American Heathen®

(The following is a transcript of a  recorded broadcast by John Mill. John is a noted free thought advocate and broadcaster. “This Week In Freethought” airs on my American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 02/18/12)

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

Last Sunday, February 12, was the anniversary of two great lights in Freethought history – one in science, the other in politics, one in England, the other in America – both born on the same day in the same year!

Last Sunday, February 12, 203 years ago (1809), British naturalist Charles Darwin was born. His collection and analysis of specimens from nature across a wide area of the earth, during and after his voyage on the Beagle, led to his formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection. The response in the scientific community was electric. But in the religious community, where accepting Darwin’s theories was tantamount to rejecting divine creation, the response ranged from dismissive to panic-stricken. Darwin’s own religious views evolved from a passable piety to deep skepticism. Three years before he died, Darwin wrote, “I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.”

Also last Sunday, 203 years ago (1809), the 16th US President Abraham Lincoln was born. Presiding over a divided nation in the midst of civil war, Lincoln guided the Union effort with a firm hand. Was his hand guided by God, as many fundamentalists today claim? Though he read the Bible and accompanied his wife to church, Lincoln never joined any church. Perhaps he was a secret Christian? Nobody who knew him well says Lincoln was a Christian in any sense of the word – and in Western civilization nobody has had to be a “secret Christian” since the Roman catacombs! When a delegation of ministers in Chicago, claiming God’s direction, demanded that he issue the Emancipation Proclamation with all haste, Lincoln replied, “[I]f it is, as you say, a message from your Divine Master, is it not odd that the only channel he could send it by was that round-about route by that awfully wicked city of Chicago?”

Last Monday, February 13, 377 years ago (1635), the first US public school was founded. The system of free public education under pagan Rome, says historian William Boyd, “With few exceptions [under Christianity] had disappeared by the sixth century.” What education there was in medieval Christian Europe was for the wealthy and well connected and consisted largely of preparation for church duties, with little science and secular literature. The monks, far from preserving them, destroyed many ancient classics. Most priests were too illiterate to read the Mass. Illiteracy in Europe was 95-99% until the 1800s; 90% in 1900; but it is in single digits in the secular West today.

Last Tuesday, February 14, marked the 63rd birthday of American magician and comedian Teller (1948). Teller is the non-speaking half of the Penn & Teller act, currently running on pay cable as “Penn & Teller’s Bullshit.” They are both outspoken and often funny atheists. Teller was asked if even the most hardened Atheists “search for some kind of personal answers for existence itself.” Teller remarked that “Atheists do look for answers to existence itself. They just don’t make them up.”

Last Wednesday, February 15, 192 years ago (1820), American feminist and social reformer Susan B. Anthony was born. It is a characteristic of the early days of social reform movements that the pioneers were almost entirely Freethinkers, Agnostics, Deists and even Atheists. So it was with Anthony, who said, “I have worked 40 years to make the [Woman Suffrage] platform broad enough for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon.” Anthony mostly kept her Agnosticism to herself, but elsewhere she said, “What you should say to outsiders that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our Association than an atheist. When our platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself shall not stand upon it.”

Yesterday, Friday, February 17, 412 years ago, Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned alive for heresy on the Field of Flowers in Rome (1600). Bruno was a brilliant scholar and had an astounding memory. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia admits, “His attitude of mind towards religious truth was that of a rationalist.” But there was no safe place for a Rationalist in any country of Renaissance Christendom. Denounced to the Inquisition, in 1592, Bruno was dragged to a dungeon in Rome. Then on 10 February 1600, certain that this one intransigent man could bring down the entire Christian edifice, the Inquisition allowed him a final week to recant or be executed. Bruno’s answer was the same. A monument to Giordano Bruno now looks out over the Campo de’ Fiori where he was burned.

