melioration ... as long as the majority of
men rely upon supernatural interference, supernatural guidance, from a
human point of view all is likely to be confusion.... Trusting in God
rather than in man it is in the nature of these blind worshippers to
oppose every advance of human knowledge. It was they who condemned
Galileo, who resisted Darwin and who to-day deride the doctrines of
Freud." Science has given us an account of the operation of the universe
_sans_ God, and investigation has also given us a clear conception of
the evolution of all religious beliefs from the crude conceptions of the
savage to the but little altered form of the modern conception.

"If we are to regard the God idea as an evolution which began in the
ignorance of primitive man, it would seem clear that no matter how
refined or developed the idea may become, it can rest on no other or
sounder basis than which is presented to us in the psychology of
primitive man. Each stage of theistic belief grows out of the proceeding
stage, and if it can be shown that the beginning of this evolution arose
in a huge blunder, I quite fail to see how any subsequent development
can convert this unmistakable blunder into a demonstrable truth."
(_Chapman Cohen._)

Men of today are trying to force themselves to believe that there must
be something true in that which had been believed by so many great and
pious men of old. But it is in vain; intellect has outgrown faith. They
are aware of the fallacy of their opinions, yet angry that another
should remind them of it. And these men who today are secretly sceptics,
are loudest in their public denunciation of others who publicly announce
their scepticism. In ancient Greece, when the philosophers came into
prominence, Zeus was superseded by the air, and Poseidon by the water;
in modern times, all hitherto supernatural events are being explained by
physical laws. Plato regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the
public faith although he full well knew the absurdities of that faith.
Today, there are many Platos that hold to the same conviction. The
freethinkers hold to the view of Xenophanes who denounced the public
faith as an ancient blunder which had been converted by time into a
national imposture. All religion is a delusion which transfers the
motives and thoughts of men to those who are not men. No ecclesiastic
has as yet offered a satisfactory answer as to why there has been a
marvelous disappearance of the wor