Freethought Today
September 1st, 2012
On this date in 1983, Freethought Today, the newspaper of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, debuted in Madison, Wis.
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Friday, August 31, 2012
Alan Dershowitz
September 1st, 2012
On this date in 1938, Alan M. Dershowitz was born in Brooklyn,
N.Y. He graduated with a B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1959 and an LL.B.
from Yale Law School in 1962, and soon became a criminal lawyer.
Dershowitz has been the defense lawyer for notable criminals such as
O.J. Simpson and Michael Milken, as well as representing Claus von Bülow
in the highly publicized trial where he was found innocent of attempted
murder. Dershowitz has taught at Harvard Law School for over 40 years,
beginning in 1967 when he was only 28, making him the youngest Harvard
law professor to date. He has also written 25 books, including The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved (2006) and America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation
(2005), and has published over 100 articles for newspapers including
The New York Times. Dershowitz was awarded the 1983 William O. Douglas
First Amendment award for his work with human rights.
Dershowitz was raised Jewish. As an activist who supports Israel, he
has been called “America’s most public Jewish defender,” according to
his personal website. However, he described himself as “agnostic leaning
toward atheist” when he received FFRF’s 2003 "Emperor Has No Clothes Award."
Dershowitz is critical of religion. In his speech, he said: “The
atheist who throws himself in front of a bus to save a child, with the
full knowledge that that's the end of everything for him, deserves
greater praise than the religious person who throws himself in front of a
car to save a child knowing, believing strongly, that he will get a
reward for it in the afterlife.” Dershowitz authored Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence (2008), which attacks the idea that America is a Christian nation, and Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights (2005), in which Dershowitz argues that rights do not come from religion.
“The court’s right wing seems determined to chip away at the wall of separation by limiting the right of citizens to challenge governmental actions that favor Christianity over other religions and over the views of citizens who do not subscribe to any religion.”
— Alan Dershowitz, “The Supreme Issue,” Forward, Oct. 16, 2008.
Compiled by Sabrina Gaylor (FFRF)
Chapman Cohen
September 1st, 2012
On this date in 1868, British freethought advocate Chapman Cohen was born. At the age of 21, he began a 50-year career as a popular and concise freethought writer and lecturer. When G.W. Foote died in 1915, Cohen succeeded him as president of the National Secular Society, and editor of its publication, The Freethinker.
Cohen was an efficient manager who brought security to the National
Secular Society. Cohen married happily and had a daughter, who died at
age 29, and a son, who became a physician. He gave up the NSS presidency
in 1949, and handed The Freethinker over to F.A. Ridley in 1951. Cohen is considered the "last great Victorian freethinker" (Victor E. Neuburg, The Encyclopedia of Unbelief). Cohen wrote many articles and pamphlets, as well as Almost an Autobiography (1940). D. 1954.
“Human society is born in the shadow of religious fear, and in that stage the suppression of heresy is a sacred social duty. Then comes the rise of a priesthood, and the independent thinker is met with punishment in this world and the threat of eternal damnation hereafter. Even today it is from the religious side that the greatest danger to freedom of thought comes. Religion is the last thing man will civilise. ”
— Chapman Cohen, The Meaning and Value of Freethought, 1932
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Edgar Rice Burroughs
September 1st, 2012
On this date in 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs
was born in Chicago, Ill. He graduated from the Michigan Military
Academy in 1895 and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1896, but was
discharged after only a year due to a heart condition. He became a
full-time writer of pulp fiction in 1912, the year he published his
story Tarzan of the Apes in The All-Story Magazine. Tarzan of the Apes
was an overwhelming success, and Burroughs went on to publish 26 Tarzan
novels, which became famous worldwide. The novels detail the life of
Tarzan, an Englishman who was raised by apes in the African jungle. The
books have been made into over 50 different movies, beginning with the
silent film “Tarzan of the Apes” in 1918, which was one of the first
films to make over a million dollars. Tarzan novels have also been
adapted into a 1932 radio drama, the Broadway play “Tarzan of the Apes”
(1921) and Broadway musical “Tarzan” (2006), the Disney animated movie
“Tarzan” (1999) and five television series.
Burroughs wrote 50 other books, many which were science fiction, including A Princess of Mars (1912), At the Earth’s Core (1914) and The Cave Girl
(1925). He married Emma Hulbert in 1900 and had three children: Joan,
John and Hulbert. They lived in Tarzana, Calif., which Burroughs founded
in 1928.
On
July 6, 1925, Burroughs published an article supporting evolution in
the New York America. He wrote, “If we are not religious, then we must
accept evolution as an obvious fact. If we are religious, then we must
either accept the theory of evolution or admit that there is a power
greater than that of God” (via www.hillmanweb.com). Burroughs’ novel The Gods of Mars
(1918) contained freethought themes, describing a deeply religious
society where the religion was a myth perpetuated as a way to cover up
murder. D. 1950
“Men who had not progressed as far as we have tried to interpret [evolution] some two thousand years ago. It is not strange that they made mistakes. They were ignorant and superstitious.”
