But if God made man, then God is responsible for all man's acts and
thoughts, and therefore man cannot sin against God.

And if man could not sin against God, but could only act as God ordained
that he should act, then it is against reason to suppose that God could
be angry with man, or could punish man, or see any offence for which to
pardon man.

I cannot believe that man has ever forsaken God. Because history
shows that man has from the earliest times been eagerly and pitifully
seeking God, and has served and raised and sacrificed to God with a
zeal akin to madness. But God has made no sign.

I cannot believe that man was at the first created "perfect," and
that he "fell." (How could the perfect fall?) I believe the theory
of evolution, which shows not a fall but a gradual rise.

I cannot believe that God is a loving "Heavenly Father," taking a
tender interest in mankind. Because He has never interfered to prevent
the horrible cruelties and injustices of man to man, and because He
has permitted evil to rule the world. I cannot reconcile the idea
of a tender Heavenly Father with the known horrors of war, slavery,
pestilence, and insanity. I cannot discern the hand of a loving
Father in the slums, in the earthquake, in the cyclone. I cannot
understand the indifference of a loving Father to the law of prey,
nor to the terrors and tortures of leprosy, cancer, cholera, and
consumption.

I cannot believe that God is a personal God, who intervenes in human