Psychiana No. 11 [transcript]

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:29 Unknown Speaker: Every day, scientists are giving us new and more accurate ideas of the nature of our universe. Doctor Millikan has told us about cosmic rays. Einstein has changed our ideas about space. But perhaps transcending all of these discoveries is that of doctor Frank Robinson, a discovery which he called Scheana. Well, he has given something of tremendous importance to us as human beings, something that profoundly affects our daily lives.

00:00:30:01 - 00:00:46:09 Unknown Speaker: He has given us a new and more accurate conception of God. He has swept aside the superstitions, the old beliefs borrowed from pagan mythology, and has shown us that God is not some sort of supernatural being located somewhere out there in the sky, but an all.

00:00:46:09 - 00:00:47:11 Frank Bruce Robinson: Powerful, all.

00:00:47:11 - 00:01:10:25 Unknown Speaker: Pervading force. A principle which, when we learn to understand and use it, can give us the things we want, not in some far distant future, not in some vague land beyond the grave, but right here and now. More than that, he has proved this, proved it in his own life and the lives of thousands upon thousands of thinking people all over the world.

00:01:10:28 - 00:01:27:02 Unknown Speaker: Would you like to visit Doctor Robinson’s study in Moscow, Idaho, and hear him explain his philosophy? I’m sure you would. And all you have to do is lean back in your chair and let our guide take you there.

00:01:27:04 - 00:01:37:25 Unknown Speaker: Dark clouds are massed over the hills of northern Idaho. Thunder reverberates from peak to peak.

00:01:37:27 - 00:01:39:26 Unknown Speaker: The inky black sky is lit.

00:01:39:28 - 00:01:41:04 Frank Bruce Robinson: By flashes.

00:01:41:04 - 00:01:44:15 Unknown Speaker: Of lightning.

00:01:44:18 - 00:01:45:02 Unknown Speaker: It is with a.

00:01:45:02 - 00:01:46:13 Frank Bruce Robinson: Feeling of relief.

00:01:46:15 - 00:01:50:16 Unknown Speaker: That we see the light at the windows of Doctor Robinson Hall and knock at the.

00:01:50:16 - 00:01:55:02 Frank Bruce Robinson: Door.

00:01:55:04 - 00:01:58:20 Frank Bruce Robinson: Come in.

00:01:58:22 - 00:02:03:07 Frank Bruce Robinson: Come in, come in before this storm blows you away.

00:02:03:10 - 00:02:07:20 Unknown Speaker: Hey, when it storms up here, it really storms, doesn’t it?

00:02:07:23 - 00:02:21:16 Frank Bruce Robinson: Yes. That’s right. Here, let me have your hat and coat. I’ll hang them over here where they can dry out of it. There we are. Sit down and rest yourself. You look a bit out of breath.

00:02:21:18 - 00:02:26:13 Unknown Speaker: Thanks. Bucking that wind was no fun. I am out of breath.

00:02:26:16 - 00:02:31:05 Frank Bruce Robinson: Well, while you’re getting it back again, suppose we have a little music.

00:02:31:08 - 00:02:37:28 Unknown Speaker: You don’t have to ask my permission, doctor. That’s one of the reasons why I like to come up here to hear you play.

00:02:38:01 - 00:04:03:20 Frank Bruce Robinson: Well, if you wait till I switch on the organ here, we’ll see what we can do.

00:04:03:22 - 00:04:29:02 Unknown Speaker: You.

00:04:29:04 - 00:04:32:16 Unknown Speaker: That was very beautiful, doctor.

00:04:32:19 - 00:04:35:28 Frank Bruce Robinson: But apparently not beautiful enough to calm a storm.

00:04:36:00 - 00:04:38:04 Unknown Speaker: Why? What do you mean?

00:04:38:07 - 00:04:45:07 Frank Bruce Robinson: don’t you believe that a storm is a manifestation of an angry god? And that we humans have something to do to appease him?

00:04:45:13 - 00:04:46:19 Unknown Speaker: Hey, are you joking?

00:04:46:24 - 00:04:59:01 Frank Bruce Robinson: No, I’m quite serious. Don’t you believe that God does get angry on account of our sins, and that we have to make some kind of atonement. Offer a sacrifice in order to put him in a good humor game.

00:04:59:04 - 00:05:00:25 Unknown Speaker: I certainly do not.

00:05:00:27 - 00:05:08:29 Frank Bruce Robinson: But I thought you told me you were raised in unorthodox belief. And the atonement is a part of the very foundation of orthodox belief, isn’t it?

00:05:09:07 - 00:05:13:23 Unknown Speaker: Yes. But, well, the way you put it, you make it sound absurd.

