WHO ARE THE BLASPHEMERS?

(June, 1882.)

Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot
commit. God is to them merely a word, expressing all sorts of ideas, and
not a person. It is, properly speaking, a general term, which includes
all that there is in common among the various deities of the world. The
idea of the supernatural embodies itself in a thousand ways. Truth is
always simple and the same, but error is infinitely diverse. Jupiter,
Jehovah and Mumbo-Jumbo are alike creations of human fancy, the products
of ignorance and wonder. Which is _the_ God is not yet settled. When the
sects have decided this point, the question may take a fresh turn; but
until then _god_ must be considered as a generic term, like _tree or
horse or men_; with just this difference, however, that while the words
tree, horse and man express the general qualities of visible objects,
the word god expresses only the imagined qualities of something that
nobody has ever seen.

When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not
dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God,
for he does not admit the existence of any such being.

Ideas of god may be good or bad, beautiful or ugly; and according as he
finds them the Atheist treats them. If we lived in Turkey we should deal
with the god of the Koran, but as we live in England we deal with the
god of the Bible. We speak of that god as a being, just for convenience
sake, and not from conviction. At bottom, we admit nothing but the mass
of contradictory notions between Genesis and Revelation. We attack not a
person but a belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.

Lord Brougham long ago pointed out, in his "Life of Voltaire," that
the great French heretic was not guilty of blasphemy, as his enemies
alleged; since he had no belief in the actual existence of the god he
dissected, analysed and laughed at. Mr. Ruskin very eloquently defends
Byron from the same charge. In "Cain," and elsewhere, the great poet
does not impeach God; he merely impeaches the orthodox creed. We may sum
up the whole matter briefly. No man satirises the god he believes in,
and no man believes in the god he satirises.

We shall not, therefore, be deterred by the cry of "blasphemy," which is
exactly what the Jewish priests shouted against Jesus Christ. If
there is a God, he cannot be half so stupid and malignant as the Bible
declares. In d