What wisdom poured forth from their
lips which did not come from other philosophers? What immense structures
have been founded on these shifting sands, on this morass of ignorance
and childish fable? How long can these structures endure, aided by the
bolstering up of the theologists, and how long must it be before the
light of reason will pierce these foundations of blindness and force
them to topple over? How much longer before humanity can begin to build
on a sound foundation?

Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed; revolutionists three. Moses at the head of a
weak, squabbling, and disgruntled group of Hebrew desert marauders.
Jesus sanctioning the insurrection against Rome. Mohammed at the head of
his Arabian marauders.

If the freethinkers firmly believe that in them dwell the hope for a
better humanity, for an exhilarated progress, for universal freedom and
liberty for all mankind, and emancipation from fear and superstition,
then they, too, must destroy. They must first undo the wrong before they
can proceed to build on a right foundation.

They must build on the corner stone that all religion is human in its
origin, erroneous in its theories, and ridiculous in its threats and
rewards. Religion is the greatest impediment to the progress of human
happiness.

CHAPTER IV

SOUNDNESS OF A FOUNDATION FOR A BELIEF IN A DEITY

_It is better to bury a delusion and forget it than to insult its
memory by retaining the name when the thing has perished_.

F. H. BRADLEY.

_A thousand miraculous happenings have been honoured by the
testimony of the ancients, which in later times under a more
exacting and sceptical scrutiny can no longer be believed. Inherent
in man's nature is his disposition to be gulled.... Emotion is
encouraged to supplant cool reason, fanaticism to supplant
tolerance. Not by such means can our race be saved_.

LLEWELYN POWYS.

Our interplanetary visitor is firmly convinced that all religion, no
matter what its antiquity or its modernity may be, is an invention of
our groping earthly minds. It occurs to him that it would be interesting
and proper to lay aside all theology, all creed, all the superficial
trappings placed by man about his conceptions of a deity, and consider
only the basic God-idea. The literature on the subject revealed to him
that even on this broad and basic principle not all religionists were
agreed. He found a threefold classification:

(