This paper was originally prepared for oral presentation at the Houston Church of Freethought - April 9, 2006, service. The HCOF members include humanists, atheists, agnostics, and other freethinkers. The paper argues that compassion is consistent with Freethought and supplies some suggestions for bringing it to the fore in everyday life.

This chapter contains sections titled: Mill on Liberty Khomeini v. Rushdie Fukuyama Giving Up on the Arab World The Limits of Free Speech The Deontological and Utilitarian Justifications for Free Speech Clifford on the Duty to Critique Freedom of Speech and Philosophers on the Index Intolerance not Restricted to Islam Giniewski v. France Freethought under Fire People Are not Being Insulted for Having a Religion Racism without Race Social Criticism not Identical with the Urge to Provoke Flemming Rose on (...) Why He Published the Danish Cartoons The Theory of Evolution: Too Controversial to Defend? Is There Another Way to Discover the Truth than by Free Discussion? (shrink)

Ives, Rosslyn The emergence of freethought in Western Europe and its colonies seems to be an almost inevitable outcome of the many changes that had occurred during the preceding centuries - changes that expanded knowledge and understanding about the place of humans in the scheme of things.

ABSTRACTFreethought was a transnational movement that developed particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, spreading across Europe and other world regions and promoting new models for society. The present article proposes an investigation of the contours and developments of the freethought movement in Romania before World War I. This is an important area of research given that most analyses performed to date have considered only the Western world and not the Eastern European context.Our intention is to elucidate (...) to what extent the European models influenced this movement and to uncover their impact on the Romanian society of the time. The paper highlights the criticisms of the clerics upon freethought, showing that the development of this current in Romania as a national movement represented not simply imitation of the European models, but an adaptation of those models to Romanian realities. The Romanian freethinkers can be seen trying to develop some of the most radical ideas of those times, in connection with the European trends. (shrink)

An essay exploring the failure of the Freethought Movement to repell the Religious Right in American politics.

Label mounted on title page: Distributed in U.S.A. by Humanities Press, New York. First ed., 1899, published under title: A short history of freethought. Bibliography: p. 995-1006.

This series is a rewriting, with expansion, of the short section on the 19th century at the close of "A Short History of Freethought.".

which I propose as a text for this discourse may be found. Alluding to the change in the condition of France brought about by the Revolution of Â’93, Thomas Paine says.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1901 Edition.

Hume's Treatise of Human Nature was published in the form of three separate books. The first two, "Of the Understanding" and "Of the Pas- sions," were published in London in January 1739 by John Noon. The third, "Of Morals," was published independently in London by Thomas Longman in November 1740.2 The title and subtitles on all three books are the same: A Treatise of Human Nature: Being An Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. On the (...) title page of the first two books Hume employs an epigram from Tacitus: Rara temporumfelicitas, ubi sentire, quae velis; & quae sentias, dicere licet. ["Seldom are men blessed with times in which they may think what they like and say what they think."] On the title page of the third book this epigram is replaced by an epigram taken from the ninth book of Lucan's Pharsalia: Durae semper virtutis amator, Quaere quid est virtus, et posce exemplar honesti. ["Thou that to virtue ever wer't inclined, learn what it is, how certainly defin'd, and leave some perfect Rule to guide Mankind."] Given the context and the prominence of these epigrams, it is a curious fact that they have attracted little or no attention or comment from Hume scholars. -/- In this paper I argue that Hume's use of the epigram from Lucan is directly relevant to his use of the epigram from Tacitus. The epigrams flag very clearly the anti-Christian nature of Hume's intentions in the Treatise and his affiliations with and allegiance to an anti-Christian tradition of thought that stretches from Hobbes and Spinoza in the late seventeenth century to a circle of anti-Newtonian radical freethinkers that appeared in Britain in the first part of the eighteenth century. In more general terms these epigrams are a notable and illuminating example of esoteric communication in this context, and they indicate that the Treatise has an important place in the literature of the radical enlightenment. (shrink)

Freethought and atheism in classical Islam -- Arabic philosophy and its influence on Western freethought -- The treatise of the three impostors : Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, and its origins in Islam -- Averroes and Ibn Tufayl, and their influence on Western freethought -- Atheism, freethought and Islam in the 19th, 20th, and 21st Century -- Conclusion : The Allah that failed.

