Adelphiasophism
Losing Faith: How I lost a God and Gained a Goddess
Abstract
By a former Anglican Clergyman
© 1998 The Adelphiasophists and AskWhy! Publications. Freely distribute as long as it is unaltered and properly attributed
Contents Updated: Thursday, July 22, 1999
My Childhood
My father’s religion was of the lowest Calvinistic type, but it was sincere. He allowed himself no pleasures of any kind, and though less strict with my mother and myself, we lived in a very frugal manner. My mother died in the belief that he was a miser and had never done a benevolent act in his life. After his death our family lawyer informed me that he spent immense sums in anonymous donations for religious and charitable purposes. He thought it right to conceal from her this giving of alms. Perhaps he loved her more than he allowed her to suppose, but he did not make her happy.
What would my life have been without her! He was a stern tutor and how often she caught me in her arms as I fled from the chamber of torture and kissed my bruised and bleeding hands. How often she soothed my wounded spirit with words of the tenderest love, and persuaded me to endure with patience the trials of my childish life! I did not then know that she suffered more than myself. She had a heart which pined for affection and he was a man of stone. She was ardent and romantic, fond of intellectual society, and not indifferent to admiration, possessed of remarkable beauty and many elegant accomplishments. But my father objected to social pleasures so we received no visitors.
She once told me that my birth had saved her from absolute despair. From then on she had something to live for, something to love. Often, as she pressed me to her bosom, she would gaze into my face with a timid, searching, yearning look and when, with some cold impatient words, I tried to shake myself free, her sad dark eyes would fill with tears. Our children cannot love us as we love them and, when they are old enough to return our affection, they leave us. Happily it is good for us to love as it is good for us to labour, even when the reward is slight and inadequate.
Rationalism
One day after my ordination I was dining at a friend’s house. After the ladies had left the table, the conversation turned to the discoveries in geology, which revealed the earth’s antiquity and the creation of fish, reptiles, and quadrupeds in epochs separated by vast intervals of time. Huxley, a Rationalist, expounded the matter with much lucidity, and each guest was apparently drawing his own conclusions for himself when one blurted out:
"Then the world was not made in six days, after all."
There was a dead silence, and all eyes turned upon me. I said, "The geologists must be mistaken if such was their theory, because it was clearly stated in the Bible that God had made the world in six days."
"Well then, Reverend Reade," said Huxley, "you do not agree with those of your brethren who declare that the six days in question were not actual days, but geological periods?
"They cannot honestly say that when each day is described as having an evening and morning, and when it is also said that God “blessed the seventh day and sanctified it”?"
"Nothing could be proved more completely and concisely. We may, therefore, take it for granted that the six days of Genesis are not geological periods?"
He looked at me with a questioning air. I bowed and smiled, and was going to change the conversation. He continued: "But now, if it were proved as an actual fact, beyond the shadow of a doubt, by the same kind of evidence as that which proves that the earth revolves round the sun—supposing, I say, it could be proved that the world was not made in six days, but that thousands and thousands of years intervened between, for example, the fish and birds of the fifth day, and man who was created on the sixth, what may I ask would you say then? "
"My dear sir," I replied, "you might as well ask what I would say if it could be proved that a circle is square."
But supposing it could be proved—please answer me for my argument’s sake—what then?"
"Then of course it would prove that the Bible is not inspired."
"Good," said Huxley, rising from the table. "Well now, I will tell you this. It has been proved,"
And he walked out of the room.
Huxley’s confidence shocked me as it was doubtless intended to. I determined to refute his assertion and read the Bible all through, with no commentary but that of common sense. But, far from getting the answers I needed, like Paul, the scales fell from my eyes.
Never did I more keenly appreciate the beauties of the book as a literary production but I found proofs in every page that it was written by men—not God—and men immersed in superstition. I passed many unhappy hours, for old beliefs are not torn up without a pang but my chief feeling was one of burning shame, that I could ever have credited the many profane and ridiculous fables contained in the Bible. It seemed to me an awful blasphemy to assert that the great God of heaven clothed himself in the body of a man. I prayed him to forgive me for having believed it.
