The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents...

[* At the usual weekly meeting of the Baptist ministers at the Publication Rooms yesterday, the Rev. Dr. B. F. Morse read an essay on "Christianity vs. Materialism." His contention was that all nature showed that design, not evolution, was its origin. In his concluding remarks Dr. Morse said that he knew from unquestionable authority, that Robert G. Ingersoll did not believe what he uttered in his lectures, and that to get out of a financial embarrassment he looked around for a money making scheme that could be put into immediate execution. To lecture against Christianity was the most rapid way of giving him the needed cash and, what was quite as acceptable to him, at the same time, notoriety.]

This aquatic or web-footed theologian who expects to go to heaven by diving is not worth answering. Nothing can be more idiotic than to answer an argument by saying he who makes it does not believe it. Belief has nothing to do with the cogency or worth of an argument. There is another thing. This man, or rather this minister, says that I attacked Christianity simply to make money. Is it possible that, after preachers have had the field for eighteen hundred years, the way to make money is to attack the clergy? Is this intended as a slander against me or the ministers?

The trouble is that my arguments cannot be answered. All the preachers in the world cannot prove that slavery is better than liberty. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to think. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to express their thoughts. They cannot show that a decent God will punish a decent man for making the best guess he can. This is all there is about it.