A handbook of Freethought

I have aimed in preparing this work to put into compact and orderly form a large amount of irrefragable evidence against the superstitions of the church. I have often felt the need of such a work for my own use. The matter herewith presented has been culled from some of the ablest writers living and dead. As a book of reference I hope it may be a valuable aid to all investigators and truthseekers. Its running head lines, chapter heads, subheads, and classified subjects make it a "handbook."

San Francisco.

January 10, 1890.

CREATION.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Gen. 1 : 1.)

No sooner do we read this sentence than we find our minds full of perplexing questions. Quite naturally we ask in the "beginning" of what? It could not mean in the beginning of God, for it is supposed that he had no beginning; it could not mean the beginning of eternity, as that is without commencement or end, and it could not have been in the beginning of matter as it is eternal. If then matter is eternal, the story about the creation of the heaven and the earth is nothing more than a myth--a childish story that has come down to us from the dark ages of the remote past.

The indestructibility of matter is the corner-stone of modern philosophy, and the indestructibility of matter implies its eternal existence, that is, it never was created and it never will cease to exist. Theologians have taught for centuries that God created matter out of nothing. Enlightened people have to smile when they hear these stories repeated. Some theologians who have discovered the folly of such empty traditions have tried to reconstruct them by means of new interpretations. The Rev. De Witt Talmage, of Brooklyn, has discovered that God created matter out of a piece of omnipotence. This discovery is important, and may lead to grand results; still there are some people who doggedly refuse to accept this invention, and maintain that omnipotence is nothing more than an attribute, and that one could with as much propriety speak of God's creating matter out of omniscience, or omnipresence.

There are others who do not claim that matter was made out of nothing, but that it was in a chaotic state, and that at a certain time (before time was), God formed it into the universe in six days of creation.

But this explanation does not help us out of our difficulties. For if God did not create matter out of nothing then it is eternal, and there could be no such thing as creation, or Creator. There is nothing in this old story at all, if it proves on examination that the "Creator" did not create matter; for in that case matter is co-eternal with God, and like him, is uncaused. When this old definition of creation fails the theological superstructure built upon it totters and falls to the ground. For if the Creator did not originate the universe from nothing, then matter is eternal, and God is not omnipotent, is not infinite, is not God. Thus we see that we have no reason whatever to think that there ever was a beginning to matter, or that creation of matter is at all thinkable. The words "beginning" and "creation," as thus used are without meaning.