This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

There was a time when a falsehood, fulminated from the pulpit, smote like a sword; but, the supply having greatly exceeded the demand, clerical misrepresentation has at last become almost an innocent amusement. Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the pulpit's last resort. The old instruments of torture are kept only to gratify curiosity; the chains are rusting away, and the demolition of time has allowed even the dungeons of the Inquisition to be visited by light. The church, impotent and malicious, regrets, not the abuse, but the loss of her power, and seeks to hold by falsehood what she gained by cruelty and force, by fire and fear. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising, unreasoning, aggressive and insolent. Christianity has held all other creeds and forms in infinite contempt, divided the world into enemies and friends, and verified the awful declaration of its founder -- a declaration that wet with blood the sword he came to bring, and made the horizon of a thousand years lurid with the fagots' flames.....Robert Green Ingersoll

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habitsand mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are moulded and fashioned by oursurroundings. Environment is a sculptor---a painter. If we had been born in Constantinople, the most of us would have said: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet." If our parentshad lived on the banks of the Ganges, we would have been worshipers ofSiva, longing for the heaven of Nirvana. As a rule, children love their parents, believe what they teach, andtake great pride in saying that the religion of mother is good enoughfor them. Most people love peace. They do not like to differ with their neighbors.They like company. They are social. They enjoy traveling on the highwaywith the multitude. They hate to walk alone. (...) Belief is not subject to the will. Men think as they must. Children donot, and cannot, believe exactly as they were taught. They are notexactly like their parents. They differ in temperament, in experience, in capacity, in surroundings. And so there is a continual, though almostimperceptible change. There is development, conscious and unconsciousgrowth, and by comparing long periods of time we find that the old hasbeen almost abandoned, almost lost in the new. Men cannot remainstationary. The mind cannot be securely anchored. If we do not advance, we go backward. If we do not grow, we decay. If we do not develop, weshrink and shrivel. - Taken from "Why Am I An Agnostic" written by Robert Green Ingersoll