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From Philosopedia

Gaarder, Jostein (1952— ) A Norwegian, Gaarder is author of “a novel about the history of philosophy” called Sophie’s World (1995), one which in 1996 had sold nine million copies in thirty-six languages by offering philosophy without tears. The work begins 2,600 years ago and ends in the late 1800s. Jim Herrick found the work has “a humanist outlook” and “is difficult to put down.” Herrick found that in the first lesson we learn that “[t]he aim of the early Greek philosophers was to find natural, rather than supernatural, explanations for natural processes.” The concluding instruction covers Darwin, Freud, and the “Big Bang.” A clear understanding of rationalism is in place: while considering early Greek philosophy, it is indicated that “a rationalist is someone who believes that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world.” Descartes’s rationalism is also recounted: “The more self-evident a thing is to one’s reason, the more certain is that it exists.” The work was written to intrigue and enlighten youngsters who like their fiction embedded in philosophy, Herrick added, and for adults who like their philosophy laced with fiction.

Gabarro, Bartolomé (Born 1846) A Spanish writer, Gabarro founded in Barcelona an anti-clerical League of Freethinkers pledged to live without priests. When some two hundred anti-clerical groups in over a hundred lay schools formed, the Church became concerned. When Dr. Gabarro denounced the assassins of a freethinker, he was pursued for libel, sentenced to four years in prison, and forced to fly to Cerbere on the frontier, where he published an anti-clerical journal, La Tronada. Gabarro has written many brochures and an important work on Pius IX. {BDF}

Gabelli, Aristide (Born 1830) An Italian writer, Gabelli wrote The Religious Question in Italy (1864) and Man and the Moral Sciences (1869), in which he rejects all metaphysics and supernaturalism. {BDF}

Gabriel, Ralph H. (1890—1987) Gabriel, a historian at Yale University (1915—1958), wrote The Course of American Democratic Thought (1956) and Religion and Learning at Yale (1958). Asked about his views concerning humanism, Gabriel responded to the present author:

I read your categories of humanism with interest. They seem to me to be excellent and will be useful to me. As for myself, I do not know exactly where I fit. I do not know the realities of the cosmos. I only know that man with his hopes and aspirations, his capacity to sacrifice for an ideal is part of it. He uses the abilities with which he is endowed not only to maintain life but to find some meaning for it. His efforts to discover meaning ends in mystery. His attempt through the use of reason to add to his knowledge of the cosmos has brought a vast increase in that knowledge beyond the frontiers of which, however, lies mystery. To push out this frontier, to penetrate the mystery is his greatest challenge. I find that contemplation of the mystery brings that humility which is one of the virtues taught by religion. For me the aspirations (part of the cosmos) of men suggest an essence or being greater than man, worship of whom gives added strength for dealing with the vicissitudes of life.

{WAS, 10 July 1956}
Gabriel, Toni (20th Century)

In the 1970s, Gabriel was a humanist counselor associated with the Humanist Society of Greater New York.

Gabrielle, A. G. (19th Century) Gabrielle, a freethinker, wrote Life and Immortality of Man (1898). {GS}

Gaddis, William (1922-1998) Gaddis was an innovative author of complex novels. He attended Harvard College (1941-1945) until he and a friend were asked to leave because of an altercation with the police. He became a fact checker for New Yorker (1945-1947), a Guggenheim fellow (1981), a MacArthur Prize fellow (1982), a Rockefeller grantee (1976), and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His four published novels—The Recognitions (1955), a Faust-like work about a clergyman’s son who becomes a painter, an examination of spiritual bankruptcy; J. R. (1975), a harsh depiction of greed, hypocrisy, and banality in the business world; Carpenter’s Gothic (1985), a depiction of American society’s moral chaos, an attack on religious charlatanism; and A Frolic of His Own (1993), about a motorist who arranges his own car accident, then experiences the absurdities of the legal world—“stand tall and totemic in the field of modernist literature,” wrote critic Mel Gussow. He was compared to James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon for the 1955 work. Other critics compared him to Malcolm Lowry and Herman Melville, Cynthia Ozick calling him “an American original.” Because of some harsh criticism about his first novel from Granville Hicks and others—one wrote, “What this sprawling, squalling, overwritten book needs above all is to have its mouth washed out with lye soap”—he published nothing for two decades, earning a living by writing for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. Although one of the least read of important American writers, he developed a wide underground reputation for writing demanding, perceptive, and inventive novels. “Like most American novelists, Willie didn’t have any grounding in belief of any kind,” the critic Frederick Karl said. “He was alone, no religious revival, no reaching for spiritual salvation. Irony became his fall-back position, his world view. He found everything artificial and deceptive and conspiratorial—counterfeit. That was his great theme.” As Gaddis once remarked, “Stupidity—and I don’t mean ignorance—is a central issue of our time.” In a characteristic aside, he wrote in The Recognitions, “The Irish mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton calculates that Jesus in assumption, being drawn up through space at a moderate rate, would not yet have reached the nearest of the fixed stars.” “I think he thought God was a terrible joke,” his literary agent Candida Donadio remarked. Following Gaddis’s death in 1998, the cognoscenti awaited the posthumous publication of Agape Agape. {Philip Gourevitch, The New Yorker, 28 December 1998; “In Memoriam,” The American Rationalist, March-April 1999)

Gadow, Hans Friedrich (1855—1940) A zoologist, Gadow was educated under Haeckel at Jena and studied at several other German universities. Migrating to England, he became Strickland Curator and Lecturer on Zoology at Cambridge. In the symposium honoring Prof. Haeckel (Was Wir Ernst Haeckel Verdanken (1914), Gadow describes himself as an Agnostic. {RAT; RE}

Gaede, Erwin A. (1917— ) When Gaede signed Humanist Manifesto II, he was a minister of the Unitarian Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He wrote Politics and Ethics (1983). {HM2}

Gagarin, Yuri (1934—1968) 

Gagarin, the atheist and Soviet astronaut, amused large numbers when, speaking from space in 1961, he reported, “I don’t see any god up here.” {TYD}

Gage, Matilda Joslyn (1826—1898) A suffrage leader and author of Woman, Church and State (1893), Gage collaborated with fellow freethinkers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in their History of Woman Suffrage (1881—1886). Gage, an atheist, was President of the National Women’s Suffrage Association. “The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization,” she wrote, “but has done a great deal toward retarding it.” With Anthony and Stanton, she considered the Church the great obstacle to woman’s progress. (See entry for Gerda Lerner.) {BDF; CE; EU, Gordon Stein; JM; Lois K. Porter, “Matilda Joslyn Gage,” Free Inquiry, Winter 1993; PUT; RAT; RE; TYD; WWS}

