An Atheist Manifesto - Joseph Lewis (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📗

free it from the paralyzing fear which destroyed its ability to think.

It is now established by verifiable evidence that religion stultifies the brain and is the great obstacle in the path of intellectual progress.

The more religious a person is, the more he is steeped in ignorance and superstition, the less is his sense of moral responsibility. The more intelligent a person, the less religious he is. There is an old saying that "where there are three scientists, there are two atheists."

The countries whose governments are dominated by religion and religious institutions are the most backward. By the same token, the countries whose people are the most enlightened, and whose governments are based upon the principle of secularism—the separation of church and state—are the most progressive.

And let me tell you: When man is intellectually free, the progress he will make is beyond calculation.

What better illustration than this: More progress has been made since the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution than was made in the previous five thousand years!

Yes, more intellectual and material progress has been made by man since the establishment of the American Republic than during all the intervening years from the Pharaohs of Egypt up to and including the time of "the grandeur that was Greece, and the glory that was Rome."

And there is a good and valid reason for this.

It was because "in 1776 our fathers retired the gods from politics." The basic principle of the American Republic is the freedom of man in society.

The Declaration of Independence was the product of Intellectual Emancipation, and that is why, from thenceforth, our date of existence should be recorded, not from the mythical birth of Jesus Christ, but from the day of our Independence!

This should be the year one hundred and seventy-eight in our calendar!

Despite discouraging signs here and there, the seeds of freedom planted by the American Revolution will take root, and throughout the world, if man will learn to zealously guard his freedom, Peace and Progress will come to all the world.

Could there be a more significant illustration than this:

Practically in our own lifetime, and certainly since the Declaration of Independence, man has wrought the most amazing achievements in the field of science and progress ever recorded in human history.

Not in their order, nor according to their significance, do I record the following:

Anesthesia was discovered.

Do you know what it means to relieve man of his pain and suffering? Anesthesia is the most humane of all of man's accomplishments, and what a merciful accomplishment it was.

For this great discovery we are indebted to Dr. W. T. G. Morton.

Do you know that the religionists opposed the use of anesthesia on the ground that God sent pain as a punishment for sin, and it was considered the greatest of sacrileges to use it—just think of it, a sin to relieve man of his misery! What a monstrous perversion! This one instance alone should convince you of the difference in believing in God or not.

No believer in God would have spent his energies to discover anesthesia. He would have been in mortal fear of the wrath of his God for interfering with his "divine plan," of making man suffer for having eaten of the fruit of the "Tree of Knowledge."

The very crux of the matter is in this one instance.

Man seeks to relieve his fellow man from the suffering of disease and the pangs of mental agony. The believers in God are content that man's suffering is ordained, and therefore he accepts life and its trials and tribulations as a penance for living.

The fear of the wrath of God has been a stumbling block to progress.

When Dr. James Young Simpson sought to apply anesthesia to a woman in childbirth, the clergymen of his day foamed at the mouth and spat upon him with vituperation and abuse, for attempting to violate God's direct command that "in pain thou shalt bring forth children," as based upon the idiotic text of the Bible. But Dr. Simpson persisted despite the ravings of the religious lunatics of his day.

The importance of Dr. Simpson's application of anesthesia to the relief of pain in childbirth, and his open defiance of the religionists, are beyond the measure of words to evaluate.

The X-ray was discovered in our time.

Professor Wilhelm Roentgen deserves our everlasting debt of gratitude for this contribution. Its application alone in the field of medicine makes it one of the greatest contributions to the service of man.

Dr. Karl Lansteiner's discovery of the composition of the blood—made in our time—has been responsible for the saving of countless thousands of lives.

Blood was also feared by the religionists, and a taboo was placed upon all those who touched it, as being contaminated.

Even the dissection of the human body was prohibited by religion.

The study of human anatomy is within our own time, and the fruitful results of this scientific exploring of man's physical structure are incalculable.

It is needless, I think, to tell you why the study of human body is so recent. Until the emancipation of the mind of man from the thraldom and shackles of religion, it was taught and believed as a "religious truth," and maintained under penalty of eternal damnation, that if the human body was dissected, God would not be able to recognize you on the day of resurrection!

Such has been the paralyzing menace of religion that has prevailed over the mind of man.

The discovery of the chemistry of food and its application to nutrition has contributed more to the health of the human race than all the Gods, clergymen and priests since the dawn of existence.

Preventive medicine has accomplished amazing results in bringing health to, and prolonging, the life of the people.

Hygiene and its application have saved millions upon millions from disease and premature death. It has stayed the "hand of God" in his madness in spreading deaths from epidemics of disease.

