Excerpt from Complete Lectures of Col. R. G. IngersollNow' someone says, The religion of my father and mother is good enough for me. Suppose we all said that, where would be the progress of the world? We wouldhave the rudest and most barbaric religion, which no one could believe. I do not be lieve that it is showing real respect to our parents to believe something simply because they did. Every good father and every good mother wish their children to find out more than they knew: every good father wants his son to overcome some obstacle that he could not grapple with; and if you wish to reﬂect credit on your father and mother, do it by accomplishing more than they did, because you live in a better time. Every nation has had what you call a sa cred record, and the older the more sacred, the more contradictory and the more in spired is the record. We, of course, are not an exception, and I propose to talk a little about what is called the Pentateuch, a book, or a collection of books, said to have been written by Moses. And right here in the commencement let me say that Moses neyer.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Complete Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll

INGERSOLL, ROBERT G.

Reference

Truth Seeker Co. Inc.

Reprinted from the edition of 1929, New York.

The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

Religion & Spirituality

Ams Pr Inc

The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume I

Literature & Fiction

United States

BiblioLife

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

History

Business & Money

A plea for the human treatment of offenders by the most famous agnostic and free-thinker of nineteenth-century America.

Crimes Against Criminals

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Haskell House Pub Ltd

<p>Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-99), the "Great Agnostic," was the greatest freethought orator in the history of the United States. No public speaker before or since has enjoyed the reputation accorded him.After the Civil War, Ingersoll embarked upon a career as a lecturer, touring the United States to make his thoughts on religion, women's rights, and humanism known to all. Some Mistakes of Moses, one of the most popular of these lectures, is a critical examination of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). Ingersoll passionately believed that the alleged divine origins of the Bible were not sufficient reason for a suspension of critical judgement. His diatribe against Old Testament religion is a call for rationality, a quality sorely missing in this time of political upheaval in the world in the name of religion.Ingersoll greatly feared that when the Bible was read as truth rather than as a collection of fables, mankind would destroy itself in its attempt to follow the teachings of Moses to the letter. Ingersoll fervently believed that the most important belief one can have is belief in man. "Theology is a superstition - Humanity is a religion" - this was the credo of Robert G. Ingersoll.Now, a new generation of readers can thrill to Ingersoll's brilliant and witty rhetoric, just as great thinkers Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Eugene V. Debs, and others did almost one hundred years ago.</p>

Some Mistakes of Moses

Christian Books & Bibles

Prometheus

<p>Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) was perhaps the most famous American of his day. As an enlightened freethinker and pioneer of humane, rational, and agnostic views, Ingersoll was a tireless advocate of rational thought, who battled superstition and hypocrisy wherever he found it. This dedicated popularizer would regularly address huge audiences, opening their minds to ideas that often provoked guarded whispers in private. Ingersoll was a man far ahead of his time, advocating such progressive causes as agnosticism, birth control, voting rights for women, the advancement of science, civil rights, and freedom of speech. His advocacy of such iconoclastic ideals made a lasting impression on his own and later generations. Although Robert Ingersoll lived before the development of the Secular Humanist Movement, there is no doubt that he qualifies as one of the great heroes of the Humanist Pantheon.The five essays, long out of print, that have been selected for this volume capture Robert Ingersoll at his eloquent best. They express his anti-clericalism and his defense of agnosticism and rationalism. "The Gods" examines religion and its relationship to the happiness - or despair - of humankind; "Thomas Paine" amplifies the contributions of that great advocate of liberty and free will; "Individuality" probes the importance of reason and rationality over blind faith; "Heretics and Heresies" examines the church, the Bible, and religious persecution; and "The Ghosts" surveys the relationship of supernatural belief to intellectual fear and ignorance.</p>

On the Gods and Other Essays

Philosophy

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