Today, Saturday, February 18, 58 years ago (1954), the First Church of Scientology was established in Los Angeles, CA. There’s a reason why some of us call the Church of Scientology “Where the Bullies Are”: they are notorious for their aggressive defense – not just of their religion but of their copyrighted holy books. Imagine putting a lock on the book of Genesis and charging a fee to learn how your church thinks the world began! Oh, wait. I think they already do – they just call it an offering. Started by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology grew into a multi-million-dollar business that had to litigate its way to tax exemption. The church is also responsible for the largest theft of US government documents in history and for an opposition to the science of psychiatry that has more than one preventable psychotic murder to its credit. Scientology is the medieval Inquisition, the Jesuits and the Mafia juiced up on science fiction, with thugs at its call and Internet-age mind control at its fingertips. Can you say “cult”?

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.

(The following is a transcript of a recorded broadcast by John Mill. John is a noted free thought advocate and broadcaster. “This Week In Freethought” airs on my American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 02/11/12)

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

Last Sunday, February 5, 146 years ago (1866), Scottish scientist Arthur Keith was born. A prominent evolutionist in his time, Keith was one of many experts taken in by the Piltdown fossil hoax. But his defense of Darwinism and his research and publication on the subject of primate and human evolution, put him in the front rank of his peers. Keith once said, “This world of ours has been constructed like a superbly written novel: we pursue the tale with avidity, hoping to discover the plot.” Although this sounds like Keith admitted a divine plan, he was an Honorary Associate of the British Rationalist Press Association.

Also last Sunday, February 5, 172 years ago, (1840), English inventor Sir Hiram Maxim was born. While visiting the 1881 Paris Electrical Exhibition, so the story goes, a man told him, “If you want to make a lot of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each other’s throats with greater facility.” Maybe for that reason Maxim is best remembered for the Maxim gun, the first self-acting machine gun. Maxim was an aggressive Atheist, co-writing Li Hung Chang’s Scrap-book (1913). In this, Maxim and co-author Joseph McCabe remark that “The Chinese were generally puzzled as to how it was possible for people who are able to build locomotives and steamships to have a religion based on a belief in devils, ghosts, impossible miracles, and all the other absurdities and impossibilities peculiar to the religion taught by the missionaries.”

Last Monday, February 6, 448 years ago, (1564), British poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe was born. He was arguably the most talented playwright in England next to William Shakespeare (who was born in the same year), and, had he lived beyond age 29, he might have equaled or even surpassed the Bard. In Elizabethan England, skepticism could be punished severely, yet Marlowe, Walter Raleigh and others formed a private circle of Rationalists, which clerical critics called “Raleigh’s school of Atheism.” A week before his death, the Privy Council had ordered Marlowe’s arrest on charges of Atheism, blasphemy, subversion and homosexuality. It is posited by some scholars that Marlowe’s death was not a simple dispute over a bill that accelerated under the fuel of drink. Perhaps he was murdered for political reasons?

Last Tuesday, February 7, 200 years ago, (1812), the greatest novelist in the English language, Charles Dickens, was born. Dickens was an acclaimed author by the time he made his first American tour and he returned to invent the modern idea of Christmas with A Christmas Carol in 1843. All of Dickens’ novels are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy – including religious hypocrisy. His chief modern biographer (Edgar Johnson), wrote, “…he had little respect for mystical religious dogma. He hated the Roman Catholic Church, ‘that curse upon the world,’ as the tool and coadjutor of oppression throughout Europe. … He had rejected the Church of England and detested the influence of its bishops in English politics.” It was Charles Dickens who said of religious bigotry, “There is something in the sonorous quavering of the harsh voices, in the lank and hollow faces of the men and the sour solemnity of the women, which bespeaks this a stronghold of intolerant zeal and ignorant enthusiasm.”

