It was on this date, May 10, 1900, that British-American astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was born Cecilia Helena Payne in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, England. Losing her father when she was four years old, Cecelia’s mother portioned the family resources to educating her brothers instead of her, but she nevertheless won a scholarship to Newnham College, […]

It was on this date, May 9, 1949, that American singer/songwriter and pianist Billy Joel was born William Martin Joel in the Bronx, New York City, but reared in Hicksville. His father was born in Germany and was a classical pianist, his mother was born in England. His parents, both non-observant Jews, divorced when Joel […]

“I have found some astonishing answers to my questionings as to God and religion in [Flaubert’s] book,” wrote Tchaikovsky. Flaubert was an Atheist.

Boswell reported that whenever Hume “heard a man was religious, he concluded that he was a rascal.”

“For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, as the one dieth, so dieth the other; … so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast,” quoted Brahms.

"I don't believe in Heaven and Hell. I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life – the only thing I know to exist – to be wasted."

Mann believed in an impersonal God but rejected immortality. The Dictionary of American Biography described him as "a Puritan without a theology."

Huxley invented the term agnostic to describe his view that the mind cannot reach realities beyond the senses. He disdained Christian doctrines.

It was on this date, May 3, 1933 that American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg was born in New York City. Weinberg earned his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1954, studied for a year at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, then completed his Ph.D. in Physics at Princeton University in 1957. […]

Divorce was finally, officially forbidden by the Council of Trent. This ushered in about two centuries of adultery, natural and unnatural vice, and flagrant prostitution.