Freethinkers

Author : Susan Jacoby
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
Page : 452 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2005-01-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781429934756

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Freethinkers by Susan Jacoby Pdf

An authoritative history of the vital role of secularist thinkers and activists in the United States, from a writer of "fierce intelligence and nimble, unfettered imagination" (The New York Times) At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby paints a striking portrait of more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected accomplishments of secularists who, allied with liberal and tolerant religious believers, have stood at the forefront of the battle for reforms opposed by reactionary forces in the past and today. Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Clarence Darrow—as well as once-famous secularists such as Robert Green Ingersoll, "the Great Agnostic"—Freethinkers restores to history generations of dedicated humanists. It is they, Jacoby shows, who have led the struggle to uphold the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system.

Author : Dale McGowan,Molleen Matsumura,Amanda Metskas
Publisher : AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 9780814410967

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Raising Freethinkers by Dale McGowan,Molleen Matsumura,Amanda Metskas Pdf

Raising Freethinkers offers solutions to the unique challenges secular parents face and provides specific answers to common questions, as well as over 100 activities for both parents and their children. Covers every important topic nonreligious parents need to know to help their children with their own moral and intellectual development.

Author : James C. Sanford
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : PSU:000057826530

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Great Freethinkers by James C. Sanford Pdf

Grouped into categories that range from religion and psychology to sex and politics, the 1,000 quotations by the world's great iconoclasts and skeptics collected in this volume challenge conventional notions of god, country, science, art, society, and culture. In eclectic harmony, the words of cynics Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and H. L. Mencken counterbalance those of idealists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein, and Jane Addams. Utopians Emma Goldman and Che Guevara contrast with anti-utopians George Orwell and Albert Camus. Individualists contend with egalitarians as do deists with atheists in these thought-provoking quotations that have been carefully selected from a broad range of writings and chosen on the basis of their wit, eloquence, novelty, and incisiveness.

Author : Sarah Stroumsa
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1999-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9004113746

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Freethinkers of Medieval Islam by Sarah Stroumsa Pdf

This book studies the phenomenon of freethinking in medieval Islam, as exemplified in the figures of Ibn al-R wand and Ab Bakr al-R z . It reconstructs their thought and analyzes the relations of the phenomenon to Islamic prophetology and its repercussions in Islamic thought.

Author : Dale Mcgowan
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 0814437419

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Parenting Beyond Belief by Dale Mcgowan Pdf

"Gathering the perspectives of educators and psychologists, as well as wisdom from everyday parents, Parenting Beyond Belief offers insights and advice on a wide range of topics including instilling values, finding meaning and purpose, navigating holidays, coping with loss, finding community without religion, and more. The second edition of this secular parenting bestseller brings back reflections from such celebrated freethinkers as Richard Dawkins and Julia Sweeney, and adds new voices including journalist Wendy Thomas Russell, essayist Katherine Ozment, sociologist Phil Zuckerman, and many others" --

Author : Charles Bradlaugh,Anthony Collins,John Watts,William Harral Johnson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 1858
Category : Rationalists
ISBN : HARVARD:32044054101696

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Biographies of Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers by Charles Bradlaugh,Anthony Collins,John Watts,William Harral Johnson Pdf

Author : Carolin Kosuch
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2024-06-07
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 311068716X

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Freethinkers in Europe by Carolin Kosuch Pdf

Author : Kirsten Fischer
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2020-12-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780812252712

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American Freethinker by Kirsten Fischer Pdf

The first comprehensive biography of Elihu Palmer tells the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the early United States' protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech. When the United States was new, a lapsed minister named Elihu Palmer shared with his fellow Americans the radical idea that virtue required no religious foundation. A better source for morality, he said, could be found in the natural world: the interconnected web of life that inspired compassion for all living things. Religions that deny these universal connections should be discarded, he insisted. For this, his Christian critics denounced him as a heretic whose ideas endangered the country. Although his publications and speaking tours made him one of the most infamous American freethinkers in his day, Elihu Palmer has been largely forgotten. No cache of his personal papers exists and his book has been long out of print. Yet his story merits telling, Kirsten Fischer argues, and not only for the dramatic account of a man who lost his eyesight before the age of thirty and still became a book author, newspaper editor, and itinerant public speaker. Even more intriguing is his encounter with a cosmology that envisioned the universe as interconnected, alive with sensation, and everywhere infused with a divine life force. Palmer's "heresy" tested the nation's recently proclaimed commitment to freedom of religion and of speech. In this he was not alone. Fischer reveals that Palmer engaged in person and in print with an array of freethinkers—some famous, others now obscure. The flourishing of diverse religious opinion struck some of his contemporaries as foundational to a healthy democracy while others believed that only a strong Christian faith could support democratic self-governance. This first comprehensive biography of Palmer draws on extensive archival research to tell the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the new nation's protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech—a debate that continues to resonate today.