Also last Tuesday, 127 years ago, (1885), Nobel-winning American novelist Sinclair Lewis was born. It was his attack on Bible Belt fundamentalist religion, Elmer Gantry (1927 – film 1960), that won Lewis both praise and condemnation. Protestants distanced themselves from the novel by rationalizing it as only a criticism of religious charlatans. Catholics liked Elmer Gantry because it criticized the Protestant heresy. As a boy he was interested in all religions, but it was in college that Lewis lost most of the religion he had, writing as part of his credo, “No cant about Sabbath, & priesthoods & gods, & saints, & blasphemy … If there be saints – they are Voltaire – as well as Christ; Shelley as well as St. Paul.” He at last concluded, “The Christian religion is a crutch. Until it is taken away we can never begin to walk well.”

Last Wednesday, February 8, 193 years ago, (1819), English author and art critic John Ruskin was born. In addition to his passion for architecture and art, Ruskin had a passion for social justice and progress. Although never a Christian, Ruskin was influential in the development of Christian Socialism, which is a political movement that is both Christian and socialist. Ruskin coined the term “Modern Atheism,” meaning “the unfortunate persistence of the clergy in teaching children what they cannot understand, and in employing young consecrate persons to assert in pulpits what they do not know.” John Ruskin who told English writer and raconteur Augustus Hare (1834-1903) that “he believed nothing.”

Last Thursday, February 9, 119 years ago, (1893), the first public strip-tease took place in Paris, when Mona, an artist’s model who thought she had more than just the prettiest legs, jumped nude onto a table for the art students. She got a 100-franc fine from the police, but her student fans rioted in protest. The Moulin Rouge, which had opened just a few years before, picked up on the idea… and the strip-tease was born! The public unveiling of the female body has always had the power to set religious mouths gaping. Or gasping. It seems that church control of women’s sexuality is essential or there would be no church power – just think of all the hot-button modern issues: sex-education in schools, premarital sex, birth control, abortion, pornography, sexual behavior and sexual orientation in the media and movies, homosexuality, bisexuality, breast-feeding in public, same-sex marriage, traditional roles in marriage – even topless sunbathing and nude beaches. In strip-tease, control over women’s bodies and their sexuality is in the hands of the women, where it belongs. Who is being exploited: the dancer or the gullible client?

Yesterday, February 10, 114 years ago, (1898), German dramatist Berthold Brecht was born. Attracted to Socialism and to theater, Brecht combined the two and became a leading reformer on the 20th century stage. Brecht noted a corrupt alliance between religion and capitalism in his 1928 Berlin hit, The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper). In The Life of Galileo (Leben des Galilei, 1938-39), Brecht claimed he had not meant to insult the Church; indeed, Brecht took it easy on the church officials who persecuted the great scientist. Berthold Brecht wrote in his Diaries, “The church is a circus for the masses,” and believed organized religion had been standing in the way of human progress for centuries.

Today, February 11, 165 years ago, (1847), American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was born. Edison had only three months of formal education, but his mother and the public library were his school. By age ten Edison had read Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason, of which he wrote, “I can still remember the flash of enlightenment that shone from his pages.” As for education generally, Edison said, “I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States.” “All Bibles are man-made,” said Edison. To the magazine in which a cleric discounted his religious views as those of “a mere mechanic,” Edison said, “I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.” Asked “What does God mean to you?” Edison replied, “Not a damn thing.”

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.

(The following is a transcript of a recorded broadcast by John Mill. John is a noted free thought advocate and broadcaster. “This Week In Freethought” airs on my American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 02/04/12)

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

Last Sunday, January 29, 275 years ago (1737) American patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Paine was born into an English Quaker family. As a soldier in George Washington’s army, Paine penned Common Sense, which made him so popular that the title became his nickname. The first number of The Crisis, which begins, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” was so powerful, Washington had it read to his troops for motivation. Narrowly escaping the guillotine, after helping in the French Revolution, Paine returned to a nation that had forgotten all his service to American independence and instead reviled him for his honest criticisms in The Age of Reason. Paine was an early opponent of slavery and proponent of social security and general public education. He was a Deist, never an atheist. Paine’s writings influenced Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, and generations of others.