This chapter contains sections titled: “Écrasez l'Infâme” Religion and Evil Religious Violence Father and Daughter How to Discover a Relationship between Religion and Violence Ramadan v. Hirsi Ali Religion “per se” Textual Relativism Can Translation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Can Interpretation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Why Are “Moderates” so Reluctant to Criticize Religion? The Bible on Apostasy Biblical Terrorism: The Story of Phinehas Biblical Violence and Modern Legal Practice The Book of History Some Objections.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:150. HUME AND COLLINS ON MIRACLES Some portions of 18th century intellectual history seem like puzzles of which the most important pieces are missing. In some lucky instances the pieces have not been lost altogether but only misplaced in some other puzzle, so that once this is recognised it is possible to solve both puzzles at once. The following, I believe, may comprise one such case. In his erudite (...) History of Freethought (London 1936), p. 757, J. M. Robertson presents us with the first puzzle:...seven years before the issue of Hume's Essay on Miracles, we find the thesis of that essay tersely affirmed in a note, to Book II of an anonymous translation (ascribed to T. Francklin) of Cicero's De Natura Deorum. The passage is worth comparing with Hume: "Hence we see what little credit ought to be paid to facts said to be done out of the ordinary course of nature. These miracles [cutting the whetstone, etc., related by Cicero, De Div i, c. xvii] are well attested. They were recorded in the annals of a great people, believed by many learned and otherwise sagacious persons, and received as religious truths by the populace; but the testimonies of ancient records, the credulity of some learned men, and the implicit faith of the vulgar, can never prove that to have been, which is impossible in the nature of things ever to be." M. Tullius Cicero Of the Nature of the Gods... with Notes, London, 1741, p. 85. The ascription to Thomas Francklin seems to have been drawn primarily from the "new edition" (London: T. Davies, 1775), on the title-page of which the translation and notes are said to be "By the Rev. Dr. Francklin". Also relevant to 151!. this attribution are these two facts: (1) that Thomas Francklin' s father, Richard Francklin, originally printed the book in 1741, and (2) that Thomas later translated other classical authors into English, notably Sophocles in 1759. But it is surely puzzling that Thomas, who in 1741 was barely twenty years old, and soon to be ordained and later made a Doctor of Divinity, should anticipate Hume's famous criticism of miracles. Consider now the second puzzle. It concerns Anthony Collins, the "Goliath of Freethinking" - as T. H. Huxley called him. In his Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered (London, 1727) Collins promised a discourse on miracles "which is almost transcribed" (p. 439); and, indeed, it was about time, since by that date Collins had attacked nearly every other part of the Christian edifice. But no such work ever appeared in Collins' s lifetime. Nor is this the only book which Collins came close to publishing. From private letters of Collins' s in the British Library (MS 4282) we learn that he planned to publish an annotated translation of two of Cicero's writings. Thus in a letter of 26 September 1721 he speaks of "publishing my translation of Cicero's books of ye Nature of the Gods and of Divination" For "Nothing [he writes in the same letter] can more tend to promote good sense in the world than some of his [Cicero's] Philosophical Works; which are applicable to all sorts of folly and superstition by those who have Eyes to see and Ears to hear." The reader will now probably guess my drift: Collins was responsible for the 1741 edition of Cicero and its acute comment on miracles. But why, it will be asked, has this connection not been made before? The obvious answer is that since Collins died in 1729 twelve years separated his name from the 1741 edition. The evidence which firmly connects him with it is to be found (a) on the last page (279) of his Historical and Critical Essay on the Thirty Nine Articles (London 1724): "Speedily will be published, Cicero's Treatises of the 152. Nature of the Gods and of Divination. Translated into english [sic], with annotations. In two volumes." and (b) on the title-page. For the Historical and Critical Essay was printed by none other than R. Francklin, the very one who printed the 1741 edition of Cicero. That this is no coincidence - and Richard Francklin was to print... (shrink)

Atheism has been on the rise in the West for several decades, but its roots, including those belonging to secularism, agnosticism, and freethought, run deep in Western history, philosophy, and thought. Drawing on a multitude of sources from a number of disciplines, S. T. Joshi outlines the natural origins of religious belief in primitive times and charts the slow development of secular accounts of natural phenomena in the Greco-Roman world. Adopting the " Christ myth" theory, he surveys the emergence (...) of a new faith- Christianity- that grew out of Judaism and explores its evolution through the medieval period. He then examines the increasing schisms within the church and conflicts between religious and political entities that caused a fracturing of the monolith of Christianity and the birth of the Renaissance, which not only brought to light the literary glories of the Greco-Roman world but also led to a scientific resurgence and the development of a secular view of the cosmos. By the end of the sixteenth century, as he concludes, the stage was set for the emergence of a worldview free of religion. (shrink)

