Though hardly an original thought, the simple articulation is indicative of what makes the entire book so enjoyable to read. In that simple telling a light is shone on the limits of man's mind, as incredible as it is in many ways. The vastness of time can never be truly grasped by us, all tears that are shed are ultimately of the self-pitying variety, all actions are selfish and all concepts of god in the end are only a deification of ourselves. The righteous scum who latch onto the vengeful image of god are of course ecstatic that their own feelings have been given legitimacy. When they invoke the name of god they are referring to themselves though they are so short-sighted and foolish as to not embrace the simplicity of that fact.

Ingersoll ultimately strikes a hopeful and positive note and never once, as the "agnostic" in the book's title refers to, claims to know the answers, only that those who do propose simplistic solutions are fools. That the fundamental questions of existence remain unknowable drives many into the arms of the dispensers of fairy tales with the caveat that they must also accept a degradation of all else in life that potentially holds wonder or the key to a worldly plane of pleasure that might never be fully quantified or understood.

However, more than one hundred years after the book was published and as we look forward to this new century that is certain to be mankind's bloodiest, Ingersoll may have been too optimistic:

"Nothing gives me greater joy than to know that this belief in eternal pain is growing weaker every day-that thousands of ministers are ashamed of it. It gives me joy to know that Christians are becoming merciful, so merciful that the fires of hell are burning low-flickering, choked with ashes, destined in a few years to die out forever."

That they can punish themselves during their one existence in all eternity is their own damn loss but the danger these clods present to others is reason to continually stand up to them and prevent them from further insinuating themselves into the governments of the world.

Originally appeared at: Pistonhips: misanthropic ravings from an expat in Bangkok