— Edgar Rice Burroughs, New York America, July 6, 1925 (quoted in Tarzan Forever by John Taliaferro, 1999).
Compiled by Sabrina Gaylor (FFRF)
Anatole France (Quote)
August 31, 2012
“Men are given to worshipping malevolent gods, and that which is not cruel seems to them not worth their adoration.”
— Anatole France (1844-1924), Crainquebille, 1901
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Ted Williams
On this date in 1918, baseball's Hitter of the Century, Ted Williams,
was born in San Diego. The street evangelism of his mother, who worked
for the Salvation Army and was known as "Salvation May," embarrassed Ted
as he was growing up. He was dubbed "The Kid" when he started with the
Red Sox as a 20-year-old rookie in 1939. His record-breaking career was
interrupted twice by service in World War II and the Korean War, during
which he safely crash-landed a burning plane in 1953. He was a decorated
fighter pilot who received the Medal of Freedom in 1991. "The Splendid
Splinter" won American League's Most Valuable Player Award in 1946 and
1949. Williams' career accomplishments include a .406 season in 1941,
two Triple Crowns, two MVPs, six American League batting championships,
521 home runs, a lifetime average of .344, and 17 All-Star Game
selections. Williams ended his career at age 42 by hitting a home run at
Fenway Park. Williams had the record for career on-base percentage
(.483). He was the last major league baseball player to hit .400. After
enduring a series of strokes, congestive heart failure and 9-hour heart
surgery in 2001, Williams died at age 83. After the laudatory sports
tributes came news stories in which two of his children disclosed
Williams' nonreligious views, also revealing that their father had
signed a pact with them to be frozen after death and kept in
"biostasis." Williams' children told Reuters on July 25, 2002: “Our
father was not a religious man. The faith that many people place in god,
we place in science and other human endeavors." D. 2002.
“No one could throw a fast ball past me. God could come down from heaven, and HE couldn’t throw it past me.”
— Ted Williams (quoted in The Summer of ‘49 by David Halberstam, 1989)
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Mary Godwin Shelley
August 30, 2012
On this date in 1797, Mary Godwin (later Shelley) was born in London to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Her mother, the famed champion of reason and author of the seminal feminist treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, died ten days after her birth. Her father, a well-known atheist and radical, had attracted the admiration of atheist and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Percy, also an admirer of Mary Wollstonecraft's writings, met Mary in
1814. At 16, Mary ran away with the romantic poet, who was unhappily
married to another young woman and the father of two children. They fled
to the continent. His first wife's suicide made it possible for the
couple to marry in 1816. Their first two children died and their only
surviving son, Percy, was born upon their return to England. At age 19,
while living in Switzerland, Mary wrote the classic, philosophical
horror story, Frankenstein, published in 1818, as a contest between herself, Percy and Lord Byron
to write a "ghost story." The book was immediately successful, and has
inspired more than 50 film adaptations. After her husband tragically
drowned in 1822 in Italy, Mary returned to England, where she courted
respectability on behalf of their surviving son. Mary worked as a
professional writer, penning short stories, travel books, essays and
several other novels, including The Last Man (1826), about the gradual demise of the human race during a plague. D. 1851.
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Warren Buffett
August 30, 2012
On this date in 1930, Warren Edward Buffett was born
in Omaha, Neb., which is part of the reason he's called the "Oracle of
Omaha." The other part is that he used savvy investment strategy to
become a multibillionaire. His net worth in March 2011, according to
Forbes magazine, was more than $50 billion, making him the world's
third-richest person. Buffett's father, Harold, was a politician and
businessman who had his own brokerage company. Warren was baptized as a
Presbyterian, but religion didn't take with him, according to biographer
Roger Lowenstein in Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist
(Doubleday, 1995): "Warren's exploits were always based on numbers,
which he trusted above all else. In contrast, he did not subscribe to
his family's religion. Even at a young age, he was too mathematical, and
too logical, to make the leap of faith. He adopted his father's ethical
underpinnings, but not his belief in an unseen divinity.” According to philosopedia.org,
"Asked in 1997 if he was a supernaturalist or a naturalist, a believer
or a nonbeliever, Buffett responded to Warren Allen Smith on a postcard,
'Agnostic.' "
Buffett attended the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of
Business for two years and graduated at age 19 from the University of
Nebraska–Lincoln with a B.S. in business administration. He then
enrolled in the Columbia Business School in New York City and earned an
M.S. in economics. In 1952, he married Susan Thompson. They had three
children, Susie, Howard and Peter. (They lived separately from 1977,
when she moved to San Francisco to pursue a singing career, until her
death in 2004. She introduced him to Astrid Menks, his longtime domestic
partner whom he married in 2006.) One of the reasons Buffett went to
Columbia was because Benjamin Graham, author of The Intelligent Investor,
one of his favorite books on securities markets, taught there. Buffett
would make good use of Graham's principles of value investing to build
his fortune and for a time worked for Graham. By 1962 he was a
millionaire and started merging his partnerships and investing Berkshire
Hathaway, a textile manufacturing firm, buying shares for $7.60. (At
this writing, shares are $120,000 each). He became a billionaire on
paper in 1990, when Berkshire shares were $7,000. Though frugal in his
personal life, Buffett has given away many millions, and in 2006
famously pledged to donate most of his wealth to five foundations, with
83 percent of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Along
with Bill Gates, he's the driving force behind The Giving Pledge, a
campaign to get the rich to donate to charity. For many years, he's
donated eBay auction proceeds from a lunch meeting. The 2010 winner, who
stayed anonymous, paid $2.6 million to dine with Buffett.
