Showing results by narrator "Oberon Michaels" in All Categories

In this essay, Ingersoll describes his religious education and the process of his arrival at the belief that agnosticism is the most reasonable world view.

Most organized religions have a major focus on the afterlife and offer methods for obtaining salvation—the process of ensuring that devotees will enjoy eternal bliss in the next world. In this pamphlet, skeptical scholar Joseph McCabe presents his objections to claims of the existence of the soul and of heaven and hell. In McCabe’s view, the desire for immortality is a notable example of wishful thinking; the guiding rule of nature is death, not eternal existence—though we may wish it.

“The history of Satan, prince of the demonic world, is the story of one of the weirdest of man’s illusions,” writes McCabe. In this text, McCabe treats the devil essentially as a creature of folklore, originating in prehistoric times. He demonstrates how the influence of belief in the devil has dwindled dramatically with the spread of scientific investigation and rationality.

Much of the writing by secular scholar Joseph McCabe was devoted to the de-mystifying of organized religion. In this trenchant essay, McCabe seeks to disprove the assumption that the religious instinct in humanity was evident from the earliest days of civilization, and that the search for spiritual revelation was one of the primary activities of primitive societies.

In the opinion of secular scholar Joseph McCabe, the teaching of Jesus was “almost entirely ethical”. He contends that the dogmatic pillars of organizational Christianity, such as original sin, the atonement and the divinity of Christ, were not part of Jesus’ message and originated with Paul. He also discusses the interminable and insoluble disagreements among theologians over the following two millennia. In conclusion, he expends particular vitriol on the institution of the priesthood, of which he had himself been a member in his younger days.

Alfred Adler and Carl Jung were the most prominent disciples of the founding father of psycho-analysis, Sigmund Freud. Both students eventually broke with Freud to follow their own paths. Adler’s primary focus was on the theory of the will to power, a concept developed from Nietsche. In contrast, Jung’s focused on the classification of psychological types based on the basic dichotomy of introversion and extroversion and the interpretation of dreams.

This pamphlet is a typical example of Joseph McCabe’s grasp of history, and of his hostility to organized religion. McCabe explains here how, with the spread of education, attachment to organized religion will inevitably decline. He also examines the trends in psychology and the influence of their application to the study of religion.

This pamphlet offers a condensed history of Europe between the fall of the Roman empire and the twelfth century. The author’s profound anti-clerical bias becomes apparent as he explores the influence of Christianity on a world in which order was maintained by the imposition of violence, and in which the general populace was kept in a state of ignorance and serfdom. He supports his conclusions with quotes from his own translations of documents of the period.

Henry Mulford Tichenor (1858 - 1922) was a writer and journalist, who was a very active free thinker in the early Twentieth Century. A special target of Tichenor was organized religion, which he viewed as an absurdly contrived cultural artefact. In The Olympian Gods he applies a critical scalpel to the religion of the ancient Greeks, which he regarded as an obvious precursor to Christianity.

The Necessity of Atheism was first published by Shelley in 1811. In 1813 he printed a revised and expanded version of it as one of the notes to his poem Queen Mab. Shelley evinced a searing contempt for organized religion but maintained a belief in a benevolent non-sectarian World Spirit.

Many have claimed for Freemasonry a heritage that has been traced to biblical times and involved many historical celebrities. In this acerbic essay, religious scholar Joseph McCabe reveals that this tradition actually commenced with the guilds in the Middle Ages, and that it inevitably attracted the hostility of the Catholic Church because of its populist and atheistic leanings. He also shows that Freemasons were significant players in the struggle for democracy which eroded the power of popes and princes.

Joseph Lewis (1889 - 1968) was one of the most notable atheist activists in the early 20th century. He was the founder of the Truth Publishing Company and for many years the president of a secular humanist association, The Freethinkers of America, over which he was said to exert a rigid control.

In this caustic essay, the author asks: “Who goes to hell?” His answer: “According to the Bible, and the creeds, the immense majority of mankind.” He later comments that the idea of the inevitable damnation of the unbeliever “has probably done more harm to humanity than it has benefited from the rest of the gospel.”

In this short history, scholar of religion Joseph McCabe explores the nature and development of witchcraft as an alternative religion fundamentally opposed to Christianity. He examines the inevitable persecution of witches by the established church, and describes how the development of the Enlightenment movement eventually led to the end of the practice of witch hunting.

In The Life and Exploits of Jehovah (first published in 1915), Tichenor presents, in lively and mocking prose, the troubling history of the temperamental deity of the ancient Israelites, from the mists of antiquity to the Reformation. In the final chapter, he provides a catalogue of abuses perpetrated by fanatical believers, and asserts that the recognition of human rights has advanced as religious practice has become less doctrinaire.

Theism or Atheism, published in 1921, examines not only arguments for and against the existence of God, but also the practical usefulness of such a concept. The author writes, “Atheism would mean in practice an enormous concentration of energy upon purely human affairs, and a judgment of conduct in terms of human happiness and prosperity.”

In 1947, when this pamphlet was written, the ghastly memory of the Holocaust was fresh in the public mind. The author explores this climatic catastrophe of racial persecution to reveal it not as an anomalous occurrence, but rather as the evidence of a form of institutionalized prejudice which had operated for more than a millennium. “Humanity,” McCabe argues, “will enter into full and friendly cooperation only when the myths disappear and pure humanism is the base of man’s standard of conduct.”

Joseph McCabe was a notable antagonist to all forms of organized religion. In this essay, he offers brief and incisive critiques of some major non-Christian religious systems.