Apologetics 101 from Orestes
Although Brownson was a collaborator with the radical Fanny Wright (and her partner, socialist Robert Owen), and had veered strongly toward agnosticism himself, he quickly found their anti-religion stance intellectually-clumsy. The radicals taught that religion/superstition (the two are synonymous for radicals) was coeval and co-existent with the human race, which was pock-marked with imperfections and pain; get rid of religion, they reasoned, and mankind's sufferings would diminish or disappear altogether. This, Brownson figured out, was awfully wrongheaded. If religion had been with mankind from the beginning, then it must be natural to man or imposed by the supernatural. If it's natural to man, it's useless to resist it; if it's supernatural, it's folly to resist it.
