What's God Got to Do with it? Robert Ingersoll on Free Though... by Robert G. Ingersoll

Having this control, why did he not see to it that he was recognized in the Constitution of the United States? If he had the supreme authority and neglected to put himself in the Constitution, is not this, at least, prima facie evidence that he did not desire to be there?

If he governs all nations now, he has always controlled the affairs of men. If this God is really the Governor of nations, it is not necessary to acknowledge him in the Constitution.

It is proposed to acknowledge a God who is the lawful and rightful Governor of nations the one who ordained the powers that be. Ingersoll also saw the absurdity in what is today described as the secular liberals' efforts to remove God from the public square: Are we to have the God who issued a commandment against all art - who was the enemy of investigation and of free speech? Is it the God who commanded the husband to stone his wife to death because she differed with him on the subject of religion? Shall we select the God of the Catholics - he who has established an infallible church presided over by an infallible pope, and who is delighted with certain ceremonies and placated by prayers uttered in exceedingly common Latin? Is it the God of the Presbyterian with the Five Points of Calvinism, who is ingenious enough to harmonize necessity and responsibility, and who in some way justifies himself for damning most of his own children? Is it the God of the Puritan, the enemy of joy - of the Baptists, who is great enough to govern the universe, and small enough to allow the destiny of a soul to depend on whether the body it inhabited was immersed or spinkled? What God is it proposed to put in the Constitution? Is it the God of the Old Testament, who was a believer in slavery and who justified polygamy? If slavery was right then, it is right now and if Jehovah was right then, the Mormons are right now. He saw the impossibility of our nation selecting its official God:Īnd if there is to be an acknowledgment of God in the Constitution, the question naturally arises as to which God is to have this honor. The applicability of Ingersoll's work today is uncanny. He offers compelling arguments to fight back against our modern day theocrats - the Bush administration, Bill Frist, Jerry Falwell, the AFA - all those who are seeking an end to religious freedom in this country. We do indeed need to resurrect Ingersoll's work.

What's God Got to Do with it? Robert Ingersoll on Free Though... by Robert G. Ingersoll