Gagern, Carlos von (1826—1885) Gagern was educated in Berlin, and he became acquainted with Humboldt when traveling to Paris in 1847. In Spain he studied Basque life in the Pyrenees; served in the Prussian army; and became a friend of Wislicenus and the free-religious movement. In 1852 he went to Mexico. In the French-Mexican expedition he was taken prisoner, later becoming the military attaché for Mexico at Berlin. His freethought appears in his memoirs, Dead and Living (1884) and in Sword and Trowel (1888). {BDF}

Gagern, Heinrich, Freiherr von (1799—1880) Gagern, a Hessian parliamentary leader and leading advocate of German unity, became president of the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848. In his Critik des Völkerrechts, mit practischer Anwendung auf unsre Zeit (Critique of International Law, with Practical Application to Our Time, 1840), Gagern made reference to humanism and the idea of humanity as distinct from that of classical humanism. {CE}

GAIA: See entry for Fons Elders.

GAIA HYPOTHESIS James Lovelock, a British atmospheric chemist and Lynn Margulis, an American microbiologist, developed the Gaia Hypothesis. It involves the view that our planet’s surface functions like a giant organism, one interconnected whole. Named after the Greek earth goddess, it has attracted pagans and mystics as well as atmospheric chemists, ecologists, oceanographers, microbiologists, and geologists. Gaia: The Society for Research and Education in Earth System Science is an organization that encourages interdisciplinary research into the Gaia hypothesis. Tyler Volk, an associate professor of biology at New York University and a member of Gaia’s board of directors, is author of Gaia’s Body: Toward a Physiology of Earth (1998). Interviewed by The New York Times reporter Jill Neimark (11 August 1998), he explained that

Gaia started with a stupendous metaphor and a unique scientific insight, and I think Lovelock has a special charisma. In a simple sentence, traditional Gaia theory postulates something called “comfortable conditions for life,” and asserts that the Gaian system maintains those conditions. It looks at the constancy of temperature, climate, gasses, the ocean environment. The million-dollar questions that Lovelock first asked [a quarter of a century ago] was, Why is atmospheric oxygen constant at 21 percent, the level needed to maintain complex life? But I think there’s been too much emphasis on the ill-defined idea of comfort and on environmental stability. I think the key is almost the opposite: the flow and flux of life, of the chemical processes of organisms over the entire planet. The sheer, raw power of life. . . . If you want to worship mystery, studying the global metabolism is a great way to go.

Gaidoz, Henri (1842—1932) Gaidoz was a French philologist. He was a professor of Celtic at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1876. He founded the Revue Celtique (1870) and the folklore magazine Mélusine (1877). His works indicate his rationalist outlook. {RAT}

Gaillot, Jacques (1935— ) Gaillot, a leftist Bishop of Evreux in Normandy, France, was dismissed in 1995 by the Vatican, although thousands of supporters celebrated Mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame on his final day. “This is the most beautiful day that I have had as Bishop since my arrival in 1982,” he said. The Church had been trying for years to rein him in and made him sign a statement pledging loyalty to established church doctrine. He had criticized church-run schools and contradicted the church’s doctrine by opposing the use of nuclear weapons for any purpose, even to deter war. He also flouted church doctrine condemning the use of contraceptives. To a gay magazine, he said in 1989 that failing to advise people who were at risk of contracting AIDS to protect themselves with condoms was tantamount to violating the biblical commandment against murder. The Vatican removed him, giving him the meaningless title of Bishop of Partenia, an inactive diocese in Mauritania. “When I think of what happened to me,” Gaillot observed, “I think of the Spanish Inquisition. But the church is my family. After this, I will find some way, perhaps in a monastery, to continue my work, to reflect, to continue to work with the outcasts of life—prisoners, victims of AIDS, the homeless.”

Gaines, Steven S. (20th Century) Gaines, a freethinker, is author of Marjoe (1973) and Heroes and Villains (1995).

Gaines, William M. (Born 1922; Deceased) Gaines was founder and long-time publisher of Mad. Tim Madigan has said that Gaines “may well have been one of the most influential freethinkers of all time—his magazine has always been in the forefront of giving the raspberry to dogmatism wherever it appears. He should take his rightful place in the pantheon of humanist heroes, although I’m sure his first act would be to slip a whoopy cushion under Voltaire’s seat.” An atheist, Gaines had as his motto, “Don’t take anything too seriously,” and that included satire itself. {Maria Reidelbach, Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine; Secular Humanist Bulletin, Winter 1995}

Gaines, William M. (1 Mar 1922 - 3 Jun 1992) Gaines was founder and long-time publisher of Mad. Tim Madigan, formerly the editor of Free Inquiry, has said that Gaines “may well have been one of the most influential freethinkers of all time—his magazine has always been in the forefront of giving the raspberry to dogmatism wherever it appears. He should take his rightful place in the pantheon of humanist heroes, although I’m sure his first act would be to slip a whoopy cushion under Voltaire’s seat.” An atheist, Gaines had as his motto, “Don’t take anything too seriously,” and that included satire itself. {Maria Reidelbach, Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine; Secular Humanist Bulletin, Winter 1995}

Gaitán, J. Z. (20th Century) Gaitán, from Mexico, addressed the Fourth International Humanist and Ethical Union World Congress held in Paris (1966).

Gaitskell, Hugh Todd Naylor (1906—1963) Gaitskell was a British statesman who in 1945 entered Parliament as a Labour member and from 1950 to 1951 was chancellor of the exchequer. A moderate, he succeeded Clement Attlee as party leader in 1955. Gaitskell, according to Nicholas Walter, was not a believer. {New Humanist, September 1996}

Gajewski, Karen Ann (20th Century) Gajewski is associate editor and production manager in Amherst, New York, of The Humanist. {HNS2}

Galanskov, Yuri (Died 1972) A Russian poet, Galanskov in 1961 edited Phoenix., which was not a political publication. He wrote a “Chelovecheski Manifest,” or Humanist Manifesto, for his journal, was sent to a psychiatric hospital, and died in a Soviet labor camp.

Galanter, Vera (20th Century) Galanter is a representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union at the United Nations in New York.

