Note 66 — Chapter II · PRIMITIVE FREETHINKING

On the same grounds, we must reject the claim—arbitrarily set up by one historian in the very act of showing how religion historically oppugns science—that all sacred books as such “are true because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution of truth in human history; and because in poem, chronicle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable, they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of humanity.”66 In this proposition the opening words, “are true because” are strictly meaningless. All literature whatever has been developed under the same general laws. But if it be meant that sacred books were specially likely to garner truth as such, the claim must be negated. In terms of the whole demonstration of the bias of theology against new truth in modern times, the irresistible presumption is that in earlier times also the theological and theocratic spirit was in general hostile to every process by which truth is normally attained. And if the thesis be limited to moral truth, it is still less credible. It is, in fact, inconceivable that literature so near the popular level as to suit whole priesthoods should be morally the best of which even the age producing it is capable; and nothing is more certain than that enlightened ethic has always had to impeach or explain away the barbarisms of some sacred books. The true summary is that in all cases the accepted sacred books have of necessity fallen short not only of scientific truth and of pure ethic, but even of the best speculation and the best ethic of the time of their acceptance, inasmuch as they excluded the criticism of the freethinking few on the sacred books themselves. There is sociological as well as physical science, and the former is flouted when the whole freethinking of the human race in the period of Bible-making is either ignored or treated as worthless.