Professor Briggs
On the Presbyterian heresy trial of Charles A. Briggs.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1893)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 12.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/professor-briggs/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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To the study of the Bible he has given the best years of his life. When
he commenced this study he was probably a devout believer in the plenary
inspiration of the Scripture—thought that the Bible was without an
error; that all the so-called contradictions could be easily explained.
He had been educated by Presbyterians and had confidence in his
teachers.

In spite of his early training, in spite of his prejudices, he was led,
in some mysterious way, to rely a little on his own reason. This was
a dangerous thing to do. The moment a man talks about reason he is on
dangerous ground. He is liable to contradict the "Word of God." Then he
loses spirituality and begins to think more of truth than creed. This is
a step toward heresy—toward Infidelity.

Professor Briggs began to have doubts about some of the miracles.
These doubts, like rats, began to gnaw the foundations of his faith. He
examined these wonderful stories in the light of what is known to have
happened, and in the light of like miracles found in the other sacred
books of the world. And he concluded that they were not quite true. He
was not ready to say that they were actually false; that would be too
brutally candid.

I once read of an English lord who had a very polite gamekeeper. The
lord wishing to show his skill with the rifle fired at a target. He and
the gamekeeper went to see where the bullet had struck. The gamekeeper
was first at the target, and the lord cried out: "Did I miss it?"

"I would not," said the gamekeeper, "go so far as to say that your
lordship missed it, but—but—you didn't hit it."

Professor Briggs saw clearly that the Bible was the product, the growth
of many centuries; that legends and facts, mistakes, contradictions,
miracles, myths and history, interpolations, prophecies and dreams,
wisdom, foolishness, justice, cruelty, poetry and bathos were mixed,
mingled and interwoven. In other words, that the gold of truth was
surrounded by meaner metals and worthless stones.

He saw that it was necessary to construct what might be called a sacred
smelter to divide the true from the false.

Undoubtedly he reached this conclusion in the interest of what he
believed to be the truth. He had the mistaken but honest idea that a
Christian should really think. Of course, we know that all heresy
has been the result of thought. It has always been dangerous to grow.
Shrinking is safe.

Studying the Bible was the first mistake that Professor Briggs made,
reasoning was the second, and publishing his conclusions was the third.
If he had read without studying, if he had believed without reasoning,
he would have remained a good, orthodox Presbyterian. He probably read
the works of Humboldt, Darwin and Haeckel, and found that the author
of Genesis was not a geologist, not a scientist. He seems to have his
doubts about the truth of the story of the deluge. Should he be blamed
for this? Is there a sensible man in the wide world who really believes
in the flood?

This flood business puts Jehovah in such an idiotic light.

Of course, he must have known, after the "fall" of Adam and Eve, that he
would have to drown their descendants. Certainly it would have been
more merciful to have killed Adam and Eve, made a new pair and kept the
serpent out of the Garden of Eden. If Jehovah had been an intelligent
God he never would have created the serpent. Then there would have been
no fall, no flood, no atonement, no hell.

Think of a God who drowned a world! What a merciless monster! The
cruelty of the flood is exceeded only by its stupidity.

Thousands of little theologians have tried to explain this miracle. This
is the very top of absurdity. To explain a miracle is to destroy it.
Some have said that the flood was local. How could water that rose over
the mountains remain local?

Why should we expect mercy from a God who drowned millions of men, women
and babes? I would no more think of softening the heart of such a God
by prayer than of protecting myself from a hungry tiger by repeating
poetry.

Professor Briggs has sense enough to see that the story of the flood
is but an ignorant legend. He is trying to rescue Jehovah from the
frightful slander. After all, why should we believe the unreasonable?
Must we be foolish to be virtuous? The rain fell for forty days; this
caused the flood. The water was at least thirty thousand feet in depth.
Seven hundred and fifty feet a day—more than thirty feet an hour, six
inches a minute; the rain fell for forty days. Does any man with sense
enough to eat and breathe believe this idiotic lie?

Professor Briggs knows that the Jews got the story of the flood from the
Babylonians, and that it is no more inspired than the history of "Peter
Wilkins and His Flying Wife." The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is
another legend.

If those cities were destroyed sensible people believe the phenomenon
was as natural as the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii. They do
not believe that in either case it was the result of the wickedness of
the people.

Neither does any thinking man believe that the wife of Lot was changed
or turned into a pillar of salt as a punishment for having looked back
at her burning home. How could flesh, bones and blood be changed to
salt? This presupposes two miracles. First, the annihilation
of the woman, and second, the creation of salt. A God cannot
annihilate or create matter. Annihilation and creation are both
impossible—unthinkable. A grain of sand can defy all the gods. What was
Mrs. Lot turned to salt for? What good was achieved? What useful lesson
taught? What man with a head fertile enough to raise one hair can
believe a story like this?