GALAXIES A galaxy is a large aggregation of gas, dust, and typically billions of stars. Held together by the gravitational attraction between its parts, it rotates and thereby is prevented from collapsing on itself. An estimated hundred billion galaxies exist, including our own: the Milky Way. People in the early part of the 20th century became aware that the Milky Way was not “out there,” but, rather that the Earth is a part of the Milky Way Galaxy along with over 100 billion stars including the sun. By the end of the century they had evidence from the Hubble Space Telescope that the faintest and most distant objects ever sighted—galaxies of stars more than twelve billion light years away—had been detected. A sighting penetrated for the first time to within about one billion light years of the very beginning of the universe, showing that even then there were galxies with huge families of stars. In 1997, astronomers found “Red Arc in CL1358+62,” a galaxy some 13 billion light-years from the Earth. In 1998, 0140+326RDI and dubbed RD1 was sighted at the Keek Observatory in Hawaii—the tiny galaxy on the other side of the universe was the most distant object ever before seen from Earth. It was identified the prior year by Dutch researchers from the University of Groningen and an American team from the Lick Observatory in California. If the universe is about 13 billion years old, RD1’s light is believed to take about 12.2 billion years to reach Earth. It is almost 90 million light-years father away from Earth than the previous record-holder and is made of the earliest generation of stars to appear in the universe. GRS 1915+105 is a celestial object, a “black hole” around and into which a disc of gas swirls. It was the first object in the Milky Way galaxy that was found to show “superluminal motion,” for it shoots out a pair of gaseous jets at close to the speed of light. GRS 1915+105 recently has been shown to drag space with it as it spins. To observe black holes, astronomers utilize the Rossi x-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), a satellite owned by America’s space agency, NASA. Astronomers estimate how old the universe is by dividing the distance to a galaxy by its speed of recession, concluding with the “Hubble time,” which is how long the galaxy must have taken to get that far away from earth since the Big Bang, when everything was in one place. That simple calculation, however, does not give the age of the universe directly, because the expansion was faster in the past than it is now. The dating is corrected by assuming that if the universe has exactly the critical density—the usual assumption up to now—then the age of the universe works out to two-thirds of the Hubble time. At the start of 1998 many astronomers were speaking of the likelihood that the currently expanded universe will never collapse again in a catastrophic reversal of its birth event, the Big Bang, nor ever come to a virtual standstill. Instead, the likelihood is that the cosmos will continue to grow bigger and bigger, colder, darker, and emptier. Forever. In 1998 at a San Diego, California, meeting of the American Astronomical Society, it was announced that two radio telescopes—the Dwingeloo in the Netherlands and the Parkes in Australia—have detected, respectively, forty and one hundred three new galaxies previously obscured by the Milky Way. In 1999 at the end of the century, philosophers marveled about the discovery that astronomers for the first time have identified a solar system with planets that revolve around a star other than the Sun. Now, unlike at the beginning of the century, as noted by Richard Panek, we are well aware that we are “but the blink-of-an-eye inhabitants of one of several specks of dust circling an ordinary star at the edge of an average galaxy among 125 billion others in the universe!” (A bawdy Manhattan wag is said to have been overheard arguing with a religious ideologue and complaining as well as purposely mispronouncing, “It’s a pity you guys know more about Uriah than you do about Uranus!” See entries for Extraterrestrial Life, and for Milky Way.) {CE; The Economist, 17 January 1998; The New York Times, 31 July 1997, 13 March 1998, and 17 April 1999}

Gale, Richard (20th Century) Gale is professor of philosophy and a fellow of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a contributing editor on Philo, for which he wrote R. M. Adams’s Theodicy of Grace” (Spring-Summer 1998).

Gale, Zona (1874—1939) Gale’s “Miss Lulu Bett” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1921. It was an ironic, feminist look at small-town life. Although in religion Gale may have gone through a mystical phase, her biographer August Derleth wrote that she agreed with her father’s view, “The spirit of man is God; that is the only God there is.” Her life’s theme was a belief that “Life is something more than that which we believe it to be.” {WWS}

Galbraith, John Kenneth (1908— ) Galbraith, a Canadian-born economist, was an adviser to Pres. John F. Kennedy. A Keynsian, he believed government should fight its unemployment problems by spending and should use more of its wealth to improve public services. He wrote The Affluent Society (1959), The Age of Uncertainty (1977), and Economics in Perspective (1987). In 1985 the American Humanist Association made Galbraith Humanist of the Year. {CE; HNS2}

Galdós, Benito Pérez: See entry for Pérez Galdós, Benito.

Gales, Joseph (1786—1860) Gales, a deist, was a leading newspaperman in North Carolina. He owned The Raleigh Register and had a controlling interest in The National Intelligencer. (See entry for North Carolina Freethinkers.)

GALHA: See entry for Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association.

Galiani, Ferdinando: See entry for Beccaria.

Galifret, Yves (20th Century) A professor emeritus of neurophysiology at the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Dr. Galifret is executive director, l’Union Rationaliste, and a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism. His essay, “Religious Dogmatism and Materialist Reductionism versus Humanism,” is in Challenges to the Enlightenment, Essays in defense of Reason and Science (1994). He signed Humanist Manifesto 2000. {SHD}

Galileo Galilei (1564—1642) Most have forgotten that Galileo invented the thermometer as well as the telescope. He also discovered the stellar composition of the Milky Way, but he is chiefly remembered as being an astronomer, physicist, and mathematician whose observations contradicted Aristotle’s teachings. Julian Kane, a professor of geology at Hofstra University, has written that Galileo “disproved the Ptolemaic theory, sanctioned for centuries by the Church, which held the Earth to be the central and principal object in the universe, about which all celestial objects orbited. By default, the Copernican theory of planets (including Earth) orbiting the Sun was the only credible one remaining. The Church’s belated removal [in 1992] of its 1633 condemnation of Galileo comes 376 years, 7 months, and 26 days after the 1616 decree that attempted to intimidate and restrict the great scientist.” However, Kane adds, “Copernicus did not discover the movements of the planets about the Sun. His observations, published in 1543, confirmed the heliocentric theory first promulgated 1.800 years earlier, about 270 B. C. E., by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, who attributed the annual reappearance of the constellations in the same celestial position to the Earth orbiting the Sun. This, and periodic reappearances of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, in the same respective celestial places, persuaded him to proclaim that all planets orbit the Sun.” The Church brought Galileo before the Inquisition, charging him—not with having fathered three children born of a liaison with Marina Gamba of Venice, whom he never married—as follows:

Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei, of Florence, aged 70 years, were denounced in 1615, to this Holy Office, for holding as true a false doctrine taught by many, namely, that the sun is immovable in the center of the world, and that the earth moves, and also with a diurnal motion; also, for having pupils whom you instructed in the same opinions; also, for maintaining a correspondence on the same with some German mathematicians; also for publishing certain letters on the sunspots, in which you developed the same doctrine as true; also for answering the objections which were continually produced from the Holy Scriptures, . . . this Holy Tribunal being desirous of providing against the disorder and mischief which were thence proceeding and increasing to the detriment of the Holy Faith by the desire his Holiness and of the Most Eminent Lords Cardinals of this supreme and universal inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the sun, and the motion of the earth, were qualified by the Theological Qualifiers as follows:

1. This proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scriptures. 2. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith. And, in order that so pernicious a doctrine might be altogether rooted out, not insinuate itself further to the heavy detriment of the Catholic truth, a decree emanated from the Holy Congregation of the Index prohibiting the books which treated this doctrine, declaring it false, and altogether contrary to the Holy and Divine Scripture. . . . We order you during the next three years to recite, once a week, the seven penitential psalms, reserving to Ourselves the power of moderating, commuting, or taking off, the whole or part of the said punishment or penance. 22nd, June 1633

Newton was inspired by Galileo’s findings, which inspired Newton’s laws of motion. Many critics feel that Galileo should not have given in to the Inquisition. After his books were banned, he became blind in 1638. The Pope denied him permission to see doctors in Florence, and Galileo died a believing Catholic while still under house arrest. An account of how the Jesuits applied every jot and tittle of the Trent declarations to favor Aristotle over Galileo is found in Pietro Redondi’s Galileo: Heretic. Robertson terms Galileo “an orthodox Catholic,” saying the worst part of his sentence was having all his works, published and unpublished, placed on the Index Expurgatorius and “the gag thus laid on all utterance of rational scientific thought in Italy—an evil of incalculable influence.” (See Joseph McCabe’s Rationalist Encyclopedia, which contains examples of how historians have incorrectly dealt with the life and findings of Galileo; he focuses on the untruthful Catholic versions.) {CE; CL; ER; HNS2; JMR; JMRH; PUT; RE; TDY}

Gall, Franz Joseph (1758—1828) Gall was the founder of phrenology. A physician in Vienna, he devoted much time to the study of the brain and lectured on craniology there. With Dr. Spurzheim, he taught their system of phrenology in various cities of Europe. Contemporary neurology and anthropology have refuted the theory, calling it a form of quackery. Apart from phrenology, Gall contributed materially to knowledge of the brain and nerves, and his works are on the Index Prohibitorum. He refused religious ministration at death. {BDF; RAT}

Gallagher, Liam (20th Century) The lead singer of Oasis, a British band, Gallagher emulates John Lennon and shares some of his iconoclastic views about religion. “We are bigger than Jesus,” he said of Oasis. “Oasis is bigger than God,” said his brother Noel, also in the band. As reported by Paul Lester’s Oasis: The Illustrated Story, Gallagher believes:

I live for now, not for what happens after I die. If I die and there’s something afterwards, I’m going to hell, not heaven. I mean, the devil’s got all the good gear. What’s God got? The Inspiral Carpets and nuns. Fuck that.

{CA}

Gallatin, Albert (1761—1849) A statesman educated in Europe, where he adopted deism, Gallatin made a fortune in the United States and entered politics. He served as Secretary of the Treasury under President Jefferson and was Minister to France. A leader of the Republican (Jeffersonian) minority, Gallatin was active in advocating financial reform and in opposing war with France. He attacked all war, slavery, and other evils. Gallatin was one of the founders of New York University, saying America should have “a foundation free from the influence of the clergy.” When the clergy “wormed their way in,” McCabe noted, Gallatin walked out in disgust. His son James confirmed in his diary that his father was a follower of Voltaire. {CE; JM; RAT; RE; TYD}

Gallaway, B. P. (20th Century)

Gallaway edited Texas the Dark Corner of the Confederacy: Contemporary Accounts of the Lone Star State in the Civil War (1994). {Freethought History #15, 1995}

Galletti, Baldassare (Died 1887) Galletti, a pantheist of Palermo, translated into Italian Feuerbach’s Death and Immortality and selections from Morin. {BDF}

Gallichan, Walter (Born 1861) Gallichan, who used the pen-name of “Geoffrey Mortimer,” was a frequent contributor to rationalist periodicals. In 1891 he wrote Tales from the Western Moors, a work of fiction. His rationalist views are found in The Religion of Kindness (1916). {RAT}

Gallie, Roger (20th Century) Gallie, of the University of Nottingham, was a director of the 1996 Hume Conference of The Hume Society, a group engaged in scholarly activity concerning David Hume.

Gallihan, Walter M. (20th Century) Gallihan, a freethinker, wrote The Religion of Kindness (c. 1916). {GS}

Galpin, Thomas (20th Century) Finding Jesus at a Bench (191—?) is a freethought work written by Galpin. {GS}

Galsworthy, John (1867—1933) Galsworthy is a British novelist who once asserted that “Humanism is the creed of those who believe that, in the circle of enwrapping mystery, men’s fates are in their own hands—a faith that for modern man is becoming the only possible faith.” Known for his The Forsyte Sage (1922), Galsworthy dealt with three generations of a complacent upper-middle-class family from the 1880s to the 1920s. When he won the Nobel Prize, he gave away the money and maintained charities that remained secret until after his death. When the Society of Authors demanded that he be buried in Westminster Abbey, the clergy refused to admit the remains of so wicked a man. Shortly before his death, however, Galsworthy had strongly attacked any kind of church burial and said, “Scatter my ashes.” His agnosticism is best seen in Moods, Songs, and Doggerels (1911), but he evidences a vague and wavering theism in “A Dream,” in which poem he states, “My faith but shadows that required of men.” Although some assumed he had been knighted, Galsworthy always refused the “honor.” {CE; CL; HNS; JM; RAT; RE; TYD}

Galt, Tom (20th Century) A naturalistic humanist, Galt wrote The Story of Peace and War, Seven Days from Sunday (1956), and The World Has A Familiar Face (1981). He has reviewed books for The Humanist.

