Wade! Here's the passage from Michael Shermer's The Science of Good and Evil.
"The nineteenth-century philosopher Robert G. Ingersoll, a secular moral hero if ever there was one, found additional freedoms in a naturalistic worldview, including freedom from
"The nineteenth-century philosopher Robert G. Ingersoll, a secular moral hero if ever there was one, found additional freedoms in a naturalistic worldview, including freedom from
the fear of eternal pain . . . from the winged monsters of the night . . . from devils, ghosts, and gods . . . no chains for my limbs - no lashes for my back - no fires for my flesh - no master's frown or threat - no following another's steps - no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl . . . I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds . . . And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain - for the freedom of labor and thought - to those who fell in the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains - to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs - to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn - to those by fire consumed - to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of me. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still."This was the feeling of freedom of nontheism that I was trying to explain to you when I visited you at Wheaton many months back!
