M. M. Mangasarian

“ You know the story of the rich young man who came to Jesus to ask him the way to eternal life. "Keep the ten commandments," Jesus told him. But when the youth answered that he was already doing that, Jesus said, "If thou wilt be perfect, sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." I am not surprised that the young man went away disappointed. What is there in poverty to entitle a man to eternal life? Is it not a perverse doctrine that associates beggary with moral perfection? Why should the mendicant be the pet of heaven. ”

“ Morality is born of liberty. Christianity is the religion of absolutism, in which Jesus or God is everything, and man a mere puppet. Christianity denies to man the right to reason. He must only obey. There is no morality where there is no liberty. By his doctrine of an impending catastrophe, a future hell, and by his promises of fabulous wealth and glory beyond—Jesus helped to disturb and distort the judgment of the weak and the fear [Pg 24] ful, preventing thereby the cultivation of sane thoughts of life. The morality of Jesus was the morality of panic. ”

“ And shall we hold our tongues on the terrible injustice and oppression all around us simply because there is also goodness and virtue among men? Simply because the human race keeps going as it is, shall we not endeavor to improve it? And because there is some good in all religions, shall we shut our eyes to the dangerous fallacies they contain? Is it not our duty as well as our privilege to labor for a more rational and a more ennobling faith?
In the teachings attributed to Jesus, whose nativity is celebrated to-day [1] in Europe and America, there is much that we are in cordial sympathy with. ”

“ The world is in need of a Jesus who can make people love. If Jesus has this power—why is Europe still armed to the teeth? I do not deny the good intentions of Jesus. I question his power. He has not even succeeded in making his own followers, Catholics and Protestants, to love one another. Christianity has had a good, long chance to show results. A religion which is split up into an ever-increasing number of sects is not going to bring about unity and brotherhood. ”

“ Jesus taught a magical, not a scientific morality. It was by being born of "water and the Holy Ghost," whatever that might mean, and not by intellectual and moral effort, that people were to be saved. He placed the creed above the deed, and himself above humanity. "Believe in me, do good for my sake," gives to morality a sectarian stamp, or taint, which is bound to corrupt it. ”

“ If there is a divine moment in human life, it is when a woman becomes a mother. All the tenderness, the love, the gentleness, the devotion, the sweetness, and the compassion, of which we are capable, will not be enough to outweigh the suffering a woman endures to give life and light to a new being. ”

“ The yellow millions of China and Japan, the dusky millions of Hindustan, the blacks of Africa with their galling chains, the white races with the most pressing problems which ever taxed the brain of man—do not seem to have deserved even a passing notice from Jesus. It is quite evident that such a country as our America, for instance, with its nearly one hundred millions of people of all races and religions, dwelling under the same flag, and governing themselves without a King or a Caesar, never crossed the orbit even of his imagination. ”

“ He does not devote a single thought to the education of children. Not once does he denounce ignorance, which is the mother of all abominations. In the age in which he lived, ignorance was the most abundant as well as the worst crop his own country raised. And yet, Jesus had absolutely nothing to say against it. It would take time to conquer knowledge, and the time was too short. Moreover, in the world to come, such knowledge would be superfluous. What wisdom the believers needed would be given to them miraculously, even as God rained down manna in the desert to the children of Israel. ”

“ If everything is to be done for Jesus' sake, what will become of morality, civilization or humanity with Jesus dropped out? We need no better excuse for summoning all our energies to combat a religion that commits the destinies of our world to the keeping of one man,—and he, in all probability,—a myth. ”

“ Women may wait upon Jesus at the table, they may give birth to him, and nurse him; they may fall at his feet to bathe them with their tears and wipe them with their tresses—but to be his apostles—not that. Had Jesus been really a great genius he would have understood that in the work of saving people, the co-operation of woman is indispensable. There are no better saviors than women. ”

“ But do you not know, asks the man of God, that the world will soon pass away,—that, as Jesus has foretold, the sun will turn black, the stars will fall, and the elements will be consumed in a general conflagration?
The effect of the teaching of both Judaism and Christianity is to incapacitate man for earnest work now and here. And what do these religions offer in place of the home, the love, the world, which they take away from us? ”

“ Could the curtain of the future have been lifted high enough for Jesus to have seen in advance some of the changes that have come upon the world during the past twenty centuries,—the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Mohammedanism,—carrying two continents and throwing the third into a state of panic,—wresting the very Jerusalem of Jesus from the Christians and holding it for a thousand years ”

“ This idea that everything, even our daily bread, is given to us, not acquired by us, explains also why Jesus ignored the subject of labor—the great transformer that transforms the world's waste places into gardens and its swamps into flourishing cities. "Consider the lilies of the fields," argues Jesus, with a suggestion of poetry in his usually severe and solemn speech,—"they toil not, neither do they spin,"—from which it is to be inferred that, if the lilies can be so fair and flourishing without toil or labor, so can man, if he will only put his trust in God. ”

“ No vision of heaven, no thought of glory for himself, can tempt Othello to forget his crime. He prefers hell for himself as the only thing with which his awakened conscience can be calmed. That is the way to be converted! ”

“ The Christian doctrine of forgiveness is the doctrine of license. Jesus commands us to forgive "seventy times seven." He does not seem to realize that the more accommodating we are to the criminal, the more we sap the foundations of morality. "Judge not," says Jesus, "that ye be not judged." That is very queer advice. We are not to see wrong or crime in others lest they should find the same in us. It is the religion of a guilty conscience—which abstains from criticising lest his own faults should be exposed. ”

“ A man could not teach such a doctrine in America to-day without laying himself open to the contempt of his fellows, but when preached by Jesus, hypocrisy and cowardice combine to extol it as divine wisdom. ”