Galton, Francis [Sir] (1822—1911) A grandson of Erasmus Darwin and son of a rich Quaker, Galton traveled to Africa in 1850 and wrote a popular Art of Travel, distinguishing himself by many writings bearing on heredity. In his Inquiries into Human Faculty and Development (1883), Galton gives statistical refutation of the theory of prayer. Galton was secretary of the British Association from 1863 to 1868, president of the Geographical Section in 1862 and 1872, and president of the Anthropological Section in 1877 and 1885. Also, he was president of the Anthropological Institute. Sir Francis is credited for coining the word eugenics. The system he established for classifying fingerprints is still in use today. In a letter to his friend Darwin, Galton wrote, “Your book drove away the constraint of my old superstition as if it had been a nightmare.” His biographer, Karl Pearson, described Galton as one who had ceased being “an orthodox Christian in the customary sense” as early as 1846. {BDF; CE; JM; JMRH; RAT; RE} Galtung, Johan (20th Century)

	A professor of sociology at the University of Oslo, Dr. Galtung is a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism. He is author of Limits to Growth and Class Politics (1980) and “Poor Countries vs. Rich: Whom Will NIEO Benefit?” (1987). In 1980 he was presented with Social Science—For What? A Festschrift for Johan Galtung. At the Ninth International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) World Congress held in Oslo (1986), Galtung presided. In 1998 Galtung was President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union’s 14th World Congress in Mumbai, at which he spoke on “Towards Year 2000: On the Basis of the Humanist World View.” {Humanist in Canada, Autumn 1999; International Humanist News, December 1998}

GAMAB Gamab is one of many African gods, the Supreme God living in the heavens. {LEE}

Gambetta, Léon Michel (1838—1882) A French republican leader, Gambetta opposed Napoleon’s Second Empire and was prominent in the provisional government following the empire’s fall in 1870. In 1871 he helped create the Third Republic, pursuing as premier a moderate policy between the radicals and the monarchists. He appealed to the radicals with his cry, “Le cléricalisme—voilà l’ennemi” (Clericalism—that’s the enemy). A professed disciple of Voltaire, Gambetta admired Comte and was an open opponent of clericalism. Writer Frederic Harrison has said that Gambetta “systematically and formally repudiated any kind of acceptance of theology.” During his lifetime he never entered a Church, even when attending a marriage or a funeral, but stopped short at the door, and let who would go inside and listen to the mummery of the priest. In his own expressive words, he declined to be “rocked asleep by the myths of childish religions.” He professed himself an admirer and a disciple of Voltaire. Every member of his ministry was a Freethinker, and one of them, the eminent scientist Paul Bert, was a militant atheist. Speaking at a public meeting not long before his death, Gambetta called Comte the greatest thinker of this century, saying that it was Comte who proposed to “reorganize society, without God and without king, by the systematic cultus of humanity.” Upon his death, Pays, a journal edited by Paul de Cassagnac, reported that Gambetta “dies, poisoned by his own blood. He set himself up against God. He has fallen. It is fearful. But it is just.” Two years prior to his death, M. Feuillet des Conches, formerly Vicar of Notre Dame des Victoires and then honorary Chamberlain to the Pope, told the London Times that Gambetta had brought a brace of wax tapers to offer in memory of his mother, had knelt before the Virgin, dipped his fingers in holy water, and made the sign of the cross. “Either the priest mistook some portly dark man for Gambetta,” Foote wrote, “or he was guilty of a pious fraud.” While lying on his death-bed Gambetta listened to Rabelais, Molière, and other of his favorite but not very pious authors, read aloud by a young student who adored him. Almost his last words, as recorded in The Times were, “Well, I have suffered so much, it will be a deliverance.” The words are calm, collected, and truthful, Foote notes. There is no rant and no quailing. It is the natural language of a strong man confronting Death after long agony. Shortly afterwards, he breathed his last. No priest administered “the consolations of religion,” and he expressly ordered that he should be buried without religious rites.

	Gambetta’s public and secular funeral was one of the largest gatherings ever before witnessed in Paris. {BDF; CE; FO; JM; RAT; RE}

GAMBIA, ATHEISM IN In Gambia, there has been a Gora Society for atheists and freethinkers. (See Freethought In the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth by Gordon Stein.)

Gambini, William (20th Century) Gambini, an artist who during the 1940s and 1950s studied with the abstract expressionists in Greenwich Village, New York City, completed an acrylic painting of Thomas Paine, whom he admired for his freethought.

Gambon, Ferdinand Charles (1820—1887) Gambon, a French communist, became an advocate and founded the Journal des Ecoles in 1839. The Empire drove him into exile, but he returned when an amnesty was declared in 1859. In 1869 he refused to pay taxes. As an elected deputy at Paris in 1871 he was one of the last defenders of the Commune. Imprisoned, he was released in 1881. Gambon favored the abolishment of a standing army. {BDF; RAT}

GAMMA-RAY ASTRONOMY Gammay-ray astronomers are interested in finding the origin and nature of periodic gammay-ray emissions from extraterrestrial sources. An extension of X-ray astronomy to the extreme shortwave end of the spectrum, the study is interested in events such as supernovae and black holes. In 1999 for the first time, astronomers saw brilliant, visible light and a burst of gamma rays coming almost simultaneously from the same point in the sky. The gamma-ray burst appeared to have been made brighter, or “lensed,” by a galaxy lying between Earth and the distant burst. {CE}

Gandhi, Indira (1917—1984) “There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten,” declared Indian Prime Minister Gandhi. She was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1984 she was assassinated by Sikh members of her body guard unit following an attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine. {CE; TYD}

Gandhi, (Mahatma) Mohandas Karamchand (1869—1948) The Mahatma (great-souled) preached Muslim and Christian ethics along with the Hindu, and he was a proponent of satyagraha (passive resistance). Gandhi has appealed to many religious humanists—he was technically a secularist, not a humanist—and, for example, members of New York’s Community Church (Unitarian) at 40 East 35th Street erected a statue of him which can be seen at the southwest corner of Union Square in Manhattan. In 1893, unsuccessful as a lawyer in India, Gandhi traveled to South Africa, where he was successful and led the Indian community. Renouncing material wealth, he dressed in a loincloth and shawl, symbolic of his Hindu abstemiousness and abandonment (1905) of Western clothing. His threatened “fasts unto death” successfully achieved political concessions, and his highly publicized doctrine of non-violence and truth-force were echoes of Thoreau’s essay, ”Civil Disobedience” (1849). They would later influence pacifists as well as civil rights officials and Martin Luther King Jr. During World War II, Gandhi was loyal to the British Government, but when India did not receive self-government after the Amritsar Rebellion and the Rowlatt Enactments, Gandhi declared 6 April 1919 a day of National Humiliation. He exhorted Indians to be passively resistant. In 1921 he had become the recognized leader of the Indian National Congress, which had as its goal complete national independence. A devout Hindu, he accepted Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and parts of the Bhaghavad Gita as guides for his non-violence. “The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record,” he wrote in Young India (1927), “have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.” His use of a hunger strike and a fast unto death as spiritual instruments forced the British to institute a program of gradual power sharing, but only after Gandhi was interned in 1942. In 1946, he publicly confessed that he had been taking naked girls to bed with him for many years—to test his mastery of celibacy. (His father had died while in the act of intercourse.) In 1947, British India was divided into two states; Gandhi argued against forming the independent state of Pakistan. However, in the year of Gandhi’s death a conflict between India and Pakistan commenced, and more than one million died in the battles between Hindus and Moslems (1947—1948, 1965, 1971). Critics such as the playwright Ajit Dalvi have written of Gandhi’s troubled relationship with his eldest son, Haribal, who, according to The Economist (29 August 1998), “boozed, whored and converted to Islam.” Their grandson’s biography of Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, told that Gandhi’s sudden vow of chastity at the age of thirty-seven exemplified sacrifices he had heaped upon her throughout her life. Yogesh Chadha’s 1997 biography cited Gandhi confessing,

