"A Declaration of Intellectual Independence"

I enjoyed this 1954 essay by Joseph Lewis. I was previously unaware that so many medical advancements were opposed by the clergy.

Here's a small quote from the essay:

Anesthesia was discovered.

Do you know what it means to relieve man of his pain and suffering? Anesthesia is the most humane of all of man's accomplishments, and what a merciful accomplishment it was.

For this great discovery we are indebted to Dr. W. T. G. Morton.

Do you know that the religionists opposed the use of anesthesia on the ground that God sent pain as a punishment for sin, and it was considered the greatest of sacrileges to use it -- just think of it, a sin to relieve man of his misery! What a monstrous perversion! This one instance alone should convince you of the difference in believing in God or not.

No believer in God would have spent his energies to discover anesthesia. He would have been in mortal fear of the wrath of his God for interfering with his "divine plan," of making man suffer for having eaten of the fruit of the "Tree of Knowledge."

The very crux of the matter is in this one instance.

Man seeks to relieve his fellow man from the suffering of disease and the pangs of mental agony. The believers in God are content that man's suffering is ordained, and therefore he accepts life and its trials and tribulations as a penance for living.

The fear of the wrath of God has been a stumbling block to progress.

When Dr. James Young Simpson sought to apply anesthesia to a woman in childbirth, the clergymen of his day foamed at the mouth and spat upon him with vituperation and abuse, for attempting to violate God's direct command that "in pain thou shalt bring forth children," as based upon the idiotic text of the Bible. But Dr. Simpson persisted despite the ravings of the religious lunatics of his day.

The importance of Dr. Simpson's application of anesthesia to the relief of pain in childbirth, and his open defiance of the religionists, are beyond the measure of words to evaluate.

The X-ray was discovered in our time.

Professor Wilhelm Roentgen deserves our everlasting debt of gratitude for this contribution. Its application alone in the field of medicine makes it one of the greatest contributions to the service of man.

Dr. Karl Lansteiner's discovery of the composition of the blood -- made in our time -- has been responsible for the saving of countless thousands of lives.

Blood was also feared by the religionists, and a taboo was placed upon all those who touched it, as being contaminated.

Even the dissection of the human body was prohibited by religion.

The study of human anatomy is within our own time, and the fruitful results of this scientific exploring of man's physical structure are incalculable.

It is needless, I think, to tell you why the study of human body is so recent. Until the emancipation of the mind of man from the thraldom and shackles of religion, it was taught and believed as a "religious truth," and maintained under penalty of eternal damnation, that if the human body was dissected, God would not be able to recognize you on the day of resurrection!

Such has been the paralyzing menace of religion that has prevailed over the mind of man.

The discovery of the chemistry of food and its application to nutrition has contributed more to the health of the human race than all the Gods, clergymen and priests since the dawn of existence.

Preventive medicine has accomplished amazing results in bringing health to, and prolonging, the life of the people.

Hygiene and its application have saved millions upon millions from disease and premature death. It has stayed the "hand of God" in his madness in spreading deaths from epidemics of disease.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/lewis/lewis03.htm

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Joseph Lewis (11 June 1889 - 1968) was an American freethinker and atheist who was born in Montgomery, Alabama. At the age of nine he left school to find employment and became mostly self-educated. Lewis developed his ideas from reading, among others, Robert G. Ingersoll and Thomas Paine.

A good companion piece, a much shorter essay, by Chapman Cohen. . .

The Meaning and Value of Freethought

I will commence with a definition. Freethought may be defined as the rejection of authority in matters of opinion. It sets the persuasion of fact against the coercion of force. A Freethinker is one who forms his own opinions on the facts as he sees them. Right or wrong, his opinions are his own. He is a voice, not an echo.