00:05:13:26 - 00:05:30:21 Frank Bruce Robinson: Well, let me put it another way, then. In spite of the fact that the doctrine of atonement is at the core of orthodox religious teachings, do you honestly believe that God is the sort of a being who had to be appeased by sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own son?

00:05:30:24 - 00:05:32:11 Unknown Speaker: Frankly, doctor, I don’t believe it.

00:05:32:15 - 00:05:33:20 Frank Bruce Robinson: Why not?

00:05:33:22 - 00:05:39:17 Unknown Speaker: Well, well, because it doesn’t sound right. It sounds like superstition.

00:05:39:19 - 00:06:00:06 Frank Bruce Robinson: And that’s exactly what it is. Probably you imagine that the doctrine of atonement is something which only exists in present Orthodoxy. Orthodox beliefs. Well, it isn’t. It’s something which has been barred from pagan practices, which go back to the very dawn of history, hundreds of years before the Christian religion came into being.

00:06:00:08 - 00:06:02:19 Unknown Speaker: Can you give me proof of that? Doctor Robinson.

00:06:02:26 - 00:06:24:22 Frank Bruce Robinson: I certainly can. Plenty of fruit, for instance, 1200 years before Christ. The Hindus believe that the crucifixion of their sin atoning savior called Krishna put an end to both animal and human sacrifices. In other words, the crucifixion of Krishna atone for the sins of the world.

00:06:24:24 - 00:06:30:07 Unknown Speaker: You say the Hindus believe that 1200 years before Christ.

00:06:30:10 - 00:06:34:16 Frank Bruce Robinson: That’s right. You can find that fact in any standard reference book.

00:06:34:18 - 00:06:41:12 Unknown Speaker: And that their Savior’s name was Krishna, and he was crucified to atone for the sins of the world.

00:06:41:14 - 00:06:45:07 Frank Bruce Robinson: Yes. that’s the story. Have a familiar ring to it.

00:06:45:09 - 00:06:50:20 Unknown Speaker: Why? It’s almost identical to the story which orthodox religious systems teach us right now.

00:06:50:22 - 00:07:05:18 Frank Bruce Robinson: Of course it is, because, as I say, the story was taken from a pagan religion. However, the doctrine of atonement goes back much further than 1200 BC and went through a number of changes in its development.

00:07:05:20 - 00:07:07:03 Unknown Speaker: Tell me about them.

00:07:07:05 - 00:07:36:00 Frank Bruce Robinson: Well, there were many phases in vogue among the Orientals, which originated with the design of appeasing the anger and propitiate in the favor of an irascible deity. Most of these consisted of a sacrifice or destructive offering called the atonement. It appears to have been started with the sacrifice of the cheapest kind of property known, and from that starting point gradually arose to embody the most costly commodities.

00:07:36:03 - 00:07:55:20 Frank Bruce Robinson: In other words, the deities taste began to improve, and he commenced demanding more and more costly sacrifices. For instance, he preferred Abel sacrifice to Cain because the letters consisted of mere inanimate things, while Abel embraced the first things of the flock.

00:07:55:22 - 00:07:57:20 Unknown Speaker: Yes, I remember that.

00:07:57:23 - 00:08:17:12 Frank Bruce Robinson: But the deities appetite for costly commodities did not stop there. The god made more and more demands until, to cap the climax, it called for blood. Human blood. You may recall Paul’s declaration. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.

00:08:17:14 - 00:08:24:29 Unknown Speaker: Yes, I do recall it. And it always seemed to me that it was a well, a bloody doctrine.

00:08:25:01 - 00:08:44:27 Frank Bruce Robinson: And one which every normal, intelligent person would reject with instinctive horror. And yet there it stands, right at the core of the religious philosophy advocated by the religious organizations in our midst today. Religious organizations pretending to be the ambassadors of God.

00:08:45:00 - 00:08:52:21 Unknown Speaker: It seems strange that intelligent people living in a civilized age should ever accept such a barbarous custom.

00:08:52:24 - 00:09:21:07 Frank Bruce Robinson: Intelligent people do not accept it everywhere the world over. They are turning from Orthodox teachings. They may not know where some of these beliefs came from, but their common sense tells them that such doctrines cannot be right. They cannot be true. The conception of a God who delights in bloodshed cannot be the true conception. And if it is not the true conception, then the truth must lie somewhere else.

00:09:21:10 - 00:09:28:27 Unknown Speaker: Is there any other proof that the doctrine of atonement is not an inspired doctrine originating with orthodox belief?