"Mr. Buffett's parents were observant Presbyterians and he, too, sang in the choir. Early on, though, he became an agnostic. He avoids houses of worship. His concerns are entirely secular. 'The nice thing about an agnostic is you don't think anybody is wrong,' Mr. Buffett said."
— New York Times, May 9, 1997
Compiled by Bill Dunn (FFRF)
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Xenophanes (Quote)
August 29, 2012
“The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair.”
— Xenophanes (5-6th century BCE), Greek philosopher who lived to 105, Fragment 15, 5th century BC, from James E. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor(FFRF)
Leo Tolstoy
August 28, 2012
On this date in 1828, the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy
was born as a landed count and aristocrat. After serving in the Crimean
War, his sense of social justice began to surface and he worked with
peasant schools. Tolstoy had a religious crisis in his forties, which,
although it moved him from outright skepticism, caused him to denounce
the powerful and corrupt Orthodox Church of Russia. Tolstoy called the
church an "impenetrable forest of stupidity" and a "conscious deception
that serves as a means for one part of the people to govern the other,"
according to biographer Tikhon Polner. Tolstoy, in such books as Critique of Dogmatic Theology, wrote that Jesus Christ was human, not divine, rejected miracles and immortality. In My Confession (1882),
Tolstoy wrote: "If there is no higher reason--and there is none--then
my own reason must be the supreme judge of my life." The books were
banned by church censors, and Tolstoy was called an "impious infidel."
Tolstoy determined that his artistry must also have a moral purpose.
From 1885 to 1895, he worked to make literature accessible to the masses
and organized relief during famine. In 1895, he gave up his property,
living as a nature-worshipping peasant, like his main protagonist in War and Peace.
In that novel, Tolstoy wrote: "Freethinkers are those who are willing
to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand
things that clash with their own customs, privileges or beliefs." As
James A. Haught wrote in 2000 Years of Disbelief: "Many people
who reject supernatural Christianity nonetheless embrace Christ's
message of compassion. Tolstoy carried this pattern to an extreme. He
renounced organized religion and was excommunicated by the Russian
Orthodox Church--yet he became almost a monk, living in service to
others." Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Holy Synod of the Orthodox
Church in 1901. He belonged to no sect, while espousing an ethical
Christianity. In What Is Religion? (1902), Tolstoy wrote: "One
may say with one's lips: 'I believe that God is one, and also
three'--but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense." D. 1910.
“. . . To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege.”
— Leo Tolstoy, response to excommunication in letter to Holy Synod, April 4, 1901 (All citations from 2,000 Years of Disbelief by James A. Haught)
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
C. Wright Mills
August 28, 2012
On this date in 1916, C. Wright Mills (Charles Wright Mills) was
born in Waco, Texas. Mills grew up without friends, books or music,
and, at the behest of his insurance broker father, initially planned for
a career in engineering. Enrolled at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical
College in the mid-1930s, Mills frequently wrote for the student
newspaper, often about his anger at upperclassmen taunting freshman.
When students criticized his writing for lacking "guts," he wrote in
response: "Just who are the men with guts? They are the men who have the
ability and the brains to see this institution's faults . . . the men
who have the imagination and the intelligence to formulate their own
codes; the men who have the courage and the stamina to live their own
lives in spite of social pressure and isolation." These were less the
words of an engineer and more the early musings of one of the 20th
century's great sociologists. After one year at Texas A & M, Mills
transferred to the University of Texas Austin, where he excelled in
philosophy, sociology, cultural anthropology, economics and social
psychology. At UT Austin, Mills received a bachelor's in sociology and a
master's in philosophy, while developing interest in the theories and
writings of Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey.
