When religious vampires use superstitions to bring about the deaths and subjugation of other humans, does the religion become a cult of hate?
While this article was originally published in a Kentucky newspaper in 1908, it provides insight into some of the problems persistent in today’s world.
The Persistence of Superstition
Human Slavery as a Divine Institution Comes under the Critic’s Pen.
Get Rid of the Vampires.
By Dr. T. J. Bowles
Superstition is the child of ignorance and hate. It breeds malice – it petrifies the heart – it ossifies the brain – it is a coiled serpent with poisonous fangs – it is a wild beast in ambush, thirsting for the blood of innocent victims.
Only a little while ago superstition, with its bloody hands, seized the good and the great Servetus, ties him to a stake, and with green hickory wood piled around him, slowly and fiendishly burned to ashes the body of this sublime teacher and grand philosopher.
His offense consisted in an effort to rid the world of the absurd and idiotic superstition that the maker of all the worlds had an infinite and eternal son.
This beautiful, heroic and matchless man flooded the world with light and love, and when I recall the awful fact that during all the centuries, superstition has been piling fagots [bundles of sticks] around the feet of the good and the great, the merciful and the just, I am amazed and grieved that men and women can still be found who will defend this vile and hideous monster.
Only a little while ago the superstition was nearly universal that the God of the Universe had enjoined it as a duty upon the white man to keep the black man in perpetual bondage, and so thoroughly was this superstition ground into the popular mind and heart that it was embodied in a sacred hymn and sung by the heartless priests of superstition; I recall two lines of this infamous hymn:
“Slave-ships sail from coast to coast,
Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost.”
All the languages of all the tribes and all nations of the earth do not contain enough words to describe the agonies and horrors that were inflicted upon the human race by this inexpressibly savage superstition; and when we think of Lovejoy and Wendell Phillips; when we think of the gentle Channing and the dauntless Theodore Parker; when we think of the heroic Garrison and the matchless Sumner, who flung the flag of revolt to the breeze against this hydra headed monster, and finally planted it in triumph upon the ramparts of this devilish superstition, every knee should touch the ground, and every head should be uncovered, as a tribute to the memory of these fearless and noble defenders of Justice and Human Liberty.
Only a little while ago nearly all the people of Europe had their happiness blasted and their lives made wretched and miserable by the dreadful superstition that the air was swarming with vampires, who in the darkness and stillness of the night visited men, women, and children while asleep, and sucked blood from their bodies; for many centuries this horrible nightmare and dreadful superstition completely robbed life of all its joys, and converted the continent of Europe into an earthly hell.
In a modified form vampirism still prevails all over the civilized world, but our vampires are not the ghosts of dead men – they are clothed with flesh and intensely alive and active – they are rotund, sleek and fat, and dressed in purple and fine linen. Unlike the vampires of old who sucked the blood of their victims only at night, our vampires continue their nefarious work unceasingly, and such the blood from the whole human family every minute both by day and by night.
The vampires of olden times knew nothing about the value of organization for mutual aid, but each one acted independently, and went forth at night thirsting for the blood of a sleeping victim; but our modern vampires have learned the immense benefits which spring from combination, and by the aid of cunningly organized schemes under the cover of law, they have no difficulty in robbing the widow of her pittance, and the orphans of their inheritance; every day and every hour the ignorant toiling millions of the earth are cheerfully handing over to the vile priests of superstition the fruits of their labor and the products of their toil, in exchange for fraudulent titles to corner lots in the New Jerusalem; the bloodsucking power of these modern vampires and false pretenders is almost unlimited.
Every man in the world who loves wife and child, and who feels an interest in the generations that are yet to come, should wage an unceasing warfare against these modern vampires who literally live upon the flesh and blood of the suffering and the toiling millions.
How long! O, how long will it yet be before mankind will learn that the vampires of superstition still have their poisonous fangs fastened into the quivering flesh of millions of innocent men, women and children?
Source: Blue-grass blade. (Lexington, Ky.), 25 Oct. 1908.
