Urban VIII (d. 1644) It was on this date, July 29, 1644, that the pope who will be remembered throughout history as the persecutor of Galileo, Urban VIII, died at Rome. It had been 18 months since his victim had died in Florence, while under a house arrest, which Urban did nothing to mitigate. Born […]

Church opposition to surgery, dissection and the study of anatomy slowed the development of medicine.

Alan Hale and Comet Hale-Bopp (1995) It was on this date, July 23, 1995, that Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered by Alan Hale and, independently, by Thomas Bopp. Working as a shift supervisor in a construction materials company, Bopp, an amateur astronomer, observed the celestial event in Glendale, Arizona. A professional astronomer, Alan Hale made his […]

The famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial was a publicity stunt that exposed the imbecility of fundamentalism.

Mary Baker Eddy (1821) and "Christian Science" It was on this date, July 16, 1821, that Mary Baker Eddy was born near Concord, New Hampshire into a Congregationalist family. A sickly youth, Eddy studied alternative medicine, alongside the Bible, in search of a mind-body-Bible connection. Prompted by her supposed recovery from a life-threatening accident in […]

Freethinkers such as Voltaire in France and John Locke in England pushed back the night of superstition with the light of reason.

Broca has been described as a Christian, but he must have practiced it lightly, because he founded a society for free-thinkers in 1848.

"We no longer fear when a mighty foe [science] shakes our protector [God] from his heaven, to sink with him into an abyss of annihilation."

In “An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, and of the Progress of Reason,” Hutton developed his Deistic idea that there is no distinction between God and nature.

"The heathen write that the comet may arise from natural causes, but God creates not one that does not fortoken a sure calamity."