"...In the House of
Representatives in Washington I once heard a chaplain pray for what
he must have known was impossible. Without a change of countenance,
without a smile, with a face solemn as a sepulchre, he said: "I
pray thee, O God, to give Congress wisdom." It may be that
ministers really think that their prayers do good and it may be
that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring.
The men of thought now know that all religions and all sacred
books have been made by men; that no revelation has come from any
being superior to nature; that all the prophecies were either false
or made after the event; that no miracle ever was or ever will be
performed; that no God wants the worship or the assistance of man;
that no prayer has ever coaxed one drop of rain from the sky, one
ray of light from the sun; that no prayer has stayed the flood, or
the tides of the sea, or folded the wings of the storm; that no
prayer has given water to the cracked and bleeding lips of thirst,
or food to the famishing; that no prayer has stopped the
pestilence, stilled the earthquake or quieted the volcano; that no
prayer has shielded the innocent, succored the oppressed, unlocked
the dungeon's door, broke the chains of slaves, rescued the good
and noble from the scaffold, or extinguished the fagot's flame.
The intelligent man now knows that we live in a natural world,
that gods and devils and the sons of God are all phantoms, that our
religion and our Deity are much like the religion and deities of
other nations, and that the stone god of a savage answers prayer
and protects his worshipers precisely the same, and to just the
same extent, as the Father, Son and Holy Ghost..."
infidels.org |
