The Necessity of Atheism

to save him, as he did in the past, the appendix would rupture,
peritonitis would set in, and despite prayers and sacrificial offerings,
the Deity would exact his life.

When an innocent infant, in the first few weeks of life, develops an
intussusception (an infolding of the bowel which causes an acute
obstruction), the prayers and supplication of the parents avail not a
particle; if the surgeon did not save the infant's life by operating and
removing the obstruction, the benevolent being would allow the child to
die.

The adult who develops a hernia, which is due to a defect in the
construction of the human body, which is assigned to an omniscient being
who still persists in forming bodies that are defective, and this hernia
becomes strangulated (twisted), the deity sits calmly by in omnipotent
inaction, while the prompt interference of the surgeon saves the
individual's life.

When the surgeon observes a superficial cancerous growth, or an internal
growth which can be removed in its entirety, does he trust to the Lord
to halt this pernicious development? No, the surgeon does not consult
God, but resorts to his own knowledge and skill to save a human life.

The diphtheritic child who is strangling to death with a diphtheritic
membrane in its throat is not permitted by the physician to be left to
the benevolent being's will, nor to the prayers of the parents. The
physician's prayer is the diphtheria antitoxin, which in his hands is
the life-saving device.

When the physician administers quinine for malaria, or salvarsan for
syphilis, he effects cures for these diseases by using agents to which
the clergy strenuously objected when they were first introduced. And
when the ecclesiastic attributes to the Deity whatever laws man has been
able to evolve out of his own experience and wisdom, he establishes,
fallaciously, the corollary that if God is responsible for the cures, He
is also responsible for the non-cures. Then what of the countless number
that died of disease before man evolved those cures, and what of the
wholesale murder of His children in the past ages?

Do certain diseases still baffle the physician? Surely it is less often
than the pestilences of old which baffled sacrifice and prayer. The
cruelest laws ever devised by man have more equity and benevolence in
them than the appalling and irrational jurisprudence of the Deity.

Do certain diseases as yet remain to plague man? Then it is only because
religion has for the past 2000 years been the greatest obstacle in the
development of cures for these diseases. Every single individual, in the
past 2000 years, who has succumbed to a disease for which medical
science has no cure, has died directly at the hands of religion. The
obstruction which religion has placed on the development of medical
science has laid at its feet the responsibility for the deaths of
countless millions throughout the ages.

The religionist replies that man's mind cannot fathom the will of God.
Which is an irrational statement for it is a well established fact, and
indeed, a criterion of insanity, that when the deranged are confronted
with facts which are conclusive and with creations of the imagination,
they cannot differentiate fact from fancy, and maintain, instead, that
fancy is the real fact. The religionists are guilty of the same breach
of reason. They suffer with what may be termed, "dementia religiosa."
The remarkable feature of the latter disease is its wide prevalence.

Dr. Haggard in his book, "Devils, Drugs, and Doctors," declares, "The
early and Medieval Christians accepted the doctrine of the power of
demons in the lives of men; they saw this power particularly in the
demoniac production of diseases. They believed in miracles and
especially in the miraculous healing of diseases. The demonological
belief of the Christians was inherited from the doctrine of the Jews,
who were believers in demons and the 'possession by the devil.' Jesus
himself cured by casting out of devils. Following his example,
Christians everywhere became exorcists. Jewish demonology was continued
among Christian converts, and the belief in supernatural interpositions
in human affairs was widely accepted. _Nothing has retarded the growth
of scientific medicine during the past 2000 years so much as the iron
grip of theology in maintaining practices based on belief in this
supernatural origin of disease._" The fabled curing of disease by
casting out devils, and the New Testament recordings of Jesus's
conviction that disease was caused by evil spirits, have had an
inestimable detrimental result on the development of medical science.
The fact that Jesus believed in the demoniacal production of diseases
and cured them by exorcism was deemed so important by the author of the
Gospel according to Mark that he has actually recorded the Aramaic words
Jesus was reported to have used in addressing his patients. In Mark
V:41, Jesus is reported to have given the command "Talitha cumi" to a
little Jewish girl whom her parents believed dead. In Mark VII:34, Jesus
is reported as uttering the magical word "Ephphatha," as he "put his
fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue" in behalf of
"one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech."

An excellent and timely illustration of what occurs when secular
knowledge has not yet replaced ecclesiastical ignorance and bigotry,
particularly in the field of medicine, is furnished by an article from
one of Philadelphia's leading newspapers, _The Evening Bulletin_, of
December 23, 1932. We quote it verbatim:

"Faith Healers Arrested; Two Charged with Choking to Death 5-Year-Old
Girl, Linden, Texas, Dec. 23, 1932. Despite a purported confession,
officers to-day continued an investigation of the death of a
five-year-old girl, allegedly at the hands of two itinerant preachers
who sought to 'drive out the devil' they believed responsible for her