What Infidels Have Done
On the infidels' share in the world's progress.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1892)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 11.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/what-infidels-have-done/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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ONE HUNDRED years after Christ had died suppose some one had asked a
Christian, What hospitals have you built? What asylums have you founded?
They would have said "None." Suppose three hundred years after the death
of Christ the same questions had been asked the Christian, he would have
said "None, not one." Two hundred years more and the answer would
have been the same. And at that time the Christian could have told the
questioner that the Mohammedans had built asylums before the Christians.
He could also have told him that there had been orphan asylums in China
for hundreds and hundreds of years, hospitals in India, and hospitals
for the sick at Athens.

Here it may be well enough to say that all hospitals and asylums are
not built for charity. They are built because people do not want to be
annoyed by the sick and the insane. If a sick man should come down the
street and sit upon your doorstep, what would you do with him? You
would have to take him into your house or leave him to suffer. Private
families do not wish to take the burden of the sick. Consequently,
in self-defence, hospitals are built so that any wanderer coming to a
house, dying, or suffering from any disease, may immediately be packed
off to a hospital and not become a burden upon private charity. The fact
that many diseases are contagious rendered hospitals necessary for the
preservation of the lives of the citizens. The same thing is true of the
asylums. People do not, as a rule, want to take into their families, all
the children who happen to have no fathers and mothers. So they endow
and build an asylum where those children can be sent—and where they
can be whipped according to law. Nobody wants an insane stranger in
his house. The consequence is, that the community, to get rid of these
people, to get rid of the trouble, build public institutions and send
them there.

Now, then, to come to the point, to answer the interrogatory often flung
at us from the pulpit, What institutions have Infidels built? In the
first place, there have not been many Infidels for many years and, as
a rule, a known Infidel cannot get very rich, for the reason that the
Christians are so forgiving and loving they boycott him. If the average
Infidel, freely stating his opinion, could get through the world
himself, for the last several hundred years, he has been in good luck.
But as a matter of fact there have been some Infidels who have done
some good, even from a Christian standpoint. The greatest charity ever
established in the United States by a man—not by a community to get rid
of a nuisance, but by a man who wished to do good and wished that
good to last after his death—is the Girard College in the city of
Philadelphia. Girard was an Infidel. He gained his first publicity by
going like a common person into the hospitals and taking care of those
suffering from contagious diseases—from cholera and smallpox. So there
is a man by the name of James Lick, an Infidel, who has given the finest
observatory ever given to the world. And it is a good thing for an
Infidel to increase the sight of men. The reason people are theologians
is because they cannot see. Mr. Lick has increased human vision, and
I can say right here that nothing has been seen through the telescope,
calculated to prove the astronomy of Joshua. Neither can you see with
that telescope a star that bears a Christian name. The reason is
that Christianity was opposed to astronomy. So astronomers took their
revenge, and now there is not one star that glitters in all the vast
firmament of the boundless heavens that has a Christian name. Mr.
Carnegie has been what they call a public-spirited man. He has given
millions of dollars for libraries and other institutions, and he
certainly is not an orthodox Christian.

Infidels, however, have done much better even than that. They have
increased the sum of human knowledge. John W. Draper, in his work on
"The Intellectual Development of Europe," has done more good to the
American people and to the civilized world than all the priests in it.
He was an Infidel. Buckle is another who has added to the sum of human
knowledge. Thomas Paine, an Infidel, did more for this country than any
other man who ever lived in it.

Most of the colleges in this country have, I admit, been founded
by Christians, and the money for their support has been donated by
Christians, but most of the colleges of this country have simply
classified ignorance, and I think the United States would be more
learned than it is to-day if there never had been a Christian college in
it. But whether Christians gave or Infidels gave has nothing to do with
the probability of the Jonah story or with the probability that the mark
on the dial went back ten degrees to prove that a little Jewish king was
not going to die of a boil. And if the Infidels are all stingy and the
Christians are all generous it does not even tend to prove that three
men were in a fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than was its wont
without even scorching their clothes.

The best college in this country—or, at least, for a long time the
best—was the institution founded by Ezra Cornell. That is a school
where people try to teach what they know instead of what they guess. Yet
Cornell University was attacked by every orthodox college in the United
States at the time it was founded, because they said it was without
religion.

Everybody knows that Christianity does not tend to generosity.
Christianity says: "Save your own soul, whether anybody else saves his
or not." Christianity says: "Let the great ship go down. You get into
the little life-boat of the gospel and paddle ashore, no matter what
becomes of the rest." Christianity says you must love God, or something
in the sky, better than you love your wife and children. And the
Christian, even when giving, expects to get a very large compound
interest in another world. The Infidel who gives, asks no return except
the joy that comes from relieving the wants of another.

Again the Christians, although they have built colleges, have built them
for the purpose of spreading their superstitions, and have poisoned the
minds of the world, while the Infidel teachers have filled the world
with light. Darwin did more for mankind than if he had built a thousand
hospitals. Voltaire did more than if he had built a thousand asylums for
the insane. He will prevent thousands from going insane that otherwise
might be driven into insanity by the "glad tidings of great joy."
Haeckel is filling the world with light.

I am perfectly willing that the results of the labors of Christians and
the labors of Infidels should be compared. Then let it be understood
that Infidels have been in this world but a very short time. A few years
ago there were hardly any. I can remember when I was the only Infidel in
the town where I lived. Give us time and we will build colleges in which
something will be taught that is of use. We hope to build temples that
will be dedicated to reason and common sense, and where every effort
will be made to reform mankind and make them better and better in this
world.

I am saying nothing against the charity of Christians; nothing against
any kindness or goodness. But I say the Christians, in my judgment, have
done more harm than they have done good. They may talk of the asylums
they have built, but they have not built asylums enough to hold the
people who have been driven insane by their teachings. Orthodox religion
has opposed liberty. It has opposed investigation and free thought. If
all the churches in Europe had been observatories, if the cathedrals had
been universities where facts were taught and where nature was studied,
if all the priests had been real teachers, this world would have been
far, far beyond what it is to-day.

There is an idea that Christianity is positive, and Infidelity is
negative. If this be so, then falsehood is positive and truth is
negative. What I contend is that Infidelity is a positive religion; that
Christianity is a negative religion. Christianity denies and Infidelity
admits. Infidelity stands by facts; it demonstrates by the conclusions
of the reason. Infidelity does all it can to develop the brain and the
heart of man. That is positive. Religion asks man to give up this
world for one he knows nothing about. That is negative. I stand by the
religion of reason. I stand by the dogmas of demonstration.
