Politics & Power Quote by Robert G. Ingersoll

Ingersoll turns theology into economics, and the move is not subtle: he drags the sacred into the marketplace, where claims can be compared, multiplied, and ultimately discounted. “Poor” is the first barb. Monotheism isn’t framed as moral refinement; it’s framed as scarcity, the kind that comes from deprivation rather than wisdom. The insinuation is that a single god is less an achievement than an accident of limited imagination, political control, or cultural austerity.

The joke sharpens with the language of manufacture: “made,” “raw material,” “cost so little.” If gods are cheap to produce, then their value can’t rest on rarity or evidence, only on demand. Ingersoll’s target isn’t just religion, but the authority it claims. By portraying deities as mass-produced “phantoms,” he suggests they are projections that thrive because they are easy, not because they are true. It’s a skeptical theory of belief disguised as a punchline: when the barrier to invention is low, the supply explodes.

Context matters. Ingersoll, the era’s most famous American freethinker, spoke in the late 19th century when Darwin, higher biblical criticism, and industrial modernity were unsettling inherited certainties. His lawyer’s sensibility shows: he cross-examines the metaphysics by attacking credibility and incentives. “Heaven crammed” is more than imagery; it’s a condemnation of credulity as clutter. The subtext is bracingly democratic and bracingly cynical: if anyone can mint a god, no institution gets to monopolize awe, fear, or moral leverage.