Some Mistakes Of Moses

Robert Green Ingersoll

I want to do what little I can to make my country truly free,
to broaden the intellectual horizon of our people, to destroy the
prejudices born of ignorance and fear, to do away with the blind
worship of the ignoble past, with the idea that all the great and
good are dead, that the living are totally depraved, that all
pleasures are sins, that sighs and groans are alone pleasing to
God, that thought is dangerous, that intellectual courage is a
crime, that cowardice is a virtue, that a certain belief is
necessary to secure salvation, that to carry a cross in this world
will give us a palm in the next, and that we must allow some priest
to be the pilot of our souls.

Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every
book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free.
Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to
allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a
paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ, and yet
grasp each other's hands as friends. It is amazing to me that a
difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with
certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and despise each
other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or the
Trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other seems
beyond the comprehension of man; and yet in all countries where
Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the
exact extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an
atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is
human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of
man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as
well as he treats us?

Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all
I ask is -- not that they love their enemies, not that they love
their friends even, but that they treat those who differ from them,
with simple fairness. We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish
Christians to so act that we will not have to forgive them.