In 1939, he entered the doctoral program in sociology with a research
fellowship at the University of Wisconsin. After completing his
coursework in 1941, Mills joined the faculty at the University of
Maryland, avoiding military service due to high blood pressure. Mills
involved himself in public affairs in Washington, D.C., and began
writing for progressive magazines like the New Republic. In 1945, he
joined Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, where he
attempted to combine his progressive political passions with empirical
research.
Mills authored some of the most radical books of the 20th century, including New Men of Power (1948), White Collar (1951) and The Power Elite
(1956), all published when the FBI and Attorney General were compiling
lists of "subversives," which put Mills in great personal and
professional danger. Interested in the Cuban revolution under Fidel
Castro, Mills visited Cuba in 1960, interviewing Che Guevara and Castro.
Mills, who refused to identify with any political party, movement or
religion, adamantly criticized what he called "cheerful robots," or
those who happily follow without questioning authority. He said, "If
there is one safe prediction about religion in this society, it would
seem to be that if tomorrow official spokesmen were to proclaim XYZism,
next week 90 percent of religious declaration would be XYZist" ("A Pagan
Sermon to the Christian Clergy," 1958). The Sociological Imagination
(1959), Mills' most lasting legacy, which also helped found the
subfields of public and critical sociology, calls on sociologists to
communicate with publics, instead of just one another, and make relevant
peoples' personal troubles by connecting them to public issues. At the
age of 45, Mills suffered a massive heart attack. D. 1962.
“ . . . [A]re not all the television Christians in reality armchair atheists? In value and in reality they live without the God they profess; despite ten million Bibles sold each year, they are religiously illiterate.”
“According to your belief [Christian clergy], my kind of man — secular, prideful, agnostic and all the rest of it — is among the damned. I'm on my own. You've got your God.”
— C. Wright Mills, "A Pagan Sermon to the Christian Clergy," an address before the annual meeting of the Board of Evangelical and Social Service, United Church of Canada, Feb. 27, 1958
Compiled by Bonnie Gutsch (FFRF)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
On this date in 1749, Germany's most famous poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
was born in Frankfurt am Main, to a comfortable bourgeois family. He
began studying law at Leipzig University at the age of 16, and practiced
law briefly before devoting most of his life to writing poetry, plays
and novels. In 1773, Goethe wrote the powerful poem "Prometheus" [quoted
below], which urged human beings to believe in themselves, and not in
the gods. His first novel was The Sorrows of Young Werther
(1774), a semi-autobiographical tragedy about a doomed love affair. A
line from that novel: "We are so constituted that we believe the most
incredible things: and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to
him who would endeavor to erase them." In his 1797 Hermann and Dorothea, Goethe observed: "The happy do not believe in miracles." Goethe typified the Sturm und Drang
romantic movement, celebrating the individual. The Grand Duke of Weimar
appointed him an administrator in 1775, where, according to historians,
Goethe turned Weimar into "the Athens of Germany." In supervising the
arts and sciences, Goethe discovered the human intermaxilary bone, also
known as the Goethe bone (1784), among other discoveries. After a
sojourn in Italy from 1786 to 1788, Goethe returned to his art, writing
for a journal edited by freethinker Friedrich von Schiller and starting his own. Inspired by Christopher Marlowe's
play "Faust," Goethe wrote part 1 of his most famous play, published in
1808. Part 2 was published in 1832. From Part 1, Scene 9: "The church
alone beyond all question/ Has for ill-gotten gains the right
digestion." Although Goethe's beliefs ebbed and flowed, he was uniformly
anti-Christian and, at most, a pantheist. D. 1832.
Prometheus
Cover thy spacious heavens, Zeus,
With clouds of mist,
And, like the boy who lops
The thistles' heads,
Disport with oaks and mountain-peaks,
Yet thou must leave
My earth still standing;
My cottage too, which was not raised by thee;
Leave me my hearth,
Whose kindly glow
By thee is envied.
I know nought poorer
Under the sun, than ye gods!
Ye nourish painfully,
With sacrifices
And votive prayers,
Your majesty:
Ye would e'en starve,
If children and beggars
Were not trusting fools.
While yet a child
And ignorant of life,
I turned my wandering gaze
Up tow'rd the sun, as if with him
There were an ear to hear my wailings,
A heart, like mine,
To feel compassion for distress.
Who help'd me
Against the Titans' insolence?
Who rescued me from certain death,
From slavery?
Didst thou not do all this thyself,
My sacred glowing heart?
And glowedst, young and good,
Deceived with grateful thanks
To yonder slumbering one?
I honour thee! and why?
Hast thou e'er lighten'd the sorrows
Of the heavy laden?
Hast thou e'er dried up the tears
Of the anguish-stricken?
Was I not fashion'd to be a man
By omnipotent Time,
And by eternal Fate,
Masters of me and thee?