Does a man who denies the truth of this childish absurdity weaken the
foundation of virtue? Does he discourage truth-telling by denouncing
lies? Should a man be true to himself? If reason is not the standard,
what is? Can a man think one way and believe another? Of course he can
talk one way and think another. If a man should be honest with himself
he should be honest with others. A man who conceals his doubts lives a
dishonest life. He defiles his own soul.

When a truth-loving man reads about the plagues of Egypt, should he
reason as he reads? Should he take into consideration the fact that like
stories have been told and believed by savages for thousands of years?
Should he ask himself whether Jehovah in his efforts to induce the
Egyptian King to free the Hebrews acted like a sensible God? Should he
ask himself whether a good God would kill the babes of the people on
account of the sins of the king? Whether he would torture, mangle and
kill innocent cattle to get even with a monarch?

Is it better to believe without thinking than to think without
believing? If there be a God can we please him by believing that he
acted like a fiend?

Probably Professor Briggs has a higher conception of God than the author
of Exodus. The writer of that book was a barbarian—an honest barbarian,
and he wrote what he supposed was the truth. I do not blame him for
having written falsehoods. Neither do I blame Professor Briggs for
having detected these falsehoods. In our day no man capable of reasoning
believes the miracles wrought for the Hebrews in their flight through
the wilderness. The opening of the sea, the cloud and pillar, the
quails, the manna, the serpents and hornets are no more believed than
the miracles of the Mormons when they crossed the plains.

The probability is that the Hebrews never were in Egypt. In the Hebrew
language there are no Egyptian words, and in the Egyptian no Hebrew.
This proves that the Hebrews could not have mingled with the Egyptians
for four hundred and thirty years. As a matter of fact, Moses is a myth.
The enslavement of the Hebrews, the flight, the journey through the
wilderness existed only in the imagination of ignorance.

So Professor Briggs has his doubts about the sun and moon having been
stopped for a day in order that Gen. Joshua might kill more heathen.
Theologians have gathered around this miracle like moths around a flame.
They have done their best to make it reasonable. They have talked about
refraction and reflection, about the nature of the air having been
changed so that the sun was visible all night. They have even gone
so far as to say that Joshua and his soldiers killed so many that
afterward, when thinking about it, they concluded that it must have
taken them at least two days.

This miracle can be accounted for only in one way. Jehovah must have
stopped the earth. The earth, turning over at about one thousand miles
an hour—weighing trillions of tons—had to be stopped. Now we know that
all arrested motion changes instantly to heat. It has been calculated
that to stop the earth would cause as much heat as could be produced by
burning three lumps of coal, each lump as large as this world.

Now, is it possible that a God in his right mind would waste all that
force? The Bible also tells us that at the same time God cast hailstones
from heaven on the poor heathen. If the writer had known something of
astronomy he would have had more hailstones and said nothing about the
sun and moon.

Is it wise for ministers to ask their congregations to believe this
story? Is it wise for congregations to ask their ministers to believe
this story? If Jehovah performed this miracle he must have been insane.
There should be some relation, some proportion, between means and ends.
No sane general would call into the field a million soldiers and a
hundred batteries to kill one insect. And yet the disproportion of means
to the end sought would be reasonable when compared with what Jehovah is
claimed to have done.

If Jehovah existed let us admit that he had some sense.

If it should be demonstrated that the book of Joshua is all false, what
harm could follow? There would remain the same reasons for living a
useful and virtuous life; the same reasons against theft and murder.
Virtue would lose no prop and vice would gain no crutch. Take all the
miracles from the Old Testament and the book would be improved. Throw
away all its cruelties and absurdities and its influence would be far
better.

Professor Briggs seems to have doubts about the inspiration of Ruth. Is
there any harm in that? What difference does it make whether the story
of Ruth is fact or fiction; history or poetry? Its value is just the
same. Who cares whether Hamlet or Lear lived? Who cares whether
Imogen and Perdita were real women or the creation of Shakespeare's
imagination?

The book of Esther is absurd and cruel. It has no ethical value. There
is not a line, a word in it calculated to make a human being better. The
king issued a decree to kill the Jews. Esther succeeded in getting this
decree set aside, and induced the king to issue another decree that
the Jews should kill the other folks, and so the Jews killed some
seventy-five thousand of the king's subjects. Is it really important to
believe that the book of Esther is inspired? Is it possible that Jehovah
is proud of having written this book? Does he guard his copyright with
the fires of hell? Why should the facts be kept from the people? Every
intelligent minister knows that Moses did not write the Pentateuch; that
David did not write the Psalms, and that Solomon was not the author of
the song or the book of Ecclesiastes. Why not say so?