My devotion to a God increased—to the pure and sublime—reconciling me to the loss of silly illusions, but I was a Christian clergyman for whom the illusions are important. I had become the priest of a pagan religion, and received payment to teach what I knew to be false—salvation, immortality and cruel retribution.
The Moral Law of the Church
Mr Watson had a large family, as was shown by the number of small caps and coats hanging up in the hall. Mr. Watson was seated in his study, reading Paley’s “Natural Theology” and smoking a long clay pipe. When I had explained the object of my visit, he did not seem surprised, but asked me a number of questions which showed that he was well acquainted with works of science and philosophy.
Having received my replies, he reflected a little, and then said, laying down his pipe, "I see you have thought out this matter for yourself and have not taken it at second-hand. It would be useless for me to try and move you out of your position. I shall therefore place myself in that position. I shall admit, for argument’s sake, you understand, that you have found out the truth. We shall, therefore, discuss what is best for you to do."
Mr. Watson did not interrupt my meditations, but quietly filled another pipe and began to smoke again. I said, "What do you advise?"
"I think," said he in a kind voice, "that I can show you are not bound by the moral law to give up the Church."
"Ah, sir," said I, "duty speaks to me clearly enough, though I have not, I feel, the strength to obey its commands. I cannot part from Marie. But I know that I ought."
"All moralists are agreed," he replied, "that the welfare of mankind is the test of Right. The virtues so called are virtues because they contribute to human happiness. If they become injurious they cease to be virtues. Now life is so constituted that no positive dogma, no undeviating rule can be laid down for the guidance of conduct. We may say it is for the welfare of mankind that everyone should speak the truth, but there are many exceptions to the rule. No one would hesitate to tell a lie in order to save the life of an innocent man. Here, as often happens, there is a choice between two evils, and the lesser evil is selected. It is wrong to tell a lie, but it is more wrong to participate in murder. Or we may put it another way. Here is a choice between two virtues. It is good to tell the truth, but far better to save an innocent life from destruction, while the struggle it costs the good man to lie adds to the nobleness of the deed.
"Having thus proved, as I think you will allow, that there can be a case in which falsehood is a virtue, I will take a case which, from what I know of the clergy, happens, I imagine, very often. A parson with a wife and family of children entirely dependent upon him ceases to believe in the doctrines of the Anglican Church. His first impulse is to obey the voice of his conscience, and to leave the Church, but a little reflection warns him that if he did so his wife and children would starve. He chooses the lesser of two evils. He becomes, if you will, a hypocrite"—here the pipe fell and broke into splinters on the hearth—"that he may not violate the sacred duties of the husband and the father."
The Death of a Good Woman
I accepted Watson’s reasoning at first, kept my thoughts to myself and, secure in a country parish, married Marie, my love. But my conscience was not at ease and eventually I surrendered my position, my father disowned me as an infidel and, as ill-luck would have it, Marie’s father was bankrupted by his dishonest and profligate son. We fell upon hard times and were reduced to poverty.
Marie’s trust in God seldom wavered. Whenever I gave her the scraps of dry bread which I had begged, she took them joyfully as if they were a feast. She once said she thought Jesus and his disciples must have lived like ourselves, because of the Lord’s Prayer,
Give us this day our daily bread.
For her this fancy invested our miserable lives with a halo of romance. She seemed to be strengthened by affliction, and the more she suffered the more she loved.
She seemed to be asleep. I would not wake her till the tea was quite ready then I would put the mattress close down by the fire and when she had finished her tea, I would go to the cook-shop and buy her some good strong soup.
Her eyes opened. I sat down beside her on the floor, and told her of the shilling I had received. She smiled and turned up her face to be kissed like a child before it goes to sleep. Then her countenance changed in a curious manner. Her eyes wearliy closed and her chin fell.