Didst thou e'er fancy
That life I should learn to hate,
And fly to deserts,
Because not all
My blossoming dreams grew ripe?
Here sit I, forming mortals
After my image;
A race resembling me,
To suffer, to weep,
To enjoy, to be glad,
And thee to scorn,
As I!
— Goethe, "Prometheus," 1773
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Jack Black
August 28, 2012
On this date in 1969, Thomas Jacob “Jack” Black was
born in Santa Monica, Calif., to two satellite engineers. His parents
were Jewish and sent Black to Hebrew school. Black attended the
University of California Los Angeles but dropped out to pursue acting.
Early in his career, Black landed brief roles in various television
series including “Northern Exposure” (in 1993), “The X-Files” (in 1995),
“Mr. Show with Bob and David” (in 1995 and 1996) and “Picket Fences”
(in 1995 and 1996). Early films include “Airborne” (1993), “Demolition
Man” (1993), “Dead Man Walking” (1995), “Waterworld” (1995), “The Fan”
(1996), “Mars Attacks!” (1996), “The Jackal” (1997) and “Enemy of the
State” (1998). His first major role was in 2000’s “High Fidelity,” which
starred John Cusack. Black starred in “Shallow Hal” (2001), “Nacho
Libre” (2006), “Year One” (2009), “King Kong” (2005) and “Be Kind
Rewind” (2008). He was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a
Musical or Comedy for “School of Rock” (2003). He has provided voices
for numerous animated characters, including in the hit films “Kung Fu
Panda” (2008) and Kung Fu Panda 2” (2011). In addition to his film work,
Black has been the lead singer of a successful rock comedy band called
Tenacious D since 1994. Black married cellist Tanya Haden in 2006. They
have two sons. In an interview with Conan O’Brien, Black provoked
audience laughter when discussing the pressure to send his children to
Hebrew school: “There’s a Hebrew school that we really liked. And I feel
a little hypocritical because I’m an atheist you know. But it’s a
really good school. And I am a Jew, technically. I’m allowed to take my
kids there. And my wife is too. But also we have not been to synagogue
for years so I was kind of feeling the pressure to show that I am a good
Jew. And I was putting on a little bit of a show. . .” (“Conan,” April
26, 2012).
“I don't have any real spirituality in my life — I'm kind of an atheist — but when music can take me to the highest heights, it's almost like a spiritual feeling.”
— Jack Black in an interview for National Public Radio, “Jack Black: On Music, Mayhem And Murder,” April 13, 2012
Compiled by Bonnie Gutsch (FFRF)
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Granville Stuart
August 27, 2012
On this date in 1834, Granville Stuart
was born in Clarksburg, W.Va. (then part of Virginia). He settled in
Montana in the 1850s, and soon became a Montana prospector, miner,
banker and cattle rancher. He was manager of the Pioneer Cattle Company
from 1879 to 1888, president of the Montana Stock Growers Association
and Montana Board of Stock Commissioners, and president of the Montana
Historical Society from 1890 to 1895. Stuart became an important Montana
politician who represented Lewis and Clark County in the Territorial
House of Representatives for four years, and was President of the
Territorial Council in 1883. He was elected U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay
and Paraguay from 1894 to 1898. After returning to Montana, Stuart
became a Montana historian, and wrote books including Montana As It Is (1865) and Forty Years on the Frontier
(1925). Stuart married Awbonnie Tookanka, who was Shoshone. They had
five daughters: Katie, Elizabeth, Mary, Emma and Irene, and six sons:
Tom, James, Granville, Samuel, Charles and Robert (who was adopted).
Awbonnie died in 1888. Stuart married Allis Belle Brown in 1890.
Stuart became a strong freethinker as an adult, according to As Big as the West: The Pioneer Life of Granville Stuart by Clyde Milner II (2008). James Fergus,
fellow freethinker and Montana pioneer, called Stuart “a fine writer
and most radical outspoken infidel, and has pictures of Ingersoll,
Bennett and Payne hanging in their Parlor” (in a Jan. 1, 1883 letter,
quoted on the Fergus County, Mont. History and Genealogy website). In a
July 21, 1879 letter to Fergus, Stuart requested that his funeral be
completely secular. D. 1918
“For all the use [people] make of their brains in matters of religion they had as well have none.”
— Granville Stuart, quoted in As Big As the West: The Pioneer Life by Clyde Milner II, 2008.
Compiled by Sabrina Gaylor (FFRF)
Robert Walpole
August 26, 2012
On this date in 1676, (Sir) Robert Walpole was born in England.
Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he represented King's Lynn in the House
of Commons for most of his adult life. He was named Secretary at War in
1708 and Treasurer of the Navy in 1710. That year he was imprisoned by
the Tories for leading the Whigs, the opposition party, and was barred
from office until 1715. He then became First Lord of the Treasury and
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Walpole was the only public official to
openly oppose the Spanish War, and was considered one of England's
greatest statesmen, according to freethought historian Joseph McCabe.
Walpole has often been called England's "first Prime Minister." Although
he publicly identified with the Church of England for political
expediency, biographer A.C. Ewald called him a "sceptic as regards
religion" (Sir R. Walpole, 1878). When Queen Caroline,
also a deist, lay dying, it was advised that the Archbishop be
summoned. Walpole, who was in attendance, remarked: "Let this farce be
played; the Archbishop will act it very well . . . . It will do the
Queen no hurt, no more than any good" (Lord Hervey's Memoirs). D. 1745.
“[Walpole was] a man whose life reflected a genial paganism, who regarded all creeds with the impartiality of indifference, and who looked upon religion as a local accident and as the result of hereditary influences.”
— Biographer A.C. Eward, Sir R. Walpole (1878)
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Zona Gale
August 26, 2012
On this date in 1874, Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Zona Gale
was born in Portage, Wisconsin. Following a siege of diphtheria, the
once-stout child emerged with delicate health and a lifelong fragility,
and turned to imaginative play. Her mother was an ultra-religious
Presbyterian, but Zona's father stopped attending church. A scoffer at
an early age, Zona wrote in her unfinished autobiography that when her
mother told her, at the age of five, how Santa Claus comes down the
chimney to deliver toys, Zona replied: "You can't make me believe any
such stuff as that." Zona received a degree in literature from the
University of Wisconsin in 1895, then worked for two daily Wisconsin
newspapers. She earned her Master of Literature degree in 1899, while
churning out gothic tales. In 1901, she became a reporter for the Evening World
in New York City, then a freelance writer, subsisting on legendary
birdlike meals while sending money home to her parents. Her first book, Romance Island,
was published in 1906. Zona's series of sentimental stories,
"Friendship Village," about small-town life, appeared in major
periodicals, and the stories were later published in four volumes
(1908-1919). Zona moved back to Wisconsin in 1911, and became an ardent
supporter of Progressive Senator Robert LaFollette, writing for his
magazine. Her pacifism during World War I radicalized her, as did her
friendships with Jane Addams and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Zona served as vice-president of the Wisconsin Woman Suffrage
Association and the Wisconsin Peace Society, shifting her writing from
the sentimental to realism. Her important tragedy, Birth, was published in 1918, and Miss Lulu Bett
(1920), an ironic, feminist look at small-town life, was a bestseller.
Her dramatization of that novel brought her the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for
drama. In midlife, she married Will Breese. She continued working on
progressive causes until her death from pneumonia. D. 1938.
'Who made bed-time?' I inquired irritably.
'S-h-h!' said Delia. 'God did.'
'I don't believe it,' I announced flatly.
'Well,' said Delia, 'anyway, he makes us sleep.'
This I also challenged. 'Then why am I sleepier when I go to church evenings than when I play Hide-and-go-seek in the Brice's barn evenings?' I submitted.
— Zona Gale, When I was a Little Girl. For more on Gale, see Women Without Superstition
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Barbara Ehrenreich
August 26, 2012
On this date in 1941, author Barbara Ehrenreich
was born in Butte, Montana. She graduated from Reed College in 1963 and
earned her Ph.D. at Rockefeller University in 1968, working in the
field of science, then turning to writing. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers
(1972), co-written with Deirdre English, was a widely acclaimed expose,
of male domination of female health care. Essays by this atheist,
socialist and feminist are regularly featured in mass-circulation
periodicals, such as The Nation, Ms., Mother Jones, Esquire, Vogue, and The New York Times Magazine. For many years, Barbara Ehrenreich was a regular columnist for Time. Other books include For Her Own Good: One Hundred Fifty Years of the Experts' Advice to Women (1978, with Deirdre English), The Hearts of Men (1983), The Worst Years of Our Lives (1990), and the classic expose Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America,
in which she went undercover as a waitress and member of the
working-class poor. Her classic article, "U.S. Patriots: Without God on
Their Side," originally appeared in Mother Jones, February/March 1981, and is reprinted in the anthology Women Without Superstition. In an essay for The New York Times Magazine, Ehrenreich proudly described her family as "the race of 'none,' " as being "the kind of people . . . who do not
believe, who do not carry on traditions. . ." Ms. Ehrenreich was named
"Freethought Heroine" by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1999.
“In my parents' general view, new things were better than old, and the very fact that some ritual had been performed in the past was a good reason for abandoning it now. Because what was the past, as our forebears knew it? Nothing but poverty, superstition and grief. 'Think for yourself,' Dad used to say. 'Always ask why.'”