Charles Darwin published his "Origin of Species" and the great principle of evolution was promulgated.

Modern emancipated medicine has reduced the infant death rate by more than 50 per cent, and has been responsible for more than doubling the life span of man within the past century.

Just think of it! All of this within our own lifetime!

All of this and more since the day of American independence!

And listen to these words of Dr. Paul D. White, founder of the American Heart Association. He said:

"Those of us doctors who graduated from medical school thirty to forty years ago, look back now at the almost unbelievable ignorance about heart disease that then existed. More knowledge has come since then than had been acquired in all the centuries before." (Italics mine).

Man was taught in the past that the heart, like the voice, was the "gift of God," and it was too sacred for man to probe into its workings. What were the results? Millions died who could have been saved; millions lived as horrible cripples who could have lived a normal life if man in the past, had had the courage, that he has today, to seek relief from the terrors of disease.

Such is the amazing progress that has been made when man relies upon his own efforts to solve his problems, whether they concern his health, or his social or political affairs.

It was only within the past forty years that Dr. James B. Herrick properly diagnosed the cause of coronary thrombosis from which followed the amazing progress that has since been attained in combating this greatest of killers.

I, for one, wish to place upon the brow of Dr. Herrick my laurel leaf of thanks for his great accomplishment in medicine.

What wonders have been accomplished since the invention of the steam engine, the automobile, radio, television, electronic devises, and the thousand and one other discoveries and inventions too numerous to mention.

The educational benefit of the motion picture will far outstrip its entertainment value, and its use in nearly every department of learning makes it one of man's most valuable inventions.

Think of Benjamin Franklin's discovery of the relationship of electricity and lightning and the condemnation heaped upon him for his defiance of "The Prince of the Power of the Air."

And of the Wright brothers, and the dire penalty they were to suffer for "flying into the face of God."

Lightning, once feared as the wrathful manifestation of an angry God, was reproduced in the laboratory by that electrical wizard and atheist, Charles P. Steinmetz.

The telephone, wireless telegraphy, the steam engine, refrigeration, the washing and sewing machines, the mechanical weaving of cloth, and the myriad uses of electric and atomic power will make man the master of his destiny once he frees himself from the myth of a tyrant God.

Ingersoll best expressed man's inventions and their uses when he said that, "Science took the thunderbolt from the gods, and in the electric spark, freedom, with thought, with intelligence and with love, sweeps under all the waves of the sea; science, free thought, took a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created the giant that turns, with tireless arms, the countless wheels of toil."

Deprive man of the use of his discoveries and inventions of the past century and he will think he has been returned to barbarism.

Look what Thomas A. Edison's invention of the electric light did for man—it lengthened his life, it gave more hours to the day, and increased his comforts beyond anything previously known or imagined, and added immeasurably to his joy of living.

Even Joshua's fictitious performance of stopping the sun and the moon fades into nothingness when compared with this sublime achievement.

Nor must we forget Edison's invention for reproducing the human voice—and please grant me a moment's indulgence to say that I had the great honor to know Thomas A. Edison, and Edison honored me by calling me his friend.

If printing has been hailed as one of the world's great inventions, what must we say of the phonograph? While printing preserves man's thoughts on paper, the phonograph preserves not only his thoughts but also his voice!

The song of the skylark is no longer "wasted upon the desert air."

Thomas A. Edison—the greatest of human benefactors—wrested from nature her most guarded secret—the mystery of the human voice.

He disproved, as it was once believed, that the human voice, like the heart, was the "gift of God." He demonstrated that the human voice was merely the natural mechanism of sound produced by air of the lungs passing over the "cords" of the throat and larynx in the same manner as are sounds produced by the strings of a musical instrument.

As a result of Edison's invention, man himself has already produced artificially every manifestation of the human voice!

If the voice was part of "God's plan," how do we account for its absence in the giraffe? This animal has no larynx and therefore no vocal cords, and as a consequence it cannot talk or make sounds with its throat!

The giraffe is proof of the lack of design in nature and the blindness of the forces of evolutionary life.

To list all the great discoveries in the field of science and medicine during the past century, such as aspirin, insulin, penicillin, and the streptomycin drugs would require the undivided attention of a medical historian and a veritable encyclopedia to record them.

And yet, there are still many diseases that plague man of which he has no knowledge. They eat and ravage his mind and body with excruciating pain and torture, and he is utterly helpless against them. He not only does not know their origin, but has not the slightest inkling of their nature or how to fortify himself against their attacks. He must sit, like a condemned criminal, in agonizing torture,