I sat there without moving. The dusky shadows were falling on the floor when a hand was placed upon my shoulder. I looked round. It was a City Missionary whom I had often seen passing from house to house; but he had never been to my room before.
"My brother," he said, "you are in sorrow."
I started to my feet. "There has been murder done here," I sobbed.
"What," said he, turning pale, "do you imply…"
"God has murdered her," I said. "The God who made her, the God whom she loved, obeyed and faithfully trusted."
He looked softly into my furious eyes and said, "Do you think, then, that she is dead? No, dear friend, she is but released from this poor tenement of clay, and now lives with God in paradise."
"Well could not," I choked, "could not this benevolent God make her happy in another world without inflicting these horrible tortures upon her in this one? Look at that body, once so beautiful, battered and beaten by its maker. And it is not just her body he has wounded. If her soul could be made visible, it would show the marks of many cruel and savage blows."
"Silence these angry thoughts," he commanded, "and be resigned to the will of God. For he is our sovereign and our Lord. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. My friend, let me implore you to humble your heart and kneel with me before the throne."
"What," I cried, with redoubled anger, "pray to that monster, that demon, that devil! Am I a groveling hound to lick the hand that strikes without mercy and without provocation? Am I an Oriental slave to press the bowstring to my lips and brow? I do not I fear his malignant rage. God is Satan! a bloody tyrant." My rage exploded. "Listen, Satan, you might have power, you can rack me with everlasting pains, but I curse you, I defy you…murderer…devil…"
I fell ill, nervous, feverish.
A Feverish Dream
I dreamt I was standing, it seemed, in swirling space-time, with the puzzling impression that the Infinite was just the right size for someone of my dimensions. My body had become that of the demigods, whose kingdom I had entered, while my conceptions were yet human. A cold perspiration broke out on my forehead, and I calculated that each drop was about the size of the Atlantic Ocean. Now I was seated in an amphitheatre or circus, in the midst of a large audience. All those present were equally enormous, but my vision had been enlarged and possessed extraordinary powers.
The arena of the circus must have been many millions of miles in extent, a bottomless pit of black space traversed by a bright shining ball attended by a number of little colored beads. I looked at them more closely—it was the Solar System! The eyes of the spectators were all turned in the direction of the Earth, so I too peered at it.
My senses were supernatural. I could see the whole globe, and everything upon it, even animals too minute to be distinguished with the best microscopes. I could see every man woman, and child, and study their actions without effort or confusion. I could view, at the same time, numberless dramas of domestic life which were being performed within the dramas of the nations. And these were only parts of the great drama of the Earth.
I cannot explain how so many different objects could be at the same time gathered by the eye, transmitted to the brain, and assimilated by the intellect. Can anyone explain to a maggot how the eye of a man can take in a landscape at a glance?
My amazement was soon marred by the fearful tragedies which I saw everywhere. At that moment a spectator rose to leave and I saw in him the likeness of a famous figure of history; or, properly, the famous person was a likeness of him.
Then I understood! This earth-life of ours is only a satirical play on Olympus. Our great men are caricatures of famous demigods, their vicissitudes and actions, ingenious lampoons.
Is this it? Life? Are we just puppets in a show? Are love, ambition, and religious sentiment—the tremulous passion, the desire of fame, the divine yearnings of the soul—are these but moving images cunningly contrived? Are the terrible combats of life simply gladiator-games to give the demigods some sport?
Yet do not men themselves often martyr their lives to gain the plaudits of this audience of Gods? Do not we who aspire to greatness rejoice that we play before the Immortals, hoping to achieve celestial fame?
I tried to console my suffering heart.
Alas! It was in vain! I had a hope—one last hope—and it was destroyed. I saw that the dead cannot be united, since we are but projections that vanish away. All is lost, all is done. Farewell for ever, farewell, my only love, for evermore.