I have a strain of cruelty in me . . . such that people force themselves to do things, even to attempt impossible things, in order to please me.

	He once threatened to evict his wife for having failed to clean an untouchable’s chamber pot, and he disowned Harilal for marrying without his permission. The various critics have focused not only on his heroism in breaking the British Empire with hunger strikes and a spinning wheel but also upon his cruelty.

Unlike those believers who seek immortality in mausoleums, Hindus seek oblivion in cremation. A simple marker at Rajghat in New Delhi indicates where Gandhi was cremated after his assassination by a Hindu fanatic who had been angered by Gandhi’s solicitude for the Moslems. Some of his ashes were given to friends, some were taken to Allahabad, some were placed in the State Bank of India in Cuttack, and forty-nine years after he was killed his ashes in 1997 were handed over to his great grandson, Tushar Arun Gandhi, who immersed them into the mother river (the Ganga Ma). Meanwhile, still other of Gandhi’s ashes are found at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, California. {CB; CE; ER; FUK; PA; TYD}

Gandhi, Radha (20th Century) Mrs. Gandhi has been on the Executive Committee of the Andhra Pradesh Chapter of the Indian Radical Humanist Association, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad.

GANESH Ganesh is the elephant-headed god of learning in Hinduism. In 1995, thousands of people in India rushed to Hindu temples after reports that statues of gods were miraculously drinking milk. Bringing milk in earthen and steel pots, tumblers, and jugs, people converged on temples that had reproductions of Ganesh. In a spoon, scientists offered milk mixed with colored pigments to a statue in a temple in New Delhi, according to the Associated Press, and although the milk disappeared from the spoon. Although the milk disappeared from the spoon, it soon coated the statue. This the scientists attributed to surface tension, saying molecules of milk were pulled from the spoon by the texture of the statues. In Jamshedpur, in the north, police had to use bamboo canes to control a crowd of five hundred that tried to storm a temple. “The gods have come down to earth to solve our problems,” a business executive was quoted as observing, further evidence that Indian folklore is replete with tales of miracles which an estimated nine hundred million people believe in. (See Warren Allen Smith, “Debunking Mysticism in India,” Skeptical Inquirer, May-June 1996) {The New York Times, 22 September 1995}

Ganeval, Louis (Born 1815) A French professor in Egypt, Ganeval wrote a work on Egypt and Jesus devant l’histoire n’a jamais vécu. The first part, published in 1874, was prohibited in France, but the second part was published at Geneva in 1879. {BDF}

Gannett, Ezra Stiles (1801—1871) Gannett, a colleague of William Ellery Channing at Boston’s Federal Street Church, was a key member of a group of young liberal ministers who formed the American Unitarian Association in 1825, a step Channing had not supported. Gannett’s five main beliefs were in “filial reverence for God, brotherly love for man, a grateful faith in Christ, receiving him as the revelation of divine and the model of human character; the reality of the spiritual world and regeneration, consisting in such a change of the temper and way of life as may be brought by one’s own will and effort.” Such views put him at odds with the transcendentalists, and Gannett explicitly rejected Theodore Parker’s intuitionist views. By contemporary standards, Gannett was but a borderline non-believer. {U; U&U}

Gannett, William Channing (1840—1923) Gannett followed his father, Ezra Stiles Gannett, into the Unitarian ministry, but he supported a noncreedal and anti-supernaturalist religion, agreeing with the Free Religious Association. He helped Jenkin Lloyd Jones edit Unity and became one of the staunchest defenders of western radicalism. His major work for the organization was his lyrical and persuasive description of the mind of liberal religion, The Things Most Commonly Believed To-day Among Us (1887). Gannett once wrote, “Jesus is not the only wonder-born child of the Bible, though no one else is born so wondrously as he. Recall the cradle-miracles of Isaac, Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist. . . . The first few pages of the ‘Light of Asia’ tell of another Virgin Mother—the mother of Buddha. . . . In the old Persian religion, Zoroaster, its founder, and Sociash, the expected Savior, are both described as virgin-born. In China the people glorify their emperors by tracing back their family to such a miracle. In Greece and Rome, heroes like Hercules and Romulus, philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato, great conquerors like Alexander and Caesar, were here and there accounted for by miracles of birth.” {U; U&U}

Ganulin, Rick (20th Century)

Ganulin, a lawyer who does not mind being called an infidel and a heretic, spoke to the Freedom From Religion Foundation meeting in Madison in 1998. Saying he was “half-Sephardic Jew and half-Ashkenazi Jew,” Ganulin added that “I have a major problem with the idea of a chosen people and a promised land.” In 1998 he filed a challenge to the statute known as 5 U.S. Code, Section 6103 Subpart A, which lists Christmas Day as a federal holiday.

It’s peculiar as can be that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on December 25. Christians generally—anyone I’ve ever asked—are not even aware that Jesus Christ is the nickname for the person who lived, perhaps, at some point, and as far as anyone knows, would have been called Joshua Ben Joseph. It’s generally accepted the December 25 is not the birthdate. So that having a celebration on December 25 which is not the birthdate of a person whose name is not Jesus Christ celebrating most likely by eating ham—which is something that person would never have eaten—is peculiar. But peculiar or not, Christmas is Christian.

