9 Great Freethinkers and Religious Dissenters in History

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/belief/155590/9_great_freethinkers_and_religious_dissenters_in_history/

_640x766_310x220

***SNIP

Not all of the people profiled here were strict atheists, but all of them were freethinkers, a broader umbrella term that embraces a rainbow of unorthodoxy, religious dissent, skepticism, and unconventional thinking. It's no surprise that so many influential thinkers and creative types have come from the ranks of these intellectual revolutionaries. Organized religion tends to reward people not for thinking creatively or critically, but for reciting and defending the dogmas of the previous generation. Throughout human history, it has consistently been true that hidebound theocracies have been mired in poverty, backwardness and intellectual stagnation, whereas the most dramatic advances have come about in times and places where people had the freedom to think for themselves, to freely question and debate. The lives of the men and women recounted here bear testimony to this.

1. Albert Einstein. The archetypal scientific genius, Einstein inaugurated a revolution in physics that bears fruit to this day. His theories and equations undergird the 20th century: technologies from nuclear power to GPS satellites only exist because of his discoveries. But beyond his impressive scientific contributions, he was known as a peacemaker and civil-rights advocate: he was one of the first to warn the world of the dangers of Nazism, joined anti-lynching campaigns, publicly opposed McCarthyism, and called for nuclear disarmament worldwide. Later in life, he was offered the presidency of Israel but turned it down, saying that he was unqualified.

***SNIP

2. Robert Ingersoll. One of the most famous Americans most people today have never heard of, Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, known in his lifetime as the "Great Agnostic," once commanded national fame and renown. In an era before television and radio, public oratory was the leading form of entertainment, and Ingersoll set the gold standard. He was one of the most sought-after speakers in the country; he drew crowds of thousands, and on one occasion, after hearing him speak, Mark Twain observed, "What an organ is human speech when it is employed by a master!"

***SNIP

3. W.E.B. DuBois. Contrary to popular impression, the black community in America has a long tradition of involvement with freethought and secularism, as exemplified by one of its most influential racial-justice activists, W.E.B. DuBois. One of the first black men to get a Ph.D. from Harvard, DuBois was one of the founders of the NAACP and a prolific and critically praised writer, educator and historian.

***SNIP

4. Zora Neale Hurston. Like DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston was an influential black freethinker and an acclaimed early 20th-century author. She attended Columbia University on a scholarship, and while living in Manhattan at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, met scholars and artists like Margaret Mead and Langston Hughes. She herself wrote both fiction and anthropological works about the black community. Her masterwork, the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, was judged one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

[panzerfaust]

1. All religions, save one's own, are self-evident nonsense.

[Solly Mack]

2. k/r

[seabeyond]

4. "On review, unlocking"... nt

[scarletwoman]

5. Here's a kick in celebration of the unlock!

This really IS a "good read"!

[struggle4progress]

6. Not sure what Emma Lazarus' POV was: she died young, and here is one of her later poems

The New Ezekiel

What, can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried
By twenty scorching centuries of wrong?
Is this the House of Israel, whose pride
Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song?
Are these ignoble relics all that live
Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath
Of very heaven bid these bones revive,
Open the graves and clothe the ribs of death?

Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said. Again
Say to the wind, Come forth and breathe afresh,
Even that they may live upon these slain,
And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh.
The Spirit is not dead, proclaim the word,
Where lay dead bones, a host of armed men stand!

I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord,
And I shall place you living in your land.

[felix_numinous]

7. K&R

For free thinkers---and a free thread!!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

8. Helen Keller was a socialist.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/12_11_03.htm

Quote from Helen Keller: "The Brooklyn Eagle says, apropos of me, and socialism, that Helen Keller's "mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development." Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. It was after a meeting that we had in New York in behalf of the blind. At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. Surely it is his turn to blush. It may be that deafness and blindness incline one toward socialism. Marx was probably stone deaf and William Morris was blind. Morris painted his pictures by the sense of touch and designed wall paper by the sense of smell."

She became a socialist because she was aware of the poverty and horrible working conditions that caused blindness in many people, unnecessarily.

Then there was Michael Servetus, the first Unitarian, 1511-1553. Physician who knew of the circulation of the blood long before William Harvey. Believer in one god (Unitarian) and anti-infant-baptism. Barbecued at the stake by John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland.


Blaise Pascal, mathematician, believer but critical of religion. He discovered the laws of probability (gambling):
"Men never do evil so efficiently and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

[RainDog]

9. k&r n/t