Robert Green Ingersoll: "About the Holy Bible"

[Boston_Chemist]

This essay lays out the reason for studying the living book that is our history, we humans, that is being written on a continual basis. Juxtaposed on this is that horrid little text, the bible, with its anachronisms and retrograde thinking.

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/about_the_holy_bible.html

From the end:

"XII

THE REAL BIBLE.

For thousands of years men have been writing the real Bible, and it is being written from day to day, and it will never be finished while man has life. All the facts that we know, all the truly recorded events, all the discoveries and inventions, all the wonderful machines whose wheels and levers seem to think, all the poems, crystals from the brain, flowers from the heart, all the songs of love and joy, of smiles and tears, the great dramas of Imagination's world, the wondrous paintings, miracles of form and color, of light and shade, the marvelous marbles that seem to live and breathe, the secrets told by rock and star, by dust and flower, by rain and snow, by frost and flame, by winding stream and desert sand, by mountain range and billowed sea.

All the wisdom that lengthens and ennobles life, all that avoids or cures disease, or conquers pain -- all just and perfect laws and rules that guide and shape our lives, all thoughts that feed the flames of love the music that transfigures, enraptures and enthralls the victories of heart and brain, the miracles that hands have wrought, the deft and cunning hands of those who worked for wife and child, the histories of noble deeds, of brave and useful men, of faithful loving wives, of quenchless mother-love, of conflicts for the right, of sufferings for the truth, of all the best that all the men and women of the world have said, and thought and done through all the years.

These treasures of the heart and brain -- these are the Sacred Scriptures of the human race."

[Boston_Chemist]

1. The great crime that Religious thinking perpetrates is related to the ending:

Stealing from us the recognition of these things from our nature.

[laconicsax]

2. Did you just reply to yourself?

[Boston_Chemist]

4. Yep.

Is that bad?

[EvolveOrConvolve]

5. Not bad just strange

It's like you're talking to yourself.

(And not to worry, I find myself doing that IRL all the time

[Boston_Chemist]

6. Wouldn't wanna be strange, or anything.

I feel that DU members have a long history here. Some of you have upwards of 40000 posts. I am sure that this implies certain cultural traits that I am currently lacking.

Either way, it is intended as an ex-post facto editorialization. Perhaps it should go in as an edit, eh?

[EvolveOrConvolve]

7. It's all good, don't worry about an edit

[MarkCharles]

3. And am I right that Ingersoll wrote that back in 1894?

Well, it's a good short summary and critique of many of the books of the Bible.

I think I'll pass on a thorough reading of all it's points, the ending paragraphs summarize his position well.

[Fair Witness]

8. For something more contemporary, I recommend

http://www.godisimaginary.com/video2.htm

[HarryPowell]

9. Excellent Selection

Why we humans can't be satisfied with what is is a puzzler.

We can only make what is better than it is, worse than it is or leave it alone. But we seem to want it better, but all too often make it far worse.

This could go to ridiculous lengths.

If I can find it, I'll post James Broughton's "This Is It."

[JNelson6563]

10. I've enjoyed many of Ingersoll's writings

Thanks for posting that here. He was an enlightened man, especially considering the age he lived in!

Julie