Last Monday, January 30, 237 years ago (1775), English satirist and writer Walter Savage Landor was born. Landor supported the socialist ideals of George Holyoake (1817-1906) and was a firm fighter for freedom with his popular pen. In a series of letters to William Lamb (2nd Viscount, Lord Melbourne; 1779-1848), Landor wrote, “Divorce the Church and State: divorce them; and the one will neither be shrew nor strumpet; the other neither bulley [sic] nor cutpurse.”

Last Tuesday, January 31, 131 years ago (1881) American chemist Irving Langmuir was born in Brooklyn, NY. Langmuir is chiefly remembered for coining the physics term “plasma” to describe a fourth state of matter. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A true scientist, Langmuir was deeply skeptical of shortcuts to knowledge, formulating “Irving Langmuir’s Symptoms of Pathological Science” – a list of six characteristics common to pseudoscience. When asked about his inattention to religion, Langmuir responded, “Never believe anything that can’t be proved.”

Also last Tuesday, but 215 years ago (1881) Austrian composer Franz Schubert was born in Vienna. Probably Schubert’s most popular work is his “Unfinished” Symphony in B-Minor (No. 8, D.759). The Catholic Encyclopedia, always eager to claim religious inspiration for art, makes much of Schubert’s church music and waxes rhapsodic about the faith that must have inspired the composer. In truth, like Beethoven and Mozart, Schubert was a skeptic. Sir George Grove, in his standard Dictionary of Music and Musicians, says, “of formal or dogmatic religion we can find no trace,” in Schubert’s short life. Of creeds and churches Grove quotes Schubert saying, “Not a word of it is true.”

Last Wednesday, February 1, 110 years ago (1902) American poet Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. “I grew up in a not very religious family,” Hughes noted, “but I had a foster aunt who saw that I went to church and Sunday school.” Consequently, the influences evident in his work include the Bible as much as W.E.B. Du Bois. As a leading light of the “Harlem Renaissance” in the 1920s, the author of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” depicted the ordinary lives of black people with a realism that crossed racial and cultural boundaries. He believed in God, but did not accept Christianity. Langston Hughes criticized those who used their piety for personal gain, or as a shield behind which oppression could flourish.

Last Thursday, 107 years ago (1905) Objectivist philosopher and author Ayn Rand was born to Jewish parents in Russia. As a young girl, she witnessed the brutality of the Soviet regime in the Bolshevik Revolution. At age 21 she got permission to travel to the US and settled in Los Angeles to become a screenwriter. She published The Fountainhead in 1943, and her most memorable if unreadable work, Atlas Shrugged, in 1957. In a time when most capitalists identified “godless” with “Communist,” Rand “was identifying religion and communism as brothers under the skin.” “Religion,” Rand noted, “is the first enemy of the ability to think. … Faith is the worst curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.”

Last Friday, February 3, 69 years ago (1943) four chaplains aboard the US Army Transport Dorchester, sinking from a German U-Boat attack in the icy North Atlantic, helped other soldiers board lifeboats and gave up their own life jackets when the supply ran out, thereby sacrificing their lives to save the lives of sailors and soldiers abandoning a sinking ship. Yet, the story of the Four Chaplains, if it proves anything, proves that nothing fails like faith. That 674 US soldiers had to drown in icy water to give us this heart-warming story, proves not the love of God, but his malevolence.

Today, February 4, 170 years ago (1842) Danish critic and scholar Georg Brandes was born in Copenhagen into a Jewish family. Although born and educated in Denmark, he lived in many countries: Brandes changed address so often because of his outspoken agnosticism. Brandes once wrote, “It would be as impossible for me to attack Christianity as it would be impossible for me to attack werewolves.” And, perhaps anticipating the Arab Spring in the East, and Occupy Wall Street in the West, Georg Brandes noted, “It is useless to send armies against ideas.”

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.