I fled far away into space. But my senses of hearing and smell were also endowed with marvellous powers. I could still smell the Earth! It gave forth a stench of decaying carrion not only from its body but from its soul. Each vice had its horrible odour, and though virtues had pleasant scents, rarely did a fragrance come floating. No posy could disguise the scent of putrefaction.
And now strange sounds arose. I heard the whispers of conscience and the chidings of remorse, the sighs of unrequited love, the cries of many agonies.
I woke with my cheeks wet with tears. Yet the odours of the earth lingered in my nostrils, and its horrible cries still sounded in my ears.
Why did you kill her? She was good. She was faithful.
Was it merely dramatic effect in a play to amuse the gods? Was it was more effective to do it when she was young and pretty? If she had been old or ugly the audience wouldn’t have cared. But they could see her die with the beauty of girlhood still blushing upon her, and the tenderness of her nature proved in her nursing that poor sick child. They could see her die that they be smitten to their hearts in ersatz sorrow. They could see her lover lying on the grave, weeping, keening, digging at the ground with his nails and teeth.
A fine stroke of art—charmingly devised. Weep, ye gods, weep your oceanic tears, and wait your sighs in gentle gales to mourn my love.
Burning in my fever, I fell again into a fitful sleep. Again I was in the cosmos, among the demigods—our gods—and one looking like Moses was speaking…
...creating worlds and of peopling them with beings who reflect our vices or follies, and who offer examples of virtue and moral excellence, has of late become popular in the visual arts. Doubtless it is a fad which will soon pass away, but meanwhile it is for me as Judge to assess these works. This one was simple in conception and design, comprising of not, as in some ambitious compositions, several inhabited worlds but one only is placed upon the stage. The action is confined to a single planet.
The drama is the Creator’s first attempt and it bears the stamp of inexperience but, this production fails chiefly on the following moral grounds.
It is degrading that these beings made in our image should be suffered to retain both in body and mind so much of the lower animals. The Creator may reply that he laid down the law of gradual transition, and that all traces of the beast in man could not be expelled except by departing from the law. But since he transformed, by gradual transition, the snarling muzzle to the voluptuous lips of divine beauty and the hairy paw to the skilful and sensuous hand, he might surely have found some way to obliterate by change the animal instincts of which we complain. He is ingenious enough when he chooses. If he could have devised no other plan he should have modified his law of evolution. It might have been less artistic but it would have been more respectful. An error in art is preferable to an outrage in decorum.
Then, the development of matter to mind, of quadruped to man, of savage to civilized nations, is laudable enough but how has it been carried out? By a natural law which, in its recklessness of life and prodigality of pain, is criminal. In cold forethought the Creator arranged nature such that more animals were born than could possibly obtain subsistence. This caused a struggle for existence, a desperate and universal war. The best animals were alone able to survive and so in time Evolved. There is a perverted ingenuity in this law but the waste of life is cruel. The same struggle for existence raised mankind from the bestial state. Only towards the conclusion of the drama did ambition and then more noble motives come into force. At first, every step in human progress was won by conflict and every invention resulted from calamity. The most odious vices and crimes of war, tyranny, and superstition all assisted the development of mankind.
The existence of Good requires the existence of Evil which must therefore be used in art but, though dramas in which only virtues are shown are tedious, I condemn this confusion of Evil and Good. Nothing can be more immoral than to make crime the assistant of progress and vice the seed of which virtue is the fruit.
Again, Death is a useful and perhaps indispensable element in works of this kind, but so potent a means of exciting sympathy should be employed with moderation. What do we find here? The Creator’s law of evolution is the law of death. Massacre is incessant. Flowers, animals and men die at every moment. The earth is a vast slaughter-house. Nor is that all. With a talent for torture which rouses our disgust, the Creator has smitten the animated world with many acute and lingering diseases. Even the intellect is afflicted with its own maladies. Love and romance which should afford some consolation for mankind in the drama are themselves often the cause of mental pain and despair.
