Alternative Religion/ Library

RELIGIOUS LAWS OF OUTLAWRY

The land, the religious world, even today is ringing with the furious din of religious intolerance, bigotry and persecution; pestiferous medieval laws are imposed to stop the voice of Science teaching truths which impugn the ignorant myths of Bible and Theology. Tennessee and several States of the Union have passed laws making criminal the teaching of scientific facts which contradict “the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible,” and like Hillbilly legislation is sought in all the States. The True Church lays down this amazing limitation on learning: “When a clearly defined dogma contradicts a scientific assertion, the latter has to be revised,”! (CE. xiii, 607.) The civilized portion of the world has just been shocked at the potential judicial murder and outrage sanctioned by law in North Carolina, as likewise in a number of other States, making outlaws of honest persons who, as parties in interest or witnesses in actions civil and criminal, refuse to take the ridiculous and degrading Form of Oath “upon the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, in token of his engagement to speak the truth, as he hopes to be saved in the way and method of salvation pointed out in that blessed volume, and in further token that, if he should swerve from the truth, he may be justly deprived of all the blessings of the Gospel, and be made liable to that vengeance which he has imprecated on his own head.” (Consol. Stat. N.C., 1919, sec. 3189.) ¹⁹

Under this infamous statute, in the late so-called Gastonia, N.C. murder trial, the wife of one of the defendants, who had testified that her husband was not present and had no part in the shooting, was challenged as a witness and impeached, her testimony discredited, and her husband convicted for want of her evidently candid testimony: but true or not, the principle of infamy is the same—a citizen on trial for his liberty was refused the benefit of evidence under this damnable statute, and he and his wife made outlaws—refused “the equal protection of the law”! In Maryland, later in the same year 1929, a chicken-thief, caught in the act of robbery by the owner, was discharged in court because the owner of the property, a Freethinker, was not permitted under the infamous similar statute of that godly State to give testimony in court against the criminal: the case would have been the same, if the life or liberty of the Infidel citizen had been at stake,—he was an outlaw denied the “equal protection of the law”! The benighted State of Arkansas—(“Now laugh!”)—declares infamously in its Constitution: “No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil government of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court”! (Const. Ark., Art. XIX, sec. 26.) Under this accursed act of outlawry, Charles Lee Smith, of New York City, a native of Arkansas, went to his home city of Little Rock in the Fall of 1928 to oppose the degrading proposition proposed as a law in a popular initiative election, forbidding the teaching of Evolution in the State-supported schools and universities; he made some remarks reflecting upon the personal integrity of the Almighty, as well as denying his existence; twice was he arrested, thrown into jail, convicted, and was denied the right to testify as a witness in his own behalf; he is today on bail to answer to the decision of the Supreme Court of that State, an outlaw, denied the “equal protection of the law” of the land! The hypocrisy and self-stultification imposed by such detestable laws, is finely illustrated: At the recent annual meeting of the American Law Institute, I denounced this Article to a leader of the Arkansas Bar, and appealed to him to “start something” to get rid of it. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled in sympathy, and said: “It is in the Constitution, and too difficult to get it out.” Then, dropping into Spanish, so that others at the table might not understand, he added: “Yo no creo nada,—y no digo nada—I believe nothing—and I say nothing”! While these infamies are inflicted upon the citizens of this country by law imposed by a bigoted and ignorant minority of superstitious parsons and their docile dupes;—aye, even if imposed by an overwhelming majority, or by authentic decree of God himself,—the free and fearless defiers of Church and despisers of its Superstition will fight it on to the death, till every trace of these infamies is purged out of the statute books of these sovereign States! This is due and solemn notice and defiance to the intolerant religious oppressors and their deluded dupes.

Medieval laws against the fictitious crime of “Blasphemy” survive in a dozen American States, protecting by law the Christian superstition of the old Hebrew God. A model of them all is this infamous enactment of the Church-ridden Massachusetts: “Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching ²⁰ Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost—[the whole Divine Family],—or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt or ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior.” (Gen. Laws Mass., 1921; Chap. 272, sec. 36.) Expressed contempt is held in lighter pecuniary estimation in the Yankee “Nutmeg State,” the fine being only $100.00, plus the year in gaol. (Gen. Stat. Conn., 1918, sec. 6395.) In both States, under these infamous laws, persons have been indicted, tried and convicted within the past two years! Throughout the Union are odious religious statutes, “Blue Laws” and Sunday Laws, penalizing innocuous diversions and activities of the people on days of religious Voodoo: Sunday, as we shall see, being a plagiarization from the religion of Mithras, and created a secular holiday—not a religious Holy Day—by law of the Pagan Constantine. Such laws sometimes prove troublesome to the pious Puritans themselves; an amusing instance of their boomerang effect being now chronicled to the annoyed and sneering world. Some “400” of the True Believers of the “Holy Name Society” of St. Peter's R.C, Church of New Brunswick, in the saintly State of New Jersey, including several City “Fathers” stuck their legs under the loaded tables of the local hostlery for a “Holy Communion Breakfast” the past Sunday; as they began to eat they discovered to their pious dismay that there was no bread on the tables, although the reservation had long before been made, with particular stress on a special brand of rolls, made only in the godless town of Newark. Consternation reigned, with much confusion and hurried telephoning by the management. In the midst of it came a ‘phone call from the driver of the roll-delivery truck, from the local Hoosgow: “I've been arrested for the violation of section 316 of the Laws of 1798, which prohibits the delivery of bread and rolls on the Sabbath and also forbids a man to kiss his wife on that day”! Some of the sachems called the chief of police and angrily demanded that this holy law be violated by delivering the blessed rolls; the driver was arraigned before the Recorder, who “released him with a warning,” and he consummated the violation by delivering the forbidden rolls to the angry Holy Namers. (Herald-Tribune, May 14, 1930.)

