"FREETHINKER" AGAIN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11093, 2 June 1914, Page 5

"FREETHINKER" AGAIN.

TO THE EDITOR Sir.—lt would take an, experienced tangoist to keep pace with Miss Christie. 'Therefore with your permission .1 will state my reply briefly, allowing, as is customary, the lady to have the last word. My objection to theosophy is this, that it is a dogmatism based on pure hypothesis without evidence. Miss Christie, is quite certain that immortal souls gravitate from one body to another until the inhabitant soul eventually reaches perfection. "Well, I have nin my eye over a good many saints in my time, but they were not built up to any such specification. In tho bulk they were all right, but there wero flaws. Look back over the past fivfl hundred ■ years and humanity has not come very far, and as far as it has come soap rather than theosophy has been tho prime moving factor. After aeons of travail we have a thin veneer of civilisation over a dense mass of savagery and ignorance. The Christians claim credit for such improvement as has been manifested, but even that, is a matter for argument, because most of us keep our Christianity for one day in the week. Some think that people have become comparatively enlightened de.spite the efforts of higots to impede, the wheels of progress! But that is not what wo are...discussing. Miss Christie says that a' man by tho exercise of will-power can shape, his destiny on theosophical lines and become eventually superhuman. I pointed out that after all man is only a superior kind of beast subject to precisely the same laws as all the other creatures in tho animal world, the same kind of birth and life, the same kind of bodies, tho same kind of death at the fall of the curtain, the same definite obliteration. Where are th© deadP Nobody knows.. Where is heaven? Nobody knows. The latest news about hell is that there isn't any. Miss Christie says souls come back to inhabit other bodies. Good souls inhabit saints. Bod souls inhabit devils, and so on. There is absolutely no evidence.in support of this theory, because, as I pointed out before, innocent persons are often inflicted with terrible punishments and the. wicked frequently flourish like the green bay tree. The world is as greedy, immoral and selfish'as it was fiftv'years ago. and the only signs of improvement come from those who are determined to make tho best use of. this life and let the hereafter look after itself. Such human betterment as .we have is due to science and soap. Ton cannot produce a tame bird out of a wild bird's 1 egg. nor a. saint from a criminal progenitor. Theosophists are pious aspirants to better things, but if their theorv is right tho Bible is wrong, and the Bible is the beacon light which most people steer bv.—l sm. etc.. FREE THINKER.