“ It certainly would be absurd to have any weddings, as it would be cruel to have children, or to accumulate property, or to acquire knowledge, in such a world. Tolstoi, in his Kreutzer Sonata, which is a terrible story, interprets the real Christian attitude toward marriage. He shows conclusively that it is inconsistent for a follower of Jesus to marry. Even as the believer must give up all property, he must also give up the family. If he is single, he must not marry; if he is married, he must live as though he was not married. ”

“ Jesus failed to see in woman that which inspires the poet, the painter, the hero, to do their best. He took the Asiatic view of woman. "Can man be free," sang Shelley, "if woman be a slave?" Suppose Jesus had said that!
The bible is on the whole very unfair to woman. This is a sign of its inferior morality. It is the bully who takes advantage of the physically weak. When, in the Garden of Eden, God is about to punish the first couple for their disobedience, he is much less considerate of the woman than he is of the man. ”

“ But Jesus also said "Love your enemies." The advice of Confucius to "love our benefactors and to be just to our enemies," is more sensible. It is neither practical nor desirable to love one's enemies. Can we love the slanderer, the oppressor, the murderer? If our "enemy" is not all this, he is not an enemy. But we can be just to the people who are mean, deceitful, spiteful or pitiless toward us. Did Jesus love his enemies? ”

“ The kingdom of heaven which is to take the place of this world when it has been burned down to ashes, is not an evolution, or a growth out of present conditions, but it is a totally different order, and is to be introduced suddenly and by miracle. This idea makes human labor unnecessary. Hence, the advice of Paul to the slave, not to seek his freedom, and that of Jesus, to let the tares grow up with the wheat. ”

“ And where will the charity come from, if all men were to follow the advice of Jesus and cultivate poverty? But wealth means life, it means enjoyment of the world and exuberance of spirits, which things Jesus dreads. Poverty means lassitude, asceticism, low vitality, prostration and weariness of life,—which things Jesus considered essential to the destruction of the world, which he hoped for. It is only for this world, however, that Jesus believes in poverty. In the next, his followers will receive a hundred-fold for every sacrifice made. ”

“ In other words labor is necessary for those people only who have no Father in heaven who takes notice of even the falling sparrow. But the believer has only to cast his net into the sea and fishes with pearls in their mouths will help him pay for his wants. Faith will not only move mountains, but it can make a single loaf of bread to satisfy the hunger of thousands. In fact, a miracle-worker like Jesus could not consistently recommend labor, which means application of means to ends. Jesus was a magician. Morality is a Science. ”

“ The end of the world would put an end to effort and endeavor, both of which the Asiatic dislikes. To tell people that the world is coming to an end soon,—today, tomorrow, is not to kindle, but to extinguish hope; and without hope our world [Pg 10] would be darker even than if the sun were to be blotted out of the sky.
The objection against Christianity, as also against its parent, Judaism, is that it seeks to divert the attention of man from the work in hand to something visionary and distant. It was to direct men's thoughts to some other world that Jesus belittled this. ”

“ It is a pleasure, and it confirms us in our optimism, to admit that in all the religions of the world, even in the crudest, there is much that is good, as in every structure or dwelling there are rooms and walls and posts that are perfectly sound. Religions live, as buildings endure,—by the soundness there is in them. ”

“ Does the evidence which you have presented and we have accepted without raising any objections, prove that the moral teaching of Jesus is perfect, or even the highest the world has ever possessed?
A system of thought, or a code of morals, is much like a building. A serious crack in one of the walls, or a post that is not secure in its socket, is enough to make the whole building unsafe. When a building is condemned, it is not condemned for the parts that are sound, but for the part or parts that are unsound. ”

“ Mohammedanism, for instance, has survived for nearly fifteen centuries, and its survival is due to the virtues and not to the vices of the Mohammedan faith. This is equally true of Judaism and Christianity. If human Society has survived for these many centuries, it is because, imperfect as it is, there is enough of justice and honor among men to keep it from disintegration. But is that any reason why we should be content with what little justice or truth there is in the world, and not strive for more? ”

“ The doctrine of a world hastening to destruction, while it has demoralized the people, it has enriched the churches. During the middle ages, and earlier, and also in more recent times, more than once the credulous public has been scared out of its possessions by the preachers of calamity. Jesus can not very well clear himself of responsibility for this, because, it was he who tried to hurry the people out of a world soon to be set on fire. When a young man asked Jesus' permission to go and bury his father, he was told to "Let the dead bury their dead." ”

“ How many a husband has been saved from drink—from the gutter even, by his wife. How many sons have been shielded from a prodigal's fate by a mother's all-conquering devotion. Yet for this splendid force or agency of reform, Jesus had no appreciation whatever. ”

“ It has been well said that "those who trample upon manhood can have no real respect for woman." Jesus never spoke of God except as a father. If the highest principle or being in [Pg 15] the universe is a "he," of course woman can never hope to be on an equality with man. Motherhood will always occupy a secondary place as long as the father is a god. If God is a father, what mother can be on an equality with him? He must rule; she must obey. Women do not stop to think that religion—Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism—is the most stubborn obstacle in the path of their advancement. ”

“ He imagines that God is just waiting yonder to welcome him, and that heaven is being put in order for his reception,—while his crime sinks into a mere nothing in his eyes. Like the thief on the cross, he has not a single thought of his victims—not a single pang of remorse for the suffering he has caused. Conversion has made him callous. Whether his victims are saved or damned, he does not care. All his thoughts are centered upon his own future happiness and glory. But suppose the thief on the cross had said to Jesus when the latter invited him to paradise: "But, what about my victims, Lord? ”