Some Mistakes of Moses

By Robert G. Ingersoll

This work was chosen by scientists as culturally significant and is part of the knowledge base of civilization, as we know it. Robert Green Ingersoll's book is a study of the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Bible, usually attributed to Moses. The author did not write the book in order to refute the faith of Christianity, but rather because he considers religion as often causing a split. Ingersoll takes a balanced approach to his criticism of the Old Testament, carefully advancing in his work and raising his objections to the various stories presented.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iBooks
• Release date: Jun 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781082354441

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Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author's imagination

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL BIOGRAPHY

I. HE WHO ENDEAVORS TO CONTROL THE MIND BY FORCE IS A TYRANT, AND HE WHO SUBMITS IS A SLAVE

II. FREE SCHOOLS

III. THE POLITICIANS

IV. MAN AND WOMAN

V. THE PENTATEUCH

VI. MONDAY

VII. TUESDAY

VIII. WEDNESDAY

IX. THURSDAY

X. HE MADE THE STARS ALSO

XI. FRIDAY

XII. SATURDAY

XIII. LET US MAKE MAN

XIV. SUNDAY

XV. THE NECESSITY FOR A GOOD MEMORY

XVI. THE GARDEN

XVII. THE FALL

XVIII. DAMPNESS

XIX. BACCHUS AND BABEL

XX. FAITH IN FILTH

XXI. THE HEBREWS

XXII. THE PLAGUES

XXIII. THE FLIGHT

XXIV. CONFESS AND AVOID

XXV. INSPIRED SLAVERY

XXVI. INSPIRED MARRIAGE

XXVII. INSPIRED WAR

XXVIII. INSPIRED RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

XXIX. CONCLUSION

Robert Green Ingersoll

(1833-1899)

 Robert Green Ingersoll is too little known today. Yet he was the foremost orator and political speechmaker of late 19th century America — perhaps the best-known American of the post-Civil War era.

Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York in 1833. His father was a Presbyterian minister who changed congregations often. The Ingersolls left Dresden when the baby Robert was less than four months old. Ingersoll would make his name as a resident of Peoria, Illinois; Washington, D.C.; and finally New York City. Yet the house of his birth remains the only Ingersoll residence that is open to the public as a memorial to him.

Ingersoll entered public life as a Peoria, Illinois, attorney. Following distinguished service in the Civil War, he served as the first Attorney General of Illinois. Politically, he allied with the Republicans, the party of Lincoln and in those days the voice of progressivism. Ingersoll’s electrifying speaking voice soon made him the most sought-after speechmaker on behalf of Republican candidates and causes. His legal career was also distinguished. He mounted a successful defense of two men falsely charged in the Star Route Scandal, perhaps the most controversial, politically-charged trial of the late 19th century.

But it was his private speaking career that made him famous. Tour after tour, he crisscrossed the country and spoke before packed houses on topics ranging from Shakespeare to Reconstruction, from science to religion. In an age when oratory was the dominant form of public entertainment, Ingersoll was the unchallenged king of American orators.

Ingersoll was the friend of Presidents, literary giants like Mark Twain, captains of industry like Andrew Carnegie, and leading figures in the arts. He was also beloved of reformers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Other Americans considered themselves his enemies.

He bitterly opposed the Religious Right of his day. He was an early popularizer of Charles Darwin and a tireless advocate of science and reason. More, he argued for the rights of women and African-Americans.

Ingersoll also praised the virtues of family and fireside. And he practiced what he preached. Contemporary sources say Ingersoll enjoyed almost idyllic contentment in family life. Opponents frequently despaired of finding anything to disparage in his personal life.

The Birth & Youth of Robert G. Ingersoll

Robert Ingersoll was born August 11, 1833, the youngest of five children of John and Mary Ingersoll. John Ingersoll was a Presbyterian minister. He was a man who believed, in the words of Elbert Hubbard, that that which was pleasant was not wholly good.

By all accounts a stern, uncompromising parson, John Ingersoll preached abolitionist sermons so fiery that congregations often dismissed him. Dresden’s was no exception; the Ingersolls left this area before Robert was four months old. Mary Ingersoll died at thirty-one, when Robert was one and one-half years of age. Reverend Ingersoll and the five children continued to wander. During Robert’s childhood, the family lived in various communities in New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Robert Ingersoll received little formal schooling. He last saw the inside of a conventional schoolroom as a youth of fifteen while his family was residing in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Later, he would say that his real education began while he was waiting at a cobbler’s shop, when he chanced to pick up a book of the poetry of Robert Burns.

