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.”
Monthly Archives: February 2011
February 27: Ernest Renan
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.
Tagged with: Henriette, Life of Jesus, Pantheist, Paris University, Religion of Ernest Renan, Vie de Jesus, Volney Prize
Posted in History, Writer
Posted in History, Writer
February 27: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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…
Tagged with: Christus a Mystery, Courtship of Miles Standish, Divine Comedy, Evangeline, Footsteps of Angels, Frances Appleton, Harvard, Hyperion, Mary Storer Potter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Paul Revere's Ride, Religion of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Song of Hiawatha, Spanish Student, Tales of a Wayside Inn, Unitarian, William Dean Howells
Posted in Famous Freethinkers, Poet
Posted in Famous Freethinkers, Poet
Deficit of Honesty
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.
Posted in Reflections
February 25: The Passion of the Christ Released
“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.
Tagged with: Anne Catherine Emmerich, Benedict Fitzgerald, Catholicism, Christian WYSIWYG Film Festival, crucifixion, David Edelstein, Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, inedia, Jami Bernard, Jesus, Jim Caviezel, Judas Iscariot, Luca Lionello, Mary, National Catholic Register, Passion of the Christ, Pope Paul VI, Religion of Mel Gibson, Roger Ebert, Rotten Tomatoes, stigmata, Vatican II
Posted in Entertainer, Film, History, Politics, Religion, Theology
Posted in Entertainer, Film, History, Politics, Religion, Theology
February 24: George Moore
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.
Tagged with: Apostle, Brooke Kerith, Confessions of a Young Man, Drama in Muslin, Emile Zola, Essenian monk, Esther Waters, Jesus, Joseph McCabe, Modern Lover, Religion of George Moore
Posted in Famous Freethinkers, Writer
Posted in Famous Freethinkers, Writer
February 24: Arrigo Boito
Boito’s only completed opera, “Mefistofele,” based on Goethe’s “Faust,” infuriated the Italian clergy by his frivolous treatment of religion.
Tagged with: Falstaff, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Verdi, Goethe, La Scala, Mefistofele, Otello, Religion of Arrigo Boito, Seven Weeks War
Posted in Famous Freethinkers, Musician, Writer
Posted in Famous Freethinkers, Musician, Writer
February 23: Religion and Persecution
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.
Tagged with: Albert Ehrhard, Carinus, Constantine, Constantius, Decian, Diocletian Persecution, Diokles, Eusebius, Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletanius, Galerius, Hippolyte Delehaye, Lactantius, Louis Duchesne, Maximian, Nicomedia, Numerian, Prisca, Religion and Persecution, Roman Empire, Tetrarchy, Valeria
Posted in History, Religion, Theology
Posted in History, Religion, Theology
February 23: W. E. B. Du Bois
“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.
Tagged with: black civil rights, Communist Party, Crisis, David Howard-Pitney, DuBois, Foreign Agents Registration Act, Ghana, McCarthyism, NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Pan-African Congress, Religion of W E B Du Bois, San Jose State University, slavery, Souls of Black Folk, Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, William Edward Burghardt
Posted in Famous Freethinkers, Social Reformer
Posted in Famous Freethinkers, Social Reformer
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