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SECULARISM
and
RELIGIOSITY
by Theodore Schroeder
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Secularism
and
Religiosity
By THEODORE SCHROEDER
Aº RELIGIONS and theologies are growths. The sacred
AN ... Writings contain a record of the hopes, the delusional
aspirations, the healthy and morbid fears together with the super-
stitions of our racial childhood. Of necessity, therefore, much that
may be useful is incorporated in all religions, the quantity depend-
ing directly upon the healthy mindedness and the relative intellec-
tual maturity of their founders. Let us embrace all the maturing
relative truths, wherever found, just as we willingly combat mental
disease and ignorance whenever encountered. *
Even a healthy minded person can join with the most devou
religionists in an earnest hope for a hereafter, where we may again
fondle those loved ones whose absence makes life a dreary pathway
through a .desert. Many of us are unable to find any satisfactory
evidence for believing that such hopes for a future life will ever
be realized. We are unable to treat a wish-filling fantasy as a
fact. Yet the belief of others as to a hereafter is to me a matter
of indifference so long as it is the affirmation of a healthy mind,
which accordingly does not take this belief very seriously. While
I do not care to destroy anyone’s belief in the abstract proposition
that there is a life after this one, yet if I could, I would destroy
the belief entertained by many, to the effect that some particular
man, priesthood, or church is the owner of the only well paved road
leading to a pearly gate beyond whose golden portal all is eternal
bliss. “ .* -
Whenever man locates a priest who is believed to have a power
of attorney from an almighty god, with authority to colleet tolls
or tithes along the straight and narrow path that leads to heaven,
that man is a slave. He is no longer intellectually free to use
impersonal standards for judging what is nearest to the unascer-
tainably absolute truth. With the discovery of an “infallible” guide
independent, judgement is renounced and every inclination must
Copyright 1945 by Theodore Schroeder
2 Secularism and Religiosity
yield, if necessary, to secure the good will of the Supposed gate-
keeper to eternal bliss.
I have read a sermon preached by one of those supposed to
possess superior wisdom because of his close acquaintance with
the Holy Ghost. He said, in substance, that no man could get
through the gate leading to the kingdom of god without passing
the inspection cf certain Mormon leaders. I do not believe that
St. Peter ever resigned from the position of heaven's gatekeeper,
and must consider it a matter of excessive arrogance or egomania
for any priest, prophet, or pope to assume to have superseded him.
It is belief in such doctrines as this that I would destroy,
because where generally accepted, there must be relative ignorance
and servitude. Obedience to the counsel of those who, through a
claimed intimacy with or an alleged agency for God, assume to
control our eternal destinies, can be too easily made a dangerous
instrumentality, dangerous alike to those who serve and those who
reject the prophets, either ancient, medieval, or modern.
As we would not destroy the mere hope for a hereafter, so
neither would we destroy mere belief in the existence of God. That
is harmless enough, provided it is not accompanied by the certitude
of morbid psychology. Many will find themselves unable to discov-
er any satisfactory reason for believing in the existence of any-
thing superior to or independent of that part of nature whose
behavior we can measurably understand. Yet, as to the points of
difference between the theist and the atheist we care very little.
A tentative belief in God injures no one. But the psychologic
causes which make for that belief may be most discreditable to
the believer, and may make him a danger to society. The belief
in God becomes specially injurious when man presumes to define
God's nature by attributing to Him his own ignorance, passions,
and prejudices.
It is only because the Bible reflects the superstitions and
Social sentiments of the times in which it was written that we find
in it anything of value; for the sake of this we desire to have it
preserved. though we would destroy belief in it as an infallible
moral guide, and would deny that its unscientific absurdities have
divine approval. We do this because the bigoted belief in the
practical infallibility of Christian teachers, and of the Bible, has
produced more sorrow than probably any other cause. It was
Spanish monks, with the influential Las Casas at their head, who
gave American negro slavery its greatest impetus, and its most
effective defense came from Bible sources. In Spain Catholic
Supremacy resulted most disasterously to the progress of civili-
zation, and not least of the wrongs perpetrated was the expulsion
of 100,000 Moriscoes from their native soil, largely at the behest
Secularism and Religiosity. §
of Spanish priests. During that infamy of infamies, the Inquis-
ition, over 30,000 persons were burned at the stake, and 290,000
condemned to other punishments. . According to a Catholic bishop,
12,000,000 men were killed “with stupendous and exquisite tor-
ment” that the cross of Christ might receive and maintain a footing
in the West Indies. The transubstantiation controversy it is
estimated, cost from 300,000 to 400,000 lives. The useless image
controversy cost 50,000 more. During the Manichean controversy
100,000 persons shed their blood upon Grecian soil. The killing
of 50,000 persons in the Netherlands under Charles V and many
thousands more under the reign of his son, must be added to the
list of religious horrors. . From historical records it is estimated
that after A. D. 1484, 9,000,000 persons were killed partly because
of the Bible command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Five million men gave up their lives in the crusades against Pales+
tine because the Bible said “unto thy seed will I give this land.”
