and less cruel existence in a hereafter, was
the extreme uncertainty and short duration of his own life. And this
primitive trend of thought that turns man's mind from the here and now
to a contemplation of a mythical hereafter persists to this day,
produces the same slavish resignation. This false release from the
actualities constitute a mental aberration which we see in the
hysterical and weak-minded. When such an individual is confronted by
problems that tax his mental strength, if that individual has not
strength of mind to reason and to persevere so that he overcomes his
environmental difficulties, he will seek an avenue of escape in a
fanciful existence which the physician recognizes in hysteria and
certain forms of mental disease. So, throughout the ages, man has sought
release from the realities of his existence into a fanciful and
pleasantly delusional flight into a hereafter. "There is no salvation in
that sickly obscurantism which attempts to evade realities by confusing
itself about them. Safety lies only in clarity and the struggle for the
light. No subliminal nor fringe of consciousness can rank in the
intellectual life beside the burning focal center where the rays of
knowledge converge. The hope must be in following reason, not in
thwarting it. To turn back from it is not mysticism, it is superstition.
No; we must be prepared to see the higher criticism destroy the
historicity of the most sacred texts of the Bible, psychology analyze
the phenomena of conversion on the basis of adolescent passion,
anthropology explain the genesis of the very idea of God. An where _we_
can understand, it is a moral crime to cherish the un-understood.
(_James T. Shotwell_: "_The Religious Revolution of Today._") Religious
beliefs are clearly mental aberrations from which it is high time that
the progress of knowledge should lead to a logical cure. Man is steadily
overcoming and conquering his environment; the uncertainty of life and
cruelty are much diminished as compared with the past ages, but man has
not as yet fully utilized the means of an emancipating measure from his
mental enslavement and fear of his environment."

Chapman Cohen, in his "Theism or Atheism," clearly states: "We know
that man does not discover God, he invents him, and an invention is
properly discarded when a better instrument is forthcoming. To-day, the
hypothesis of God stands in just the same relation to the better life of
to-day as the fire drill