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Hence, with the exception of two or three denominations, to become a professed Christian means to accept credulously and without question a system of belief about Nature and man and the world which you would deny in toto if you reasoned as you do about other things, and which you do practically deny by re-explaining and refining it into anything but what is stated. Down deep in your heart you do not, and never did, believe it in the same honest way in which you form your other opinions.

Think for a moment of the Christian idea of the world, its origin, its shape, place, importance, and its final end. Does any man or woman who has been through a common-school geography believe the ideas implied in the common Christian dogmas regarding the world? We must remember that the world taught in the geography is not the Christian world.

The world taught in the Christian dogmas is beneath the heavens—not a rolling sphere flying through space. It is flat, and the sun and stars pass over it daily. It is the chief object of God's creation on which to place man. It is God's footstool, and his throne is Heaven above. He created it just four thousand and four years before the Christian era began. Now we all know that this is not true; that there is no up nor down; that the earth is not the center; that it is not flat; that the sun does not go round it; that it is a very insignificant little orb; that "up in Heaven" is an utterly meaningless expression; and that the world is not a creation, but an evolution.