Amos Norton Craft

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Amos Norton Craft (July 7, 1844 - August 30, 1912) [1] was an American Methodist and early skeptic writer.

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Craft was born in Mecca, Ohio, on July 7, 1844. [1] [2] He married Alice Alvira Judson on March 10, 1863. [2] They had four children. Craft graduated from Mount Union College in 1865. He was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. [2] In 1878 he settled in Oil City, Pennsylvania. [2]

Craft obtained a PhD in philosophy from Mount Union College. [3] He is most well known for his Epidemic Delusions (1881). According to skeptic Daniel Loxton the book is a "critical gaze over spirit mediums, end of the world panics, bogus religious relics, witch-hunting manias, haunted houses, clairvoyance, and mesmerism. Again and again he hammered home the point that paranormal claims rest upon arguments from ignorance." [4]

Craft died on August 30, 1912, in Meadville, Pennsylvania. [5]

Publications

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References

  1. 1 2 Brill, H. E. (1938). Story of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Oklahoma. The University Press. p. 130
  2. 1 2 3 4 Crafts, James Monroe. (1893). The Crafts Family: A Genealogical and Biographical History of the Descendants of Griffin and Alice Craft, of Roxbury, Mass. 1630-1890. Gazette Printing Company. p. 775
  3. The Rev. Amos N. Craft. The Christian Advocate (December 12, 1912).
  4. Loxton, Daniel. (2013). Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?. The Skeptics Society. Retrieved 2015-11-06.
  5. Alumni Catalog 1915. Mount Union college.