ill do so in the future. The laws
governing the production of life itself are under investigation in the
laboratories and it is highly probable that this law will be unraveled
at some future date. It will be interesting for our posterity to witness
the confusion of the ecclesiastics and their attempted confirmation of
this fact in the Bible; their finding of some obscure phrase that will
be interpreted by them as a prediction of the fact in the Bible.

The theists have maintained, as we have seen, many false beliefs that
have cost the lives of innumerable men and suffering incalculable;
beliefs which they themselves have subsequently recognized as false but
relinquished only by the onslaught of rising secular knowledge. It was
the ecclesiastic who pointed to the God-dictated phrase, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live," and the various precepts that have been
enumerated in the preceding chapters. Surely sufficient evidence has
been noted to convince a thinking being that reason is a better guide
than theism. Belief is the antithesis of reason; reason is rationality;
religious belief is clearly mental abnormality.

If a religionist is asked what he thinks of a secular institution which
vigorously condemns and persecutes inquiry, experiment, and truth, he
will reply with the logical answer. When it is pointed out to him that
religion has done and still is doing this, he will hem and haw until he
manufactures some illogical answer. It has been stated that the more we
think, the less we believe; and that the less we think, the more we
believe. The Christian will analyze the creed of the Mohammedan and find
it ridiculous; the Mohammedan analyzes the creed of the Christian and in
turn finds it ridiculous. That is thinking. But does the Mohammedan or
the Christian analyze as critically each his own belief? Will he
endeavor to analyze it at all? That is believing. The ecclesiastic
concerns himself not with truth or knowledge; it is creed which is his
shrine. He definitely is at war with knowledge and he wants to learn
only such things as fit in with his preconceived notions and prejudices.
When the minds of men are from infancy perverted with these ideals, how
can mankind build a virile race?

It is often asserted that the alleged universality of the belief in God
is an argument for its truth. But what of the fact that men had
everywhere come to the conclusion that the earth was flat, and yet a
wider and truer knowledge pr