M. M. Mangasarian

“ But if the bible is not divine, we are asked again, how explain the fact that despite all the attacks of all the ages, it is still loved and cherished by so many? We might as well ask, "If the bible is divine, how is it that in spite of all the things done to bolster it up, there are still so many who do not believe in it?" If long life and popularity prove the bible true, they ought to prove the Chinese and the Hindu bibles true, too. Is a man right because he is old, or is he wrong because he is young? Is truth to be decided by counting beans, as Socrates would ask? ”

“ It is in the very nature of a revelation to deny man the right to be himself. But that is the very negation of morality. "You must obey," says the bible; "never mind whether you understand the commandments, or whether you approve of them or not." Is that morality? And the bible can not treat you as its equal, else what will become of its infallibility? In other words, the bible wants slaves who will do its bidding without protest or question. Under slavery there can be no self-development; that is to say, slaves can not be moral. ”

“ Whatever of hope there is to-day in the human heart for a better future on earth, and whatever signs there may be of a realization of justice and happiness for all men, here and now, we are indebted for them, not to the New Testament, but to modern thought, which is heresy from the point of view of the New, as well as the Old, Testament.
It is the passing of the bible that has opened the way for real and radical reforms. It is the failure of the inspired teachers to fulfill their promises that has at last induced man to step to the front and assume full control of the world's destinies. ”

“ It brings tears into my eyes to think of Europe and America upon their knees, with blanched cheeks and trembling lips, before such a text. Why retain so unjust and tyrannical a commandment in a book which the people are asked to love and obey? And why translate such evil words into all the tongues of man? What has happened to the European races—to the descendants of the glorious Greeks and the proud Romans—that they can fawn over a book that commands a mother to kill her child for not believing as she does? ”

“ If the Gentile will not take the Jew into his club, the Jew shuts his home to the Gentile. But why should not a Jew marry a Gentile? Moses and Ezra will not allow it? And why should the twentieth century be bound by Moses and Ezra? How can God be a universal father, and all peoples his children, if it is a crime deserving of death, as the bible plainly announces in many places, for one of his children to love another not of the same faith? This is the negation of brotherhood in the holiest sense of the word. ”

“ What would not Jews or Christians give for such a passage in their "holy" book! How proudly the clergy would quote it, to prove the divinity of their religion, if this beautiful gem sparkled somewhere within the covers of their bible!
I am a man, and nothing human can be foreign to me.—Terrence.
A sentiment like that makes the whole page which expresses it of solid gold. In vain do we look for so big an utterance in "infallible" books. To the Hebrew there was no world outside Israel, and to Jesus all that came before him were "thieves and robbers." ”

“ We have only to think of the pyramids of Egypt, the cities and temples of Babylonia, the still-abiding wonder of Baal-bec—the temple of the sun, to realize that even when they vaunt their gifts and possessions, even with their passion for inflation and swagger, the bible writers do not rise to the level of the achievements of their heathen neighbors.
But it is only by comparing Athens with Jerusalem that we realize how very much more wonderful is the truth of paganism than Jewish fiction. It is not our intention to enumerate the masterpieces of Athens. ”

“ We say again, if this champion of an obsolete theology, a theology which is being deserted by the Christian scholars themselves, is in earnest, if he really believes all he says, if he dares to put his faith to such a test as Elijah imposed upon his, or if he is prepared to prove to an intelligent audience that the science, the history, and the ethics of the bible can stand all the strain that Reason and Conscience may put upon them—why did he run under cover as soon as he heard the first sound of the Rationalist's approach? ”

“ When the bible was supreme in Europe there was neither science nor commerce. When the bible was supreme, tyrant and dissolute kings ruled by the "grace of God," and priests persecuted the thinker in every capital of the Christian world. It is the emancipation of thought, and not the New Testament, that has conquered for us every blessing we enjoy. Not until the Renaissance, that is to say, not until Europe deserted its Semitic or Asiatic teachers for those of Hellas and Rome, did modern nations begin to wax strong in mind and body. ”

“ Does the bible throw any more light on what are called the mysteries of religion than any other book? Before the bible, men speculated about the hereafter; has the bible changed speculation into knowledge? Before the bible, men believed or doubted the gods; has the bible changed faith, or doubt, into certainty? Which unsolved problem concerning the origin of the universe, or of man, has the bible illuminated? The bible has added to the number of sects and creeds, but has it removed even one theological tenet from the field of controversy and uncertainty? ”

“ Moreover, the miracles—which are as thick on the pages of the bible as blackberries on a bush—what good did they do to the people for whose benefit they were performed? If the Egyptians perished in their homes, the Jews perished in the wilderness; if the Egyptians lost their slaves, the Jews lost their sons and daughters—lost themselves. What good did all the miracles performed in their behalf do for them? Their city, Jerusalem, was set on fire, their homes pillaged, their children put to the edge of the sword, over and over again. ”

“ Was it to encourage honesty, liberty of conscience and tolerance that so Asiatic and despotic a command as the above has been translated into all the languages of the earth? Would not the bible have been a more helpful book if it had said: "Do not believe upon insufficient evidence, for to do so is to prefer error to truth"? But there is not a single bible that contains so daring a commandment. If a man may not "Speak according to knowledge," he can not act according to conscience, and a religion which denies to us these two rights instead of saving us, destroys us body and soul. ”

