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Title: Humanity's Gain from Unbelief
Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889

Author: Charles Bradlaugh

Release Date: October 6, 2009 [EBook #30206]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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HUMANITY'S GAIN from UNBELIEF

By Charles Bradlaugh

[Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889.]

LONDON

FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,

1889.

HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF.

As an unbeliever, I ask leave to plead that humanity has been real
gainer from scepticism, and that the gradual and growing rejection of
Christianity--like the rejection of the faiths which preceded it--has in
fact added, and will add, to man's happiness and well being. I maintain
that in physics science is the outcome of scepticism, and that general
progress is impossible without scepticism on matters of religion. I
mean by religion every form of belief which accepts or asserts the
supernatural. I write as a Monist, and use the word "nature" as meaning
all phenomena, every phaenomenon, all that is necessary for the happening
of any and every phaenomenon. Every religion is constantly changing, and
at any given time is the measure of the civilisation attained by what
Guizot described as the _juste milieu_ of those who profess it. Each
religion is slowly but certainly modified in its dogma and practice by
the gradual development of the peoples amongst whom it is professed.
Each discovery destroys in whole or part some theretofore cherished
belief. No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather
gradually out-grown. None see a religion die; dead religions are like
dead languages and obsolete customs; the decay is long and--like the
glacier march--is only perceptible to the careful watcher by comparisons
extending over long periods. A superseded religion may often be traced
in the festivals, ceremonies, and dogmas of the religion which has
replaced it. Traces of obsolete religions may often be found in popular
customs, in old wives' sto