No intelligent minister believes the story of Daniel in the Lion's den,
or of the three men who were cast into the furnace, or the story of
Jonah. These miracles seem to have done no good—seem to have convinced
nobody and to have had no consequences. Daniel w'as miraculously saved
from the lions, and then the king sent for the men who had accused
Daniel, for their wives and their children, and threw them all into
the den of lions and they were devoured by beasts almost as cruel as
Jehovah. What a beautiful story! How can any man be wicked enough to
doubt its truth?

God told Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah ran away, took a boat for another
place. God raised a storm, the sailors became frightened, threw Jonah
overboard, and the poor wretch was swallowed and carried ashore by a
fish that God had prepared. Then he made his proclamation in Nineveh.
Then the people repented and Jonah was disappointed. Then he became
malicious and found fault with God. Then comes the story of the gourd,
the worm and the east wind, and the effect of the sun on a bald-headed
prophet. Would not this story be just as beautiful with the storm and
fish left out? Could we not dispense with the gourd, the worm and the
east wind?

Professor Briggs does not believe this story. He does not reject it
because he is wicked or because he wishes to destroy religion, but
because, in his judgment, it is not true. This may not be religious, but
it is honest. It may not become a minister, but it certainly becomes a
man.

Professor Briggs wishes to free the Old Testament from interpolations,
from excrescences, from fungus growths, from mistakes and falsehoods.

I am satisfied that he is sincere, actuated by the noblest motives.

Suppose that all the interpolations in the Bible should be found and the
original be perfectly restored, what evidence would we have that it was
written by inspired men? How can the fact of inspiration be established?
When was it established? Did Jehovah furnish anybody with a list of
books he had inspired? Does anybody know that he ever said that he had
inspired anybody? Did the writer of Genesis claim that he was inspired?
Did any writer of any part of the Pentateuch make the claim? Did the
authors of Joshua, Judges, Kings or Chronicles pretend that they had
obtained their facts from Jehovah? Does the author of Job or of the
Psalms pretend to have received assistance from God?

There is not the slightest reference to God in Esther or in Solomon's
Song. Why should theologians say that those books were inspired? The
dogma of inspiration rests on no established fact. It rests only on
assertion—the assertion of those who have no knowledge on the subject.
Professor Briggs calls the Bible a "holy" book. He seems to think that
much of it was inspired; that it is in some sense a message from God.
The reasons he has for thinking so I cannot even guess. He seems also to
have his doubts about certain parts of the New Testament. He is not
certain that the angel who appeared to Joseph in a dream was entirely
truthful, or he is not certain that Joseph had the dream.

It seems clear that when the gospel according to Matthew was first
written the writer believed that Christ was a lineal descendant of
David, through his father, Joseph. The genealogy is given for the
purpose of showing that the blood of David flowed in the veins of
Christ. The man who wrote that genealogy had never heard that the Holy
Ghost was the father of Christ. That was an afterthought.

How is it possible to prove that the Holy Ghost was the father of
Christ? The Holy Ghost said nothing on the subject. Mary wrote nothing
and we have no evidence that Joseph had a dream.

The divinity of Christ rests upon a dream that somebody said Joseph had.

According to the New Testament, Mary herself called Joseph the father
of Christ. She told Christ that Joseph, his father, had been looking for
him. Her statement is better evidence than Joseph's dream—if he really
had it. If there are legends in Holy Scripture, as Professor Briggs
declares, certainly the divine parentage of Christ is one of them. The
story lacks even originality. Among the Greeks many persons had gods for
fathers. Among Hindoos and Egyptians these god-men were common. So in
many other countries the blood of gods was in the veins of men. Such
wonders, told in Sanscrit, are just as reasonable as when told in
Hebrew—just as reasonable in India as in Palestine. Of course, there
is no evidence that any human being had a god for a father, or a goddess
for a mother. Intelligent people have outgrown these myths. Centaurs,
satyrs, nymphs and god-men have faded away. Science murdered them all.

There are many contradictions in the gospels. They differ not only on
questions of fact, but as to Christianity itself. According to Matthew,
Mark and Luke, if you will forgive others God will forgive you. This
is the one condition of salvation. But in John we find an entirely
different religion. According to John you must be born again and
believe in Jesus Christ. There you find for the first time about
the atonement—that Christ died to save sinners. The gospel of John
discloses a regular theological system—a new one. To forgive others is
not enough. You must have faith. You must be born again.

