Robert Ingersoll
May 16, 2004 11:39 AM   Subscribe

 


interesting guy--So many people made their livings on the lecture circuit back then--I wonder whether he was always received calmly. Stuff like this about the bible must have inflamed.

And i had never heard of this infidels.org--some good stuff there. thanks!
posted by amberglow at 12:07 PM on May 16, 2004


"Oh, my hearers, he has been making that request for more than eighteen hundred years. And millions of ages hence that wail will cross the gulf that lies between the saved and lost and still will be heard the cry: 'Father Abraham! Father Abraham! I pray thee send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my parched tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.'"

For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain -- appreciated "the glad tidings of great joy." For the first time my imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian horror. Then I said: "It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is true, I hate your God."


Nice way to pass a few minutes on a Sunday. Thanks for the links.
posted by Voivod at 1:12 PM on May 16, 2004


Agnostics and atheists have the lowest divorce rates in the US, so I guess they are the most moral group?

Or the most staid.

Amberglow - a lot of people still make a living off the lecture circuit. They tend to be a lower grade of huckster though.
posted by troutfishing at 5:12 PM on May 16, 2004


Oh - I didn't mean, at all, to call Ingersoll a huckster. I meant "a cheaper grade of huckster than the norm".
posted by troutfishing at 5:14 PM on May 16, 2004


Well, I'm impressed. Of course, I'm sympathetic to his views.
posted by kevspace at 8:34 PM on May 16, 2004


Wow, he wrote these a hundred years ago? Now I'm even more impressed that I read so much. Usually I have trouble with the style of things written even fifty years ago.
posted by kevspace at 8:38 PM on May 16, 2004


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