The Necessity of Atheism | Page 3

stand.
The secularists, the opinion of the theists to the contrary, are also
agreed. It matters not what a man calls his mental process; be he infidel,
sceptic, rationalist, agnostic, or atheist; he is firm in the conviction that
religions of all varieties are rapidly sinking into the limbo of all other
ancient superstitions. To him it is but a matter of time for the inevitable
crumbling and disappearance of these superstitions, and the time
involved is directly proportional to the ease and rapidity with which
scientific knowledge is disseminated to men who have the mental
capacity to understand the value of this knowledge and its utter
destruction of all forms of supernaturalism. When man becomes fully
cognizant of the fact that all the knowledge acquired by the human race
has been the result of human inquiry, the result of reasoning processes,
and the exercise of mind alone, then secularism will have overcome the
long night of supernaturalism. And it is this mental attitude of
securalism that proceeds with an ever accelerated rapidity to overcome
the problems that confront humanity by substituting human inquiry for
divine revelation. Thus this attitude of man to proceed through life
dependent only on his own resources will expand and strengthen his
mentality by doing away with the inferiority complex of the God-idea.
This vision of man, the master of his own destinies, the searcher for
truth and the shaper of a better life for the only existence that he knows
anything about, this reliance of man upon man, and without the
supposed interference of any god, constitutes atheism in its broadest
and true sense.

Science and reason, the constituents of secularism, are the mortal
enemies of supernaturalism. Secularism, however, is at a disadvantage
at this stage of our mental development, since it is approached only by
the calm light of the intellect. And intellect can but make an appeal to
reason. If the seeds of these appeals fall on the fertile minds of mentally
advanced humanity, they will flourish; if they fall on the barren ground
of creed-bound minds, they take no root. Recognition of facts and
honest deductions are not natural to the human mind. As far as
religious matters are concerned, the vast majority of men have not
reached a mental maturity; they are still in the infantile state where they
have not as yet learned that the sequences of events are not to be
interrupted by their desires. The easier path lies in the giving way to the
unstable emotions. The primitive instincts are for emotion and for loose
imaginings, and these are the provinces of supernaturalism.
Supernaturalism arouses the stupid interests and the brutish passions,
and from these are born the bitter fruits of ignorance and hatred. The
secularist is one in whom the intellect is passionate, and the passions
cold. The supernaturalist on the other hand reverses the order, and in
him the passions are active and the intellect inert. In each man there
dwells a tyrant who creates for him a deity materialized out of these
factors of ignorance and fear. It is science and reason which must
destroy for him this monstrous apparition. But, as yet, there is no
indication that our mental development in relation to social progress
has made the great strides that our purely material progress has made.
The twentieth century man utilizes and enjoys the material benefits of
his century, but his mental progress lies bound and drugged by the
viewpoints of 2000 years ago.
Sir Leslie Stephen has declared, "How much intellect and zeal runs to
waste in the spasmodic efforts of good men to cling to the last fragment
of decaying systems, to galvanize dead formulæ into some dim
semblance of life! Society will not improve as it might when those who
should be leaders of progress are staggering backward and forward
with their eyes passionately reverted to the past. Nay, we shall never be
duly sensitive to the miseries and cruelties which make the world a
place of torture for so many, so long as men are encouraged in the

name of religion to look for a remedy, not in fighting against
surrounding evils, but in cultivating aimless contemplations of an
imaginary ideal. Much of our popular religion seems to be expressly
directed to deaden our sympathies with our fellow men by encouraging
an indolent optimism; our thoughts of the other world are used in many
forms as an opiate to drug our minds with indifference to the evils of
this; and the last word of half of our preachers is, 'dream rather than
work.'"
There is always a great deal of discrepancy between that which is best
for the gods and that which is best for the individual and for society in
general. One cannot serve man perfectly and the traditional