Who could view that melancholy Earth and those writhing masses of humanity, who could hear those agonising cries without a shudder of pain and a scowl of indignation? What can be said of the Creator of such a world? What kind of defence or excuse can there be for him? The Absolute allows us to produce and destroy life but such a gift should not be abused. Though these tiny humans live only for a moment, they are sentient beings and their torments while they last are real and intense. That he made men himself does not justify his cruelty, nor his vanity in inducing them to worship him constantly. It is for the audience, the judges to praise the Creator, not his creations! Some left, others heckled so at one time it seemed his world would be damned.
A Judge should not be too hard upon a new craftsman whose talents have yet to emerge but, unless this critique induces him to reform, he is heading for a fall. When next he produces a world let it be one which will excite in the audience the nobler sentiments, and which also will give us a more favorable impression of the personal character of its Creator…
Recovery
My illness was severe. I had to undergo a long convalescence and, as I improved, sought solace in books. The ancient Egyptians would carve over a public library the inscription: “The medicine of the soul”.
In time the spirit of impotent wrath passed away. The old habit of devotion began knocking at the door of my heart. Though I again longed to worship God, first I had to be able to revere him. I reasoned, if he were omnipotent, the death of Marie was a crime. But I took refuge from this painful conclusion in a theory I had seen somewhere suggested. God was perfectly benevolent, and had made the world as well as he was able, but his power was limited by the evil nature of the material he had at hand.
This gave me comfort for a time, but I soon saw through the fallacy. For mankind has been able to make the earth better, and so God, before humans came to the earth, must have been able to make it better had he pleased. Otherwise, man is more powerful than God!
I now began to suspect that our conception of God was entirely erroneous. For what is the definition of God? A Perfect Mind. And what is Mind? It is a product of the earth, a created thing, existing within the lower animals in a rudimentary condition, and in truth not less human than the body.
Mind cannot create, it can only arrange and dispose, as Shelley remarked long ago. Even a perfect mind could not create a grain of sand. We suppose that God is a mind, or has a mind, because mind is the highest consciousness, and the Supreme Consciousness is the best definition of God the human intellect can offer. But is it for man to define God? We are but amoebae crawling on a speck of matter floating in space—an infinitesimal fraction of the Universe. Can we form a correct image of the Creator?
At this time I happened to read the passage in Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning”:
Certain it is that God worketh nothing in nature except by second causes.
It set me thinking on all that I had read in scientific works about natural law governing physical phenomena. Thence I was taken on to the conclusion that all moral phenomena and events are also subject to fixed and invariable law. God has no personal relations with the earth and that his entity or being is higher than a perfect mind, and far beyond human comprehension.
Perhaps, then, some clue might be obtained to the intentions of God towards ourselves by a careful study of the natural laws which govern the earth, as these laws, which for brevity’s sake I shall sometimes call Nature, may fairly be considered the expression of his Will.
I went to Marie’s favorite rose-bush. It was dead! Alas! thought I, the same cruel law pervades the whole animated kingdom. Trees and flowers, insects and birds, the fish of the sea, the beasts of the earth—all must die, as men die, after a life of combat and pain.
Then I considered this fact from another point of view.
Was it not strange that mankind, who is God’s “noblest work”, should be subject to the same law as the lower animals, to the same law even as the flower? Was it not strange that Nature should treat the greatest men with the same unconcern as the meanest creatures of the soil, slaying with a breath of pestilence a genius over his noble work, as she sweeps away with a breath of wind a spider spinning in its web? The injustice of this law, and its imperfection, troubled me exceedingly.
After much thought I found the solution of the problem. It was a sad discovery.
