Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/80

66 most enthusiastic theologian can produce no testimony to prove the existence of God, that approaches in clearness and convincing force, that offered by the archæologian and geologist to prove the antiquity of the earth and its inhabitants, or by the astronomer to convince us of the revolution of the earth around the sun; notwithstanding the fact that a man is excused, even from a theological standpoint, much more readily when he doubts the existence of God, than when he questions the results of scientific investigations, which are capable of such over whelming demonstration. Besides this, the State appoints professors and pays their salaries out of the government revenue, bestows upon them authority and is always ready to help them enforce it, and these professors are commissioned to teach and to prove that the occurrences of this world are regulated by natural laws, that physiology recognizes no organic difference in the formation of all living beings, and that twice two are four. But in addition to these professors of the exact sciences, the State appoints professors of theology, who are commissioned likewise to teach, but necessarily not to prove, to assert however, that the newborn babe is cursed with original, inborn sin, that God dictated to certain men a book to be reverenced as holy, that on numerous occasions the laws of nature were suspended as a favor to certain human beings, that by murmuring certain words over some dough it is changed into flesh, and this flesh is part of the body of a human being who died almost two thousand years ago, and that three persons are one, and one, three. When a law-abiding citizen listens in succession to a lecture on science delivered by some professor appointed by the Government, and then to a sermon preached by some professor of theology, also appointed by the Government and armed with the same authority—his mind must be