The four gospels cannot be harmonized. If John is true the others are
false. If the others are true John is false. From this there is no
escape. I do not for a moment suppose that Professor Briggs agrees with
me on these questions. He probably regards me as a very bad and wicked
man, and my opinions as blasphemies. I find no fault with him for that.
I believe him to be an honest man; right in some things and wrong in
many. He seems to be true to his thought and I honor him for that.

He would like to get all the stumbling-blocks out of the Bible, so
that a really thoughtful man can "believe." If theologians cling to
the miracles recorded in the New Testament the entire book will be
disparaged and denied. The "Gospel ship" is overloaded. Somethings must
be thrown overboard or the boat will go down. If the churches try to
save all they will lose all.

They must throw the miracles away. They must admit that Christ did not
cast devils out of the bodies of men and women—that he did not cure
diseases with a word, or blindness with spittle and clay; that he had no
power over winds and waves; that he did not raise the dead; that he was
not raised from the dead himself, and that he did not ascend bodily to
heaven. These absurdities must be given up, or in a little while the
orthodox ministers will be preaching the "tidings of great joy" to
benches, bonnets and bibs.

Professor Briggs, as I understand him, is willing to give up the
absurdest absurdities, but wishes to keep all the miracles that
can possibly be believed. He is anxious to preserve the important
miracles—the great central falsehoods—but the little lies that were
told just to embellish the story—to furnish vines for the columns—he
is willing to cast aside.

But Professor Briggs was honest enough to say that we do not know the
authors of most of the books in the Bible; that we do not know who wrote
the Psalms or Job or Proverbs or the Song of Songs or Ecclesiastes or
the Epistle to the Hebrews. He also said that no translation can ever
take the place of the original Scriptures, because a translation is at
best the work of men. In other words, that God has not revealed to us
the names of the inspired books. That this must be determined by us.
Professor Briggs puts reason above revelation. By reason we are to
decide what books are inspired. By reason we are to decide whether
anything has been improperly added to those books. By reason we are to
decide the real meaning of those books.

It therefore follows that if the books are unreasonable they are
uninspired. It seems to me that this position is absolutely correct.
There is no other that can be defended. The Presbyterians who pretend to
answer Professor Briggs seem to be actuated by hatred.

Dr. Da Costa answers with vituperation and epithet. He answers no
argument; brings forward no fact; points out no mistake. He simply
attacks the man. He exhibits the ordinary malice of those who love their
enemies.

President Patton, of Princeton, is a despiser of reason; a hater of
thought. Progress is the only thing that he fears. He knows that
the Bible is absolutely true. He knows that every word is inspired.
According to him, all questions have been settled, and criticism said
its last word when the King James Bible was printed. The Presbyterian
Church is infallible, and whoever doubts or denies will be damned.
Morality is worthless without the creed. This, is the religion, the
philosophy, of Dr. Patton. He fights with the ancient weapons, with
stone and club. He is a private in Captain Calvin's company, and he
marches to defeat with the courage of invincible ignorance.

I do not blame the Presbyterian Church for closing the mouth of
Professor Briggs. That church believes the Bible—all of it—and the
members did not feel like paying a man for showing that it was not all
inspired. Long ago the Presbyterians stopped growing. They have been
petrified for many years. Professor Briggs had been growing. He had
to leave the church or shrink. He left. Then he joined the Episcopal
Church. He probably supposed that that church preferred the living to
the dead. He knew about Colenso, Stanley, Temple, Heber Newton, Dr.
Rainsford and Farrar, and thought that the finger and thumb of authority
would not insist on plucking from the mind the buds of thought.

Whether he was mistaken or not remains to be seen.

The Episcopal Church may refuse to ordain him, and by such refusal put
the bigot brand upon its brow.

The refusal cannot injure Professor Briggs. It will leave him where
it found him—with too much science for a churchman and too much
superstition for a scientist; with his feet in the gutter and his head
in the clouds.

I admire every man who is true to himself, to his highest ideal, and who
preserves unstained the veracity of his soul.

I believe in growth. I prefer the living to the dead. Men are superior
to mummies. Cradles are more beautiful than coffins. Development is
grander than decay. I do not agree with Professor Briggs. I do not
believe in inspired books, or in the Holy Ghost, or that any God has
ever appeared to man. I deny the existence of the supernatural. I know
of no religion that is founded on facts.

But I cheerfully admit that Professor Briggs appears to be candid, good
tempered and conscientious—the opposite of those who attack him. He is
not a Freethinker, but he honestly thinks that he is free.