“ To give a man a pair of lungs, and then to tell him he shall not breathe, would not be more unreasonable than to give a man organs, senses, brains—to make him in the image of God—and then to menace him with instant death if he should acquire knowledge. To give an impossible commandment is to desire its violation.
The apologists of the bible say that God was only trying Adam's character, as he tried Abraham's faith when he ordered him to sacrifice his son Isaac. But why try Adam with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? ”

“ Is there any inspiration in such a prospect? Is it not like clinging to a straw, to expect help from such haphazard utterances as these? What a serious world desires to know is not how to "beat around the bush," but how to remedy real evils. By taking the bread from one man and giving it to another, we neither add to the quantity of food, nor diminish the stress of poverty. Yet that is precisely the solution Jesus proposes with such a flourish of trumpets. Is it any wonder that people do not care for his heaven, or that humanity has turned away from Jesus to look for help elsewhere? ”

“ If we desire fairy stories, there is the mythology of the Greeks; if we want miracles, there is science with its real wonders; if we want tales of human adventure and heroism, there is history, ancient and modern; if we want biography, better than the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is the story of the glorious discoverers and inventors whose genius transmuted human ignorance into knowledge and barbarism into civilization. And for the sufferings of the gods, read the story of the martyrdom of man!
What Is the Best Thing That Can Be Said in Favor of the Bible? ”

“ Why resist not evil? If evil is evil, and if we have power to resist it, why may we not do so? What is morality but the exercise of the power of resistance against evil? The idea that by resisting evil we become evil ourselves, as Tolstoi maintains, is as much a conundrum as the text itself. Did not Jesus resist the devil in the wilderness? Did he not drive the evil spirits out of his patients? Did he not denounce the scribes and Pharisees who would not accept his Messiaship? And did he not scourge the money-changers out of the temple court, and overturn their tables by sheer physical force? ”

“ A good Christian must never undertake to defend his bible against criticism; the moment he attempts this he takes the whole question out of God's hands. Who are you that you should undertake to defend the Word of God? And what makes you think that God's Word needs a defense? No better proof could be asked for to show that both Bryan and his hearers had lost the faith of Elijah, and were struggling in the slough of doubt, than his elaborate attempt to defend the bible and his mock challenge to its critics. ”

“ People speak of the mission or the message of Judaism; but how could a religion have a message for mankind when it recognized no mankind outside Israel? Was not the doctrine of a chosen people, which is the spina dorsi of the bible, the negation of human brotherhood? Was not its severe prohibition of intermarriage calculated to keep the Jew separate and an alien in every land? ”

“ The God who in the Old Testament hardened the heart of Pharaoh that he might ruin him and his people, leads people, in the New Testament, to hug a delusion to their souls that he might damn them. And this is the being who is not only to be our pattern for morality, but it shall also be considered impossible for any one to be better than he is. To try to improve on this "divine" pattern is blasphemy, both to the Jew and the Christian.
To teach that no one can be better than Jehovah, as he is depicted in the bible, is the most hopeless pessimism. Morality is born of hope and courage. ”

“ An infallible book should save more people than the bible is claimed to do. The greater part of Christendom, not to speak of the rest of the world, is still to be saved. If the bible only saves some, so does education and other purely human agencies; and if education does not save everybody, neither does the bible. Wherein, then, is the superiority of the "divine" to the human?
Moreover, if a man is comforted by reading Shakespeare, or Goethe, or Emerson, or George Eliot, would that prove these authors inspired? ”

“ TO make it possible for a man to be as honest in his religion as he would like to be in his business; to make him as unafraid in church as he aims to be anywhere else, and to help make him as impatient of a lie on Sunday as he is on any other day of the week, is the object of these studies on the bible. I wish to be able to kindle in the breast of every free citizen of this free country the love of truth, irrespective of whether it helps or hurts; I wish to shame cowardice and cant out of every man and woman who speaks the English language. ”

“ And thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. *
* II Samuel xii, 31.
"Unto all the cities." Goodness! It is not only upon one or two special offenders that these atrocities are practiced, but upon "all the cities." And think of the state of heart and mind of a man that could be such a monster! But there is something more appalling still: think of the head and heart of the people of the twentieth century who dare not denounce such barbarities because they are in the bible, and who translate these details into every language under the sun for edification in morals! ”

“ To bring a church full of people together—tired, busy, perplexed, hungering for ideas, for truth, for beauty—only to tell them that the tares must not be touched or separated even from the wheat until some day in the future, some judgment day in the clouds, when the Lord of the harvest shall gather up the tares to be burned, and the wheat to be deposited in his chests! ”

“ To Jesus, God was something like a Turkish sultan of the olden days who exalted his barber to the rank of a grand vizier, and humbled the vizier to the level of a keeper of his stables, all in one night, to show that his pleasure is above any consideration of justice and character. But this is not morality; this is caprice. To pay the man who has worked only for one hour as much as the man who has worked all day long, is to rob the latter of his dues. ”

“ Is Judaism the name of a nation or of a religion? It is argued that the Jews are compelled to cling to one another, and to keep together in a body, because of the general prejudice against them. Will I be forgiven if I were to say that Judaism is largely responsible for this fearful prejudice. Is there a text in bible or Talmud, which any rabbi could quote, to prove that Jew and Gentile should love and respect one another and dwell together in fraternal relations, taking and giving in marriage, as though they were one people? ”