Remarks on R. Hall's Sermon
The preacher of the foregoing sermon speaks a great
deal about infidelity, but
does not define what he means by it.
His harangue is a general exclamation. Everything, I suppose that
is not in his creed is infidelity with him, and his creed is infidelity
with me. Infidelity is believing falsely. If what Christians believe is
not true, it is the Christians that are the infidels.
The
point between Deists and Christians is not about doctrine, but about
fact -- for if the things believed by the Christians to be facts are not
facts, the doctrine founded thereon falls of itself. There is such a
book as the Bible, but is it a fact that the Bible is
revealed religion?
The Christians cannot prove it is. They put tradition in place of
evidence, and tradition is not proof. If it were, the reality of witches
could be proved by the same kind of evidence.
The Bible is a history of the times of which it
speaks, and history is not revelation. The obscene and vulgar stories in
the Bible are as repugnant to our ideas of the purity of a divine Being,
as the horrid cruelties and murders it ascribes to Him are repugnant to
our ideas of His justice.
It is the reverence of the Deists
for the attributes of the DEITY, that causes them to reject the Bible.
Is the account which the Christian church gives of the
person called Jesus Christ a fact, or a fable?
Is it a fact that he was begotten by the Holy Ghost?
The Christians cannot prove it, for the case does not admit of
proof.
The things called miracles in the Bible, such for
instance as raising the dead, admitted if true of occular demonstration,
but the story of the conception of Jesus Christ in the womb is a case
beyond miracle, for it did not admit of demonstration.
Mary, the reputed mother of Jesus, who must be
supposed to know best, never said so herself, and all the evidence of it
is that the book of Matthew says that Joseph dreamed an angel told him
so. Had an old maid two or three hundred years of age brought forth a
child it would have been much better presumptive evidence of a
supernatural conception, than Matthew's story of Joseph's dream about
his young wife.
Is it a fact that Jesus Christ died for the sins of
the world, and how is it proved? If a God he could not die, and as a man
he could not redeem. How then is this redemption proved to be fact? It
is said that Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, commonly called an apple,
and thereby subjected himself and all his posterity for ever to eternal
damnation.
This is worse than visiting the sins of the fathers
upon the children unto the third
and fourth generations. But how was the death of Jesus Christ to
affect or alter the case?
Did God thirst for blood? If so, would it not have been better to have
crucified Adam at once upon the forbidden tree, and made a new man?
Would not this have been more creator-like than repairing the old one?
Or did God, when He made Adam, supposing the story to
be true, exclude Himself from the right of making another? or impose on
Himself the necessity of breeding from the old stock? Priests should
first prove facts, and deduce doctrines from them afterwards.
But instead of this they assume everything and prove nothing.
Authorities drawn from the Bible are no more than authorities
drawn from other books, unless it can be proved that the Bible is
revelation.
The story of the redemption will not stand
examination. That man
should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a
murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up.
Deism is perfect purity compared with this.
It is an established principle with the Quakers not to
shed blood: suppose then all Jerusalem had been Quakers when Christ
lived, there would have been nobody to crucify him, and in that case, if
man is redeemed by his blood, which is the belief of the Church, there
could have been no redemption; and the people of Jerusalem must all have
been damned because they were too good to commit murder. The Christian
system of religion is an outrage on common sense. Why is man afraid to
think?
Why do not the Christians, to be consistent, make
saints of Judas and Pontius Pilate? For they were the persons who
accomplished the act of salvation. The merit of a sacrifice, if there
can be any merit in it, was never in the thing sacrificed, but in the
persons offering up the sacrifice -- and, therefore, Judas and Pontius
Pilate ought to stand first on the calendar of saints.
The survey shows a giant step forward for Deism in the fact that it actually uses the word "Deist" and for the very significant raw numbers it shows as representing the number of people who are Deists. In reality, the number of Deists is actually higher than the survey shows because the survey uses an outdated definition of Deist. For a more accurate definition please see our Deism Defined page.
Click here to read the actual survey. (It's in PDF)
One of the reasons the freethinker Giordano Bruno was tortured and murdered by being burned alive by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition was that he said the Universe is eternal and infinite which violates the superstitions in the Bible found in Genesis. This new study vindicates Bruno.
The Abraham Accord between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the US seems to be more of a war plan against Iran than any kind of legitimate peace agreement.