C
From Philosopedia
CABALA Cabala is a general name for Jewish mysticism and includes a type of occult theosophical formulation of the doctrines of Judaism. Every word, letter, number, and accent of the Scriptures is believed to contain mysteries. The principal written sources are Sefer Yezira (Book of Creation, translated in 1894 but possibly written in the 3rd century B.C.E.) and Zohar (partially translated in 1949), written by Moses de León in the 13th century but attributed to a 2nd-century scholar, Simon ben Yohai. When Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, Isaac Luria developed cabala and found many adherents, including the pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Zevi. In the 18th century, a movement founded by a reputed miracle healer, Baal-Shem-Tov and known as Hasidim, continues to influence present-day Hasidic Jews. One of the signers of Humanist Manifesto II, Joseph L. Blau, has written The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (1944). (See “Cabala” by Joseph L. Blau in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 2.) {CE}
Cabanis, George Paul Sylvester (Born 1859) An artist and a poet, Cabanis wrote a humanist Life of Christ and other works. An admirer of Haeckel, Cabanis was a monist. {RAT}
Cabanis, Pierre Jean George (1757—1808) Cabanis has been called “the father of the materialistic physiology.” A friend of Mirabeau, whom he attended in his last illness, Cabanis also was an intimate of Turgot, Condorcet, Holbach, Diderot, and other distinguished freethinkers. His works are mostly medical, the chief being Des Rapports du Physique et du Morale de l’Homme. In that work Cabanis is accused of being a superficial dabbler who said that the brain secretes thought just as the liver secretes bile. As pointed out by McCabe, however, Cabannis said that “the brain is a special organ, specially designed to produce thought, just as the stomach and intestines are destined to effect digestion.” When later he says that “the brain digests impressions and organically secretes thought,” it is clearly a figurative way of stating the same scientific fact. Cabanis was a deist, not an atheist. He believed in the existence of an intelligent First Cause. {BDF; JM; RAT; RE}
Cabell, James Branch (1879—1958) A Virginian author of short stories, novels, and poetry, Cabell was a freethinker with an urbane writing style as shown in his The Soul of Melicent (1913), revised as Domnei (1920). The work is the start of a series concerning the pseudo-erudite romances of Dom Manuel, set in a mythical medieval country called Poictesme. Jurgen (1919) concerns a poetical pawnbroker who makes a pact with the Devil to find his missing wife, and in his resultant pursuits he has erotic adventures, visits Hell where he marries a vampire, and is allowed (disguised as Pope John XX) to visit the Heaven of his grandmother, where he ascends God’s throne before reverting to his previous dull married life with the wife he finally finds. The book was banned, bringing him a great amount of needed publicity, and he then turned out a large body of work. {CE; EU, William F. Ryan}
Cabet, Etienne (1788—1856) A French Utopian socialist, Cabet was elected to the chamber of deputies in 1831. But, following his bitter attacks on the government, he exiled himself to Great Britain (1834—1839), where he developed a theory of communism influenced by Robert Owen. In his Voyage en Icarie (1840), Cabet depicted a society in which an elected government controlled all economic activity and supervised social affairs. A popular book, it led to the establishment of an Icarian community on the Red River in Texas. Other Icarian communities, dedicated to “Humanity” but none surviving after 1898, rose in Nauvoo, Illinois, and Corning, Iowa. Cabet died in St. Louis, Missouri. {CE}
Cable, Louis W. (20th Century)
Cable is a freethinker, author of “The Bloody Bible,” in Freethought Today (June-July 1997). On the Web he has the Skeptics Corner, which features his writing: <http://www.inu.net/skeptic>.
Cable, Paul (20th Century) Cable has written for New Humanist (September 1996) about “What’s Wrong with Political Correctness?”
Cadogan, Peter (20th Century) Cadogan in the 1970s was general secretary of the South Place Ethical in London. {FUK}
CADMUS: See entry for Egyptian Civilization.
Cadmus, Paul (1904—1999) Cadmus, the controversial painter of “The Fleet’s In!” and “The Seven Deadly Sins,” became a distinguished member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1974. In 1984, he was the subject for a video-recording, “Paul Cadmus, Enfant Terrible at 80.” At the time, a New York Times reviewer noted,
Recent interest in representational painting has fostered an appreciation of artists whose realist modes, long out of the stylistic and commercial mainstreams, are now receiving renewed attention. . . . For Mr. Cadmus, best known for his earlier, more accessible works, including the much reproduced New York street and restaurant scenes and Coney Island panoramas, also practices a dark, more personal, visionary magic realism in which black humor and distant allusions are endemic.
Cadmus and an early lover, Jared French, spent time on the island of Majorca, where he painted “Shore Leave” and “YMCA Locker Room.” His circle included Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden, George Balanchine, George Platt Lynes, George Tooker, Lincoln Kirstein (the husband of his sister Fidelma), and E. M. Forster. He was unsure about his ancestry: “I think my ancestors sailed from Jutland (Denmark) around 1710. My father’s side may have been Dutch and, like Erasmus, Latinized the name. My mother, conceived in Spain, was born in New York. Her father was Basque, her mother Cuban. Maybe I was just a cad to begin with,” he joked, “and the name was Latinized.” His parents, both artists, encouraged their son and their daughter, Fidelma, to study art, and Cadmus began with an interest in antiques. One day at the National Academy of Design in uptown Manhattan and knowing that older art students had nude models to work with, he peered through a peephole and saw a naked female. “I had never seen a stranger in the nude. It was a revelation,” he told journalist Richard Goldstein. Naked men would follow. It was the start of his becoming the artist who painted the male body with more sensuality, Goldstein observed (Village Voice, 18 May 1999), than any American artist of the century:
“The Fleet’s In!” [is] the 1934 painting that made him an art star. In this knowing study of carousing sailors, there are not only buns and baskets on proud display but loose ladies admiring the briny trade and even a fey gentleman offering a cigarette to an eager gob. The navy was not amused. An outraged admiral had the painting removed before it could be shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. A sequel, “Sailors and Floosies” (1938), featuring the angelic seaman in slumber, grasping his crotch, fared no better in San Francisco; “in the interest of national unity,” it was taken off the wall. In “Shore Leave” (1933), a gay man is clearly propositioning a willing sailor, but what one notices first is the ripe women in the foreground and a recumbent swab with his bulging crotch in full view. Sometimes the queers come out to play, as in “Fantasia on a Theme by Dr. S.” (1946), which is set on Fire Island. But usually the artist’s eye is drawn to what is often ignored in modern painting: a casually muscled male physique and an utterly open attitude. Looking at this pantheon of locker-room studs, seafood Sampsons, and young waifs lounging in the playground with baseball bats jammed between their legs, one sees a quality beyond the ideologically mandated worship of the working class. Call it longing. “I was fascinated by the sailors, and I used to sit on a bench and watch them all the time,” Cadmus recalls. In fact, Riverside Park around 96th Street was a prime cruising ground in the 1930s, largely because it was where the warships docked. “The uniforms were so tight and form-fitting that they were an inspiration. I was young enough to be propositioned by the sailors, who would offer to take me back to the boat, but I never went. They were too unattractive, or maybe I was too timid. I don’t know.”
“The male nude has been a specialty of my own oeuvre,” Cadmus agreed, “when I am not being concerned with the foibles of people in daily life: men, women, and children. . . . We are made, we are told, ‘in God’s image,’ and we assume that He was not clothed by Armani or Brooks Brothers or, if He is She, not attired by Balenciaga or Donna Karan.” In 1992, Lincoln Kirstein, the founding director of the New York City Ballet, wrote a definitive study, Paul Cadmus, which described his relationship with other artists and writers, including W. H. Auden. E. M. Forster, while posing for a portrait, was said to have passed the time reading aloud passages from Maurice. Kirstein described Cadmus’s work as being “executed with the technical virtuosity and anatomical precision of the Renaissance masters that celebrate the beauty of the human body.” Agreeing, Guy Davenport in an introduction for The Drawings of Paul Cadmus (1989) stated that “Not since Michelangelo has any artist done so many studies of the male nude.” He included dozens of such examples. Cadmus, who in 94 years completed over 120 paintings, delighted in such observations. “I do love Michelangelo’s male forms,” he has said, adding that “Michelangelo’s women often look like males with grapefruits attached.” “It seems that genitalia,” Cadmus lamented about the public taste, “equal pornography.” But not for him personally: “My penis is not the most important organ in my body. My eyes are.” In 1989, after a discussion about philosophy, he responded to the present author’s request for his views about humanism:
Your request should have a worthy answer but it would take me days to try to compose one (as I used to do when I first began writing to E. M. Forster). The subject is too complicated for this feeble old mind to go into deeply. The simple description of a humanist is one who is interested in humans (not as profound as the Oxford Universal Dictionary’s definition, “a student of human affairs, or of human nature”). I’m no student. I guess I somewhat fit in Naturalistic Humanism #7.
Later, in an interview at his Connecticut home, Cadmus discussed religion and his increased interest in the philosophy of naturalistic humanism. “I’ve always liked the story of the Albigensians,” Cadmus mused, “who were besieged by the Pope at Beziers. His soldiers asked him: ‘How do we know the heretics from the Christians?’ The Pope replied, ‘Burn them all. God will know his own.’ ” A devout Catholic until he was seventeen, he then “shed it all.” Cadmus is cited by Charles Kaiser in The Gay Metropolis 1940—1996 (1997) as having painted key individuals and scenes of that period. Kaiser noted that Cadmus met Jon Andersson, 27, when he himself was 59 and “I never wanted to be with anyone else.” That included the time he was invited to a long-ago party by Truman Capote. Capote’s long-time companion Jack Dunphy told him he could not bring a male guest, that “Truman said he didn’t want to ask ‘a bunch of fags’ to his party.” This infuriated Andersson and was one of the few times the two did not appear together in public or private. At a book signing when Kaiser referred to Cadmus as the only artist to draw so many male nudes, the then ninety-two-year-old quipped, “Well, there was Michelangelo.” Kaiser quotes Cadmus as having been interviewed by Alfred Charles Kinsey: “He took homosexuality just as calmly as he did his work with wasps. He interviewed me about my sex life–how many orgasms, how big it was, measure it before and after.” Kinsey even went to dinner at Cadmus’s house following the interview. Cadmus died five days before his 95th birthday, which he had joyously celebrated two weeks earlier with several hundred friends at the D. C. Moore Gallery in New York City. {“Men Without Women, Paul Cadmus as Curator,” National Academy of Design, 1999; “The Great Impresario: Lincoln Kirstein,” The New Yorker, 13 April 1998; WAS, 28 May 1989 and numerous conversations; Warren Allen Smith, “Paul Cadmus: Artist-Humanist,” Free Inquiry, Summer 1996}
Cadogan, Peter (20th Century) Cadigan, a secretary of the South Place Ethical Society in the 1970s, called his outlook “Apocalyptic Humanism.”
Caesalpinus: See entry for Cesalpino, Andrea.
Caesar, (Caius) Julius (100?—44 B.C.E.) According to Lamont, Caesar “avowed his unbelief in immortality and was contemptuous of the supernaturalist rituals and sacrifices that he carried out for the sake of political expedience.” Robertson remarks that “the greatest and most intellectual man of action in the ancient world had no part in the faith which was supposed to have determined the success of the most powerful of all the ancient nations.” Whereas the illiterate Marius carried about with him a Syrian prophetess, and Sulla carried a small figure of Apollo as an amulet, Caesar was a convinced freethinker who disbelieved in the popular doctrine of immortality. If he offered sacrifices to gods in whom he did not believe, he was simply following the habitual procedure of his age. Froude has written that Caesar’s writings “contain nothing to indicate that he himself had any religious belief at all. He saw no evidence that the gods practically interfered in human affairs. . . . He held to the facts of this life and to his own convictions; and as he found no reason for supposing that there was a life beyond the grave he did not pretend to expect it.” A memorable evaluation, penned by Alexander Pope: “Caesar, the world’s great master and his own.” His detractors, however, call him a demagogue who forced his way to dictatorial power and destroyed the republic. As for his personal morality, legend has it that Caesar had an affair with the king of Bithynia. Also, Suetonius wrote
Home we bring our old whoremonger; Romans lock your wives away. {BDF; CE; CL; JMR; JMRH; TYD}
Cagadas, Roberto (20th Century) Cagadas is a leader of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Philippines, 065 Rovira Road, Bantayan, Dumaguete City 6200, Negros, Philippines.
Cage, John (1912—1992) A controversial composer famous for his unorthodox musical theories and experimental compositions, Cage with a “prepared piano” used metal, rubber, wood, and other objects on a piano’s strings, altering its sound. He held that all sound, including that which is nonmusical, is part of the “total soundspace.” Cage’s “ 4’ 33” ” (1952) consists of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence along with random environmental sounds that happen to occur. Upon arriving in New York City, he boarded with Peggy Guggenheim, enticed Virgil Thompson’s coterie by his good looks and talent, divorced, slept with, among others, architect Philip Johnson, and fell in love with Merce Cunningham, with whom he shared the rest of his life. Books he wrote include Silence (1961) and A Year From Monday (1968). According to two works reprinted in 1997, his I-VI and, with Joan Retallack, Musicage: Cage Muses on Words Art and Music, he became more folksy in the 1960s, now substituting jeans and a denim shirt for his 50s tie and jacket. He was accorded cultural superstardom by the 1980s and was generally regarded as one of the most important arts figures in the second half of the century. Cage’s unorthodox punctuation is illustrated in a lecture on the word imitation:
the greeks went rIght up to the door of treMble too much for that actually In These nucleAr insighT poInt five times ten hOw much more exterNal
Upon turning eighty, Cage was described by some as a musical anarchist and by others a musical liberator. Traditionalists regard him as the former, for he fails to use musical notation in the way others have used it for centuries. For example, a 1991 work utilizes “time brackets” sections lasting 75 seconds, during which the musicians are directed to play for the first 45 seconds, and they must finish between the 30th and 75th second–the timing is entirely up to the musician, which has led many to say that no two performances of the work can be the same and that this is “liberating.” Not a Eurocentrist, Cage (along with Allen Ginsberg) was drawn to Asian concepts in philosophy. His politics as he grew older became radically anarchist/leftist and by the 1970s he embraced aspects of Maoism.
When, two months before his death, he was asked by the present author for his views on humanism, the Iowa-educated musician, a practicing Buddhist, wrote,
If there are only seven humanisms, as your letter indicates, I choose number seven, secular humanism. But if one were added that connected with zen and Tibetan Buddhism together with technology (Fuller, McLuhan, Nano Technology), I would choose that.
{CE; WAS, 3 June 1992}
CAHIERS RATIONALISTES A French rationalist monthly, Cahiers Rationalistes is at 14 rue de l’Ecole-Polytechnique, 75005 Paris, France.
Cahill, Edward (20th Century) Cahill, a freethinker, wrote Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement (1939). {GS}
Cahuac, John (19th Century) Cahuac, an English bookseller, revised an edition of Palmer’s Principles of Nature (1819). For this he was prosecuted at the instance of a “Vice Society.” The matter, however, was compromised, but he again was prosecuted in 1820 for selling the Republican. {BDF}
CAIN The first non-humanist depicted in the Judeo-Christian Bible was Cain, who was Adam and Eve’s eldest son. In a fit of jealousy, Cain killed his brother Abel and became a fugitive. Some Mormons have believed that Cain’s ancestors were punished by being stricken black, an unpopular view among African-American believers as well as non-believers. In the twentieth century it was rejected by most in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (See entry for Christian Identity.)
Cain, Stanley A. (1902— ) Author of Vegetation of the Great Smoky Mountains (1930), Cain is a naturalist and freethinker who has taught botany at the University of Michigan.
Caine, William Ralph Hall (Born 1869) A writer and the brother of Sir Hall Caine, Caine was a journalist on the Liverpool Mercury. For several years he represented a department of the Manx Legislature in London, and he edited the Court Circular, the Family Churchman, and Household Words. Caine has been active in supporting the British Rationalist Press Association. {RAT}
Cairns, Fred I. (20th Century) Cairns, a humanist, was a liberal minister. {HNS}
Caldecott, Ernest (20th Century) A Unitarian minister, Caldecott signed Humanist Manifesto I. In 1944, for the Second Humanist Convention in Los Angeles, Caldecott wrote:
Humanism is the conviction that, as far as we know, human intelligence, ethically exercised, and applied to the phenomena of the universe, can produce the best possible conditions and make available to mankind the finest development. This is different from supernaturalism, which posits not only the existence of an all-powerful Being, but one who intervenes in the affairs of men, and who aids man in achieving what otherwise would be impossible. Humanism is predicated on the assumption that it is the essential nature of the universe, which produced man, to provide the conditions in which he can best thrive. Even this statement tends to be teleological, for, when we observe that the universe “provides” something the implication can easily be that a “Provider” exists. Actually, we are employing the word “provide” in the same sense in which the physical scientist speaks of “nature’s design,” as though nature were conscious and directive. Humanists aver that we do not know the “ultimate” nature of the universe, nor even if there be such. We know nothing of origins or ends. Our knowledge is confined to existences. . . . The human being is less than a speck in the scale of the teeming centuries which amount to aeons of time. But since it is man who measures, and it is not known that anything exists more worthy of consideration (and also more needing it), we assert again that “the proper study of mankind is man.” Supernaturalism impedes progress. This is not to suggest that all forms of orthodoxy, religious, political, economic, and social, are inimical to the race. On the contrary it happens that some persons, orthodox in this are liberal in that. A Roman Catholic, accepting on faith the things he believes for his soul’s salvation, may still think for himself in politics, although he is less likely to do so than he who thinks out his own philosophy of living. What must be noted is that the irrationalism of supernaturalism leads astray. Consistent supernaturalism would necessarily be harmful. Its superstitions are enormous. It is blind unreasoning belief. Its exponents are rarely men of learning and never of vision. The obvious is the real to them. The miraculous is normal. . . . It is highly important that humanists associate with others of their kind for effectiveness, at the same time not falling into the errors of visionaries who expect a few persons to change the world over-night. The best we can reasonably hope for is to act as leaven. There we can be very helpful. That enough rational thinkers exist is probably self-evident. Up to now the emancipated seem to sense no need for group relationship. Thence the weakness of Unitarianism and Universalism. Were those who agree with the philosophy of either movement linked up with them, they would constitute a power greater than obtains anywhere on the planet. The spearhead of this force might well be humanism. The time for such joining of forces is here. {FUS; HM1; HNS}
Calder, Ritchie [Lord] (1906—1982) In the National Secular Society’s centenary brochure, Calder wrote that when Bradlaugh agitated for birth control of the world’s population, there were then 1,200,000,000 humans on Earth. He estimated there would be more than 6,000,000,000 by 1995. Explaining in his own views, Calder wrote Future of a Troubled World (1983). Secularists have consistently warned against the danger of over-populating our planet. {TRI}
Calderino, Domizio (1445—1478) Calderino was a learned writer of the Renaissance who lived in Verona and in Rome. Bayle says Calderino, who edited and commented upon many of the Latin poets, was without religion. {BDF}
Calderon, Alfredo (Born 1852) Calderon was a Spanish journalist, freethinker, and lawyer who, in addition to having written books on law, edited La Justicia. {BDF}
Calderon, Lauresmo (Born 1847) Calderon y Arana, a propagator of Darwinian ideas in Spain, was a professor of chemistry in the University of Madrid. {BDF}
Calderon, Salvador (Born 1851) A Spanish geologist and naturalist, Calderon y Arana was a professor at the University of Seville. He made scientific travels in Central America and wrote on geological subjects. His brother was Lauresmo Calderon. {BDF; RAT}
Calderone, Mary Steichen (1904—1998) Calderone, the daughter of the photographer Edward Steichen, was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 1974. In 1953, she was medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. From 1954 to 1975, she was executive director of the Sex Information Educational Council of the United States, becoming its president in 1975. In 1980, she received the Margaret Sanger Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation. She enjoyed asking young audiences for a four-letter word ending in “k” that meant sexual intercourse. When they tittered, she answered “talk”: “We never talk to each other as nonsexual people.” Human sexuality, she explained, goes far beyond the sex act—it is multifaceted and must not be hidden in a shroud of secrecy nor lowered to the level of erotic expression. “Sometimes,” she wrote, “sex becomes a problem because of our inability to talk openly and objectively about it. . . . It is interesting to note that in the vocabulary of some cultures there is a rich supply of entirely acceptable words to describe the varieties of sexual love and parts of the body especially involved in it. . . . How much better if [we too] had an ample, pleasant array of language with which to talk to each other about sex!” Sex education, she insisted, should start in kindergarten, leading enemies such as the Christian Crusade, the John Birch Society, and Moral Majority to accuse her of being an “aging sexual libertine.” A nominal Quaker, she was plunged into depression upon the death from pneumonia of her eight-year-old daughter. Calderone wrote Talking With Your Child About Sex (1982) and Family Book About Sexuality (1987). Although she and Dr. Frank Calderone separated in 1979, the two never divorced. He died in 1987. {HNS2}
Caldicott, Helen Broinowski (1938— ) In 1982, Caldicott was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. An Australian-born pediatrician, she wrote Nuclear Madness: What Can You Do? (1979) and has established anti-nuclear groups in several countries. She has written, “How stupid that we lack the imagination to settle conflicts, so we have to go and kill each other. And the people who get killed are not the men and women . . . who are having a problem with each other; the people who get killed are our kids–17 and 18 year olds, little boys. They are sent off as instruments by people who can’t solve their conflicts . . . [who] don’t take the time to work out how to get in the other person’s frame of reference and understand them and make capitulations and concessions.” Her 1996 work, A Desperate Passion, is an autobiography describing the friends and enemies she made in her anti-nuclear crusades. {HNS2}
Caldwell, Erskine (1903—1987) Caldwell was a proletarian novelist who wrote Tobacco Road (1932) and God’s Little Acre (1933), both of which librarians often hid on special shelves and required permission in order that they be checked out. With his photographer-wife Margaret Bourke-White, he collaborated on You Have Seen Their Faces (1942). Asked his view in 1951 concerning humanism, Caldwell replied to the present author,
I prefer leaving critical comment of that nature left to others far better qualified.
Some critics have pointed to Caldwell’s anti-Semitism. But in “Deep South,” he exposes a fundamentalist Christianity which promises a “better world” that never comes. He includes details of the rituals of snake handling, of speaking in tongues (glossolalia), and bloodletting. With his father, he felt fundamentalism was a dangerous narcotic for poor Southern workers who had little hope or other entertainment. But what readers have liked has been his description of those very people: Jeeter Lester, a sharecropper in Tobacco Road who has fifteen children, who pawns off his own daughter for a turnip; a daughter, Pearl, who was married when only twelve years old; a near-catatonic mother; a grandmother so worthless she is left to die when run over by a car; a dumb son named Dude who marries Sister Bessie Rice, a widowed preacher, when promised he could blow the horn in her new car; and Jeeter’s daughter with the hare-lip:
Ellie May’s upper lip had an opening a quarter of an inch wide that divided one side of her mouth into unequal parts; the slit came to an abrupt end almost under her left nostril. The upper gum was low, and because her gums were always fiery red, the opening in her lip made her look as if her mouth were bleeding profusely.
Caldwell’s fame soared in 1946 when God’s Little Acre was reissued, but after his marriage to Margaret Bourke-White ended—she left him often but once wrote him a cable, saying simply, “My pussy grows cold for you”—he was accused of writing inferior work and many magazines refused to publish his work. {WAS, 14 February 1951}
Caldwell, John Taylor (20th Century) Caldwell is author of Come Dungeons Dark, a biography of Guy Aldred, an atheist and anarchist. His autobiography is Severely Dealt With—Growing Up in Belfast and Glasgow.
CALENDAR The earliest calendars were naturally crude. The earth completes its orbit about the sun in 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds, whereas the moon passes through its phases in about 29 1/2 days, amounting to more than 354 days 8 hours 48 minutes. The discrepancy between the years is inescapable, and a major problem in devising a calendar has been to harmonize the solar and lunar reckonings. (If God really exists, humanists jocularly explain, He is an exceedingly poor mathematician.) The Egyptians worked out a formula for the solar year (12 months of 30 days each, five extra days a year, and an extra day every four years). The Ancient Jews dated their calendar from Creation, Ancient Greeks dated theirs from the first Olympic Games, and Islam from the flight from Mecca. The old Chinese calendar was devised to have six 60-day cycles, each cycle having 10-day periods and three such periods going to make up a month. It will be 4698, Year of the Dragon, in China when it is 2000 in Chicago. The Maya divided the year into eighteen 20-day periods, with a 5-day period at the end—they brilliantly began each month using a day 0, not day 1. The Romans dated their calendar from the foundation of Rome by the legendary Romulus. Ad Urbe Condita–from the foundation of the city–was pegged at 753 B.C.E. When Rome emerged as a world power, superstition held that even numbers were unlucky, so the Roman calendar has months that were 29 or 31 days long, with the exception of February, which had 28. However, four months of 31 days, seven months of 29 days, and one month of 28 days added up to only 355 days. Therefore, they invented an extra month–Mercedonius–of 22 or 23 days, which was added every second year. Caesar, being advised by astronomers that the Roman calendar was far off, ordered a sweeping reform in 45: One year, made 445 days long by imperial decree, brought the calendar back in step with the seasons. Then the solar year (with the value of 365 days and 6 hours) was made the basis of the calendar. Every fourth year was made a 366-day year. Caesar also decreed that the year should begin with the first of January, not with the vernal equinox in late March. This calendar, the Julian, is still the calendar of the Eastern Orthodox churches. Unfortunately, the year is 11 1/2 minutes shorter than the figure written in Caesar’s calendar, and after a number of centuries, even those few minutes add up. Meanwhile, from 20 B.C.E. to 20 C.E. is not 40 years: it is 39 inasmuch as there was no Year Zero.
Around 1600, when Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It described the world as “almost 6,000 years old,” she was somewhat echoing Archbishop Ussher, who in 1564 had authoritatively given the time of creation as having been 4,004 B. C. E.
Roger Bacon once sent a memorandum in the 1200s to Pope Clement IV that although Caesar could decree that the vernal equinox should not be used as the first day of the new year, the vernal equinox is still a fact of Nature. By the 16th century, time had displaced the vernal equinox to March 11th from March 21st. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII rectified this error by suppressing 10 days in the year 1582 and ordained that thereafter the years ending in hundreds should not be leap years unless they were divisible by 400. The year 1600 was a leap year under both systems, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were leaps years only in the unreformed calendar. The present generally accepted calendar is called the Gregorian. The reform was not accepted in England and the British colonies in America until 1752. The Gregorian was called the New Style (N.S.) and the Julian the Old Style (O.S). George Washington’s birthday, therefore is 22 February 1732 (N.S.) and 11 February 1731 (O.S.). Thomas Jefferson’s tombstone reads:
Born April 2, 1743 O.S. Died July 4, 1826.
A “fixed” 13-month “civil” cosmic calendar has been proposed for the first day of the 21st century, 31 December 2000. As described by William H. Becker (Mensa Bulletin, March 1995), the calendar’s first regular weekday would be Monday, with all weeks starting on Monday and ending on Sunday. Becker’s 13-month calendar re-names all the months and is astronomically sound. It has quarters of 91 days (13 weeks), and Leap Years are any year evenly divisible by four, except that years ending in “00” are Leap Years only if they are divisible by 400. The 28-day months are named as follows: Helio, Mercury, Venus, Terra, Luna, Ares, Jove, Kronos, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Galaxy, and Cosmos. For example, America’s Fourth of July would be on Jove 15th. Christmas Day would be Cosmos 22nd. World Day would be the day just before Helio 1st, which is the day after Cosmos 28th. The first day of a year would be Monday, Helios the 1st. If one were born on a Thursday, all succeeding birthdays would always be on a Thursday. Such a calendar might appeal to many inasmuch as no month would be named after a Roman god, December which linguistically looks as if it is the tenth month would no longer be used, and astronomers would be expected to welcome the new terminology. Not addressed are the weekday names–Tiu, for example, is related to a Teutonic war god; Woden, or Odin, was the supreme Norse god; Thor was a Norse god of thunder; Friday is named after Frigga, a Norse goddess associated with sex; Saturn was a Roman god of agriculture. On Mars, where mankind may one day settle, a year will have a length of 668 days, 23 hours, 52 minutes, and 32 seconds in Earth time, or 668.61561 sols (days). William H. Becker (Mensa Bulletin, May 1995) has extrapolated that a seven-sol week divided into 668.61561 gives a year of 95 7-day weeks, with 3.6151 sols short of a full Mars year, a shortage which could become a Mars Leap Year for any year ending in 66 or any year ending in 32 in an even-numbered century. This would keep the calendar in sync with the seasons. The Earth and Mars calendars could only be compared by multiplying the Earth year by .5316514. Ergo the Earth year 2001 would see the start of Mars year 1065 at its northern hemisphere winter solstice, if such a point were established as Mars New Year’s Day. The Mars calendar might be 95 five-week months long and have 19 months. What to call the months and days on Mars? Humanists like Arthur C. Clarke would likely come up with Ganymede or other such names which have no connection with Judeo-Christianity. (For other calendar ideas, see entries for Gilbert Romme [Republican], Auguste Comte [Positivist], and Stanley Stokes [Rational]; also see entry for Time.) {CE; David Ewing Duncan, The Calendar}
Calenzio, Eliseo (c. 1440—1503) An Italian writer, Calenzio was preceptor to Prince Frederic, the son of Ferdinand, King of Naples. He wrote a number of satires, fables, and epigrams, some of which are directed against the Church. {BDF}
Calhoun, Charles (20th Century) Calhoun edited the monthly Progressive Forum in Los Angeles from 1923 to 1930. {FUS}
[[Calhoun, John Caldwell [Vice President]]] (1782—1850)
Calhoun, the US Senator from South Carolina and Vice President under Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, was a Unitarian who gave money to build the church in Washington. He was listed on its first membership roll. However, William C. Meigs wrote in a 1917 biography of Calhoun, “He was brought up a Presbyterian . . . but he himself never joined any faith. He attended the Episcopal Church in later years, and is said to have aided in founding a church of that sect, but neither the Episcopal creed nor the formulated one of any religion can have appealed to him with much force, and he equally contributed to the erection of the first Unitarian Church in Washington, and is said to have been among ‘its warm friends and consistent adherents.’”
A 1950 biography by Margaret L. Coit wrote that Calhoun would not join a church:
Even his friends had no idea where he stood. Some believed him a deist, others a Swedenborgian. Furthermore, he gave money to build the Unitarian Church in Washington and “on the first roll of this Washington parish” can be found his name. “Unitarianism is,” he announced with his characteristic dogmatism, “the only true faith and will ultimately prevail over the world.
{CE; EG; UU}
CALIFORNIA ATHEISTS, FREETHINKERS, HUMANISTS California has the following groups:
• Alliance of Humanist, Atheist, and Ethical Culture Organizations of Los Angeles County, 8491 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 240, West Hollywood, California 90069. • American Association for the Advancement of Atheism (AAAA), 1863 Falconcer Court, Vista, California 92083–the group was founded in 1908 and incorporated in 1925. Kei Kanbit is a contact. • American Atheists, Inc. Dave Kong is a contact in San Francisco. <dksf@atheists.org> • Atheist Coalition (Atheist Alliance), POB 4786, San Diego, California 92164. Howard Kreisner is the president. E-mail: <atheistcoalition@hotmail.com>. • Atheists and Other Freethinkers (ASHS), PO Box 15182, Sacramento, California 95851-0182 (916) 920-7834. E-mail: <hkocol@hotmail.com>. • Atheists of San Francisco Region (Atheist Alliance), PO Box 31523, San Francisco, CA 94131-1523; (415) 648-1201. Contacts are Ray Romano at <ray75511@aol.com> and <jackmassen@aol.com>. • Atheists United (Atheist Alliance), POB 5329, Sherman Oaks, California 91423. Alexander Prairie was the president until 1993. • Cedar Springs Library, 43378 Cedar Springs Road, Auberry, California 93602. Bill Young is a contact for the library, which is a non-profit foundation that maintains a library of freethought materials. • Center for Inquiry West, 5519 Grosevnor Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066. <www.cfiwest.org>. • College of the Siskiyous humanists are at <http://www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>. • Ethical Culture Society of the Bay Area is at (415) 522-3758 and <sanfrancisco@aeu.org>. • Ethical Culture Society of Los Angeles, POB 370425, Reseda, California 91337; E-mail: <losangeles@aeu.org> • Ethical Culture Society of San Diego is at <sandiego@aeu.org>. • Fellowship of Humanists, 411 West 28th Street, Oakland, California 94609. LeRue Grim is president of this organization which was founded in 1935 and is one of the oldest continuously existing humanist organizations. • Freethinker’s Society, POB 25863, West Los Angeles, California 90025 (310) 479-6318 • Freethinkers of Ventura County (FTVC), PO Box 346, Somis, California 93066; (805) 386-4232. Contact is Charlotte Poe. E-mail: <frthvc@aol.com>. • Gay and Lesbian Atheists and Humanists of Los Angeles County (213) 667-0838 • Gay and Lesbian Freethought Forum, 1213 North Highland Ave., Hollywood, California (213) 666-3875 • Humanist Association of Los Angeles (AHA), 22316 Barbacoa Drive, Saugus, California 91350. Lisa-Jo Corbin-Singletary is the contact (213) 462-7649. On the Web: <http://www.hala.org/>. • Humanist Association of San Diego, POB 86446, San Diego, California 92138. Philip Paulson is the contact, (619) 280-8595. E-mail: <pkp@ix.netcom.com>. On the Web: <http://www.godless.org/hasd/hasd.html>. • Humanist Association of the Greater Sacramento Area (AHA), 142 Juniper Street, Vacaville, California 95688. Mildred McCallister is the president. On the Web: <http://www.cwo.com/~pkelley /index.html>. • Humanist Center–Humanist Fellowship of San Diego (AHA), POB 87662, San Diego, California 92138. William Lindley is the contact. E-mail: < warren@bookwarren.com>. • Humanist Club of Long Beach (AHA), 3316 Roxanne Avenue, Long Beach, California 90808. Peter Ballou is the contact. • Humanist Community (AHA), 3032 Warm Springs Drive, San Jose, California 95127. Bill Jacobsen is the executive director. • Humanist Community of San Francisco (AHA, ASHS), POB 31172, San Francisco, California 94131; (650) 342-0910; Jay Martin is the contact at <martinjg@flash.net>. • Humanist Community of the Peninsula (AHA), 350 Ludeman Lane, Millbrae, CA 04030. Greydon Wellman is the contact. (415) 345-2765. E-mail: <athalsfj@aol.com>. • Humanist Community Serving Stanford University, a monthly newsletter at PO Box 60069, Palo Alto, California 94306-0069. Bill Jacobsen, contact, PO Box 60069, Palo Alto, CA 94306; phone (415) 969-3630). On the Web: <www.humanists.org/>. • Humanist Fellowship of the First Unitarian Society of San Francisco (AHA), 170 Oak Park Drive, San Francisco, California 94131. • Humanist Society of Berkeley (AHA), 100 Arlene Lane, Walnut Creek, California 94595. Howard Gonsalves is the president. • Humanists of Inland Communites, PO Box 1001, San Jacinto, CA 92581; Joe Bernard, President, (909) 658-2491. • Humanists of Orange County, Peter O. Anderson, contact member, 20 Owen Court, Irvine, CA 92612-4042; Phone: (714) 854-4305. • Humanists of Riverside County (AHA), 42010 Mayberry Avenue, Hemet, California 92344. Joe Bernard is the regional director of the Southern California region of the AHA. • Humanists of the Desert Communities, contact member Phil Russo, PO Box 719, Palm Springs, cA 92263-0719. • Humanists of the Pomona Valley (AHA), POB 376, Claremont, California 91711. Joe Gorman is the contact. • Humanists of the San Joaquin Valley (AHA), contact Bill Young at (209) 855-2438, PO Box 515, Auberry, California 93602. • Institute of Humanistic Science, A-35, 5175 Luigi Terrace, San Diego, California 92122. James W. Prescott in 1975 established the group as a division of the AHA “to provide a mechanism to support research and educational projects to develop a scientific basis for Humanistic ethics and moral values.” Phone: (714) 645-6802. E-mail: <jwprescott@aol.com>. • Los Alamitos High School Atheists are at <http://www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>. • Rational Inquirers of Orange County (ASHS), 1931 East Meats #115, Orange, California 92865. • San Diego State University Atheist Coalition: <http://www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>. • Santa Barbara Humanist Society (ASHS), PO Box 118, Santa Barbara, CA 93102; (805) 687-8619 • Secular Humanists of Los Angeles (ASHS), POB 10517, Marino Del Ray, CA 90295. (310) 305-8135; E-mail: <cfiwest@worldnet.att.net>. • Secular Humanists of the East Bay (ASHS), POB 830, Berkeley, California 94701. (510) 486-0553. Contacts: Eric Worrell, Jesse Cordell, and Sarita Cordell. E-mail: <eew@eew.com>. • Secular Humanists of Los Angeles (SHOLA), PO Box 10517, Marina Del Rey, CA 90295 (310) 305-8135. E-mail: <cfiwest@worldnet.att.net>. • Set Free!, 9766 Chapman Ave. (#192), Garden Grove, CA 92840. Contact: Mark Smith at <JCnot4me@aol.com>. • Society for Humanistic Judaism of Los Angeles, 1261 Loma Vista, Beverly Hills, California 90210. • South Bay Secular Humanists, POB 4396, Mountain View, California 94040. Jim Stauffer is a contact. • University of California at Irvine’s Campus Freethought Alliance group is found on the Web: <www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>. • University of California at Santa Cruz on the Web: <www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>.
Calisher, Hortense (1911— )
Calisher, who has taught at various universities and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, is noted for stories she has written in which she interprets character. False Entry (1961), for example, is about a character known only by his pseudonym, Pierre Goodman, and his involvement in an Alabama trial, testifying against racists in the murder of a Negro. Asked about humanism, she responded to the present author as follows:
Category? Writing, one hopes to ignore categories. (See Herself: An Autobiographical Memoir. “Category is the true crocodile.”)
Humanist? A fine word. Works best when it collates with its immediate text.” {WAS, 11 June 1992}
Call, Lon Ray (1894—1916) Raised a Baptist, Call was influenced by Curtis Reese, one of the leaders of the Humanist movement, and became like Reese a Unitarian minister. As a minister-at-large, he founded thirteen Unitarian churches. {U&U}
Call, Wathen Mark Wilks (1817—1890) Call, an English positivist, entered the ministry in 1843 but resigned his curacy about 1856 on account of his change of opinions, which is recounted in his preface to Reverberations (1876). Call contributed largely to the Forthrightly and Westminster Review. {BDF; RAT}
Callaghan, William J. (20th Century) For his 1958 Columbia University Ph. D. dissertation, Callaghan wrote “Philosophy of Francis E. Abbott.” {FUS}
Callahan, Tim (20th Century) Callahan, in Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment? (1997), examined Old Testament claims of biblical prophecy. He included material concerning contemporary attempts to interpret prophecy in light of apocalyptic expectations.
Callas, Plutarco [President] (1877—1945) Callas was a strong secular President of Mexico. The Spanish clergy tried in the 1920s to get the United States to annex Mexico in order to stop his influence. {TRI}
Callaway, Charles (1838—1915) Callaway, a geologist, was educated for and entered the Nonconformist ministry, but he seceded on doctrinal grounds and became an outspoken agnostic. He supported the Cheltenham Ethical Society and was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association. {RAT}
Callaway, Howard (20th Century) Callaway is the student representative on the Board of Governors of The Humanist Institute.
Callen, Michael (1954—1993) Callen, a writer and singer who embodied for a dozen years the possibility of long-term survival with AIDS, was an atheist. He was one of the authors of How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach (1983, with his companion Richard Dworkin along with Richard Berkowitz and Dr. Joseph A. Sonnabend). He became well-known for his solo album, “Purple Heart,” and a quintet called the Flirtations. Dr. Jeffrey Laurence in the New York Times Book Review wrote in 1990 that Callen had managed in his book to “capture the spirit and eccentricities of men and women who, shouldering an extraordinary burden, simply will not break.” Callen is credited with encouraging the use of the phrase “safe sex” and of obtaining acceptance of “person with AIDS” rather than “AIDS victim.” Callen was an honorary member of the Secular Humanist Society of New York’s AIDS-support group (AASH), which held a joyous memorial in his honor when the prescribed shark cartilage and other treatments he had been taking were unable to keep him alive. At a memorial held in the Ethical Culture Society, the Flirtations sang, refreshments were served, and many individuals recounted Callen’s happy as well as gay life.
Callen, Michael (11 Apr 1955 – 27 Dec 1993) Callen, a writer and singer who embodied for a dozen years the possibility of long-term survival with AIDS, was an atheist. He was one of the authors of How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach (1983, with his companion Richard Dworkin along with Richard Berkowitz and Dr. Joseph A. Sonnabend). He became well-known for his solo album, Purple Heart and a quintet called the Flirtations. Dr. Jeffrey Laurence in The New York Times Book Review wrote in 1990 that Callen had managed in his book to “capture the spirit and eccentricities of men and women who, shouldering an extraordinary burden, simply will not break.” He is credited with encouraging the use of the phrase “safe sex” and of obtaining acceptance of “person with AIDS” rather than “AIDS victim.” Callen was an honorary member of the Secular Humanist Society of New York’s AIDS-support group (AASH), which partook in a joyous memorial in his honor (when the prescribed shark cartilage and other treatments he had been taking were unable to keep him alive). At a memorial held in New York City’s Ethical Culture Society, the Flirtations sang, refreshments were served, and many individuals recounted Callen’s happy as well as gay life. {WAS}
Callet, Pierre Auguste (Born 1811)
Callet was a French politician and the editor of the Gazette until 1840. At the 1851 coup, he took refuge in Belgium, returned to France, was then imprisoned for writing against the Empire. In 1871 he was again elected representative for the department of the Loire. His chief freethought work is L’Enfer (1861), an attack upon the Christian doctrine of Hell. {BDF}
Calloway, Charles (20th Century) A freethinker, Calloway wrote Does Determinism Destroy Responsibility? (1905). {GS}
Calverton, V. F. (1900—1940) Calverton, a freethinker, wrote The Making of Man (1931) and The Passing of the Gods (1934). {FUS; GS}
Calverley, Charles Stuart (1831—1884) A poet who translated Latin and Greek poetry, Calverley wrote verse in Latin, English, and Greek. In a biographical sketch, prefixed to his Complete Works (1901), his friend Sir W. J. Sendall stated, “To mere dogmatic teaching he was always and for ever impervious.” {RAT}
CALVINISM • Calvinism was the child of indigestion. —Robert G. Ingersoll
• The sexual act can be barbaric, brutally selfish, and self-aggrandizing, or loving and revelatory. It can be infantile and ludicrous, or spiritually exalted and profound. It can be narcissistic, heedless, and exploitative, or devotional. In the course of one person’s life, it can, at one time or another, be all these things. But the particular character of a consensual act is manifest only in the intimate connection of two minds. When it is exposed to an audience, it deconstructs as something inevitably prurient, automatically scandalous. This is especially true in America, where one of the abiding shames of the Calvinist mind is that only a Son of God can be conceived without animal intercourse. —E. L. Doctorow The New Yorker, 12 October 1998
Calvinism refers to the religious doctrines of John Calvin (1509-1564). During a sudden conversion in 1532, he was told by God that God is omnipotent; to do God’s will is man’s first duty; in Adam this was possible; in the Fall of Man this power was destroyed; humans are therefore rightfully damned; God in Christ redeems whomever He wills; that these elect whom he has so willed live by faith in union with Christ, etc. Freethinkers are quick to note that Calvin was even less humorous than most of his fellow theologians.
Calvo, Rafael (Born 1852) Calvo was a Spanish actor and dramatic author. He was both a pronounced Republican and a freethinker. {BDF}
Cambacérès, Jean Jacques [Prince] (1753—1824) Cambacérès was a French statesman, a distinguished lawyer who during the Revolution was President of the Convention and one of the Council of Five Hundred. Under Napoleon, he was one of the chief authors of the famous Code Civil, then the finest such in the world. He was made Prince, Duke of Parma, and Arch-Chancellor of the Empire. A deist, Cambacérès was banished by Louis XVIII when the royalty and church were restored. {JM; RAT}
Cameron, Dean Eikelberry (1962— ) Cameron, an actor, co-authored the screenplay of “Lost Weekend” (1984) and has written numerous other works. He has appeared in various television shows, on one of which when asked if he believed in God responded, “No god. Next caller.” “I don’t believe in god, satan, angels, an afterlife, a creator, or any of those dangerous myths,” Cameron has written. “I trust in science, objective truth, wonder, and mankind.” {CA}
Cameron, Dean Eikelberry (1962 - ) Cameron, an actor, co-authored the screenplay of Lost Weekend (1984) and has written numerous other works. He has appeared in various television shows, on one of which when a caller asked if he believed in God responded, “No god. Next caller.” “I don’t believe in god, satan, angels, an afterlife, a creator, or any of those dangerous myths,” Cameron has written. “I trust in science, objective truth, wonder, and mankind.” {CA}
Camisani, Gregorio (Born 1810)
Camisani, an Italian who translated the Upas of Captain R. H. Dyas and other works, was a freethinker who taught languages in Milan. {BDF}
Cammer, Michael (20th Century)
Cammer, an artist and academic, has written that he does not believe in any sort of spirituality and, in fact, disdains religion. On the faculty of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he does not discuss religion at the job. Of humanism, he wrote to the present author:
I find irreconcilable contradiction in how scientists can believe in any religion. Esthetics and knowledge have no need for pseudo-explanations or crutches for worry over non-acceptance of non-comprehension. Anyhow, my credentials as a humanist are that I’m pretty much a lefty or libertarian even though I’d like to make a buck. But I have been remiss; I have done no conspicuous protesting since the Gulf Massacre when I painted a huge NO WAR sign in my painting studio window overlooking the intersection of 125th Street and Broadway in New York City.
