Any fans of the Sage of Baltimore out there? I have been dipping into A Mencken Crestomathy, the collection of excerpts from his writings that he put together late in his life (cres·tom·a·thy: "a collection of choice passages from an author or authors"). The section on "religion" is predictably satisfying. A piece that appears under the title "Immune" (pp. 80–81) sounds a note that we have been hearing a lot recently from Richard Dawkins and other so-called new atheists:
The piece was originally published in the Baltimore Evening Sun in 1918. Of course, such stuff would be considered far too inflammatory to gain publication in a major newspaper today.The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone. . . .
There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly. . . .
No, there is nothing notably dignified about religious ideas. They run, rather, to a peculiarly puerile and tedious kind of nonsense. At their best, they are borrowed from metaphysicians, which is to say, from men who devote their lives to proving that twice two is not always or necessarily four. At their worst, they smell of spiritualism and fortune-telling. Nor is there any visible virtue in the men who merchant them professionally.