At last the family came to settle in Illinois. In this state Robert Green Ingersoll, now a young man, determined to seek his fortune. He had some of his father’s gift for oratory, but had seen enough of the frontier preacher’s life. He apprenticed himself to two lawyers, one after another, and in that way qualified himself for the practice of law.

The Peoria Years With His Brother Ebon Clark Ingersoll

Robert set up a law practice in the growing town of Peoria, Illinois. The law practice prospered. Both brothers became active in local politics.

In 1861 Robert Ingersoll raised the 11th Illinois Cavalry Regiment and was awarded the rank of Colonel. The regiment broke camp and entered active service on February 22. Ingersoll’s regiment fought with distinction in the Battle of Shiloh.

Soon after, Ingersoll was captured. As was sometimes done with officers early in the war,

Ingersoll was paroled: allowed to go free on condition that he not fight again.

Ingersoll built a reputation for oratory during and after the war. In 1867 he was appointed the first Attorney General of Illinois. It was the first – and last – public office Ingersoll would ever hold. Ingersoll’s speechmaking played a vital role in his brother Ebon’s successful congressional campaign. In 1868 he was considered for the state’s Republican gubernatorial nomination, but passed over when he would not agree to make fewer speeches on controversial subjects, from women’s rights to religion.

Ingersoll & Politics

Ingersoll was the best-known political speechmaker in 19th century America. In 1876 he gave a speech before the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, nominating James G. Blaine for the presidency. The party nominated Rutherford B. Hayes instead, but Ingersoll’s nominating speech – known ever after as the Plumed Knight speech – was considered for decades afterward the classic political speech of the age. Candidates sought Ingersoll’s oratorical services eagerly. He campaigned for every Republican Presidential candidate but one, from Grant to McKinley. Yet because of his outspoken and controversial views, Ingersoll was never appointed to public office by any of the politicians whose election he helped to secure.

Ingersoll & The Law

Ingersoll’s law practice added to his fame. Starting in 1880, he defended Thomas J.Brady and Stephen W. Dorsey in the famous Star Route Trial. The Star Route affair, which concerned the misassignment of rural postal routes, was the Watergate scandal of its day.

The nation watched Ingersoll deftly weave what would become the longest trial defense in American history. After months of testimony, Ingersoll secured acquittals for his clients.

Cartoons of the time suggested that Star Route made Ingersoll rich. In fact, he was paid only with a New Mexico ranch of dubious utility.

In 1886, Ingersoll offered himself pro bono to defend Charles B. Reynolds, a prominent freethinker who had been arrested in Boonton, New Jersey under an archaic blasphemy law.

Reynolds was convicted and Ingersoll paid the $50 fine himself. But so effectively had Ingersoll mocked the idea of blasphemy laws in a free society that few states have attempted a blasphemy prosecution since.

The Electrifying Orator

Between 1865 and 1899 Ingersoll crisscrossed the country on more than a dozen speaking tours. He would pack the largest theaters of the day at the then-substantial admission of $1 apiece. Ingersoll had numerous three- to four-hour lectures committed to memory. No human being had been seen and heard by more Americans – or would be until the advent of motion pictures, radio, and television. His subjects ranged from Shakespeare and Burns to religion, from political and moral issues to the lives of famous patriots and scientists.

Among his best-known speeches were The Gods, Ghosts, Humboldt, Shakespeare, and What Must We Do To Be Saved?

Ingersoll was beloved by contemporary leaders in all walks of life. Among his admirers were president James Garfield, poet Walt Whitman, General Ulysses S. Grant, industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, inventor Thomas Edison, and preacher Henry Ward Beecher. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was especially impressed by Ingersoll. After hearing Ingersoll speak, he wrote his wife Olivia Langdon Clemens: What an organ is human speech when it is employed by a master!

Ingersoll’s Residences After leaving Peoria

Ingersoll lived in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Neither residence stands today.

