — through the moon, by some oversight, only shines during half the nocturnal hours … The importance of man, which is the one indispensible dogma of the theologians, receives no support from a scientific view of the future of the solar system.

I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment ... I must say that I think that this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty.  It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as His chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that. 

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas.  He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead.  He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance.  Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith.  If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation.  The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.