Now, throughout the State, and in far off Ohio, at the instigation of the parsons, these pestiferous pious laws are being forced into enforcement, headlined—“Blue Law Net Busy in Jersey,” and recorded: “hundreds of names and addresses were in the possession of the police today because their owners played golf, tennis or radios, bought or sold gasoline, cigarettes or groceries, or operated trolley cars, busses or trains in this capital city (of Trenton) on the Sabbath,” with much more of detail; and in the same column, a dispatch from Dover, Ohio, that the police used tear-gas bombs to dislodge the operator from the projection-box of a local “movie” theater, who, with the owner and four employees, was “arrested for violation of the Sunday closing law”! (N.Y. Sun, May 26, 1930.) And all this medieval absurdity of repressive penal legislation to enforce obsolete religious observance by disbelievers, in a land whose every constitution proclaims the complete separation of State and Church! But for the defiance of fearless heroes of Rationalism who have through the ages contended, ²¹ and suffered martyrdom by rack and stake in defense of human liberty, rack and stake and fiendish torture would yet be the penalty, rather than fine and jail, for violators of the odious proscriptions of Church and Church-minded, Church-driven, politicians. To know fully the insidious and intensive efforts being made throughout our country by the dupes of priestcraft to undermine and destroy the liberties and rights of free men in the interest of canting religious Pharisaism, bent on rule and ruin, every true friend of freedom and enemy of the Church, should read intently and keep ever at hand for an arsenal of defense, Maynard Shipley's stirring book, The War on Modern Science; A Short History of the Fundamentalist Attacks on Evolution and Modernism—(Knopf, 1929),—which to rend doth “make the angry passions rise” in righteous wrath against these pious conspirators against American liberties and the innate rights of man. The Church, too, through the ages has been and yet nefariously is “in polities,” seeking to dictate and dominate and impose its malign superstitions by law: witness the two last presidential campaigns, and the pernicious activities of the Methodist Board of Intolerance, Meddling and Public Nuisance, as now being revealed by the Lobbying Investigation Committee of the United States Senate, whereby it is shown seeking to ruborn and subordinate all to its intolerant superstitious dominance. In most European countries the True Church maintains its blatant “Catholic Party” in the elections and in the parliaments; here it operations are via the “grape-vine” route,” but effective, as through the corrupt machinations of St. Tammany; while the Methodist Party and the Baptist Party, and their allies the Ku Klux Klan pursue the same evil ends through vocal frightening of cheap politicians and of large sections of the people and press. The very pious Editor of the Christian Herald has just published a book on “The Church in Politics,” in which with cynical frankness he asserts its right and discloses its odious methods.

These odious things are all the work and blighting effects of the unholy ‘Odium Theologicum' of Priestcraft, poisoning men's minds with the rancor of obsolete superstitious beliefs.

Remove the cause, the cure is automatically and quickly effected. To contribute to the speedier consummation of this supreme boon is the motive and justification of this book. It gives to the unctuous quack “Doctors of Divinity” a copious dose out of their own nauseous Pharmacopaeia of Priestly Mendacity. As it takes its deadly effect upon themselves, haply their “incurably religious” duped patients may begin to evidence hopeful symptoms of a wholesome, speedy and complete cure from their priest-made malady.

“Fraud,” says Ingersoll, “is hateful to its victims.” The compelling proofs of duplicitous fraud of priestcraft and Church exposed in this book must convince even the most credulous and devout Believer, that the system of “revealed religion” which he “drew in with his mother's milk” and has in innocent ignorance suffered in his system ever since, is simply a veneered Paganism, unrevealed and untrue; is a huge scheme of priestly imposture to exploit the credulous and to live in power and wealth at his expense. Luther hit the bull's-eye of the System—before he ²² established another to pass the same old counterfeit: The Church exists mostly for wealth and self-aggrandizement; to quit paying money to the priests would kill the whole scheme in a couple of years. This is the sovereign remedy. Let him that hath ears to hear, hear; and govern himself accordingly. Every awakened Believer must feel outraged in his dignity and self-respect, and in disgust must repudiate the Creed and its impostors.

When a notorious Criminal is arraigned at the bar of Justice and put to trial for deeds of crime and shame, it is his crimes, his criminal career and record, which are the subject of inquiry ,—which are exposed and denounced—for conviction. No weight in attenuation is accorded to sundry sporadic instances—(if any)—between crimes or as cloaks for crime—of his canting piety and gestures of benevolence towards his victims, the dupes of his duplicity. Thus the Church and its Creed are here arraigned on their record of Crime,—“extenuating naught, naught setting down in malice”;—simply exposing truly its own convicting record and confessions of its criminality, for condign judgment upon it.

Goliath of Gath was a very big Giant; but a small pebble, artfully slung, brought him to a sudden and violent collapse, a huge corpse. This TNT-bomb of a book, loaded with barbed facts, is flung full in facie ecclesiae—into the face of the Forgery-founded Church and all her discordant broods. The “gates of hell” will be exploded!

But yesteryear the Church of God in might
has stood against the world; now lies she here,
And none so poor to do her reverence!

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