John Anderson was Australia's most important philosopher in the first half of this century. Coming from Scotland as a young man, he held the chair of philosophy at the University of Sydney for thirty years until his retirement in 1958. The doctrinaire Scots empiricist would become as Australian as a magpie. He developed his own distinctive system of realism and fathered a vigorous local school characterised by inquiry, independence and a deep commitment to philosophy as a way of life. Far (...) from being a remote, albeit distinguished, technical philosopher and university man, he was a formidable public figure and fierce controversialist who, over decades, outraged many of Sydney's clergy and conventionally minded citizenry. From an early Marxist phase, he espoused and applied 'freethought' and criticism in everything, opposing all forms of censorship and mind control - except perhaps, as one intrepid student observed, his own. Anderson was no secular saint and this, his first biography, is no hagiography. Brian Kennedy has uncovered much new material, including personal letters and diaries, about Anderson's Scottish past and his conflicted public and private life in Australia. His relations with students were complex; with women, they were decidedly problematic. Warts and all, Anderson has much to teach us about universities and the intellectual life, as this lucid and incisive book makes clear. In the aftermath of the revolution that has swept our universities and colleges into a brave new world, Anderson's uncompromising calls to unfettered inquiry, criticism and the Socratic way of life are timely. (shrink)

This essay examines Secularism as developed by George Jacob Holyoake in 1851–1852. While historians have noted the importance of evolutionary thought for freethinking radicals from the 1840s, and others have traced the popularization of agnosticism and Darwinian evolution by later Victorian freethinkers, insufficient attention has been paid to mid-century Secularism as constitutive of the cultural and intellectual environment necessary for the promotion and relative success of scientific naturalism. I argue that Secularism was a significant source for the emerging new creed (...) of scientific naturalism in the mid-nineteenth century. Not only did early Secularism help clear the way by fighting battles with the state and religious interlocutors, but it also served as a source for what Huxley, almost twenty years later, termed ‘agnosticism’. Holyoake modified freethought in the early 1850s, as he forged connections with middle-class literary radicals and budding scientific naturalists, some of whom met in a ‘Confidential Combination’ of freethinkers. Secularism became the new creed for this coterie. Later, Secularism promoted and received reciprocal support from the most prominent group of scientific naturalists, as Holyoake used Bradlaugh's atheism and neo-Malthusianism as a foil, and maintained relations with Huxley, Spencer and Tyndall through the end of the century. In Holyoake's Secularism we find the beginnings of the mutation of radical infidelity into the respectability necessary for the acceptance of scientific naturalism, and also the distancing of later forms of infidelity incompatible with it. Holyoake's Secularism represents an important early stage of scientific naturalism. (shrink)

This collection demonstrates the strong influence that humanism and freethought had in developing the history and ideals of black intellectualism. Most people are quick to note the profound influence that religion has played in African-American history: consoling the downtrodden slave or inspiring the abolitionists, the underground railroad, and the civil rights movement. But few are aware of the role humanism played in shaping the black experience: developing the thought and motivating the actions of powerful African-American intellectuals. Section One of (...) this book offers biographical sketches of such prominent black humanists as Frederick Douglass, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert H. Harrison, and Richard Wright. Section Two features essays by black humanists: Douglass, DuBois, Charles W. Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Jaffree, Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, and Bruce Wright. Section Three offers the views of contemporary black African humanists: Freda Amakye Ansah, Emmanuel Kofi Mensah, Nkeonye Otakpor, Franz Vanderpuye, and Kwasi Wiredu. Section Four contains interviews conducted by Allen on the subjects of black humanist activism, the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, and the Harlem Renaissance with: Martin G. Bernal, Charles Faulkner, Leonard Harris, Norman Hill, and Alaine Locke. (shrink)