These, and many other horrors, are chargeable directly to Chris-
tianity. Other religions have similar records. Is it strange
that rational beings should question the infallibility of a book, or
code of ethics, which has produced such results? It is not the
book which is to blame, but the zeal which made it our “infallible”
guide. t a tº e
Five hundred years before Christ, thinking men concluded
that the world was round instead of flat; 1500 years after Christ
the priests and popes were still denying the correctness of this
scientific conclusion and justifying their belief by infallible scrip-
ture, and on the authority of a church that claimed to provide an
“infallible”, unchangeable and irreformable moral theology cover-
‘ing this question.
r- In the year 1600, Bruno, after sixteen years of imprisonment,
was burned at the stake for asserting that the universe was infin-
ite. - The “inspired” priests could not tolerate the suggestion that
other-worlds existed besides this special one which was erected
by God apparently for their benefit.
2 . In the seventeenth century Galileo was made to get upon his
knees and with his hand on the Bible recant the statement made
by him that the earth moved around the sun, and notwithstanding
the recantation he suffered ten years of imprisonment and was
denied burial in consecrated ground. Is it strange that in the light
..of this we should doubt the heaven-inspired “scientist” or the claim
that this priesthood is an “infallible, unchangeable; and irreform-
able authority in moral theology?” . * - pe
... . Centuries ago, thinking men came to the conclusion that
man was the product of evolution; today, every scientist of any
note believes in this theory. . Yet even now we frequently read in
4 Secularism and Religiosity
certain religious periodicals, on the authority of those who are
supposed to speak by powers of the Holy Ghost, denunciations of
the theory of evolution as erroneous, because not in accordance
with the dream of prophets. How long will it be before the
prophets learn that their gods know no more about evolution than
they did about the shape of the earth, which they are supposed to
have created? Perhaps our fundamentalists need a mental cure
more than education.
I believe it was Magellan who said, “The church says that
the earth is flat, but I have seen its shadow upon the moon, and I
have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.” The
church eventually admitted that the shadow furnished better
evidence upon which to base scientific conclusions than did the
“word of God,” or the “infallible, unchangeable, and irreformable”
Church. It is true that many Christians now reject inspired
“science,” and many of them have become so far ashamed of the
Bible absurdities that they content themselves with attempting
to prove “the substantial verity of the historical part of the New
Testament,” and treat its “science” as metaphysics or mere
allegory.
Mormon communities claim to be more fortunate than others,
because the dominant church there is attempting to re-establish
primitive Christianity, with all its primitive iniquities. They call
it “purity.” The late Wilford Woodruff, Prophet, Seer, and Revel-
ator of the Mormon Church, once preached a sermon, and the Iater
“mouthpieces of God” doubtless would still have their followers
believe in it, in which he said that no matter what you might have
learned respecting the arts and sciences by your search and study,
no matter what principles you may have accepted as the result of
your experience or scientific research, if the prophet of God should
tell you that your scientific conclusions were not true, you must
abandon those conclusions. Similarly many Christians still believe
in the scientific authority of the Bible, their Church, or the pope
or Rome.
To my mind nothing can be more enslaving or more conducive
to hypocracy than belief in such a doctrine. The man who thus
professes to abandon his own honest convictions at the direction
of church superiors must of necessity become a hypocrite, because
our convictions are not the result of arbitrary volition, and no man
can change his opinions at command. He can only seem to
change them by expressing an endorsement of a formula which
he does not believe, or does not understand. Such an acceptance
of such a doctrine is enslaving, because he who believes it practic-
ally ceases to have the right to think for himself or choose his
own conclusions. He becomes the machine through which the
Secularism and Religiosity 5
will of others is made operative. He renounces observation and
conscious reason, the only methods which entitle us to claim
superiority over brute creation.
PERSECUTION ALWAYS A DANGER
It is useless to argue that religious persecution will never
again occur even in this country. The laws for it already exist.
It Only remains to mobilize public passions for their enforcement.
If it seems at present impossible that men will be jailed or killed
for differences of religion, it is so only (thanks to the work of
infidels) because Christians are not so certain as they used to be
that God is the author of their blood atonement doctrines, and
because skeptics are too numerous to make the practice of blood
atonement entirely safe. That many alleged Christians still have
the disposition to persecute those who differ from them is manifest-
ed in the many social, business, and political boycotts with which
sceptics are afflicted, and with the numerous instances in which
Mormon missionaries and Jehovah's Witnesses have been brutally
treated by other Christians who, through their own ignorance,
are unable to answer the missionaries’ arguments.