{WAS, 23 November 1993}
CAMP QUEST A summer camp for secular humanist children, Camp Quest, was inaugurated in 1996. Its address: Camp Quest, 6404 Pheasant Run, Loveland, Ohio 45140.
Campanella, Tommaso (1568—1639) During the French Revolution, Maréchal cited Campanella as being only a “possible” atheist. The Italian Renaissance philosopher never left the church, but he had frequent troubles with the authorities. His City of the Sun (1602) is similar to Plato’s Republic in that it designs a utopia, when a new era of earthly felicity should begin. For non-believers his major importance is that he anticipated what came to be known as the scientific attitude of empiricism. As for his private views on religion, Campanella defended himself when first arrested and tried during the Inquisition. In Calabria in 1599, he was arrested on charges of heresy against the Spanish Government of Naples. Upon appeal to Rome, he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in the prison of the Holy Office. He was put to the torture seven times, his torments on one occasion extending over forty hours, but he refused to confess. He was dragged from one prison to another for twenty-seven years, during which he wrote some sonnets, a history of the Spanish monarchy, and several philosophical works. Released from prison by the intervention of Pope Urban VIII, Campanella fled to France, where he met Gassendi, and to Holland, where he met Descartes. Julian Hibbert has remarked that Campanella’s Atheism Subdued (1631, Atheismus Triumphatus) might better be entitled Atheismus Triumphaus (Atheism Triumphant), for the strongest arguments are on the heterodox side. {BDF; CE; EU, Aram Vartarian}
Campbell, Ada (c. 1855—1915?) Campbell was an early Australian secularist and activist. Described as “a lady whose bold, outspoken, and fearless lectures have been the means of spreading Freedom of Thought,” she lectured widely on freethought subjects. Although threatened in Wellington with prosecution for “charging on Sunday,” the Judge of Queensland ruled in her favor: “Lectures do not come under the head of amusements and therefore cannot legally be interfered with by any Government.” An 1886 Otago Daily Times wrote that Campbell was “undoubtedly a very clever woman, with a powerful pleasant voice, considerable oratorical ability, and a neat form of mimicry” which “occasionally descended to the verge of vulgarity.” {SWW}
Campbell, Alexander (1796—1870) Campbell was a socialist from Glasgow. Upon the death of Combe in 1827, he became a socialist missionary in England, taking an active part in the co-operative movement. He also agitated for an unstamped press, for which he was tried and imprisoned at Edinburgh, 1833—1834. About 1849 Campbell returned to Glasgow and wrote on the Sentinel. In 1868 he summed up the opinion of many Owenites: “I am heart-sick of theology, and consider it a great waste of time to discuss the old Book. . . . When I compare the past Freethought platform with the present, it seems to me that there was more real progress made in the past when Robert Owen was propounding the old social ideas.” In 1867, Campbell was honorary president of the Eclectic Society. {BDF; FUK; RSR; VI}
Campbell, Archibald (19th Century) In 1856, Campbell founded the Auckland Secular Society in New Zealand. {FUK}
Campbell, Bruce (20th Century) Campbell, the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, wrote (with Maude Barlow) Straight Through the Heart: How the Liberals Abandoned the Just Society. He has written for Humanist in Canada (Summer 1996).
Campbell, Colin (20th Century) In 1988, Campbell was elected as an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association. A reader in sociology and Head of Department at the University of York, he has gained an international reputation for his work on “the cultic milieu” and the occult as well as irreligion. His Towards a Sociology of Irreligion (1971) discussed the secularist, positivist, ethical, and rationalist movements in the United States and Britain, as well as the first account of the emergence of the humanist movement in the 1960s. He also wrote The Myth of Social Action. Campbell has been on the board of the Rationalist Press Association, is a contributor to New Humanist and Question, and is a regular speaker on behalf of humanism. In Birmingham, England, at the Centenary Conference of the Rationalist Press Association in 1999, he spoke on “The Easternization of the West: The Threat to Rationalism in the New Millennium.” {FUK}
Campbell, Frances (20th Century) Campbell in Scotland is active with the Stirling Humanists.
Campbell, Ellen (20th Century) Campbell is executive director of the Canadaian Unitarian Council (Suite 706, 188 Eglinton Avenue East, Toronto, Ontaro M4P 2X7, Canada). E-mail: <cuc@web.net>.
Campbell, Glen (20th Century) Campbell was executive director of the Canadian Unitarian Council in Toronto.
Campbell, John Archibald (1906—1976) Campbell was an Australian freethinker, activist, and quantity surveyor. Upon migrating from England, he became active in the Humanist Society of South Australia, being elected as its president in 1966. From 1967 to 1968, he was president of the Council of Australian Humanist Societies, and in 1969 with Laurie Bullock he re-established the Rationalist Association of South Australia, becoming its president and editor of the monthly Rationalist. When the organization changed its name to the Atheist Foundation of Australia, he was elected president and retained that office until his death. Campbell was noted as a prolific writer of hard-hitting articles and leaflets. {SWW}
Campbell, Joseph (1904—1987) Campbell, a mythologist, folklorist, and educator, wrote The Hero With A Thousand Faces, which inspired a “Star Wars’ series of motion pictures. He is also known for having written Myths to Live By. Although purportedly anti-Semitic, no definitive study proves this. Asked his view about humanism, Campbell responded to the present author:
I have never thought of myself as being a humanist, nor can I find in any of the seven categories you have defined a spot into which I fit or should like to fit–except, of course, the first [humanism, devotion to human interests; the study of the humanities], which is so broad as to include practically everybody in the world. My sympathies are rather with the Platonists and Stoics than with the line of thinkers suggested by your rota of “Ancient Humanism,” and although I admire some of the writers named in the category of “Classical Humanism,” I am not of their species; indeed, I think of Classical Humanism as a fossil in the field of contemporary thought–like, say, Judaism or Catholicism. From the movements described as theistic humanism, atheistic humanism, and communistic humanism, I should like to dissociate myself absolutely. The contradictio in adjecto involved in the term “theistic humanism” seems to me too silly for discussion; the negativism of atheistic humanism controverts both the idea of human decency that I share with the classical humanists and that sense of the supernatural wonder of being which is for me the richest gift and delight of human experience; while the association of a systematic liquidation of whole classes of humanity with the term “humanism,” which is implied in the fraudulent rubric “communistic humanism,”I find monstrous. Finally, the position of “naturalistic humanism” I long ago abandoned, consciously and without regret, after having been trained to it in the hallowed morgue of Columbia University. The term “humanism,” in short, remains associated in my mind with a tradition that has contributed to my education but denies my experience–a stilted tradition it seems to me, not open to the winds of mystery and rapture that are synonymous with the breath of life. For nature is to me supernatural in its mystery, and absolutely so. Moreover, I include in my view of nature both man and his civilizations: these I find justified and wonderful, not because they are potential of something, but in their actuality, right here and now. Hence I lack both the “nausea” of the Existentialists and that lean toward improvement which is characteristic of the naturalistic humanists. I do not believe, as Dr. Overstreet does [in a letter to the present author, one quoted herein], that “the goal of human development lies in the greatest possible fulfillment of human powers,” or that man lives “to bring to fruition the powers with which nature endowed him.” Some people live for such things and receive awards (as they should) for their services to the race; others live to enjoy with friends the rich wine of life in one or another of its manifestations, and I believe that I am of this sort–preferring the vintage of Lao-tze to that of Lin Yu-tang, James Joyce to that of Bertrand Russell, and Henry Thoreau to that of John Dewey and his thoughtful brood. The Occidental writers whom I regard as having most strongly influenced my development are Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Spengler, Leo Frobenius, Heinrich Zimmer, Carl G. Jung, Thomas Mann, and James Joyce. The Oriental list includes Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and D. T. Suzuki. But I should also mention–with emphasis–the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, whose Paris studio in the winter of 1927–1928 was the scene of my timely rescue from the rising rocket of naturalistic humanism and establishment in the beatific vision of les grandes lignes de la nature. I hope that these brief paragraphs may be of use . . . [and I am led] to believe that I may be a humanist after all, though of a sort not yet numbered in your list.
Campbell, in Myths to Live By (1972), wrote, “What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man’s imagination.” He also wrote, “. . . god is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.” Theists as well as non-theists find much to like in Campbell’s outlook. {TYD; WAS, 15 June 1956}
Campbell, Margaret Mollie (1930— ) Campbell, born to a fundamentalist Ana-Baptist mother who limited her education on religious grounds and forbade her becoming a nurse, later rejected all religion. Upon arriving in Australia in 1962, she joined the New South Humanist Society and became its secretary in 1986. {SWW}
Campbell, Patrick (1917— ) Campbell’s “Joseph Lewis–Champion of Forethought” was published in Lewis’s freethought journal, Age of Reason (May, 1963). The New Zealand Rationalist Association in 1964 published his The Mythical Jesus. {FUK; GS; TRI}
Campbell, Philip (20th Century) Campbell is a specialist in astrophysics and atmospheric physics. Before becoming editor of Nature in 1995, he was founding editor of Physics World for the Institute of Physics. In Birmingham, England, at the Centenary Conference in 1999 of the Rationalist Press Association, Campbell spoke on “Irrationality in the Public Communication of Science.”
Campbell, Steuart (20th Century) Campbell, a rationalist, is author of The Loch Ness Monster (1991) and The UFO Mystery Solved (1994). He makes the case for an “Astronomical Mirage Hypothesis,” that a celestial body (for example, a planet) that is just below the horizon is not, in fact, invisible, but is visible by means of atmospheric refraction which causes the light from it to be “bent.” As a result, the celestial body presents itself as being above the horizon briefly and moving rapidly. E-mail: <explicit@cix.co.uk>. On the Web: <http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/stockton>.
Campbell, Theophilia Carlile (19th Century) Campbell, a freethinker, wrote The Battle of the Press as Told in the Story of Richard Carlile (1899). {FUK; GS}
Campbell, Thomas (1777—1844) A Scottish poet and reformer, Campbell was educated for the ministry but became a skeptic and turned to poetry. He played a part in the project to break the religious tyranny of Oxford and Cambridge Universities by founding the University of London as a purely secular institution. He rejected the idea of immortality, but McCabe states that Campbell “wavered between a pale theism and agnosticism.” Dean Milman and Macaulay were among his pallbearers. Although in his poems Campbell resented “superstition’s rod,” he was buried in Westminster Abbey. {JM; RAT; RE}
Campbell, W. A. (20th Century) A freethinker, Campbell wrote Did the Jews Kill Jesus, and the Myth of the Resurrection (1927) and The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus (1933). {GS}
Campell, Steuart (20th Century) In The Rise and Fall of Jesus (1996), Campell, who had a fundamentalist Christian youth, attempts to assess and interpret fact, especially historical fact, on the assumption of the non-divinity of Jesus. {Eric Stockton, New Humanist, December 1996}
Campion, William (19th Century) A shoemaker by trade, Campion worked as a shopman in Carlile’s and was tried for selling Paine’s Age of Reason. After a spirited defense, he was found guilty and was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. In prison he edited, in conjunction with J. Clarke, R. Hassell, and T. R. Perre, the Newgate Monthly Magazine. {BDF}
CAMPUS FREETHOUGHT ALLIANCE (CFA)
In 1996, students from fifteen campuses launched an alliance for atheists, humanists, and skeptics. Represented were students from the following universities, and more were soon added:
Alabama U at Birmingham (Adam Butler) Amherst College (David Beckman, Nathan Hartshorn: Doubters’ Club) Auckland United Atheists, New Zealand (Alex Clark) Birmingham-Southern College (Bradley Davis) British Columbia U (Michael Kraft of Humanists’ Society) Brock University, St Catherines, Ontario, Canada (Sara E. Moodie) California U at Irvine (Doug Semier) Chicago U (Scott Oser) Christopher Newport U, Virginia (Christopher Green, Gautam Srikanth) Colorado U at Boulder (Miriam Black of Campus Heretics) Columbia U (Joel Finkelstein) Florida International U (David Bendana) Guelph U (Diana Carter) Harvard (Derek Araujo) Houston U (Joe Lynch) Illinois U at Chicago (Michael S. Valle) Kalamazoo College (Jason Pittman) McGill U, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (Stephen Ban) Marshall U (Deidre Conn; Chad Docterman) Maryland at College Park (Alireza Aliabadi, Keith Augustine, Brianna Waters) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sarah Carlson) Minnesota U (Nicholas J. Rezmerski) Missouri U at Kansas City (Anthony Walsh) New Mexico State U (John F. Kennedy) Ohio State University Oregon U (Selena Brewington) Pennsylvania State (Daniel Smith) Puget Sound U at Tacoma, Washington (Nancy Richardson) Queens U, Ontario, Canada (Jascha Jabes) State University of NY at Albany (Carrie Fowler) State University of NY at Buffalo (Etienne Rios) Stony Brook U (Vincent Bruzzese) Tel Aviv U, Israel (Amnon Eden) Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Tim Law) Tennessee U at Martin (Jason Tippitt) Texas U at Austin (Michael Lowry) University College, Los Angeles (Vagan Karayan) University of Buffalo Webster (John Muhrer) Western Washington U (John Simons) Wisconsin U (Peter Braun, Eric Shook) Yale University
They issued “A Declaration of Necessity,” calling attention to an increasing opposition to freethought and working toward the establishing on campuses skeptical, secular, and freethinking organizations. In 1998 they issued a “Bill of Rights for Unbelievers.” Officers as of the summer of 1998 were as follows:
• Derek Carl Araujo, President (Harvard)—following his graduation in 1999, Amanda Chesworth became President: • Daniel Farkas, Vice President (Yale) • Deidre Conn, Secretary (Marshall) • August Brunsman, Treasurer (Ohio State) • David Schummer, Press Coordinator (SUNY Buffalo) • Adam Butler (Alabama at Birmingham), Pearl Chan (Harvard); Chris Mooney (Yale); Bill Bishop (Florida); Paula Duckhorn (College of Lake Country)—Executive Council
The complete list of groups and officers is found on the Web: <http://www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/>.
(See entry for Bill of Rights for Unbelievers.) {International Humanist News, December 1996}
Camus, Albert (1913—1960) Camus, the novelist whose works illustrate contemporary humanism, was born and reared in Algeria. Partly of Alsatian, partly of Spanish, descent, he was raised as a member of the French white underclass. His father had been killed in France in October 1914, during which battle he became stone blind and suffered terrible wounds. His mother, left with two sons, worked as a domestic in an Algerian slum quarter, leading Camus to remark later, “I did not learn about liberty from Karl Marx. I learned it from being bone-poor.” Tubercular from boyhood, he ran an amateur theatre company, “The Team,” a troupe in which no one was a star. The members not only acted but also built sets, sold tickets, and did whatever other jobs were required. Camus looked upon theatre, wrote Olivier Todd in Camus: Une Vie (1996), as a social duty not as a vehicle for glamor. He also enjoyed journalism and, when he married (briefly) for the first time he had four typesetters as his witnesses. As an editorialist for Combat, he favored Algeria’s liberation, which did not occur, however, until two years after his death. Camus had envisioned a federation in which Algeria and France would be equal partners, a dream which never transpired. Todd also detailed the surprising multiplicity of Camus’s sexual relationships, describing his skill as a seducer and also the connection between his mood of guilt shown in La Chute and his second wife Francine’s suicidal attempt of throwing herself out of a window. In 1948, talking to some Dominican priests, Camus said, “I shall not, as far as I am concerned, try to pass myself off as a Christian in your presence. I share with you the same revulsion from evil. But I do not share your hope, and I continue to struggle against this universe in which children suffer and die.” In 1957, upon winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, he became the first African author–not Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, who won in 1986, or Naguib Mahfoux of Egypt, who won in 1988–to be honored. The Swedish Academy cited his “important literary production that with clear-sighted earnestness illuminated the problems of the human conscience in our times.” His three major works were The Stranger (1942), The Plague (1947), and The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). The first, with its famous opening lines (“Mother died today, or maybe it was yesterday.”), showed humans as being outsiders trying to obtain self-awareness in a world they do not understand. It is the story of a thoughtless killer, one whose major wish upon the day of his execution was that he would be greeted by “an enormous crowd who would call out to him in hatred.” How tragic, Camus is saying in the novel, that man is a stranger to his environment, a stranger to the humanism of which he is a natural part. The Plague is an allegorical account of the efforts by determined people in Oran, Algeria, to fight an epidemic, individuals who assert their humanity by rebelling against their circumstances. (In 1863, a plague had wiped out half the population of his birthplace, Mondavi.) Its character, the atheistic Dr. Rieux, struggles valiantly against the disease, in contrast with the laissez-faire attitude of Father Paneloux, who preaches that the plague has been sent as a punishment by God. The latter work develops his theory of the absurd. Camus wrote with a distinctly humanistic viewpoint: “In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between a man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.” Although, like Sartre, Camus wrote of “the absurd,” he did so in a distinctly different and more constructively humanistic fashion. Sartre tended to think negatively concerning man’s absurd and meaningless existence on earth, whereas Camus expressed no nausea at such absurdity, choosing instead to accentuate the positive concerning our existence. An admitted lover of the sun, a pagan, a person who adored life, Camus treated “absurdism” as intellectual. It might be absurd that war is normal or that the deadly bacillus is a fact of life, but humanity needs to love that which is inevitable in this imperfect life of ours. Such a tragic humanism, to Camus, was not to be confused with pessimism. Martin Seymour-Smith describes how Camus blamed Christianity for the introduction of the notion of original sin, and although Camus recognized life’s injustices he knew that man must be positively dedicated to life, must develop a moral responsibility, and must be anti-nihilist. Meursault, the anti-Christ of L’Étranger, hates Christ for his sacrifice–for that sacrifice involved pain. As Seymour-Smith points out in Who’s Who in Twentieth-Century Literature (1976), Camus’s “anti-Christianity is one of the most absolute of modern times. (He was courted by some Christians and has–naturally–been described as ultimately Christian).” In Le Mythe de Sisyphe, he portrays a man, Smith-Seymour states, not unlike that of the true Nietzsche, “who is doomed to perform an absurd task but who may nevertheless learn to be happy in it. This is a paradox: accept meaninglessness but then fight it with every weapon you have.” Adds Seymour-Smith, “Had he lived he could well have gone on to become the world’s foremost novelist.” “Violently attacked in the 1960s and 1970s, when theoretical debate ran rife,” wrote Germaine Brée, “Camus has emerged in the 1980s as one of the precursors of a revolt against the constraints and evils of totalitarian systems. He has become a classic but a classic whose work has not lost its bite.” Camus was asked in 1960 to contribute to the present work his views concerning humanism, and his secretary responded that he would do so just as soon as he returned from a trip. But it was on that trip that his life ironically and absurdly ended, in a crazy burst of speed by a car he was not driving. Near that wreck was found a mud-stained briefcase containing 144 pages of almost indecipherable handwriting that made up the first draft of the early chapters of a novel based closely on his life. His wife, Francine, knowing her husband was on poor terms with Sartre and other Left Bank luminaries, decided against publication at that time. In 1952, Sartre had broken publicly with Camus over his essay, “The Rebel,” in which Camus had denounced Soviet concentration camps. “One thing that Hegel and I have in common,” Sartre wrote, “is that Camus has read neither of us.” But in 1994, a time Alan Riding has observed, when “leftist intellectuals no longer rule the roost in Paris,” Camus’ daughter Catherine published the work under the title Le premier homme (The First Man). It glorifies Algeria, his birthplace, the nation which he was unable to commit to independence for that would have meant, in his mind, the permanent loss of his childhood home. The work takes up the questions of morality, “how we should act” and how we should live if we do “not believe in God or in reason.” Its main character, Jacques (who is a thinly disguised Camus), “was 16, then he was 20, and no one had spoken to him, and he had to learn by himself, to grow alone, in fortitude, in strength, find his own morality and truth, at last to be born as a man.” The work’s release resulted in a reassessment of Camus’s literary stature. Upon its publication, many in France, where The Stranger is required reading in many schools, held that Camus had finally triumphed over Sartre, for it was Sartre who tarnished his old friend’s reputation and it was the “anti-humanists” who had contributed to the fashionable view that Camus had declined in status as a writer. The intellectual complaint was that Camus rejected violence and terror in all its forms, particularly in the Algeria he knew and loved. His denunciation of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and his failure to commit himself to Algerian independence under Arab rule, observed The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani, had “earned him the enmity of the left, while his literary endeavors–engagé, earnest and devoted to the consideration of moral issues–struck the fashionable new avatars of structuralism as old-fashioned, sentimental, and contemptibly humanistic.” Paul Edwards, in God and the Philosophers, noted that
Camus never uses an argument like Sartre’s appeal to free will. His certainty that there is no God seems to stem from his belief that the universe and more specifically human life is “absurd.” By this he means that the universe is indifferent to the human demand for rationality and justice. Camus’s view that human life is absurd and what we should infer from it is worked out in The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus has been condemned by the gods to roll a rock to the top of a mountain. As soon as he reaches the top, the rock starts rolling down, and Sisyphus has to start all over again. This cycle is repeated forever. “If this myth is tragic,” Camus wrote, “that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?”
André Glucksmann and Bernard-Henry Lévy, the so-called “New Philosophers,” scorned Camus for his “moralizing” obsession with responsibility. But now Glucksmann and Lévy have lost all favor, alleges Tony Judt of New York University: “They have been discredited by their casual resort to future History to justify present crimes, and by the ease with which they asserted that others must suffer for the sins of their own fathers. The lucidity and moral courage of Camus’s stand shine through today in a way that was not possible in the polarized world of 1958 [when Camus had written]. ‘As for me, I find it disgusting to beat the other man’s breast, in the manner of our judge-penitents.’” Judt continues: “What Camus understood perhaps better and earlier than any of his (metropolitan) contemporaries was not Arab nationalism–though as early as 1945 he had predicted that the Arabs could not much longer be expected to tolerate the conditions under which they were governed–but the particular culture of Algeria’s inhabitants, and the price that would be paid should anyone attempt to shatter it. The lost world of French Algeria is at the center of his last, unfinished novel, and it is a subject to which French readers are open now in a way that would have been unthinkable in 1960, when the manuscript was found in Camus’s briefcase at the scene of his death.” (See letter, below, from James T. Farrell.) {CE; EU, Germaine Brée; Jeannette Lowen, “The Search for Connection Between Two Worlds,” Free Inquiry, Winter 1996-1997; TYD}
CANADIAN ATHEIST The Canadian Atheist is at PO Box 41613, 923 12th St., New Westminster, British Columbia V3M 6L1.
CANADIAN FREETHINKERS Canadian freethought dates to the Toronto Freethought Society in 1873 and in Montreal to L’Institut Canadien in the 1840s. (See Gordon Stein’s Freethought in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, which contains a bibliography. Also see entry for William Dawson Le Sueur, A Canadian man of letters who has been called “the Sage of Ottawa.”) CANADIAN HUMANIST NEWS A quarterly, Canadian Humanist News is at PO Box 3736, Postal Station C, Ottawa ON, K1Y 4J8, Canada. E-mail: <hac@magi.com”.
CANADIAN HUMANISTS British Columbia boasts the highest percentage of Canadians claiming no religion: 30% compared to the national average of 12%. In Greater Vancouver, 31% choose “none” when asked their religious affiliation. Mia Stainsby, writing in the Vancouver Sun, explains this as follows: “It’s a gorgeous province with more tempting things to do than go to church or a temple on Sunday. We’re said to be a more pleasure-loving province. The ‘nones’ group is top-heavy with young people, who also are attracted to B.C.” On the Web: <www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html> and <magi.com/~hac>. Brock University humanists are on the Web: <http://www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>. The Canadian Humanist Association is on the Web: <http://infoweb.magi.com/~hac/hac.html>. Canadian Humanist News has the E-mail of <hac@magi.com>. Canadian Humanist Publications, Box 3769, Postal Station C, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1Y 4J8, is an associate member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Canadians for Intellectual Freedom is an ad hoc group of humanists, atheists, and freethinkers, according to Canadian Humanist News, February 1998. The Humanist Association of Canada (HAC), PO Box 3736, Station C, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1Y 4J8, is a full member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. The Humanist Association of Ottawa Newsletter is a monthly obtained from PO Box 8733, Postal Station T, Ottawa, Ontario, K1G 3J1. Humanist Association of Toronto, Box 44512, 2376 Eglinton Ave. East, Toronto M1K 5K3. Phone: (416) 966-1316. E-mail: <mail@humanist.toronto.on.ca>. On the Web: <www.humanist.toronto.on.ca>.
Humanist in Canada, a quarterly, is at PO Box 3769, Postal Station C, Ottawa, Ontario, K1Y 4J8. E-mail: <jepiercy@cyberus.ca>.
The Humanists’ Society at the University of British Columbia, of which Michael Kraft is President, is on the Web at:
<www.ams.ubc.ca/Clubs/Social/humanist/>.
McGill University’s Atheist, Agnostic, and Secular Humanist Society in Montreal, Quebec, is on the Web: <http://www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>. University of Regina humanists are on the Web at: <http://www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>.
John McTaggart of Alberta has compared Canadian and Netherlands humanist movements. His thorough research concluded that the lack of success in Canada’s humanist movement is attributable to (a) the absence of strong secular or irreligious themes in the development of Canadian society; (b) a greater degree of formal separation between church and state—a “naturalistic,” rather than a “pluralistic” approach, which is characteristic of the Dutch model, and has ensured that humanists in the Netherlands have received state support for many of their projects; and (c) the abolitionist approach of the Canadian movement. Svend Robinson, a member of the Canadian Parliament, has gone public as being both gay and a non-theist. (See entries for William Algie, J. Lloyd Brereton, British Columbia Humanists, John McTaggart, Henry Morgentaler, and Peter R. Smith.) {Freethought Today, November 1995}
CANADIAN UNITARIANS
The Canadian Unitarian Council (CUC) includes forty-four congregations from coast to coast, ranging in size from 500 members to small fellowships. An estimated five thousand adults and almost eight hundred children are members. Unlike Unitarian movements in Transylvania, England, and the United States, the Canadian movement did not arise from indigenous roots. Its earliest members were immigrants who brought their religion with them. The first congregation was established in Montreal in 1842. New Ones were affiliated with British and American associations. The CUC was established in 1961. According to the CUC, until fifty years ago most Canadian congregations were Christocentric in belief and practice, but now the majority is humanist. Like Unitarians everywhere Unitarians currently have moved toward a deeper spirituality drawing on the insights of ecology, feminism, and world religion. In 1998 Ellen Campbell was Executive Director of the CUC, 188 Eglington Avenue East, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2X7 Canada. On the Web: <http://www.web.net/~cuc> and <http://www.uua.org/icuu/icuu-north-america.html>. E-mail: <cuc@web.net>.
Canby, Henry Seidel (1878—1961) Canby, a founder of Saturday Review of Literature and its editor until 1936, wrote Thoreau: A Biography (1939) and many books of literary and social criticism. Asked his views concerning humanism, Canby responded to the present author that it would take a week of work and ten or fifteen thousand words. But, he added,
I wrote in the 20’s several essays for the Saturday Review on humanism from the literary angle, and even spoke at the famous meeting at Carnegie Hall. My interests, however, were much more literary than philosophical, and in my busy life since I have not kept up in any scholarly fashion, though I have done quite a little reading. {WAS, 5 April 1949}
CANDOMBLÉ The strongest of Brazil’s syncretist religions, Candomblé mixes the nature-based beliefs some four million slaves brought from Africa with the Catholicism of the Portuguese colonists. Its pantheon of orixas—gods and goddesses of wind, oceans, still water, metals, and fire—correspond to Catholic saints and appear in masks and swaying skirts of raffia. At one time the rituals of animal sacrifice, possession, music, and dance were thought to be a form of devil worship. One individual, a priestess by the name of Cleusa Millet (1931-1998), is credited along with her mother of transforming Candomblé into a religion accepted in the highest levels of Brazilian society. {Diana Jean Schemo, The New York Times, 25 October 1998}.
Canestrini, Giovanni (Born 1835) An Italian naturalist, Canestrini taught natural history at Geneva and is known for his popularization of the works of Darwin, which he translated into Italian. At Padua, where he taught zoology, anatomy, and comparative physiology, he published a Memoir of Charles Darwin (1882). {BDF; RAT}
Canfield, Russell (19th Century) Canfield edited Temple of Reason in Philadelphia from 1835 to 1837.
Canney, Maurice Arthur (1872—1941) Canney was a professor at Manchester University and a member of the editorial staff of the Encyclopaedia Biblica (1897—1903). From 1912 on, he edited the Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society. His chief works were An Encyclopaedia of Religions (1921) and Givers of Life (1923) {RE}
CANNIBALISM • Cannibal, n. A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period. —Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary
• “Must have been someone he ate.” —Comedian Bob Hope
in “The Road to Zanzibar,”
upon hearing an African native burp
Cannibalism, which is associated with a superstitious belief that the eater will absorb the magical powers of whatever he eats, has involved eating penises, breasts, hearts, brains, and other human parts, but it also has included “eating the god” (as it was called in Mexico) or food and drink in which the god was believed to be incarnated. Aztecs, according to Frazer, made dough images of Huitzlipochtli that were blessed by the priests long before Catholics arrived in Mexico. Westermarck’s Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1926) described cannibalism on four continents. Preservèd Smith’s work on theophagy emphasized the religious aspects of communion, the sacrament of figuratively eating the body and drinking the blood of God. Early Christians ate the dough image of a child at Easter, which may have given rise to the pagan charge of killing and eating children. The partaking of corn and wine at the Eleusinian mysteries may have influenced the Christian idea of a Eucharist. Rendel Harris in Eucharistic Origins (1927) suggests that the Christian rite was taken almost bodily from the cult of Isis and Osiris. Cannibalism from Sacrifice to Survival (1995) by Hans Askenasy, discussing “man’s last taboo,” states that most “appear to need a few taboos and for the time being cannibalism seems to serve that purpose admirably.” The Christian view about “transubstantiation,” or the Eucharist or communion, is that the worshiper is eating the body of Christ, symbolized by bread, and drinking His blood, symbolized by wine. Catholic doctrine holds that these substances turn miraculously into the substance of Christ. Freethinkers often hold that most Christians do not fully understand transubstantiation, often avoiding services at which communion is served. In The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (1979), William Arens differed from many of his fellow scientists. He claimed there has never been a human culture that has routinely eaten its dead or that killed and devoured its enemies. Exceptions were noted, but these involved incidents such as people starving after an accident or during famine. Different viewpoints are easily found. The Caribs ate not for appetite but to render an enemy’s spirit harmless, Caribbean journalist Larry Millman has written. First, they stuffed the body with herbs and spices, then trussed it on a pole, roasting it over a medium fire while women basted the body, lard being caught in calabash gourds. Reportedly, the French tasted the best, the Dutch were flavorless, the Spaniards tough and stringy. No related taste test was supplied for missionaries. (See entries for Communion, Preservèd Smith, and Theophagy. Suddenly Last Summer (1958) by Tennessee Williams brought up the subject.) {RE}
Cannizzaro, Stanislao (1826—1910) An Italian chemist, Cannizzaro joined the Garibaldians and was elected to the Sicilian parliament. He was awarded the Gran Cordone. Besides chemical works, Cannizzaro wrote L’Emancipazione della ragione (1865) and other rationalist volumes.
Cannizzaro, Tommaso (1837—1916) An Italian poet, Cannizzaro translated Omar Khayyam and the sonnets of Camoens. His Tramonti contains many rationalist poems, as in the ode on the death of Victor Hugo: “Inexorable enemies of truth,/Ye priests and kings and brothers of the dark.” {RAT}
Cannon, Ida Maud (1877-1960) Cannon, a Unitarian, was a social worker who became known as the founder of medical social work.
CANON For theists, a canon is an ecclesiastical law or code of laws which a church council has established. Included in a canon are, for example, the books of the Bible which are officially accepted as Holy scripture. In addition, the canon is that part of the Mass which ends just before the Lord’s Prayer. Also, a canon is a clergyman who belongs to the chapter or the staff of a cathedral or collegiate church. For non-theists in the humanities, the canon is that body of Western thought and art that is considered to be at the core of our education. But who is to determine which works are to be included? Harold Bloom in The Western Canon, The Books and School of the Ages (1994) concentrated upon twenty-six major authors and included dozens of others he considered central to the canon. Shakespeare is ordinarily considered pre-eminent, and Bloom included Molière, Ibsen, and Beckett. But by not including Racine, Lope de Vega, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht, or Pirandello, he was criticized heavily. Similarly, he included Tolstoy and Proust, but no Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Turgenev, Flaubert, Balzac, or Stendhal. In the humanities, no agreement is to be found as to what works are definitely part of the canon.
Cantab, A. (19th Century) A freethinker, Cantab wrote Jesus Versus Christianity (1873). {GS}
Cantoni, Carlo (1840—1906) An Italian philosopher, Cantoni edited the Rivista Italiana di Filosofia and wrote philosophical works of a Kantian complexion. A Senator, Cantoni was Rector of Pavia University. {RAT}
Cantor, Nathaniel (20th Century) Cantor has been an active member of the American Humanist Association. {HNS}
Capaldi, Nicholas (1939— ) A professor of philosophy at Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY), Capaldi is author of The Art of Deception (1987). {Free Inquiry, Fall, 1982}
Cape, Emily Palmer (Born 1865) Cape was an American writer, the first woman student at Columbia College. She studied sociology under Prof. Lester Ward and, like him, was an agnostic. With Ward, she compiled Glimpses of the Cosmos (12 volumes, 1913). Both Ward and she were agnostics and ardent humanitarians. {RAT}
Capek, Maja V. (1888-1966) A Czechoslovakian Unitarian minister, Capek helped create the Flower Communion and introduced it to Unitarians in America and Europe.
Capek, Norbert Fabian (1870—1942) The founder of Unitarianism in Czechoslovakian, Capek first became interested in liberal religion at the 1910 Berlin Congress of the International Association of Religious Freedom, which he had attended at President Jan Masaryk’s urging. The Liberal Fellowship, which led to the establishment of the Religious Society of Czechoslovakian Unitarians, was founded in 1923. In his The Absolute At Large (1944), he included a typically humanistic observation: “ ‘You know,’ Father Jost declared, ‘the loftier the things in which a man believes, the more fiercely he despises those who do not believe in them. And yet the greatest of all beliefs would be belief in one’s fellow men.’ ” A fellow Unitarian, Richard Henry, has written that it is difficult to be sure about details of Capek’s death:
Norbert and his daughter, Zora, were arrested on March 28, 1941. They were imprisoned first in Pankrac prison in Prague, then sent to different prisons: Norbert to Ceske Budjovice, Zora to Dresden. Capek arrived in Dachau concentration camp on July 5, 1942, and was sent on a transport from Dachau to Hartheim Castle, near Linz, Austria, on October 12th that same year, where he was gassed. Nazi authorities gave the family the date of his death as November 3, 1942. (Bureaucratic convenience rather than truth determined dates given out for such matters by Nazi authorities.) That information was relayed by Karel Haspl, his son-in-law and successor, to Frederick M. Eliot, then President of the AUA, who repeated the (mis-) information in an editorial in the Christian Register in November 1942. Official records in the archive at Dachau confirm the date of the transport and list Norbert as one of the prisoners so transported. {pdhenry@compuserve.com>; U; WAS, 21 April 1998}
CAPITAL DISTRICT HUMANIST SOCIETY The Capital District Humanist Society is an organization of humanists in Upstate New York, Western Massachusetts, and Southern Vermont. E-mail: <cdhs@global2000.net>.
CAPITALISM
Capitalism is an economic system which involves a free market. Philosophers and non-believers are free to be capitalists, socialists, communists, libertarians, or supporters of other economic systems. Of concern to freethinkers is that the combined wealth of the world’s richest 225 people at the end of the century was $1 trillion, whereas the combined annual income of the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people was also $1 trillion. However, Roman Catholics, according to their catechism, are advised that “any system that subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups to the collective organization of production is contrary to human dignity. Every practice that reduces persons to nothing more than a means of profit enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and contributes to the spread of atheism. ‘You cannot serve God and mammon.’ The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modern times with ‘communism’ or ‘socialism.’ She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of ‘capitalism,’ individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor. Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market. Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.” According to one wag:
• Capitalism = exploitation of man by man. • Socialism = the reverse.
Caplan, Arthur (20th Century) Caplan, who is Director of the Center fot Bioethics and Trustee Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, is a leading bioethicist. He wrote When Medicine Went Mad (1992) as well as several hundred articles and reviews in professionaljournals. In “The Future of Engineering Humans” (Free Inquiry, Fall 1999), he explains that the major influences on his thinking have been Ernest Nagel, John Dewey, and Sydney Hook, adding, “I think of myself as a pragmatist, although I am not quite sure my pragmatism is the same as Dewey’s. I am also influenced by biological thinking about evolution and genetics so that I am somewhat Aristotelian in outlook. And my real hero was Socrates, who I think knew what he did not know and pushed others hard to be sure what they thought they knew was really true.”
Capone, Al(phonse) (or Alfonso Capone) (1899—1947) Capone, the American gangster who contributed generously to the Catholic Church, was indicted in 1931 by a Federal grand jury for evasion of income tax payments. His business card indicated he was a used furniture dealer. In 1939, physically and mentally shattered by syphilis, about which he was so puritanical he had not asked for physicians to help, he was released. His Mt. Carmel Cemetery grave in Chicago, Illinois, has the epitaph, “My Jesus Mercy.” (See entry for WASP. Digby Baltzell the sociologist considered Capone “one of the organizing geniuses of his generation.)
Capote, Truman (1924-1984) • Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art. —Gore Vidal • Good career move. —Gore Vidal upon hearing about Capote’s death
Born Truman Streckfus Persons, Capote achieved fame with his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He also wrote The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), and In Cold Blood (1966), the latter of which was described as a “nonfiction novel” inasmuch as it told of actual events but in novelistic form. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Cappon, Alexander (1900— ) Cappon wrote The Scope of Shelley’s Philosophical Thinking (1935). He also worked on the staff of The New Humanist and later joined its editor, Harold Buschman, on the faculty of the University of Kansas City. There, Cappon edited the University of Kansas City Review and was a professor of English. {EW}
Captain Sensible: See entry for Sensible, Captain.
CAPYBARAS Capybaras are large guinea-pig-like animals that live in Venezuela. According to zoologists, they are mammals. The Roman Catholic Church, however, classifies them, for culinary purposes, as fish. {The Economist, 7 November 1998}
Caracappa, Michael G. (20th Century) Caracappa is a rationalist who writes for The American Rationalist. Reviewing L. Sprague de Camp’s The Ape-Man Within (1995), Caracappa wrote,
It is false to say white Americans enslaved blacks. It needs to be correctly restated: Certain white Americans before 1865 enslaved certain blacks who lived before 1865.
[[Carazo, Rodrigo [President][[ (1926— ) Carazo addressed the Tenth International Humanist and Ethical Union World Congress held in Buffalo (1988). He is President of the University of Peace, A Catholic, and an ex-President of Costa Rica.
Cardano, Girolamo (1501—1576) Cardano, better known as Jerome Cardan, was an Italian mathematician and physician. He was excluded from the Milan College of Physicians because of his illegitimate birth, at which time he and his young wife were compelled to take refuge in the workhouse. Understandably, his first work was an exposure of the fallacies of that faculty. In 1563 he was arrested for heresy, was released, and was deprived of his professorship. Despite some superstition, Cardano is said to have done much to forward science, especially by his work on algebra. Scaliger accused him of atheism. Pünjer says, “Cardanus deserves to be named along with Telesius as one of the principal founders of natural philosophy.” On September 20th, 1576, he is said to have starved himself in order to verify his own prediction of his death at that time. {BDF}
Cardaronella, Loretta (20th Century) Cardaronella is active with the Secular Humanist Society of Las Vegas. (See entry for Nevada Humanists.) {FD}
Cardiff, Ira D. (20th Century) Cardiff is a humanist who wrote If Christ Came to New York (1940?) and What Great Men Think of Religion (1945). {FUS; GS; HNS}
Carducci, Giosuè (1835—1907) Winner of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Literature, Carducci ranks with the greatest of the modern Italian poets, including fellow unbeliever Leopardi. He was strongly anti-Catholic. Among his works are Inno a Satana [Hymn to Satan] (1865) and Rime e ritme (1898). In an 1857 poem he wrote, “Il secoletto vil che cristianeggia [This vile christianizing century].” In 1860 he became professor of Greek in Bologna University but was suspended for a time because of an address to Mazzini. In 1865 he wrote a fiery “Hymn to Satan” and, according to McCabe, never abandoned his atheism in the days of his fame. In Naturalismo Italiano, Carelle quotes Carducci as saying, “I know neither truce of God nor peace with the Vatican or any priests. They are the real and unaltering enemies of Italy.” In 1876, Carducci was elected as republican deputy to the Italian Parliament for Lugo di Romagna. {BDF; CE; JM; JMR; RAT}
Carey, Alexander Edward (1922—1987) Carey was an Australian humanist, farmer, and psychologist. A lecturer in social and applied psychology at the University of New South Wales, Carey wrote and lectured extensively. He was active in opposing Australian involvement in the Vietnam War and, for some years, was vice-chairman of the Humanist Society of New South Wales.
Carey, Alice (Born 1820)
A Universalist, Carey was a storyteller and a poet. She was the first president of Sorosis, the early women’s intellectual and feminist organization.
Carey, Richard (1952—1996) Carey was an active member of the Humanist Association of Massachusetts.
Cargill, Oscar (1898—1971) A professor of English at New York University and author of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1950), Cargill wrote the present author in 1954 about his views on humanism:
I certainly would not apply the term “naturalistic humanism” to my own thinking. Whereas I think I would be satisfied with the phrase “scientific humanism,” if I understand what Julian Huxley means by that term. I am afraid that I am a “do-gooder” and an experimentalist in the sense that John Dewey and William James were experimentalists. I object to the phrase “naturalistic humanism” because naturalism means to me determinism. So far as I can see, one’s thinking is determined only by the heritage of one’s time and one may make choices among the ideologies represented by that intellectual heritage. I objected very much years ago when a critic termed by thinking positivistic criticism.
{WAS, 17 August 1954}
Carley, Adam L. (20th Century) Carley, who holds a number of patents and has been instrumental in the starting of several business, is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In Free Inquiry (Fall 1994) he wrote, “What is ‘Consciousness’?”, concluding that when scientists eventually determine the answer the genetic blueprint of consciousness will be so all-encompassing it “might fit on your PC’s hard disk.” But consciousness-explaining, he holds, will not be accepted as comfortably as evolution was. “A breakthrough not in science but in education would be required for that.” The article won the 1994 Selma Forkosch Award for the journal’s best article that year.
Carlile, Eliza Sharples (c. 1805—1861) The second (common-law) wife of Richard Carlile, Eliza Carlile was the first female freethought lecturer in England. When Charles Bradlaugh needed a place to stay, after being accused of atheism by his pastor, Eliza boarded him. She edited Isis, a London publication, in 1832. Carlile wrote The Glossary of the Bible, Chiefly Designed for Children (c. 1830). {BDF; EU, Joel H. Wiener; FUK; GS; VI}
Carlile, Jane (19th Century) The first wife of Richard Carlile, Jane Carlile carried on his business during his imprisonment. In 1821, she was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Of her three children, Richard, Alfred, and Thomas Paine, the last edited the Regenerator, a Chartist paper published in Manchester in 1839. {BDF; FUK}
Carlile, Mary-Anne (19th Century) A freethinker, Carlile wrote The Defence of Mary-Anne Carlile to the Vice Society’s Indictment (1821). {GS}
Carlile, Richard (1790—1843) An English journalist, reformer, and freethinker born at Ashburton in Devonshire, Carlile spent an entire lifetime advocating freethought and republicanism. He also resisted the blasphemy laws. in order to secure freedom of the press spent over nine years and four months in jail, nearly one-third of his adult life. He had to pay fines amounting to many thousand pounds. Among his crimes were publishing the suppressed works of Thomas Paine, William Hone, and his own Political Litany (1817). He supported birth control, universal suffrage, and freedom to publish including material on phrenology and mesmerism. Although Robertson holds that “Carlile had always been a deist, and, now near his end [he lapsed] into a kind of theistic mysticism,” Berman holds that Carlile was never a deist, that he was first an agnostic, later an atheist. McCabe agrees, stating that from 1821 onward Carlile was an aggressive atheist. In a letter Carlile flatly asserts, “I am an atheist” and “there is no God,” signing the letter, “Your atheistical friend, Richard Carlile.” “The fable of a god or gods visiting the earth did not originate with Christianity,” he declared, further riling the religionists. Carlile is considered to be the first atheistic leader who exerted a wide influence by means of the periodical, mass meetings, and the courtroom. Berman states that Charles Southwell took over the championship of atheism from Carlile, “who had moved away from atheism in the 1830s to a confused form of mystical theism.” He was an editor of such publications as The Republican (1819—1826), The Moralist (1823), Lion (1828—1829), Prompter (1830—1831), and Scourge (1834—1835). Once, when his house was seized because he refused to pay church-rates, he put life-size figures of a devil and a bishop arm-in-arm in his shop window in the center of London. Eventually, he wore out his persecutors, who quit troubling him. The British Dictionary of National Biography wrote that he “did more than any other man for the freedom of the press.” Thirteen days before his death Carlile penned these words: “The enemy with whom I have to grapple is one with whom no peace can be made. Idolatry will not parley; superstition will not treat on covenant. They must be uprooted for public and individual safety.” He was attended in his last illness by Dr. Thomas Lawrence, the author of the once famous “Lectures on Man.” Wishing to be useful in death as in life, Carlile devoted his body to dissection. The family complied with his wish, and the post-mortem examination was recorded in the Lancet. The burial took place at Rensal Green Cemetery, where a clergyman insisted on reading the Church Service over his remains. According to Foote, Carlile’s eldest son Richard, who represented his sentiments as well as his name, “very properly protested against the proceedings as an outrage upon the principles of his father and the wishes of the family. Of course the remonstrance was disregarded, and Richard, his brothers, and their friends left the ground. . . . After their departure, the clergyman called the great hater of priests his “dear departed brother” and declared that the rank Materialist had died “in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection.” {BDF; EU, Joel H. Wiener; FO; FUK; HAB; JM; JMR; RAT; RE; RSR; VI; TRI; TYD}
Carlin, George Denis (1937— ) A comedian who has appeared on numerous major television shows, Carlin has also been in many movies. In 1972 he received a Grammy award for best FM/AM comedy recording. The author of Sometimes A Little Brain Damage Can Help, he is often critical of the devoutly religious in his humor. “Religion is just mind control,” he has stated. In a 1995 appearance on Tom Snyder’s CBS talk program, Carlin defended his non-belief in a “man in the sky” who tells you “where you shouldn’t put your hands.” To The New York Times, he confirmed that although he attended Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, “They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, ‘This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it’s not for me.’ ” In one of his acts, Carlin said
One of the things humans did wrong was to believe in this guy God, to believe that there’s really a man in the sky who cares about any of this, and who directs our feelings or thoughts or has a report card or a scorecard on our behavior. This is really a crippling belief. And what religions do is to use it to control people and scare them.
