Related Research Articles
Robert Green Ingersoll, nicknamed "the Great Agnostic", was an American lawyer, writer, and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, who campaigned in defense of agnosticism.
"The Necessity of Atheism" is an essay on atheism by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, printed in 1811 by Charles and William Phillips in Worthing while Shelley was a student at University College, Oxford.
Freethought is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other methods such as logic, reason, and empirical observation. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a freethinker is "a person who forms their own ideas and opinions rather than accepting those of other people, especially in religious teaching." In some contemporary thought in particular, free thought is strongly tied with rejection of traditional social or religious belief systems. The cognitive application of free thought is known as "freethinking", and practitioners of free thought are known as "freethinkers". Modern freethinkers consider free thought to be a natural freedom from all negative and illusive thoughts acquired from society.
Charles Bradlaugh was an English political activist and atheist. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866, 15 years after George Holyoake had coined the term "secularism" in 1851.
Emanuel Haldeman-Julius was a Jewish-American socialist writer, atheist thinker, social reformer and publisher. He is best remembered as the head of Haldeman-Julius Publications, the creator of a series of pamphlets known as "Little Blue Books," total sales of which ran into the hundreds of millions of copies.
The Golden Age of Freethought is the mid 19th-century period in United States history which saw the development of the socio-political movement promoting freethought. Anti-authoritarian and intellectually liberating historical eras had existed many times in history, notably in eighteenth century France. But the period roughly from 1875 to 1914 is referred to by at least one contemporary writer as "the high-water mark of freethought as an influential movement in American society". It began around 1856 and lasted at least through the end of the century; author Susan Jacoby places the end of the Golden Age at the start of World War I.
Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist known for being a prolific writer and speaker who opposed capitalism, marriage and the state as well as the domination of religion over sexuality and women's lives which she saw as all interconnected. She is often characterized as a major early feminist because of her views.
George William Foote was an English secularist, freethinker, republican, writer and journal editor.
Joseph Lewis was an American freethinker and atheist activist, publisher, and litigator. During the mid-twentieth century, he was one of America's most conspicuous public atheists, the other being Emanuel Haldeman-Julius. Born in Montgomery, Alabama to a Jewish family, he was forced by poverty to leave school at the age of nine to find employment. He read avidly, becoming self-educated. Lewis developed his ideas from reading, among others, Robert G. Ingersoll, whose published works made him aware of Thomas Paine. He was first impressed by atheism after having read a large volume of lectures of Ingersoll devoted to his idol Paine, which was brought to their house by his older brother. He later credited Paine's The Age of Reason with helping him abandon theism.
Edwin Frederick Kagin was an attorney at law in Union, Kentucky, and a founder of Camp Quest, the first secular summer camp in the United States for the children of secularists, atheists, agnostics, brights, skeptics, naturalists and freethinkers. He served as the National Legal Director of American Atheists from 2006 until his death in 2014.
Chapman Cohen was an English freethinker, atheist, and secularist writer and lecturer.
Abram Wakeman was an attorney, businessman, and politician from New York City. An important figure in the creation of the Republican Party in the mid-1850s, and a supporter of the Union during the American Civil War, he was most notable for his service as a U.S. Representative from New York.
William Whitehouse Collins was a New Zealand Member of Parliament for Christchurch in the South Island.
The National Liberal League of the United States advocated separation of church and state and the freedom of religion. The league evolved into the American Secular Union in 1884. The First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis grew directly out of the chapter there.
Irreligion is prevalent in Germany. Following near universal adoption of Christianity, religious traditions in Germany were weakened by the rule of the Nazi Party during World War II and the subsequent rule of the Socialist Unity Party in East Germany during the Cold War. As of 2021, approximately 42% of Germans are irreligious, with a significantly higher concentration of irreligious citizens in East Germany. Eastern Germany, which was historically Protestant, is perhaps the least religious region in the world.
Etta Semple was an American atheist and feminist activist, editor, publisher and community leader in Ottawa, Kansas. She was the president of the Kansas Freethought Association and, in later life, founded a "Natural Cure" sanitorium for 31 patients. Semple was part of a group of people in Kansas who actively fought the intrusion of religion into United States government, when prominent religious leaders of the time were "pushing to amend the US Constitution and declare America a Christian nation."
Lucy N. Colman was a freethinker, abolitionist and feminist campaigner. She campaigned for racial justice and for the education of African Americans.
Emily Wakeman Hartley was an American actress and theatrical manager, founder of the Stamford Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut.
The Freethinkers Society was an American organization founded as the Freethinkers' Society of New York in 1915. Later renamed, the society was behind a number of lawsuits seeking to ensure the separation of church and state.
References
- ↑ The Proceedings and Addresses at the Freethinkers' Convention held at Watkins, N.Y. , pp. 373-381.
- ↑ Princeton Alumni Weekly, Vol. III, no. 20, p. 300
- ↑ Young, Ellen. John Emerson Roberts: Kansas City's "Up-To-Date" Freethought Preacher (XLibris Corporation, 2011), pp. 129-130.
- ↑ A. P., "A Woman Who Financed and Built a Theatre" The Theatre (September 1914): 113-114, 131-132.
 | This article about a politician from the state of New York is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This biography of an American philosopher is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |