Robert Ingersoll, the most popular lecturer of the nineteenth century, presented a new freethought lecture called “Which Way” in the 1880s. It brings up some interesting points for our day.
His primary question is threefold “How shall we civilize the world? How shall we protect, life, liberty, property and reputations? How shall we do away with crime and poverty?” There was hope in the late nineteenth century that these questions might find answers. The events of the last one hundred and thirty years suggest otherwise.
Ingersoll points out the lack of success of “the churches” in answering these questions. He spends a lot of time on the God portrayed in Genesis. Did this God advise or instruct his new human beings? No, he just said “You shall not eat of this tree.” Did he forgive and comfort when they sinned? No, he punished them.
He asks, “Are we to be governed by a Supernatural Being, or are we to govern ourselves?” The answer is obvious to him. “I take the democratic side,” he says. That “Supernatural Being” is a figure called on by tyrants and despots, princes and popes, to support the status quo.
Ingersoll doesn’t go as far as we might today to show how the God those rulers called on to maintain their power was made after their own image. He doesn’t need to because not just some, but most of his audience had been raised to believe that Genesis is history; that the punishing God is the only option. In Ingersoll’s day good people still believed that the fear of hell helped to preserve social order. Ingersoll disagrees:
There is no reforming power in fear. You can scare a man, maybe, so bad that he won’t do a thing, but you can’t scare him so bad he won’t want to do it. There is no reforming power in punishment or brute force.
That’s one lesson we as a community have not learned to this day. We also have made no progress, perhaps have even gone backward, in this:
You may ask me what I want. Well, in the first place I want to get theology out of government. It has no business there. Man gets his authority from man, and is responsible only to man. I want to get theology out of politics. Our ancestors in 1776 retired God from politics, because of the jealousies among the churches, and the result has been splendid for mankind. I want to get theology out of education. Teach the children what somebody knows, not what somebody guesses.
Robert Ingersoll was intensely patriotic. I believe he would be quite discouraged to see how little progress our nation has made in these matters since his time. Which way should we turn to find a solution to our present situation?
freethoughtandmetaphor 
May 12, 2012 @ 21:01:00
Great entry, Ellen. I don’t know if you’re seen my book trailer yet, but it starts off with a recreated Ingersoll quote…
And here’s another good Ingersoll short film posted recently…
Ingersoll would be very discouraged, but we’re making great strides on the secular front. 32% of Americans now claim to be “not very religious.” It’s the late 19th-century all over again. We just need to find our Ingersoll.
May 13, 2012 @ 05:10:42
You believed too much to the teaching of this ungodly man. You speak of a way to which you should turn, and I will tell and show you and point you to that “Way”. The most excellent WAY, of which those churches in the 1880 and up to this present time have not known. Only if you want.