His New York brownstone was razed in the 1920s to make room for the Gramercy Park Hotel.

Ingersoll’s admirers placed a tablet honoring Ingersoll on the hotel when it opened. In later years, this tablet was vandalized and had to be removed. The Robert Green Ingersoll Memorial Committee placed a new plaque on the exterior of New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel in 1988.

Death & Remembrance

Ingersoll died of heart failure on July 21, 1899 at Walston, his son-in-law’s palatial home in Dobbs Ferry-on-Hudson, New York. He was 65 years old. The house where Ingersoll died still stands, but it has been converted to condominiums. It is not open to the public and bears no memorial to Ingersoll. Ingersoll was buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, where his large grave marker can still be seen.

Shortly after Ingersoll’s death, his complete works were collected and published by his brother-in-law Clinton P. Farrell. The lavish 12-volume set was known as the Dresden Edition, named for the town of Ingersoll’s birth. The Dresden Edition went through numerous printings. Later versions include Herman Kittredge’s biography of Ingersoll as the thirteenth volume.

I. HE WHO ENDEAVORS TO CONTROL THE MIND BY FORCE IS A TYRANT, AND HE WHO SUBMITS IS A SLAVE.

I want to do what little I can to make my country truly free, to broaden the intellectual horizon of our people, to destroy the prejudices born of ignorance and fear, to do away with the blind worship of the ignoble past, with the idea that all the great and good are dead, that the living are totally depraved, that all pleasures are sins, that sighs and groans are alone pleasing to God, that thought is dangerous, that intellectual courage is a crime, that cowardice is a virtue, that a certain belief is necessary to secure salvation, that to carry a cross in this world will give us a palm in the next, and that we must allow some priest to be the pilot of our souls.

Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ, and yet grasp each other's hands as friends. It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and despise each other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or the Trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other seems beyond the comprehension of man; and yet in all countries where Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us?

Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is—not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends even, but that they treat those who differ from them, with simple fairness.

We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish Christians to so act that we will not have to forgive them.

If all will admit that all have an equal right to think, then the question is forever solved; but as long as organized and powerful churches, pretending to hold the keys of heaven and hell, denounce every person as an outcast and criminal who thinks for himself and denies their authority, the world will be filled with hatred and suffering. To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.

That which has happened in most countries has happened in ours. When a religion is founded, the educated, the powerful—that is to say, the priests and nobles, tell the ignorant and superstitious—that is to say, the people, that the religion of their country was given to their fathers by God himself; that it is the only true religion; that all others were conceived in falsehood and brought forth in fraud, and that all who believe in the true religion will be happy forever, while all others will burn in hell. For the purpose of governing the people, that is to say, for the purpose of being supported by the people, the priests and nobles declare this religion to be sacred, and that whoever adds to, or takes from it, will be burned here by man, and hereafter by God. The result of this is, that the priests and nobles will not allow the people to change; and when, after a time, the priests, having intellectually advanced, wish to take a step in the direction of progress, the people will not allow them to change. At first, the rabble are enslaved by the priests, and afterwards the rabble become the masters.

One of the first things I wish to do, is to free the orthodox clergy. I am a great friend of theirs, and in spite of all they may say against me, I am going to do them a great and lasting service. Upon their necks are visible the marks of the collar, and upon their backs those of the lash. They are not allowed to read and think for themselves. They are taught like parrots, and the best are those who repeat, with the fewest mistakes, the sentences they have been taught. They sit like owls upon some dead limb of the tree of knowledge, and hoot the same old hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. Their congregations are not grand enough, nor sufficiently civilized, to be willing that the poor preachers shall think for themselves. They are not employed for that purpose. Investigation regarded as a dangerous experiment, and the ministers are warned that none of that kind of work will be tolerated. They are notified to stand by the old creed, and to avoid all original thought, as a mortal pestilence. Every minister is employed like an attorney—either for plaintiff or defendant,—and he is expected to be true to his client. If he changes his mind, he is regarded as a deserter, and denounced, hated, and slandered accordingly. Every orthodox clergyman agrees not to change. He contracts not to find new facts, and makes a bargain that he will deny them if he does. Such is the position of a Protestant minister in this nineteenth century. His condition excites my pity; and to better it, I am going to do what little I can.

Some of the clergy have