00:09:29:00 - 00:09:53:17 Frank Bruce Robinson: Yes, indeed. Even prior to the day that I mentioned 1200 B.C., there was a custom in many countries of symbolizing sin by means of some article, usually a piece of cloth, and tying this cloth on the back or head or horns of an animal. Then the animal was driven into the wilderness or some other place so remote that the brute could not find its way back.

00:09:53:20 - 00:10:17:19 Frank Bruce Robinson: In this way, the cargo of sins was supposed to have been carried away. The cloth used for representing or enclosing the sins was usually of a red or scarlet color of the semblance of blood. In fact, it was generally dipped in blood when this cloth was fastened to the animal and was exposed to the weather and drenching rains, it naturally began to fade and finally became white.

00:10:17:22 - 00:10:32:25 Frank Bruce Robinson: And here we have the key to Isaiah’s declaration. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall become as wool, and thus the meaning of this obscure text is clearly explained by tracing its origin to its Oriental source.

00:10:32:28 - 00:10:34:29 Unknown Speaker: Well, that is interesting, doctor.

00:10:35:01 - 00:11:07:05 Frank Bruce Robinson: To carry away their sins. The ancient Jews used a goat known as a scapegoat. The Egyptians had escaped on the Chaldeans escape Ram. The Britons escaped both. The Mexicans escape. Lamb until the last of these religions has escaped God of Orthodox Christianity. For Jesus Christ may properly be termed the Escape God, as he stands in the same relation to his disciples as the goat to the Jews, and performs the same office.

00:11:07:07 - 00:11:27:07 Frank Bruce Robinson: This doctrine of the atonement, which is at the heart of the religious teachings of the present day, is a monstrous and morally revolting doctrine, and one that God knows nothing. Whatever of. It is a doctrine which teaches us that somebody’s blood must be shed, some bodies, veins and arteries deleted for every trivial offense committed against the moral laws.

00:11:27:10 - 00:11:57:12 Frank Bruce Robinson: Somebody must pay the penalty in blood. Somebody must be slaughtered for every little foible and peccadillo and moral blunder through a jarring man may chanced to stumble on the pilgrimage of life. Even if a God has to be dragged from his throne in heaven and murdered to accomplish it, nothing else will appease divine wrath. According to the present day church teachings, whose soul, possessing the slightest moral sensibility, does not inwardly and instinctively revolt at such a doctrine.

00:11:57:14 - 00:12:25:25 Frank Bruce Robinson: I would not teach that doctrine for the world, for it is founded in butchery and bloodshed, and is an old pagan superstition which originated far back in the midnight of mental darkness and heathen ignorance, when the whole human race was under the brutal sway of their propensities. And when the ennobling attribute of love, mercy and forgiveness had as yet found no abiding place in the human bosom, the bloody soul of the savage first gave his birth.

00:12:25:28 - 00:12:41:06 Frank Bruce Robinson: And I hold the doctrine to be a high handed insult to the loving father, who we are told is long suffering in mercy and plentiful in forgiveness. To charge him with sanctioning such a doctrine, much less with originating it.

00:12:41:08 - 00:12:47:25 Unknown Speaker: You make that very plain and easy to understand, doctor. And now there’s something else I’d like to ask you to explain.

00:12:47:28 - 00:12:51:09 Frank Bruce Robinson: Oh, come. I think we’ve had enough talk for one session.

00:12:51:12 - 00:12:53:13 Unknown Speaker: But we still have a few minutes left.

00:12:53:16 - 00:13:11:04 Frank Bruce Robinson: Well, then I’ll compromise with you instead of talking. I’ll play. Here’s a number that’s been running through my mind all day.

00:13:11:06 - 00:13:29:28 Frank Bruce Robinson: For.

00:13:30:00 - 00:13:52:12 Unknown Speaker: In his discussion, Doctor Robinson made a remark that struck me with considerable force. He said, regarding the present orthodox conception of God. If it is not the true conception, then the truth must lie somewhere else. Is it possible to find the truth? Well, thousands upon thousands of people have found it in Doctor Robinson’s outline of his philosophy, which he calls psyche on a.

00:13:52:14 - 00:14:12:04 Unknown Speaker: Isn’t it worth your while to send for a copy? Then judge for yourself. Doctor Robinson will be glad to send it to you without charge, and without obligating you in any way. Simply write to him and say, send me a free copy of your outline. Address your letter to doctor Frank Robinson here of the station to which you are listening, or to Doctor Frank Robinson.

00:14:12:04 - 00:14:40:17 Unknown Speaker: Moscow, Idaho. Either address will reach him if you send your letter to Moscow, Idaho. Be sure to add the word radio Department. We return you now to your local announcer, who will give you the time and date of Doctor Robinson’s next broadcast.