The Basis of Christianity & Why the World Needs a Savior – Channing Severance, 6/19/1910

Republished from the free-thought publication the Blue Grass Blade

Everything that exists must have a basis to rest on, and the Christian religion is no exception. Now let us see
what it does rest on, and why we need the services of a long-dead and much deified Jew named Jesus. The
Christian religion is founded on the story of Adam and Eve, which appears in the Book of Genesis and was
written no one knows when or by whom. It starts out like a fiction story to amuse idle minds and has all the
earmarks of an imaginary tale; and yet, such is the power of blind faith in credulous humanity, ever ready and
willing to believe anything said to have occurred in the distant past, this fishy story, this silly fable, has been
accepted by untold millions for thousands of years as a true and indisputable fact. In the story we have a God
who, having passed an eternity of time in darkness, silence, and the contemplation of his latent powers and
characteristics, at last decided to make the material universe we now behold—out of nothing—and on this
earth to create endless forms of life that should culminate in human beings, whose duties should be to worship
him and to reproduce their species. God spoke every form of life into existence (a very easy way) until he got to
Adam, his last and crowning effort; then he adopted a new plan. Taking the dust of the ground (and presumably
a little water to make a suitable mixture), he molded the form of a man and proceeded to blow some air into
his nose, which started his wind pump, when lo and behold, the father of the human race appeared, and he
called him Adam. Putting him into the garden which he called Eden, he proceeded to tell Adam what he could
and must not do. He could eat from every tree in the garden but one; he must not go near the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil and eat from it, or he would surely die that very day—presumably of appendicitis.
After laying down these rules for Adam’s guidance, the thought came to him, all at once and not very unexpectedly,
that it was not good for Adam to be alone with nothing but beasts and cattle, so he would make him a help meet.

Immediately he put Adam to sleep by hypnotic power, cut out one of his ribs, sewed up the hole in his flesh with
antiseptic dressing, and by hocus-pocus methods made that raw and bloody rib into a full-grown and beautiful
woman, and brought her into the presence of Adam without so much as a Mother Hubbard on. It seems they got
acquainted very quickly, and being hungry, started for something to eat. While Adam was telling her that God had
forbidden the eating of the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which, if done, would be followed
by sure death, a serpent that could talk like a human being, and as plainly and distinctly as Balaam’s ass did
centuries afterward, came along and began to give his views on the subject and to contradict God by telling
both of them they could eat all they wanted to and not die. He was so positive and certain in his remarks that
they concluded to try the fruit on the tree of knowledge, and did so. The result was quickly felt, though they did
not die, as the serpent had predicted, but Eve saw at once the need of a Mother Hubbard, and Adam a pair
of breeches. But nothing of the kind was within their reach, so they began sewing fig leaves together to make
aprons. About that time they heard God calling Adam and asking him where he was, for he evidently failed to
see him with his infinite eyesight. Adam, though greatly terrified, told him he was hiding in the garden because
he was naked. “Who told you that you were naked?” said God. “Have you been eating of the tree of knowledge?”
Adam admitted he had, and then, like the contemptible coward he was, he thought to evade God’s anger by
throwing the blame on Eve. Eve, with woman’s natural timidity, sought escape from punishment by throwing
the responsibility for their actions onto the serpent.

Her excuse had great force and weight with God, for he turned to the serpent and let forth his anger in a torrent
of words, and as a punishment condemned Mr. Serpent to crawl on his belly as long as he lived, which would
indicate the unreasonable supposition that previously he had walked on the tip of his tail. God then turned to
Eve and pronounced this sentence on her for disobedience: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy conception;
in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
Turning then to Adam, God condemned him to eat his bread in the sweat of his face, and then he drove both
of them out of the mythical Garden of Eden. From that day to this his curse has rested on the whole human
race. On this foolish, simple, absurd, and ridiculous story we find the whole structure of Christianity resting;
for that hellfire system of religion tells us that sin came into the world through Adam’s act in eating fruit contrary
to God’s command. Because of that fact, we are all sinners, and God has doomed the whole race to endless
torture in a hell of fire and brimstone, except only those who receive Jesus as their Savior and are properly
baptized. When these facts are calmly and rationally considered, it does not seem possible that human beings
have been such credulous fools as to believe them for thousands of years, or that they are still believed by
millions at the present time. But we know they have believed, and they do yet, and that 120,000 priests and
preachers in this country alone make a good living and secure all the material comforts of this life by teaching
and perpetuating these rank and rotten superstitions. It does not seem as though any man with a spoonful of
brains in his head could be found to believe these things or to give them one minute’s serious consideration.

