e the children of
mendacity. Nothing can be more wonderful than the majestic, sublime,
and eternal march of cause and effect. Reason must be the final
arbiter. An inspired book cannot stand against a demonstrated fact.
Is a man to be rewarded eternally for believing without evidence or
against evidence? Do you tell me that the less brain a man has the
better chance he has for heaven? Think of a heaven filled with men who
never thought. Better that all that is should cease to be; better that
God had never been; better that all the springs and seeds of things
should fall and wither in great nature's realm; better that causes and
effects should lose relation; better that every life should change to
breathless death and voiceless blank, and every star to blind oblivion
and moveless naught, than that this religion should be true.

The religion of the future is humanity. The religion of the future
will say to every man, "You have the right to think and investigate for
yourself." Liberty is my religion--everything that is true, every good
thought, every beautiful thing, every self-denying action--all these
make my bible. Every bubble, every star, are passages in my bible. A
constellation is a chapter. Every shining world is a part of it. You
cannot interpolate it; you cannot change it. It is the same forever.
My bible is all that speaks to man. Every violet, every blade of
grass, every tree, every mountain crowned with snow, every star that
shines, every throb of love, every honest act, all that is good and
true combined, make my bible; and upon that book I stand.

Ingersoll's Lecture on Intellectual Development

Ladies and Gentlemen: In the first place I want to admit that there
are a great many good people, quite pious people, who don't agree with
me and all that proves in the world is, that I don't agree with them.
I am not endeavoring to force my ideas or notions upon other people,
but I am saying what little I can to induce everybody in the world to
grant to every other person every right he claims for himself. I
claim, standing under the flag of nature, under the blue and the stars,
that I am the peer of any other man, and have the right to think and
express my thoughts. I claim that in the presence of the unknown, and
upon a subject that nobody knows anything about, and never did, I have
as good a right to guess as anybody else. The gentlemen who hold views
against mine, if they had any evid