Feb 28
Montaigne was a Deist, but refrained from candor about his beliefs due to the mutual slaughter between Catholics and French Huguenots of the time. “It is setting a high value upon our opinions,” he wrote, “to roast men and women alive on account of them.”
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1513
Feb 27
Ernest Renan, who did not believe in a future life, once said, “I know that when I am dead nothing of me will remain.” He remained a Pantheist throughout his life.
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1509
Feb 27
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807) It was on this date, February 27, 1807, that the first American professional poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was born in coastal Portland, Maine. Although his father steered him toward a legal career, Henry was too in love with language to turn down the newly founded chair in modern languages at Bowdoin …
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1499
Feb 26
To a census-taker, who asked him in 1872 if he was a Catholic, Hugo replied, “No. A Freethinker.” Hugo predicted that Christianity would soon disappear, but men would still believe in God.
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1467
Feb 25
The American people are not clamoring for tax cuts for rich people. They’re clamoring for jobs. And to keep their homes. And to keep their pensions, gambled away by Wall Street.
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1590
Feb 25
“The Passion of the Christ” really amounts to sadomasochism and homeroticism, sending a political message that Mel Gibson’s true passion is anti-Semitism and Catholic fundamentalism.
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1478
Feb 24
Although he was agnostic, the Catholic-born Moore he preferred to be regarded as a Protestant – even though Protestants, too, found his ideas about Jesus troublesome.
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1491
Feb 24
Boito’s only completed opera, “Mefistofele,” based on Goethe’s “Faust,” infuriated the Italian clergy by his frivolous treatment of religion.
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1485
Feb 23
The truths about the Diocletian Persecution are that a tiny number believed so strongly that they died for their faith, but that the vast majority either went into hiding or abjured the faith.
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1472
Feb 23
“The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon ‘hell and damnation,’” wrote DuBois. Anti-rational dogma repelled him, and he ceased participating in organized worship as a young adult.
Permanent link to this article: http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1458
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