In Brain Droppings he further develops his freethinking:
I’ve begun worshiping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It’s there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to dress up, and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered “God” are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate.
During a 1999 HBO special, “You Are All Diseased,” Carlin in a live recording said,
In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can’t hold a candle to a clergyman. ’Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.
In a 1999 interview with James A. Haught, Carlin told of his positive views about feeling connected with the universe, said of the Vatican that it “is up to its ass in political troublemaking and deal-making,” called Opus Dei “another semisecret organization,” and compared the Bible to “The Three Little Pigs,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Humpty-Dumpty”: “There is no Humpty-Dumpty and there is no God. None. Not one. No God. Never was.” Carlin became the first recipient of the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “The Emperor Has No Clothes Award.” (See entry for Emperor Has No Clothes Award.) {CA}
Carlin, George Denis (12 May 1937 - )
A comedian who has appeared on numerous major television shows, Carlin has also been in many movies. In 1972 he received a Grammy award for best FM/AM comedy recording. Many still remember his statement, “Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can’t say on television.” He explained in a style he has made famous, that our rights are rights, not to be taken away:
Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, wow. Tits doesn't even belong on the list, you know. It's such a friendly sounding word. It sounds like a nickname. “Hey, Tits, come here. Tits, meet Toots, Toots, Tits, Tits, Toots.” It sounds like a snack doesn't it? Yes, I know, it is, right. But I don't mean the sexist snack, I mean, New Nabisco Tits. The new Cheese Tits, and Corn Tits and Pizza Tits, Sesame Tits Onion Tits, Tater Tits, Yeah. Betcha can't eat just one. That's true I usually switch off. But I mean that word does not belong on the list.
The author of Sometimes A Little Brain Damage Can Help, he is often critical in his humor of the devoutly religious. “Religion is just mind control,” he has stated. In a 1995 appearance on Tom Snyder’s CBS talk program, Carlin defended his non-belief in a “man in the sky” who tells you “where you shouldn’t put your hands.” To The New York Times, he confirmed that although he attended Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, “They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, ‘This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it’s not for me.’ ” In one of his acts, Carlin included the following:
One of the things humans did wrong was to believe in this guy God, to believe that there’s really a man in the sky who cares about any of this, and who directs our feelings or thoughts or has a report card or a scorecard on our behavior. This is really a crippling belief. And what religions do is to use it to control people and scare them.
In Brain Droppings he further develops his freethinking:
I’ve begun worshiping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It’s there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to dress up, and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered “God” are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate.
During a 1999 HBO special, “You Are All Diseased,” Carlin said,
In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can’t hold a candle to a clergyman. ’Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.
Carlin, in a 1999 interview with James A. Haught, told of his positive views about feeling connected with the universe, said of the Vatican that it “is up to its ass in political troublemaking and deal-making,” called Opus Dei “another semisecret organization,” and compared the Bible to “The Three Little Pigs,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Humpty-Dumpty”: “There is no Humpty-Dumpty and there is no God. None. Not one. No God. Never was.” In a 2001 interview with Stephen Sherrill, he was asked about the statement in his book that people are too willing to die quietly, then was asked how he would like to go. “I’d like to explode spontaneously in someone’s living room. That, to me, is the way to go out.” Anybody’s in particular, Sherrill asked. “Just a friend,” Carlin replied, “so they can be there to describe it to the press.” Because so many bogus quotations have been attributed to him, Carlin has had to deny thousands that are found using computer search engines. His own Web site lists the denials but also recommends that he not be quoted unless the quotations be documentable at <http:www.georgecarlin.com/georgecarlinhome/dontblame.html>. Carlin became the first recipient of the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “The Emperor Has No Clothes Award.” {CA; Stephen Sherrill, The New York Times Magazine, 3 June 2001}
Carlson, Anton J. (1875—1956) Carlson was a scientist who signed Humanist Manifesto I. In 1953, he was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. A professor of physiology at the University of Chicago, Carlson was known on the campus as “Ajax,” the nickname given him because of his resemblance to the Greek hero who fought his battles without calling on the gods for aid. He denied the existence of a life after death, leaving the Lutheran ministry, and at the age of twenty-nine received fame by establishing that the heartbeat begins with the nerve and then reaches and sets off the heart muscle. He commenced his University of Chicago classes at 7 a.m., and once flunked half of the senior class for failure to pass a surprise examination. One of the world’s leading authorities on the physiology of hunger and on the properties of various foods, he proved the nutritive properties of oleomargarine at a time when oleo was illegally sold unless its coloring was separate from the oleo. This was required in order to distinguish it from creamery products. He also insisted that alcoholics be treated as sick persons rather than delinquents and treated them accordingly. He fought for vivisection, saying, “If man isn’t worth more than a dog, then our efforts to improve man are in error.” Carlson was the 94th president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he was an adviser to Herbert Hoover’s U.S. Food Administration program after World War I. Medical history credits him with refuting the theory of Dr. Ivan Pavlov concerning the ebb and flow of gastric juices. Most of Carlson’s research in this connection was done on himself, and he was able to prove to the satisfaction of many noted scientists that gastric juices do not flow according to the stimuli supposed by Pavlov to be responsible. His major books were The Machinery of the Body and The Control of Hunger and Disease. In Science and the Supernatural (1945), Carlson wrote, “Science nurtures inquiry, the supernatural stifles it. . . . The supernatural has no support in science, is incompatible with science, [and] is frequently an active foe of science. It is unnecessary for the good life.” {FUS; HM1; HNS; HNS2}
Carlson, Eric W. (20th Century) When he reviewed books for The Humanist in the 1950s, Carlson was an English teacher at the University of Connecticut. He is author of Emerson’s Literary Criticism (1995).
Carlson, John (20th Century) Carlson is a production editor of the atheistic Truth Seeker.
Carlson, Sarah (20th Century) Carlson, while a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of the founding members of Campus Freethought Alliance and of MIT’s Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists. {International Humanist News, December 1996}
Carlson, Shawn (20th Century) Carlson, who heads the Society for Amateur Scientists, is on the Council for Secular Humanism’s Faith-Healing Investigation Project.
Carlton, Henry (1785—1863) Carlton was an American jurist, a judge of the Supreme Court in Louisiana. His Liberty and Necessity (1857) showed him to be a deist as well as determinist. Ueberweg called him the “Anthony Collins of America.” {RAT}
Carlyle, John Aitken (1801—1879) The brother of Thomas Carlyle, John Carlyle was a writer who translated Dante’s Inferno. {RAT}
Carlyle, Thomas (1795—1881) Carlyle, who intended originally to enter the ministry, left the University of Edinburgh because he developed strong religious doubts. In his reading of German literature, he became influenced by Goethe as well as the transcendental philosophers. Sartor Resartus (1833—1834) details a spiritual autobiography in which he saw the material world as mere clothing for the spiritual one. The God of his beliefs was an immanent and friendly ruler of an orderly universe. In his portraits of the great leaders of the French Revolution, he extended his view of the divinity of man. What he liked about Voltaire, he once wrote, is that he “gave the death-stab to superstition.” At the age of fifteen, he had horrified his mother with the question, “Did God Almighty come down and make wheelbarrows in a shop?” A friend of Emerson, Carlyle conveyed to susceptible readers a non-Christian view of existence, according to Robertson. He also knew Henry James Sr., who summed up Carlyle as “the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease.” “It is not possible that educated, honest men can even profess much longer to belief in historical Christianity,” he declared. His heresy clearly appears in Life of John Sterling. Although in Sartor Resartus he appears to follow the lines of Goethe’s pantheism, Carlyle confided to the poet Allingham, who wrote in his diary that Carlyle told him, “I have for many years strictly avoided going to church or having anything to do with Mumbo Jumbo [a reference to the Christian God]. . . . We know nothing. All is, and must be, utterly incomprehensible.” Once asked if he was a pantheist, Carlyle retorted, “No, never was; nor a pot-theist, either.” In a biography, J. A. Froude wrote, “We have seen him confessing to Irving that he did not believe as his friend did in the Christian religion,” that “the special miraculous occurrences of sacred history were not credible to him.” Froude shocked many by doing what Carlyle had asked him to do, write a truthful biography. As a result he included details of Carlyle’s impotence and the unhappiness of the Carlyles’ marriage, items that led to accusations that he had been a traitor to his friend. According to biographers David A. Wilson and David W. MacArthur, in the last week of his 85th year, after several weeks of pain during which he could barely speak, Carlyle awoke from a sound sleep and to his niece said, “So this is Death–well. . . . ” {BDF; CE; FUK; JM; JMR; JMRH; RAT; RE; RSR; TRI}
Carlysle, Brian (20th Century) Carlysle is on the staff of the atheistic Truth Seeker.
Carmack, John (20th Century) Carmack is the lead programmer for and software owner of such computer games as “Wolfenstein 3rd,” “Doom,” and “Quake.” He has written that he has no belief in luck, fate, karma, or god(s), that the only casino game that interests him is Blackjack. {CA}
Carnap, Rudolf (1891—1970) Carnap was a German-American philosopher, a logical positivist, and author of The Logical System of Language (1937). Asked about humanism, he replied to the present author,
I should say that among the positions outlined I would choose naturalistic or scientific humanism as nearest to my position. (I would not like the label “religious humanism.” Indeed, “atheistic humanism” would fit better, but this should, of course, not be interpreted in the sense of existentialism.) I find myself in agreement with the basic attitudes as explained in Corliss Lamont’s book, disregarding minor differences in questions of epistemology and the like.
(See Norman M. Martin’s entry for Carnap
in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 2.) {CE; HNS; WAS, 13 August 1954}
Carneades (c. 213 —129 B.C.E.) A teacher in Plato’s Academy, Carneades worked out a theoretical formulation with Arcesilaus that showed nothing can be known by our senses or our reason. He therefore was one of the first of the academic skeptics. H. J. Blackham, in New Humanist (January 1990), explains that Carneades “redeemed epistemology by shifting the question from the objectivity of sense perception to using the subjectivity of perception, brought under control in different levels of permanent suspension of judgment, but in well-founded judgments of probability.” Bertrand Russell in his History of Philosophy (1945) relates how Carneades taught young Romans anxious to ape Greek manners and acquire Greek culture by expounding the views of Aristotle and Plato on justice. The next lecture, however, refuted all that he had said in his first, “not with a view to establishing opposite conclusions, but merely to show that every conclusion is unwarranted.” Charles Hartshorne described Carneades’s skepticism by saying he thought logic must take account of free will and the probable indeterminateness of the future. Thus “x will occur” may be neither true nor false, since there may at present exist no cause to make it so. Really, “x will occur” and “x will not occur” are both false if the truth is that x may-or-may-not occur. Hartshorne, noting that none of the writings of Carneades survive, cites Levi ben Gerson as insisting that where there is no determinate reality, all determinate assertions are false. {BDF; CE; ER; EU, Richard H. Popkin; JMRH}
Carnegie, Andrew (1835—1919)
Carnegie, a famed philanthropist, was an agnostic, according to Moncure Conway. From youth he was a skeptic, as illustrated by his mother’s telling him one sabbath, “You would have enjoyed the sermon today, Andrew. There wasn’t a word of religion in it.” Carnegie once said he was “a disciple of Confucius and Benjamin Franklin.” He is credited with having given away $332,000,000. during his lifetime, a sum which included 2,811 free public libraries in the United States, England, and Scotland as well as 7,689 church organs in several countries, once saying this was “in the hope that the organ music will distract the congregation’s attention from the rest of the service.” When asked for funds that missionaries to China could use, Carnegie refused, saying that “we do a grievous wrong to the Chinese by trying to force our religion upon them against their wishes.” As for any afterlife, he said, “I will give a million dollars for any convincing proof of a future life.” As for prayer, he declared, “I have not bothered Providence with my petitions for about forty years.” As for God, “I don’t believe in God. My God is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.” Although he never joined a church, he attended the Universalist church in New York City of which his wife was a member. Her minister, in fact, had married the two. {CE; EG; JM; RAT; RE; TYD}
Carneri, Bartholomâus von (1821—1909) Carneri was a German writer who sat in the Austrian Parliament with the Liberals. He wrote Morality and Darwinism (1871) and Der Mensch als Selbstweck (Humanity as its Own Proper Object) (1877). He was one of the founders of the Monistic Association. {BDF; RAT}
Carnes, Paul (20th Century) Carnes was a President of the American Unitarian Universalist Association from 1977 to 1979. {U}
Carney, Kevin G. (20th Century) Carney is an atheist who wrote “Spirituality Without God.” {RFD, Summer-Fall 1996}
Carolla, Adam (20th Century) Carolla, co-host of a nightly syndicated radio and MTV talk show, “Love Line,” regularly tells listeners that he is an atheist. “Nah, there’s no bigger atheist than me,” he has said. “Well, I take that back. I’m a cancer screening away from going agnostic and a biopsy away from full-fledged Christian.” {CA}
Carnot, Lazare Hippolyte (1801—1888) Carnot, a French statesman, edited a Saint-Simonian journal and was in the Parliament. At the Revolution of 1848 he became Minister of Public Instruction, and in 1876 he was a member of the Senate. Carnot was a Republican and was resolutely anti-clerical. {RAT}
[[Carnot, Lazare Nicolus Marguerite [Count]] (1753—1823) A French military engineer and statesman, Carnot served the Republic and then Napoleon, who raised him to the highest honors. Originally Catholic, Count Carnot became an atheist. Of his grandsons Lazare Hippolyte (1801—1888) was a distinguished and anti-clerical statesman. Marie Carnot was equally anti-clerical in politics and became President of the Republic. Lazare’s son, Sadi Nicholas Leonard Carnot (1796—1832) turned to science and was a leading figure in French physics. {JM; RAT; RE}
[[Carnot, Marie François Sadi [President]] (1837—1894) Carnot, the fourth President of the French Republic and eldest son of Lazare H. Carnot, originally sat on the Left in the Chambre. In 1887 he was, by 616 out of 827 votes, elected President of the Republic. At the height of his popularity, the freethinking Carnot was assassinated by an Italian anarchist. {RAT}
Carnot, Sadi Nicolas Léonard (1796—1832) Carnot was a French physicist, the son of L. N. M. Carnot. A freethinker, he wrote Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu (1824), containing what is known as “Carnot’s Principle” and which laid the foundations of the science of thermodynamics. {RAT}
Caro, Elme (1826—1887) A French philosopher, Caro rejected the belief in a personal God or personal immortality in his Idée de Dieu (1864). He was elected to the French Academy in 1875. Caro once wrote, “Science has conducted God to its frontiers, thanking him for his provisional services.” {RAT}
[[Caroline of Ansbach [Queen Consort]] (1683—1737) Caroline, the queen consort of George II of England, was a German noble who married George when he was the Prince of Hanover. The mother of three sons and five daughters, she studied philosophy and after reading Leibnitz discarded Christianity. After George’s accession in 1727, Caroline gave active support to Sir Robert Walpole, and her influence over the king lasted until her death. Her house near London was frequented by many English Deists of the time. When she had to administer the Kingdom in her husband’s absence, she refused to take the oath. She also refused the ministrations of the Church of England although she was pressed to do so by the Archbishop of Canterbury on her deathbed. Lord Hervey in his Memoirs described her as “a Deist believing in a future life.” McCabe declares it “is ludicrous of British writers to pretend that she was not a freethinker.” Lord Hervey spoke of “the irreligion of the Queen in desiring to have no clerical prayers by her death-bed,” causing much court tattle; whereupon Walpole revealed his sympathy with the Queen’s views by advising the Princess Emily in the presence of a dozen people, to “let the farce be played: the Archbishop will act it very well. . . . It will do the Queen no hurt, no more than any good; and it will satisfy all the wise and good fools, who will call us atheists if we don’t pretend to be as great fools as they are.” {JM; JMRH; RAT; RE; WWS}
Caron, Sandra M. (20th Century) Caron was the third moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, presiding from 1977 to 1985.
Carpenter, Edward (1844—1929) Carpenter, ordained as a minister in 1869, became a Fabian socialist, renouncing religion when he was thirty and quitting the Church. A friend of Walt Whitman, Carpenter wrote a long unrhymed poem about social reform entitled Towards Democracy (1863—1902). He also wrote Homogenic Love and Its Place in a Free Society (1894), Love’s Coming of Age (1897), and Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk (1914). These books proposed equality between the sexes, were gay-positive, and showed that in primitive societies homosexual behavior was often considered normal and sometimes even exalted. His religious nonbelief is evident in Myth, Magic, and Morals, A Study of Christian Origins (1910). Carpenter’s rationalism is shown in My Days and Dreams (1916). However, the English Freethinker states he was no secularist, that “his writings mingled elements of rural Utopianism with mysticism. But neither was he a conventional superstitionist. . . . Carpenter could be said to have been a courageous pioneer of both modern feminism and of Gay liberation, and his writings still may be read with profit and pleasure.” Carpenter’s love of George Merrill inspired E. M. Forster’s representation of the love of Maurice Hall and Scudder, the gamekeeper, in Maurice. {GL; RAT; RE; RSR; TRI}
Carpenter, Maria Weston (1806-1885) Carpenter, a Unitarian, was a teacher, an abolitionist, and a juvenile justice reformer.
Carpenter, William Benjamin (1813—1885) A naturalist, Carpenter held the medal of the Royal Society and the Lyell medal of the Geological Society. He was a corresponding member of the Institute of France. He was theistic (in a liberal sense) but was not a Unitarian. {RAT}
Carr, Herbert (Born 1857) Carr was a philosophical writer and the President of the Aristotelian Society. A leading champion of Bergson, he was in agreement with his heterodox views concerning theism. {RAT}
Carr, Steve (20th Century) Carr is a regional director in Missouri of the Council for Secular Humanism.
Carra, Jean Louis (1743—1793) Carra, a French man of letters and Republican, wrote History of Moldavia and an Essay on Aerial Navigation. He espoused the revolution and was a member of the Jacobin club. His freethought sentiments are evident from his System of Reason (1773), his Spirit of Morality and Philosophy (1777), and New Principles of Physic (1782—1783). In the National Assembly, he voted for the death of Louis XVI but was guillotined with the Girondins. {BDF; RAT}
Carrel, Jean Baptiste Nicolas Armand (1800—1836) Carrel was called by Saint Beueve “the Junius of the French press.” Secretary to Thierry, he edited the works of P. I. Courier and established The Nation in conjunction with Thiers and Mignet. Carrel was known as the leading journalist of his time, and John Stuart Mill praised his work. Several of his journalistic articles led to duels and, in an encounter with Émile de Girardin, Carrel was fatally wounded. On his deathbed, he said, “Point de prêtes, point d’église. (No priests nor church).” {BDF; RAT}
Carrera, Asia (20th Century) An actress in adult films, Carrera told Luke Ford, in a profile entitled “Bud & Hyapatia & Asia: Porn in the Family,” that
I’ve always been an atheist. Science explains everything. There is no meaning in life except to be the best at something. If only I could be the best at something, perhaps my parents would love me. . . . Religion is silly. When you’re dead, you turn into a source for future flowers and plans. . . . I don’t know what’s on the other side of death and it scares me. Darkness and nothingness scare me. I’d rather face the miseries of my day-to-day life than turn into darkness. {CA}
Carrier, Richard C. (20th Century) Carrier, when a student at Columbia University in 1998, signed the Campus Freethought Alliance’s Bill of Rights for Unbelievers.
Carrière, Moritz (1817—1895) Carrière was a German philosopher who followed Hegel in his earlier writings, then professed a pantheism (which he called theism) similar to the ideas of Fichte. Finite minds are, he held, acts of a pantheistic divine will. {RAT}
Carrington, Athol Egbert (1895—1980) Carrington, a New Zealander, was a rationalist, editor, and activist who stated that when he read Joseph McCabe’s The Existence of God “the cobwebs of religion were swept from my mind.” He visited Auckland in 1923 and heard Joseph McCabe, after which he became the first editor of the Auckland Rationalist Association’s Truth Seeker. Carrington wrote under the pseudonym of A.E.C. and is considered to be in the forefront of New Zealand’s rationalist leaders. {FUK; SWW}
Carrington, Dora (1893—1932) Lytton Strachey spent the last sixteen years of his life in a ménage à trois with Carrington, a painter, and her husband, George Partridge. A 1995 movie, “Carrington,” was directed by Christopher Hampton and detailed her escapades with others, mainly non-theists, of the Bloomsbury group. Carrington was barely educated, but her misspelled letters reveal a sensitivity and wit which held a profound appeal to the homosexual Strachey. He, in turn, supplied her with a refreshing interest in intellectual rather than in animalistic sexual matters. Neither was attracted to organized religion. Carrington, a graduate of the Slade School of Art, was a person lacking in confidence, yet many men fell in love with her because of her aura of milkmaid innocence. After overcoming her long period of virginity, she had many affairs but kept Strachey as her major love. After his death, she committed suicide when but thirty-eight.
Carroll, Damian (20th Century) Carroll has never actively “converted” anyone to humanism, he wrote in Humanist Monthly (December 1998). “But I know lots of people whose religious views were affected because they saw I was able to be a happy, moral person without God’s guidance,” he added, according to the Scotia, New York, publication.
Carroll, Devin (20th Century) Carroll is active with the Humanists of the San Joaquin Valley (AHA). He has helped develop non-theistic publications and activities for young people. (See entry for California Atheists, Humanists.) {FD; HNS2}
Carroll, William Joseph (1882—1975) Carroll was an Australian rationalist, writer, and freethinker who used the nom de plume of “Ame Perdue.” He wrote several satiric novels and poems, including The New Rubaiyat and Man’s Inhumanity to Man. {SWW}
Carruth, Hayden (1921— ) Carruth is a poet who was editor of Poetry (1949—1950). He was recipient of the Vachel Lindsay prize (1954), the annual Brandeis University poetry award (1959), the Harriet Monroe prize of the University of Chicago (1960), the Carl Sandburg prize (1963), and numerous others, including a grant of $10,000 in 1967 from the National Foundation on Arts and Humanities. Among Carruth’s many works are The Crow and the Heart (1959); After the Stranger (1965); The Bloomingdale Papers (1975); and Paragraphs (1975). Asked in 1994 about humanism, Carruth responded to the present author,
You may enroll me among the “non-theists,” if you wish. My writing contains many explanations of my position though I have never written expressly on this topic. Perhaps the best explanation is in my essay, “The Nature of Art,” Ohio Review (#49). The essay will be included in my forthcoming Selected Essays and Reviews.
{WAS, 7 December 1994}
Carson, Joseph (Died 1995) Carson was charter member of the Humanists of Iowa and served as its treasurer at one time.
Carson, Rachel (1907—1964)
A marine biologist, Carson wrote Silent Spring (1962) to show the dangers involved in the use of insecticides. A humanist, she also wrote Under the Sea Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1954). Her Silent Spring probably did more than any other single book or event to set off the new environmental movement which commenced in the United States in the 1960s. She called the chemicals used for insect and week control “elixirs of death,” adding, “For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.” In graphic terms, she explained that “As few as 11 large earthworms can transfer a lethal dose of DDT to a robin. And 11 worms form a small part of day’s rations to a bird that eats 10 to 12 earthworms in as many minutes.” Her work was greeted with ridicule and denunciation by the chemical industry and parts of the food industry, and Newsweek accused her of raising “paranoid fears” akin to those of “such cultists as anti-fluoridation leaguers, organic-garden faddists, and other beyond-the-fringe groups.” Complained a federal pest control member, “I thought she was a spinster. What’s she so worried about genetics for?” Actually, Carson, who was fifty-five when the book was published, had been diagnosed as having the cancer that would later kill her. Although called a spinster, a term she abhorred, she was not an unloving spinster. In Martha Freeman’s Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952—1964, one of Carson’s letters to Freeman included the following:
You must have sensed that I couldn’t express myself adequately last night. What I wanted to do was hold you in my arms to be able to tell you just what your happiness means to me. Can you possibly know? Your voice came over so clearly that you seemed to be quite near–so near, dear, it made me ache to be with you.
Growing up on a farm in western Pennsylvania, she became an amateur naturalist and was fascinated by Darwinism, according to Paul Brooks’s The House of Life (1972). Brooks tells the story that when her mother, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, told her that God had created the world, she retorted, “Yes . . . and General Motors created the Oldsmobile, but how is the question.” Carson often anthropomorphized nature, attributing human feelings to fish and animals. “I have spoken of a fish ‘fearing’ his enemies,” she explained, “not because I suppose a fish experiences fear in the same way that we do, but because I think he behaves as though he were frightened.” Carson’s sense of rectitude was remarkable, notes Daniel J. Kevles, who heads the Program in Science, Ethics, and Public Policy at the California Institute of Technology: “Because she was earning so much money from The Sea Around Us, she returned a fellowship to the Guggenheim Foundation. Her sensitivity to nature was informed by a Thoreau-like transcendentalism: letters from readers, she said, “suggest that they have found refreshment and release from tension in the contemplation of millions and billions of years–in the long vistas of geologic time in which men had no part–in the realization that, despite our own utter dependence on the earth, this same earth and sea have no need of us.” Toward the end of her life, Carson battled failing eyesight, angina, and the pain of cancer. Having been encouraged by Freeman to play the piano, Carson wrote in her last letter to Freeman,
Not long ago I sat late in my study and played Beethoven and achieved a feeling of real peace and even happiness. Never forget, dear one, how deeply I have loved you all these years.
(Donald Fleming in Perspectives in American History (1972, No. VI)
discusses transcendentalism in Carson’s writings.)
Carson, Rhode B. (20th Century)
A freethinker, Carson wrote Physician of No Value: The Repressed Story of Ecclesiastic Flummery (1979). {GS}
Carter, Abram B. (20th Century) Carter heads The Savant of Virginia, a publication for members who were in the now formally dissolved Society of Evangelical Agnostics and for a wide range of independent thinkers. (See entry for Virginia Freethinkers, Humanists.) {FD}
Carter, Diana (20th Century) While a student at the University of Guelph, Carter was one of the founding members of Campus Freethought Alliance. {International Humanist News, December 1996}
Carter, Lee (20th Century) A professor of communications in Los Angeles, Carter wrote Lucifer’s Handbook (1977). {FUS}
Carter, Nicholas (20th Century) Carter is author of The Christ Myth (1993).
CARTESIAN • Cartesian, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum—whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum—I think that I think, therefore I think that I am; as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made. —Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary
Cartier-Bresson, Henri (1908— ) A French photojournalist, Cartier-Bresson became renowned for his countless memorable images of 20th century individuals and events. In 1944, after escaping from a German prison camp, he organized underground photography units. Cartier-Bresson was a founder of the Magnum photo agency, and he wrote The Decisive Moment (1952), People of Moscow (1955), China in Transition (1956), The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson (1968), The Face of Asia (1972), and About Russia (1974). In an interview with Michel Nuridsany (The New York Review of Books, 2 March 1995), Cartier-Bresson spoke of having gone to a Cole Fénelon, a Catholic school that prepared one for the Lycée Condorcet. One day, he related,
. . . the proctor there caught me reading a volume of Rimbaud or Mallarmé, right at the start of the school year, in the lower sixth. He said to me: “Let’s have no disorder in your studies!” He used the informal tu–which usually meant you were about to get a good thrashing. But he went on: “You’re going to read in my office.” Well, that wasn’t an offer he had to repeat: I did read there, for a year. It’s why I never managed to graduate. But I read everything you could possibly read: Proust, the Russian novelists, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Nietzsche, or course. And a book on Schopenhauer that led me to Romain Rolland and to Hinduism. That had a huge effect on me. I had never been a Christian believer. My mother once said: “Poor dear, if only you had a good Dominican confessor, you wouldn’t be in such a fix!” But at the same time, she gave me Jean Barois [a novel by Roger Martin du Gard] to read, and the pre-Socratics. She was a left-wing Catholic. Myself, I’m a libertarian.
{CE}
Cartier-Bresson, Henri (22 Aug 1908 - ) A French photojournalist, Cartier-Bresson became renowned for his countless memorable images of 20th century individuals and events. In 1944, after escaping from a German prison camp, he organized underground photography units. Cartier-Bresson was a founder of the Magnum photo agency, and he wrote The Decisive Moment (1952), People of Moscow (1955), China in Transition (1956), The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson (1968), The Face of Asia (1972), and About Russia (1974). In an interview with Michel Nuridsany (The New York Review of Books, 2 March 1995), Cartier-Bresson spoke of having gone to Ecole Fénelon, a Catholic school that prepared one for the Lycée Condorcet. One day, he related,
. . . the proctor there caught me reading a volume of Rimbaud or Mallarmé, right at the start of the school year, in the lower sixth. He said to me: “Let’s have no disorder in your studies!” He used the informal tu–which usually meant you were about to get a good thrashing. But he went on: “You’re going to read in my office.” Well, that wasn’t an offer he had to repeat: I did read there, for a year. It’s why I never managed to graduate. But I read everything you could possibly read: Proust, the Russian novelists, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Nietzsche, or course. And a book on Schopenhauer that led me to Romain Rolland and to Hinduism. That had a huge effect on me. I had never been a Christian believer. My mother once said: “Poor dear, if only you had a good Dominican confessor, you wouldn’t be in such a fix!” But at the same time, she gave me Jean Barois [a novel by Roger Martin du Gard] to read, and the pre-Socratics. She was a left-wing Catholic. Myself, I’m a libertarian.
{CE}
Carus, Julius Viktor (1823—1903) Carus was a German zoologist and freethinker. He was keeper of the anatomical museum at Oxford, and he translated Darwin’s works and the philosophy of G. H. Lewes. {BDF; RAT} Carus, Karl Gustav (1789—1869) A German physiologist and pantheist, Carus taught comparative anatomy and wrote Psyche, a history of the development of what he called the human soul. Carus was a friend of Goethe, and he subscribed to the monistic or pantheistic philosophy. {BDF; RAT}
Carus, Paul (1852—1919) A German-American who settled in Chicago, Carus was a philosopher. With funds supplied by his father-in-law, Carus attempted to propagate monism (on more philosophic lines than Haeckel’s system) in America. He founded The Monist and The Open Court. In 1943, an edition was published of his God: An Enquiry into the Nature of Man’s Highest Ideal, and a Solution. {GS; RE}
Caruso, Maire (20th Century) Caruso is on the board of directors of Society Against Religion.
Carvalho e Melo, Sebastião José de: See entry for Pombal.
Carver, Charles (20th Century) Carver wrote Brann and the Iconoclast (1957), a short biography of the freethinker. {Freethought History #15, 1995}
Carver, Raymond (1938—1988) An American short story writer, Carver was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1988. Nick Sweet (New Humanist, June 1996) has discussed how Carver’s stories develop the humanist theme of moving to maturity and independence. Carver was both a novelist and a poet. His works include Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1977), What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1982), Cathedral (1984), and Elephant (1988).
Cary, Alice (1820—1871) Cary, an Ohio poet, was prominent in Horace Greeley’s circle. An abolitionist, she wrote hymns and poems, inspiring Whittier’s “The Singer.” Her sister, also a Unitarian, was Phoebe Cary. {U}
Cary, Joyce (1888—1957) Cary, a British novelist who studied art in Edinburgh and Paris, took part in the Balkan War (1912—1913) and served with the Nigerian regiment in the Cameroons campaign, 1915—1916. His early novels about Africa described the relations between Africans and their British administrators. The Horse’s Mouth (1944) was chiefly concerned with the life of Gulley Jimson, the artist. Art and Reality (1958) was a study in aesthetics. The Captive and the Free (1959) was an unfinished novel which had a religious theme. Asked about humanism, Cary responded to the present author:
I don’t know what kind of a humanist I am. My position is roughly and very shortly: (1) The world is finally one unity: “nature” includes “human nature”; (2) In the unity we find altruistic as well as aesthetic values, good will, and also evil will; (3) Values obtain only in a personal free will. Therefore, you have to fit a person, and values, into your unity; (4) This means that the unity is ultimately personal and free but it contains a complex mass of evil; (5) Daily experience makes us know the battle between good and evil in which the good is often beaten; the dilemma is always charged with tragedy, in justice, every kind of cruelty; (6) Some of the evil is pure evil–wicked evil; some derives from chance–the unity is shot through with luck. It is always bedevilled by deterministic causation. The two often work together; i.e., a child is born to tubercular parents (luck) and inherits a physique (determinism) which is open to tuberculosis, and so he dies young; (7) Any answer proposed to this complex situation must account for (a) the freedom of the moral and immoral will; (8) the determination of the “material” world [an illegible word here is possibly “governed”] at the least by statistical laws which, I should say, are good evidence of a fixed consistency in spite of Planck’s views as I understand them. The only answer I can propose which is, of course, purely conceptual is that since the world is “so” and not “otherwise,” it must have a permanent character. That is, a real and actual free will requires a consistent form in actuality. Such a dual existence is known to [illegible words] in our bodies. It is therefore not beyond imagination. It is, no doubt, something a good deal larger than our imagination and probably of a quite different order. Yet we know what we know.
{WAS, 28 February 1951}
Cary, Neal (20th Century) Cary is the national outreach director of American Atheists as Volunteers. E-mail: <ncaryatheists.org>.
Cary, Phoebe (1824—1871) Phoebe and Alice Cary were poets whose work was moralistic and idealistic. Both were Unitarians.
Casale, Jerry (20th Century) A recording artist, Casale was a founding member of Devo and a co-writer of “Whip It.” Asked by Billboard about the role of “devolution” in Devo’s style, Casale answered, “Like the Bible, devolution is basically an extended joke. One man’s doughnut is another man’s death.” {CA}
Casanova, Giovanni Jacques de Seingalt (1725—1798) An Italian writer, Casanova entered the Church and received the minor orders. Abandoning the Church, he began a life of adventure, as shown in his Memoirs (12 volumes, 1828—1838). At various times he was secretary to a cardinal, an officer in the Venetian army, a violinist, a librarian, and a secret police-agent. Casanova translated the Iliad into Italian. {RAT}
Casas, Yoloxóchilt (20th Century) Casas, a Mexican, spoke on health, sexuality, and medical information at the 1996 Humanist World [[Congress held in Mexico City.
Cash, W. J. (20th Century) Cash’s The Mind of the South (1941) is an overview which draws together history, sociology, and literature. {Freethought History #14, 1995}
[[Casimir-Périer, Jean Paul Pierre [President]] (1847—1907) Casimir-Périer served two terms (1890 and 1893) as President of the French Chambre, and in the heat of the conflict with the Church was elected President of the Republic (1894). He gave valuable evidence for the accused at the trial of Dreyfus, and throughout his political life cooperated in the secularization of France and the destruction of the power of the Church. {RAT; RE}
Casler, Lawrence (20th Century) Casler is a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology, at the State University of New York in Geneseo. An atheist, he has written Is Marriage Necessary? and has written for American Atheist.
Caspari, Otto (Born 1841) A German philosopher, Caspari in his works attempted to reconcile philosophy with modern evolutionary science and, a monist himself, gave much valuable support to Haeckel. {RAT}
Cassara, Ernest (1925— ) Cassara is author of Hosea Ballou: The Challenge to Orthodoxy, a study of the nineteenth-century Universalist, and of Universalism in America (1971).
Cassels, W(alter) R(ichard) (1826—1907) Cassels spent much of his early life in India, serving in the Legislative Council of Bombay from 1863 to 1865. Only after his Supernatural Religion: An Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation went into a sixth printing did it occur to others that the popular work which was published anonymously was his. A nephew of Dr. Pusey, Cassels wrote under his own name Eidolon and Other Poems (1850) and A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot’s Essays (1889). In a scholarly criticism of the Bible he confessed a belief in an impersonal God, but he later rejected this and professed agnosticism. {BDF; FUK; RAT; RE}
Casserly, J. V. Langmead (20th Century) Casserly, a freethinker, wrote The Retreat from Christianity in the Modern World (1952). {GS}
Cassirer, Ernst (1874—1975) Cassirer, a German neo-Kantian, is cited by some naturalistic humanists as having influenced them. However, he basically was an idealist, not a naturalist or a materialist. (See James Gutmann’s letter, below.). {CE}
Casson, Herbert (20th Century) Casson, a freethinker, wrote The Crime of Credulity (1901). {GS}
CASTE In India, a caste is any of four classes, comprising numerous subclasses, which constitute Hindu society. One’s social class is separated from that of others by distinctions of hereditary rank, profession, or wealth. Castes in a colony of social insects such as ants include workers or soldiers who carry out a specific function. (See entry for Poopathi Manckham, who objects to the caste system. Also see the critique in the entry for V. R. Narla.)
Castelar y Ripoli, Emilio (1832—1899) Castelar was a Spanish statesman and journalist who became known for his writing of a novel, Ernesto (1855). He was a professor of history and philosophy at the University of Madrid, was foreign minister, and then president (1873—1874) of Spain’s first republic. He ruled as a dictator and was partially successful in restoring order to the war-torn country. “We have not the same republican traditions possessed by Italy and France,” he wrote. “Our people, always at war, have always needed a chief, and this chief required not only the sword of the soldier to fight, but the scepter of the monarch to rule. Notwithstanding this ancient monarchical character, there are regions which have been saved from the monarchy, and which have preserved their democracy and their republic. There still exist in the north provinces possessed of an autonomy and an independence which give them points of resemblance to the Swiss cantons. The citizens give neither tribute nor blood to the kings. Their firesides are as sacred form the invasion of authority as those of the English or of the Americans. . . . Our Cortes of Castile succeeded frequently in expelling the ecclesiastical and aristocratic estates from their sessions. Our Cortes of Aragon attained such power that they named the government of their kings, and obtained fixed days for their sessions. Navarre was a species of republic more or less aristocratic, presided over by a king more or less respected. And the Castilian municipalities were in the Middle Ages true democratic republics.” Although a representative of Republican Spain, a noble orator, a literary exponent, he was more an idealist than a materialist, according to Putnam, who added that Castelar “studies history, we might say, of Hegel, which makes history a kind of divine romance.” Although a non-orthodox Christian, Castelar was something of a theist. He favored a federative republic like that of America, not a centralized republic like that of France. But he was overthrown by a military coup d’état. After the restoration (1875) of Alfonso XII, Castelar became a member of the political opposition in the Cortes. {BDF; CE; PUT}
Castelli, David (Born 1836) An Italian writer, Castelli held the chair of Hebrew in the Institute of Superior Studies at Florence and translated Ecclesiastes with notes. His rationalist works included Talmudic Legends (1869), The Messiah According to the Hebrews (1874), and The History of the Israelites (1887). His numerous works on Hebrew literature are rationalistic. {BDF; RAT}
Castellio, Sebastian [also: Castalion, Châtillon (1515—1563) A Swiss school rector whom John Calvin frowned upon because of his unauthorized Latin and French translations of the Bible, Castellio was horrified when Calvin had Michael Servetus murdered because of theological differences. So he wrote Concerning Heretics, in which (using a pseudonym, Martinus Bellius) he condemned Calvin as the murderer of Servetus. Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) has described in The Right to Heresy: Castellio Against Calvin (1951) how Calvin plotted the heretic Castellio’s death, which was thwarted by Castellio’s illness and death from “an overtaxed heart.” {CE; JMRH; TSV}
Castiglione, Ruggero de Palma (20th Century) Castiglione, an Italian, addressed the Fourth International Humanist and Ethical Union World Congress held in Paris (1966) and also at the Second European Conference held in Hannover (1968).
Castilhon, Jean Louis (1720—1793)
Castilhon, a French man of letters, edited the Journal of Jurisprudence. His freethought shows in his Essay on Ancient and Modern Errors and Superstitions (1767) and in his History of Philosophical Opinions (1769). {BDF}
Castillo Rojas, Marco (20th Century) A lawyer and notary, Castillo is president of Asociación Ético Humanista Costarricense (ASEHUCO), the Costa Rican Association of Ethical and Secular Humanists. He was instrumental in the founding of Asociación Iberoamericana Ético Humanista (ASIBEHU), the Ibero-American Ethical Humanist Association of Spanish-speaking humanists in the Americas. Castillo, one of the leading human rights lawyers in Costa Rica, was a participant in the 1996 Humanist World Congress held in Mexico City. E-mail: <asibehu@sol.racsa.co.cr>.
Castle, Marie Alena (20th Century) Castle is the activist President of Atheist Alliance, Inc., the Democratic Alliance of Autonomous Atheist Societies (Box 6261, Minneapolis, MN 55406). She is co-chair of the Minnesota Atheists, and is one of the counsels for Secular Nation. In 1994 at the Toronto Conference of the Coalition for Secular Humanism, Atheism, and Freethought (CSHAFT), she spoke on “Dealing With the Religious Right.” Castle has stated that humanists should not be on the defensive, that they have already won. She cites the Enlightenment, the founding of constitutional democracies around the world, the Bill of Rights, the New Deal, and the humanistic arts and sciences. “Our problem,” she holds, “is not to establish humanism but to defend and preserve it.” Declare victory, she advises, and move forward. It is the triumph of humanism which “has brought on the rise of an aggressive religious fascism,” she insists, appealing to humanists, atheists, and secular organization to work together for the preservation of our victory. In 1996 in Vijayawada, India, she gave the valedictory address at the fourth World Atheist Conference, during which she particularly stressed the importance of political action. Her e-mail: <mac@mtn.org>. {The Free Mind, February 1996}
Castro, Fernando (1814—c. 1874) A Spanish philosopher and historian, Castro had been a priest. But on his death-bed he confessed himself a freethinker and had a secular burial. {BDF}
Castro, Fidel (1926— ) Castro is the Cuban revolutionary and premier of Cuba who toppled Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar in 1959, installing his own Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. An atheist who has called his philosophic outlook “humanism,” he has been a symbol of revolution and social change in Latin America and elsewhere. “Liberty with bread, without terror–that is, Humanism,” he stated when first displacing the Batista government. His government, however, did not carry out that slogan. He campaigned for the socialistic nationalizing of industry, the confiscating of foreign-owned property, the collectivizing of agriculture, and improving of the average person’s quality of life. However, this “humanism,” according to most other professed humanists, led more than one million Cubans to flee the island because of his authoritarian and undemocratic rule. Those who fled, called la escoria (scum) or gusanos (worms), decry the chivatos (informers) who did not flee. Meanwhile, with the incredibly fast fall of other Marxist-Leninist governments in the 1990s, Castro remained a solitary symbol of his brand of humanism. His 1996 meeting with the Pope at the Vatican led him to say, “As a child, I never would have imagined that one day I would have lunch with cardinals and meet with a Pope.” Little wonder, for he long ago went on record:
When I was a young boy, my father taught me that to be a good Catholic, I had to confess at church if I ever had impure thoughts about a girl. That very evening I had to rush to confess my sin. And the next night, and the next. After a week, I decided religion wasn’t for me. As pointed out by Sidney Hook and other humanists, communistic humanism was destined to fail because it is not founded upon freedom, the significance of the individual, and political democracy. In mid-1994, Castro in a pragmatic decision invited some of the gusanos to return to their former country. In 1998 he invited Pope John Paul to visit Cuba. Asked by reporters if this implied he was no longer an atheist, Castro said,
I can say one thing. I respect those who believe and those who do not believe. If you say you do not believe, you offend those who believe. If you say you believe, you offend those who do not believe. In a way you become a preacher. I am not a preacher. I do believe in mankind and in the goodness and nobility of man. I believe the world should live in a way that is just and rational. {CE; E; The Economist, 16 August 1997}
CASUISTRY Casuistry involves specious or excessively subtle reasoning that is intended to mislead or to rationalize. For example, by interpreting the religious doctrine that “thou shalt not kill,” a casuist might accuse physicians of unethically killing germs.
Catalano, John (20th Century) Catalano is a freethinker who has written about Richard Dawkins for the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia.
CATASTROPHISM : See entry for Uniformitarianism.
CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant defined the ultimate moral obligation that applies a priori to everyone in all circumstances:
• Act according to that maxim which you could wish to be a universal law of nature upon which every one should act at all times;
• Always treat humanity in yourself and others as an end and never as merely a means;
• Act always as if you were a member of a merely possible kingdom of ends.
Following such commands, he believed, is a categorical imperative, a moral obligation that is unconditionally and universally binding. McCabe, however, said that Kant “was a man of very isolated and eccentric life who had been reared in a strict puritanical environment, and he never attempted to study the moral consciousness of others, so that his ethical philosophy is rather an analysis of one highly sophisticated individual conscience. His critics said that as he had destroyed the foundations of the ordinary arguments for God and immortality in his Critique of Pure Reason, he felt compelled to appeal to ‘practical reason.’ Neither psychology nor the modern science of ethics countenances his idea.” {CE; ER}
CATHARISM The Cathari (also known as Albigenses) were a medieval, puritanical, and heretical movement called, by theologian Herman Hausheer of Lamoni, Iowa, “a repristination of Manichaeism and Gnostic christology, maintaining to be the only true church of a holy hierarchy and efficacious sacraments.” Translated, this means that the group claimed to have had proof that Jesus did not die on the cross, that he married Mary Magdalen, that they settled in the Languedoc, and that their heirs founded the Merovingian dynasty that united Christian Europe under Charlemagne. (See Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou, which by studying Inquisition notes describes the life of a medieval village.) {ER}
Cather, Willa (1867—1947)
Cather, a short story writer and novelist, is one of the great writers of the 20th century. She celebrated the strength of the frontier settlers in O Pioneers (1913) and My Antonia (1918). Her Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) is considered one of her best works. She is known as a master of the craft of fiction, as evidenced not only by her fiction but also by her On Writing (1949). While on the editorial staff of McClure’s Magazine in 1907 and 1908, Cather wrote a scathing work, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (republished 1992), which brought her much negative criticism. Like Samuel Clemens, who had called Eddy “queen of frauds and hypocrites,” Cather presents a negative view of Eddy’s life and writings. However, a Canadian newspaperwoman named Georgine Milmine originally was credited as having been the author. In fact, to her death Cather denied having written the book, either unwilling to be known as a comic writer or, as critics claim, was tacitly acknowledging that Milmine was biased and had supplied her with material for its sensational and commercial value. Critic Michael Warner (Voice, 17 Aug 93) wrote concerning the Eddy biography: “The heroine comes off with as much pathos, hilarity, and will as any character in Cather’s fiction. Each chapter shows Mrs. Eddy venturing into new realms of implausibility, a bombazine Cortez of the ridiculous. The suspense lies in wondering how much farther she can go, and she never fails to satisfy. This is the woman, after all, who had an adult-size cradle made to order so she could be rocked to sleep. She had her second husband (the exquisitely queer Mr. Eddy came third) cover a nearby bridge with sawdust to deaden the sound of neighbors’ footsteps. At night, she sent him out to kill discordant frogs. By the time Eddy was forty, she had raised nervous illness to an art form—and that was before she became its theorist. Like her principal rival in hysterical science, Sigmund Freud, Mary Baker Eddy did not begin the major part of her career until the age of fifty. Perhaps Cather felt reluctant to take credit for such a splendid character, who was still alive when the biography was published.” Puritan critics accused Cather of being a lesbian, citing how from the ages of fourteen to eighteen she so strongly identified as a male that she dressed in men’s clothing, got a crew cut, and called herself William Cather Jr. In 1895 in the Nebraska Journal, she condemned Oscar Wilde for his alleged homosexual acts. However, in 1895 she wrote a rhapsodic newspaper commentary on Sappho, whose lyre “responded only to a song of love.” Her critics, particularly religionists sensitive about her attacks on Mary Baker G. Eddy, disclosed that Cather in 1905 had left her lover, Isabelle McClung in Pittsburgh, later burning all their correspondence, and had moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where she lived the rest of her life, for almost forty years, with Edith Lewis, another Nebraskan. One of her biographers, Sharon O’Brien, said that Lewis phoned her not to use the word “lesbian” in writing of Cather. “When I told her this wasn’t possible, she hung up,” wrote O’Brien, who then added that “Cather herself invited me to tea at her Bank Street [New York City] apartment. ‘I want you to know,’ she said, pouring me a cup, ‘that I am not gay.’ ‘What about the letters to Louise Pound?’ I asked. As soon as I spoke, the dream abruptly ended. I could not tell if I had silenced or convinced her.” O’Brien explained that while at Duke University, she had come across romantic love letters to Pound, her friend at the University of Nebraska, “in which Cather agreed that relationships like theirs were ‘unnatural.’ ” O’Brien’s work, Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians: Willa Cather (1994), took fifteen years to research and argues that if Cather were alive today she would not at all mind being outed, that flouting convention when she thought she was right was part of her character. Cather’s other critics were surprised that her work was so popular, that readers were buying plots about mule-riding priests in nineteenth-century New Mexico and about non-shocking romance. Clifton Fadiman as well as Lionel Trilling considered her as a person writing of the past and acting as if she was not of the present. Trilling observed that she lived in a world of Freudians but wrote in “defense of gentility.” The Catholic World commended her for high standards, aware that she was a nominal Episcopalian, for not stooping to “crude realism, Freudism, inchoate prose, shallow philosophy.” Her final years were spent tending a case of chronic tendinitis in her right hand. Awaking one day from an afternoon nap, she complained of a headache, then died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The Nation in an obituary described her as a minor novelist, one “remote from the talents and problems of the past two anxious decades.” Only in the 1990s did “William” Cather’s reputation increase, partly because of a new evaluation of her lesbianism and her feminism. (See entries for Christian Science and Louise Pound.) {Joan Acocella, “Cather and the Academy,” The New Yorker, 27 November 1995; CE; GL}
Catherine II Catherine The Great (1729—1796) Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, was a German princess chosen by Czarina Elizabeth partly on the recommendation of Frederick II of Prussia, to be the wife of the future Czar Peter III. Accepting the Orthodox faith, she changed her original name, Sophie, to Catherine. Becoming “completely Russian” made her popular with important political elements who opposed her eccentric husband, whom many considered a drunken boor. When her husband ascended to the throne in 1762, a group of conspirators headed by her lover, Grigori Orlov, proclaimed Catherine the autocrat. Shortly afterward, Peter was murdered. Catherine then began great projects of reform, drawing upon the writings of Beccaria and Montesquieu to serve as guides. An enthusiastic patron of the arts, she wrote memoirs, comedies, and stories. She corresponded with the French encyclopedists, including Voltaire, Diderot, and d’Alembert. Although she had many lovers, only Orlov, Potemkin, and P. L. Zubov were said to have been influential in government affairs. She was succeeded by her son, Paul I. McCabe notes that Catherine found it difficult being in a world where the Church was supreme and life was coarse and unrestricted. She particularly had little regard for the sex-part of the Christian code. (On Broadway in the 1940s, Mae West played the starring role in “Catherine the Great,” which detailed her many sexual escapades. In one scene, she asks her homosexual hairdresser what he wants for Christmas. He responds what he really wants is one of her discarded lovers.) Because of her friendship with the French encyclopedists, who were largely responsible for her glorious contemporary reputation, she learned a humanitarianism which the Church ignored, and she began a great program of social reform in Russia (in education, sanitation, administration of justice). The French Revolution and execution of the King caused a reaction in her mind and character and all reform was suspended. But, according to McCabe, she remained a Deist. Robertson also called her a deist, “a satirist of bigots in her comedies,” one who accomplished what Peter had planned, the secularization of Church property. Robertson lamented the fact that “her half-crazy son Paul II, whom she had given cause to hate her, undid her work wherever he could.” {CE; JM; JMR; JMRH; RAT; RE; WWS}
Cathey, Bruce E. (20th Century) A New York City bibliographer, Cathey is writing Traditional Religious Issues: A Bibliographic Guide to Rationalist/Humanist/ Secularist Perspectives. Gordon Stein wrote the foreword before his death, and the work is scheduled for printing in 2000.
catholic Freethinkers, agnostics, atheists, and members of the liberal religious groups are frequently known for their catholic, or universal, interests. Often aspiring to be Renaissance-like scholars, they encourage individuals to be catholic in their interests and to be experts in several areas. (See Bertrand Russell’s entry for a critique, not of catholic, but of Catholic.)
CATHOLIC CATECHISM In 1994, a Catechism of the Catholic Church was issued and became a runaway best-seller for its sixteen different publishers. Catechism, a word rooted in the Greek for “oral instruction,” has meant a manual of religious doctrine since the late Middle Ages. Johannes Paulus II (John Paul, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God for Everlasting Memory) wrote an introductory note, and in a separately bound introduction Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Vatican official in charge of doctrine, wrote a note striking out against “those interests which portray the Catechism as inimical to progress.” He singled out by name Hans Küng, the Swiss theologian known for his liberal Catholicism and complaint that the work is an assertion of power by the Church’s “Roman party.” Some Americans were critical of the Vatican’s decision to continue using gender-insensitive words, for example using “Man” for “Humanity.” Other Americans, although finding the 853-page work has its good points, are aware that many do not agree with the Church declarations in regard to contraception, divorce, and abortion. They note that the catechism persists with the medieval teaching that the only legitimate end of sex is procreation. In fact, contraception is said to be “intrinsically evil,” and it is condemned more harshly than homicide, which is declared sometimes permissible. The catechism also condemns in vitro fertilization, even if the husband and wife supply their own sperm and egg, inasmuch as such “established the domination of technology.” Further, it is “not possible” for women to be ordained. Catholics generally accept the idea that some items of doctrine have to be accepted . . . on faith. For example: the divinity (and humanity) of Christ; his death and resurrection; the virginity of Mary; the power of prayer. However, many Catholics do not agree with Pope John Paul that the “ordinary magisterium”—all church teaching—requires absolute acceptance. In fact, that teaching has changed over the years. For example, at one time the Roman Catholic church banned artistic images of Christ, prohibited the payment of interest, allowed priests to marry; and expected inquisitors to torture. Pope Paul VI abolished the Index Prohibitorum. John Paul II retracted the church’s 17th-century denunciation of Galileo. A 1907 encyclical condemning “modernism,“ The Economist has observed (29 April 1995), “is now regarded as an embarrassment at best.” (See entry for the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, an outspoken liberal Roman Catholic theologian.)
CATHOLIC CRITIQUE OF HUMANIST MANIFESTO I : See entry for Humanist Manifestos.
CATHOLIC POPES : See entry for Pope. For a description of one pope’s wild parties, see the entry for Alexander VI.
CATHOLIC RELATIVISM The Roman Catholic Church rarely talks about heresy, but in 1997 the Vatican’s doctrinal authorities found a seventy-two-year-old Sri Lankan priest, the Rev. Tissa Balasuriya, guilty of having “deviated from the integrity of the truth of the Catholic faith.” As a result, he was excommunicated, formally cast out of the communion of the church. Another case of excommunication in recent times was against Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988, after he flouted the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Similarly, the Pope severely criticized and cracked down on the Swiss theologian Hans Küng, a professor at Tübingen University in Germany; the Rev. Charles E. Curran, who taught at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.; and the school of liberation theologians from Latin America whose anti-establishment, populist views often overlapped with leftist social ideals in the 1970s and 1980s. However, Father Küng observed of the Sri Lankan’s excommunication, “This is much tougher, perhaps because he is a third-world theologian. It is very serious for this man, and it is very unjust, but it is the consequence of the system. This is the system as it works, and as it will work as long as Catholicism doesn’t get rid of a doctrine that says the Pope is always right.” Observed a fellow member of Father Balasuriya’s order, “I love my order; the fraternal bonds are very strong; but you have to respect the mission of the church. The Pope and the bishops have a responsibility for teaching by the Scriptures, for interpreting by tradition.” The Sri Lankan had been accused of challenging such beliefs as original sin and the Immaculate Conception. {Celestine Bohlen, The New York Times, 7 January 1997}
CATHOLIC WOMEN In The Recovering Catholic: Personal Journeys of Women Who Left the Church (1995), Joanne H. Meehl writes about women of many walks of life who have rejected the Roman Catholic faith. The denigration of females by the male clergy, abortion, contraception, and the role of women in the Church are discussed. Meehl speaks of the “Great Goddess” matriarchal culture, leading R. E. Wolke and others to wonder why she would wish to replace the illogic of one religion for another. {The American Rationalist, September-October 1995}
CATHOLICISM “Catholicism,” wrote lapsed Catholic Anthony Burgess in his memoirs, “is, in a paradox, a bigger thing than the faith. It is a kind of supranationality that makes one despise small patriotisms.” Freethinkers, although highly critical of Catholicism, generally refrain from trying to change the beliefs of its Catholic adherents. (See entry for Cross-Dressing.)
CATHOLICISM—INTRIGUE IN THE VATICAN : See entry for Vatican, Gone With the Wind in the.
CATHOLICS, FORMER Sherry Bishop is author of Immaculate Misconceptions: A Self-Help Book for Former Catholics (Veranda Press, PO Box 626, Carlsborg, WA 98324). The book is based on her own experience as well as that of other former Catholics. The first part details how they were hurt by their childhood experiences in Catholic churches and schools. The second part offers suggestions for healing.
Catlin, George (20th Century) Catlin was on the board of directors in England of Archibald Church’s The Realist: A Journal of Scientific Humanism (1929—1930).
CATOPITHECUS In 1992, an ancient and extinct animal known as Catopithecus was first reported to Dr. Elwyn Simons of Duke University. “This is the earliest animal known from the higher primates, the group that humans, apes, and monkey are in,” Simons has declared. According to an analysis of skull, jaw, and teeth fossils found in what now is an Egyptian desert, this oldest ancestor of apes, monkey, and humans was a squirrel-size animal that lived 36,000,000 years ago. Simons said he had no doubt about his find because of the distinctive features of the Catopithecus fossils: shovel-shaped front upper teeth; a skull with a flattened face; forward-looking eye sockets, and a fused forehead bone. In lower primates, like lemurs, this forehead bone is separated. If his interpretation is accepted, higher primates, like gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans all evolved from this tiny animal. Meanwhile, Dr. Bert Covert of the University of Colorado at Boulder notes that specimens found in China and Algeria were older but were “extremely fragmentary” and that their species classification was uncertain. “Simons’s material is between plausible and compelling” as the oldest higher primate fossil, Covert reported in a 1995 issue of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “The other material I would place between unlikely and plausible. We cannot resolve the issue right now.”
Catt, Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman (1859-1947) Catt, a suffragist and pacifist who favored many Unitarian causes, was founder of the League of Women Voters.
Cattaneo, Carlo (1801—1869) Cattaneo was an Italian philosophical writer. He founded Il Politecnico and after flinging himself into the revolutionary movement was compelled to flee to Switzerland. The Swiss appointed him professor at Lugano, where he became known as the “Auguste Comte of Italy.” After the defeat of the Austrians he was several times elected to Parliament, but, being a Republican as well as a rationalist, Cattaneo refused to enter the Camera. {RAT}
Cattell, Charles Cockbill (1830—1910)
Cattell was English leader of the Birmingham freethought and republicanism of the 1850s. He was an important figure in the national organization of freethought groups. In the 1870s he wrote What Is A Freethinker? and he wrote The Dark Side of Christianity (190—?). Originally a member of the Church of England, he left it and studied science and logic, then called himself a secularist. Secularism he regarded as atheistic but is not atheism. The pseudonym he used was Christopher Charles. {FUK; GS; PUT; RAT; RSR; VI}
Cattell, Christopher Charles (1830—1910) Cattell wrote in English secular journals and was author of Against Christianity and The Religion of This Life. He worked in the co-operative and labor movements and the Sunday League. {BDF}
Catterall, Eric (Died 1977) An Australian poet, Catterall wrote The Verse and Worse of a Militant Rationalist. Ron Marke in the work’s introduction, wrote, “Eric contracted polio as a child. He had a violent father who said it’s useless sending a cripple to school, so he was denied any education. The doctors declared he would never walk, but Eric knew better. He battled on his feet, crippled as he was, and at eleven years of age left home for the bush and nature. He acquired a horse, taught it to lay down so that he could get on it as he had no strength in his legs or feet. . . . He was a self-taught and learned man; most of his knowledge came from books and experience, and he was fairly conversant in a lot of subjects.” The following, quoted by Freethought History (#23, 1997), is from Catterall’s “Priests Will Rule Forever”:
We banned The Pill, I’ll tell you why, We profit when the babies die. From Christening, from funeral lie . . . We cash in when the parents cry. . . .
We say “OUR FLOCK” of sheep or geese! Let’s make it “SHEEP,” for these we fleece. Our two legged sheep . . . may they increase! For then our graft will never cease.
It helps us that governments aid our schools. Let us implant the Pope’s own rules. If government aid for our church cools They’ll lose the votes of all the fools.
So “TAX THE CHURCH” is branded “red” And schools from rational thought have fled. “Give us the child,” as we have said, “And we will rule until it’s dead.”
Catullus [Caius Valerius Catullus] (84?—54? B.C.E.) Catullus’s “love poems are among the most moving in all literature,” wrote Lamont. “[He] was a sort of ancient Omar Khayyam in his general attitude of irrepressible pleasure-seeking in this vale of delight.” “Suns may rise and set; we, when our short day has closed, must sleep on during one perpetual night,” Catullus wrote. Some of his poems were addressed to the faithless Lesbia, and other pieces include elegies, epigrams, and works that are obscenely derisive. “On the Death of Lesbia‘s Sparrow” is one of his better known works. {CE; CL; GL; TYD}
Cauffiel, Phyllis C. (20th Century) Cauffiel is associated with the Humanists of Northwest Ohio (AHA). (See entry for Ohio Atheists, Humanists.) {FD}
Cauldwell, D. O. (20th Century) Cauldwell, a freethinker, wrote A Modern Analysis of Biblical Sex Scandals (1947). {GS}
Caumont, Georges (c. 1845—1875)
Caumont, a French writer who suffered from consumption, wrote Judgment of a Dying Man Upon Life as well as a humorous and familiar work, Conversations of a Sick Person with the Divinity. He died at Madeira. {BDF}
CAUSALITY Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Causation in philosophy deals with the relationship between two events or states of affairs such that the first brings about the second. Flip a switch, and the light comes on. But all events may not have an antecedent cause, and naturalists in philosophy are interested in the quantum theory, which implies that some events occur at random. Rationalists tend to search for a priori principles governing what kind of thing may or cannot cause some other kind of thing. Hume argued that knowledge of causes must come from experience. John Stuart Mill was unable, however, to supply a satisfactory positive account of just what causal connection is. Bertrand Russell subsequently claimed that an advanced scientific understanding of the world needs no such notion. According to Flew, modern analyses regard the need for such a notion “as explicable through the subjunctive conditional ‘If e1 had not occurred, e2 would not have occurred,’ but little is clear about what makes such a remark true.” {Antony Flew, A Dictionary of Philosophy).
Caute, David (20th Century) Caute, a former literary editor of The New Statesman and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, is author of Fatima’s Scarf (1998). Although his is a controversial work critical of Muslim theology, much like Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and Shame! by Taslima Nasrin, Caute is not an Islamic apostate. {The Freethinker, May 1998}
Cavafy, C. P. (1863—1933) Cavafy was regarded by literary historian C. A. Trypanis as “the most original of all the modern Greek poets.” A recluse whose work was never commercial during his lifetime, he lived in the Greek community of Alexandria and worked as a petty bureaucrat. Adept at investing in the stock exchange, he eventually retired from the Ministry of Irrigation. His major themes were philosophy, history, and hedonism, and his work was critical of patriotism, heterosexuality, and Christianity. To E. M. Forster, Cavafy was poet at a “slight angle to the universe.” To Lawrence Durrell, he was the likely character of the presiding poet in The Alexandria Quartet. W. H. Auden and Marguerite Yourcenar wrote about him, some of his work was translated by Stephen Spender and James Merrill, he inspired etchings by David Hockney (1966) and photographs of males nudes by Duane Michals (1978). Peter Christensen of Marquette University described Cavafy as one who deliberately rejected Classical Greece in favor of a decadent Hellenism. Cavafy was also inspired by the last days of the Ptolemies, Cleopatra, and her lover Marc Antony. In Anekdota Peza (Unpublished Prose), he indicates a love for Alexander Mavroudis (Alex Madis), a minor poet and Parisian playwright. In “Bandaged Shoulder,” in which he takes the bloody rag of a wounded soldier to his lips, he writes homoerotically as he implies that the blood confirms his love for the injured man. His other work with sexual overtones, often describing one-night stands in seedy places and published two decades after his death, seldom describes a mutual love or a long-term relationship. A freethinker, Cavafy died of throat cancer. {GL}
Cavaignac, Éleonore Louis Godefroy (1801—1845) A French journalist who struggled against the reactionary monarchy, Cavaignac was one of the founders of the Société des Amis du Peuple and the Société des Droits de l’Homme. He was imprisoned and exiled, but in 1841 Cavaignac returned to France. J. S. Mill called him “the intensest of atheists.” {RAT}
Cavalcante, Guido (1230—1300)
A noble Italian poet and philosopher, Cavalcante was a friend of Dante and a leader of the Ghibbelin party. Bayle wrote that “it is said his speculation has as their aims to prove there is no God. Dante places his father in the hell of Epicureans, who denied the immortality of the soul.” {BDF}
Cavallotti, Felice Carlo Emanuel (1842—1873) Cavallotti was an Italian poet and journalist, a pronounced atheist. He was elected a member of the Italian parliament in 1873. {BDF; RAT}
Cave, Henry (17th Century) Cave, an atheist, wrote The Darkness of Atheisme Expelled by the Light of Nature (1683). {GS}
Cave, Nick (20th Century) A recording artist, Cave told a Boston Globe reporter (September 1998) that he “is an atheist but loves the Bible.” Cave is a singer for such punk bands as Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds. {CA}
Cavendish, Henry (1731—1810) Cavendish, one of the great British pioneers of the science of chemistry, was a recluse and most of his writings were published posthumously. His chief researches were on heat, in which he determined the specific heats for a number of substances, although his findings were not recognized until later. He wrote on the composition of air; on the nature and properties of a gas that he isolated and described as “inflammable air,” now known as hydrogen; and on the composition of water, which he demonstrated to consist of oxygen and “inflammable air.” He determined that the density of the earth led him to state it as 5.48 times that of water. His biographer, G. Wilson, quotes his attitude on religion from a contemporary scientist: “As to Cavendish’s religion, he was nothing at all.” He never went to church. Cambridge University is the site of the Cavendish Physical Laboratory, named in his honor. {CE; JM; RAT; RE}
Cavett, Dick (1936- ) A Nebraska-born entertainer, television comedy writer, club performer, and television show host, Cavett is widely known by TV viewers. He wrote (with Christopher Porterfield) Cavett (1974) and Eye on Cavett (1983). On one of his programs, he mentioned that he finds it impossible to maintain any religious faith:
This is my religious problem: it would be wonderful to believe in the most fundamental way. It would make life easier, it would explain everything, it would give meaning where none is apparent, it would make tragedies bearable. If I went to a revival meeting, I have no doubt I could be one of the first to go down on my knees. It seems as if the only religion worth having is the simplest possible religion. But something about the fact that all it takes to make it so is deciding it is so puts me off. Knowing it could instantly make me much happier makes it somehow unworthy of having.
Of his grandfather, a fundamentalist Baptist minister, Cavett is quoted in Cavett, “I hope there is a God for Grandpa Richards’s sake, but don’t much care if there is one for mine.” {CA}
Cavett, Dick (19 Nov 1936 - ) A Nebraska-born entertainer, television comedy writer, club performer, and television show host, Cavett is widely known by TV viewers. He wrote (with Christopher Porterfield) Cavett (1974) and Eye on Cavett (1983). On one of his programs, he mentioned that he finds it impossible to maintain any religious faith:
This is my religious problem: it would be wonderful to believe in the most fundamental way. It would make life easier, it would explain everything, it would give meaning where none is apparent, it would make tragedies bearable. If I went to a revival meeting, I have no doubt I could be one of the first to go down on my knees. It seems as if the only religion worth having is the simplest possible religion. But something about the fact that all it takes to make it so is deciding it is so puts me off. Knowing it could instantly make me much happier makes it somehow unworthy of having.
Of his grandfather, a fundamentalist Baptist minister, Cavett is quoted in Cavett, “I hope there is a God for Grandpa Richards’s sake, but don’t much care if there is one for mine.” {CA}
Cavia, Mariano de (1855—1920)
Cavio was a Spanish journalist and critic. He edited the Liberal of Madrid. {BDF}
Cavour, Camillo di (1810—1861) With Mazzini and Garibaldi, Cavour wrote The Other Creators of the Kingdom of Italy. Cavour was a freethinker. {TRI}
Cayce, Edgar (1877—1945)
Cayce, an American folk healer, was a believer in reincarnation and an inspiration for contemporary New Age spiritualists. His views were found ludicrous by Paul Edwards in Reincarnation (1996).
Cayla, Jean Mamert (1812—1877) A French man of letters, Cayla edited the Emancipator of Toulouse, a city about which he wrote a history. Among his numerous anti-clerical brochures were The Clerical Conspiracy (1861); The Devil, His Grandeur and Decay (1864); Hell Demolished (1865); and The History of the Mass (1874). {BDF; RAT}
Cazeau, Charles J. (20th Century) Cazeau, a geologist and pre-evolution spokesperson, writes for Free Inquiry. He is author of Physical Geology (1976) and Science Trivia (1986). {Free Inquiry, Summer 1982}
Cazelles, Émile Honoré (Born 1831) Cazelles, the French translator of Bentham’s Influence of Natural Religion (1875) also translated Mill’s Subjection of Women and his Autobiography and Essays on Religion. {BDF; RAT}
Cecco Stabili d’Ascoli (1269?–1327) Cecco is an example of one of the most daring heretics of the later Middle Ages. His given name was Francesco degli Stabili. A professor of philosophy and astrology at Bologna, he knew Dante and was one of his detractors. In fact, he has been described as “representing natural science, against the Christian science of Dante.” Combining a strong anti-Christian feeling with the universal belief in astrology, Cecco had declared that Jesus lived come un poltrone (like a sluggard) with his disciples, and died on the cross, under the compulsion of his star. [Albertus Magnus and Pierre d’Ailli, Cardinal and Bishop of Cambrai, also cast the horoscope of Jesus.] Because of such heresy, including his having accused Dante of heresy, Cecco in 1327 was burned at the stake in Florence. {BDF; CE; JM; JMR; JMRH; RE}
Cée, Jean-Paul (Born 1839) Cée, the founder and president of the Comité d’ Études Morales (Committee on Moral Laws), was an officer in the French navy. He was in Rome during the pontificate of Pius IX, observed the splendor of Roman Catholic rites, and while in Dahomey witnessed human sacrifices. In Paris at the 1889 Universal Freethought Congress, he discussed his travels and recommended that freethinkers found a Committee on Moral Laws, which idea was accepted. Cée’s position on socialism was nearer to the English concept of nationalism, not to the socialism of Marx, Liebknecht, or Bebel. {PUT}
CELEBRITY • A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know. —H. L. Mencken
CELEBRITY ATHEIST LIST Jim Lippard is webmaster for the “Celebrity Atheist List,” one which keeps track of public statements by individuals that they are non-believers. On the Web: <www.primenet.com/~lippard/atheist.celebs/>.
CELIBACY The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) states that “All the ordained ministers of the Latin Church, with the exception of permanent deacons, are normally chosen from among men of faith who live a celibate life and who intend to remain celibate ‘for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.’ Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to ‘the affairs of the Lord,’ they give themselves entirely to God and to men. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church’s minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God.” (See entry for Peter.)
Abstinence from sexual intercourse is, to freethinkers, the strangest of all aberrations. It is not practiced in any other part of the animal kingdom. (See entries for Chastity and Andrew Greeley.)
Celko, Jaroslav (20th Century) Celko founded the Prometheus Society in Slovakia. Estimating in 1995 that 72% of adults declare themselves to have a religious belief, while only 18% say they are non-religious, Celko comments that “the efforts of religious organizations to ground all social activities in religion are finding substantial support not only with politicians, but also with certain and state officials.” Atheism, which is connected with communism, is seen as the source of amorality, crime, and pornography. As a result, Celko believes that the development of humanism in Slovakia is uphill work. He signed Humanist Manifesto 2000. {International Humanist News, June 1995}
Cellarius, Martin (16th Century) In 1527, Cellarius published On the Works of God. The earliest anti-Trinitarian book, it preceded by four years Michael Servetus’s On the Errors of the Trinity. {BDF}
Celsus, Aurelius (c. 125—175) Celsus was a pagan philosopher whose True Discourse was lost but which showed him to have been an aggressive antagonist of Christianity. Origen’s Contra Celsus (Against Celsus), which refers to the lost book, is a rebuttal of the philosopher’s outlook and attacks Celsus’s objections to the Christian gospels. Why did Jesus not know that Judas Iscariot would betray him, Celsus argued. Had not the author of Mark said that Jesus had foreknowledge but that the prophecy had to be fulfilled? Had not the author of John had Jesus arrange the betrayal by giving the piece of bread to Judas? As quoted by Origen, Celsus gave a picture of a prophet-ridden Palestine, where many self-proclaimed prophets were claiming to be the god or the son of god or a divine spirit. Jesus, according to Celsus, was but one of these wandering healers and professed miracle workers. “Before accepting any belief one ought first to follow reason as a guide,” Celsus wrote, “for credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.” Fortunately, Origen, one of the most learned of the Fathers, considered Celsus the most formidable opponent of the Church, for had he not written about Celsus we would not know about him today inasmuch as the Church decreed that all his works had to be destroyed. In 1987, R. Joseph Hoffmann translated and published Celsus’s On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians. {BDF; EH; RE}
CEMETERY A cemetery is a graveyard, a place set aside to bury the dead. The original Greek koimeterion, referred to a “dormitory” or “sleeping place,” however. Early Christian writers referred to the Roman catacombs and later to consecrated churchyards as cemeteries. Shakespeare, among others, complained that when some cemeteries could hold no more bodies, new bodies were buried in the same plots. Therefore,
Good friend, For Jesu’s sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones; Cursed be he that moves my bones.
Many contemporary secularists, finding that cemeteries have become commercialized along with an entire funeral industry, often avoid cemeteries altogether. They ask that their cremains be scattered rather than buried. By so doing, they avoid ending up in a “garden of honor,” a “garden of memories,” a “memorial park mausoleum,” or a “burial cloister.” No Stiffyville, no last home, no skeleton park, no bone orchard, no God’s acre for them. (See entries for Jessica Mitford and for Death, A Freethinker’s.)
CENSORSHIP
• Run, don’t walk, to the first library you can find and read what they’re trying to keep out of your eyes. Read what they’re trying to keep out of your brains. Because that’s exactly what you need to know. —Stephen King, novelist whose Salem’s Lot, Carrie, and Cujo have been censored in schoolsand libraries despite his being a theist. (See entry for Books, Censorship Of.)
• “What Every Girl Should Know”—Nothing, by order of the U.S. Post Office. — In place of Margaret Sanger’s newspaper column in The Call, the newspaper printed this notice.
CENSUS OF NON-THEISTS AND NON-BELIEVERS A study in the 1990s showed that an estimated 66% of the world’s population is non-Christian and 34% is Christian. (See entry for Hell.)
CENTAURS The centaurs in Greek mythology were creatures half man and half horse. They had been fathered by Ixion (although some stories credit his son, Centaurus). These centaurs were uncouth and savage, except for Chiron, who became friends and a teacher of men. Their half-brothers, the Lapiths, engaged them in a battle which Ovid described, were depicted on the Parthenon, and sculpted by Michelangelo. (See entry for Tartarus.) {CE}
CENTER FOR INQUIRY—Amherst, New York In 1995, a 20,000 square foot educational and administrative center for the Council for Secular Humanism, Free Inquiry, and Skeptical Inquirer, was dedicated in Amherst, New York. Entertainer Steve Allen, Nobel Laureate Herbert Hauptman, and Paul Kurtz were among the several hundred dignitaries who attended. Adjacent to Buffalo’s Amherst campus, the building houses all of the Council for Secular Humanism’s editorial, administrative, and warehouse operations. Its library complex, which has a 50,000-volume capacity, houses the largest freethought collection in the world.
CENTER FOR INQUIRY—Kansas City The Center for Inquiry Midwest is at 6301 Rockhill Road (Suite #412), Kansas City, Missouri 64131. Prof. Verle Muhrer is Executive Director; Richard Tolbert is special projects director; Steve Carr is in charge of operations; Henry Wahwussuck is prison outreach coordinator.
CENTER FOR INQUIRY—Los Angeles During 1996 donors gave or pledged almost $1.5 million to two capital fund drives benefiting construction of the Center for Inquiry—West, which will be built in the Los Angeles, California, area. Like the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York, it will house offices of the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).
CENTER FOR INQUIRY—Moscow The Center for Inquiry at Moscow State University was inaugurated in 1997 and was cosponsored by the newly formed Russian Humanist Society and the International Academy of Humanism. An estimated fifty scientists and philosophers spoke. Professor Valerii Kuvakin is president of the Society. In attendance from the United States were Jan Eisler of the St. Petersburg, Florida, Humanist Society, Timothy J. Madigan of Free Inquiry, and Dr. Paul Kurtz. {Free Inquiry, Winter 1997-1998}
CENTER FOR INQUIRY—Oxford: See Centre for Critical Enquiry.
CENTER FOR INQUIRY INSTITUTE The Center for Inquiry Institute, Box 664, Amherst, New York 14226, offers courses in humanism and skepticism. It also sponsors an annual summer session and periodic workshops. The first Dean of the Council for Secular Humanism group was Vern Bullough. The current dean is Reid Johnson. Executive Director is Theodore Manekin. Special projects Director is Thomas Flynn. Chief Financial Officer is Barry Karr. Publications Coordinator is Lewis Vaughn. The board of directors includes Vern Bullough, Thomas Casten, Kendrick Frazier, David Hehehan, Lawrence Jones, Joseph Levee, and Robert Worsfold.
CENTER FOR RATIONAL THOUGHT The Center for Rational Thought is found on the Web: <http://www.teleport.com/~preacher>.
CENTER FOR THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLAIMS OF THE PARANORMAL (CSICOP) Barry Karr is Executive Director of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), POBox 703, Amherst, New York 14226. E-mail: <Skeptinq@aol.com>. Web: <www.csicop.org>. CSICOP’s executive council includes the following: James Alcock, Barry Beyerstein, Thomas Casten, Kendrick Frazier, Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, Philip Klass, Joe Nickell, Lee Nisbet, Amardeo Sarma, and Eugenie C. Scott. Associate members are Lawrence D. Jones and Mario Mendez-Acosta.
CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE The Earth used to be the theologian’s center of the universe. Later, the Sun. Later our Galaxy. Hubble and other astronomers and cosmologists have shown that no center exists for the galaxies.
CENTRAL AMERICAN HUMANISTS In 1989, the Costa Ricans founded their Asociación Ético Humanista Costarricense (ASEHUCO), an association of ethical humanists. In 1994, with the financial assistance of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) then in Utrecht, an association for all Spanish-speaking ethical humanists in the Americas was founded: Asociación Iberoamericana Ético Humanista (ASIBEHU). Instrumental in the group’s being founded were Rob Tielman in the Netherlands, Dr. Paul Kurtz of the Council for Secular Humanism, and Warren Allen Smith. Its first president was Alexander Cox Alvarado of Costa Rica. On the Web: <http://idt.net/~wasm/asibehu>.
CENTRAL LONDON HUMANISTS For information, telephone Cherie Holt on 0171 916 3015 or Hilary Leighter on 01895 632096.
CENTRE D’ACTION LAIQUE Centre d’Action Laique (IHEU), is a Belgian French-speaking humanist group at CP 236, Campus de la Plaine U.L.B., Boulevard du Triomphe, 1050 Brussels, Belgium Cp236, Campus de la Plaine. In 1997 its five-story headquarters building was inaugurated. (See entry for Belgian Humanists.)
CENTRE FOR CRITICAL STUDIES IN RELIGION, ETHICS, AND SOCIETY In 1995 at a Methodist school, Westminster College, Oxford, England, the Centre for Critical Studies in Religion, Ethics, and Society was inaugurated. Present among others were Jim Herrick, Paul Kurtz, and Nicolas Walter. Dr. Kurtz, during the dialogue between humanism and religion, commented, “Humanism, I submit, because of its emphasis on the dignity, value, and happiness of each individual, its reliance on critical thinking and scientific technology to solve human problems, and its desire to build a genuine democratic world community, is the most appropriate philosophy for the age. . . . However, it is clear that if humanism is to gain ground in the future, it will need to forge dramatic new ideals that can heighten the imagination and inspire commitment and devotion to them. But the question remains: Can it do so without betraying its skeptical methodology?” The Centre was sponsored by the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism. R. J. Hoffmann, its director at Westminster College, Oxford University, has written that the centre is
. . . for the study of the humanist tradition, which is here defined very broadly to include both secular/rationalistic shades of humanism as well as religious/liberal religion shades. I am myself a Unitarian (perceived by most of my colleagues on the “secular” side, I fear as being therefore a “soft” humanist), but I am also a senior editor of the journal Free Inquiry and an advocate of dialogue between the denominations of the movement. I have little defence for occupying this middle ground (Antony Flew once accused me of occupying a muddled ground) except that I feel comfortable doing so and because I came to humanism through Unitarianism and still need the consolation of its patron saints.
{WAS, 24 October 1996}
CENTRO COSCIENZA Centro Coscienza, an Italian humanist group, is at Corso Di Porta Nuova, 16-20121, Milan, Italy. {FD}
CENTRO POSITIVISTA DO PARANA Centro Positivista do Parana is at Rua Comendador Araujo 531, 80420-000 Curitiba, Parana, Brazil. It is an associate member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union.
CEREMONIES Barthez, a French physician and friend of D’Alembert, was once shown by the Archbishop of Sens a number of works relating to the rites of his see. Barthez is said wittily to have observed, “These are the Sens ceremonies, but can you show me the sens [sense] of ceremonies?” (See entry for Paul Barthez.)
Ceresole, Pierre (1879—1945) Ceresole was the Swiss founder of Service Civil International. He was a pacifist, a conscientious objector, and the assistant secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. {TRI}
Cerniglia, Mimi (20th Century) Cerniglia, a board member in several elective positions of the American Association of University Women in North Carolina, is treasurer and vice-president of Freethinkers, Inc.
CERTAINTY • Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. —Friedrich Nietzsche
• Doubt is not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one. —Voltaire
Cerutti, Joseph Antoine Joachim (1738—1792) Cerutti was an Italian writer who joined the Jesuit Society and taught with distinction at Jesuit colleges. He then embraced the deistic opinions of philosophers he read. His Bréviaire Philosophique (to which he put the name of Frederic the Great) and his Les jardins de Betz (1792) reveal his skepticism. Cerutti accepted the Revolution, delivered a funeral oration in memory of Mirabeau, and was elected to the Legislative Assembly. {RAT}
Cervantes, Saavedra Miguel de (1547—1619) Cervantes is a major Spanish novelist, dramatist, and poet. In his youth and in the service of a cardinal, he studied philosophy and literature in Italy. His left arm was permanently crippled in the naval battle of Lepanto (1571), and when captured by Barbary pirates in 1575 he was sold as a slave, eventually becoming the property of the viceroy of Algiers. Américo Castro, in El Pensamiento de Cervantes, avers that Don Quixote de la Mancha (Part 1, 1605; Part 2, 1615) is more than just a parody of chivalry, that it is a profound study of the cultural times and contains elements of the author’s unbelief. Quixote [Quijote], the gentle old man who goes crazy over the ideals of chivalry, is the Spanish Everyman. He is the typical Spaniard who recognizes that the glory of Spain is in the past and, in the end, takes the expedient route of confessing his sins and leading the illusional life of being a good Catholic. The work also is his most anticlerical. In Cervantes’s time, the Inquisitors had their hands full now that the Protestant Reformation had arrived. Erasmistas, followers of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, were considered heretics, Lutherans, or some kind of crypto-Protestants, and Cervantes was aware of their influence. Actually, according to John Devlin, Cervantes was most unorthodox:
Because of the Inquisition, writers had to disguise their message; basically Cervantes was heterodox. The author is constantly tampering with reality and posing the question as to what reality is. Thus, Cervantes is supposedly attacking the ultimate foundations of belief. For example, the knight fell upon the poor traveling barber and snatched his basin from his head. The Don was convinced that the basin was Mambrino’s helmet. Quijote’s companions discussed the matter at the inn and split the difference: from one point of view it was obviously a barber’s basin; from another it was Mambrino’s helmet.
The scholastic “principle of contradiction” states:
What is, is. What is not, is not. What is, is not what is not.
Once this principle is abandoned, the floodgates for multiple skepticism are open. The foundations of society are undermined and the ordered Thomistic logic of the Catholic church and its teachings are exposed to grave doubt.
Cervantes, in Novelas ejemplares (1613), included twelve original tales of piracy, gypsies, and human passions, drawn from his own experience, and his work in general had a major influence upon development in Europe of the novel. Despite the anticlericalism in parts of his writings, his work never made the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. {CE; EU, John Devlin; JMRH}
Cervone, Ed (1945- ) Cervone, an artist whose representational works are highly erotic, is a non-believer. He never knew his father, a German naval officer who commanded a submarine sunk by the Allies during World War II. His Latvian mother, who had fled to Germany to escape the Russian army, married an American soldier, and Cervone was raised in the United States, renamed by his stepfather. Two books containing his erotic drawings are Ed Cervone (Janssen Verlag, Berlin, 1995) and Ed Cervone: Phantasies of Gay Sex (Janssen Verlag, Berlin, 1996).
Cesalpino, Andrea (1519—1603) An Italian botanist and physiologist, Cesalpino (also called Andreas Caesalpinus) was physician to Pope Clement VIII. Linnaeus considered him the first true systematist and admitted his obligations to his Cesalpino’s Plantis (1583). In Demonum Investigatio, Cesalpino contended that “possession” by devils is amenable to medical treatment. His Quaestinum Peripateticarum (5 books, 1588) was condemned as teaching a pantheistic doctrine similar to that of Spinoza, and Bishop Parker denounced him. Cesalpino founded the botanical garden at the University of Pisa. {BDF; CE}
Cesareo, Giovanni Alfredo (Born 1861) An Italian poet and critic, Cesareo taught Italian literature at the University of Palermo. His rationalism is seen in his sympathetic article on Renan in the Nuovo Antologia (1892). {RAT}
Cevallos Estarellas, Pablo (20th Century) Cevallos, who teaches at the Catholic University of Santiago in Guayaquil, Ecuador, is a secular humanist with a special interest in logic and critical thinking. He is active with the Asociación Iberoamericana Ético Humanista, a group of Spanish-speaking ethical humanists in Central and South America. In 1996 he spoke about humanism in Latin America at the Humanist World Congress held in Mexico City. In 1997, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study at Montclair State University in New Jersey. E-mail: <cevallop@ucsg.edu.ec>.
Chadbourn, Catalina (20th Century) In 1995, Chadbourn became President of the University of Minnesota Atheists and Humanists (UMAH).
Chadwick, John White (1840—1904) Minister for forty years of the Second Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, New York, Chadwick was a prominent spokesman for the radical wing of late 19th-century American Unitarianism. He championed the theories of evolution, arguing that Darwin helped confirm a view of nature and humanity as part of an evolving cosmos unified by a God who was revealed in that evolutionary process. His biographies of Theodore Parker (1900) and William Ellery Channing (1903) were highly praised, and his anti-supernaturalism was basic to his philosophic outlook. {U&U}
Chaeremon (1st Century C.E.) An Alexandrian rationalist and one of Nero’s tutors, Chaeremon explained the Egyptian religion as a mere allegorizing of the physical order of the universe. He regarded comets, however, as divine portents. {JMR; JMRH}
Chaho, J. Augustin (1811—1858) A Basque man of letters, Chaho wrote Philosophy of Comparative Religion and a Basque dictionary. At Bayonne, he edited the Ariel, which in 1852 was suppressed and he was exiled. {BDF}
Chainey, George (19th Century) Chainey edited the semi-monthly Boston publication, Infidel Pulpit, in 1881. He wrote The Infidel Pulpit (c. 1880) and Relics of Barbarism (1881). {GS}
Chait, Leonardo (20th Century) Dr. Chait, who signed Humanist Manifesto 2000, and Virginia Li, his wife, formed a trust to help fund the Center for Inquiry–West in the Los Angeles area. They were among the first of the donors for the West Coast center for secular humanism.
