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Chapman Cohen

Chapman Cohen Biography

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“And, truly, the case against Christianity is plain and damning. Never, during the whole of its history has it spoken in a clear voice against slavery; always, as we have seen, its chief supporters have been pronounced believers. They have cited religious teaching in its defence, they have used all the power of the Church for its maintenance. Naturally, in a world in which the vast majority are professing Christians, believers are to be found on the side of humanity and justice. But to that the reply is plain. Men are human before they are Christians; both history and experience point, to the constant lesson of the many cases in which the claims of a developing humanity override those of an inculcated religious teaching. But the damning fact against Christianity is, not that it found slavery here when it arrived, and accepted it. as a settled institution, not even that it is plainly taught in its 'sacred' books, but, that it deliberately created a new form of slavery, and for hundreds of years invested it with a brutality greater than that which existed centuries before. A religion which could tolerate this slavery, argue for it, and fight for it, cannot by any stretch of reasoning be credited with an influence in forwarding emancipation. Christianity no more abolished slavery than it abolished witchcraft, the belief in demonism, or punishment for heresy. It was the growing moral, and social sense of mankind that compelled Christians and Christianity to give up these and other things.”

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Book:Christianity Slavery & Labour
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“Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. They thrive on servility and shrink before independence. They feed upon worship as kings do upon flattery. That is why the cry of gods at all times is “Worship us or we perish.” A dethroned monarch may retain some of his human dignity while driving a taxi for a living. But a god without his thunderbolt is a poor object.”

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Author:Chapman Cohen
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“The defenders of godism are now shrieking against the growing number of Atheists, and there is a call to the religious world to enter upon a crusade against Atheism. The stage in which heresy meant little more than all exchange of one god for another has passed. It has become a case of acceptance or rejection of the idea of God, and the growth is with those who reject.”

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“But there are still many who continue to marvel at the wisdom of God in so planning the universe that big rivers run by great towns, and that death comes at the end of life instead of in the middle of it. Divest pleas ... of their semi-philosophic jargon, reduce his illustrations to homely similes, and he is marvelling at the wisdom of God who so planned things that the two extremities of a piece of wood should come at the ends instead of in the middle.”

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Author:Chapman Cohen
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“It is useless saying that we do not accept the gods of the primitive world. In form, no; in essence, yes. The fact before us is that all ideas of gods can be traced to the earliest stages of human history.... There is an unbroken line of descent linking the gods of the most primitive peoples to those of modern man. We reject the world of the savage; but we still, in our churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, perpetuate the theories he built upon that world.”

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Author:Chapman Cohen
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“I have hitherto followed the lines marked out by the Theist in his attempt to prove that there exists a mind behind natural phenomena, and that the universe as we have it is, at least generally, an evidence of a plan designed by this mind. I have also pointed out that the only datum for such a conclusion is the universe we know. We must take that as a starting point. We can get neither behind it nor beyond it. We cannot start with God and deduce the universe from his existence; we must start with the world as we know it, and deduce God from the world.”

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“The devil and God are components of a Siamese twin. Neither has any existence apart from the other. In denying the existence of the one, Christians have helped to kill the other. If there need to be no fear of hell, people may well ask what is the attraction of heaven? Gods and devils were born together. Gods and devils will die together.”

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“Regularity in Nature is not proof of the control of Nature by a Divine intelligence; it is rather the reverse. If something- call it matter, or ether, or x - exists, it must operate in accordance with its innate qualities; and so long as this x remains uncontrolled, its manifestations will continue unchallenged- in other words, there will be order. The same causes, the same results. That is the manifest signs of a natural order that knows nothing of God.”

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Book:Essays in freethinking
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“The trick is, after all, obvious. The Theist takes terms that can apply to sentient life alone, and applies them to the universe at large. He talks about means, that is, the deliberate planning to achieve certain ends, and then says that as there are means there must be ends. Having, unperceived, placed the rabbit in the hat, he is able to bring it forth to the admiration of his audience.”

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“Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.”

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Author:Chapman Cohen
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“All my life I have made it a rule never to permit a religious man or woman take for granted that his or her religious beliefs deserved more consideration than non-religious beliefs or anti-religious ones. I never agree with that foolish statement that I ought to respect the views of others when I believe them to be wrong.”

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“Human society is born in the shadow of religious fear, and in that stage the suppression of heresy is a sacred social duty. Then comes the rise of a priesthood, and the independent thinker is met with punishment in this world and the threat of eternal damnation hereafter. Even today it is from the religious side that the greatest danger to freedom of thought comes. Religion is the last thing that man will civilise.”

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“The belief in God is not therefore based on the perception of design in nature. Belief in design in nature is based upon the belief in God. Things are as they are whether there is a God or not. Logically, to believe in design one must start with God. He, or it, is not a conclusion but a datum. You may begin by assuming a creator, and then say he did this or that; but you cannot logically say that because certain things exist, therefore there is a God who made them. God is an assumption, not a conclusion. And it is an assumption that explains nothing.”

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