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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (7883)	6/28/2010 9:15:34 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

When I compare Ingersoll to a mudslinging half retarded pinched-faced imbecile like you, I thank Providence that you are only in my life as a bit of evening fun! Just to sit having a coffee within 20 feet of you with your slanted brow and your stunned expression would be an ugly experience for me that water could not clean off for some days to come. "When the conference was over, Ingersoll was adamant. He gave them a peremptory "Good-by, gentlemen," with this further explanation: Here is his laconic reply: "I am not asking to be Governor of Illinois ... I have in my composition that which I have declared to the world as my views upon religion. My position I would not, under any circumstances, not even for my life, seem to renounce. I would rather refuse to be President of the United States than to do so. My religious belief is my own. It belongs to me, not to the State of Illinois. I “I would not smother one sentiment of my heart to be the Emperor of the round world..." "A good man," he said, "should not agree to keep silent just for the sake of an office. A man owes his best thoughts to his country." Did any statesman, in any country on the face of this earth, utter a more magnificent statement? There was to be no chains of slavery upon the brain of Robert G. Ingersoll; there was to be no shackles of servitude upon his mind. His intellectual independence was far more important, and far more valuable, than the governorship of any state in the union, or even the Presidency of the United States. Robert G. Ingersoll was to remain a free and independent human being, under the government which he so proudly loved, and fought so gallantly to preserve. There was no office on the face of this earth that could induce him to sacrifice his intellectual integrity, or cause him to commit assault upon the children of his brain. How paltry seem the excuses of some people today, who refuse to express their honest convictions, for fear of some petty retaliation. The Brooklyn minister, by the name of DeWitt Talmadge, sought to "answer" Ingersoll's attacks upon Christianity by stressing the fact that he had lost the nomination for Governor of Illinois because of his unbelief. Should Ingersoll have been condemned for having been true to his principles -- to his intellectual integrity -- or should he have been a hypocrite, like so many ministers, and remained silent in order to secure that which was trash compared to his being true to himself? In reply to Talmadge, Ingersoll said: "I thought it better to be honestly beaten, than to dishonestly succeed. If I had been a successful hypocrite, I might now be basking in the sunshine of this gentleman's respect.... I preferred to tell the truth and I have never regretted the course I pursued." The trouble with most ministers of religion is that they have been so steeped in hypocrisy and sophistry that they cannot understand what intellectual integrity means. They are so accustomed to mental lying, as a measure of success, that they cannot understand what prompts a man to prefer to be true to himself -- who prefers to tell the truth -- for the truth's sake, rather than gain public recognition by being a hypocrite. No wonder Ingersoll said, "it is a magnificent thing to be the sole proprietor of yourself."