Part 3

The Resurrection Gospel Witnesses The Time Spirit Have the Documents been Tampered with? Christianity Before Christ Other Evidences

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION-- What is Christianity?

DETERMINISM-- Can Man Sin against God?

CHRISTIAN APOLOGIES-- Christian Apologies Christianity and Civilisation Christianity and Ethics The Success of Christianity The Prophecies The Universality of Religious Belief Is Christianity the Only Hope? Spiritual Discernment Some Other Apologies Counsels of Despair

CONCLUSION-- The Parting of the Ways

GOD AND MY NEIGHBOUR

THE SIN OF UNBELIEF

Huxley quotes with satirical gusto Dr. Wace's declaration as to the word "Infidel." Said Dr. Wace: "The word infidel, perhaps, carries an unpleasant significance. Perhaps it is right that it should. It is, and it ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ."

Be it pleasant or unpleasant to be an unbeliever, one thing is quite clear: religious people intend the word Infidel to carry "an unpleasant significance" when they apply to it one. It is in their minds a term of reproach. Because they think it is wicked to deny what they believe.

To call a man an Infidel, then, is tacitly to accuse him of a kind of moral turpitude.

But a little while ago, to be an Infidel was to be socially taboo. But a little while earlier, to be an Infidel was to be persecuted. But a little earlier still, to be an Infidel was to be an outlaw, subject to the penalty of death.

Now, it is evident that to visit the penalty of social ostracism or public contumely upon all who reject the popular religion is to erect an arbitrary barrier against intellectual and spiritual advance, and to put a protective tariff upon orthodoxy to the disadvantage of science and free thought.

The root of the idea that it is wicked to reject the popular religion--a wickedness of which Christ and Socrates and Buddha are all represented to have been guilty--thrives in the belief that the Scriptures are the actual words of God, and that to deny the truth of the Scriptures is to deny and to affront God.

But the difficulty of the unbeliever lies in the fact that he cannot believe the Scriptures to be the actual words of God.

The Infidel, therefore, is not denying God's words, nor disobeying God's commands: he is denying the words and disobeying the commands of men.

No man who knew that there was a good and wise God would be so foolish as to deny that God. No man would reject the words of God if he knew that God spoke those words.

But the doctrine of the divine origin of the Scriptures rests upon the authority of the Church; and the difference between the Infidel and the Christian is that the Infidel rejects and the Christian accepts the authority of the Church.

Belief and unbelief are not matters of moral excellence or depravity: they are questions of evidence.

The Christian believes the Scriptures because they are the words of God. But he believes they are the words of God because some other man has told him so.

Let him probe the matter to the bottom, and he will inevitably find that his authority is human, and not, as he supposes, divine.

For you, my Christian friend, have never seen God. You have never heard God's voice. You have received from God no message in spoken or written words. You have no direct divine warrant for the divine authorship of the Scriptures. The authority on which your belief in the divine revelation rests consists entirely of the Scriptures themselves and the statements of the Church. But the Church is composed solely of human beings, and the Scriptures were written and translated and printed solely by human beings.

You believe that the Ten Commandments were dictated to Moses by God. But God has not told you so. You only believe the statement of the unknown author of the Pentateuch that God told him so. You do not know who Moses was. You do not know who wrote the Pentateuch. You do not know who edited and translated the Scriptures.

Clearly, then, you accept the Scriptures upon the authority of unknown men, and upon no other demonstrable authority whatever.

Clearly, then, to doubt the doctrine of the divine revelation of the Scriptures is not to doubt the word of God, but to doubt the words of men.

But the Christian seems to suspect the Infidel of rejecting the Christian religion out of sheer wantonness, or from some base or sinister motive.

The fact being that the Infidel can only believe those things which his own reason tells him are true. He opposes the popular religion because his reason tells him it is not true, and because his reason tells him insistently that a religion that is not true is not good, but bad. In thus obeying the dictates of his own reason, and in thus advocating what to him seems good and true, the Infidel is acting honourably, and is as well within his right as any Pope or Prelate.

That base or mercenary motives should be laid to the charge of the Infidel seems to me as absurd as that base or mercenary motives should be laid to the charge of the Socialist. The answer to such libels stares us in the face. Socialism and Infidelity are not popular, nor profitable, nor respectable.

If you wish to lose caste, to miss preferment, to endanger your chances of gaining money and repute, turn Infidel and turn Socialist.