introduced. And
when the ecclesiastic attributes to the Deity whatever laws man has been
able to evolve out of his own experience and wisdom, he establishes,
fallaciously, the corollary that if God is responsible for the cures, He
is also responsible for the non-cures. Then what of the countless number
that died of disease before man evolved those cures, and what of the
wholesale murder of His children in the past ages?

Do certain diseases still baffle the physician? Surely it is less often
than the pestilences of old which baffled sacrifice and prayer. The
cruelest laws ever devised by man have more equity and benevolence in
them than the appalling and irrational jurisprudence of the Deity.

Do certain diseases as yet remain to plague man? Then it is only because
religion has for the past 2000 years been the greatest obstacle in the
development of cures for these diseases. Every single individual, in the
past 2000 years, who has succumbed to a disease for which medical
science has no cure, has died directly at the hands of religion. The
obstruction which religion has placed on the development of medical
science has laid at its feet the responsibility for the deaths of
countless millions throughout the ages.

The religionist replies that man's mind cannot fathom the will of God.
Which is an irrational statement for it is a well established fact, and
indeed, a criterion of insanity, that when the deranged are confronted
with facts which are conclusive and with creations of the imagination,
they cannot differentiate fact from fancy, and maintain, instead, that
fancy is the real fact. The religionists are guilty of the same breach
of reason. They suffer with what may be termed, "dementia religiosa."
The remarkable feature of the latter disease is its wide prevalence.

Dr. Haggard in his book, "Devils, Drugs, and Doctors," declares, "The
early and Medieval Christians accepted the doctrine of the power of
demons in the lives of men; they saw this power particularly in the
demoniac production of diseases. They believed in miracles and
especially in the miraculous healing of diseases. The demonological
belief of the Christians was inherited from the doctrine of the Jews,
who were believers in demons and the 'possession by the devil.' Jesus
himself cured by casting out of devils. Following his example,
Christians everywhere became exorcists. Jewish demonology was continued
among Christian converts, and the belief in superna