— "Cultural Baggage," Barbara Ehrenreich, The New York Times Magazine, April 5, 1992
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Friday, August 24, 2012
Horace Seaver
August 25, 2012
On this date in 1810, Horace Seaver was born in Boston. At age 28, he became a compositor at the Boston Investigator and there learned the art of printing. Seaver also began writing editorials under the name "Z." The Investigator had been launched in 1830 by Abner Kneeland
as a weekly, becoming the most effective and prominent freethought
newspaper in the United States, continuously published until 1904, when
it merged with The Truth Seeker. When Kneeland, who had been
prosecuted for blasphemy more than once, resigned, Horace Seaver was
selected to become its editor. Seaver edited the newspaper for the next
half-century, promoting freethought, the working class, and other
secular reforms. He wrote Occasional Thoughts of Horace Seaver from Fifty Years of Free Thinking
(1888). When his freethinking wife died, Seaver held a "social
funeral," an innovative model of the modern secular memorial service.
When Seaver himself died, his funeral oration was given by the great
19th century freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll. D. 1889.
“For over fifty years he [Seaver] battled strenuously for Freethought; he was an Atheist and Materialist; he had no fogs of superstition; he was a clear, plain writer, and always went straight to the point; he indulged in no rhetoric; he was a wise man--a philosopher . . and he won the respect of every one who knew him.”
— Eulogy for Horace Seaver by S.P. Putnam, Four Hundred Years of Freethought, 1894
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)
Taslima Nasrin
On this date in 1962, Taslima Nasrin was born in
Mymensingh, Bangladesh. She graduated from Mymensingh Medical College in
1984, and worked as a physician for eight years. Nasrin is a writer,
poet and journalist who began writing at 15. Her first book of poetry, Demands, was published in 1986, and she has since published many novels, essay collections and books of poetry, including The Game In Reverse (1995), French Lover (2002) and Getting Even (2002). She has also published seven autobiographical books.
Nasrin’s work contains strong feminist and atheist themes, and she often writes about the harm the Quran exerts on women. Her experience as a gynecological anesthesiologist, where she often dealt with rape and incest survivors, has profoundly influenced her writing. Nasrin is infamous among Islamic fundamentalists for her novel Shame (1993), which was banned in Bangladesh for being sympathetic to the plight of Hindus under Muslim law. She was forced to flee the country in 1994 due to numerous death threats, having three fatwas issued against her, and facing criminal charges for daring to speak out against Islam. Despite fleeing Bangladesh, Nasrin is still persecuted by fundamentalists: In 2007, she was attacked during a booksigning in Hyderabad, India. Nasrin began to question the Muslim faith as a child, after reading numerous misogynistic passages in the Quran. “I came to suspect that the Quran was not written by Allah but, rather, by some selfish greedy man who wanted only his own comfort,” Nasrin explained in a speech at the 25th Annual FFRF convention. “So I stopped believing in Islam. When I studied other religions, I found they, too, oppressed women.” She is outspoken about the harm of religion, stating in a 1994 interview with The New Yorker: “I want a modern, civilized law where women are given equal rights. I want no religious law that discriminates, none, period—no Hindu law, no Christian law, no Islamic law. Why should a man be entitled to have four wives? Why should a son get two-thirds of his parents’ property when a daughter can inherit only a third?” (via Women Without Superstition). Nasrin was awarded FFRF’s 2002 “I’m an atheist, and I believe religion is totally against human rights and women’s rights.” Freethought Heroine Award, and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1994. “I’m an atheist, and I believe religion is totally against human rights and women’s rights.” — Taslima Nasrin, The Atheist Newsletter, 1995
Compiled by Sabrina Gaylor (FFRF)
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
Howard Zinn
August 24, 2012
On this date in 1922, historian, author, playwright and peace activist Howard Zinn
was born in New York City to Jewish immigrants. As a 17-year-old, Zinn
attended a political rally in Times Square at the urging of neighborhood
Communists and was knocked unconscious by police battering and beating
the crowd. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1943, received an Air Medal,
and, upon returning home, placed his medal and military papers in a
folder on which he wrote, "Never again." Zinn attended New York
University and received a doctorate in history from Columbia University.
He became chair of the history and social sciences department of
Spelman College, the historically black college for women in segregated
Atlanta, in 1956. He actively participated in the civil rights movement,
served on the executive committee for SNCC (the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee), and inspired many of his students, including Alice Walker.
Fired for "insubordination" from Spelman in 1963 (namely for his
criticism of the school's failure to participate in the civil rights
movement), Zinn took a position teaching history at Boston University,
which he held until his retirement in 1988.