Yet on these monstrous absurdities and puerile conceptions of a God great enough to control the universe, as
Christians assert he does, billions of dollars have been drawn out of the pockets of both fools and wise men;
and because of belief in these utterly unreasonable and preposterous teachings of the institution known as
Christianity, the most costly buildings ever seen on the surface of this earth have been erected. In all ages,
no matter how poor the people, the Christian religion has been the conspicuous embodiment of wealth and
power, and on this Adam and Eve nonsense it has always depended for existence and always must. For if
sin did not enter this world through Adam, it did not come at all; and if he is necessary to account for it, he
cannot be dispensed with without removing the need for a Savior. So to be a Christian one must believe in
the Adam and Eve story, with all its details, for without it they have nothing to show that man ever fell or
incurred the anger of God to such an extent that he cursed the whole human race to the end of time. I have
said that wise men and fools have believed this mess of nonsense, and I wish to refer to one man that lives
in history and will long live because of his mental powers. Samuel Johnson of England is the man. It is on
record that when death was approaching, “his fear of it was pitiful.” “I am afraid,” said he, “I may be one of
those who shall be damned.” Asked what he meant, he replied, “Sent to hell and punished everlastingly.”
When such a man, with his great brain, could be so enslaved by the most unreasonable and silly superstition
ever put forth by priestcraft, some of our wonder must depart when we think of its acceptance by the ignorant
masses, whose thinking faculties were never cultivated. But Johnson must have been enslaved by it in his
childhood, else it could never have gotten a grip on his great mind.

And the same with Sir Isaac Newton, who, with his wonderful intellect, was all his life enslaved by that hellfire
religion built on Adam and original sin. Science has proven the Adam and Eve origin of the human race, by
excavations made with the spade, to be utterly false; for beneath the surface of this old earth, evidence of
civilized races that lived 16,000 years ago has been found. Only the imagination of man can cover the period
of time necessary to produce a civilized people from primitive beings in human form. No man has the least
idea when mortal man first appeared on this earth, and all efforts to find out are unavailing, because the
surface of the earth is constantly changing, and where water exists today was once land throbbing with
life in all its varied forms. Human life may have existed for millions of years, and it is not unreasonable to
suppose it has; but when we have indisputable knowledge of civilized nations 16,000 years ago, that alone
is sufficient to put the quietus on the truth of Christianity and its dogmas, which cannot stand for an instant
when origin is traced to a mythical Adam who appeared less than 7,000 years ago. And yet Christians go
on teaching these falsehoods, and such a remarkable man in some respects as Theodore Roosevelt
professes belief in them. There is not a dogma of Christianity, nor a satisfactory claim it advances, that
can stand for one moment before the light of reason and the revelations of science; yet it lives on and
on because it is forced into children, and the masses neither think nor investigate its absurdities. All
governments are partial to religion and religious beliefs because they help, as nothing else can, to keep
the people in subjection and under control.

Our present occupant of the White House is what has been rightly termed a “whitewashed infidel,” that is,
a Unitarian who rejects hell and the Trinity—a rejection that destroys the vital part of Christianity; and yet
he is a booster for that mind-paralyzer in frequent public addresses. William Jennings Bryan is now a
Presbyterian elder, if press reports are correct, and he professes to swallow the Bible whole and to believe
God damned the world through Adam and is trying to save it through Jesus. Hence and therefore, I care
not how great and brilliant a man is in any department of life, when I see him shutting his eyes to the
revelations of science, closing his ears to the voice of reason, and professing to be a believer in Christianity,
he cannot escape being labeled a hypocrite or a simpleton, for his actions demonstrate he is one or the
other. When the foundation of Christianity is destroyed by the discovery of a civilized people who lived
8,000 years before Adam and Eve, reason and common sense should lead all who use them to let go
of the rotten fake and break away; but human nature is not prone to do such things, as the records of
the past reveal. After the gods of mythology were known to be only phantoms of the mind, they were a
thousand years dying out in the superstition-steeped minds of the masses. So we can believe without
much effort that Christianity will be a long time dying, though its foundation is destroyed, and not only
Adam, but Jesus and Jehovah are known to be myths.