Chakraberty, Chandra (20th Century) Chakraberty, a rationalist in India, wrote The Outline of Rationalism (1938). {GS}
Challemel-Lacour, Paul Armand (1827—1896) A French statesman, Challemel-Lacour taught French literature at Zurich, then returned to France in 1859 and joined the anti-clerical politicians, especially Gambetta. From 1880 to 1882 he was French Ambassador at London, where he was attacked by the Irish Catholics. He became President of the Senate in 1893. His Pensées d’un Pessimiste is rationalistic. {RAT}
Chaloner, Thomas (1595—1661)
A member of Parliament, Chaloner was a witness against Archbishop Laud and was one of the King Charles Judges. Wood has said that Chaloner “was as far from being a Puritan as the east is from the west” and that he “was of the natural religion.” His True and Exact Relation of the Finding of Moses His Tomb (1657) was a satire directed against the Presbyterians. Upon the Restoration, Chaloner fled to the Low Countries and died in Zeeland. {BDF; RAT}
Chamberlain, Arthur Neville [Prime Minister] (1869—1940) Chamberlain, the “man with the umbrella,” was a British statesman who stated that Hitler, a rational person like himself, would not go to war, that he could be trusted despite his record. This resulted in the “appeasement” that culminated in the Munich Pact—had Chamberlain admitted that Hitler could be stopped by force, Chamberlain would have had to admit that his own policies had been wrong, thereby endangering his own political reputation. He once described Spanish dictator Franco as “a gallant Christian gentleman.” After the British debacle in Norway in 1940, Chamberlain was forced to resign as prime minister, leading non-appeasers to suggest he be rapped over the head with his often-photographed umbrella. However, in 1993, a political biography of Winston Churchill has suggested that Britain should not have gone to war against Adolf Hitler. John Charmley in Churchill: The End of Glory suggests that Chamberlain and his supporters knew Britain lacked the power to defeat Hitler, that it was more expedient to be prudent realists and allow Germany to assume a dominant role in Europe, even though Hitler’s methods were disapproved as being coarse. Otherwise, Britain would either lose to Germany or become a slave to American power while the Soviet Union replaced Germany as the dominant power in that area. But when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Chamberlain was forced, Gaddis Smith of Yale has said in reviewing the Charmley thesis, “to go to war rather than accept a fait accompli, as it had over Czechoslovakia at and after Munich in 1938-1939.” A biography by David Dilks in 1984 states that although Chamberlain was grounded in the austere tradition of Unitarianism, “He felt no close affinity with many established institutions. He drew no daily comfort or hope of salvation from religious faith. He would not attend church.” {CE; EG; TRI; U; UU}
Chamberlain, Basil Hall (1850—1918) Chamberlain, son of Vice-Admiral Chamberlain and brother of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, settled in Japan and became on authority who taught Japanese philology at the Tokyo Imperial University. He wrote a dictionary or cyclopedia entitled Things Japanese (1902) and The Invention of a New Religion (1912). Chamberlain, an agnostic, was an honorary associate of the British Rationalist Press Association. {GS; RAT; RE}
Chamberlain, Daniel Henry [Governor] (1835—1907) Chamberlain was a Governor of South Carolina. He took part in the Civil War, then became Attorney General (1865—1872) and Governor (1874—1877). All assumed he was an orthodox believer in religion. But upon his death, the North American Review published a document stating Chamberlain had been a “freethinker” all along, that he rejected “the idea of a presiding or controlling Deity,” and that he was skeptical about a future life. {JM; RAT}
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart (1855—1927) Chamberlain, a writer who was an enthusiastic Wagnerian and a student of science and philosophy, was a rationalist with some leaning to Hindu mysticism. He wrote Immanuel Kant (1921). Purportedly, however, his mysticism may have influenced Adolf Hitler. {RAT}
Chamberlain, Joseph (1836—1914)
Chamberlain, a Unitarian, headed the National Liberation Federation in England. “I have always had a grudge against religion for absorbing the passion in men’s nature,” he once stated. {TRI}
Chambers, Betty (20th Century) Chambers was a four-term President of the American Humanist Association, serving from 1973 to 1979. She is assistant to the President of the American Humanist Association, is on the editorial board of The Humanist, is editor of Free Mind, and is active in the Puget Sound Humanist organization in Washington. Chambers signed Humanist Manifesto II. (See entry for Washington Atheists, Humanists.) {FD; HNS2}
Chambers, Ephraim (c. 1680—1740) Chambers originated the Cyclopaedia of Arts and Sciences, the first edition of which procured him admission to the Royal Society. A French translation gave rise to Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. He also edited the Literary Magazine, making known his infidel opinions. The encyclopedia was placed on the Roman Index, but Chambers was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. {BDF; RAT; RE}
Chambers, Jerry (20th Century) Chambers was on the board of directors of the American Humanist Association in the 1950s.
Chambers, Robert (1802—1871) A deist, Chambers rejected both the divine creation and religious fundamentalism’s miracles. He did, however, believe in a First Cause. His Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) is said by Birx to be the most important work on organic evolution to appear between Lamarck and Charles Darwin. However, it contained errors of fact and interpretation, and the year Chambers died Darwin published his own more scientifically oriented Descent of Man.00 McCabe labels him a non-Christian theist. {CE; EU, H. James Birx; JMR; RAT; RE}
Chamfort, Sébastian Roch Nicolas de (1740—1794) A French writer known for his maxims and epigrams, Chamfort was popular at court because of his acute observations on literature, morals, and politics, this despite his republican beliefs. He was admired by Jean Rostand. Albert Camus called him a “true classic” and “a moralist as profound as Mme. de Lafayette or Benjamin Constant, and he takes his place, in spite of or because of his impassioned blindness, among the great creators of a certain art in which the truth of life is at no point sacrificed to the artifices of language.” W. S. Merwin, reviewing Claude Arnaud’s biography, Chamfort (1992), states that the philosopher E. M. Cioran spoke of Chamfort with respect and that Cyril Connolly “adopted Chamfort as a kind of private cult figure. . . . [Connolly] got away with it partly because his readers (as he must have assumed) knew little about Chamfort.” During the French Revolution, with its Reign of Terror, Chamfort the freethinker was denounced. Eventually, he committed suicide. {CE; JMR; JMRH}
Chamisso, Adelbert von (1781—1838) A French poet and naturalist, Chamisso in 1815 sailed round the world in the Rurik, and on his return he became custodian of the Berlin Botanical Institute. Many of his poems are bitterly anti-clerical, and he was both a skeptic and a rationalist. {RAT}
Champion, Henry Hyde (1859—1928) “Harry” Champion was a socialist propagandist who arrived in Australia from India in 1890, then returned to England in 1891. He was a friend of Annie Besant’s daughter, Mabel Besant-Scott. In Australia in 1898 he married Elsie Belle, sister of woman emancipist and suffrage worker, Vida Goldstein. The Goldsteins converted to Christian Science, which presented a medical problem for Champion, said to have had a venereal disease. Champion’s days for activism or campaigning for the secular cause diminished after his marriage. From 1906 to 1909, he was President of the Victorian Socialist Party. {SWW}
Champion, Rafe Alfred (1945— ) Champion, who grew up on a dairy farm in Tasmania, is an Australian humanist, liberal agnostic, biologist, technical editor, and writer. An admirer of the humanist philosophy of Karl Popper, Champion joined the New South Wales Humanists, establishing a working group on birth control and family planning. He is a joint author of Discrimination and Intellectual Handicap.
Champollion, Jean François (1790—1832) Champollion was a French Eyptologist who read Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit as well as ancient Egyptian. He is credited with learning the secret of the hieroglyphic inscriptions (1822). Although the Church still claims him, his biographer, Hartleben, reproduced a discussion of religion which Champollion wrote and concludes that he had quit the church because of his skepticism. {JM; RAT; RE}
Chan, Pearl (20th Century) Chan, a Harvard University member of the Campus Freethought Alliance, was a 1998 signer of the Bill of Rights for Unbelievers.
Chance, Janet (1885—1953) Chance, a freethinker, was head in England of the Abortion Law Reform Association. {TRI}
Chancellor, John (1927—1996) An American reporter, news anchor, and commentator for NBC, Chancellor was “the wise man with ready wit,” Jack Thomas wrote in the Boston Globe. In an interview the year before Chancellor died of cancer, Thomas asked if he feared death and was told, “not as much as I would have thought.” Thomas then asked what he thought happens after death, to which Chancellor replied, “I’ve been an agnostic for as long as I can remember . . . so I don’t know where we go. But if it turns out that the lights are just turned off and nothing happens, well, that’s OK.” {E}
Chand, Gopi (20th Century) Chand was an eminent Telugu litterateur. Although he was a radical humanist much of his life, he converted to mysticism and became a disciple of Sri Aurobindo in his last days.
Chandler, David Ross (1938— ) Chandler is book review editor of Religious Humanism, the quarterly of the Fellowship of Religious Humanists. He is author of Toward Universal Religion (1996).
Chandler, John (20th Century) Chandler, who teaches philosophy at the University of Adelaide, is active in the Humanist Society of South Australia.
Chandler, Michael (20th Century) Chandler, a high school principal, received the 1997 Freethinker of the Year Award by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. A native of Alabama and a graduate of that state’s university, he successfully challenged a 1993 law promoting prayer in public schools. Alabama’s governor, however, counseled schools not to comply but did not appeal the ruling. “Extremists,” Chandler has said, “use this majority rule argument—which is mob rule—to force religion down your throat. My civil rights are not up for majority vote.” {Freethought Today, March 1998}
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1910—1995) Chandrasekhar was elected in 1968 as an honorary associate by the Rationalist Press Association. A theoretical astrophysicist, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Among his books are An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure (1939) and Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium (1969). From 1952 to 1971, he was managing editor of The Astrophysical Journal. In 1994 Chandrasekhar was elected to the Royal Society and in 1983 was awarded the Nobel Prize. In a December 1995 obituary in New Humanist, Hermann Bondi noted that Chandrasekhar’s uncle, Sir C. V. Raman, was also a Nobel Laureate. Bondi included details about a quarrel with Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, in which Chandrasekhar showed that the ultimate fate of a star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel; it contracts and can reach equilibrium in a highly condensed state of future density only if its mass is less than the “Chandrasekhar limit”; more massive stars must go on contracting without limit, ending up as a “Black Hole.” Eddington, however, argued against this, and Bondi speculates, “My suspicion is that he, a devout Quaker who firmly believed in an orderly universe, was unwilling to accept that something as singular (and to him obnoxious) as a Black Hole could form naturally. This is another instance where deep faith can make an otherwise friendly and reasonable person behave nastily and irrationally.”
Changeux, Jean Pierre (1936— ) A professor at Collège de France and Institut Pasteur, Changeux is a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism. He is author of L’Homme neuronal (1983) and co-editor (with M. Konishi) of The Neural and Molecular Basis of Learning: Report of the Dahlem Workshop on the Neural and Molecular Bases of Learning (1987). In 1994, he wrote Raison et plaisir. He signed Humanist Manifesto 2000. With Alain Connes, a distinguished mathematician, Changeux wrote Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics (1995). The conversation by Changeux, the celebrated neuroscientist and molecular biologist, with Connes pointed up differences of opinion on basic matters. Connes chides Changeux for not grasping some points about quantum physics, for example. But Changeux relates and questions to his vision of humans as being complex biological systems, the result of millions of years of evolutionary changes. He thinks of mathematics as a human construction, the result of having been shaped by the intricacies of neural wiring and cultural transmission. Changeux, according to Philip Kitcher, the Presidential Professor of Philosophy at the University of California in San Diego, includes an overview of the fundamentals of neuroscience which “is a model of lucidity.”
Channing, William Ellery (1780—1842) A prominent writer and a major figure in liberal religion, Channing was instrumental in identifying the goals of contemporary Unitarianism. Of Channing, Lamont has written, “While the world-view of the Unitarians was certainly non-Humanist, they were on the whole liberals in theology and also backed most of the important social reforms of the nineteenth century. They gave emphasis, too, to the right of individual religious freedom and welcomed into the Unitarian fellowship even those who questioned the existence of a personal God.” It is generally held that Channing is the single most important figure in the history of American Unitarianism. {CE; CL; ER; FUS; U; U&U; UU}
Channing, William Henry (1810—1884) The nephew of William Ellery Channing, William Henry Channing became a Unitarian minister and also collaborated with James Freeman Clarke and others on the Transcendentalist and Unitarian periodical, Western Messenger. Although he influenced the Brook Farm commune to embrace Charles Fourier’s ideas, the commune collapsed after the fire of 1846. His emphasis on Unitarianism focused on the church’s need to work for the progress of the human race as a whole, not simply emphasize the individual. {CE; U; U&U}
Chantrey, Francis Leggatt [Sir] (1781—1841) An eminent British sculptor, Chantrey abandoned “all Christian and religious feelings,” his biographer Holland states. Chantrey’s large fortune was left to the Royal Academy to found the trust that is still known as the Chantrey Bequest. {JM; RAT; RE}
CHAOS In Greek mythology, Chaos was the unfathomable space out of which all—including Gaea, the mother of all things—arose. Another version is that Eurynome rose out of Chaos, creating all things. The concept of chaos has come to refer to the confusion of matter, out of which the universe grew. In mathematics, physics, and other fields, according to James Gleick’s Chaos: Making A New Science (1987), chaos has taken on a contemporary significance, as illustrated in the work of the physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum, the Polish-born mathematician and inventor of fractals Benoit Mandelbrot, and the mathematician James Yorke. In current usage, between order and chaos lies complexity. Order, or stability, is a static, repeating state. {CE}
Chapin, Augusta Jane (1836—1905) One of the first Universalist women to be ordained, Chapin was active in the temperance movement and a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Women. She was a leading organizer of the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions and the first woman in America to be awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. {U; U&U}
Chapin, Edwin Hubbell (1814—1880) Minister of the Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity in New York City, Chapin was said to be one of the greatest orators of his day. Religion, he preached in a pragmatic way, is “not merely a theory of existence” but a “working-power.” {U; U&U}
Chapin, Lydia Maria (Born 1802) A Unitarian, Chapin was a 19th century author. {U}
Chapin, Schyler Garrison (1923— ) Chapin has been director of the Masterworks Columbia Records Division of CBS (1959—1962), vice president of programming of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (1964—1965), the Acting General Manager of the New York Metropolitan Opera (1972—1973), and in 1994 became the Cultural Affairs Executive of the City of New York. Chapin, a member of All Souls Church in New York City, is author of an autobiography, Musical Chairs (1977), and Leonard Bernstein, Notes from a Friend (1992).
CHAPLAIN Before the 20th century, a chaplain was a priest who served an institutional chapel or was appointed to the army or navy. The term may first have been applied to the priest-custodian of the cape (cappella) of St. Martin of Tours. In the 20th century, chaplains are still assigned to the Armed Forces. In the Netherlands, for example, a special post of Humanist Chaplain exists in light of the large numbers of Dutch who are humanists. Harvard University has created the position of Humanist Chaplain, a person who works with agnostics, atheists, and other freethinkers on the faculty and in the student body. In 1998 when Denis Cobell was named by Lewisham’s mayor the “Mayor’s chaplain—humanist officiant,” a priest objected that such an appointment by the English mayor “sends out completely the wrong signals to people—especially if they are going to call him chaplain.” Cobell quickly retorted that the title “Father” was hardly less confusing. (See entry for Harvard Chaplaincy.)
Chaplin, Charles Spencer [Sir] (1889—1977)
Sir Charlie Chaplin, who was knighted one year before his death, was the English film actor known internationally as the Little Tramp. With his baggy trousers, black derby, cane, and over-sized shoes, he entertained audiences in silent short movies, then silent features, and in 1940 movies with sound. With D. W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford, he co-founded United Artists in 1919. His features include “The Kid” (1920), “The Gold Rush” (1924), “City Lights” (1931), “The Great Dictator” (1940), and “Limelight” (1952). Oona O’Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill, was his fourth wife. On political grounds, Chaplin was barred from returning to the United States, so he resided in Switzerland. Born in London, Chaplin was the son of a music hall singer who left the boy’s mother before the child was two and saw him rarely thereafter, dying in 1901. His mother when he was but a child was certified insane in 1903. Chaplin and a brother survived the workhouse and several poor-law schools, then entered showbusiness. Ironically, by 1916, Chaplin was earning more money than the President of the United States. In My Autobiography (1964), Chaplin wrote,
There is a fraternity of those who passionately want to know. I was one of them. But my motives were not so pure; I wanted to know, not for the love of knowledge but as a defence against the world’s contempt for the ignorant. So when I had time I browsed around the second-hand bookshops. In Philadelphia, I inadvertently came upon an edition of Robert Ingersoll’s Essays and Lectures. This was an exciting discovery; his atheism confirmed my own belief that the horrific cruelty of the Old Testament was degrading to the human spirit.
The pompous-sounding title of his autobiography reminded Wesleyan University professor Jeanine Basinger of Katharine Hepburn’s Me. She terms Walter Kerr’s The Silent Clowns as the best film book about Chaplin’s works and Lita Grey Chaplin’s My Life With Chaplin as the one written by an ex-wife with the longest list of complaints. Joyce Milton’s Tramp (1996) described Chaplin’s movies between 1931 and 1940 as handmade products in an era of mass production. She tells of his Dickensian childhood and his view of Communists: “They presented themselves as the representatives of the oppressed classes, with whom he identified, and they also purported to have the one correct answer to every question.” But he was not a party member and became disaffected with the group by the end of the 1920s. The Chaplin Milton portrayed is a petty individual, one who started lawsuits against his friends but one whose talent was in creating unique, hilarious movies. She depicted Chaplin as a great admirer of the Russian Revolution, quoting a 1942 remark of his that the American people were beginning
to understand the Russian purges, and what a wonderful thing they were. Yes, in those purges the Communists did away with their Quislings and Lavals and if other nations had done the same there would not be the original Quislings and Lavals today.
Rarely, lamented Milton, had the Stalinists “received such a ringing endorsement.” The Manual of a Perfect Atheist quotes Chaplin:
By simple common sense I don’t believe in God, in none.
Colleen Moore, in her autobiography, Silent Star, described how in 1922 Chaplin invited her and the four owners of First National Pictures to his home. He had heard that Robert Leiber, its president, had purchased Papini’s “Life of Christ,” and Leiber nodded yes. Chaplin nodded also, saying, “I want to play the role of Jesus. Although everyone appeared to be stunned by his request, Chaplin followed with:
I’m a logical choice. I look the part. I’m a Jew. And I’m a comedian. And I’m an atheist, so I’d be able to look at the character objectively. Who else could do that?
Although he did not choose Chaplin, Leiber said wistfully, “It would be the greatest religious picture ever made, but I’d be run out of Indianapolis.” (See entry for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which for some reason post-baptized Chaplin. Also, see entry for the atheist, Pier Paolo Pasolini, who directed “the greatest religious picture ever made.” The entry for George Orwell indicates the creator of Big Brother thought Chaplin was Jewish.) {CE; Tim Madigan, Free Inquiry, Spring 1991}; The New York Times 28 July 1996}
Chaplin, Charles Spencer [Sir] (16 Apr 1889 - 25 Dec 1977) Sir Charlie Chaplin, who was knighted one year before his death, was the English film actor known internationally as the Little Tramp. With his baggy trousers, black derby, cane, and over-sized shoes, he entertained audiences in silent short movies, then silent features, and in 1940 movies that had sound. With D. W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford, he co-founded United Artists in 1919. His features include The Kid (1920), The Gold Rush (1924), City Lights (1931), The Great Dictator (1940), and Limelight (1952). Born in London, Chaplin was the son of a music hall singer who left the boy’s mother before the child was two and saw him rarely thereafter, dying in 1901. His mother when he was but a child was certified insane in 1903. Chaplin and a brother survived the workhouse and several poor-law schools, then entered showbusiness. Oona O’Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill, was his fourth wife. The Manual of a Perfect Atheist quotes Chaplin as saying, "By simple common sense I don’t believe in God, in none." In My Autobiography (1964), Chaplin wrote,
There is a fraternity of those who passionately want to know. I was one of them. But my motives were not so pure; I wanted to know, not for the love of knowledge but as a defence against the world’s contempt for the ignorant. So when I had time I browsed around the second-hand bookshops. In Philadelphia, I inadvertently came upon an edition of Robert Ingersoll’s Essays and Lectures. This was an exciting discovery; his atheism confirmed my own belief that the horrific cruelty of the Old Testament was degrading to the human spirit.
The pompous-sounding title of his autobiography reminded Wesleyan University professor Jeanine Basinger of Katharine Hepburn’s Me. She terms Walter Kerr’s The Silent Clowns as the best film book about Chaplin’s works and Lita Grey Chaplin’s My Life With Chaplin as the one written by an ex-wife with the longest list of complaints. Joyce Milton’s Tramp (1996) described Chaplin’s movies between 1931 and 1940 as handmade products in an era of mass production. She tells of his Dickensian childhood and his view of Communists: “They presented themselves as the representatives of the oppressed classes, with whom he identified, and they also purported to have the one correct answer to every question.” But he was not a party member and became disaffected with the group by the end of the 1920s. Ironically, by 1916, Chaplin was earning more money than the President of the United States. The Chaplin Milton portrayed is a petty individual, one who started lawsuits against his friends but one whose talent was in creating unique, hilarious movies. She depicted Chaplin as a great admirer of the Russian Revolution, quoting a 1942 remark of his that the American people were beginning "to understand the Russian purges, and what a wonderful thing they were. Yes, in those purges the Communists did away with their Quislings and Lavals and if other nations had done the same there would not be the original Quislings and Lavals today. Rarely, lamented Milton, had the Stalinists “received such a ringing endorsement.” On political grounds, Chaplin was barred from returning to the United States, so he resided in Switzerland. Colleen Moore’s autobiography, Silent Star, described how in 1922 Chaplin invited her and the four owners of First National Pictures to his home. He had heard that Robert Leiber, its president, had purchased Papini’s “Life of Christ,” and Leiber nodded yes. Chaplin nodded also, saying, “I want to play the role of Jesus. Although everyone appeared to be stunned by his request, Chaplin followed with:
I’m a logical choice. I look the part. I’m a Jew. And I’m a comedian. And I’m an atheist, so I’d be able to look at the character objectively. Who else could do that?
Although he did not choose Chaplin, Leiber said wistfully, “It would be the greatest religious picture ever made, but I’d be run out of Indianapolis.” [George Orwell indicated that the creator of Big Brother thought Chaplin was Jewish.] {CE; Tim Madigan, Free Inquiry, Spring 1991}; The New York Times, 28 July 1996}
Chapman, Antony M. (20th Century)
Chapman is on the Board of Directors of the British Rationalist Press Association. He is associated with the Humanist Media Committee and is a director of the Rationalist Press Association.
Chapman, John (Born 1839) Chapman was a freethinker who wrote for and was the proprietor of Westminster Review.
Chapman, Linda (20th Century) Chapman is Member at Large of Arizona Secular Humanists.
Chapman, Stephen James (1954— ) Chapman, a columnist, was associate editor of The New Republic (1978—1981), and since 1981 he has been editorial writer and columnist for The Chicago Tribune. Chapman has gone on record as being a non-theist:
What I no longer understand, looking back on my life as a Christian, is the capacity to believe in something so outlandish as the existence of an Almighty God—much less one who created us all one by one, cherishes our immortal souls, intervenes on behalf of those who call upon his name, and holds a place for his faithful in an everlasting paradise. None of us has ever seen this being; none of us has ever heard him, except in the silence of our heads; none of us can produce a piece of evidence as large as a mustard seed that what we think of as God is anything more than a thought. Our scientists can see stars that have been dead for a billion years; they can document microscopic bacteria that concluded their brief lives on earth eons ago. But of God we have no trace, except for the testimony of scribes writing of events neither they nor those around them every witnessed—and the faith of millions of people who have managed to convince themselves that he lives and reigns somewhere in the sky.
{CA; E}
Chappell, Arthur (20th Century) Chappell, in a Freethinker (June 1994) article entitled “Humanism Keynote of Starship Space Quests,” disagrees with any critics who hold that the program’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, is guilty of militarism, racism, or fascism. Rather, he argues, “Star Trek is essentially a science fiction vision of mankind humanising a dangerous and exciting universe.” And he notes that Roddenberry was a passionate humanist. Once, he relates, Roddenberry was asked to put a padre in the regular cast in order to explain Christian values to aliens. The author wisely put his foot down: “How could you have a chaplain if you’ve got that many people of different and alien beliefs on your ship? With as many planets as we were visiting, every person on the ship would have to be a chaplain!”
Chappellsmith, Margaret (Born 1806) Chappellsmith was a writer of political articles in the Dispatch and lectured on socialism and freethought. Moncure D. Conway mentioned that Chappellsmith was the first female lecturer of the English Communists established by Robert Owen and others, in Broughton, a little village twenty miles north of the New Forest. Of this community, which Margaret Reynolds (her maiden name) joined, and where she became personally acquainted with many of the leading English freethinkers, Conway remarks as follows: The English Communists, the first considerable body in England who ever professed Materialism, and the only party, perhaps, that never possessed it, made their first practical settlement in Hampshire, at a time when society was hard and cold, taxation heavy, the people ignorant, and workingmen homeless. Robert Owen—the first to bring a breath of courage upon those evil days with which the present generation opened—and his disciples set up a propagandism, and subscribed money to create that situation in which it should be impossible for men to be depraved or poor. Looking around on the besotted and criminal, Owen said, “Give me a tiger and I will educate it!”
In that faith he called around him the most earnest men of his time, for the effort which represented more high sentiment and spiritual hope than any movement England has seen. . . . Harmony Hall (the name of the Community at Broughton) came to know discord, and after a few years of struggle came to an end, by a complication of disorders such as are too familiar in such experiments to require mention in detail.
When Harmony Hall, “the English Brook Farm,” broke up, the Chappellsmiths moved to America. In 1850 she contributed to the Boston Investigator. {BDF; SAU; WWS}
Chaptal, Jean Antoine Claude [Count de Chanteloup] (1756—1832) A French chemist and statesman who had been trained in medicine, Chaptal turned to chemistry and rendered great service to the Revolution and to Napoleon, who made him a count. Chaptal retired at the royalist-clerical reaction but was, in spite of his freethinking, recalled and sent to the Home of Peers by the King. His great-grandson, the Viscount Chaptal, says in his Souvenirs sur Napoleon that he “had no religion” but believed in “a sort of Providence.” {JM; RAT; RE}
CHARACTER • What you are thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Four characteristics seem to me jointly to form the basis of an ideal character: vitality, courage, sensitiveness, and intelligence. I do not suggest that this list is complete, but I think it carries us a good way. Moreover, I firmly believe that by proper physical, emotional, and intellectual care of the young, these qualities could all be made very common. —Bertrand Russell Education and the Good Life (1926)
Charbonnel, Victor (20th Century) A writer who had been educated for the Catholic priesthood, Charbonnel left the priesthood and the Church in 1897. He then became a leader and propagandist of rationalism in France, founding La Raison in 1901 and becoming co-editor of L’Action in 1902. {RAT}
Charavay, Gabriel (19th Century) In France, Charavay rejected religion and was a humanitarian and materialist.
CHARISMATIC RELIGION : See entry for Pentecostalism.
Charles, Andrew (20th Century) Charles, writing in Freethought Today (June-July 1996), includes the following as “Freethought’s Greatest Hits” in music:
• Baker, LaVern, “Saved”—a satirical testimony of a liar-cheater-hootchykoo dancer turned Salvation Army bass drum thumper
• Barker, Dan and Kristin Lems, “My Thoughts Are Free”—by the production assistant of Freethought Today, a performer who also wrote “Reason’s Greetings! All Year ‘Round”
• Berlin, Irving, “Pack Up Your Sins (And Go to the Devil in Hades)”—the tune tells why Hell is so much more fun than Heaven
• Burdon, Eric, “Sky Pilot”—an emotional critique of religion’s complacency during wartime
• Charming Beggars, “Tales You Tell”—an excoriation of preachers
• Crawford, Anthony, “Fit In”—an expression of the plight of not being able to believe in God and wondering how he “fits in”
• Crosby, Stills & Nash, “Cathedral”—a surrealistic flight through Winchester Cathedral that lands firmly onto unbelief
• Dead Kennedys, “Frankenchrist”—a slam on televangelists
• Dyer-Bennet, Richard, “The Vicar of Bray”—about a vicar determined to keep his job no matter who is on the throne, or how much he has to compromise himself
• Gershwin, George and Ira Gershwin, “It Ain’t Necessarily So”—those things you read in the Bible
• Harding, John Wesley, “The Devil In Me”—the British singer recounts his dirty deeds, then reveals his true identity: humanity
• Head, Murray and the Trinidad Singers, “Superstar”—a comment about Jesus
• Head, Murray, Ian Gillan and others, “Jesus Christ Superstar”—views the “son of God” in an earthly light
• Hills, Joe, “The Preacher and the Slave”—among the many recorded versions of Hill’s “In the Sweet By and By” re-write are those of “Haywire” McClintock and poet Carl Sandburg
• Lehrer, Tom, “Vatican Rag”—he admitted poking fun at the ritual but not at the religion, then suggested that the most sacrilegious song is “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,” which implies “that God approves of A killing B but not B killing A.”
• Lennon, John, “God”—an unapologetic response to his once having been forced to apologize for saying the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”
• Lennon, John, “Imagine”—a vision of a religionless, peaceful world
• Living Colour, “Cult of Personality”—the black musicians warn about personality cults
• M.C. 900-foot Jesus with D. J. Zero, “I’m Going Straight To Heaven”—a white freethought rapper mocks streetcorner preachers, even distorting his voice to make it sound like it’s going through a bullhorn.
• Nine Inch Nails, “Terrible Lie”—God is cursed for making the world and the singer so lousy; then the singer pleads for a reason to believe
• Robbins, Marty, “I’ll Go On Alone”—a country song about a wife’s conversion to born-againism, leading the husband to go on alone
• The Temptations, “You Make Your Own Heaven and Hell Right Here on Earth”—an obscurity from their “Psychedelic Shack” album
• XTC, “Dear God”—an unabashedly atheistic anthem produced by Todd Rundgren
Many musical groups have members who are freethinkers. For example, the Headstones, a Toronto group that has performed in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, has four Unitarians: Tim White, bass; Trent Carr, guitar; Steve Carr, tour manager; and Beverly Carr, publicist. A rock group, the Headstones, are on the Web at: <http://ww.headstones.com>.
Charles, Martin S. (20th Century) In 1931, Charles edited Godless World in Oakland, California.
Charleton, Walter (17th Century) Charleton, an atheist, wrote The Darkness of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature (1652). {GS}
Charma, Antoine (1801—1869) A French philosopher, Charma was denounced for his impiety by the Count de Montalembert in the Chamber of peers, which resulted in an unsuccessful attempt to unseat him as a professor of philosophy at Caen. Charma wrote many philosophical works, including an account of Didron’s Histoire de Dieu. {BDF; RAT}
Charron, Pierre (1541—1603) Charron’s La Sagesse (1601) presented Montaigne’s thoughts and quickly made the Vatican’s list of prohibited books in 1605. His writing emphasized that nature, like mankind, has failings and inconsistencies, that both are reflections of the divine. Franck has written that “the scepticism of Charron inclines visibly to sensualisme and even to materialism.” Jesuits denounced his work as “a brutal atheism.” {BDF; CE; EU, Vivien Thweatt; ILP; RAT; RE}
Chartier, Émile Auguste (1868—1951) Using the pseudonym, Alain, Chartier wrote of his belief in an ethic of agnosticism based on a realistic acceptance of the limitations of human understanding. His work, states Thweatt, contributed to a new secular humanism. Alain wrote for La Nouvelle Revue Française. {EU, Vivien Thweatt}
Charvaka (Ancient India) Charvaka, or Lokayata, is a philosophic and materialist movement in India that rejects the ideas of karma and moksha (spiritual liberation). Its adherents are atheistic and do not believe in a future life: Only this world exists. No outstanding individual is representative of the group. A. J. Mattill Jr., in “An Ancient Atheist” (The American Rationalist, January-February 1999), describes the materialistic view of Charvaka, that matter is eternal and consists of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Naturalistically, not supernaturalistically, there is no heaven, hell, transmigration of souls, retribution, reward, punishment. The Supreme Being was the earthly ruler of a state, one expected to be the arbiter of right and wrong in society. Charvaka rejected the authority of the Vedas, advocated trying to achieve happiness here and now, and found all religion to be an aberration. Mattill concludes that some of us “may prefer Epicurus’ description of the summum bonum to Charvaka’s.” However, the outlook protested the superstitions of its day, and modern rationalists are much indebted to the Charvaka manner of thinking. (See Dr. Dakshina Ranjan Sastri’s Charvaka Philosophy, which was published in Calcutta in 1967.)
CHARVAKAM A Telugu monthly, Charvakam is at B. Ramakrishna, Nidamarru, Mangalagiri 522 503, India.
Chase, Stuart (1888—1985) An economist, the social scientist who probably coined the term “New Deal” used by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Chase is author of A New Deal (1932); A Tyranny of Words (1938), which Sinclair Lewis referred to as the most important book of 1938; and The Proper Study of Mankind (1948). In 1951, he wrote the following about humanism:
Your question baffles me a little, because, since I took up semantics, I’m pretty shy of hard and fast categories. I’ve been called a “scientific humanist,” whatever that means, and of the categories you named in your letter, I’m sure I belong more with Julian Huxley and John Dewey—though I am not so sure about Thomas Mann and George Santayana. A handy book published by Simon & Schuster in 1939, edited by Clifton Fadiman and entitled I Believe, contains a summary of my point of view, together with the views of Thomas Mann, Franz Boas, Havelock Ellis, Julian Huxley, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Lewis Mumford, Joseph Krutch, and many others. Using the operational definition of the physicists (see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, where the label comes out of what one does), I would seem to fall under ‘Naturalistic (or Scientific) Humanism.’ All my books deal with aspects of the scientific method applied to various phrases of human behavior. I have never been able to see how intuition, Authority, or common sense can save us in the long run, helpful as they may sometimes be in the short run. Only knowledge can save us, and knowledge depends on the scientific method—gathering the facts, evolving a theory to explain them, and applying standards of verification which other competent observers can repeat. The process is cumulative, and perhaps the major characteristic of the participant is the ability to say: ‘I was wrong.’ With the release of atomic energy, the fulcrum of the scientific method must now swing to problems of human behavior, especially ways and means for reaching agreement; for getting along with other races, religions, nations, classes, to the end of abolishing war, and using the new energy to establish world-wide standards of economic and emotional security. Finally, I believe that most of us use our minds far below capacity—like a power house operating at half load. Scientists are now in the process of discovering ways and means to improve the load factor. (See W. R. Ashby, Design for a Brain; J. Z. Young, Doubt and Certainty in Science; Sir George Thomson, The Foreseeable Future). Assuming the process successful, a whole new dimension opens for mankind: what now seems desirable may prove a blind alley; what now seems impossible becomes negotiable. I carry around a private picture which I call “The Man on the Cliff.” He is that human being, outlined against the sky, which we might all be if the bonds of ignorance now holding us were loosened.
In 1954, Chase wrote again, stating that he considered himself “80% a Humanist.” He asked The Humanist to consider reviewing his latest humanistic work, Some Things Worth Knowing (1958). The Humanist Newsletter (September-October 1953) quoted him as saying:
I tend to be guided in conscious decisions by four criteria: (a) that I am a creature of this earth; (b) that I am a member of a human group; (c) that it is meaningless to judge other members of the group until the biological and psychological facts are in; and (d) that progress depends not on revealed authority, not on ethics and morals, which shift with the folkways, but on using the scientific attitude in social as well as in physical affairs.
{CE; WAS, 23 March 1951}
Chasman, Deborah (20th Century) Chasman, a senior editor at Beacon Press, was a finalist for the 1995 Literary Market Place award for individual achievement in editorial trade publishing. She was recognized for attracting to Beacon such prominent authors as Doris Grumbach, Faye Moskowitz, Richard Mohr, and Cornel West. {World, May-June 1995}
Chastelet du Lomont, Gabrielle Emilie [Marchioness] (1706—1749) Chastelet (or Châtelet) du Lomont came from a noble family and learned Latin, Italian, English, and Spanish before she was sixteen years of age. She published a work on physical philosophy called Institutions de Physique (1740) and translated Newton’s Principia. Chastelet lived for thirteen years with Voltaire at Cirey between 1735 and 1747, and addressed to him her Deistic work, Doubts on Revealed Religions (1792). According to McCabe, it can be said of the marchioness, one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of her time, that “in this case the godly do not claim the brilliant lady.” Her Treatise on Happiness was praised by Condorcet. {BDF; JM; WWS}
Chastellux, François Jean de [Count] [Marquis de] (1734—1788) Count Chastellux was a soldier, traveler, and writer. Voltaire praised his On Public Happiness (1776). His article on “Happiness” in the Encyclopédie was suppressed by the censor because it did not mention God. {BDF; RAT}
CHASTITY • Chastity: the most unnatural of the sexual perversions. —Aldous Huxley (also attributed to Anatole France.)
• We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition. —Alex Comfort (See entry for Virgins.)
Chateaubriand, François René, Vicomte de (1768—1848) The founder of romanticism in French literature, Chateaubriand was the most important French author of his time. The Martyrs celebrates Christianity’s victory over paganism. Despite the accumulating evidence of geology and paleontology, Chateaubriand persisted, Robertson lamented, “with his grotesque theorem that God made the world out of nothing with all the marks of antiquity upon it—the oaks at the start bearing ‘last year’s nests’—(on the ground that) if the world were not at once young and old, the great, the serious, the moral would disappear from nature, for these sentiments by their essence attach to antique things.” Robertson adds, “It is humiliating, but instructive to realize that only a century ago a ‘Christian reaction’ in a civilized country was inspired by such an order of ideas (as found in Chateaubriand’s Gémoe di Christianisme (The Genius of Christianity) [1802]) and that in the nation of Laplace, with his theory in view, it was the fashion thus to prattle in the taste of the Dark Ages.” {CE; JMR}
Châtelet, Gabrielle Émilie du (Marchioness): See entry for Chastelet.
Chatterton, Thomas (1752—1770) Called “the marvelous boy poet,” Chatterton wrote poems which he pretended were written by one Thomas Rowley in the fourteenth century and discovered by him in an old chest in Redcliffe Church. Several of his poems were deistic in content. In his letters he professed his rationalism. “I am no Christian,” he wrote to his family shortly before his death. When he visited London in 1769 and had bitter experiences, he destroyed himself in a fit of despair. {BDF; RE}
Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad (1918—1993) Prof. Chattopadhyaya, a noted academician and philosopher of international repute, taught more than two decades in Calcutta, Bombay, and other colleges in India. His expertise in Indian philosophy and his emphasis on the study of the history of science and technology were guides to students and researchers trying to understand the complexities of development of knowledge in India. In 1987 he was elected National Fellow of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research. He was a member of the German Academy of Sciences and was the first Indian to be awarded the D. Sc. (honoris causa) from the Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Among his major publications were Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism (1959); Indian Philosophy: A Popular Introduction (1964); Science and Society in Ancient India (1977); Indian Atheism (1980), a Marxist analysis; and Tagore and Indian Philosophical Heritage (1984). {FUK}
Chaucer, Geoffrey (1340?—1400)
Although in The Canterbury Tales (1387, unfinished) the Parson is designed to be a model for the truly religious to follow, Chaucer delights in relating how religion works in practice. His Pardoner, for example, uses religion for personal gain. Yes, the lascivious friar is “full of dalliaunce and fair language” for ”yonge wommen” and he depicts the essentially pagan Miller and Wife of Bath as colorful souls. Do not blame me, Chaucer is saying, if the doctor I describe loved gold so much, if a pilgrim was more Epicurean than Christian, and if animal bones were sold as saints’ bones to gullible country parsons: I am just relating what happened. What with the religious restraints placed upon everyone at that time, how better could Chaucer editorialize concerning what he found wrong in society. His understanding of how people actually speak is exemplified by his use of such words as erse (arse, ass), fart, quent (cunt), shitten, and piss, which apparently were not frowned upon inasmuch as he was simply a reporter of the language. Those who made their living from religion were placed on the defensive, and Chaucer became a revered iconoclast to his supporters. In his Studies in Chaucer (1892), Lownsbury calls Chaucer an advanced freethinker. Commenting on lines 1809 to 1825 of “The Knight’s Tale,” he asks: Can modern agnosticism point to a denial more emphatic than that made in the fourteenth century of the belief that there exists for us any assurance of the life beyond the grave? Lownsbury says Chaucer grew more opposed to the Church as time went on and was “hostile to it in such a way that implies an utter disbelief in certain of its tenets.” A retraction is appended to some editions of the Tales, but it is generally rejected as spurious, McCabe holds. {BDF; CE; EU, Victor N. Paananen; JM; RE}
Chaumette, Pierre Gaspard (1763—1794) A French revolutionary destined to lose his head, Chaumette as a youth received botany lessons from Rousseau. He embraced the revolution with ardor and was among the first to assume the tri-color cockade. Nominated a member of the Commune in 1792, he took the name of Anaxagoras to show his little regard for his baptismal saints. He abolished the rod in schools, suppressed lotteries, instituted workshops for “fallen women,” established the first lying-in-hospital, had books sent to the hospitals, separated the insane from the sick, founded the Conservatory of Music, opened the public libraries every day (instead of two hours per week, as in the ancien régime), replaced books of superstition by works of morality and reason, put a graduated tax on the rich to provide for the burial of the poor, and was the principal mover in the feasts of Reason and closing of the churches. Accused by Robespierre of conspiring with Cloots “to efface all idea of the Deity,” Chaumette was guillotined. {BDF; RAT}
Chauncy, Charles (1705—1787) A leader of the liberal or Arminian theological movement in New England, Chauncy was a Universalist who argued that punishments of hell were not eternal, that all humanity would be redeemed. His The Mystery Hid from Ages and Generations (London, 1784), is one of the earliest documents of American liberal theology. {CE; FUS; U&U}
Chaussard, Pierre Jean Baptiste (1766—1823) Chaussard was a French man of letters who, after the Revolution, took the name of Publicola and published patriotic odes, Esprit de Mirabeau, and other works. He was preacher to the Theophilanthropists and became professor of belles lettres at Orleans. {BDF; RAT}
Cheam, Michael (20th Century) Cheam is the secretary of the Humanist Society of Western Australia. His E-mail is <mcheam@WCOMPER1.telstra.com.au>. (See entry for Australian Humanists, Freethinkers.)
Cheetham, Henry H. (20th Century) Cheetham wrote Unitarianism and Universalism: An Illustrated History (1962). {FUS}
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (1860—1904) Chekhov was an eminent Russian short-story writer, dramatist, naturalist, and physician. The grandson of a serf, and the third of six children born of a grocer, he was whipped often by his father as well as by the choirmaster in church, where he was made to sing for hours while kneeling on freezing stones. When his father went bankrupt and the family departed Taganrog for Moscow in search of work, Chekhov was left to fend for himself. It was a time when many found a new church and dogma in the radical movement. As an indication of his outlook at the time, he advised a brother to refrain from force and deceit and to “work at it constantly, day and night. You must never stop reading, studying in depth, exercising your will. Every hour is precious.” When thirty and called an “unprincipled” writer by the editor of a journal, Chekhov protested, “I have never toadied, nor lied, nor insulted. . . . I have never written a single line that I am ashamed of today.” Upon graduating from Moscow University in 1884, he wrote that he was able to divide his time between “medicine . . . my lawful wife, and literature . . . my mistress.” His record of humanitarian work was impressive. He wrote about a prison colony on the Siberian island of Sakhalin, basing it on a medical-statistical survey of conditions there, bringing to the public’s attention the horrors of the Russian penal system. To alleviate famine in his region in 1891—1892, he treated peasants in a clinic on his estate, helped build schools, endowed libraries, and purchased horses to be distributed to peasants for transporting grain. Not one to believe in universal salvation, he had no faith in the intelligentsia en masse, placing his hopes on individuals because “They’re the ones who really matter.” On a visit to Nice, he wrote in a letter, he was pleased at finding no “Marxists with their self-important faces.” His Ivanov in 1887 launched Chekhov as a dramatist, and he came to be lionized in artistic circles. His work depicted mortals subject to the depredations of time and chance, as shown in Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. In the latter work, acceptance of the loss of the orchard means new possibilities for Ranevskaya and her daughter. Richard Gilman, in Chekhov’s Plays: An Opening into Eternity (1997), describes Chekhov’s unhappiness about Stanislavsky’s production of The Cherry Orchard: “With the exception of two or three parts nothing in it is mine. I am describing life, gray, ordinary life, and not this tedious whining. They make me either a crybaby or simply a bore.” Although Stanislavsky complained that Chekhov came to rehearsals and “messed everything up for us,” Gilman points out that Chekhov was masterful in telling us about the familiar, giving us a perspective on everyday experience which is different from the conventional assumptions, and offending cherished beliefs about ourselves and the world. The best single source on Chekhov’s thought, according to Aileen Kelly, a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, remains the selection of his letters translated by Michael Henry Heim and introduced and annotated by Simon Karlinsky in 1973. Of particular importance, Karlinsky points out, is Chekhov’s asserting that his medical training in the empirical methods of the natural sciences had been the formative influence on his literary work. A writer, he held, should be faithful to the empirical reality of the world and of human behavior. Little wonder that he revered Tolstoy but was repelled by his didactic story “The Kreutzer Sonata,” whose treatment of human sexuality exposed the great writer “as an ignorant man who has never at any point in his long life taken the trouble to read two or three books written by specialists.” Writers, Chekhov lamented, had only a smattering of scientific method and were prone to the delusion that mankind was on the verge of resolving the ultimate mysteries of existence. Criticized once for having taken no clear position on the question of pessimism, he retorted,
It is not the writer’s job to solve such problems as God, pessimism, etc.; his job is merely to record who, under what conditions, said or thought what about God or pessimism.
This did not imply, Kelly added, a moral relativism. Chekhov wanted “to depict life truthfully and to show in passing how much this life deviates from a norm.” But no one can define that norm: “We all know what a dishonest deed is, but what is honour?—we do not know.” Therefore, one needs to be guided by the good that has withstood the test of time: liberation of the individual from oppression, prejudice, ignorance, or domination by his passions.