We are not sent upon the earth to pass through an ordeal, and to be rewarded or punished in another world, after death, according to our actions. We are sent upon the Earth for the sake of the Earth. In common with the atoms of water and air, we are part of the material with which the Creator, through secondary laws, carries out his scheme, whatever it may be. Those laws are evil and imperfect to us as they are to the insects and the flowers, but they were not arranged for our approval and convenience, and are no doubt perfect for the purpose of their design.
This made me sorrowful. I thought to myself it was just a theory, yet I felt it was the truth, and it forced itself upon me in spite of the aversion it provoked.
I was humbled and mortified.
So then we were merely as slaves, merely as lower animals, merely as potters’ clay!
And where now was the hope of a life beyond the grave? Mankind’s expectation of a future life is justified in that humans deserve compensation for unmerited suffering. If man is only raw material, that hope falls to the ground.
Then again the spirit of science spoke within me:
In death the mind decomposes—nothing is ever destroyed—yet its elements recombine in other forms of mental life, so that though the individual intellect perishes, nothing is lost to the race. People bequeath not only their characteristics but their minds to Humanity.
Understanding Comes
One soft June night I went out and sat on a cliff overhanging the seashore. Above was a cloudless sky, shining with innumerable stars, each star a sun, the center and sovereign of a system. My head swam as, gazing upwards, I beheld worlds lying as thickly together as leaves in a forest—at least so it seemed—in reality vast distances divide them. "Prodigious universe!" I sighed, "and poor, vain, ignorant man, that could believe all these were made for him." Low is our true condition in this galaxy of worlds. We call ourselves God’s “noblest work” but there might be on the planets which attend those distant orbs, beings who would look upon us as we look upon ants or cockroaches, beings to whom our highest efforts of mind would seem but as mere instinct or glimmers of rudimentary intelligence.
My brain was in a whirl. Could I see the light again, the blessed light of hope and joy?
If we are fellow-slaves with the humblest creatures of the earth, and even with the elements, we are also fellow-workers with God, and assistants of his inscrutable designs. If a part of the Divine Scheme is the progress from fear and incomprehension to happiness and reason, does mankind have a role in it? Is it to cast off superstition, to extinguish the evil of supernatural belief, to be the Ormuzd that shall bind Ahriman, to comprehend by the powers of their intellect how to use natural laws without destroying Nature?
I believed that when mankind fully understood and realized their mission, a new religion would animate their life. It would be a religious duty to replace the evil which has divorced mankind from Nature with the goodness of a partnership in symbiosis of mankind and Nature to preserve the glory of the planet. Perhaps this is the reason we were placed upon the earth. Intellect would be carefully trained. Selfishness and ignorance would be stigmatized as sins. The social interdependence of humans and all other species—both within and between species—would be accepted by us all. Lastly, everyone would abandon the delusion of personal immortality as a selfish craving at variance with planetary symbiosis.
Thus I cast aside all thought for the future fate of my own soul. To labour and love without hope of reward, what religion could be more pure and more sublime? Hitherto I had looked on the material world as an alien landscape and life as a tortuous loyalty test set by God within it. But the world is a womb and all other creatures and plants my brothers and sisters constantly being reborn. I kissed the grass and flowers growing on the brink of the cliff. I sang to the waters, and the winds, and the beasts, and the birds, saying: “Together we accomplish the work of Nature”.
I felt a rapture of love for the whole of nature, and resolved to preach the New Gospel far and wide, proclaiming the glorious mission of mankind. I had discovered a religion for myself and laid down a rule of life to which I have always rigidly adhered. Never since have I been distressed by the problems of existence.
An Old Man’s Advice
My father’s health, in spite of his iron constitution, had quite broken down of late years. Something seemed to be preying on his mind, and before he died he left his parish altogether. I believe that he loved me in his heart, and suffered for having rejected me. He acted rightly according to his barbarous Calvinistic creed. I was faithless, a servant of Satan, and he refused me admission to his house, as he believed that God would refuse me admission to heaven. Christian Faith! It is not only opposed to Reason, but to Charity and, given certain morbid spiritual conditions such as guilt-ridden piety, can tear the believer’s heart and leave them to languish and to die. His perfect belief led not to joy but to misery.