GANYMEDE The Hebrews’ God appears not to have gone on record as having been bisexual, but the Greeks’ Zeus was enamored of the naked and lovely Trojan boy, Ganymede. Zeus, in fact, carried the chap away and made him “cupbearer to the gods,” a legend which implies Zeus’s bisexuality. Richard Rambuss, in Queering the Renaissance (1994), suggests that Thomas Traherne (1637—1674), the chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgeman and lord keeper of the Great Seal was, like Zeus, enamored of a lovely boy: Jesus. In a poem entitled “Love,” Traherne is rapt at the prospect of Christ selecting him as

His Ganymede! His life! His joy! Or he comes down to me, or takes me up That I might be His boy And fill, and taste, and give, and drink the cup.

By Traherne’s time, comments Rambuss, “the rapture of Ganymede had long since been widely spiritualized as a Christian allegory of the devout soul’s ascent to God. Indeed, as Leonard Barkan notes, Claude Mignault, the commentator on Alciati, goes so far as to align Jupiter’s love for Ganymede and Christ’s invitation to ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.’ Moreover, Alan Bradford suggests that the figure of Ganymede as cupbearer to the gods would have also appealed to Traherne in terms of his own vocation as bearer of the Communion chalice.” In short, Traherne made it clear he wanted to see himself as Christ’s boy-bride. (See entries for Greek Religion, Kallimachos, and Allen Windsor.)

Garadzga, Viktor Ivanovich (20th Century) At the Tenth International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) World Congress held in Buffalo (1988), Garadja from the USSR addressed the group. A work of his on religion and science is Nauka i teologia (1972). Garadzga was president of the Soviet Institute for Atheism.

Garafalo, Janeane (1965— ) Garafalo, an actress and comedian, in an interview in Showbiz (August 1995) said she no longer believed in God. “He just seems very man-made to me. There are so many theories, and no everyone can be right. It’s human nature to need a religious crutch, and I don’t begrudge anyone that. I just don’t need one.” She has played a role in The Truth About Cats and Dogs, and on the David Letterman telecast Garafalo joked that in light of her atheism some higher power must be responsible for making her see the same reruns over and over. As for her religious belief, she added, “the glass is half empty as far as I’m concerned.” {E} Janeane Garofalo, Actress/Comedian ent Internet Movie Database

Garofalo was interviewed in the August 1995 edition of Showbiz: "She admits to having lost God. ('He just seems very man-made to me. There are so many theories, and not everyone can be right. It's human nature to need a religious crutch, and I don't begrudge anyone that. I just don't need one.')"

--KSG

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During an appearance on David Letterman, Garofalo, saying she is an atheist, joked that some higher power must be responsible for making her see the same reruns over and over. And in reference to religious belief she said "the glass is half empty as far as I'm concerned".

--EA

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Garofalo appeared as a panelist in the July 14th, 1998 installment of ABC's Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. In discussing the Pope's recent apostolic letter where the traditional rules of the church were reaffirmed, the subject of marriage annulment is brought up, and Maher asks Janeane...

Bill: ...Janeane, you Catholic?

Janeane: Well, I was. I'm not religious anymore, but I think it's like papal infallibility, which is a ridiculous man-made tenet, like what I believe most religious tenets to be, are man-made after the fact.

Bill: I agree.

Janeane: The Bible, I've said it before, is a beautifully written work of fiction.

[ Light applause ]

No, no, don't clap, don't clap. That's what gets me killed.

Bill: Yeah.

[ Laughter ]

[...]

Janeane: But I just think that papal infallibility and what you're saying, it's like a fascist thing, shut up, get in line, this isn't a focus group. Well, you know, that's a very fascist type of statement. I mean, Catholicism? Yes. So don't be a Catholic, I guess you're right. There's something to that. But it's supposed to be about tolerance and acceptance, and also keeping an eye on pragmatism. And it's 1998. There's got to be certain concessions made for the times.

Arianna Huffington: Well, you could become a Southern Baptist. I mean, instead of having to obey the Pope, you could just obey your husband.

Janeane: Right, exactly.

---

Garofalo says this in feel this book -- the book she wrote with Ben Stiller:

"Organized religions and their dogmas only serve to indoctrinate the participants into sheeplike common behaviors. This type of blind assimilation promotes the popularity of top-forty count down radio stations and movie sequels. Skepticism towards groups, holy or otherwise, is enriching and makes you a far more entertaning person" (page 172-173)

In "Janeane's Glossary" in the book defines the bible as "A marvelous work of fiction" (page 209)

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In the August 1, 1999 USA WEEKEND actress Janeane Garofalo talks to an interviewer about her career. A sidebar has a number of questions and answers. One, "Whether God exists" bears the quote from Garofalo: "For other people, yes. I don't have a particular allegiance to one."

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A reader reports a conflicting quote in an October 1999 Yahoo Chat where Garofalo said that she believes in life after death. We're awaiting a transcript to see the context in which the quote was made.

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During her March 7, 2000 appearing Late Show on CBS tonight Garofalo was guest hosting and talking politics with David Cross.

Talking about Alan Keyes she said "I believe in everything he says, except I don't believe in God".

The contributor MMcC is quite certain that JG was joking "about the first half of the statement!"

Garofalo, Janeane (28 Sep 1964 - ) A comedienne and television/movie actress, Garofalo, has appeared on the Ben Stiller Show, Saturday Night Live (1994-1995), and numerous other programs. She has twelve tattoos, some in places she will not show to strangers. A few are in plain sight, however: She has the Japanese character for wisdom on one shoulder and the character for happiness on the other. A black floral design rings her forearm, and underneath it, Garofalo has etched the word think. Since starting her stand-up comedy career in the late 1980s, this daughter of a New Jersey oil executive and his secretary wife established herself as one of her generation's most intelligent and approachable comedians. She tells joke not so much as she talks openly to an audience—her audience reports that going to a Garofalo show feels like hanging around her living room, listening to her bitch about dating, politics, popular culture, and anything else that ticks her off. Garofalo in 1992 hooked up Ben Stiller, her frequent artistic partner (and one-time boyfriend), for his Emmy-winning but short-lived Fox sketch comedy program, The Ben Stiller Show. Two years later, she was a regular on Saturday Night Live and Winona Ryder's best friend in Stiller's directorial breakthrough, Reality Bites. Since then, Garofalo has been omnipresent on television (Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show) and in such films as The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), Mystery Men (1999), Steal This Movie (2000), and Wet Hot American Summer (2001). Along the way, Garofalo has picked up a few critics, notably Joan Rivers, who ridiculed Garofalo on TV in 1997 for wearing a favorite pair of black pants and a brown sweater to the Emmy Awards. "Janeane Garofalo looks like a bag lady," Rivers shrieked during her critique of the evening's fashion. "Is this girl a pig or what?" Garofalo was interviewed in Showbiz (Aug 1995), saying she did not believe in God: “He just seems very man-made to me. There are so many theories, and not every one can be right. It's human nature to need a religious crutch, and I don't begrudge anyone that. I just don't need one."

