Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest by Robert Green Ingersoll

Author:Robert Green Ingersoll [Ingersoll, Robert Green]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Free thought
Published: 2005-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Ingersoll's Lecture on Human Rights

Ladies and Gentlemen: I suppose that man, from the most grotesque savage up to Heckle, has had a philosophy by which he endeavored to account for all the phenomena of nature he may have observed. From that mankind may have got their ideas of right and wrong. Now, where there are no rights there can be no duties. Let us always remember that only as a man becomes free can he by any possibility become good or great. As I said, every savage has had his philosophy, and by it accounted for everything he observed. He had an idea of rain and rainbow, and he had an idea of a controlling power. One said there is a being who presides over our world, and who will destroy us unless we do right. Others had many of these beings, but they were invariably like themselves. The most fruitful imagination cannot make more than a man, though it may make infinite powers and attributes out of the powers and attributes of man. You can't build a God unless you start with a human being. The savage said, when there was a storm, "Somebody is angry." When lightning leaped from the lurid cloud, he thought, "What have I been doing?" and when he couldn't think of any wrong he had been doing, he tried to think of some wrong his neighbor had been doing.

I may as well state here that I believe man has come up from the lowest orders of creation, and may have not come up very far; still, I believe we are doing very well, considering.

But, speaking of man's early philosophy, his morality was founded first on self-defense. When gathered together in tribes, he held that this infinite being would hold the tribe responsible for the actions of any individual who had angered him. They imagined this being got angry. Just imagine the serenity of an infinite being being disturbed, and a God breaking into a passion because some poor wretch had neglected to bring two turtle doves to a priest!

Then they sought out this poor offending individual, to punish him and appease the wroth of this being. And here commenced religious persecution.

Now, I do not say there is no God, but what I do say is that I do not know. The only difference between me and the theologian is that I am honest. There may or there may not be an infinite being, but I do not know it, and until I do I cannot conceive of any obedience I owe to any unknown being.

As soon as men began to imagine they would be held responsible for the act of any other person, came the necessity for some one to teach them how to keep from offending the being. Some called him medicine man, some called him priest; now, we call him theologian. These men set out to teach men how to keep from offending this being, and they laid down certain laws to regulate the conduct of men.

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