The Necessity of Atheism | Page 2

creeds--- the future freethinkers.
It was Spinoza who remarked that, "The proper study of a wise man is
not how to die but how to live." Religious creeds can but teach how
man should live, so that when he dies, he may be assured of salvation;
and the important thing is not what he does to help his fellow men
while he is living, but how closely he lives in conformity to a
reactionary code of dogmas. Religion has always aimed to smooth the
sufferer's passage to the next world, not to save him for this world.
Freethought has dethroned the gods from the pedestal, and has replaced,
not an empty idol, but an ideal, the ideal of a man who is his own god.
It has become increasingly apparent that what men have hitherto
attributed to the gods are nothing but the ideals they value and grope
for in themselves. The ideal of the freethinker, the conception that
places the supreme worth of human life in the expanding horizon of
man's usefulness to man, is forever menaced by the supernaturalism of
the theist which manifests itself in the multifarious religious sects that
are the most active and constant menace to civilization and to mankind
today. That religion in the past has produced suffering incalculable and
has been the greatest obstacle in the advance of secular knowledge is a
fact too well attested to by history to be denied by any sincere and
unbiased intelligent man. That today it constitutes a cultural lag, an
active menace to the best interests of humanity and the last refuge of
human savagery, is the contention of the freethinker.

The conception of the God-idea as held by society in general stands in
the same position as the vermiform appendix does to the anatomy of
man. It may have been useful in some way thousands of years ago, but
today it constitutes a detriment to the well-being of the individual
without offering any compensatory usefulness. Agree or disagree with
this contention you may, but only when you are made aware of the
facts that can be brought to the aid of this conviction. Just as the
fundamental principle of justice is outraged when a man or an
institution is condemned by jurist or popular opinion when an
opportunity is not given to present the facts on both aspects of the case,
just so is no man justified in making a decision between theism and
atheism until he becomes acquainted with both sides of the controversy.
Freethought but asks a hearing and the exercise of the unbiased reason
of the man who has not hitherto been made aware of its contentions.
In the religious revolution of this twentieth century, the battle ground is
squarely seen to be between supernaturalism and secularism. Although
the supernaturalists are well entrenched and fortified, it is well to
remember that it is the man with vision who finally prevails. The time
has passed when the freethinker could be held up to the community as
an example of a base and degraded individual. No manner of pulpit
drivel can delude even the unthinking masses to this misconception.
The freethinker is today the one who beholds the vision, and this vision
does not transcend the natural. It is a vision that is earth-bound; a vision
it may be called, since it leaps the boundary of the present and infers
for him what the future of a secular organization of the entire
constituency of humanity will bring forth. This vision is but a product
of his scientific armamentarium and is the means by which he is
assured of victory over the well-entrenched and fortified position of the
supernaturalists who are still creed-bound to use antiquated and useless
weapons. The supernaturalist's armamentarium of God, Bible, Heaven,
Hell, Soul, Immortality, Sin, The Fall and Redemption of Man, Prayer,
Creed, and Dogma, leave as much impression on the mind of intelligent
man as would an arrow against a battleship. And the comparison is apt,
the supernaturalists have made full use of force, be it in physical
warfare or in mental coercion. The freethinker has as much use for
physical force and war as he has for mental coercion; both are

abhorrent to him.
Supernaturalism vs. Secularism--that, and that alone is the field of
argument. The supernaturalist, be he the fundamentalist of whatever
denomination, or the more advanced modernist, is as tenaciously
clinging to the transcendental, to revelation, to the infallibility of the
Bible, if not in all respects at least in some (although this is a
contradiction per se), to the interdisposition of a deity in the affairs of
mankind, as were his ancestors of five hundred years ago. In these
aspects as well as in the armamentarium enumerated above, the
supernaturalists are agreed and are making their last