Lest We Forget: Free-Thought and the Environment In the world of modern theology, specifically Western theology, there has been a tendency to knit together religion and morality. It is partially because much work in theology is done with the assumption that since God exists God must care about human intentions and actions. The existence of God and religion, as the public manifestation of shared philosophical and moral beliefs, has been thought to impart moral awareness and behavior, as well as ground (...) morality. Many modern theologians have given voice to sentiments like these. They equate irreligion with iniquity, freethinking with depravity, and atheism with apathy about the world, human life, and morality. This essay challenges such positions by arguing for the validity of naturalistic accounts of morality. It shows how such accounts can be applied to the treatment of our environment as well as give us the motivation to do so. From David Hume to Paul Kurtz a history of freethought is drawn and the human reasons for protecting and conserving our environment are examined. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 105 NEW RUSSIAN WORK ON RUSSELL IRVING H. ANELLIS Modern Logic Publishing I Box 1036, Welch Ave. Station Ames, JA 5°010-1036, USA A. S. Kolesnikov. cI»HJIOCOcPHJl BepTPaHa PacceJIa [Filosofija Bertrana Rassela]. Leningrad: Izdatel'srvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1991. Pp. 232. 3 rub. 30 kop.. Anatolii Sergeevich Kolesnikov is a relatively new name in Russell studies,.r1.a1though his book shows a deep knowledge of the material available on Russell in Russian and (...) a wide acquaintance with Russell's publications in English and in Russian translation.1 In this work, which translates as The Philosophy ofBertrand Russel~ Kolesnikov traces the evolution of Russell's "world-view", while presenting a traditional Soviet interpretation of Russell's place in "bourgeois" philosophy. This monograph presents for the first time in Russian a thorough analysis of the evolution of Russell's philosophy as the outstanding representation of contemporary bourgeois philosophy, and is the first major study on Russell's philosophy in Russian since the appearance in'1962 ofSoviet philosopher 1. S. Narskii's The Philosophy ofBertrand Russell2 Russell himself is viewed by Kolesnikov as the best representative of the bourgeois humanist, philosopher, and mathematician. The author seeks a critical understanding of the historical and philosophical sources of Russell's ideas and conceptions and of the influence which these exercised and continue to exercise on contemporary Western philosophy and science. The author's aim is to "uncover" the neo-realist empiricist direction of Russell's philosophy as it manifested itself as a condition of his scientific and epistemological thinking. As had been usual for Soviet studies of Western "bourgeois" philosophers and their philosophies, Lenin and his empiriocriticism serves as a foil for the elucidation of Russell's thought and its development. Probably the most famous example of the dialectical attack on anaI Kolesnikov is also the author of The Freethought ofBertrand Russell [Svobodomyslie Bertrana Rassela] (Moscow: Mysl', 1978). 2 The Philosophy ofBertrand Russell: Lectures for Students in the University Philosophy Faculty [Filosofija Bertrana Rassela: lekcija dlja studentovfilosofikih fakul'tov universitetov] (Moscow: 1962). In the first footnote (on p. 60) to his translation of the article on "Bertrand Russell in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Translation from Russian", Russel~ nos. 23-4 (1976): 60-2, Charles Haynes wrote that "Narskiy... appears to be a leading Soviet writet on Russell's philosophy." In fact Narskii wrote extensively on philosophy of logic, for which work he is bcst known. 106 Reviews lytic philosophy revolved around the rather rough treatment accorded to A. J. Ayer when he lectured at Moscow State University in 1962. This methodology for criticizing "bourgeois idealism" has declined in recent years as a consequence of perestroika; from as early as 1987 Soviet philosophers have managed to refrain from employing this tactic in their writings (as one may readily see, e.g., from Zinaida Sokuler's recent paper on "Wirrgenstein on the Contradictions in Logic and in the Foundations of Mathematics"3). Kolesnikov's discussion of political-ideological, social and moral issues is limited to the Preface, which also presents a brief sketch of Russell's life, especially his education and the earliest of the philosophical influences at Cambridge, of course Russell's visit in 1920 to Soviet Russia and the writings that derived from that trip, especially his book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, and of his travels in China. Here Kolesnikov notes Russell's ties to the Fabian socialists and names in particular the Webbs, H. G. Wells and "other members representative of the bourgeois intelligentsia" (p. 5). Mention is also made here of his activism for nuclear disarmament and against the American war in Indochina, and of the essay "Why I Am Not a Christian". We are told at the very outset (p. 3) that "the name of this philosopher is widely known in our country." The remainder of the book is concerned with Russell's technical philosophy, i.e. with his work in philosophy of mathematics, logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics and epistemology. Kolesnikov divides Russell's philosophical evolution into three stages (p. 22). The "early" period (1894-1910) is the developmental stage, characterized by the influence ofneo-Hegelianism and neo-Kantianism and by the development of the conception of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 509 Mytheli Sreenivas Birth Control in the Shadow of Empire: The Trials of Annie Besant, 1877–1878 In March 1877, two London activists provoked a debate about poverty and overpopulation that reverberated across metropole and colony. These activists, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, republished a book by the American physician Charles Knowlton that outlined methods to prevent conception. TheFruitsofPhilosophy,which (...) Bradlaugh and Besant provocatively subtitled An Essay on the Population Question, had been in limited circulation in Britain since 1833, but the book’s legality was called into question when its previous publisher was charged with obscenity in early 1877.1 Determined to establish the legal right to publish information about contraception, on March 23rd, 1877, Bradlaugh and Besant delivered copies of The Fruits of Philosophy to the police department, the city solicitor, and local magistrates, and they announced their intent to sell the book from their premises at the Freethought Publishing Company on Stonecutter Street in East London. The following day, a crowd filled the narrow space outside the publishing house, and the two activists sold hundreds of copies of Knowlton’s book. When no arrests were made, Besant and Bradlaugh renotified the authorities that they were selling a supposedly obscene book and were informed in turn that papers were 1. S. Chandrasekhar, “A Dirty, Filthy Book”: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Reproductive Physiology and Birth Control and an Account of the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 26. 510 Mytheli Sreenivas being prepared for their arrest and prosecution. On the 7th of April, 1877, Besant and Bradlaugh were arrested and taken into custody.2 In their subsequent trial, the two activists linked birth control advocacy to a Malthusian worldview. They argued that the urban working classes and the rural poor in Britain labored under the burden of overpopulation. Humanitarian concern for impoverished people, and not intent to promote obscenity, drove them to disseminate information about birth control. Besant and Bradlaugh were eventually acquitted on a legal technicality, and Bradlaugh moved on to other issues. Besant, however, was dissatisfied with The Fruits of Philosophy because its methods were outdated by the science of the day. She was determined to write a more up-to-date guide explaining contraceptive methods and went on to found a Malthusian League to disseminate birth control information. These events—the trial and Besant’s further campaigns promoting contraception —mark a watershed moment in the history of birth control activism.3 They would shape how reproduction came to be understood not as a private matter, but as a particular sort of social problem, whose implications reverberated from London to the empire in India and back again. To outside observers, Bradlaugh and Besant may have seemed an unlikely pair to set these events into motion. Bradlaugh, at age forty-four, had a long history of association with radical causes. A celebrated atheist and antimonarchical republican, he helped to shape a tradition of mid-nineteenth-century English radicalism that developed in the wake of Chartist decline. As a member of the National Reform League in the 1860s, he had participated in public demonstrations to extend the franchise. His leadership of the National Secular Society made him a popular lecturer among Freethinkers on issues of political democracy, anticlericalism, and occasionally on neo-Malthusianism.4 2. Anne Taylor, Annie Besant: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 110–12. 3. The term “birth control” was coined in a meeting of Margaret Sanger and her associates in 1914, and thus would not have been in use in the late nineteenth century. The term contraception was not unknown, but had only limited circulation in scientific discourses. Nevertheless, I use both “birth control” and “contraception” interchangeably to mean methods to prevent conception. See Peter C. Engelman, A History of the Birth Control Movement in America (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), xviii. 4. Taylor, Annie Besant, 80–81. Mytheli Sreenivas 511 In comparison to Bradlaugh’s prominence, Besant was relatively unknown. Her public career began after a separation from her husband, the Anglican vicar Frank Besant. Perhaps the couple were ill-suited to each other from... (shrink)