“It is obvious that nature is doing everything in her power to rid herself of all weaklings and organisms for which she has no use,” he wrote, comparing the famine and cholera threatening his region at the beginning of the 1890s with an influenza epidemic then affecting horses in central Russia. Life’s evanescence and unpredictability need to be accepted without resentment, for nature “gives a person equanimity. And you need equanimity in this world. Only people with equanimity can see things clearly, be fair, and work.” His outlook showed him to be an attentive reader of Darwin. Kelly wrote that Chekhov, like Darwin not one to be gloomy about the way things are,
believed that the romantic yearning for a world modeled on religious or rational ideals of perfection had blinded mankind to the beauty and rich potential of the world they actually lived in. The history of Russian exploration in the Far East, which he read in preparation for his trip to Sakhalin, was “enough to make you want to edify man, but we have no use for it, we don’t even know who those people were, and all we do is sit within our four walls and complain what a mess God has made of creating man.”
“Alas! I shall never be a Tolstoyan!” Chekhov wrote to Suvorin. “In women what I like above all is beauty, and in the history of humanity, culture, which is expressed in rugs, carriages with springs, and keenness of thought.” In short, Chekhov did not accept Tolstoy’s ideal of moral perfection, which demanded the sacrifice of all the attachments and desires that distracted mankind from the pursuit of a narrowly defined good. His humanistic outlook included having a fascination for lives utterly different from his own. He dreamed of how it would feel to have “a wife, a nursery, a little house with garden paths,” or to be a country gentleman, a university professor, a retired navy lieutenant, a traveler, or an explorer. Chekhov earned enduring international acclaim for his stories and plays. In 1888, “The Steppe,” a story in his third collection, won the Pushkin Prize. His plays became acclaimed when produced by the Moscow Art Theater. In 1901 he married the actress Olga Knipper, the interpreter of many of his characters. Three years later, he died of tuberculosis, the symptoms of which he had had for almost a decade but chose to ignore. When Tolstoy arrived at his hospital bed to discuss death and immortality, Chekhov remained unpreoccupied by ultimate questions, choosing instead to inquire about becoming a military doctor in the Russian Far East. His wife described his final moments in a scene that sounds Chekhovian. His doctor had ordered champagne to ease his breathing. Chekhov sat up, announced to the doctor in German, “Ich sterbe.”
Then he picked up his glass, turned to me, smiled his wonderful smile and said, “It’s been such a long time since I’ve had champagne.” He drank it all to the last drop, lay quietly on his left side and was soon silent forever. The . . . stillness . . . was broken only by a huge nocturnal moth which kept crashing painfully into the light bulbs. . . . [Then] the cork flew out of the half-empty champagne bottle with a tremendous noise.
“His ideas on religion are not clear,” wrote McCabe, “but he stood well outside the Church.” For 20th century secular humanists, Chekhov is the person who wrote, inspiringly, that life “is given only once and one wants to live it boldly, with full consciousness and beauty.” {CE; JM; Aileen Kelly, “Chekhov the Subversive,” The New York Review of Books, 6 November 1997; RE; TRI; TYD}
Chemin-Dupontes, Jean Baptiste (Born 1761) One of the founders of French Theophilanthropy, Chemin-Dupontes published many writings, the best known of which is What Is Theophilanthropy? The Society of Theophilanthropes which he formed had as an active member Thomas Paine. {BDF}
Cheney, Ednah Dow Littlehale (1824-1904) Cheney, a suffragist, civil rights activist, and editor, was a Universalist, Unitarian, and member of the Free Religious Association.
Chénier, Marie André de (1762—1794) Considered by many the greatest French poet in 18th century France, Chénier was active in the early stages of the French Revolution but was horrified by Jacobin excesses. A freethinker, he contributed denunciatory pamphlets to the Journal de Paris, an organ of moderate royalism. His Élegies (published posthumously, 1819) and Bucoliques were consummate examples of his work, as was Iambes, which had stirring political satires in verse. Robespierre had him arrested in March, 1794, and just three days before the end of the Terror Chénier was guillotined. His life inspired the opera Andrea Chénier (1896) by Umberto Giordano. Chênedolle said of Chénier’s Hermes, a work in imitation of Lucretius, that Chénier “était athée avec délices (was a delightful atheist).” {BDF; CE; JMR; JMRH; RAT; RE}
Chénier, Marie Joseph de (1764—1811) Chénier, brother of André, was a French poet whose first successful drama was “Charles IX” (1789). A Voltairean, he satirized in Nouveaux Saints (1801) those who returned to the old faith. {BDF; RAT}
Cherbuliez, Charles Victor (1829—1899) A French novelist and freethinker, Cherbuliez wrote Noirs et Rouges (1881). He became an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1892. He was admitted to the French Academy in 1881. {RAT}
Chernyshevsky, Niakolai Gavrilovich (1828—1889) A Russian intellectual and the leading disciple of Visarion Belinsky inside Russia, Chernyshevsky advocated basic agrarian reform and emancipation of the serfs. He translated Mill’s Political Economy and wrote on Superstition and the Principles of Logic (1859). A forerunner of the Russian revolutionary movement, he envisioned the village commune as a transition to socialism. In 1864 he was sentenced to the Siberian mines where, after heartrending cruelties, he became insane and died. {CE; BDF}
Cherbury, Lord: See entry for Edward Herbert.
Cherrington, Bet (1912-1998) Cherrington was born in Lucknow, India, where her father was in the Indian Civil Service. An activist who took part in Liberal politics, she was a fighter for women’s rights and abortion law reform. Facing the World: An Anthology of Poems for Humanists (1989) is an expression of her wide literary knowledge and her committed humanism. Jim Herrick conducted Cherrington’s funeral ceremony.
Cherry, Matt (1967— ) Cherry has worked in senior positions for humanist organizations in three countries. Having gained in 1989 a B.A. honors in philosophy from University College London (known as “The Ungodly Hole on Gower Street” because of its freethinking tradition dating back to its founder Jeremy Bentham), he started working in 1990 for the British Humanist Association. He led the Young Humanists, organizing a successful week-long international young humanist conference in 1991. That same year he became director of development and public relations at the British Humanist Association, for which he became editor of Humanist News. At the end of 1993 he joined the staff of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) as Secretary for Development and Public Relations, the office of which at that time was in The Netherlands. In 1995, he moved to Amherst, New York, becoming Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism and the International Secretariat for Growth and Development of the IHEU. Cherry was coordinator of the 1996 Humanist World Congress held in Mexico City. In 1999 he helped establish the Center for Inquiry branch in Los Angeles, California. Cherry signed Humanist Manifesto 2000. E-mail: <ficherry@aol.com>. On the Web: <http://www.secularhumanism.org/iheu/>. {International Humanist News, December 1996}
Cherubini, Mario Luigi Carlo Zenobio-Salvadore (1760—1842) Cherubini, an Italian composer who started at the age of ten, wrote a mass at thirteen, and an opera at nineteen, was King’s composer in London, then in France. He hailed the Revolution and composed hymns and anthems for its feasts as well as an opera, “Epicurus.” He also wrote an immense amount of religious music, making him a favorite in the Catholic Church. Yet Cherubini was a freethinker all the time. His Catholic biographer Bellasis quotes the evidence of his daughters that Cherubini was “not mystical but broadminded in religion” and admits that there is no evidence that he received the sacraments of the Church before death. McCabe attests that Cherubini did not. {JM; RAT; RE}
Chesen, Eli S. (20th Century) A freethinker, Chesen wrote Religion May be Hazardous to Your Health (1972). {FUS; GS}
Chesnutt, Vic (20th Century) A singer and songwriter, Chesnutt mentions his atheism in his songs, sometimes characterizing himself as “a backsliding atheist.” {CA; E}
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1874—1936) Chesterton, the English author, conservative, and Catholic apologist, wrote the following barb concerning Middleton Murry’s atheism:
Murry, on finding le Bon Dieu Chose difficile à croire Illogically said “Adieu,” But God said “Au Revoir.”
Chesterton also wrote, “From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end.”
Chesworth, Amanda (1971- ) Chesworth is a Campus Freethought Alliance Coordinator for the Council for Secular Humanism. A Canadian by birth, she works with youth program in high schools and campuses. {Secular Humanist Bulletin, Spring 1999}
Chevalier, Bernadette (20th Century) Chevalier wrote L’Atheisme dans le Monde Moderne (1969), a Swiss work utilizing a Catholic viewpoint. {GS}
Chevalier, Joseph Philippe (1806—1865) A French chemist, Chevalier wrote The Soul from the Standpoint of Reason and Science (1861). {BDF}
Cheves, Charles (20th Century)
Although raised a Southern Baptist, Cheves is a Florida attorney who is a freethought activist.
Chidley, William James (c. 1860—1916) Chidley was an Australian social and sex reformer. In The Answer he claimed that “our false coition makes villains of us all,” that the best method of human copulation is for the inert penis to be first drawn by suction or presence of air into the erect and distended female vagina. Publishing the book resulted in his being convicted for selling an indecent publication, which he had done while walking the streets with only a short voile tunic. After repeated convictions, Chidley was committed to a lunatic asylum where he died of arteriosclerosis. {SWW}
Chies y Gomez, Ramon (1845—1893) One of the foremost freethought champions in Spain, Chies y Gomez was educated at his father’s direction without religion. He wrote for a Madrid journal, La Discusion, took part in the Revolution of 1865, and at the proclamation of the Republic in 1873 became civil governor of Valencia. In 1881 he founded El Voto Nacional and in 1883 Las Dominicales del Libre Pensamiento. When the police forcibly closed the International Freethought Congress at Madrid in 1892, Chies alluded to the incident at the republican convention, predicting the fall of a monarchy which, instead of being the servant of the people, was but the henchman of the church. Upon his death, the funeral started with a hearse which was followed by three hundred carriages and ten thousand persons. The municipal council attended in a body. {BDF; PUT; RAT}
Child, Lydia Maria Francis (1802—1880) A Unitarian and novelist, Child wrote an antislavery tract, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833) which influenced William Ellery Channing’s Slavery (1835). She was an advocate of women’s independence, a historian of religion, and an editor of National Anti-Slavery Standard. One of her major works was the two-volume History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations (1835). Originally baptized an orthodox Congregationalist, Child supported the Free Religious movement and for a time was a convert to Swedenborgianism. She usually attended Unitarian services, however, and among her friends were William Lloyd Garrison, Maria Weston Chapman, William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, and Anne Whitney. She was highly eulogized upon her death from heart disease by Wendell Phillips, and John Greenleaf Whittier recited a memorial poem in her honor at the funeral. “It is right noble to fight with wickedness and wrong,” she wrote in Over the River and Through the Woods (1842); “the mistake is in supposing that spiritual evil can be overcome by physical means.” In a biography, Carolyn L. Karcher notes that as early as the 1830s Child was vindicating the rights of women, Indians and, particularly, African-American slaves. She was a “household name” during her lifetime, but her works and influence have been all but “erased from history.” Karcher found Child’s writings had an anti-Catholic, anti-French, and anti-Irish bias. {BDF; CE; JM; PUT; RAT; U&U; WWS}
Childe, Vere Gordon (1892—1967) Childe, the son of an Australian clergyman, became a rationalist, political historian, and archaeologist. In How Labour Governs (1916) he concluded that the parliamentary system was a creation of the upper classes. From 1946 to 1956, he was professor of prehistoric European archeology at the University of London. {SWW; RE}
CHILDREN
• As the twig is bent, the tree inclines. —Vergil
• Give me the children until they are seven, and anyone may have them afterward. —St. Francis Xavier
• A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother. —Mark Twain, “Letter to Annie Webster,” 1 September 1876
• The child is father of the man. —William Wordsworth
• There was a little girl Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead; And when she was good She was very, very good, But when she was bad she was horrid. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• We’ve had bad luck with our kids—they’ve all grown up. —Christopher Morley
• You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. —Franklin P. Jones
• I abhor their [children’s] company, because I can only regard children as defective adults, hate their physical ineptitude, find their jokes flat and monotonous. —Evelyn Waugh who shipped his children off to school as soon as he could and avoided them as much as possible during the holidays
• Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. —Kahlil Gibran
• I’ve got two wonderful children—and two out of five isn’t bad. —Henny Youngman American comic
• So, remain the benevolent despot, vary your errors, spank little, sit-on if necessary, scream infrequently, threaten rarely, groan often, question organized activities, support their interests, control television watching, and act silly on occasion while trying to ignore snotty words as you attempt to read their feelings. Trust them to imitate us—30 years on down the pike. —Robert E. Kay, M.D.
Richard Dawkins considers the practice of giving children a religious appellation absurd. Calling a four-year-old a Muslim, a Sikh, or a Christian implies the child can have “developed theological opinions.” In The Independent (19 December 1996), he said it would be laughable to “speak of a four-year-old monetarist Eurosceptic, a four-year-old dialectical materialism, or a four-year-old neo-Kantian [but] we accept ‘Muslim child’ or ‘Christian child’ without thinking.” He continued, “If a child is the child of an atheist,” does that make her an atheist child?” {Michiko Kakutani in a review of Auberon Waugh’s Will This Do?, The New York Times, 23 June 1998}
CHILEAN FREETHOUGHT, HUMANISM: See entries for José Victorino Lastarria and Francisco Bilbao.
CHILTERN (England) HUMANISTS Details about the group are available by telephoning 01296 623730. Antony Chapman is one of its contacts.
Chilton, Marcus William (1815—1855) Chilton, a bricklayer who became a typesetter and then one of the editors of the British Oracle of Reason, wrote in the Movement and the Reasoner. He was an Owenite. {BDF; FUK; RAT; VI}
CHIMERA
• Quaestio subtilissima, utrum chimera in vacuo bombinans possit comedere secundas intentiones. A most subtle question: whether a chimera bombinating in a vacuum can devour second intentions. —François Rabelais (1494?-c. 1553) Pantagruel, II: viii
• A memory of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow’s dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a Chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer. So certainly is there nothing, nothing in spiritual things, perfect in this world. —John Donne (1571?-1631) XXI Sermons (1660)
• What the sage poets taught by th’ heavenly Muse, Storied of old in high immortal verse Of dire chimeras and enchanted isles And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell,— For such there be, but unbelief is blind. —John Milton (1608-1674) Comus (1634)
• What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble worm of the earth, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe. —Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Pensées
• Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great; With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride, He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little or too much; Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still be himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world. —Alexander Pope (1688-1744),
Essay on Man. Epistle II
• These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue. . . .of instructing princes to know their true interest by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people: of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive, and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth. —Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Voyage to Laputa in Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
• How chimerical, the wildly fanciful and highly improbable plots fabricated by those believers who think there is a supernatural and an afterlife! Yet how chimerical that they have succeeded so surprisingly with their biblical tales whereas Chimera—the mythological fire-breathing she-monster composed of a lion, goat, and serpent—is relatively unknown either as a creature or a concept. Chimeras now are references to the coming together of cells from two people that live in one person, such as during pregnancy, organ transplantation, and blood transfusion. How chimerical that during pregnancy the mother’s body does not reject the fetus as a foreign tissue! How chimerical that your blood might today flow within my body, or mine within yours! How chimerical that my heart might one day beat within your breast, or yours within mine! —Allen Windsor
CHIMPANZEES The chimpanzee, not the Neanderthal man, is mankind’s closest living relative. A 1997 study of Neanderthal DNA concluded that interbreeding of Neanderthals and humans was never possible. (See entry for Homo sapiens.)
CHINESE CURSE, THE • May your life be interesting! —Anonymous
CHINESE FENG SHUI: See entry for Superstition.
CHINESE FOLK RELIGIONS: For number of adherents, see entry for Hell.
CHINESE HUMANISTS Although Finngeir Hiorth in “Whither Freethought?” (New Humanist, December 1998) asserts that “In ancient China atheism was no real option,” Antony Flew notes that the observation although true is likely to be misleading. For, he wrote (New Humanist, March 1999), “it may suggest that atheism in ancient China, like apostasy in fully Islamic states today, was a capital offence. The truth is that the language of Imperial China contained no word for a supposedly omnipotent personal Creator. Atheism was thus not ‘no real option’ because it was suicidal, but because the Chinese had yet to learn what it is that atheists have as such to disbelieve.” Westerners know about two main streams of Chinese thought, the traditionalist and moralistic Confucianism (founded by Kongfu-zi, the Pinyin transliteration of Kung-fu Tzu); and the mystical and quietistic Daoism (Taoism), founded by Lao-zi (Lao Tzu) and Zhuang-zi (Chuang Tzu). According to Nicolas Walter (New Humanist, October 1998),
Most thinkers belonged to one or other (or more) of these traditions, which differed between and among themselves but which generally shared assumptions about the twin essences (yang and yin), the divinity of heaven, the propitiation of fate and spirits, reverence for ancestors and the past, and the practical importance of magic and ritual.
Mo-zi (Mo Tzu) in the 5th Century B.C.E. advocated altruism and asceticism based on utilitarian and leading to pacifism. Yang Chu in the 4th Century B. C. E. advocated individualism and hedonism based on pessimism and leading to egoism. Also, there was Wang Chong, described by Joseph Needham as “one of the greatest men of his nation in any age.” {See Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China—The History of Scientific Thought, 1956). Walter, surveying the various masters of early Chinese thought, concluded:
Just as we may wish that Europe had followed the philosophers of Ionia and Athens and Alexandria rather than the theologians of Constantinople and Rome and Geneva, we may wish that China had followed Wang Chong rather than all the other hundred schools, and we should pay tribute to a precious spirit of enlightenment and reason in a dark and irrational age.
China, since becoming a Marxist state, has made it difficult for freethinking philosophers to travel and exchange views with Westerners. One of the few known humanists is Xiao Xuehui, a philosopher in Sichuan province. However, by rejecting the official Marxist doctrine that morality is determined by economics, she was imprisoned, released after nineteen months, then not allowed to teach. In 1995, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) started an international campaign to protest Dr. Xiao’s treatment and to press the Chinese authorities to honor her human rights. At the Shang Xin-Jian Institute of Philosophy, the group which studies humanism is called Study Group of the History of Western Humanism (IHEU), Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, 25 Xi-San-Huan Bei Lu. Youzheng Li, of the Institute of Philosophy, CASS, Beijing, signed Humanist Manifesto 2000. In China, 2000 is the Year of the Dragon, 4698. (See entries for Xiao and Yong-shen.)
CHINESE PHILOSOPHY See an extensive discussion of Chinese philosophy by Wing-tsit Chan in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 2. Most in the Western world admit and lament their ignorance concerning philosophy in the Eastern world. (Also, see entries for Tai-tsung and Xiao.)
CHINESE RELIGION According to Anthony DeBiasi of the State University of New York Albany, the Han people emphasized the domination of utilitarianism over strict adherence to a belief or faith. Gods and spirits exist everywhere – in trees and walls, not far away in some other place – and in addition to their having power over human lives humans can become spirits and gods when they die. The creation moment is not a main focus. Religious duties are performed with practical consequences in mind, not for the expectation of being rewarded with health or avoidance of disasters. Eclecticism allows ancestor worship overlapping the different religious traditions. Taoism and Confucianism emerged in the 6th century B.C.E. Buddhism also originated at that time in India, arriving in China around the 1st century of the Common Era.
Chisholm, Brock (1896—1971) The first Director General of the United Nations World Health Organization wrote to the present author about humanism:
While I have never considered the matter of a label for my particular set of attitudes, it appears that I might be listed as a naturalistic humanist, if such listing is desirable. Basically, my attitudes are founded on the fact, as I see it, that man is only just at the beginning of the development of his intellectual powers. For many centuries man has been presuming to provide answers for questions totally beyond his capacity. For instance, I believe that everything encompassed in the field known as ‘theology’ might advantageously be left for study by generations in the far distant future. At this state of human development our reliable knowledge is confined entirely to the field of nature. In the field of nature, there is still enough investigation, research, and understanding to do to occupy fully all the best brains of the human race for many generations into the future. I see no limit to the potential understanding of the human as long as he can resist the temptation to introduce magic and the “supernatural” into his system of beliefs. Tentative belief, based on acceptable evidence, and changeable with the introduction of new or more convincing evidence, is a very valuable instrument. “Faith,” meaning a rigidly held certainty, if unchangeable with the introduction of new evidence, or only changeable at the expense of a feeling of guilt, I believe to be a serious barrier to man’s continuing evolution. Any systematized faith, protected by ritual and dogma, and developing vested interests in real estate, salaries, prestige, and power, will tend to slow man’s development of his highest powers.
In 1959 the American Humanist Association named Dr. Chisholm their Humanist of the Year. He addressed the Third International Humanist and Ethical Union World Congress held in Oslo in 1962. From its formation in 1968 until his death in 1971, Dr. Chisholm was the first honorary president of the Humanist Association of Canada. Dr. Chisholm was a distinguished Canadian psychiatrist who once made the headlines because of his view that Santa Claus should be taught as a myth to youngsters rather than as a real individual whom they will come to learn does not really exist. Jove, for example, is taught as a myth, and other gods one day will be, also, he reasoned. {CL; HNS; HNS2; TRI; WAS, 24 June 1956}
Chitwood, Marci (20th Century) Chitwood in 1998 became assistant editor of Figleaves, the newsletter of Cincinnati’s Free Inquiry Group.
Choate, Lowell F. (20th Century) Choate was editor of Progressive World (1947) and the American Rationalist. {FUS}
CHOCOLATE
Anthropologists from Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley, California, have located evidence of a village in the Ulúa Valley in northwestern Honduras which was continuously occupied for 3,000 years, until about 1000 C.E. The valley was renowned in pre-Columbian America for the quality of its cocoa beans, and Montezuma at the time of the conquistadors was said to have drunk cups of chocolate beverage every day. By 1500 Spanish explorers had returned samples to Europe, in 1657 the drink netted luxury prices in a London shop and in 1765 chocolate was manufactured in Massachusetts. Instead of wafers at communion, secularists choose wafers with chocolate at home. {CE; Henry Fountatin, The New York Times, 17 November 1998}
Choi, Jaihi (20th Century) A Korean, Prof. Choi addressed the Fourth International Humanist and Ethical Union World Congress held in Paris (1966).
Chomsky, Avram Noam (1928— ) A noted American linguist, Chomsky addressed the Fifth International Humanist and Ethical Union World Congress held in Boston (1970). In 1995, Chomsky became an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association. Speaking at the opening plenary of the 1999 Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City, he cited Thomas Paine as an inspiration, then detailed why freedom without opportunity is a dubious gift—the United States aid to the poor is the most miserly in the world, he lamented, suggesting that the International Monetary Fund is not on the side of the world’s poor despite its claims. Chomsky has called the Bible “probably the most genocidal book ever written.” Noting polls that show large percentages of Americans believing the Bible, he lamented that
the figures are shocking. Three-quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that—it’s astonishing. These numbers aren’t duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You’d have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population.
Unlike the structural linguists, who study language by starting with minimal sounds, Chomsky posited a rudimentary or primitive sentence, from which many syntactic combinations evolved through a series of transformational rules. The Chomskyan generative grammar was a theory that focused almost exclusively on syntax, or the rules of sentence formation. A rival view, such as that advanced at the University of Chicago by James McCawley, was called generative semantics and held that the study of grammar must necessarily involve the study of logic and meaning as well. Leibniz’s New Essays Concerning Human Understanding (1704) defended “innate ideas” against Locke’s attack, and Chomsky revived the concept of “innate ideas” in his Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (1966). Chomsky presently teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his most recent theory of language is called the Minimalist Program. Imagine, he told reporter Margalit Fox of The New York Times (5 December 1998), that some divine superengineer, in a single efficient stroke, endowed humans with the power of language where formerly they had none. This simple idea, the Minimalist Program, is the cornerstone of his approach to the discipline he founded in 1957. Although previously he had taught that an inborn mental endowment allows human beings to acquire, use, and understand language, the Minimalist Program streamlines his previous views, dispensing with concepts like “deep structure” and “surface structure,” both of which were more or less canonical in his earlier work. Some have spoken of Chomsky’s introduction of his theory of language in 1957 in the same breath with Darwin’s theory of evolution and Freud’s theory of the unconscious so far as its importance in the history of ideas. {CA; CE; E; HNS2}
Chorley, Robert Samuel Theodore [Baron of Kendal] (Born 1895) Lord Chorley was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association when Bertrand Russell was its president. He was editor of Arnould’s Law of Marine Insurance and President of the Haldane Society. He wrote Charley and Giles’ Shipping Law (1987).
Chorowsky, Karl (20th Century) Chorowsky, a Unitarian minister who found theists as well as humanists in his congregations, served in Brooklyn, New York, as well as in Westport, Connecticut.
Choukri, Mohammed (20th Century) A Moroccan author, Choukri wrote For Bread Alone (translated into English by Paul Bowles), The Tent, and Jean Genêt in Tangier. An atheist, he was asked by Ludmilla Biebl in Spitting Image #2 if he was unafraid of becoming a victim of the Islamic fundamentalists. “There is no point in being afraid,” Choukri responded. “If it happens, it happens.” {CA}
CHRIST Christ is a word which came from the term Christos, meaning “anointed with oil” [the Greek translation of the Aramaic Meshicha; Hebrew, Mashiakh]. Even by the time of Paul of Taursus, Christ became more of a proper noun than a title. In the Christian religion, Jesus is the personal name of its founder, Christ his title—his last name, many do not realize, is not Christ. (See entries for Christmas and for Jesus. For an atheist’s account, see “The Origin and Establishment of the Christ Myth,” by John M. Davis, in Secular Nation (Fall 1995].) {ER}
CHRIST, ACCORDING TO MONTY PYTHON “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” is a movie with the following plot: Brian is born just down the street from Jesus Christ. He joins the People’s Front of Judaea thirty-three years later and swears to defeat the Roman oppressors. Pursued by admirers and arrested, he is called before Pontius Pilate, who sentences him to death. Brian is crucified with some other bad guys upon a hill, and they join him in singing as they merrily go off to the afterlife. It’s the humorous story of a nobody.
Christesen, Clement (1911— ) “Clem” Christesen is an Australian rationalist, literary journalist, and editor. In 1940, he founded the Meanjin Quarterly and was its editor until 1975. Christesen was a one-time vice-president of the Council for Civil Liberties and a director of the Rationalist Association of Australia Ltd.
CHRISTIAN • Christian, n. One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. —Ambrose Bierce
• I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. We give them a nice Jewish boy to worship, five books—no charge. And what do we get in return? Crusades, the Inquisition, pogroms, the Holocaust. And now they want us to join them in heaven? I’ll take hell any day! —Harriet Levenbaum Kean
CHRISTIAN ADHERENTS Of the 5,772,000 humans in 1996, an estimated 66% are not Christians and a total of 34% are Christians, according to mid-1997 estimates. (See entry for Hell.)
CHRISTIAN ATHEISM • Thomas J. Altizer (1927— ) is an American theologian who is termed a Christian atheist. “Only by accepting and even willing the death of God in our experience can we be liberated from a transcendent beyond, an alien beyond which has been emptied and darkened by God’s self-alienation in Christ.”
• Paul Van Buren (1924— ) in The Secular Meaning of the Gospel claims that it is no longer possible to speak of God acting in the world. Science and technology have made the old mythology invalid. A simple faith in the Old Man in the Sky is now clearly impossible, but so has been the more sophisticated belief of the theologians. Thus, Van Buren holds, we must do without God and hold on to Jesus of Nazarath. The Gospel is “the good news of a free man who has set other men free.”
• William Hamilton (1924— ) wrote Radical Theology and the Death of God. He, Altizer, and Van Buren are all listed as Christian atheists in Karen Armstrong’s A History of God.
Freethinkers, rationalists, and secular humanists find all such ratiocination impossible to follow, comparing Christian atheism to the experience of playing a game of cricket using General Henry M. Robert’s Rules of Order.
CHRISTIAN COALITION
The Christian Coalition (1801-L Sara Drive, Chesapeake, VA 23320) was founded in 1989 by Pat Robertson “to give Christians a voice in government. We represent a growing group of nearly 2,000,000 members and supporters who believe it’s time for people of faith to have a voice in the conversation we call democracy.” Or so its Online homepage reads at <http://www.cc.org>. The Executive Director is Randy Tate. The group’s Families 2000 Stragegy has the aim of “recruiting 100,000 volunteers to serve as liaisons between their churches and local Christian Coalition chapters—an effort to mobilize hundreds of thousands of pro-family activists by November 2000.” Key beliefs: • Pro-life [code for: being against abortion] • Pro-family [code for: being against homosexuality] • Pro-religious freedom [code for: vote the nonbelievers out of office] The two organizations that have been the most efficient in fighting this right-wing religious group are People For the American Way (2000 M Street NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20036 <www.pfaw.org>); and the Interfaith Alliance at <http://www.tialliance.org>, whose president is the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman and whose executive director is the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy. Many benefit “from the fiction that religion has been banned from the public schools,” George B. Pyle has editorialized in The Salina Journal, Salina, Kansas. “Some may be truly anti-religious. But the rumor is more likely to be spread by those who claim to follow a Christian faith. It can certainly boost Christian Coalition fund-raising.” Pyle then reports that those who complain “that God has been banished from the public schools are very much mistaken. . . . There are as many prayers in the public schools as there are prayerful people. If our children are murdering each other, we must find something other than a lack of faith to blame.” {The New York Times, 31 May 1999}
CHRISTIAN ETHICS According to Bertrand Russell’s Education and the Modern World (1932), “The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts ‘sins’ and others ‘virtue’ on the grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences. An ethic not derived from superstition must decide first upon the kind of social effects which it desires to achieve and the kind which it desires to avoid. It must then decide, as far as our knowledge permits, what acts will promote the desired consequences; these acts it will praise, while those having a contrary tendency it will condemn.” Through such an emphasis laid upon sexual virtue, Russell wrote in Marriage and Morals (1959), “The Christian ethics inevitably . . . did a great deal to degrade the position of women. Since the moralists were men, woman appeared as the temptress; if they had been women, man would have had this role.” Only in modern times, Russell suggests, have women regained the degree of freedom which they enjoyed in the Roman Empire. Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, a move which led to women’s freedom being curtailed under the pretense of protecting them from sin. Only during the French Revolution were the laws of property and inheritance altered in order that women could recover their rights of inheritance which had been lost over the time of a dozen centuries.
CHRISTIAN HUMANISM Two Protestants, Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, referred to their outlooks at times as being that of Christian Humanism.
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY Christian Identity is an example of a hate group which embarrasses not only most Christians but also most Americans. Mark Thomas, for example, runs a Pennsylvania neo-Nazi group known as Christian Identity near Seisholtzville, Pennsylvania. In 1994 at a Hitler Youth Festival several hundred “skinheads” and other white supremacists met. “It is the trademark of the Jew to make us feel dirty and unworthy,” stated the monthly newsletter, The Watchman. In Idaho, a similar racist group—the Aryan Nation—is active. Both groups hold that the first chapter in the Bible claims that Jewish people are descended from Cain, who was a descendant of the devil snake and Eve. White people, they hold, are descendants of Abel, who was a descendant of Adam and Eve. They hold that there are two main races, Jews and white people, with everyone else being classified under “beasts of the field.” God’s chosen are not the Jews, in short: His chosen are whites of northern European extraction. Jews are Satan’s children and blacks are subhuman. Their culture, which glorifies violence, made its way to the United States from England in the early 1980s, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama. However, William Potter Gale, a retired Army colonel, had founded the Posse Commitatus, an anti-government group active during the 1970s and early 1980s. One large group, in Elohim City (City of God), Oklahoma, was founded by ex-Mennonite Robert G. Millar, who claims he was divinely led to the site. Millar has said that “this people [the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples] represents 9% of the population of the world. They control 50% of the wealth of the world. So it’s evident that the promises of God have come to pass.” Similar groups exist in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. In 1994, sixty-four white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups were active in Pennsylvania alone. An estimated two thousand incidents against Jews occurred nationally in 1994, according to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. In 1996, the Rev. Helen Young, a Montana Protestant minister, interviewed a group, the Freemen, which had threatened government officials and was being indicted for bank and mail fraud. They told her that as believers in Christian Identity they believed that God created white gentiles as a superior race, descended directly from Adam and Eve. Jews, they held, descended from a sexual union between Eve and Satan. Whites, therefore, are the true “Israelites,” a lost tribe that had migrated to America, the new promised land but one now corrupted by Jewish influence. Although Christian Identity was condemned by the National Council of Churches, the group issued documents calling on those would be “free” to sever ties to government, by not paying taxes and shunning Social Security cards, marriage licenses, and building permits. Ms. Young listened for four hours, then called their beliefs disgusting. Journalist Gustav Niebuhr, writing in The New York Times (12 April 1996), described the group’s twenty-page “edict,” or manifesto, which describes two categories of citizens: “We the People,” or white males, subject to “God’s law,” the Constitution, and its first ten amendments; and other racial groups, enfranchised only by “man’s law,” the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. “Free” white males have lost control of the country, said one of their leaders, Rodney Skurdal, and “We the People are now ruled by foreigners/aliens.” In a message to others, the Christian Identity group proclaimed, “This is a religious war between the Freemen characters, i.e., American nationals, in their attempt to return to their one and only true Almighty God and His laws.”
CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
Roman Catholic bishops in the United States went on record in 1994 concerning marital roles: marriage must be characterized by “mutual submission” of a husband and wife to each other. In 1998 Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination and an increasingly conservative force among American religious organizations, amended its essential statement of beliefs to include a declaration that a woman should “submit herself graciously” to her husband’s leadership and that a husband should “provide for, protect, and lead his family”:
The husband and wife are of equal worth before God. Both bear God’s image but each in differing ways. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being “in the image of God” as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his “helper” in managing their household and nurturing the next generation.
The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, R. Albert Mohler Jr., declared that submission of wives to their husbands is “not a modern idea” but “is clearly revealed in Scripture.” He added that “the secular world may hear it as strange, but it is, we believe, God’s pattern.” To critics he said if they would read the Bible they would see that God in the fifth chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians “says” that just as Christ is head of the church so the husband is “head of the wife.” Just “as Christ loved the church” so the husband, not the wife, was “to provide for, to protect, and to lead” their families, all the while recognizing that “husband and wife are of equal worth before God.” However, according to Baptist official Herb Hollinger, “I don’t know anyone who would say, ‘If you don’t believe [wives must be submissive to their husbands] you can’t be a member of our church.’” Jerry Falwell, a noted fundamentalist Christian, not a Southern Baptist, agreed with the Baptists’ statement, adding that marriage also was not a sacred ceremony that could ever be enjoyed by homosexuals. (Wags wondered if the Southern Baptist United States President, Bill Clinton, had discussed the ruling with his wife, a Methodist; or if the Southern Baptist wife of the Southern Baptist Vice President Al Gore was submissive or ungraciously non-capitulative, passive or active, masochistic or sadistic. Other wags wondered when Bible literalists such as Mohler and Falwell would show their faith by washing each other’s feet during 7 p.m. telecasts.) The Southern Baptists also have boycotted the Walt Disney Company, complaining that the entertainment giant condones homosexuality. In 1996 it voted to appoint a missionary specifically to evangelize Jews and went on record as opposing divorce, homosexual unions, and abortion. Although the Southern Baptists are, like the Mormons, on the conservative end of Protestant thinking, the more liberal churches are the Friends and the Congregationalists. Their adherents have the more contemporary view that the Biblical references are statements of the early church, not of Jesus, ideas that had been written but then later interpreted to support patriarchal and sexist outlooks. {The New York Times, 10 June 1998}
CHRISTIAN MEGACHURCHES Charles Trueheart in The Atlantic Monthly (August 1996) describes the “full-service” mostly Protestant churches which are winning millions of “customers” with pop-culture packaging. They may, he holds, be building a new form of community. Mariners Southcoast Church in Newport Beach, California, has an orchestra which plays upbeat soft rock with cappuccino carts dispensing “the secular sacrament” while numbers of seminars draw hundreds of individuals from throughout the area. Prince of Peace Church in suburban Minneapolis, Next Church in Dallas, Texas, Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, and Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, are examples of such megachurches which use contemporary music rather than pipe organs, old hymnals, and robed choirs to attract hundreds, sometimes thousands, of members. Willow Creek, for example, boasts 15,000 worshippers. Saddleback Valley Community Church in Mission Viejo, California, has a seventy-nine-acre campus, a 10,000-seat auditorium, 11,000 worshippers, and a building which cost more than $50 million. An estimated 400 megachurches were in business as of 1996.
CHRISTIAN NATION Many Christians refer to the United States of America as “a Christian nation,” this despite the clear statement to the contrary of President John Adams in 1797. Referring to the Treaty between the United States and Tripoli, Adams said “the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.” Many individuals, however, still continue to argue that because ours is a Christian nation, for example, it follows that religion can be taught in the public schools, “In God We Trust” can appear on our currency and our courtroom walls, and other such extensions can be concocted. In 1995, as an “olive branch” to Jews, the executive director of the Christian Coalition, Ralph E. Reed Jr., said it was a “blatant wrong” for some on the religious right to talk of the United States as a “Christian nation.” Such a phrase, he held, conjures up for Jews fearful historical memories of the Inquisition, of “barbarous acts” against Jews like pogroms, the establishment of ghettos and the Holocaust, and other such persecutions. Disinterested viewers doubt that such a declaration will sway those who believe that God is deaf to Jews’ prayers and that America is not necessarily a place where non-Christians should be welcome. [See entry for John Adams.]
CHRISTIAN NUDISM “Father God, we present ourselves to you in humble gratitude,” intoned the seventy-two-year-old preacher. Reporter Jennifer Lee of The Wall Street Journal (11 August 1997) described the scene as the Nottingham, New Hampshire, congregation rose to sign the opening hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Many Christian believe they will stand naked before God on Judgment Day. This group, Lee wrote, does not want to wait. The Rev. Harry Westcott stepped out from behind the pulpit “naked except for white sneakers and a black watch. The accompanist, his fingers skimming the keyboard of the Wurlitzer, is similarly undressed.” Although worshipers have the option of wearing clothing and some wear their Sunday best, others wear “their birthday suits.” Christian nudist publications are proliferating, as is nudism generally, Lee reported. “If you believe that the human body is a creation of God in his own image, there is nothing shameful or harmful about being nude,” the Rev. Westcott preached, citing Isaiah 20:2. Opponents cite parts of Genesis. Meanwhile, freethinkers have seldom gone on record as opposing nudism. In fact, the editor of Sunshine and Health in the 1950s was an active members of the American Humanist Association. (See entry for Nudity.)
CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION, DEBUNKING THE MOVEMENT The radical wing of the Religious Right is a group called Christian Reconstruction. Its leaders would replace democracy with a government that enforces their version of biblical law. One of its key individuals is James Dobson, a child psychologist who launched Focus on the Family in 1977. Debunking of the Christian Reconstruction Movement can be found on the Web: <http://www.servecom/thibodep/cr/cr.htm>.
CHRISTIAN RIGHT Skipp Porteous in Freedom Writer (May-June 1999) listed the following top ten Religious Right organizations:
• American Family Association—headed by the Rev. Donald Wildom, 61, of Mississippi • Chalcedon—founded by the “father of Christian Reconstruction,” the 82-year-old R. J. Rushdoony. • Christian Coalition—Pat Robertson, the 69-year-old founder boasts of a large membership but is a paper tiger having trouble with the Internal Revenue Service • Coalition On Revival—led by Jay Grimstead, 65, the group bent on creating a theocracy in America is “burned out.” • Concerned Women for America—founded by Beverly LaHaye, 69, now led by Carmen Pate and somewhat unproductive of any results. • Oregon Citizens Alliance—headed by Lon Mabon, the group is now defunct. • Focus on The Family—is the 800-pound gorilla of the Religious Right; founded by James Dobson, 64. • Free Congress Foundation—founded and directed by Paul Weyrich, who has announced, “We have lost the culture war.” • NACE/CEE—the National Association of Christian Educators and Citizens for Excellence in Education was founded by Robert Simons, 74; had some success in electing conservative Christians to school board seats. • Operation Rescue—once loud and boisterous, this antiabortion group founded by Randall Terry has lost most of its steam. • Traditional Values Coalition—Run by the Rev. Lou Sheldon, 65, and his family, it is primarily an antigay organization. • Christian Action Network—headed by Martin Mawyer, formerly of the Moral Majority, it is another primarily antigay organization. • Eagle Forum—founded by Phyllis Schlafly, it almost single-handedly defeated the Equal Rights Amendment. • Ruthrford Institute—a conservative Christian advocacy group was founded by John Whitehead, who made a break from his former Christian Reconstructionist views and now approaches issues from a more liberal viewpoint. • Promise Keepers—once feared by some as the “third wave,” it now is merely a ripple. Rallies planned for state capitals on 1 Jan 2000 have been canceled for fear of the Y2K bug.
CHRISTIAN SAINTS Lavender Lists (1990) makes note of the following “noteworthy saints”:
• St. Aelred of Rievaulx “of twelfth-century England, left writings expressing deep feelings for male spiritual friendship. To control his carnal impulse, Aelred fasted and took icy baths.
• St. John the Evangelist (the Apostle) “also known as the Beloved Disciple whom Jesus loved and who lay on Jesus’ bosom at the Last Supper. Medieval sculptures of John asleep with his head in Christ’s lap gave rise to mystical texts in which John is said to have enjoyed the milk of the Lord.”
• St. Moses the Hungarian (11th Century) “was sold as a slave to a polish noblewoman who developed a yen for him, but he preferred to stay with his fellow Russian prisoners rather than marry her. Angered by his refusal, she finally had Moses whipped and his genitals cut off. He eventually entered a monastery, where he constantly warned the other monks to avoid women and sin. He was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.”
• St. Sebastian “has been venerated by homosexuals since at least the second half of the nineteenth century, as well as by male artists looking for an excuse to draw a nude male body.”
• St. Sergius and St. Bacchus “were said to have been lovers.”
CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS, FUNDAMENTALIST Fundamentalist schools have been established across America, allegedly because parents believe and want to follow Deuteronomy 6:7’s injunction, “And thou shalt teach [God’s commandments] diligently unto thy children”. According to Christian Schools International, at least 3,200 member schools existed in 1998 with 600,000 pupils who had been taken out of public schools.
When is a Christian school a fundamentalist school? The Economist (6 June 1998) answers:
There are no hard-and-fast rules; but an unequivocal belief in creationism is probably the most reliable indicator. So is a sense of ministering to the whole child. “We believe that every human has three parts: spirit, body and soul, and that we should minister to all three parts,” says John Burges, the principal and only full-time teacher at Grace [Christian School, Mason, Texas].
The “Accelerated Christian Curriculum,” which Grace uses, has a Christian slant:
The history curriculum carries the notion of America’s “manifest destiny” far beyond Monroe’s dreams. Spain was defeated in North America because it was Catholic. George Washington was preserved by a miracle during the French-Indian war. All Muslims are “descendants of Isaac’s half-brother Ishmael.” Above all, “Americanism” is the divine template for the world.
Grace is pragmatic in some respects. In deer season the whole school goes hunting (physical education), butchers a deer (biology), then cooks it (home economics) into venison burgers for the school lunch. And everyone says grace first.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE Christian Science is a denomination founded by Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy. Widowed six months after her marriage to George W. Glover, and separating from dentist Daniel Patterson in 1866, she married Asa Gilbert Eddy in 1877. She gave birth to one child, also named George W. Glover. The church Mrs. Eddy founded is centrally organized and directed but, as pointed out by Gaius Glenn Atkins who once taught homiletics and sociology at Auburn Theological Seminary in North Marshfield, Massachusetts, it functions denominationally in local churches with their own buildings, leaders and “readers,” stated times, and forms of worship. The “Mother Church” in Boston was in its origin a variant of American Protestantism, although it has since extended internationally. Science and Health was a book in which Mrs. Eddy explains the philosophy of Christian Science, which is pure idealism: “Nothing is real and eternal; nothing is spirit—but God and His ideal; evil has no reality.” In short, Atkins writes, “Since God is good, He cannot have created nor be responsible for all the shadowed side of life. Man is ‘God’s spiritual idea’ and belongs by right to an order in which there is neither sickness, sin, sorrow, or death. Such things are errors of his mortal mind. They have no reality for him save as he admits them. Deny them and they cease to exist. There are, therefore, two fundamentally opposed systems of belief, the true and the false. Man is entangled in a false system of belief whose sources Mrs. Eddy does not convincingly trace. He may escape that entanglement with all its consequences by affirming the other system and demonstrating his affirmation by faith, self-discipline, and practice.” Adds Atkins, “One may say, therefore, that Christian Science is a philosophy, a semi-theology, a system of Biblicism and a psycho-therapy effectively organized, amply financed and aptly propagated. Its followers have an unusually strong group consciousness.” Two leading critics of Christian Science have been Mark Twain in Christian Science (1907) and Willa Cather in The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1908). Village Voice critic Michael Warner has written, “Eddy’s own prose style is one of the wonders of the modern world. She took the English language to places it had never been before. Together with Artemus Ward and Erma Bombeck, she stands in the front rank of American humorists, writing in such masterful deadpan you can still hear a 19th-century pin dropping. She writes, for example, ‘Obesity is an adipose belief of yourself as a substance.’ (Sentences of this grandeur prompted Mark Twain, in a 1903 work called The Literary Guillotine, to pose as the judge of a lawsuit by Henry James against Mary Baker Eddy. James argues that Eddy has infringed on his ownership of ‘the patent obscure sentence.’ Judge Twain concludes that Eddy beat James to it.) As philosophy, Eddy’s writing is a minor branch in the American pragmatist tradition, telling us that the world we encounter has already been shaped by our beliefs about it. But Eddy concludes that if reality is shaped by belief it must be delusional and malign, and thus she veers from pragmatism into the gothic. When you treat a patient with a fever, she instructs, ‘the fever is to be argued down,’ and your argument should go like this: ‘Inflammation is not inflammation or redness and soreness of any part; this is your belief only and this belief is the red dragon the King of beasts which means this belief of inflammation is the leading lie out of which you get your fright that causes chills and heat.’ In later life, Eddy gave herself over to these gothic tendencies. Her greatest creation in this vein is the theory of malicious animal magnetism (MAM). Eddy thought that several of her enemies—all former disciples—were poisoning her with MAM, and that she could tell which enemy was working on her at any given moment because each produced the effects of a different poison: when one was thinking about her, she felt strychnine; when another, arsenic. If nothing else, such fantasias show that Eddy shared with Cather a marked distaste for the merely commonplace. Eddy wrenched herself free of the ordinary, and this got Cather’s attention. It also prompted in Cather the moral melancholy that would become the distinctive note of her mature style.” (See entries for Samuel Clemens, Willa Cather, Caroline Fraser, and Martin Gardner.) {ER; RE; Village Voice, 17 August 1993}
CHRISTIAN WRITERS: See entry for Theistic Humanism.
