You can only destroy, you can only punish. And I warn you that a wicked law like a plague destroys everyone it touches, whether its followers or its defiers.
If you take a law as Revolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools. Tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools. And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholics against Protestants, and Protestants against Protestants. And try to force your own religion upon the mind of the man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeded. And soon your honor, with banners flying and with drums beating, we will be marching backward, backward! To the glorious ages of that 16 century, when bigots burned the man who dare bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind.
Call Brady as a witness:
Is it possible that something is holy to the celebrated agnostic?
Yes
The individual human mind
In a child's power to master the multiplication table, there is more sanctity than all your shouted out "Amens" "Holy holy" and
An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.
And the advance of man's knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned into snakes and the parting of the waters.
But now are we to forgo all those progress b/c now Mr. Brady frightens us with a fable?
Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it.
Sometimes I think there is a man who sits behind a counter and says "all right, you can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charms of distance. ""Madam, you may vote, but as a price you lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petty coat.""Mr. you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder. And the clouds will smell of gasoline. "
Darwin took us forward to a hill top, from where we could look back and see the way where we came
But for this insight and for this knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis.
Brady: We must not abandon faith. Faith is the most important thing.
Then why did God plead us the power to think? Mr. Brady why did you deny? The one faculty the man raises above the other creatures of the Earth? The power of his brain to reason. What other is to be pride of? The elephant is larger, the horse is stronger, the butterfly is far more beautiful, the mosquito was more prolific. Even a simple sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?
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It is sad we don't all have your positive knowledge of what is right and wrong, Mr. Brady.
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The Bible is a book, it is a good book, but it is not the only book.
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God tells Brady what is good. To be against Brady is to be against God.
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