Historically, freethought has become identified with the rejection of religious doctrines. This is because it is from the side of religion that the impulse to intolerance has come. Human society is born in the shadow of religious fear, and in that stage the suppression of heresy is a sacred social duty. Then comes the rise of a priesthood, and the independent thinker is met with punishment in this world and the threat of eternal damnation hereafter. Even to-day it is from the religious side that the greatest danger to freedom of thought comes. Religion is the last thing man will civilise.

Considerable progress was made in the old Greek and Roman civilisations in the way of establishing freedom of thought. Neither had anything in the shape of a sacred book warning men not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and, in Greece particularly, every question of religion, ethics, science and philosophy was discussed with the freedom that Europe subsequently lost and has never altogether regained. Indeed if it were possible to revive an Athenian of, say, the time of Socrates and place him in the centre of Europe at any date from the 5th to the 16th century, and if he had seen the prison, the stake and the torture chamber being used to prevent criticisms of religion, he would have thought that the world had been overtaken with an epidemic of insanity.

The intellectual freedom of Europe died with the establishment of the Christian Church. Bible in hand, the Church met every new idea with a "Thus saith the Lord." On the ruins of the ancient civilisation, she placed the flag on an interested dogmatism, and opened one of the most hideous chapters in the history of mankind. Enquiry was forbidden, freedom of speech was taboo, a premium was offered for cowardice and hypocrisy, a tax was placed upon intellectual sincerity. Intolerance became a virtue and persecution a habit.

Nothing more demoralising has ever existed. Where religious heresy was concerned, no man could feel himself safe. In the name of religions, a man was taught to denounce his neighbour, a wife her husband, a child its parent. The Church went further, and made man a policeman over himself, until men feared to think, lest they should be led to doubt. The thinker was everywhere suspect. The credulous fool was held up as the model of religious perfection. It was the vilest system the world has ever known.

In prohibiting the free play of ideas the Church struck at the foundation of progress. Throughout the whole of animate nature variation is one of the conditions of development. The opposite process is elimination, by which unfavorable or undesirable variations are weeded out. The Church adopted the latter policy. Every variation against its teaching was crushed. It imposed conformity on all with the result of achieving stagnation -- and worse. A sheep-like attitude was inculcated, and where men are trained like sheep they share the fate of sheep -- they are sheared and eaten.

Had a bench of Bishops existed amongst our simian ancestors, the human race would never have arisen. The first variations toward a more human type would have been crushed as a blasphemous innovation.

In the history of every institution where is a time when it has to face the challenge of new knowledge. The man who makes this challenge is an asset of great social value. He compels us to something like a mental stocktaking, to get rid of unusable goods and to restock on better lines. The greatest need of to-day is to create an environment that is completely hospitable to new ideas.

The vote spreads political power over a wide area but carries no guarantee of its right use. All can read, but reading without the critical habit is of but small value. The Press flashes its lightning, and the mass of the public are without a conductor that will protect them from its dangers. There never was a time when there was greater need for independent thinking than there is to-day. Unfortunately, fifteen centuries of Christian rule have made intolerance of unorthodox opinions fatally common.

In Christian mythology, it is noted that man's primal sin was an act of disobedience. He ate of the Tree of Knowledge, and the Gods cannot forgive that offense; yet knowledge is the greatest need of mankind. It is that which has raised him from savagery to civilisation. It is that which makes him more than the equal of the Gods. It lifts him above them. But you cannot acquire sound knowledge without the courage to examine, modify and reject what is already established. This is a painful and troublesome process; but the pain is that of a new birth, the trouble that if clearing away things that have outlived their utility.

Freethought, then, claims the fullest possible freedom of thought, speech, publication and action. It asks for these, not as luxuries, but as necessities; it asks not for their toleration, but for their encouragement. They must be the unquestioned and inalienable rights in a society where men and women can exist with dignity and self-respect.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/cohen00.htm

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Chapman Cohen (1 September 1868, Leicester – 4 February 1954, Brentwood) was a leading English atheist and secularist writer and lecturer.

"A Declaration of Intellectual Independence"

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