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Author: Susan Jacoby
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300137257
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
A biography that restores America's foremost 19th-century champion of reason and secularism to the still contested 21st-century public square.
Author: Susan Jacoby
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300137257
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
A biography that restores America's foremost 19th-century champion of reason and secularism to the still contested 21st-century public square.
Author: Susan Jacoby
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300205787
Category : Freethinkers
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A biography that restores America's foremost 19th-century champion of reason and secularism to the still contested 21st-century public square.
Author: Robert Ingersoll
Publisher: Steerforth
ISBN: 1586421972
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148
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Book Description
Robert Ingersoll (1833—1899) is one of the great lost figures in United States history, all but forgotten at just the time America needs him most. An outspoken and unapologetic agnostic, fervent champion of the separation of church and state, and tireless advocate of the rights of women and African Americans, he drew enormous audiences in the late nineteenth century with his lectures on “freethought.” His admirers included Mark Twain and Thomas A. Edison, who said Ingersoll had “all the attributes of a perfect man” and went so far as to make an early recording of Ingersoll’s voice. The publication of What’s God Got to Do with It? will return Robert Ingersoll and his ideas to American political discourse. Edited and with a biographical introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Page, this new popular collection of Ingersoll’s thought – distilled from the twelve-volume set of his works, his copious letters, and various newspaper interviews – promises to put Ingersoll back where he belongs, in the forefront of independent American thought.
Author: Robert Green Ingersoll
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
There was a time when a falsehood, fulminated from the pulpit, smote like a sword; but, the supply having greatly exceeded the demand, clerical misrepresentation has at last become almost an innocent amusement. Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the pulpit's last resort. The old instruments of torture are kept only to gratify curiosity; the chains are rusting away, and the demolition of time has allowed even the dungeons of the Inquisition to be visited by light. The church, impotent and malicious, regrets, not the abuse, but the loss of her power, and seeks to hold by falsehood what she gained by cruelty and force, by fire and fear. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising, unreasoning, aggressive and insolent. Christianity has held all other creeds and forms in infinite contempt, divided the world into enemies and friends, and verified the awful declaration of its founder -- a declaration that wet with blood the sword he came to bring, and made the horizon of a thousand years lurid with the fagots' flames.....Robert Green Ingersoll
Author: Paul Horwitz
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019973772X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
"Argues that the fundamental reason for church-state conflict is our aversion to questions of religious truth. By trying to avoid the question of religious truth, law and religion has ultimately reached a state of incoherence. He asserts that the answer to this dilemma is to take the agnostic turn: to take an empathetic and imaginative approach to questions of religious truth, one that actually confronts rather than avoids these questions, but without reaching a final judgment about what that truth is"--Jacket.
Author: Robert Green Ingersoll
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781670882363
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habitsand mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are moulded and fashioned by oursurroundings. Environment is a sculptor---a painter. If we had been born in Constantinople, the most of us would have said: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet." If our parentshad lived on the banks of the Ganges, we would have been worshipers ofSiva, longing for the heaven of Nirvana. As a rule, children love their parents, believe what they teach, andtake great pride in saying that the religion of mother is good enoughfor them. Most people love peace. They do not like to differ with their neighbors.They like company. They are social. They enjoy traveling on the highwaywith the multitude. They hate to walk alone. (...) Belief is not subject to the will. Men think as they must. Children donot, and cannot, believe exactly as they were taught. They are notexactly like their parents. They differ in temperament, in experience, in capacity, in surroundings. And so there is a continual, though almostimperceptible change. There is development, conscious and unconsciousgrowth, and by comparing long periods of time we find that the old hasbeen almost abandoned, almost lost in the new. Men cannot remainstationary. The mind cannot be securely anchored. If we do not advance, we go backward. If we do not grow, we decay. If we do not develop, weshrink and shrivel. - Taken from "Why Am I An Agnostic" written by Robert Green Ingersoll
Author: Susan Jacoby
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1429934751
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
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: Lesley Hazleton
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594634130
Category : Agnosticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
"A widely admired writer on religion celebrates agnosticism as the most vibrant, engaging--and ultimately the most honest--stance toward the mysteries of existence." -- Amazon.com.
Author: Roger E. Greeley
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615921559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Robert Ingersoll was America''s finest orator and foremost leader of freethinkers. Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Eugene V. Debs, and Elizabeth Cady used to gather to hear the speeches of "the great agnostic."Roger E. Greeley has selected the best from speeches and essays of this iconoclastic orator who labored to destroy the superstition and hypocrisy of fundamentalism in America and who answered the Moral Majority in the last century.One hundred years after he advanced into the national spotlight, Ingersoll''s commentaries still retain their fresh, penetrating, and witty character. His pleas for civil rights, the rights of women and children, responsible and responsive government, and individual freedom of conscience and religious belief have placed him in the vanguard of enlightened thinkers.Today the legacy of Robert Ingersoll, prophet and pioneer, merits the attention of anyone who espouses humane, liberal, rational, or agnostic opinions.
Author: Khushwant Singh
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
ISBN: 9381398232
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 149
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Book Description
Instead of entering into a pointless debate on whether or not God exists, it is more important to bear in mind that belief in the existence of God has little bearing on making a person a good or a bad citizen. One can be a saintly person without believing in God and a detestable villain believing in Him. In my personalized religion, there is NO GOD! Khushwant Singh, over the decades, has built up a reputation for coming up with something new and controversial in each book, and he does not disappoint his readers this time too. He begins with a chapter on the ‘need for a new religion – without God’, in which he questions the relevance of God. He then moves on to describe how religion has proved to be more harmful than beneficial and, in the process, debunks astrologers and the breed of so-called ‘godmen’. However, he is not dismissive of religion. Through his lucid writing, he brings out the beauty and significance of holy books such as the Bhagvad Gita, the Quran and the Granth Sahib. He provides relevant extracts to highlight the poetry and the music in such books. The author next tries to dispel the prejudices held by many non-Muslims against their Muslim compatriots by giving down-to-earth examples. He also emphasizes the importance of the Ramzaan fast. Khushwant Singh’s description of the life and times of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh and his in-depth analysis of the Granth Sahib throw new light on a particularly troubled period in India’s history. The chapter devoted to the interaction of the author (a confirmed agnostic) with the Dalai Lama (probably the world’s most renowned spiritual leader) makes for fascinating reading. Here’s one book containing a wealth of knowledge and information that you would want to read or consult again and again.
