Think for a moment of the Christian idea of the world, its origin, its shape, place, importance, and its final end. Does any man or woman who has been through a common-school geography believe the ideas implied in the common Christian dogmas regarding the world? We must remember that the world taught in the geography is not the Christian world.
The world taught in the Christian dogmas is beneath the heavens--not a rolling sphere flying through space. It is flat, and the sun and stars pass over it daily. It is the chief object of God's creation on which to place man. It is God's footstool, and his throne is Heaven above. He created it just four thousand and four years before the Christian era began. Now we _all_ know that this is _not_ true; that there is no up nor down; that the earth is not the center; that it is _not_ flat; that the sun does not go round it; that it is a very insignificant little orb; that "up in Heaven" is an utterly meaningless expression; and that the world is not a creation, but an evolution.
And yet thousands of people credulously cling to creeds which embody the notions of barbarous or uncivilized ages.
Take the dogma of revelation. It tells us that the Bible is a revelation of the will and wisdom of an omniscient God; that it is a perfect and sufficient rule of faith and practise. What, in the name of humanity, causes people to make such statements today? It is like trying to light the house with a saucer of tallow in which a rag is immersed, instead of using gas or electricity.
Take an example of this Bible. In Deuteronomy xiv: 21, we read, "Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou mayest give it unto the sojourner that is within thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto a foreigner: for _thou_ art a holy people unto Jehovah thy God." In Matthew vii: 12, we read, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them."
Why do you talk about the infallibility, the inerrancy, or even the moral unity of a volume written by many hands at widely different times? Are such people so ignorant that they have not read the Book they are swearing by? Are they moral idiots and do not know the plainest right and wrong? Are they scoundrels and have some deceitful reason for urging such a book as an authority? Or are they the dupes of their own credulity, clinging without thought to the beliefs in which they have been reared? They are evidently not using commonsense in an honest way.