Last Straw

There is but one way to demon­strate the exist­ence of a power inde­pend­ent of and super­ior to nature, and that is by break­ing, if only for one moment, the con­tinu­ity of cause and effect. Pluck from the end­less chain of exist­ence one little link; stop for one instant the grand pro­ces­sion and you have shown bey­ond all con­tra­dic­tion that nature has a mas­ter. Change the fact, just for one second, that mat­ter attracts mat­ter, and a god appears. The rudest sav­age has always known this fact, and for that reason always deman­ded the evid­ence of mir­acle. The founder of a reli­gion must be able to turn water into wine—cure with a word the blind and lame, and raise with a simple touch the dead to life. It was neces­sary for him to demon­strate to the sat­is­fac­tion of his bar­bar­ian dis­ciple, that he was super­ior to nature. In times of ignor­ance this was easy to do. The credu­lity of the sav­age was almost bound­less. To him the mar­velous was the beau­ti­ful, the mys­ter­i­ous was the sub­lime. Con­sequently, every reli­gion has for its found­a­tion a miracle—that is to say, a viol­a­tion of nature—that is to say, a false­hood. No one, in the world’s whole his­tory, ever attemp­ted to sub­stan­ti­ate a truth by a mir­acle. Truth scorns the assist­ance of mir­acle. Noth­ing but false­hood ever attested itself by signs and won­ders. No mir­acle ever was per­formed, and no sane man ever thought he had per­formed one, and until one is per­formed, there can be no evid­ence of the exist­ence of any power super­ior to, and inde­pend­ent of nature. The church wishes us to believe. Let the church, or one of its intel­lec­tual saints, per­form a mir­acle, and we will believe. We are told that nature has a super­ior. Let this super­ior, for one single instant, con­trol nature, and we will admit the truth of your assertions.

—Robert G. Inger­soll, The Gods, 1872