Yesterday I posted a letter published in the Blue Grass Blade on October 11, 1903 from an atheist man who recounted why he had become an atheist. Today I’m posting an answer to a letter (also published in the same edition) that came in to the newspaper’s publisher (C. C. Moore) from Rev. Shearer. It appears to be the product of an ongoing conversation about religion, atheism and (sort of) related subjects.

I posted this in addition to the earlier letter because it is clear to me that the arguments have not progressed. Apart from some terminology specific to the time (i.e. prohibition), this could easily be some post on a site dedicated to atheism.  I find that a little depressing. Still, it took 100 odd years from the Civil War to get to the civil rights of the people brought to this continent to labour in our fields and (later) factories and more than 50 years after that before Black people really saw an opening to equality (I’m talking about Obama, of course) and the Tea Party and related Republicans have shown us that Emancipation Proclamation or not, Blacks are still scary, scary shit to some of us and to be destroyed if at all possible. So I’m not really surprised that at 115 years after the death of the “father of American atheism” that we have not resolved the atheist/religious problem.

Answer.– I indicate your bad spelling to support my contention that a scholarly man is not apt to believe in a God.

It has been said of spelling that it is a thing which it is no credit to know, but a disgrace not to know.

The “burden of proof” in this instance rests upon you. You affirm that there is a God. I deny that there is a God.

Greenleaf says, “To this general rule that the burden of proof is on the party holding the affirmative, there are some exceptions.” Greenleaf on Evidence, vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 3. p. 105—L. B. & Co. ’52).

You offer no reason why your case should be an “exception” to the general rule and I see no such reason. I think you will find that “Jefferson’s Manual” will decide that the burden of proof is upon you.

The Bible and Sir William Blackstone and the courts of Salem Massachusetts affirmed that there were witches. The consensus of the competent said that the burden of proof rested upon those three, and that contention never having been sustained by any of the three, modern intelligence has decided that there are no witches. I do not have to account for any phenomena of nature, “leaving God out,” or leaving him or it, in. That is the graft of the natural scientist, I don’t have to account for anything. All I have to do is hear your argument and answer I, if I can. You say to me: “If you say you can do this, the burden of proof is upon you.”

Your statement is correct, but I do not say, “I can do this,” and therefore the burden of proof is not upon me. You say it would be foolish for you to try to prove to me that there is a God when I decline to accept your “testamony.” If you knew in advance, as you probably did, that I would not accept the testimony that you would offer, you were certainly “foolish” to offer it.

The testimony that you offer is the Bible and nature. If I accepted the Bible as a “competent” witness in this case, it would be “foolish” in me to discuss the question with you, for the Bible certainly says there is a God. But the competency of the Bible is a matter in issue, and, of course, I can not accept the Bible as competent testimony. You argue that the Bible is true because God wrote it, and then you argue that there is a God because the Bible says so.

That is what is called, in logic, “reasoning in a circle,” and it is recognized by all logicians as a common fallacy.

If it be true that the Bible, “for four thousand years has furnished indubitable evidence” that there is a God, why are you still arguing that there is a God? The very fact that you are making this argument shows that you do not regard the argument for the existence of a God as being “indubitable.” The multiplication table is indubitably correct.

If any man would say the multiplication table is not correct, you would not write him a long letter to show him that the multiplication table is correct. We do not argue about indubitable things. You would regard a man who thought the multiplication table incorrect as being an ignoramus or a fool, and you would wast no time on him, or would make an ass of yourself if you did.

The Bible says that man is a fool who says there is no God, and that goes with people who think the Bible knows it all, but it does not cut any ice with people who don’t believe the Bible any more than they do “Arabian Nights.” You say that beside this indubitable evidence we have in the Bible, we have the “book or nature” bearing the same testimony.”

If the Bible’s testimony that there is a God is indubitable why mention the additional book of nature?

If Euclid proves a certain mathematical proposition to be true, what is the use of saying that some other man, or some other book, also proved it to be true? Granting that nature is a book, there certainly is quite a diversity of opinion as to what it says, and your mere assertion that it says there is a God does not count.

I think it is “the height of folly and presumption” for you to offer the Bible book and the “book of nature” to me as evidence that there is a God, and you say it is “the height of folly and presumption” for you to do so, then why do you do it?

You certainly must have known that that same old racket had been offered to Atheists million of times, and as often rejected by them, then what was the good sense in asking me to fill up my columns with a long rigamarole that you evidently knew in advance would not amount to a hill of beans to me?

What was the use of your saying anything to the 15,000 hell-bent Atheists that “blow” themselves in my paper unless you had some new argument?

You answer my question by saying that the testimony you offer is “the only testimony that can be brought to bear in this matter.”

Then what are you kicking about? The evidence is all in, and it’s a hung jury and we will go to the presiding judge and tell him we can’t agree on a verdict.

