duty to God demanded
that you should at once strike a blow at the life of your tempter. Let
us suppose, then, that in truth God went to Palestine and selected the
scanty tribes of Israel as his chosen people, and supposing that he
afterward came to Jerusalem in the shape of a man and taught a
different doctrine from the one prescribed by their book and their
clergy, and that the chosen people, in obedience to the education he
had prepared for them, struck at the life of him who tempted them.
Were they to be cursed by God and man because the former had reaped the
harvest of his own sowing?

Ingersoll's Lecture on "How the Gods Grow"

Ladies and Gentlemen: Priests have invented a crime called blasphemy.
That crime is the breastwork behind which ignorance, superstition and
hypocrisy have crouched for thousands of years, and shot their poisoned
arrows at the pioneers of human thought. Priests tell us that there is
a God somewhere in heaven who objects to a human being, thinking and
expressing his thought. Priests tell us that there is a God somewhere
who takes care of the people of this world; a God somewhere who watches
over the widow and the orphan; a God somewhere who releases the slave;
a God somewhere who visits the innocent man in prison; the same God
that has allowed men for thousands of years to burn to ashes human
beings simply for loving that God. We have been taught that it is
dangerous to reason upon these subjects--extremely dangerous--and that
of all crimes in the world, the greatest is to deny the existence of
that God.

Redden your hands in innocent blood; steal the bread of the orphan,
deceive, ruin and desert the beautiful girl who has loved and trusted
you, and for all this you may be forgiven; for all this you can have
the clear writ of that bankrupt court of the gospel. But deny the
existence of one of these gods, and the tearful face of mercy becomes
lurid with eternal hate; the gates of heaven are shut against you, and
you, with an infinite curse ringing in your ears, commence your
wanderings as an immortal vagrant, as a deathless convict, as an
eternal outcast. And we have been taught that the infinite has become
enraged at the finite simply when the finite said: "I don't know!"
Why, imagine it. Suppose Mr. Smith should hear a couple of small bugs
in his front yard discussing the question as to the existence of Smith;
and suppose one little red bug swore on the honor of a bug