The Atheist Book Club discussion

We'll be reading Some Mistakes of Moses by Robert G. Ingersoll through the end of December.

This thread can be used to give book reviews as well as for a general discussion of the book. Please feel free to start a new discussion in the book club folder if you'd like to focus on specific aspects of or ideas from the book.

This is a great book. It doesn't feel like it was written 134 years ago.

“The believers in the bible are loud in their denunciation of what they are pleased to call the immoral literature of the world; and yet few books have been published containing more moral filth than this inspired word of God”

Excerpt From: Robert Green Ingersoll. “Mistakes of Moses.” iBooks.
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One of my favorite quotes in the book:

"Suppose, however, that God did give this law to the Jews, and did tell them that whenever a man preached a heresy, or proposed to worship any other God that they should kill him; and suppose that afterward this same God took upon himself flesh, and came to this very chosen people and taught a different religion, and that thereupon the Jews crucified him; I ask you, did he not reap exactly what he had sown? What right would this god have to complain of a crucifixion suffered in accordance with his own command?”

+1

I became aware of this book through this thread, and I must say that I'm astonished that I had never been acquainted with the author or his work before. For a book written in 1879, it is remarkably contemporary, filled with wit, irony and sarcasm in its dismantling of the first 5 books of the Old Testament. His incredulous and chilling portrait of Jehovah (Yahweh) is in complete agreement with that of Dawkins in THE GOD DELUSION--but 134 years earlier! Such apostasy was probably much more common than we think today, but its expression in an earlier time was dangerous to the life of the heretic. Ingersoll's analysis of the scientific inaccuracies of the two creation stories in Genesis alone is worth the price of the book. He even discredits the idea that the 7 days of creation were not ordinary days, but days that may have lasted centuries or millennia.

Yes, Ingersoll is incredible. It was said that he would have had a good chance at becoming president (he was easily the most famous and popular orator in America, and one of the greatest of all time) if he hid his views on religion from the public, but he refused to do this because, according to him, withholding facts from the public/lying would be immoral! Imagine that, a politician who refuses to lie because it would be immoral!

Here is a website that contains all of his works - http://www.theingersolltimes.com/

Some of his stuff is so amazing that it literally brings tears to my eyes.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I wasn't expecting such a freethinking mind being openly expressed during his time. Coming from a family where his father was a preacher of some sort, I'm sure he was very familiar with the scriptures and how they were interpreted and taught to the crowd. I am also thinking that being a lawyer, also taught him much about how to pick the text apart and question it. I'm sure he was very good at this by nature, but the combination of it all probably made for excellent arguments... such as this book.

I too was amazed at Ingersoll's "Some Mistakes of Moses." The world needs to know this man's name. So poetic and beautifully written. He had a way with descriptive language. One of my favorite quotes from the book (or at least of the online copy that I read) was:

"The sword and cross have always been allies; they defended each other. The throne and altar are twins,--vultures born of the same egg ... The King owned the bodies and the priest owned the souls; one lived on taxes and the other on alms; one was a robber and the other a beggar."

A powerful statement!

You could literally go to any random page in any of Ingersoll's work and you will have a new favorite quote. I'd say he had more control of the English language than anyone since Shakespeare.

I had the same thought. He was a walking quote machine!