CHRISTIANITY • In reality we Christians are nothing more than a sect of Jews. —G. C. Lichtenberg
• It is surely high time to recognize that Christianity is a busted flush: we can no longer view the Bible reverentially and uncritically as a God-given guide to faith and morals. Nor (if we use the same canons of critical scholarship that have been applied to Church history since the time of Gibbon) can we give credence to the claim of any Church to embody an authentic divine revelation or ongoing sacramental channel of grace. —Daniel O’Hara,
a former Anglican curate (1968—1970)
and Rationalist Press Association Director
Christianity, which is professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies, is a religion derived from Jesus—the Christ, the Messiah, the second person of the Trinity—as interpreted from a series of books called the Holy Bible. Over the centuries, Christianity has developed from its original roots in Judaism, despite sporadic persecution, being spread through the Roman Empire by missionaries, notably St. Paul, and it was recognized by Emperor Constantine in 313 as the official religion of Rome. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 condemned such heresies concerning the nature of Christ as Arianism (the belief that the Son of God was not the same as the Father but was an agent for creating the world), Nestorianism (a belief that divine and human persons remained separate in the incarnate Christ), and Monophysitism (a belief that Christ’s nature remains divine and was never human although Jesus took on an earthly and human body). Some basic sources for understanding Christianity are as follows:
Michael Arnheim, Is Christianity True? (1984) J. G. Davies, The Early Christian Church (1965) Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History (1995) Asher Finkel, The Pharisees and the Teacher of Nazareth (1964) R. M. Grant, Augustus to Constantine (1970) R. Joseph Hoffman, The Origins of Christianity Philip Hughes, History of the Church (3 volumes, 1949) K. S. Latourette, History of the Expansion of Christianity (1937—1945) Jules Lebreton and Jacque Zeiller, A History of the Early Church (4 volumes, 1944—1946) Hans Lietzmann, The History of the Early Church (4 volumes, 1961)
“Ever since the start of public opinion polling in the late 1930s,” complain Roger Finke and Rodney Stark in The Churching of America 1776—1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (1992), “surveys have always found that virtually everyone has a religion [in the United States]. I know of no national survey in which as many as ten percent answered ‘none’ when asked their religious affiliation. But the nation’s churches cannot possibly seat ninety percent of the population. More careful investigation reveals that for many, their claim to a religious affiliation amounts to nothing more than a vague recollection of what their parents or grandparents have passed along as the family preference. . . . Can students who think they go to the Pisscaple Church have ever seen the word Episcopal? Or what of Presditurians?” Some Christians claim the United States has always been a Christian nation. Stephanie Thomas in Virginia wrote The Economist (15 January 1994) that “Until Engel v. Vitale (1962) America, in both its public and private life, was an openly Christian nation. Until that decision struck down ‘prayer in the public schools,’ everyone acknowledged that although no particular denomination was entitled to be ‘established,’ the very fabric of America’s culture as well as its government was grounded and founded on Christian principles. Indeed, both the words and deeds of Thomas Jefferson clearly indicate that this is what was intended. As Justice Joseph Story indicated, the institution of the church was to be isolated from the institution of the state.” However, President Washington in 1797 confirmed and signed the Treaty between the United States and Tripoli in which appears the significant statement, ‘. . . the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.’ ” “Organized Christianity,” wrote R. Gallienne, “has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder’s than any other agency in the world.” What Christianity has accomplished, most of its critics agree, is a remarkable ability to convince its adherents that their souls are stained indelibly with sin. As to why Christianity incorporated the Old Testament instead of using just the New Testament, Irving Kristol in Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (1995) has suggested
They [the church fathers] needed the Old Testament for certain key statements that are not found in the New Testament, or at least are not found there in an emphatic way, such as that when God created the world, he saw that “it was good.” That is an Old Testament doctrine. It became a Christian doctrine, and it is crucial to any orthodoxy, in contrast to gnosticism, which says that no one knows who created the world—a demiurge or whatever—but that the world is certainly bad. (See entries for John Adams, Arianism, Civilization, Thomas Jefferson, Monophysitism, and Nestorianism.) {CE; ER; Freethought History #8, 1993}
CHRISTIANITY, FOUNDER OF Ferdinand Christian Baur (1826—1860), the pioneering German Scripture scholar who headed what was known as the Tübingen School, tried to explain the evolution of Christianity in terms of a rigidly maintained Hegelian philosophy of history. In its earliest stage, he found, Christianity was a form of Judaism: Jesus was the Messiah of the Jews, not the founder of a world religion. In contradistinction to this view (thesis), Paul maintained that Jesus was the Messiah of the whole world, and Christianity was wholly distinct from Judaism and thus unrestricted by the Mosaic law (antithesis). The British novelist A. N. Wilson, in Paul: The Mind of the Apostle (1997), holds that Paul is the one who created Christianity, not Jesus, and expected that his research would “change the way we think about Christianity.” What disturbs many is Wilson’s picture of Paul himself: once a wealthy tent maker who supplied the hated Roman forces; a former member of the Jerusalem temple guard who had not only persecuted Jesus’s followers but probably even had a role in the death of Jesus himself. {ER; Peter Steinfels, The New York Times, 22 March 1997}
CHRISTIANS: For an estimate of the number of Christians in the world, see entry for Hell.
CHRISTIANS AND GAYS In 1998 Time reported the following quotations in its issue entitled “The War Over Gays” (26 October 1998):
• God hates fags. —Sign carried by the Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and his band of protesters at the 1998 funeral of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old Wyoming gay man beaten to death by two heterosexuals who disliked homosexuals.
• We are standing with the G.O.P. [Republican Party] against the Sodomites. —The Rev. O. N. Otwell, one of several protesters wanting to ban a Republican
gay group from the Texas party’s convention. • You should try to show them a way to deal with [homosexuality] just like alcohol
. . . or sex addiction . . . or kleptomaniacs. —Trent Lott, the U. S. Senate majority (Republican) leader on television during june. He also suggested that gays are sinners and said he got his views “in the Bible.”
• wage the war against the homosexual agenda. —Gary Bauer’s website for the Family Research Council calls homosexuality “destructive”
• the acceptance of homosexuality is the last step in the decline of Gentile civilization. —Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, who also warned that hurricanes could hit Orlando, Florida, because of gay events there.
CHRISTIANS, HIDDEN Christianity was banned in Japan in 1612, having been introduced by Francis Xavier in 1549. The government, concerned about dual loyalties the Christian converts might have, crucified, boiled, drowned, burned, or otherwise murdered those who disputed the banning. Many gave up, but those who did not became kakure Kirishitan, or hidden Christians. In 1873 when Christianity was again legalized, most of the 50,000 or so hidden Christians returned to conventional Christianity. A few, however, re-created from memory in the 1820s their version of Biblical stories. As described in The Economist (11 January 1997), the young Holy One debated with Buddhist priests, “as twelve-year-old Jesus was said to have done with the Jewish elders. Two men, Ponsha and Piroto (i.e., Pontius Pilate), are told to kill all children of five and under, an echo of Herod’s order. Mary gives birth in a stable, but the innkeeper who had spurned her then takes her in: in a wonderfully Japanese touch, he offers her a hot bath.” Little wonder, say freethinkers, that the initial Biblical stories written long after the facts were similarly stretched.
Christie, Dame Agatha (1891—1976) Christie, the English detective storywriter who in 1971 was named Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, may or may not have been a philosophic naturalist. In her story, “The Hound of Death” (1933), however, she wrote, “The things we call supernatural are not necessarily supernatural at all. An electric flashlight would be supernatural to a savage. The supernatural is only the natural of which the laws are not yet understood.”
CHRISTMAS Christians object to the shortening of Christmas to “Xmas” by commercial concerns and others. Non-believers, however, editorialize their feelings about the holiday by calling it “Xmess.” The Rationalist Society of St. Louis, describing the event as “Christmyth,” has published the following:
• December 25: Christmas was given this date because it was strongly identified with pagan rites, the winter solstice, and numerous feats already celebrated close to that date. In fact, Dec. 25 was so strongly identified with pagan rites that many felt it sacrilegious to observe Jesus’s birth then. The ancient Roman calendars identified Dec. 25 as the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, the Intermediary of the One and Only Supreme God, the Sovereign Master of Heaven. Emperor Aurelian consecrated a temple to this god on Dec. 25, 274 C.E. [Common Era], well before agreement was reached on the date of Christ’s birth. The final selection of Dec. 25 as the date to celebrate Christmas may have been given a boost by Constantine who was a worshiper of the Unconquered Sun. There has been no unanimity in acceptance of this date; there have been movements by Christians to remove it from the ecclesiastical calendar. (See entry for Stanley Stokes.)
• Bethlehem: To fulfill his role as king of the Jews, Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem, as were Joseph and David. But it was reported that Jesus was a Nazarene. Some way was needed to explain why a man from Nazareth was born in Bethlehem. The story of the census allowed the writers of the Gospels to not only move their central character to the appropriate city of birth, but to also conveniently explain the circumstances surrounding his birth in a stable, which just happened to parallel the conditions under which similar saviors were born. There is no historical evidence that such a census was conducted in any year that could possibly have been that of Jesus’s birth.
• We Three Kings: This notion was not unique to the Jesus story. The birth of Socrates (469 B.C.E.) and Krishna (1200 B.C.E.) were both also marked by the presentation of the gifts of gold, frankincense (a type of incense made from resins of a tree found in the Mideast), and myrrh (another type of incense made primarily from the tree gum resin of the myrrh tree; also used as an embalming compound and a drug). The arrival of Magi with gifts was a virtual cliché, also reported earlier in the myths of Osiris, Zoroaster, and Mithra. The Magi were actually a Persian priestly caste that arose to prominence under Zoroastrianism. Biblical accounts do not establish the number of Magi, so various traditions have arisen in depicting this aspects of the nativity scene. The notion that there were three is likely because three gifts were mentioned. The Magi are also occasionally identified as kings, although this is not contained in the Gospel accounts.
• Nativity Scene: The popular scene, including animals, has been traced back to St. Francis of Assisi. But the traditions tapped by St. Francis go back much further even than the supposed time of Jesus’s birth. The stable could very well be an adaptation of the cave, which was the birthplace of numerous other savior gods which preceded him. However, stables are also frequently cited as origin points for gods. The astrological explanation is that the constellation Capricorn, the Goat, was directly under the earth at the time of the winter solstice. This constellation was also known as the Stable of Augeas, which was cleaned by Hercules. Similar tales have been traced back to at least 1700 B.C.E., the date of an Egyptian nativity scene from the Temple of Amen at Luxor. This depiction was intended to relate the birth of the first-born sons of the Pharaohs, but did so in a manner that would be instantly recognized by Christians.
• Mary: The Egyptian god Isis is said to have been the most important model for the character Mary, mother of Jesus. In Alexandria in the fourth century the Temple of Isis and the Church of St. Mary were next door neighbors, and pagans and Christians viewed the two as largely interchangeable. Isis was actually called Meri, and is said to have made occasional personal appearances before her more devout worshippers. Isis, also a virgin, was a gentle mother-goddess who was an intercessor on the behalf of mortals. Joseph had an Egyptian counterpart in the earth god, Seb. In the Egyptian tongue, “Jo” means god, so that if this is put together with the name Seb, we have approximated the name Joseph. Likewise, as Mary begat Jesus, Isis begat Horus. As Isis and Seb hid Horus from the serpent Herut, Mary and Joseph hid Jesus from Herod. The similarity of the names of the mythical Herut and the historical Herod was apparently too much for the authors to the Gospels to ignore. They had to work him into the story with the Massacre of the Innocents, totally unsubstantiated by any historical accounts, but easily explainable by examining parallel myths.
Wick Allison, former publisher of National Review and author of That’s in the Bible?, figures that Jesus was born in 6 B.C.E. (Before the Christian Era). Dionysius Exiguus (“Denny the Runt”) designated the first year after the birth as anno Domini (year of our Lord) 1, so Jesus would have been born in the year before that: not the year 0, but 1 B.C.E. Christian scholars complained that Dionysius erred, that Jesus had not been born in the 753rd year of the old Roman calendar: Herod the Great, King of Judea, they argued, had died in the 750th year after Rome was founded, so if Jesus was born in Herod’s reign then Dionysius was at least three years off, maybe five. Allison uses other evidence—Luke may have confused Quirinius with Quintilius, writing that a census was taken “while Quirinius was governor of Syria,” but it was Quintilius who was legate in Syria from 6 to 4 B.C.E. The man-hours spent in such mathematics has been staggering, everyone agrees. Janis Ian, in The Advocate (12 December 1995), told of a gay male couple wishing to educate their son about Christmas. “If we start early, he’ll have more time to get over it later on,” remarks one of the two dads, whose forebears were Catholic priests. They invite Ian to help re-create the Last Supper for a Christmas dinner, but she points out that the Last Supper did not take place until late April. Going ahead, nevertheless, they invite twelve friends for a re-enactment of the meal. All goes well, particularly when Jason decides, after being told how the story ends, to play Judas and gets kissed by the person (a lesbian) playing Jesus. Mary, they decide, is not present because “they probably had her back in the kitchen.” The youth is said to have enjoyed the religious re-enactment, except he had a quick tantrum upon finding that he would not at the end collect the thirty silver dollars. Christmas has no relevance for freethinkers, who regard it as a time of inflated prices and sales of un-needed items. As observed by Jimmy Cannon, “Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed, and the rejected.” (See entries for Thomas William Flynn, often dubbed “the anti-Claus”; Charles Follen; Humanist Holidays; and Rick Ganulin.)
CHRISTMAS CAROLS: “We Wish You a Merry Solstice,” “Arrest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Deck the Halls with Calls of Folly”: these are new humanistic lyrics for old religious tunes. See entry for David J. Gornik.
CHRISTMAS TREE: See entries for Eliza and Charles Follen, who introduced the custom to America.
CHRIST’S PENIS Penises in various societies have been revered, sometimes even been eaten by victorious warriors who believed they would then receive added sexual potency from such a diet. A fascinum in Latin was the image of an erect penis which people hung up in their rooms, wore around necks, or worshiped as an aid to warding off the evil eye. Diane Ackerman, noting that the word fascinate refers to penises, is fascinated by the religious interest in the male organ. The penis of the crucified Jesus Christ, for example, has long been an object of adoration. “Hundreds of Renaissance churches,” she writes, “claimed to have part of Christ’s penis as a holy relic. His circumcised prepuce, the only mortal part of him left on earth when he ascended to heaven, was treasured as a miraculous fertility aid. Women prayed at Christ’s foreskin for help in conceiving. Thirteen of those relics survive today. The best known, at the Abbey Church in Chartres, was said to be responsible for thousands of pregnancies.” Connecticut painter and photographer Anne Rowland, partly in response to the fundamentalist hysteria surrounding art work sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts in the late 1980s, holds that “if we assign a gender to God, we must accept the deity as a sexual being, with all the ramifications that entails.” At the Gregg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, Washington, she exhibited in a 1991 show entitled “Dictu Sanctificare” not only “Jesus’s Penis” (which was erect and circumcised, leading some “size queens” to comment about its smallness) but also “God’s Penis” (which was flaccid and not circumcised, leading other wags to ask why He had not been mutilated). She also exhibited “God’s Beard,” “Mary Magdalene’s Hair,” “Eve’s Fig Leaf,” “Jesus When He Was Just An Embryo,” and other such works. Rowland is concerned about the politicization of religion in America and the censorious stance of the fundamentalist right. Fundamentalists have been infuriated by such a blasphemous cock-up. Others, however, noting that God’s penis is flaccid whereas Jesus’s is erect, compliment Rowland for giving an entirely original meaning to “religious member.” (See entry for Circumcision.) {ACK}
CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT UNIVERSITY Humanists at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, are on the Web at: <www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>.
Christopher, James (1942— ) An editorial associate of Free Inquiry, Christopher founded an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Calling it the Secular Organization for Sobriety (SOS), he has organized a large number of groups which do not utilize the “higher power” concept of AA’s 12-step plan. His program has received much favorable attention from a variety of counselors in medical and scientific circles in this and other nations. Christopher, who is a Secular Humanist Mentor of the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, is author of SOS Sobriety, The Proven Alternative to 12-Step Programs (1992). Christopher was a participant in 1996 at the Humanist World Congress held in Mexico City. (See entry for the Secular Organization for Sobriety.)
CHRONOLOGICAL ERAS: See entry for Eras.
[[Chubb, Percival (1860—1960)
An Englishman and charter member of the London Ethical Culture Society, Chubb became an Ethical Culture leader in New York, having been recruited and trained by Stanton Coit. From 1898 to 1904, he edited Ethical Record. From 1911 to 1933, he led the St. Louis society and was emeritus until his death. (See entry for Ethical Culture.) {EU, Howard B. Radest; HNS; RAT}
Chubb, Thomas (1679—1747) An English deist, Chubb was one of the first to show rationalism among the common people. Gradually relinquishing supernatural religion, he came to consider that Jesus Christ was of the religion of Thomas Chubb. In his A Farewell to His Readers (1747), he appears to reject both revelation and special providence. {BDF; FUK; RAT}
Chugerman, Samuel (20th Century) Chugerman wrote Lester F. Ward: The American Aristotle (1939). {FUS}
Chuman, Joseph (20th Century) Chuman, a classics graduate of City College of New York who received his doctorate in religion at Columbia University, started Ethical Culture leadership training in 1967. He led briefly in Essex County, New Jersey, then settled as Leader in Bergen County. Chuman signed Humanist Manifesto II and has been on the editorial board of the International Humanist. He is on the Board of Governors of The Humanist Institute and is one of the members of the IHEU’s Committee on Religious Extremism and Rational Inquiry. In 1998 at the International Humanist and Ethical Union’s congress in Mumbai, Chuman spoke about the resurgence of religion in North America, lamenting the fact that fundamentalists have become a powerful political force. E-mail: <jchuman@idt.net>. (See entry for Ethical Culture.) {EU, Howard B. Radest; HM2}
Chumbawamba Members of the United Kingdom band known as Chumbawamba had a 1997 hit, Tubthumping. On the Web, the group was asked questions about religion, and their freethinking responses are as follows:
LuLu09: Were you raised an atheist, or were you born into a religion and dropped out? If so, why? Chumbawamba: I [Boff that is] was raised as a Mormon in Burnley, heartland of Fundamental bible-bashing (cf “Oranges Are not The Only Fruit” by Jeannette Winterson), it took me most of my teenage years to extricate myself from religion. I never “got” religion, though I tried—read the Bible, prayed, went to Sunday School, etc. Nothing happened. No “still, small voice,” no answers to prayers. Nothing. And then this mental void began to be filled with real philosophical/logical problems which religion was skirting around (existence of God, creationism, etc) and by political and social problems which religion was part of (male dominance, racism, war, capitalism, etc,). And eventually the whole bundle imploded sometime when I discovered the Bonzo Dog Band, sex, and truancy. All my huge family are still Mormons; we all get along fine. LuLu09 Um, this little question has been bugging me for a while. Do you guys see any benefit in religion/spirituality at all? I'm not religious or anything, just curious. And another thing I've been running over with a few friends . . . (just want an opinion) people want meaning in their lives, they look for meaning in everything they do. But say there is no meaning? Suppose there's no reason or “truth” or “rightness” in anything? It's all meaningless. Or suppose EVERYTHING matters? Which would be worse? Chumbawamba: No, I don't see any benefit in religion, other than the wearing of priest's robes makes paedophiles easier to identify. As for spirituality, what exactly is it? I've never trusted anybody who claimed to be spiritual. It's like claiming to have a sixth sense which nobody else can see. When people say they're spiritual what they usually mean is: “I'm dead special me! Unlike the rest of you who are a couple of steps down the evolutionary ladder.” The problem with religion or the state for that matter is that it involves putting faith in something above yourself. They take power and responsibility away from ordinary people and undervalue people's worth. In lefty circles there's a tendency to dismiss Western religions as bollocks whilst believing any old clap-trap as long as it's Eastern. I'm sick of hearing how spiritual and fantastic Buddhism is; tell it to the slave labourers in Burma. They live under a Buddhist system and its not doing them much good. As for the second part of your question... the tendency to claim everything is meaningless or of equal importance seems part of the disease of post-modernism. I hate post-modernism because it's just an excuse to be self serving and not care about anything. I think it's worth taking part in the struggle to be human. Calling it searching for truth sounds a bit pompous. Human beings are endlessly inventive and capable of fantastic things, seems sensible to put our efforts in to creating something better than we have now. We don't believe in fate. We've got capitalism, religion and military regimes murdering and depriving people, these aren't unchangeable, immutable ever to be with us systems. We don't have to accept them. Questions like “Does nothing matter? Does everything matter?” have to come second to “why are vast portions of the earth's population starving in the midst of plenty.” - S. Berkely: My question is this: if you believe in god/divine power/creation force on any level, how would you define it and how do you see it manifest itself in the world around you (if you believe it does)? Chumbawamba: We don't believe in god on any level. Religion is a socially acceptable version of heroin, it's a prop which fucks people up and over. And as Blaise Pascal so aptly put it: "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." {http://www.chumba.com/_faquestions.htm}
CHURCH AND STATE President Thomas Jefferson’s tombstone describes him not as a former President but as the father of the University of Virginia and the author of the Declaration and of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. The latter was a law which he and James Madison struggled for nine years to get through the legislature. “The Virginia Statute,” wrote Anthony Lewis in The New York Times, “not only rejected official support for a single, established church. It forbade neutral support for all denominations: which is what some Americans want government to do today. The statute’s principles informed the religion clauses of the First Amendment, which was drafted by Madison.” Lewis, noting that in the 1800 campaign for President, Jefferson was attacked as an atheist, added, “In fact he believed in God despite his dislike of priesthoods and his rejection of biblical revelation, saying he “was a sect of one.” He believed that diversity of creeds and separation of church from state would actually strengthen religion in America, a prediction which has proved true. In the absence of state involvement, religion has thrived. On the Jefferson Memorial in Washington is carved his statement: “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,” which he wrote about activities of the clergy. Lewis notes that Jefferson and John Adams, political opponents and longtime friends, both died on 4 July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams’s last words were, “Jefferson still lives.” (See entry for Protestants and Others United for the Separation of Church and State.)
CHURCH AND STATE (Ireland) A quarterly, Church and State can be reached by contacting P. Maloney, Box 159, Cork, Ireland.
Church, Archibald (20th Century) Church was editor of The Realist, a Journal of Scientific Humanism from 1929 to 1930. Lancelot Hogben was one of its contributors.
Church, Henry Tyrell (Died 1859)
Church was a lecturer and writer who edited Tallis’s Shakespeare. He contributed to the Investigator when it was edited by Bradlaugh. {BDF}
Church, Mary Ann (19th Century) Although not ordained, Church was listed in the Universalist Register (1838), making her the first woman in Canada to be officially recognized as a preacher.
CHURCH OF CHRIST The Church of Christ, organized in 1830, is at PO Box 472, Independence, Missouri 64051.
CHURCH OF EUTHANASIA The C of E (not to be confused with the Church of England) is led by the Rev. Chris Korda (PO Box 261, Somerville, MA 02143). In the tradition of the ancient May-Pole worshippers and heathen Free Spirits, the group is noted for its craziness. For example, it has One Commandment: “Thou Shall Not Procreate.” The Four Pillars of the Church are Suicide, Abortion, Cannibalism, and Sodomy. In their efforts to restore “balance between Humans and the remaining species on Earth,” they advocate “massive voluntary population reduction, which will require a leap in Human consciousness to a new species awareness.” Included among the 100,000 of bumper stickers the group has sold are the following:
• Save the Planet—Kill Yourself • Eat People Not Animals • Prevent AIDS—Aim for the Chin • Thank You for Not Breeding • Eat a Queer Fetus for Jesus • God is Coming, Stick Out Your Tongue
The Church’s on-line journal, Snuff It, is found at <http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/coe>. “Unfortunately,” according to the Rev. Chris, “the group attracts Humanists like flies on crap, so the conversation tends to be dull to say the least. We occasionally try to liven things up a bit by posting sermons or articles from Snuff It. Feel free to lurk there, annoy the Humanists, and flame the idiots who post pro-life messages.” {Freethought History, #23, 1997}
CHURCH OF GOD IN CHRIST The Church of God in Christ, which has over 5,000,000 members, is at 939 Mason Street, Memphis, Tennessee 38126.
CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS Commonly called Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe that their founder, Joseph Smith, had golden tablets revealed to him by God. Those tablets, translated as the Book of Mormon, were dropped from the sky at Palmyra, New York. Mormons followed Smith westward, founding Salt Lake City in Utah in 1847, three years after a mob murdered Smith and his brother Hyrum in 1844. Under the leadership of Brigham Young, the Mormons weathered hardships and built a communal economy. Plural marriages within the group prevented Utah’s admission to the Union until 1896, but in 1890 the church withdrew its sanction of polygamy. The church is led by a three-member First Presidency and by the Council of Twelve (the Apostles). Mormons believe in baptizing those who died without hearing the Mormon message. As a result, they have established massive genealogical records which include an estimated 200,000,000 people who were baptized and added to the index. Included are Anne Frank, Joan of Arc, St. Francis of Assisi, Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields, and other non-Mormons. Because of intense pressure from Jewish groups, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints signed an agreement to remove from their Index all Jewish Holocaust victims, except those with descendants who are current Mormons and approve of their Jewish ancestors’ inclusion. A separatist group, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was organized in 1852 and has its headquarters in Independence, Missouri. D. Michael Quinn, in Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example (1996), found that “most of Utah went apoplectic” at his assertions that several prominent Mormons might be gay. “When I wrote that [Mormon Church founder] Joseph Smith slept with men all his life,” he told The Advocate, 3 March 1998), I meant slept with them.” Quinn also alleged that the former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir never married and referred to his protégés as his “boy chums” and “the loves of [his] life.” Quinn, who had been a full professor at Brigham Young University,” resigned in 1988 and was excommunicated from the church in 1993. Quinn—himself a homosexual—laments the church’s homophobia and its hyprocisy. (See entries for Steve Benson, grandchild of Ezra Taft Benson, a Mormon leader; for non-theists Charles Chaplin and W. C. Fields; and for Virgil Thomson.) {CE}
CHURCH OF POSITIVISM In 1881 in Brazil the Church of Positivism was established. It emphasized the views of Auguste Comte, whose slogan “Order and Progress” appears on the Brazilian national flag.
CHURCH OF THE EXQUISITE PANIC: See entry for Robert Delford Brown.
CHURCH OF THE HOLY SPOOK
Shane McGowran is the Irish singer-author of a freethinking “Church of the Holy Spook.”
CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP The Church of the Larger Fellowship, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02108, provides a ministry to Unitarian Universalists all over the world. For individuals who live nowhere near a Unitarian Universalist society, the organization keeps in touch by mail.
CHURCH ORGANISTS: See entry for Andrew DeMasi.
CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT The Church Universal and Triumphant, a Montana sect, was founded in 1957 by Elizabeth Clare Prophet and her husband Mark. The group has its roots in theosophy and has told the press that it establishes “direct mystical contact with divine principle through contemplation, revelation, and other techniques.” Ms. Prophet claims to receive dictations from a host of spirits called Ascended Masters. When the group in 1980 issued a warning of an imminent Soviet missile strike that could destroy the United States, several thousand followers sold belongings, left their families, and crammed into bomb shelters in mountains on the northern boundary of Yellowstone National Park. Enthusiasm waned when no attack occurred. Ms. Prophet, whom many followers call Mother, announced in 1997 that she and her fourth husband, Edward Francis, had divorced, which further disillusioned members, who had been told that “the marriage is divinely inspired.” {The New York Times, 2 March 1997}
Churchill, Charles (1731—1764) In Gotham (1763), Churchill, an English poet and satirist, wrote, “Faith is a necessary fraud at best.” {TYD}
Churchill, R. C. (20th Century) A freethinker, Churchill wrote English Literature and the Agnostics (1944) and Art and Christianity (1945). {GS}
Churchill, Randolph (1911-1968): For a comment by the son of Sir Winston Churchill, see entry for Bible.
Churchland, Patricia Smith (20th Century) Churchland, a professor of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego, is a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism. She is the author of Neurophilosophy and Alzheimer’s Disease (1992), Neurophilosophy: Toward A Unified Science of the Mind-Brain (1986), and The Computational Brain (1992). In Free Inquiry (Fall 1995), she further developed contemporary notions of consciousness, neuroscience, and ethics. (See entries for Adam Carley, consciousness, and John R. Searle.) {CA; E}
Churchland, Paul (1942— ) Churchland, who teaches at the University of California in San Diego, is author of The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain (1995). For The Journal of Philosophy in 1981, he wrote, “Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes.” He is married to Patricia Smith Churchland. {CA; E}
Chydenius, Anders (19th Century) Chydenius was a noted non-theist in Finland. (See entry for Scandinavian Unbelievers.)
Chypere, John (20th Century) A freethinker, Chypere wrote A Psychoanalysis of Jesus Christ (1986). {GS}
Ciardi, John (1916—1986) A member of the Institute of Arts and Letters of the American Academy, Ciardi once proposed to The Humanist editor Priscilla Robertson that John Holmes be the magazine’s poetry editor. She appointed Holmes soon thereafter. Ciardi had taught at Harvard and Rutgers, was poetry editor of Saturday Review, and translated Dante’s Inferno. His poetry is witty and includes vernacular diction. Three of Ciardi’s works are Homeward to America (1940), I Marry You (1958), and For Instance (1979). A personable man, Ciardi had a special way with words. Asked what gentility is, he replied, “Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.” He also once confided that of the various contemporary poets, he was one of the few who could afford a Cadillac. Ciardi was a signer of Humanist Manifesto II. {CE; HM2}
Ciccone, Madonna Louise Veronica: See entry for Madonna
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106—43 B.C.E.) According to Corliss Lamont, Cicero “showed an absolute disbelief in all the accepted practices of divination, but thought they should be fostered ‘on account of popular opinion and of their great public utility.’ ” During the French Revolution, Maréchal cited Cicero as being only a “possible” atheist. Robertson explains that Cicero devised a religious make-believe which paralleled the State. His outlook can be looked at as being historically, not theologically, appropriate for his day. He swears, for example, that “the Gods” exist, albeit it is their glory to do nothing. Yet, he held that “There are no miracles” and “What old woman is so stupid now as to tremble at those tales of hell which were once so firmly believed in?” In the last three years of his life, he reinforced his reputation as a major classical skeptic by writing Concerning the Nature of the Gods (44 B.C.E.), by which he made Greek philosophy accessible to Latin audiences, according to Gaskin. {CE; CL; EU,; JM; JMR; JMRH; TYD}
CIRCUMCISION Male circumcision is an operation—a barbaric custom, according to many—which removes the foreskin covering the glans (so-called because of its acorn-like shape; acorn in Latin is glans) of the penis. As a religious rite it was widespread throughout the Middle East before being introduced among the Hebrews, presumably by Abraham. Jews ordinarily perform the rite on the eighth day after the birth of the male child, and the practice is said to be a sign of the covenant between God and man. (Jewish comics have been known to say that although a mohel’s pay is lousy, at least the guy gets good tips. . . . ) According to the Village Voice, inflation has apparently resulted, and five hundred dollars has been charged in 1996 “for hacking a foreskin.” Acts 15, however, states that Christians need not practice circumcision. Saint Catherine of Siena claimed that Jesus gave her his foreskin as a wedding ring, allowing her to become his bride “not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his holy flesh, for when he was circumcised just such a ring was taken from his holy body.” She whipped herself three times a day, according to Ackerman: once for her own sins, once for the sins of living people, and once for the sins of the dead. Although male circumcision is said to be performed as a sanitary measure, there are arguments both pro and con. Those who favor circumcision sometimes point out that penile carcinoma is almost unheard of in circumcised men; that circumcised boys are ten to twenty times less prone to urinary tract and bladder infections than their uncut peers; and that circumcision is associated with a 50-90% reduction in transmission of HIV (Nature, 1994). Kenyan microbiologist Maina Kahindo in 1999 described his study that found circumcised men were less likely to become HIV-infected. Of 219,755 boys born in United States armed forces hospitals, a tenfold increase in the incidence of urinary tract infection was found among those who were uncircumcised. As for any pain involved, rabbis stated that a 30% lidocaine cream is applied thirty minutes before the procedure. Others, however, find it a brutal practice and blame organized religious groups for abusing children before they are able to object. As times change, mohalim (the plural form for mohel, pronounced moyle) are presented with new problems. At a Bethesda, Maryland conference in 1998, they discussed how the mohalim could make the rite as meaningful as posssible to a gay or lesbian couple who have given birth to or adopted a baby: does the child of an interfaith couple need to be immersed in a mikvah, or ritual bath, or does the bris itself suffice? What should the mohel do when families ask for a postponement so that a grandparent can afford to attend from afar? Is a religious circumcision covered by insurance or managed care? And how do mohalim use the Internet to inform the public? Are all Jews circumcised? Ronald Goldman, a Boston psychologist who founded The Circumcision Research Center in 1991, claims more than 200 Jewish-identified members are not. For example, Moshe Rothenberg is a Brooklyn, N.Y., social worker and high school guidance counselor who has held a bris-sans-circumcision meeting for more than a hundred local families, “a welcoming ceremony, a celebration of the newborn” that includes tree-planting, singing, dancing, or similar events. His son, 9-year-old Samuel is not circumcised. He cites scripture that he believes supports abjuring circumcision, but the majority of Jews counter that his interpretations are twistings and distortions. Since the 1960s, some children in presumably frivolous lawsuits have demanded of parents that they replace their lost foreskins. Some studies indicate a reduction of such operations in the United States, although Jane E. Brody in The New York Times (25 May 94) estimates that 86% of newborn boys in this country are being circumcised. A number of Humanist leaders have said circumcision should be for medical reasons only. On the topic, Joseph Lewis wrote In the Name of Humanity (1956). In the 1990s, secular humanist groups have met to discuss circumcision, and Robert Gorham Davis in “The Unkindest Cut of All” (Free Inquiry, Fall, 1993) discussed the subject. A 1997 study by National Health and Social Life researchers at the University of Chicago found that circumcision in the United States was most prevalent among white men and men from educated families (96% in Jewish families questioned but only 54% for Hispanic men). Circumcised men were found to be engaged in a wider range of sexual practices, like oral and anal sex and masturbation, but that routine circumcision did not, contrary to some past studies, lead to lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases. Since 1989, the American Academy of Pediatrics has been neutral on circumcision, leaving it up to parents and pediatricians. “Which is better, to be or not to be circumcised?” Neither, according to current views, unless there is some specific medical reason. In England, circumcision levels dropped from 85% to near zero in the 1950s. In the 1990s, the United States was the only Western country (except for Israel) that still circumcised a majority (66% in 1995) of baby boys. Pediatrics (March 1999), summarizing new information, reported that the American Academy of Pediatrics found no “medical indication” for circumcision, reversing its findings in 1989 that circumcision might bring “potential medical benefits.” Although in the 1960’s over 90% of American-born boys were circumcised before leaving the hospital, the figure has dropped to 60% today. The figure for Hispanic and Asian immigrants is closer to 36%. Female circumcision, which involves the excision of the labia minora and clitoris (clitoridectomy), is common in Islam and in certain tribes of Africa, South America, and elsewhere. Africans who have worked to abolish the removal of all or part of a girl’s external genitalia, usually to insure virginity or control sexuality, include New York human rights lawyer Seble Dawitt and Wellesley College filmmaker Salem Mekuria. Both oppose the practice and call for its eradication, but they argue that Africans must lead the fight, that “superior Western attitudes do not enhance dialogue or equal exchange of ideas. . . . Neither Alice Walker nor any of us here can speak for [African women]; but if we have the power and the resources, we can create the room for them to speak, and to speak with us as well.” In 1993, Sudan, Kenya, Egypt, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso had taken legal or policy measures against genital mutilation. A leading secular humanist, Bangladesh’s Taslima Nasrin, herself a physician, has written of her utter contempt for individuals who would genitally mutilate a child. In 3001, according to Arthur C. Clarke’s science-fiction novel, much will have changed:
Circumcision made a lot of sense in primitive times but no longer. By the mid-twenty-first century so many malpractice suits had been filed that the American Medical Association had been forced to ban it. The practice, however, continued a century later, until “some unknown genius coined a slogan—please excuse the vulgarity—“God designed us: circumcision is blasphemy.” {ACK; Sheila Anne Feeney, NY Daily News, 27 May 1997; The Economist, 27 Nov 1999}
Cirrincione, Gerald Angelo (20th Century) Cirrincione, who is a talk show host on “Jazz and Conversation,” and a cable interviewer on “Omniverse,” is a freethinker who writes for Truth Seeker.
CIVIL RELIGION: See entry for Conor Cruise O’Brien.
CIVILIZATION “Civilization” to many is a word with as many useless encrustments as “humanism.” Some Europeans have joked that the symbol of American civilization is the tail fin on a Cadillac automobile. Lexicographers define civilization as “a relatively high level of cultural and technological development.” The Economist in 1994 inquired why one group of men felt the need to kill another group, suggesting that what is involved is a conflict of specific interests, a clash of life-shaping ideas; and one group’s belief that it is in blood and bone superior to the rest. The fundamental fear, that there will be a general war between Islam and the West, was followed by, “Not again, for heaven’s sake.” In short, the editors hoped that in the 20th century we would not return to the time of Pope Urban II, who in a sermon at Claremont in 1095 brought about the First Crusade against Islam. At the same time, The Economist noted the potential problems, the differences between the two groups concerning ideology, skin color, and conflicts of interest. In 3001, according to the novel of the same name by Arthur C. Clarke, the character Ted Khan is described as being “still famous back on Earth for at least two of his sayings: ‘Civilization and Religion are incompatible’ and ‘Faith is believing what you know isn’t true.’ ” Meanwhile, Samuel Huntington, a professor of Harvard University, holds that there currently are eight civilizations, or cultures, five of which (the Latin American, African, Slavic, Hindu, Japanese, Buddhist) are not potential problems. The three cultures he cites are (a) the West, the Euro-American culture that is the product of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, and is the begetter of modern capitalism and democracy; (b) Confucian, the body of ideas that has grown up around the Chinese language and the habits of public life that are said to belong to the Chinese region; and (c) Islam, which claims to be an idea based upon a transcendental certainty, that of the word of God, revealed syllable by syllable to Muhammad in a dusty corner of Arabia 1,400 years ago, and copied down by him into the Qur’an. Brian Beedham of The Economist argues that the West and the 1.2 billion followers of Islam have every reason to cease their perpetual confrontation, that they should not overlook the Confucian. (See entry for K’ung Fu-tzu.)
Cjecka, Victor (20th Century) Cjecka started editing Vek Rozumu in New York in 1910, later moving his monthly publication to Berwyn, Illinois.
Clafin, Adelaide Avery (19th Century) Clafin was one of the early graduates, 1896, of Meadville/Lombard Theological School, and she was ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1897. {World, May-June 1995}
Clampett, W. Frederick (20th Century) Clampett, a freethinker, wrote Luther Burbank, “Our Beloved Infidel”: His Religion of Humanity (1926). {FUS}
Clanton, Gordon (1942— ) Clanton was an assistant professor at Trenton State College in New Jersey when he signed Humanist Manifesto II. {HM2}
Clapp, Theodore (Born 1792) Clapp, a Unitarian, was a pioneer religious liberal in New Orleans, Louisiana. {U}
Claretie, Jules Armand Arsène (1840—1910)
A French writer, Claretie wrote biographies of celebrities, La libre parole [Free Speech] (1868), and Camille Desmoulins (1875). The 1868 work was the result of having been refused by the minister of Public Instruction to lecture on one occasion, whereupon Claretie issued a vigorous defense of free thought and speech. Claretie, one of the leading French writers in the second half of the nineteenth century, was a member of the French Academy. {BDF; JM}
Claretie, Jules Arsène Arnaud (Born 1840) Claretie was a French author who won distinction as a journalist and drama critic. His La Libre Parole (1868) was a rationalistic defense of free speech. Claretie was a Commander of the Legion of Honour and a member of the French Academy. {RAT}
Clarey, (Reynold) Arnold (1897—1972) Clarey was an Australian rationalist, Unitarian, accountant, and politician. A Freemason, he opposed state aid to denominational schools. {SWW}
Clark, Alex (20th Century) Clark, of the Auckland United Atheists in New Zealand, was one of the founding members of Campus Freethought Alliance. {International Humanist News, December 1996}
Clark, Brad N. (20th Century) Clark, a correctional educator in California, is a member of Atheists and Other Freethinkers in Sacramento. He wrote “How Religion Impedes Moral Development” in Free Inquiry (Summer 1994) and “Acts of God and Other Disasters.” (Secular Nation, Fall 1994).
Clark, Dorine (20th Century) “The Masochistic Myth” by Clark appeared in Joseph Lewis’s freethought magazine, Age of Reason (January, 1966). For the same publication, she wrote “The Voice of the Truth” (January, 1967).
Clark, Harry Hayden (1901—1971) Clark edited Poems of Freneau (1929). {FUS}
Clark, Jaden (20th Century) Clark, a secular humanist who writes reviews for the Gay & Lesbian Humanist, wrote the film script for “Wavelengths.” It is a short, stylish film about a quest for gay love in contemporary London.
Clark, Jonas Gilman (1815—1900) Clark was an American philanthropist. The $2,000,000 he gave for the founding of Clark University was called “the largest sum ever given in New England up to that time by any individual for education.” Clark was a rationalist and expressly stipulated that no religion was to be taught in it. However, its first president, Stanley Hall, pressed Clark to allow it. {RE}
Clark, Oscar (20th Century) Clark, a New Zealander who is working for a doctorate in chemistry, is treasurer of Auckland University Atheists. With sophomoric wit, he has described his hobby as “inventing a cult Christian Killer (I, II & III) series of games.”
Clark, Thomas Welbourne (20th Century) Clark, associate director of the Institute for Naturalistic Philosophy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has noted that humanism has been broadly naturalistic but that it now is at odds “with the postmodern denial of universal, perspective-neutral reason.” He edited The Novel in India (1970). In “Humanism and Postmodernism, A Reconciliation” (The Humanist, Jan-Feb 1993), Clark concluded that “Humanists will always want to argue naturalism against theism, evidence against faith, rationality against superstition, and the individual against the herd; but to find allies for the real fight, the pragmatic recommendation is to see where one’s presumed opponents stand on practical issues. When and if agreement is reached about ends and means, many ideological differences can safely remain unresolved. The humanistic project will continue on in as many different guises and under as many different names as our tolerance for ideological diversity will permit.” In “Secularism and Sexuality” (The Humanist, May-June 1994), he makes the case for gay equality. In the scientific view, he notes, everything in nature, including sodomy, is literally and unavoidably natural. The harm of homosexual behavior or homosexual partnerships is simply and only a function of homophobia and heterosexism, he holds, and after homosexual marriage is adopted in keeping with the U. S. Constitution’s protection, “many will wonder what all the fuss was about. How could anyone have supposed that being gay or lesbian was intrinsically immoral or deviant or sick? On what basis, precisely, did they think that homosexuals should be denied any right or privilege given to heterosexuals?” Says Clark, the central truth is that prejudice against homosexuals is “a religiously incited and secularly unfounded bigotry.” Clark’s web site regarding naturalism is <http://www.naturalism.org>.
Clark, W. E. (20th Century) Clark, a freethinker, wrote Can Jesus Save? (1910). {GS}
Clark, Warner (20th Century) Clark has been an active member of the American Humanist Association. {HNS}
Clarke, Arthur C(harles) [Sir] [C.B.E.] (1917— ) Clarke, a preeminent writer of science fiction, a Commander of the British Empire who was knighted in 1997, emigrated in 1956 from England to Sri Lanka, where he became one of that island’s major figures. He is Chancellor of the University of Moratuwa and of the International Space University in Sri Lanka. In 1968, he wrote the memorable science fiction work, 2001. The dean of the science fiction genre, he has become internationally famous partly because his work has been turned into realistic motion pictures, notably “2001,” which have captured the imaginations of so many viewers. Science fiction, which sometimes resembles Utopian fiction, is a literary type whose writers have included Mary Shelley, Poe, Verne, Fitz-James O’Brien, and H. G. Wells. Samuel Clemens’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is exemplary of the genre. Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. have used it as an instrument of social criticism. When a farm lad in Minehead, England, Clarke had a job as mail deliverer that required him to ride his bicycle on winter nights. He had already started a serious collection of science fiction magazines, and from his bicycle the teenager gazed into the night sky, sure that one day men would walk on the moon and leave their bootprints on the red sands of Mars. His certainty that the exploration of space was inevitable found few that were in agreement. Even in the RAF he was considered some kind of screwball, always talking about the British Interplanetary Society and taking it for granted that rocket-launched satellites could be made to remain stationary over the Earth. When the Nazi V-2 rockets began raining terror on British cities, his “crackpot views” suddenly became credible. Beginning in the mid 1940s and with the subsequent travel into outer space, authors such as Clarke have extended science fiction into new realms, extrapolating about the future of space travel and anticipating the resultant problems and challenges which will face humankind. Neil McAleer, in Arthur C. Clarke, The Authorized Biography (1992), reveals the following details about the author whose books have sold more than fifty million copies:
• During World War II, inductees into the RAF who had no religious affiliation were required to put “Church of England” on their dogtags. Clarke, who unhappily had gone to an Anglican Sunday school as a farm lad, refused. “I got the man who was handling the paperwork and made them change it to pantheist,” he explained. From his youth, he has had a consistent aversion to organized religion, saying faith is no substitute for knowledge.
