How Freethinkers Made Notable Contributions To Civilization

How Freethinkers Made Notable Contributions To Civilization, by Joseph McCabe. The Works of Joseph McCabe is so important today that every word he wrote should be in every home. He dared to tell the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth when he wrote History, and his words are as true and needed as when he first pinned them -- NO!! They are more needed today, because we are drowning in the false history and religious, Christian, propaganda that floods out modern books and institutions of learning. Let me quote a little from the needed History: "It is amazing to what extent our literature is still saturated with the clerical claim that Christianity has a noble record of social service and that with its passing social inspiration will decay. It is ‘surely time that we put together, as I do here, the undisputed historical facts which show that this claim is exactly the reverse of the truth. The Christian apologetic which is responsible for these perversions of history has passed through three phases. Down to the outbreak of the French Revolution and during the half-century of reaction which followed it the Churches were generally content to claim that they ‘served men’s interests in a life beyond the grave. Their entire scheme of doctrine and ritual was based essentially upon men’s hope of heaven and fear of hell. With the advance of knowledge and the spread of education however, men began to rub their eyes and to appreciate the fact that hell had been just a nightmare of the race during 15 centuries. Heaven had never been to them more than a pale day-dream, for neither scholar nor artist, had ever succeeded in giving it a definite and alluring ‘shape. It was hell that really mattered; and, as this hideous phantom was dismissed by growing millions of folk and they turned eagerly to discover the resources of earth, the clergy had to discover ‘some utility of the Churches in the visible life of man. First they concentrated upon sexual morality, which they persuaded large numbers of people to call “the social problem.” And that is only a small taste of the forceful facts this History contains.
Emmett F. Fields