Joseph McCabe

“ School-education, from the primary to the university, is jealously watched for anything that it considered "contrary to the interests of religion": which means that scientific and historical teaching is eviscerated or falsified. It is largely owing to the clergy, or the alliance of the Churches with capitalist governments, that education remains everywhere outside Russia and Turkey an unstimulating and very largely useless communication of facts that are irrelevant to the purposes of life. ”

“ Of course we grant the existence of very large bodies of such people. Whether even these, or how many of them, would retain their fervor if it were not for the untruth that is given them instead of science and genuine history is a question. But if the Churches had only, or mainly, such men and women to deal with, they would be content with the occasional chicken-supper or concert or picnic which is a time-honored concomitant of religious fellowship. They go leagues beyond these things today. ”

“ The activity of the Churches in America is glowingly announced; the beneficent action of Atheism in Russia is misrepresented; the crimes of the Churches in Europe which cooperate with truculent dictators are never mentioned; and, in particular, the growth of Atheism is so carefully concealed behind assurances of Church- progress that people regard a plain statement of it as fantastic and reckless. History and contemporary life alike are falsely described, because the truth would be resented by one or other Church. ”

“ The critic they dread above all others is the man with a clean-cut profession of Atheism, the man who neither in his thoughts nor his speech admits the slightest shade of mysticism. They care very little about the professor or the literary man who openly rejects their doctrines but still talks respectfully about religion and Spiritual realities and the sacredness of doubt and the open mind. ”

“ We shall now survey the world in an attempt to determine to what extent Atheism has grown. The task is difficult. Atheist organizations are so few and poor that there is no approach to a census of the number of Atheists throughout the world, while the name itself has been so changed in meaning by religious writers that a large proportion of the folk who are Atheists do not know it or are reluctant to admit it. ”

“ With the passing of Capitalism and large private fortunes they lose not only the greater part of their wealth and its immunity from taxation, but the power they now enjoy of controlling education (to a great extent) , securing the service of the press, bullying publishers and booksellers, censoring public libraries, and—in comparison with the Atheist—monopolizing radio-instruction. ”

“ Our post graduate research-students and professors seem at times to be running short of themes for those valuable monographs an contemporary life that they give us, but none cares to take up the exact study of one of the most startling phenomena of our age—the rapid growth of Atheism. one knows why. In the circumstances, instead of imitating the round liberality of a religious organization when it publishes a statement of its membership, I will use here only such figures, besides those which are accepted statistics, as are plainly within the truth. ”

“ The Intrigue for Wealth and Power Much more serious is the use of the new business-organization of the Churches to prevent free trade in truth. I have said that it is a law of history that Atheism grows with the growth of knowledge, and that we have now a marvelous machinery for transmitting our knowledge to all. ”

“ Some 200,000,000 people in Europe today live or suffer under a Fascist tyranny which scorns every principle of the American social ethic, even as taught by the Churches, yet all the Churches, with the reserve I gave in the case of Germany, support the tyranny. The chief pretext for establishing the tyranny was the growth of Communism and Socialism, and part of the reward of the Churches in nearly every case was the suppression of their critics, whether Communist or not. ”

“ For reasons which will be discussed in later essays even this comprehensive and unceasing miseducation does not make people return to the Churches, but it has one of the effects that are sought: it convinces most people that Atheists are a scanty and rather eccentric body who have no title to be treated in the press or on the radio with the same respect as Christians, The clergy attach more importance to that than many people imagine. ”

“ Even in the few countries where a religious clause is inserted in the census-papers the results are, we shall see, apt to be grossly misleading, Except where Atheism is accepted as the creed of a definite political organization such as the Communists and, in some countries, the Socialists, it is so difficult to ascertain its strength in a community that for the compilation of this essay I have had practically no assistance from any other writer. ”

“ The biggest Churches are still those that are richest in medieval stupidities. The most successful of them all in restricting its leakage, accumulating wealth, and usurping the power to bully people who do not belong to it, is the most medieval of them all. ”

“ The noisier it becomes, with its braying out upon the ether, its publicity bureaus and camera men, and its boosting of its social attractions and entertainments, its pushing to the front at every civic ceremonial or public event, the more plainly it confesses its failure to appeal to either the intellect or the emotions of our time. ”

“ For, that the constant aim of all this work is to prevent the dissemination of truth and purvey what is regarded by the great majority of properly educated persons as untruth I have proved in scores of works. The grossest historical untruths, to the advantage of Christianity, are repeated until even the non-Christian majority imagine them to be unquestioned. The social services and possibilities of service of the Churches are flagrantly misrepresented. The truths of science that are essential to a correct appreciation of life and man are concealed or denied. ”

“ Atheism perishes again with the crass ignorance and clerical tyranny of the Iron Age, but it spreads widely in the light of the Arab-Persian civilization, wherever the fanatics are checked, and at the Renaissance it reappears in Christendom. ”

“ There are large cities like Boston where the Catholic Church notoriously influences education even in the schools to which it forbids its parents to send their children, but all the Churches keep an eye on school-manuals and teachers. ”

“ The word is here taken in its legitimate sense, which is supported by most of our leading dictionaries and invariably accepted by Atheist writers—the men, one would say, who ought to know best—as the proper designation of any man or woman who has no belief in any being or entity whom he or she calls God. ”

“ Today the great body of the Lutheran pastors support the blood-stained tyranny of the Nazi regime, and the dissentient minority of them quarrel, not with the truculent tyranny as such, but with its interference in their affairs. Catholics and Protestants alike are willing to see Hitler and his brutal lieutenants torture Jews, Communists, Socialists, Pacifists, and humanitarians generally as long as they do not attempt to interfere with the doctrinal teaching of the Churches themselves ”

“ Our Meretricious Churches But if we would appreciate the full force and implication of these statements we must consider the difficulties that are put in the way of the spread of Atheism in all but one or two countries. In America and England, for instance, one imagines a quite honest religions person scoffing at my thesis and pointing out that religion looms larger in public life today than it did in the first two decades of the present century ”

“ The clergy will even permit him to speak on the radio. He generally agrees with them that Atheists are dogmatic, lacking in good taste, superficial and anyway a nuisance. So the fiction is sustained and the people are duped.
3. The Gentle Art of Murder The third chief method is the modern form of the medieval habit of invoking the secular arm. It is today cynical. The Churches were still assuring us that they are today in favor, on principle, of complete toleration and freedom when they eagerly grasped every opportunity that was offered them to cooperate in a policy of intolerance and tyranny. ”

“ In other words, the Churches have gone back to medieval methods just as the dictators they support have. In six of the countries I have named atheistic Communism and Socialism had in about 20 years won at least 50,000,000 adherents, detaching most of them from the Churches. ”

“ And this is only the first stage of their control of education. They have organizations, with local representatives everywhere, for watching the daily and weekly papers and threatening to injure the circulation if truths that are unpalatable to them are published or if good space is not given to their own utterances and activities. They get the work of reviewing books and even reading for publishers into the hands of the clergy or reliable laity. ”

“ They try to stifle all criticism, they insist on favors for their subsidized articles and pamphlets; and they make the ether throb with their ancient and modern untruths. Even employers are enlisted in the good work. ”