Martyrdom Proves Nothing
When all other arguments fail, we are called to contemplate the wonderful fortitude of those martyrs who have suffered and died in the cause of Christianity. Such religious heroism, it is said, could proceed only from a conscious certainty of the existence of those sublime and holy truths contained in the system which inspired such preternatural courage. The slightest knowledge of the history of the human passions would furnish a complete refutation of the argument in favour of revelation. Extravagant zeal and unbounded enthusiasm are frequently exhibited in many of the important concerns of human life; there are martyrs in the worst of causes, and if martyrdom could prove Christianity to be true, it would prove a hundred other things to be true which are in pointed opposition to that system. --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species