If I were a young man endowed with literary powers, and about to begin my career, I should adopt as the work of my life the Diffusion of Doubt. Doubt dissipates superstition and softens the rancour of religious life. Without Doubt there can be no tolerance, and the history of tolerance is the history of Doubt. The skepticism spread by Voltaire humanized the dogmas of the Roman Church. And we ourselves must continue the doubting revolution despite the backlash from the Unthinking.
What is it that latterly has made the clergymen of established denominations so temperate in their views, so considerate for the opinions of others? It is Doubt arising from discoveries in science, and from the treatment of religious topics with freedom of spirit. Yet much religious persecution goes on, and bigotry abounds, notably among fundamentalists. The Diffusion of Doubt is the only remedy for these evils and though the pruning of morbid beliefs must cause anguish to some believers, anguish is less harmful than intolerance.
And now a last word about my religion. It has been with me very many years. We are no longer strangers to each other. It has given me peace. It has made me content. It has taught me to value and enjoy life, yet not to dread annihilation.
I have come to believe in the Goddess Nature, whose laws mankind must unfold in order to be able to live harmoniously with them. To worship this extraordinary power would be irrational, though to admire it is inevitable—but to worship an idol, even if it is set up only in the mind, is not profound but stupid. I do not allow myself to speculate upon transcendental mysteries. It is a waste of mental effort which might otherwise be usefully employed, for the transcendental can never be known.
I continue to gather knowledge, and shall do so to my last hour, for knowledge is the way to truth. I try to be good, and rigidly watch my temper and my thoughts. I seek the happiness of others. I do not believe in a future life and this disbelief is a positive conviction. At first I would sigh for my old belief that God was a large human and mankind was a small god, so that after death life began, and happiness never ceased, and my mother, my Marie, would be joined to me again. Sometimes also my heart has rebelled against the fate of the human race, given to work like the coral polyps of the sea.
I learnt how to overcome these regrets and now I have attained the perfection of unselfishness as regards the disposition of my soul. Last year, when I was given up by the doctors and expected to die every hour, I had no desire whatever to begin a new state of existence. It even seemed ludicrous to me, the idea of my feeble imperfect mind being transplanted to another world. It was, I thought, just and natural that I should rejoin the Goddess in the Earth whence I came.
One may cease to believe in a Personal God and in the Immortality of the Soul, and yet not cease to be good and even religious. This Religion of Unselfishness, for those who are able to embrace it, is far more ennobling than any religion which holds out the hope of celestial rewards. Its need for unselfishness and purity means it can make few converts in the present state of humanity. Long ages must elapse before it could become the religion of the world. More and more, as time goes on, it will give sound rest to troubled hearts, unlike the illusion of rest offered by the drug of immortality. Year by year the necessity of this religion will grow, or mankind will destroy the only heaven they can know.
You might answer: Suppose that a good person, converted by your arguments, gave, up the belief in their own immortality, loved others, worked for others, strove to purify their heart, but took no heed for their own soul, and died believing in annihilation. And there is a future life after all. What then?
They would be perfectly delighted at the pleasant surprise of an unanticipated life. This is the beautiful quality of our religion. We do not believe in future rewards and so eradicate all selfish longings from our hearts. But if there should be a future life offered as a reward for good deeds then no believer would be ahead of us in the queue. The Supreme Good is that which neither desires nor expects reward. It is true love—a mother’s love not a father’s.
Gods are made by human heads, as idols are made by human hands. The people of the churches and chapels worship an idol of base metal—the God of Hell Fire and retribution. If you must give your children a fictional parent, give them an idol of gold—a mother—a Goddess of the purest love and noblest ideals.
Adapted from The Outcast by Winwood Reade.