All that you say about what I would do or would not do if an angel were to come from heaven to Lexington is poppycock. You certainly cannot know what I would do under such circumstances, for I don’t know myself. You are merely talking through your hat. It will be time enough for me to consider what I would do under such circumstances when the angel gets here. I do not think it is commonly recognized as being dead certain that angels come to this country at all these times, and I don’t think an angel that had any sense would come to Lexington. He wouldn’t last fifteen minutes in Lexington. The “cops” would run him in for wearing woman’s clothes on the streets, or some Lexington fellow would shoot him because he would not come into Gus Jaubert’s and set up the beer, or, if he did go into Gus’s he would get drunk and the “cops” would get him anyhow. But I believe you are mistaken, or worse—lying.

Old man Bell, the manager of the cemetery, reported the other day that a man was buried in that cemetery who made just 15,000 people buried there in all.

If some fellow would come along and resurrect all of those 15,000 people buried, and they should come marching into Lexington, including some hundreds of old boys that I believed whisky killed forty years ago, and my precious little curly headed girl, whose death brought the first gray hairs to my head, I think it would shake my present opinions about the resurrection from the dead. If anybody will come to Lexington and even clear the whisky out of the town, by any means, natural or supernatural, I will give anything he has to say, on any subject, a very respectful hearing. I think you got that up wrong pard. I say “pard” because I think you are a Campbellite preacher. They are hell on “shearing Baptists and Methodists,” and they make the wool fly. I’ve been there.

I have nothing to say in defense of those fellows over in Jerusalem. I’ve been there, too. O, no, that’s not “mud-slinging”— nothing of the kind, all fair so far as decency is concerned. What does all that dissertation on the subject of “mind” amount to in this connection? That is the province of mental philosophy, in which Upham and Abercrombie are authorities, but you and I are discussing theology in which you and Moses, and the “book of nature,” are your authorities. Mind certainly “plays a very conspicuous part in everything with which man has to do” (unless it is preaching), but your remark is just as true of muscle and bread and butter and money and a million other things and so what is the occasion of a remark so self-evidently true?

We don’t look “within” us except with an X-ray and you’d better leave that out.

Your statements about the hop and the bean stalk would be well enough in a lecture on botany or horticulture, but are irrelevant here. We are discussing whether or not there is a God. As a “sky-buster,” you ought to stick to your text.

As a good Prohibitionist, I may recognize some relationship between the hop and lager beer to prove the existence of a devil, but I can’t see how a hop testifies for any brand of a God that is against liquor.

You say a great mind has had to do with the framing of this universe. The Standard Dictionary defines “mind” to be “the entire psychical being of man.” Webster defines “mind” to be “the intellectual, or intelligent, power of man.”

These dictionaries agree that “mind” is a part of man, and if “mind” had anything to do with “the framing of this universe,” then man must have had something to do with “the framing of this universe,” and I reckon he didn’t. Guess you are in water over your head and you had better try to get ashore.

The opinion of Mr. B.A. Wright, in the Blade may B. Wright, or it may B. Wrong, but even if man does stand at the head of the animal creation instead of the tail of the animal creation, as there seems some reason to believe, I don’t see how that proves that there is a God. All that about “mechanical arrangement” sounds well enough if we were discussing natural philosophy or dynamics, but we are trying to find out if there is any God. You ask me: “What is it that leaves the brain at death that renders it unable to think?” I give it up; ask me something easy. But what about it? We are discussing the existence of a God, and I am a theologian and not an physiologist. Same about the origin of life. I don’t have to know or even to have an opinion on that subject. We are not discussing biology. We are talking about the existence of a God.

You talk funny. You say: “If it is a fact (and a fact it certainly is),” etc. Why say, “If it is a fact,” which expresses doubt, when you say it certainly is a fact.” which affirms that there is no doubt?

They say that death and taxes are “certain,” but the domain of the certain is very limited, and you ought to go slow in asserting the “certain.” You want to know how an idea is carried over from the mind to the nervous system.

Not my graft; didn’t even know it was carried over; thought may be it just walked over. Ask some doctor. You ask me the same question a second time, but I don’t know any more about it that I did the first time.

Same about the pumpkin—give it up. Ditto about the pig and the lamb and the goose. I used to know that one about the fox and the goose and the corn that a mans had to take over in a boat, but I am not specially good on riddles. Same way about the oak and the acorn—which was first? I can’t give my 15,000 readers the origin of a single think in this universe, even with the “God idea” in, and you say I can’t do it with the “God idea” out, so why do you keep on asking me so many hard questions? Ask me an easy one.

You say I know that this world is made up of little things, but I don’t. I didn’t even know that it was made up at all—thought may be it had been here always.

I haven’t specially “limited” myself—could write this whole paper full if I wanted to, (missing text) I think five Blades full (missing text) be a little too much of a muchness. If you are going to write any more on this subject, I would be obliged to you if you would “limit” yourself some, unless you have some argument to prove the existence of a God. Please confine yourself to that subject and discuss pigs and geese in an article to some farm journal. This is a religious paper.

That joke about my hair and whiskers is pretty good—only trouble about it is that we old Blade readers had worn it out years ago, and had let up on it; but you are probably a new beginner on the Blade and didn’t know about that. But if I were you I wouldn’t say it any more.