"For myself, I do not recognize any existing church or state as complete in itself or founded by God. There is absolutely nothing in church or state that cannot be traced to a perfectly natural origin.... Instead of the religious idea that God breathed into clay the breath of life, and so man came into existence in the image of God, we know beyond question that man's ancestors were animals, and he is the image of his animal parentage.... Singing hymns, saying prayers, learning catechism, attending the services of a place miscalled a sanctuary will do nothing whatever to effect the ends for which men are striving.... The church will attract its own, and the Socialist cause will draw those who belong to it. People who are interested in fossils and relics and curios will find a congenial place in the church as will also the ignorant and deluded masses."
George D. Herron, who, like William T. Brown, had once been a minister, on becoming a Socialist expressed his atheistic sentiments by writing in the "International Socialist Review," Chicago, August, 1901:
"When the gods are dead to rise no more, man will begin to live. After the end of the gods, when there is nothing else to which we may turn, nothing left outside of ourselves, we shall turn to one another for fellowship, and behold! the heart of all worship is exposed and we have omnipotence in our hands.... "There will be no more priests, no rulers, no judges, when fellowship comes and the gods are gone. And when there are neither priests, nor rulers, nor judges, there will be no evil on earth, nor none called good, to stand over against others called evil."
John Spargo, a former Socialist of considerable renown in the United States, and until recently very popular with the party, speaking of