The Necessity of Atheism

minds of the sceptics whom they aim to convert. The Church casts aside
its own theology, having learned by bitter experience and recanting of
opinions, bulls, and infallible statements by infallible popes, and now
succumbs to the opinions it has formerly anathematized. In the present
age the Church calls science to its aid, and utterly disregards its
obsolete theology which it still practices, and attempts, by means of
the misinterpretation of scientific facts and statements of a few men
such as Eddington and Jeans, to force science into some illogical and
unscientific concordance with the conception of a supreme being.

Ironically it occurs to the Martian that the shades of Hypatia, Bruno,
Galileo, Copernicus, Vanini, Darwin, and the vast numbers of Waldenses,
Albigenses, Huguenots, Jews, and the victims of the Inquisition and the
Witch Hunt, must, as they contemplate the present tactics of that Holy
Institution, the Church, find some consolation in the depths of that
hell to which the Church consigned them. The Martian logically deduces
that by employing science for its defense, the Church admits the
impotence of "divine revelation," in this age, to convince even its own
adherents of the problematical existence of a divine being. _Theology is
no longer recognized as authoritative even by theologians!_

Will the theologians now discard their theology based on the
supernatural, and build a system of theology based on science? Is this
all that is left to the theologian: that he must use the pitiful
"Theology of Gaps"? That is, wherever there are gaps in scientific
knowledge, the theologians insert their idea of God! This is but the
replacing of the question mark with a meaningless label.




CHAPTER V

THE PERSISTENCE OF RELIGION

    _We believe what we believe, not because we have been convinced by
    such and such arguments, but because we are of such and such a
    disposition._

    C. E. M. JOAD.


    _The mind of the ordinary man is in so imperfect a condition that it
    requires a creed; that is to say, a theory concerning the unknown
    and the unknowable in which it may place its deluded faith and be at
    rest._

    WINWOOD READE.

    _Generations followed and what had been offered as hypothetical
    theological suppositions were through custom and tradition taken for
    granted as unquestioned truth._

    LLEWELYN POWYS.


The Martian has had his attention drawn to the statement that religion
in some form or other has existed from most primitive times down to the
present day. The theologians point to this as a proof of the existence
of a supreme being. An investigation of this assertion leads the Martian
to the conclusion that religions have continued to exist mainly because
of the power which inherited superstitions wield over mankind. Men are
born with a marked tendency towards superstitions.

Certain isolated families of men are born with an inherited tendency
towards tuberculosis. Most of these are born, not with an active
tuberculosis, but some as yet imperfectly understood tendency, a defect
in their protoplasmic make-up that renders them an easy prey to the
tubercle bacillus if they are exposed to it. Similarly, generations of
men have been born with a weakened mental vitality towards superstition;
a weakened mental capacity that renders their minds an easy prey to that
fear which manifests itself in superstition, creed, religion--the
God-idea. It was Karl Marx who remarked that, "The tradition of all the
generations of the past weighs down like an Alp upon the brain of the
living."

Since the days of our racial childhood, our beliefs have been handed
down from generation to generation, and they have persisted since in all
ages it was forbidden to question their existence. Man has persuaded
himself that it is so just because he has said it for so long and so
often. The force of repetition is great; it is, in fact, taken by a vast
majority of men as the equivalent of proof.

Most men have to accept their religions ready made. Their daily tasks
leave them no time or opportunity for a personal search. The toil for
bread is incessant, there is not sufficient leisure to verify the
sources of their religious beliefs. Moreover, the ecclesiastic's answers
to the riddles of life are easier, by far, to grasp than the answers of
science. These two factors, of innate mental inertia and force of
repetition, are well manifested by the present tactics of advertising.
The manufacturer of any product well knows that constant repetition and
the dangling of his product before the eyes of the public will lead to a
widespread acceptance of the advertising slogans propounded for his
article.

The force of so-called authority has aggravated this mental inertia. It
takes a tremendous amount of will power and mental courage for any
individual to assert an opinion that runs counter to the accepted mode
of thinking. It is much easier and much more pleasant to give oneself
passively to that delusion of grandeur, that delusion that pleasantly