Social Darwinism
This lecture will be the fourth in my series on secular thought in Gilded Age America, from approximately the 1870’s to the end of World War I in 1918. I shall be extending the lecture into the 1970’s and into the present day due to the nature of the subject matter. My three previous lectures have glanced […]
American Freethought – Birth Control Advocates and their Enemy, Anthony Comstock
There are two earlier lectures, Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought, and Anarchism, Atheism and Emma Goldman, which discuss issues during the same time span as the current talk. It is suggested that they be read together in order to form a more complete picture of United States freethought during the Gilded Age until the beginning […]
Anarchism, Atheism, and Emma Goldman
This lecture will discuss the impact of anarchism, atheism, and Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940) on United States culture and legal development from the Gilded Age up to America’s entry into the First World War in 1917. If you will recall from my earlier lecture on Ingersoll and the Golden Age of Freethought in the […]
Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought
This lecture will be concerned with the Golden Age of American Freethought, from about 1860 to 1900, and its most famous spokesperson, Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899.) The events and spread of freethought played out against the backdrop of a very conservative, although dynamic, period of American history. Many books about Ingersoll and freethought often merely […]
Miracles, Relics, and Other Follies
The following lecture is one that I never thought I would find necessary to undertake. It is on the concept of miracles, as well the greatest miracle of all–belief in the Shroud of Turin, the alleged burial cloth of Jesus which he left behind when he was resurrected from the dead. I must confess that […]
Apostasy: An Atheist Perspective
The topic of this lecture is apostasy and its definition by various religions. We shall scrutinize as well the religious reaction to being abandoned. But I shall also a glance at the word’s secular meaning, and how it is used by contemporary sociologists. The talk will discuss the concept of apostasy in the present day […]
Heresy: An Atheist Perspective
I am gratefully dependent on the work of Bill Cooke, John D. Henderson, and Leonard George for the information I am providing in this lecture. Their works are listed in the bibliography below. This lecture is devoted to the concept of heresy. In an earlier lecture I visited the topic of blasphemy, which is a […]
Intelligent Design and Creationism
Christians believe in the divinity, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Atheists examine, test and accept the facts of natural phenomena. Intelligent Design/Creationism will be shortened to ID/C in this lecture. They are combined because Intelligent Design is an attempt by proponents of Creationism to shed its association with religion and wear the cloak of […]
Christianity’s Pagan Roots
This lecture will discuss the pagan roots of the Christian Church. We shall discuss how most of the present-day rituals, vestments, holy objects, liturgy, and sermons of the Christian Church were rooted in the pagan cultures of the ancient world. Most of these customs were developed after the death of the apostles. I have already […]
Noah, Ark, and Water
There are about six hundred global flood myths from every continent in the world, according to the well-regarded website, talkorigins.org. There are many more narratives concerning historical floods that were local. Our concern in this lecture is with the Great Flood, or Noah’s Flood, described in the 6-8 sections of Genesis in the Old Testament […]
Religion’s Oppression of Women, Part 2: Christianity
The second part of my two lectures on religion’s oppression of women concerns Christianity. I have focused on the persecution of witches in Europe in the 15th,16th and 17th centuries, finishing with the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials in 1692 and 1693. The topic of Christianity and its oppression of women is much too large and varied to […]
Religion’s Oppression of Women, Part 1: Islam and Hinduism
It is a truism that women have been and continue to be ill-treated and subjugated by religion. As I began to delve into this area of research, I discovered that many contemporary studies on women and gender issues have focused more on cultural questions rather than strictly religious ones. However, culture, religion and gender matters […]