What constructive work has been done by the church? Christianity gave us a flat world a few thousand years ago -- a heaven above it where Jehovah dwells and a hell below it where most people will dwell. Christianity took the ground that a certain belief was necessary to salvation and that this belief was far better and of more importance than the practice of all the virtues. It became the enemy of investigation -- the bitter and relentless foe of reason and the liberty of thought. It committed every crime and practiced every cruelty in the propagation of its creed. It drew the sword against the freedom of the world. It established schools and universities for the preservation of ignorance, it claimed to have within its keeping the source and standard of all truth. If the church had succeeded the sciences could not have existed.
Freethought has given us all we have of value. It has been the great constructive force. It is the only discoverer, and every science is its child.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)