How should one define “atheism”? The first response to such a question might be: “look it up in the dictionary”. The dictionary in question is, as Rosamund Moon has cleverly put it, the “Unidentifi...

Cílem této studie je představit základní rámec filozofického díla anglického volnomyšlenkáře Anthonyho Collinse (1676–1729) v kontextu britského osvícenského myšlení konce 17. a první poloviny 18. století. Prostřednictvím analýzy jednotlivých spisů je vyloženo Collinsovo chápání rozumu jako nástroje nepostradatelného nejen v oblasti poznání profánního, ale také divinálního. Studie dále sleduje Collinsovu obhajobu naprosté volnosti myšlení i formy jeho vyjádření. Významný prostor je věnován rovněž autorově filozofii náboženství. Studie dokládá, že Collins nebyl izolovaným myslitelem, ale že ve svém díle těžil jak z (...) předcházející (Spinoza, Herbert z Cherbury a především John Locke), tak i současné filozofické diskuze (zejména John Toland). (shrink)

Text John Toland a jeho Křesťanství bez mystérií sestává ze dvou provázaných částí. První část představuje stručné biografické pojednání o Johnu Tolandovi (1670–1722), v němž se mimo jiné snažíme předložit obecný úvod do jeho myšlení. Druhá část pak nabízí první český překlad předmluvy k Tolandovu nejznámějšímu spisu Christianity not Mysterious (1696), který je považován za základní impulz deistické diskuze na Britských ostrovech.

The mystery of the images and an unknown book.

The philosopher and his passion for the “gentle sex”.

A mistery unveiled, among magic, alchemy and philosophy.

Giordano Bruno's copy of Camoeracensis Acrotismus from Prague.

Bellarmino was not the actual executioner of the Nolan.