In more than a score of states of this union we have laws
against blasphemy and still more penalize the same thing under
the title of profanity. In several American states an infidel or
agnostic is not permitted to testify in courts, and a well organized
demand exists to secure a general religious censorship of the
mails, as we already have such a censorship to protect religious
“morals” from criticism.
Religious wars and persecutions will not cease until men have
become sufficiently healthy-minded and intelligent to know that
fhey have no absolute truths. They cannot possibly acknowledge
the possibility of error, so long as they have an infallible Bible, a
living prophet, or an infallible pope or church. Those who would
question must be of necessity “the enemies of man and God,” and
as such must be hated, traduced, imprisoned, and even killed, to
prevent the spread of their satanic doubts. Why not, if they have
infallible authority?
The work of the agnostics will never be finished until religion-
ists have no more feeling about people claiming to hold different
opinions on religious matters than they have over differences of
opinion as to the chemical constituents of the moon.
We realize that in every community there are many who are
psychopathic, or borderland cases, and others who are only unfor-
tunately ignorant. Therefore, some need an arbitrary and “infal-
lible” religion to comfort their morbid feelings of inadequacy,
shame, and artificial guilt, which create the need for a redeemer
and a forgiving God. They value their “moral” codes just to the
6 Secularism and Religiosity
degree that they need a mask for their guilty conscience. Such
persons would need to be bribed to a decent regard for their neigh-
bors, and a promise to give them a mansion in the sky, built upon a
corner-lot, adjacent to streets paved with gold, may answer the
purpose as well as anything else. If not, you may try a threat of
purgatory, hell fire, and eternal damnation. Realizing that there
exists this unfortunate class I would not, if I could, wipe out all
churches by a mere wave of the hand. Our purpose should be to
do what we can to develop mental hygiene and democratize edu-
cation, toward the point where religion ceases to be a necessity to
anyone, and thus teach men to use maturer intellectual methods, as
the best means for refining our sense of justice and for the demo-
cratization of welfare.
When we have elevated the individual above the necessity of
having a supernatural religion, he will never complain of our having
robbed him of his faith without giving him something in its stead.
He then understands that he lost only a delusional feeling of guilt
and a delusional hope of forgiveness. The cure is better than the
disease and its fantasmal palliations. . . . . .
'It is a peculiar feature that those who are supposed to be
injured by being “robbed” of their religion never complain. To
all others we reply that the destroyer of devils is more of a bene-
factor of mankind than the creator of Gods. Our course is not
only destuctive but constructive as well. - *
We should spend our time in the cure of the mentally afflicted
and the edification of erring men, not the glorification of imaginary
Gods; for theology we substitute anthopology. We should en-
deavor to make men healthy-minded, not religious. We believe
that the use of mature intellectual methods is more important than
the love of man or the fear of God. - -
REASON, VS. PRAYER
We believe that man is “bad”, or antisocial, not because a walk-
ing and talking snake tempted Eve to eat an apple, but because the
priests have taught him to think through and for his feelings,
instead of teaching him to observe and reason fearlessly. º
The belief that we are degenerate children from perfect
parents, who were banished from the Garden of Eden, we reject
for the one that we are the enlightened descendants of barbarous
and more religious ancestors. -, *
For groveling prayer we substitute self-reliant observations
and rational effort. Piety we replace by more healthy mindedness
and greater intelligence.
Instead of useless inquiry about our duty to an “unknowable”
God we would have man use more mature intellectual methods to
study his relations toward his fellow man, with the view to matur-
Secularism and Religiosity 7
ing his sense of justice.
Instead of spending time trying to acquire a harp in the
hereafter, we would try to get more mental maturity here.
Instead of teaching men how to die so as to secure a crown in
the next world, we would teach them how to live in harmony with
a more mature sense of justice and enjoy a more mature kind of
happiness here and now.
We would determine such value, not by a man’s belief about
infant damnation, but by his activities and their effect upon mental
hygiene and the democratization of welfare. The man who re-
frains from wrongdoing only for fear of hell fire is on the same
plane with the man who is “good” solely because he is in jail. For
knowledge we depend upon observation, reason, and experience,
not visions, dreams, or revelations. We would encourage inde-
pendent and more mature thinking instead of humility and prayer.
We want the individuality of healthy-minded reason, instead of
unquestioning obedience to self-constituted authority, or humanly
appointed spokesmen for divinity.
The books of Moses and the Book of Mormon must alike stand
the test of scientific method or be rejected. Instead of worship-
ping Gods we would serve men. For revelations superinduced by
disordered digestion, or morbid psychology, we would substitute
the most mature product of healthy minds. Our creed may be
summed up in these words:
The time to be happy is now; the place to be happy is here;
the way to insure the most mature joys is to promote mental
hygiene and the democratization of education and welfare.