“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

It would be an awful universe if everything could be converted into words, words, words.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should

"make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Thomas Jefferson

"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation." And as for those who would ban questioning the Bible's allegedly divine origins? "I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind.“ John Adams

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. Thomas Paine

I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity… Ben Franklin on Jesus

John DeweyPhilosopherEducatorClass of '79

“The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received, that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it.”

In the face of knowledge, science, and of the whole extent of radiant civilization, I cannot accept the presence in Turkey's civilized community of people primitive enough to seek material and spiritual benefits in the guidance of sheiks. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

“Have faith and go forward,” he said, but faith in what exactly? “I cannot see any use of a future life.”

Hubert Henry Harrison, “the black Socrates,” was a great scholar, orator, and writer. He was a champion of labor, a foe of superstition, and an avowed atheist.

At one of his lectures he was asked why he rejected Christianity; he replied that any rational Black man who accepted Christianity must be crazy. As Harrison pointed out, the Christian Bible is a slave master's book.

“It should seem that Negroes, of all Americans, would be found in the Free-thought fold… the religion taught to slaves stress[ed] the servile virtues of subservience and content… Nietzsche’s description of Christian ethics as slave ethics “would seem to be justified in this instance.” JMH

The negation of gods is also an affirmation of humanity, an “eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty. Emma Goldman

“No Gods, No Masters.” Margaret Sanger

Her father asked her why she had spoken to the bread. She said she was thanking God for it, and he asked if God was a baker.

“It was not pleasant, but father had taught me to think... Unceasingly he tried to inculcate in us the idea that our duty lay not in considering what mighjt happen to us after death, but in doing something here and now to make the lives of other human beings more decent.” JMH

For the 1992 season finale, the creators of Star Trek: The Next Generation chose to transplant their cast of characters to San Francisco in 1893. The choice of locations is not nearly as interesting as the man they meet in San Francisco--Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain. In his fiction, Mark Twain often wrote of frontiers… continues

He described the size of the universe, our place in it… we are as a vial of microbes would be to the Emperor of China. JMH

A petition urging the veto of House Bill 368, signed by thousands of concerned Tennesseans, was delivered to Governor Bill Haslam's office on April 5, 2012, MSNBC reports(April 5, 2012). Nicknamed the "monkey bill," HB 368 would, if enacted, encourage teachers to present the "scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses" of topics that arouse "debate and disputation" such as "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.“ (continues)

Governor petitioned to veto "monkey bill“

April 6th, 2012

I claim a small “degrees of separation” connection to the infamous Tennessee Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925: I lived under the same roof, for a short time, with one of Clarence Darrow’s expert witnesses who was not allowed to testify in Dayton, Tennessee on behalf of John Scopes. (210 Westmount)

I remember Winterton Curtis, my first landlord, as a kindly, charming old man who mysteriously pulled dollars from my ear. (The Dayton judge would’ve seen that as proof of his Satanic nature, no doubt.) He was also very respectful of the locals H.L. Mencken derided as “boobs.”

A Defense Expert's Impressions of the Scopes Trial - from D-Days at Dayton: Fundamentalism vs Evolution at Dayton, Tennessee by Winterton C. Curtis (1956)

I was met at the station by one of my fellow scientists and driven through the town to the house where we were to be quartered… (continues)

Damned YankeeWinterton Curtis, the Scopes expert who pulled dollars from my ear and provided my first solid roof, recalled a much more southern Columbia, Missouri than mine, in these notes published in the Columbia Missourianin 1957. (I matriculated in 1975, he arrived in 1901.)

This reprint, one of the treasures from Dad’s memory chest, is full of small surprises and delights. WCC’s old New England mother drew the line well north of Mason-Dixon. “No. I cannot give my consent to Winnie’s going to such a place as Missouri.” continues

If you want to learn more about Scopes, Dayton, and Friendly Atheism, read Matthew Chapman’sTrials of the Monkey. Chapman, great-great-great-(great?) grandson of Charles Darwin himself, went down to Dayton to try and understand the curious breed of human known asYoung Earth Creationist [more].

He still doesn’t get it (any more than I do), but he actually confesses to liking many of the Darwin Deniers he met and spoke with– including one (Kurt Wise) who studied with Stephen Jay Gould at Harvard, before being hired to teach biology (!) to Bryan University undergraduates.

Scopes trial images

And if you want to see an entertaining dramatic rendition of Scopes, watch Spencer Tracy and Frederic March in Inherit the Wind.

Edward Larson’s Summer of the Gods