Freethought Across the Centuries
Author : Gerald A. Larue
Publisher :
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 40,67 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Free thought
ISBN : 9780931779039
Author : Gerald A. Larue
Publisher :
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 40,67 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Free thought
ISBN : 9780931779039
Author : Christopher Cameron
Publisher : Critical Insurgencies
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 44,75 MB
Release : 2019-09-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780810140790
Black Freethinkers is the first study to offer a comprehensive historical treatment of African American freethought (including atheism, agnosticism, and secular humanism) from the nineteenth century to the present.
Author : John Mackinnon Robertson
Publisher : London : Dawsons of Pall Mall
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 17,86 MB
Release : 1969
Category : Religion
ISBN :
Author : John Mackinnon Robertson
Publisher :
Page : 472 pages
File Size : 19,44 MB
Release : 1899
Category : Free thought
ISBN :
Author : Tomáš Bubík
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 46,60 MB
Release : 2020-02-26
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1000039838
This book provides the first comprehensive overview of atheism, secularity and non-religion in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast to scholarship that has focused on the ‘decline of religion’ and secularization theory, the book builds upon recent trends to focus on the ‘rise of non-religion’ itself. While the label of ‘post-communism’ might suggest a generalized perception of the region, this survey reveals that the precise developments in each country before, after and even during the communist era are surprisingly diverse. A multinational team of contributors provide interdisciplinary case studies covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This approach utilises perspectives from social and intellectual history in combination with sociology of religion in order to cover the historical development of secularity and secular thought, complemented with sociological data. The study is framed by methodological and analytical chapters. Offering an important geographical perspective to the study of freethought, atheism, secularity and non-religion, this wide-ranging book will be of significant interest to scholars of twentieth-century social and intellectual history, sociology of religion and non-religion, cultural and religious studies, philosophy and theology.
Author : Susan Jacoby
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
Page : 452 pages
File Size : 30,86 MB
Release : 2005-01-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1429934751
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 : George H. Smith
Publisher : Cato Institute
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 40,23 MB
Release : 2017-07-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1944424385
Liberty of conscience and freedom of thought are twin, core components of modern life in societies across the world. The ability to pursue one?s vision of the right and the good, coupled with liberty to pursue individual reason and enlightenment, helped produce so much of modern life that we may be apt to forget that libertarian philosophy was not dictated by Nature. Freethought and Freedom surveys the long history of religious and intellectual liberty, exploring their key ideas along the way.
Author : George A. Erickson
Publisher : Prometheus Books
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 34,69 MB
Release : 2010-10-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1615929088
For sixteen centuries Christianity dominated Western culture, during which time a powerful church rigidly and sometimes ruthlessly imposed its dogma. Under these conditions progressive thinkers who departed from the Christian worldview encountered stiff opposition from ecclesiastical authorities. Persecution by both church and state as a means of stifling heretics became routine.Using the biblical dictum, ôby their fruits shall ye know themö (Mt. 7:20), humanist George Erickson surveys the historical record of the defenders of faith and the proponents of reason. His analysis challenges the commonly held belief that despite its many abuses religion on balance civilized the world. Beginning with the unfettered progress of science in pre-Christian, polytheistic societies, he notes that this progress was soon actively thwarted by the growing Christian throng. Aided by the carrot-and-stick appeal of heaven and hell, missionary passion, superstitions, and miracles, Christianity gradually overwhelmed its religious competitors while simultaneously working to destroy all interest in scientific reasoning.Yet even amidst these suffocating, often bloody conditions, certain individuals doggedly pursued new and dangerous, frequently heretical scientific research, sometimes at the risk of their lives. Erickson briefly profiles such pioneers as Giordano Bruno, Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Linnaeus, and others. While condemning the Christianity that produced such abominations as the Inquisition and witch hunts, Erickson concludes on an optimistic note, emphasizing that science and secular society have broken free from centuries of religious opposition, and continue to benefit the world through mass education, modern medicine, and technological progress.George A. Erickson (New Brighton, MN) is a former director of the American Humanist Association, a member of the Council for Secular Humanism and the National Center for Science Education, and the author of a pro-science, pro-freethought travel adventure book titled True North: Exploring the Great Wilderness by Bush Plane.
Author : John Bagnell Bury
Publisher :
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 46,62 MB
Release : 1913
Category : Free thought
ISBN :
Author : Georges Minois
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 35,62 MB
Release : 2022-09-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0226821064
A comprehensive biography of the Treatise of the Three Impostors, a controversial nonexistent medieval book. Like a lot of good stories, this one begins with a rumor: in 1239, Pope Gregory IX accused Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, of heresy. Without disclosing evidence of any kind, Gregory announced that Frederick had written a supremely blasphemous book—De tribus impostoribus, or the Treatise of the Three Impostors—in which Frederick denounced Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as impostors. Of course, Frederick denied the charge, and over the following centuries the story played out across Europe, with libertines, freethinkers, and other “strong minds” seeking a copy of the scandalous text. The fascination persisted until finally, in the eighteenth century, someone brought the purported work into actual existence—in not one but two versions, Latin and French. Although historians have debated the origins and influences of this nonexistent book, there has not been a comprehensive biography of the Treatise of the Three Impostors. In The Atheist’s Bible, the eminent historian Georges Minois tracks the course of the book from its origins in 1239 to its most salient episodes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, introducing readers to the colorful individuals obsessed with possessing the legendary work—and the equally obsessive passion of those who wanted to punish people who sought it. Minois’s compelling account sheds much-needed light on the power of atheism, the threat of blasphemy, and the persistence of free thought during a time when the outspoken risked being burned at the stake.