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Religion is based, I think primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror
of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand
by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of
defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have
gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little
to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against
the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help
us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I
think our own hearts can teach, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here
below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries
have made it.
WHAT WE MUST DO
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world - its good
facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the
world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception
of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental desporisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free
men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the
rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look
the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish,
after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs
knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the
free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence.
it needs hope from the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be
far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.
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