Wednesday, June 30, 2004
The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever.
No civilized men ever believed in this dogma. The belief in eternal punishment has driven millions from the church. It was easy enough for people to imagine that the children of others had gone to hell; that foreigners had been doomed to eternal pain; but when it was brought home -- when fathers and mothers bent above their dead who had died in their sins -- when wives shed their tears on the faces of husbands who had been born but once -- love suggested doubts and love fought the dogma of eternal revenge.
Robert Ingersoll Crumbling Creeds. 1890
No civilized men ever believed in this dogma. The belief in eternal punishment has driven millions from the church. It was easy enough for people to imagine that the children of others had gone to hell; that foreigners had been doomed to eternal pain; but when it was brought home -- when fathers and mothers bent above their dead who had died in their sins -- when wives shed their tears on the faces of husbands who had been born but once -- love suggested doubts and love fought the dogma of eternal revenge.
Robert Ingersoll Crumbling Creeds. 1890
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