An aggressive and early opponent of the Vietnam War (and war in general) and champion of leftist causes, Zinn's 1967 Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, was the first book calling for immediate withdrawal from the war with no exceptions. His A People's History of the United States, published in 1980 with a small printing and little promotion, became essential reading in classrooms across the country and a bestseller, hitting 1 million sales by 2003. In his 1994 autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Zinn wrote: "I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it." While his publications were numerous, some of the highlights included the plays "Emma" (1976), about radical anarchist/feminist/atheist Emma Goldman, "Daughter of Venus" (1985), and "Marx in Soho: A Play on History" (1999), and books such as Artists in Times of War (2003), History Matters: Conversations on History and Politics (2006), and Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian (1993). Zinn received the 1958 Albert J. Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association for his book, LaGuardia in Congress; the 1998 Eugene V. Debs Award from the Debs Foundation; the Upton Sinclair Award in 1999; and the 1998 Lannan Literary Award. Zinn's wife and lifetime collaborator, Roslyn, died in 2008. Zinn died of a heart attack while swimming at the age of 87. D. 2010.
An aggressive and early opponent of the Vietnam War (and war in general) and champion of leftist causes, Zinn's 1967 Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, was the first book calling for immediate withdrawal from the war with no exceptions. His A People's History of the United States, published in 1980 with a small printing and little promotion, became essential reading in classrooms across the country and a bestseller, hitting 1 million sales by 2003. In his 1994 autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Zinn wrote: "I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it." While his publications were numerous, some of the highlights included the plays "Emma" (1976), about radical anarchist/feminist/atheist Emma Goldman, "Daughter of Venus" (1985), and "Marx in Soho: A Play on History" (1999), and books such as Artists in Times of War (2003), History Matters: Conversations on History and Politics (2006), and Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian (1993). Zinn received the 1958 Albert J. Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association for his book, LaGuardia in Congress; the 1998 Eugene V. Debs Award from the Debs Foundation; the Upton Sinclair Award in 1999; and the 1998 Lannan Literary Award. Zinn's wife and lifetime collaborator, Roslyn, died in 2008. Zinn died of a heart attack while swimming at the age of 87. D. 2010.
"If I was promised that we could sit with Marx in some great Deli Haus in the hereafter, I might believe in it! Sure, I find inspiration in Jewish stories of hope, also in the Christian pacifism of the Berrigans, also in Taoism and Buddhism. I identify as a Jew, but not on religious grounds. Yes, I believe, as Pascal said, 'The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know.' There are limits to reason. There is mystery, there is passion, there is something spiritual in the arts—but it is not connected to Judaism or any other religion."
— Howard Zinn in a Tikkun Magazine interview with Shelly R. Fredman, "Howard Zinn on Fixing What's Wrong," May 17, 2006
Compiled by Bonnie Gutsch (FFRF)
Stephen Fry
August 24, 2012
On this date in 1957, Stephen Fry was born in London,
England. He grew up in Norfolk. At age 17, after leaving school, he was
convicted of credit card fraud. After serving time in prison, Fry
studied at City College Norfolk with the intention of sitting entrance
exams for Cambridge, where he received a scholarship. At Cambridge, he
performed in the Cambridge Footlights Review with Emma Thompson
and Hugh Laurie. Fry and Laurie continued their comedic collaboration
outside of school, including the sketch comedy show “A Bit of Fry and
Laurie,” for the BBC, which had six seasons between 1986 and 1995. From
1990 to 1993, Fry and Laurie also starred in “Jeeves and Wooster” (Fry
played Jeeves). Fry has had a wide-ranging career in acting, comedy and
writing.
He is very active in social media, preferring to speak directly to his
fans whenever he can, such as through Twitter and on his personal
website. In 2003, Fry began hosting the BBC television panel comedy game
show “QI.” The ninth season broadcasts in fall of 2011. Fry has been
openly gay for his entire active professional life, and at times
advocates for various causes, including gay rights. He grew up in an
atheist home, but according to his website, http://www.stephenfry.com, he had a brief flirtation with Christianity as a teenager after reading C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters
and was also influenced by G.K. Chesterton. However, as an adult, Fry
returned to atheism and is very open about his nonbelief. In 2011, he
was awarded the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard's Lifetime Award in
Cultural Humanism.
"I love how when people watch I don’t know, David Attenborough or Discovery Planet type thing you know where you see the absolute phenomenal majesty and complexity and bewildering beauty of nature and you stare at it and then … somebody next to you goes, 'And how can you say there is no God? Look at that.' And then five minutes later you’re looking at the lifecycle of a parasitic worm whose job is to bury itself in the eyeball of a little lamb and eat the eyeball from inside while the lamb dies in horrible agony and then you turn to them and say, 'Yeah, where is your God now?' "
— Stephen Fry in an interview by bigthink.com, Dec. 17, 2009
Compiled by Eleanor Wroblewski (FFRF)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Invention-God-Mythology-Religion/dp/0978754336/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
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