• In 1943 while in the RAF, he complained to C. S. Lewis that his novels attacked scientific humanism in general and scientists and astronauts in particular.
• Early in 1970, he told the Playboy interviewer, “I have a long-standing bias against religion that may be reflected in my comments,” adding that he could not forgive religions for the wars and atrocities they have inspired. Many, said Clark, “confuse religion with a belief in God. Buddhists don’t necessarily believe in a god or a supreme being at all; whereas one could easily believe in a supreme being and not have any religion.” Clarke knew Buddhism well, having chosen in the 1970s to live in Sri Lanka.
• When a “20 / 20” ABC camera once captured the parade of the Buddha’s tooth, the Perahera, Clarke observed to the reporter, “I’m anti-mysticism. I’m very anti the sort of lamebrains who accept anything fanciful, nonsensical like pyramid power, astrology, which is utter rubbish, much UFOlogy, flying saucers. There’s so much garbage floating around and on the newsstands. This is one thing that does worry me about the present mental state of the West, not only the United States. At the same time, I’m sure there are many very strange things in the universe.”
• When in the USSR it was revealed that 2010: Odyssey Two takes place aboard Cosmonaut Leonov’s spaceship, officials at first were delighted. But then they read the book’s dedication:
Dedicated, with respectful admirection, to two great Russians both depicted herein: General Alexei Leonov Cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviety Union, Artist and Academician Andrei Sakharov Scientist, Nobel Laureate, Humanist
Sakharov had been banished to Gorky two years prior, and officials thereupon banned the book.
• His story, “The Nine Billion Names of God,” describes two computer engineers hired by a sect of Tibetan monks to program and run a computer to help generate the nine billion names of God, which they have worked on for three centuries. They believe that once their goal is reached, God’s purpose will end and mankind will have completed its reason for existence. Clarke’s memorable end-line: “Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.” When he read the story in 1997, the Dalai Lama wrote to Clarke, “Your short story titled ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’ was particularly amusing.”
• His story, “The Star,” has an opening line that describes the conflicting scientific and religious systems of belief: “It is three thousand light-years to the Vatican.”
• To Pope Pius XII’s statement that exploring space is simply to fulfill mankind’s God-given potential, Clarke wrote, “Any path to knowledge is a path to God—or to Reality, whichever word one prefers to use.”
• Father Lee Lubbers, a Jesuit priest and one of the dozens McAleer interviewed for the book, recalls that when he met the man who had first predicted telecommunications via satellite, Clarke stepped out from behind his desk, extended his right hand, “as though he were protesting dramatically that I was going to convert him before he could reach the other end of the room,” all the while saying, “I am an atheist.”
• In 1975, addressing the U.S. Congress, Clarke remarked, “It is true that we must cherish and conserve the treasures of this fragile Earth, which we have so shamefully wasted. . . . It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.”
Mark Nuttal, a reporter for the London Times interviewed Clarke (4 Aug 1992), asserting there had been a spate of books linking science and an ultimate creator with titles such as The Mind of God. And would he comment, please? To which Clarke responded, “I remain an aggressive agnostic.” Time, in a special Fall 1992 issue, “Beyond the Year 2000,” published Clarke’s “The Hammer of God,” a story set in the third millennium about an asteroid that imperils the earth—it was only the second piece of fiction ever to be published by the magazine, the first having been a 1969 selection by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The story was further evidence of Clarke’s agnosticism and philosophic naturalism, and it pointed up the dangers of any increases in religious fundamentalist groups around the world. A member and an active supporter of the Secular Humanist Society of New York, Clarke has long been on record as being a non-believer. “It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God,” he once wrote, “but to create him.” A Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism, Sir Arthur signed Humanist Manifesto 2000 . Isaac Asimov, also an active supporter of the Secular Humanist Society of New York, was his friend and sparring partner. As for Clarke’s ability to reconcile materialistic science with a kind of mystic imagination, Asimov wrote:
Old Arthur C. Clarke of Sri Lanka Now sits in the sun sipping Sanka Enjoying his ease Excepting when he’s Receiving pleased notes from his banker.
Clarke, the man who first put forward the concept of a communications satellite in 1945, also predicted then that the first flight around the moon would be in 1967— a year early—and that the first manned moon landing would be between 1970 and 1972—just six months off. His longer-term forecasts were not so accurate: that the first flight around Mars would be in 1980 and the first landing there would be in 1990. In 1966 he predicted that the actual colonization of other planets would take place by the year 2000. And he believes “there’s a 99% chance of life all over the universe and a 90% chance of intelligent life being all over the place as well.” By 2015, he has recently stated, a baby will have been born on Mars. Clarke extrapolated further in a 1997 novel, 3001. The character of Frank Poole, who had been killed by Hal the computer in 2001, is accidentally discovered in a frozen state. He awakes in a rather dull utopia, in which organized religion, circumcision, meat-eating, madness, prisons, and poverty have all disappeared. Earth’s ten billion humans became no longer habitable, so a remaining one billion now lived in a cartwheel, its rim in orbit, its spokes reaching down to the earth at the hub. Poole, after getting his bearings, leaves for the Jovian satellite Europa, finding one of the big black monoliths mentioned also in 2001, 2010, and 2061, monoliths which imply a connection with the meaning of existence. The visionary Clarke at one point cites Lucretius, who
. . . hit it on the nail when he said that religion was the by-product of fear—a reaction to a mysterious and often hostile universe. For much of human prehistory, it may have been a necessary evil—but why was it so much more evil than necessary—and why did it survive when it was no longer necessary?
He also notes that
. . . most of the other religions, with a few honorable exceptions, were just as bad as Christianity. . . . Even in your century, little boys were kept chained and whipped until they’d memorized whole volumes of pious gibberish, and robbed of their childhood and manhood to become monks. . . . Perhaps the most baffling aspect of the whole affair is how obvious madmen, century after century, would proclaim that they—and they alone!—had received messages from God. If all the messages had agreed, that would have settled the matter. But of course they were wildly discordant—which never prevented self-styled messiahs from gathering hundreds—sometimes millions—of adherents, who would fight to the death against equally deluded believers of a microscopically differing faith.
Lest that leave any doubt as to his outlook, Clarke informed the media that he considered the Pope as well as Mother Teresa two of the most dangerous people in the world, this because of their doctrinal stands on condom usage, the rights of women to become church leaders, sexuality, family planning, etc. “Would you argue that anyone with strong religious beliefs was insane?” Poole asks Dr. Khan in 3001. Khan replies, “In a strictly technical sense, yes—if they really were sincere, and not hypocrites. As I suspect ninety percent were.” (See “God, Science, and Delusion,” a chat about mankind, morality, and religion that Matt Cherry had with Sir Arthur, in Free Inquiry, Spring 1999.) {CA; CE; E; WAS, extensive correspondence}
Clarke, David (20th Century) An experienced Unitarian minister with a doctorate, Clarke commenced in-service training with West Coast Ethical Culture Societies in the 1980s. (See entry for Ethical Culture.)
Clarke, James Freeman (1810—1888) Clarke, a Unitarian and a theologian, edited the Western Messenger (1833—1840) and taught at Harvard Divinity School. He was a member of the Transcendental Club, along with Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Clarke was active in the anti-slavery, woman-suffrage, and other reform movements. He wrote Ten Great Religions (1872—1883) and Non-Essentials in Religion (1878). {CE; EG; U; U&U}
Clarke, John (19th Century) A Methodist who then changed his opinion by studying the Bible, Clarke became one of Carlile’s shopmen. In 1824 he was tried for selling a blasphemous libel of The Republican and after a spirited defence, in which he read many of the worst passages in the Bible, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. While in prison he wrote A Critical Review of the Life, Character, and Miracles of Jesus (1825, 1839), a work showing with some bitterness much bold criticism and Biblical knowledge. {BDF}
Clarke, Malcolm Gordon (1910-1999)
Clarke, who was born in Lahore and who once fled South Africa because of its apartheid regime, taught mathematics in Zambia and became head of Science and Education at the University of Lusaka. An avowed atheist and a subscriber to Freethinker, he willed that he be cremated with no service. {Freethinker, July 1999}
Clarke, Marcus Andrew Hislop (1846—1881) Clarke was an early Australian atheist, journalist, and author. He wrote for the Melbourne Argus and the Victorian Review. One of his noted articles in 1879 was “Civilisation Without Delusion,” in which he described the new civil society that had abandoned belief in miracles and Christ’s divinity; “where the fear of judgment and the hope of redemption had lost their force and there was no longer absolute certainty of any life other than this.” When accused of being an atheist, he began a literary debate and was said to have scored a notable victory. {BDF; SWW; RAT; RE; TRI}
Clarke, Rebecca Sophia (1833-1906) Clarke, a Unitarian, wrote children’s books.
Clarkson, Frederick (20th Century) Clarkson, a widely published journalist, author, and public speaker, co-authored with Skipp Porteous Challenging The Christian Right: The Activists Handbook. To successfully counter religious fundamentalism, he holds, “will likely depend on our ability to reclaim the legacy of Madison and Jefferson—as articulate, passionate, and credible advocates of pluralism, and as active and strategic practitioners of participatory democracy.” {Free Inquiry, Fall 1996}
CLASSICAL HUMANISM At the end of the Middle Ages, or from the 14th to 16th centuries, a revival of letters commonly known as the Renaissance occurred. During this period a genuine desire arose among some scholars to bring about an emancipation of thought and education from what they considered to be excessive domination on the part of the medieval Church over their thoughts and actions. Such was the beginning of classical humanism, an interest in studia humanitatis, litterae humaniores, and so-called polite learning. Although some of the classical humanists were anti-clerical and critical of the Church, such an attitude was not a prerequisite. What was wanted was not an elimination of control but rather a broadening of outlook on the part of the Church toward the development of individual learning and research. In fact, classical humanists often were supernaturalists and members of the Church. At least two—Nicholas V and Leo X—were Popes. After Pope Martin V in 1417, the papacy increasingly warmed to humanistic ideas, and a Vatican Library document defines Renaissance humanism as a “belief not in the unique value of the individual but in the transcendent value of scholarship.” Whereas ancient humanism is, by definition, a thing of the past, classical humanism has persisted and is prevalent even today. Contemporary classical humanists, however, are not so concerned with theological criticism as were their historical namesakes, for most are educators interested in the problems of the humanities, as contrasted with the sciences. When, for instance, one sees titles such as “The Liberal Arts in Public Education,” “Scholarship and Humanism,” and “Humanism in Education,” classical humanism is being discussed. The two greatest classical humanists of the Renaissance period in Italy were Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) and Giovanni Boccaccio. Both looked to the “humaner letter” for their mental salvation, and in so doing they dug up forgotten classics, helped restore the culture of the past, and assisted in recapturing some of the mighty spirit of early thinkers. One of the most extensive lists of classical humanists is to be found in Paolo Giovio’s Elogia (published in Antwerp, 1557). Giovio included Pietro Pompanazzi, who championed a purified Aristotelianism, as against neo-Platonism, and brought about a new interest in the classics—somewhat of a typical classical humanist, he believed in the soul and the possibility of miracles; Gemisthos Pletho, the scholar who encouraged the study of Plato and neo-Platonism and whose aim seems to have been the substitution of a neo-Platonic mysticism for Christianity; Pico della Mirandola; Giordano Bruno, who was steeped in Platonic and Pythagorean speculations and was later to influence such philosophers as Spinoza, Leibniz, Descartes, and Schelling; Campanella, whose humanism was manifest in his belief that man can truly know only himself, that like can be known only by like, and that therefore man cannot know anything of the universe except through the medium of sense-perception; Pietro Bembo; Bruni; Trapozuntius the Cretan; Cardinal Bessarion; Valla, whose De Voluptate was an imitation of Cicero’s Tusculans; Beccadelli, sometimes called the poet of pornography; Enea Silvio dei Piccolomini; Platina; Michael Chrysoloras; Theodore Gaza; Johannes Argyropulos; Demetrius Chalcondylas; Musurus of Crete; Lascaris; Lorenzo de’ Medici; Ermolao Barbaro; Politian; and Savanarola. Other classical humanists: Luigi Marsiglio, leader of the Florentine club of humanists; Coluccio Salutati, Chancellor of State whose letters set the pace for style at that time; Cosimo de’ Medici, founder of the Florentine Academy; Marsiglio Ficino; Estienne Dolet, champion of a Ciceronianism against Erasmus and, because he was burned in Paris for heresy, a martyr of the Renaissance; Adrien Turnebe, teacher who advanced Greek scholarship; Julius Caesar Scaliger, writer who attacked Erasmus; Robert Estienne, publisher with his brother, Henri Estienne, of numerous classical publications; Ludovico Vives and Telesio, who boldly criticized the strong entrenchments of Aristotelianism; and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who favored Platonism to such an extent that he was finally brought under the ban of the Church. Well-known French classical humanists were Michel de Montaigne and Rabelais. Also, there were the following: Jean de Montreuil, a disciple of Petrarch; Nicholas de Clemanges, known for his Ciceronian eloquence; John Lascaris, who taught Greek at the University of Paris; Jerome Aleander, who added the study of Hebrew at the University of Paris; Guillaume Budé, sometimes called the best Greek scholar of his day in Europe; Lefevrew d’Etaples, who translated the Bible; and Guillaume Farel. German classical humanists included Johann Reuchlin; Ulrich von Hutten; Philip Melanchton; and the following: Alexander Hegius, one of Erasmus’s professors; Gregor von Heimburg, scholar of the Italian humanists though often repelled by them; Peter Luder, renowned student of his day; Mutianus Rufus, leader of the Erfurt group of humanists; Rudolf Agricola, leader of the Heidelberg group and of whom Erasmus said was “the first to bring us out of Italy a breath of higher culture”; Johann Eik, opponent of Luther at Ingolstadt; Urbanus Rhegius, zealous supporter of Luther; Wilibald Pirkheimer, leader of the Nuremberg group of humanists; Conrad Peutinger, an Augsburg humanist; Jacob Wimpfeling, a Strasbourg schoolmaster; and Sebastian Brant, satirist from Strasbourg. Spanish humanists included Antonio Lebrixa and Cardinal Ximenes. Scottish thinkers in the same tradition were George Buchanan and Andrew Melville. A hotbed for classical humanism in England was the Oxford Group, from which came such supporters as the four “Oxford reformers,” Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, John Colet, and William Lyly. Generally considered to be the most important English humanist, however, was Sir Thomas More, a contemporary of the Dutch “humanist of humanists,” Erasmus. Additional English classical humanists included the following: Sir Thomas Elyot; Sir Thomas Smith and Sir John Checke, who established Greek at Cambridge; William Baldwin; John Leland; John Bale, John Stow; William Camden; Thomas Wilson; Richard Hooker; John Fisher; William Tyndale; William Latimer; and Roger Ascham, sometimes called “the last humanist” because his style was allegedly so perfect that it was no longer necessary for the English to travel abroad for a humanistic model. The chief Italian collectors of manuscripts were Guarino Veronese and Poggio Bracciolini, ardent bibliophiles, along with Angelo Ambrogini and Francesco Filelfo. But of all the classical humanists, Erasmus is perhaps the most famous, and his influence upon the Oxford Group and English classical humanists was considerable. Erasmus, More, and Colet all remained in the Church, although never hesitating to offer what they considered to be constructive criticism. More’s Utopia, as well as Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and Campanella’s City of the Sun, advanced and furthered the principle that experiment and research with their resulting discoveries were to be used for human well-being, an idea which gave an added impetus to the natural sciences and the part they should play in assisting the improvement of material and social conditions of mankind. {CE; ER; Warren Allen Smith, “The Seven Humanisms.”}
Claude-Constant (19th Century) Claude-Constant was author of a freethinkers’ catechism, published at Paris in 1875. {BDF}
Clausse, Arnold (20th Century) At the Ninth International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) World Congress held in Oslo (1986), Prof. Clausse from Belgium received a Humanist Award “for his contribution to the advance of humanist thought, especially in the fields of education and psychology.” He wrote L’epopee laique, ou la conquete des libertés (1982).
Clausson, Nils (20th Century) A teacher in Regina, Saskatchewan, Clausson wrote “In Search of the Gay Lifestyle” (Humanist in Canada, Spring 1999). It is illogical to talk about a heterosexual or a homosexual lifestyle, he reasoned. Although people belong to a different culture, one would not for example say that Muslims with their different culture “have a different lifestyle.” Or “being black in America, or native in Saskatchewan, or of French descent in Quebec is not a lifestyle. To use the word in that context is to trivialize the lives of blacks, natives, and Quebecois.” Clausson finds redundant the phrase “chosen lifestyle,” and he points out that one can go from multiple sexual partners to serial monogamy, thereby changing lifestyles. But a gay person in a city who moves to the country will not by so doing change his fundamental identity.
Clavel, Adolphe (Born 1815) Clavel was a French positivist and physician. {BDF}
Clavel, F. T. B. (19th Century) A French author of a Picturesque History of Freemasonry and also a Picturesque History of Religions (1844), Clavel had Christianity take a subordinate place in religious history. {BDF}
Clayton, Robert (1695—1758) Clayton successively was Bishop of Killala, Cork, and Clogher. In 1756 he proposed in the Irish House of Lords the omission of the Nicene and Athanasian creeds from the liturgy. A legal prosecution was instituted, but he died, Wheeler reports, from nervous agitation before the matter was decided. {BDF}
Cleanthes (c. 331—232 B.C.E.) Cleanthes was the second head of the Stoic school, the philosopher who followed Zeno. His Hymn to Zeus is said to have blended free will and fate.
Cleave, John (19th Century) Cleve was a bookseller, one of the pioneers of a cheap political press. He started the London Satirist and Cleve’s Penny Gazette of Variety (1837—1844). In 1840, he was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for selling Haslam’s Letters to the Clergy. {BDF}
Cleland, John (1709—1789) Cleland wrote Fanny Hill, or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748—1749) which censor Anthony Comstock has called “the most obscene book ever written.” What Comstock found was thirty acts of copulation and perversion but no four-letter word. Fanny was a fifteen-year-old lass whose acrobatic bedroom experiences netted Cleland twenty guineas but earned £10,000 for its printer. However, the bookseller, Drybutter, was punished in the pillory for having “altered the language of the book for the worse after it had been favorably noticed in the Monthly Review.” Lord Granville, when he presided over the Privy Council, got Cleland a pension of £100 per year so long as Cleland promised that he would write no more dirty books. Irving Wallace has written, “Cleland’s Fanny Hill remained the major underground classic of erotic literature for over two centuries, until it was published openly by the New York firm of G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1963. Putnam’s was taken to trial, won, lost an intermediate appeal, and in 1964 won again in New York’s Court of Appeals, 4 votes to 3. Fanny Hill was free at last.” For some reason, the 18th century work never made the Vatican’s list of prohibited reading. Although in his later life Cleland was accused of being a sodomite, such may have been a conjecture based on an interpretation that he was the first-person narrator, Fanny, of Fanny Hill. {GL; PA}
Clemenceau, Georges [Premier] (1841—1929) Twice the premier of France (1906—1909; 1917—1920), Clemenceau was called “the Tiger.” Trained as a physician, he was in conflict with Napoleon III because of a belief in republicanism, so he went (1865) to the United States as a journalist and teacher. When Napoleon III was overthrown (1870), Clemenceau returned to France and had a stormy life in politics, once being implicated in a Panama Canal scandal. A passionate defender of Alfred Dreyfus, he later led France during World War I and was a main antagonist of Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. The humanist historian Geoffrey Bruun wrote a definitive biography (1943), as did Wythe Williams (The Tiger of France). E. M. Forster, however, said of the Tiger who “urged millions to die” that “[P]inch the book where you will, and it does not move. Not only are the characters ‘dead’ . . . being mere bundles of qualities, but the scenery, the social face of Paris, is also defunct.” “As a result of quarrels over heresies,” Clemenceau wrote, “what massacres followed among Christians in the name of the common God of universal charity.” Clemenceau was an honorary associate of the British Rationalist Press Association, which in 1899 had been founded by Charles A. Watts. Before dying, he asked for no burial procession, no official or religious ceremony, and a tomb without inscription and surrounded by a simple iron railing. {CE; Robert Craft, The New York Review of Books, 6 May 1999; BDF; JM; RAT; RE; TYD}
Clemens, Samuel Mark Twain (1835—1910) “Both Mark Twain and his inventor, Samuel Clemens, continue to give trouble to those guardians of the national mythology to which Twain added so much in his day, often deliberately,” Gore Vidal has written. He then cites an “academic critic,” Guy Cardwell, who “tells us that Clemens was sexually infantile, burnt-out at fifty (if not before), and given to pederastic reveries about little girls, all the while exhibiting an unnatural interest in outhouse humor and other excremental vileness.” Vidal adds, “It is hard to believe that at century’s end, academics of this degraded sort are still doing business, as Twain would put it, at the same old stand.” Referring to Cardwell’s description that Clemens was “banal anal,” Vidal comments, “as opposed to ‘floral oral?’ ” Vidal is one of many, including William Dean Howells, Bernard DeVoto, Van Wyck Brooks, and Lionel Trilling, who have praised the unique American writer generally considered to be one of its top humanists. Mark Twain’s What Is Man? (1906) and Letters from Earth (published posthumously in 1962) contain a savage attack on orthodox Christianity. Generally conceded to be one of the foremost if not the foremost of American authors, Clemens is noted for his humor and philosophic gems:
• Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
• Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden.
• When angry, count a hundred; when very angry, swear.
• He (Satan) hasn’t a single salaried helper; the Opposition employ a million.
• The first thing a missionary teaches a savage is indecency. He makes him put clothes on. He is as innocent and clean-minded up to that time as were our first parents before the Lord and not ashamed. He hid the knowledge of indecency from them; the missionary doesn’t.
• Satan to newcomer, with discontent: “The trouble with you Chicago people is that you think you are the best people in Hell—whereas you are merely the most numerous.”
• Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
• There is nothing more impressive than a miracle, except credulity that can take it at par.
• Clothes make the man? Nonsense! Clothes are not important. Why, I’d rather associate with Sarah Bernhardt, without a stitch on, than with General Grant in full uniform!
• In God We Trust. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased. It always sound well—In God We Trust. I don’t believe it would sound any better if it were true.
• It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me—it’s the parts that I do understand.
With Voltaire-like wit, he satirized hypocrisy and gullibility in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900), which some considered cynical. He mercilessly attacked Mary Baker Eddy’s new religion in Christian Science (1907), which some said was sacrilegious. His daughter, Clara, suppressed Letters from Earth for a long time after his death, believing Soviet Union intellectuals were using it to mock American values. In their Freethought on the American Frontier, Whitehead and Muhrer conclude that basically Clemens was a theist. The late critic Philip Foner wrote, in Mark Twain: Social Critic, a good analysis of the writer as an infidel: “It is true that, rather early in life, Twain began to doubt the truth of his religious teachings, and, as his faith in Christian dogma vanished, he rejected orthodox religion. Nonetheless, Twain was deeply interested in the relationship of institutionalized religion to man and society, particularly in reconciling Christian ethics and the social structure of his own day. Hence, while he indicted the influence of religion and the church when it served to fetter man and society, he also called for a religion and a church that would help man and society. A sincere, courageous, vital, realistic, dynamic religion for him meant one that would inspire people to create a better world. He urged all churches, as a major step toward this goal, to tear from Christianity all the camouflage of self-deception, hollow sham and hypocrisy, to strip it of the ornamentation of the ages and to return to the original, sound principles of Jesus Christ—the ethics of humanity. Although Clemens would not like to have been called a philosopher, he might agree to being described as the first philosopher ever to discuss the moral position of the God who created flies.” Twain in his The Book of Mormon called the Mormon bible “an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print.” In Following the Equator, he observed, “There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow. Yet it was the schoolboy who said ‘Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.’” In Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, he wrote, “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” Huckleberry Finn, generally said to be his best work, has also been termed the major United States novel. Its theme, man’s inhumanity to man, has appealed to adolescents, as has his Tom Sawyer, with its humanistic and happy ending. Secular humanists are particularly interested in some of the lesser-known works that show his philosophic outlook: Extracts From Adam’s Diary (1904); Eve’s Diary (1906); and Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven (1909). Clemens was one of the first seven chosen by secret ballot to be one of the original members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He did not, however, receive the most votes: William Dean Howells, whose works have not had the long life of Twain’s, did. Clemens, however, received more than Henry James. In 1908, responding to a person who asked if he would include Jesus among the 100 greatest men of history, Clemens said he would include Jesus as well as Satan. “These two gentlemen,” he explained, “have had more influence than all others put together, and 99% of it was Satan’s.” He added that the devil is “worth very nearly a hundred times as much to the business as was the influence of the rest of Holy Family put together.” Clemens and wife Lizzie, daughter of Judge Jervis J. Langdon of Elmira, New York, had three daughters and one son. His personal misfortunes were many. His son died in infancy, and one daughter died in her teens. When his wife died, Clemens never remarried. Some critics have suggested that his personal troubles led him to become misanthropic. But even when he was in bankruptcy, he was a public hero, one who was greatly in demand as a speaker. Clemens enjoyed speaking out bitterly on public issues, for example denouncing imperialism and objecting to the European subjugation of the Congo. In the year before Clemens died, his daughter Jean drowned Christmas morning in the bathtub in her father’s house in Redding, Connecticut. As a result, his daughter Clara, who was married to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, inherited his entire estate. A known prankster, Clemens once arranged that his obituary be printed in New York newspapers, after which he had cabled from London that “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” When he died in Connecticut, he was too weak to speak and had written a note to his nurses, “Give me my glasses.” On the bed when he died was Thomas Carlyle’s French Revolution. (See entries for Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, and Alfred Kazin.) {BDF; CE; CL; EU, William F. Ryan; FUS; JM; RAT; RE; TRI; TSV; Gore Vidal, The New York Review of Books, 23 May 1996}
Clement, Ron (20th Century) Clement has been active with the Humanist Community of Central Michigan. (See entry for Michigan Humanists.) {FD}
Clements, Tad S. (20th Century) Author of Science versus Religion and Science and Man: The Philosophy of Scientific Humanism (1990), Clements is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at State University of New York College at Brockport. He addressed the Tenth International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) World Congress held in Buffalo (1988). Clements, co-editor of Religion and Human Purpose (1987), signed Humanist Manifesto 2000. [[Clemetshaw, C. (Born 1864) A French writer who used the name Cilwa, Clemetshaw was a delegate to the International Congress in 1887 and was editor of Le Danton. {BDF}
Clendening, Logan (20th Century) According to Fred Whitehead’s Freethought History (#1, 1992), Dr. Clendening was one of the most successful medical journalists in early 20th century America. A professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, he defined his outlook as being that of a freethinker.
CLERGY • Clergyman, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones. —Ambrose Bierce A Devil’s Dictionary
• A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live. —Voltaire
• Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks. —H. L. Mencken
Clericus, B. B. C. (20th Century) Clericus, possibly an Englishman’s pseudonym, wrote Religion (1942). {GS}
Cleveland, Patricia (20th Century) Cleveland is director of the Lake Hypatia Freethought Hall, near Talladega, Alabama. Also, she is on the board of directors of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. {Freethought Today, May 1996}
Cleveland, Roger (1945- ) Cleveland, with his wife Patricia, is on the board of directors of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. A former paper-mill worker, he started the Alabama Freethought Association in 1989 to combat what he saw as the incursion of religion into state government. {The New York Times Magazine, 7 December 1997}
Cleyre, Voltairine de: See entry for De Cleyre.
Clifford, Dick (20th Century) Clifford is President of the Humanist Society of South Australia. Also, he is that group’s webmaster: <rmc@adelaide.on.net>.
Clifford, John (20th Century) Clifford, who has Unitarian ties in Edinburgh and London, is on the Worldwide Web: <www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/2038>.
Clifford, Martin (c. 1600—1677) An English rationalist, Clifford was Master of the Charterhouse (1671) and published anonymously a treatise of Human Reason (1674). In the Nouvelle Biographie Générale, Clifford is amusingly described as an “English theologian of the order des Chartreux,” who, it is added, was “prior of his order.” Robertson states that although Clifford makes no overt attacks on religion and points out that many modern wars have been on subjects of religion, he adds that reason alone, fairly used, will bring a man to the Christian faith, that he who denies this cannot be a Christian. {BDF; JMRH; RAT}
Clifford, William Kingdon (1845—1879) “It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for everyone,” Clifford wrote, “to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” An English mathematician-philosopher, the son of a bookseller, he formulated skepticism as an ethical imperative and was one of the first to appreciate the relevance of Darwin’s evolutionary theory to human ethics. When thirty-one, he delivered “The Ethics of Belief” (1876) to the Metaphysical Society, a group that met in London nine times a year to discuss philosophical ideas and religious beliefs. Members included William Gladstone, Thomas Henry Huxley, Archbishop Henry Manning, John Ruskin, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. He wrote Seeing and Thinking (1879); Lectures and Essays, Volumes I and II (1879, edited by Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock, with an introduction by Pollock); Mathematical Papers (1882, edited by Robert Tucker); and. The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (published in 1946, with a preface by Bertrand Russell). His attacks on Christianity were profound. Religion, “that awful plague which has destroyed two civilizations,” had its priests, “at all times in all places the enemy of all men,” he accused. With Thomas Henry Huxley, he was a member of the Metaphysical Society. Wheeler cites Clifford as “an outspoken Atheist, and he wrote of Christianity as a religion which wrecked one civilisation and very nearly wrecked another.” Putnam says that Clifford, next to Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall, is along with R. A. Proctor the ablest scientist to aid English freethought during the nineteenth century. Foote added that Clifford “utterly dismissed from his thoughts, as being unprofitable or worse, all speculations on a future or unseen world.” Further, “as never man loved life more, so never man feared death less,” which was similar to Spinoza’s Homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat (A free man thinks less of nothing than of death.). Clifford died of consumption, first giving exact directions as to the disposal of his works. His wife, Lucy, the daughter of John Lane and a close friend of Henry James, wrote Mr. Keith’s Crime (1885) and shared her husband’s rationalism. She has written in the Rationalist Press Association annual. “The Virtues of ‘The Ethics of Belief’,” by Timothy J. Madigan (Free Inquiry, Spring 1997), is discueed Clifford’s outlook, pointing out that Clifford “wished to motivate all members of society to utilize their intellectual abilities to the highest degree and—aware of the growing doubts about traditional Christian beliefs that had helped to gird society up to that time—he felt a personal responsibility to use his own gifts to further the cause of rationalism.” Madigan has edited “The Ethics of Belief” and other Essays by W. K. Clifford (1999), the most thorough Clifford study to date. {BDF; EU, Peter H. Hare; FUK; PUT; Tim Madigan, March 1997; RAT; RE; TRI}
Clinchy, Everett R. (20th Century) A freethinker, Clinchy wrote All in the Name of God (1934). {GS}
Cline, Austin (20th Century) Cline is a German Literature graduate student at Princeton University. He founded the Princeton Freethought Association. In Pennsylvania, he is a regional director of the Council for Secular Humanism.
Cline, Henry (1750—1827) Cline, a surgeon and a skeptic who admired Horne Tooke, “thought there was a cause superior to man, but believed that nothing was known of the future,” according to the Dictionary of National Biography. {RAT}
Clinton, William Jefferson (1946- ): See entry for Roma.
Cliteur, Paul (20th Century) Cliteur was once president in the Netherlands of Humanistisch Verbond. He is professor of philosophy at Technical University Delft. At the 1994 Toronto conference of the Coalition for Secular Humanism, Atheism, and Freethought (CSHAFT), he spoke on the subject of “Humanism and Ethics/Humanism and Postmodernism.” Postmodernism, he holds, is a revolt against the Enlightenment, against the grand narrative of the Enlightenment. As a result, secular humanists need to be against postmodernists and, although many are atheists, would do well to refute their methodology. In 1995, in Madrid, he spoke on “A New Approach to Government Support of Morals.” E-mail: <jfencpc@law.LeidenUniv.nl>. {“The Challenge of Postmodernism to Humanism,” New Humanist, August 1995}
Clitomachus (Fl. 129 B.C.E.)
The fifth head of the New Academy, as contrasted with Plato’s Old Academy, Clitomachus is remembered because Carneades left no written works but Clitomachus taught Carneades’s philosophic skepticism in four hundred treatises. As described by Bertrand Russell in his History of Philosophy (1945), the two
set themselves against the belief in divination, magic, and astrology, which was becoming more and more widespread. They also developed a constructive doctrine, concerning degrees of probability; although we can never be justified in feeling certainty, some things are more likely to be true than others. Probability should be our guide in practice, since it is reasonable to act on the most probable of possible hypotheses. This view is one with which most modern philosophers would agree. Unfortunately, the books setting it forth are lost, and it is difficult to reconstruct the doctrine from the hints that remain. {JMRH}
CLITORIS: See entry for Federico Andahazi, who described Mateo Colón as the first man to discover the female organ, at least within the world that he knew.
CLOCKWORK UNIVERSE God, some say, created the universe, which like a clock needs Him to keep it wound up. Just as the clock’s gears are governed by the laws of physics, so are the universe’s. During the Enlightenment, scientists held that Newton’s laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation explained the behavior of the solar system. Some young freethinkers, entirely ignorant of ratchet wheels, drums, winding squares, and springs, fail to comprehend the concept of a clockwork universe, pleading tongue-in-cheek that they have never experienced anything but digital. (See entry for Aristarchus of Samos.) {DCL}
Clodd, Edward (1840—1930) Clodd was a banker and anthropologist who, from 1906 to 1913, was chairman of the Rationalist Press Association. He wrote The Childhood of Religions (1875); The Story of Creation (1888); and Pioneers of Evolution (1897). {FUK; RAT; RE; TRI}
CLONING A clone is something that appears to be a copy of some original form. In a science lab, a clone can be reproduced or propagated asexually, such as in the cloning of a frog (or a plant variety), with the intent of using the result to fight diseases, infertility, and animal extinction. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus in 1818 tells of the Genevan medical student of natural philosophy who stitches together a body, bringing it to life. The creature is rational and articulate, one who enjoys Goethe, Plutarch, and Paradise Lost but is lonely and displeased with his unusual origin. When Dr. Frankenstein refuses to create a female counterpart, his creation murders his brother, his friend Clerval, and his bride Elizabeth. He is then pursued to the Arctic by the doctor, who dies in the pursuit after relating the story to Walton, an English explorer in the Arctic. In movie and other versions, the creature is driven mad and murders the good doctor himself. The work has been regarded as the first of science fiction stories, although it also is a version of the myth of the Noble Savage, in which a nature essentially good is corrupted by ill treatment. Science fiction writers such as Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. LeGuin, and William Gibson continued the tradition, as did Philip K. Dick, author of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” from which the cult film “Blade Runner” was made. Dick envisioned a world, journalist Brent Staples has written, “where in vitro fertilization and cloning are passé and have given way to the wholesale manufacture of synthetic human life.” In 1996 Ian Wilmut announced in Scotland that he and his colleagues at Roslin Institute had, indeed, scraped a few cells from the udder of a 6-year-old ewe, then fused them into a specially altered egg cell from another sheep, resulting in a lamb named Dolly, the first instance of cloning an adult mammal. The lamb was named Dolly after the well-endowed country music star, Dolly Parton. In 1998 Dolly became a mother the old-fashioned way. Free Inquiry (Summer 1997) devoted an entire issue to the subject. Included was a declaration in defense of cloning and the integrity of scientific research that was signed by thirty-one members of the International Academy of Humanism. A 1999 study, however, found genetic abnormalities in cloned animals. Nature (May 1999) found that the sheep named Dolly, the first animal that was a clone of an adult, may show a sign of aging, appearing, in effect, older than the original animal that was cloned. Although the initial findings are tentative, they indicated that Dolly’s cells had slightly stunted telomeres, the tickertape-like appendages to chromosomes. Telomeres are like a virtual aging clock for cells grown in the laboratory, shortening with each cell division and marking off the number of divisions remaining before a cell dies. The telomeres in older animals tend to be shorter than they are in younger animals, according to Gina Kolata in an evaluation of the scientists’ announcement. (See entry for Ian Wilmut.) (OEL; The Economist, Brent Staples, The New York Times, 1 Mar 1997; and Gina Kolata, The New York Times, 27 May 1999}
Clooney, George (1962- ) An actor, Clooney was in “E.R.,” a television series, from 1984 to 1985 and from 1994 to 1999. He has been in numerous movies, including “Batman & Robin (1997). Sharon Waxman, profiling him in the Washington Post (28 September 1997), quoted him: “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.” {CA}
Clooney, George (6 May 1962 - ) A popular actor, the Kentucky-born Clooney was in E.R., a television series, from 1984 to 1985 and from 1994 to 1999. He has been in numerous movies, including Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988), Batman & Robin (1997), The Thin Red Line (1998), Three Kings (1999), The Perfect Storm (2000), and Ocean’s Eleven (2001). Sharon Waxman, in a Washington Post (28 September 1997) profile, quoted Clooney: “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.” {CA}
Cloots, Johann Baptist [Baron] (1755—1794) Cloots (or Clootz) was a Prussian enthusiast, a nephew of Cornelius de Pauw. In 1780 under the pseudonym of Ali-gier-bet, an anagram of Bergier, he published The Certainty of the Proofs of Mohammedanism, a parody of the of Certainty of the Proofs of Christianity. With Paine, Priestley, Washington, and Klopstock, Cloots was made a French citizen, and in 1792 he was elected to the Convention by two departments. Cloots de-baptized himself, taking the name Anacharsis, becoming a prime mover in the Anti-Catholic Party and declaring that there is no other God but Nature. Incurring the enmity of Robespierre, he and Paine were arrested as foreigners. Imprisoned for two and a half months at St. Lazare, Cloots was then brought to the scaffold with the Hébertostes, where he died calmly, first uttering materialist sentiments, saying “Let me lie under the green sward so that I may be reborn in vegetation.” “Nature,” he said, “is a good mother, who loves to see her children appear and reappear in different forms. All she includes is eternal, imperishable like herself. Now let me sleep!” He ended as one of a tumbril-load of victims, nineteen in all. {BDF; RAT}
Close, Converse (19th Century) Close, a freethinker in Grattan, Michigan, was an invalid who contributed articles to the Truth Seeker and other liberal journals. For him, freethought “was a power in man’s heart and brain to eventually make the real paradise of this world.” {PUT}
CLOSET, CLOSETED To be “closeted” carries the connotation of having motives that are secret. One can be a closeted atheist although a nominal Catholic, for example. A “closet queen” in the 1940s and 1950s referred to a crypto-homosexual. “And are you a practicing homosexual?” accusers asked individuals seeking positions, for example, in top-secret government posts, implying that they would be denied such jobs because they would be easy to blackmail. “No,” one exceptional out-of-the-closet homosexual reportedly responded, “I am an accomplished homosexual.” Bill Bonano’s Bound by Honor: A Mafioso’s Story (1999) described the author’s understanding of why J. Edgar Hoover, who headed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, assigned only “about half a dozen” agents to “organized crime.” Removing seven or eight photos from a manila envelope and showing them to gangster Joe Bonano, lawyer Roy Cohn said, “You know, [Hoover] still won’t use the term Mafia.” According to Bonano’s son, “Most were five-by-seven shots, a couple were eight-by 10s. They were all pictures of Hoover in women’s clothing. His face was daubed with lipstick and makeup and he wore a wig of ringlets. In several of the photos, he posed alone, smiling, even mugging for the camera. In a few others, he was sitting on the lap of an unidentified male, stroking his cheek in one, hugging him in another, holding a morsel of food before his mouth in yet another.” Because Hoover knew the photographs existed, Bonanno alleges Hoover feared being blackmailed. The photos were said to have been taken by Lewis Rosenstiel “at a party on a houseboat in the Keys, 1948-1949.” During a period in which homosexuality was called a sickness by psychiatrists, and reinforced by religionists with appeals to sacred books, gay individuals chose then, and often still do choose, to be closeted.
Clough, Arthur Hugh (1819—1861) An English poet, Clough was a skeptic and was somewhat cynical. He has been said to be closer in spirit to the 10th than to the 19th century. He wrote Blasting the Rock of Ages (published in 1925). His poetry, including “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth,” “Dypsichus,” and “Mari Magno,” reveal not only his doubts about religion but also about himself. On an 1852 trip to the United States, he gained the friendship of Emerson and Longfellow. Clough is the Thyrsis of Matthew Arnold’s “Monody.” Leslie Stephens has said of Clough, “He never became bitter against the Church of his childhood, but he came to regard its dogmas as imperfect and untenable.” According to McCabe, Clough “wavered a little, as poets do, but in his final declaration on religion he is practically agnostic, not Unitarian, with a thin lingering shade of theism or pantheism.” {BDF; CE; GS; JM; JMR; RAT; RE; TRI}
Clouston, Thomas [Sir] (1841—1915) A physician and lecturer on mental diseases at Edinburgh University, Clouston was president of the Edinburgh Royal College of Physicians and editor of The Journal of Medical Science. He rejected belief in a separable mind and severely criticized what he called “religionists.” {RAT; RE}
Clunas, John (20th Century) Clunas in Scotland is active with the Aberdeen Humanist Group. He has had articles in Humanism Scotland.
COALITION FOR SECULAR HUMANISM, ATHEISM, AND FREE THOUGHT The Coalition for Secular Humanism, Atheism, and Freethought, Box 32, Buffalo, NY, 14215, is a group which espouses secular humanism, freethought, rationalism, secularism, agnosticism, and atheism. It seeks joint action on secular humanist and freethought positions on issues of concern to people, including values, morality, and ethics. {FD}
Coate, Lowell H. (20th Century) In Los Angeles, Coate and a group of Quaker humanists broke away from their denomination and in 1939, at a meeting of the First Universalist Church, established the Humanist Society of Friends. {HNS2}
Coate, Lowell L. (20th Century) Coate was an editor of The American Rationalist. {EU, Eldon Scholl}
Coates, Collinson (1885—1981) Coates, the son of a freethinker, became an apprenticed shoemaker in Liverpool, England, at the age of fourteen. Emigrating to Western Australia in 1912, he became active in the Australian Labor Party. In 1958 he co-founded the Western Australian Secularist Fellowship, which continued until about 1980. At the age of 95, Coates published an anti-war book, Almost Too Late.
Coates, J. B. (20th Century)
Coates, a freethinker, wrote A Challenge to Christianity (1958), which in an appendix contained “A Humanist Manifesto.” {GS}
Coates, Jack (Born 1892) Writing in Literary Guide, Coates spoke of the need to develop secular humanism in the Rationalist Press Association (RPA). Science without ethics could destroy the world, he held. Agreeing with Emmanuel Mournier’s Esprit (1932) and with J. P. van Praag, the Dutch leader, Coates founded in 1945 the London Personalist movement. {TRI}
Cobb, Irvin S(hrewsbury) (1876—1944) A noted humorist, columnist, and author, Cobb wrote over sixty books. Best known for his humorous stories of Kentucky local humor, he wrote an autobiography entitled Exit Laughing (1942). Upon his death, he left a “To Whom It May Concern” letter for Edwin J. Paxton Sr., publisher of the Paducah Sun-Democrat, which read in part as follows:
In death I desire that no one shall look upon my face and once more I charge my family, as already and repeatedly I have done, that they shall put on none of the bogus habiliments of so-called mourning. Folds of black crepe never ministered to the memory of the departed; they only made the wearers unhappy and self-conscious. I ask that my body be wrapped in a plain sheet or cloth and placed in an inexpensive container and immediately cremated—without any special formality or ceremony. If anybody tries to insert me into one of those dismal numbers run up by the undertaker’s dress-making department, I’ll come back and ha-nt ’em. Nor do I crave to make my mortal exit in a tailcoat with white tie and artificial pearl studs. I’ll be done with after dinner speaking forever, so why dispatch me hence in the regalia of the craft? When a man dies with his sins, let the sins die with the man. That’s what I say and it sums up such speculations as I might ever have had touching on the future state, if any. When convenience suits, I ask that the plain canister—nothing fancy there, please—containing my ashes shall be taken to Paducah, and that at the proper planting season a hole shall be dug in our family lot or elsewhere at Oak Grove and a dogwood tree planted there and the ashes strewn in the hole to fertilize the tree roots. Should the tree live, that will be monument enough for me. But should my surviving relatives desire to mark the spot further, I make so bold as to suggest that they use either a slab of plain Kentucky limestone set flat in the kindly earth, or a rugged natural boulder of southern granite bearing a small bronze plate with my name on it and, if it seems pertinent, the year of my birth and the year of my death. Also on the bronze tablet or the stone slab, as the case may be, and provided it doesn’t cost too much, I’d like to have inscribed certain lines, as I remember them, from the epitaph which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote for himself:
These be the lines you ’grave for me; Here I lie where I long to be. Home is the hunter, home from the hill, And the sailor home from the sea.
[Ed. note: To correct the record, Stevenson’s lines