Author : Annie Laurie Gaylor
Publisher : Freedom from Religion Foundation
Page : 706 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Religion
ISBN : UOM:39015046820331

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Women Without Superstition by Annie Laurie Gaylor Pdf

The collected writings of women freethinkers of the nineteenth & twentieth centuries

Author : Carolin Kosuch
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 397 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2020-08-10
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783110688320

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Freethinkers in Europe by Carolin Kosuch Pdf

This volume brings together for the first time case studies on secularists of the 19th and early 20th centuries in national and transnational perspectives including examples from all over Europe. Its focus is on freethinkers taken as secular avant-gardes and early promoters of secularity. The authors of this book deal with multiple historical, religious, social, and cultural backgrounds and, in these contexts, analyze freethinkers' organizations, projects, networks, and contributions to forming a secular worldview, in particular, the promotion of concrete undertakings such as civil baptism or initiatives to leave church. Next to this secularist agenda, the contributions also take into account ambivalences and difficulties freethinkers were faced with, namely, the tensions between a national self-image and the transnational direction the movement has taken; the regional base of many projects and their transregional horizon; freethinkers' cultural programs and their immanent political mission; and the dialogue with respectively the conceptual distinction from other secularist groups. Readers interested in the history of secularity will learn that it was a heterogeneous enterprise already in its beginnings. This set the course for later European and global developments.

Author : AtheistSocial
Publisher : SPOIO Books, imprint of SPOIO Inc.
Page : 82 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2012-04-09
Category : Reference
ISBN : 9781452444499

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Freethinkers Directory by AtheistSocial Pdf

Freethinkers Directory is a 300 page book listing groups, organizations, stores, newspapers, magazines, publishers, blogs, podcasts, family services and more for atheists, agnostics, rationalists, naturalists, humanists and all freethinkers from around the world.

Author : Chris Highland
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2021-03-06
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9798716932111

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Friendly Freethinker by Chris Highland Pdf

Another dynamic collection of contemporary essays on Humanism, Religion and Nature by former minister and chaplain Chris Highland selected from his weekly "Highland Views" columns in the Asheville Citizen-Times. Friendly Freethinker follows the publication of A Freethinker's Gospel and Broken Bridges, each presenting provocative perspectives on faith and freethought in a fractured world. Positive, incisive, hopeful and helpful, essays include "Can We Talk About Religious Supremacy?," "Having Difficult Conversations without Destroying Relationships," "Battling Bullies in Boyhood and Beliefs," "The Man Who Changed His Name to God," "Why Does the World Still Need Scriptures?," "The Friendship of an Atheist and an Evangelical," "If There is a God in Nature, Which One?," "What I Would Most Like to Believe," "Mature Christians and Grown-up Atheists," "Does Religion Begin and End in Silence?" and many more (50 essays in all). Highland draws from a deep well of experiences in chaplaincy and teaching, exploring the edges of our comfortable communities and congregations, asking the questions that stir us to more rational thinking and practical action. Though he left the ministry--and faith--Highland is happily married to a progressive minister who reads, comments and helps edit his newspaper columns. Together, they model a creative, constructive approach to bridging differences of belief. Highland's writings exemplify a commitment to secular/spiritual communication so greatly needed in our culture today.

Author : Michael Hunter
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2020-01-07
Category : Enlightenment
ISBN : 9780300243581

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The Decline of Magic by Michael Hunter Pdf

A new history that overturns the received wisdom that science displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain--named a Best Book of 2020 by the Financial Times In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great change is usually given to science - and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? Michael Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

Author : Christopher Cameron
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2019-09-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780810140806

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Black Freethinkers by Christopher Cameron Pdf

Black Freethinkers argues that, contrary to historical and popular depictions of African Americans as naturally religious, freethought has been central to black political and intellectual life from the nineteenth century to the present. Freethought encompasses many different schools of thought, including atheism, agnosticism, and nontraditional orientations such as deism and paganism. Christopher Cameron suggests an alternative origin of nonbelief and religious skepticism in America, namely the brutality of the institution of slavery. He also traces the growth of atheism and agnosticism among African Americans in two major political and intellectual movements of the 1920s: the New Negro Renaissance and the growth of black socialism and communism. In a final chapter, he explores the critical importance of freethought among participants in the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Examining a wealth of sources, including slave narratives, travel accounts, novels, poetry, memoirs, newspapers, and archival sources such as church records, sermons, and letters, the study follows the lives and contributions of well-known figures, including Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker, as well as lesser-known thinkers such as Louise Thompson Patterson, Sarah Webster Fabio, and David Cincore.

Author : Khushwant Singh
Publisher : Rupa Publications
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 819232804X

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The Freethinker's Prayer Book by Khushwant Singh Pdf

Quotations from various sacred, philosophical, and literary texts and authors.