	During an appearance on David Letterman, Garofalo, saying she is an atheist, joked that some higher power must be responsible for making her see the same reruns over and over. And in reference to religious belief she said "the glass is half empty as far as I'm concerned.”. 

Garofalo appeared as a panelist in the 14 July 1998 installment of ABC's Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. In discussing the Pope's recent apostolic letter where the traditional rules of the church were reaffirmed, the subject of marriage annulment is brought up:

Bill: Janeane, you Catholic? Janeane: Well, I was. I'm not religious anymore, but I think it's like papal infallibility, which is a ridiculous man-made tenet, like what I believe most religious tenets to be, are man-made after the fact. Bill: I agree. Janeane: The Bible, I've said it before, is a beautifully written work of fiction. [Light applause ] No, no, don't clap, don't clap. That's what gets me killed. Bill: Yeah. [ Laughter ] Janeane: But I just think that papal infallibility and what you're saying, it's like a fascist thing, shut up, get in line, this isn't a focus group. Well, you know, that's a very fascist type of statement. I mean, Catholicism? Yes. So don't be a Catholic, I guess you're right. There's something to that. But it's supposed to be about tolerance and acceptance, and also keeping an eye on pragmatism. And it's 1998. There's got to be certain concessions made for the times. Arianna Huffington: Well, you could become a Southern Baptist. I mean, instead of having to obey the Pope, you could just obey your husband. Janeane: Right, exactly.

Feel This Book, which she wrote with Ben Stiller, further describes her outlook:

Organized religions and their dogmas only serve to indoctrinate the participants into sheeplike common behaviors. This type of blind assimilation promotes the popularity of top-forty count down radio stations and movie sequels. Skepticism towards groups, holy or otherwise, is enriching and makes you a far more entertaining person.

In USA Weekend (1 Aug 1999), Garofalo told the interviewer who asked if God exists, “For other people, yes. I don't have a particular allegiance to one." {CA}

Garatttini, Silvio (20th Century) Garattini, director of Instituto Richerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri in Italy, signed Humanist Manifesto 2000. [[Garbarino, James (20th Century) Garbarino, a Unitarian, is author of Let’s Talk About Living in a World with Violence (1993), a workbook for children ages seven to eleven.

Garber, Bob (20th Century) Garber is editor of News and Views, the publication of the Humanists of North Jersey in Glen Rock, New Jersey. (See entry for New Jersey Freethinkers, Humanists.) {FD}

Garbo, Greta (1905—1990)) Although rumored to have been an unbeliever, partly because her ability to portray sexual passion was associated in some people’s minds as being sacrilegious and that therefore she must be “irreligious,” Garbo—born Greta Gustaffson in Sweden—does not qualify. According to Loving Garbo, the Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton, and Mercedes de Acosta (1994) by Hugo Vickers, GG (as she called herself) had an affair with, among others, the homosexual Cecil Beaton, an English scenery and costume designer who once attended a party in pink chiffon and a bustle. And she may have had an affair with Leopold Stokowski. George Brent, Fifi D’Orsay, and Marie Dressler. One of Garbo’s lesbian lovers, Mercedes de Acosta, was known also for having had affairs with Marlene Dietrich, Isadora Duncan, and Eva Le Gallienne. But Garbo never married, nor did she ever again speak to de Acosta after her 1960 memoir about their affair. Garbo, in fact, became known for her inaccessibility, saying offscreen, “Why don’t they leave me alone?’ and ‘I want to be left alone,’ and memorializing William A. Drake’s line in the 1932 script of “Grand Hotel,” “I want to be alone.” Vickers comments that, to console each other because of Garbo’s inaccessibility, Beaton and de Acosta resorted to exchanging news about their previous love. The tragic heroine of “Annie Christie” (1930), “Anna Karenina” (1935), and “Camille” (1936) was famed on the movie screen for being the lover with “one of the most beautiful faces of the 20th century,” but she detested the film industry and the studio system. Beaton found her dull and he tired of her “saying no to everything including Life.” Relationships meant little to her, he observed, and she was little interested in intellectual matters. In 1995, biographer Barry Paris made the case in Garbo that de Acosta was one of the great loves of Garbo’s life. “I would see her above me, her face and body outlined against the sky, looking like some radiant, elemental, glorious god and goddess melted into one,” de Acosta was quoted as saying. In the 1930s the two took a vacation in the Sierra Nevadas where they swam in the nude and cooked their own food. Garbo’s other love was said to be Lilyan Tashman, a “slinky blond” and former Ziegfeld girl who was bulimic and who eventually died of a brain tumor. Paris alleges that Garbo as a pre-teen had several affairs with girlfriends and “possibly also with her sister, Alva.” Paris also states that various sources insist that Garbo had several abortions performed by a doctor on retainer at MGM, her company. He includes such other trivia as that Garbo did not have big feet, that her size 7AA was ideal for a 5’ 7” woman; she never said, “I want to be alone,” but, rather, “I want to be left alone”; that when a made-for-TV movie touted its leading lady as “the new Greta Garbo,” she growled, “There is only one Garbo!”; and while on Fire Island when a parade of gay men passed by, she said, “Should be called ‘Royal Island.’ It’s filled with kveens!” Garbo, according to Barry Paris, cooked with peanut oil, loved fresh vegetables, but disliked buying flowers because “What’s the point? They’d only die.” Known for her tart rejoinders, she replied to an individual offering a dinner invitation, “How do I know I’ll be hungry on Wednesday?” Begged by fans for her photo, she replied, “Why do they want my picture? I’m not their relative.” When Adrian, her couturier, suddenly resigned from MGM, she told him, “I’m very sorry you’re leaving. But you know, I never really liked most of the clothes you made me wear.” Her “Whatever you suggest, it’s no” was illustrative of her frequent imperiousness. Paris wrote that “the metabolism that photographed as listless sensuality was really closer to fatigue. What looked like a migraine on Joan Crawford was, on Garbo, ‘an intense form of sexual yearning. Few could believe the simple truth—that the connection between Garbo’s erotic screen essence and her private sexuality was nonexistent.” Her interests, particularly during her legendary seclusion from 1941 until her death, were going to bed early, exercising, being massaged, eating organically grown vegetables, collecting a cache of dynel-haired toy trolls, and pursuing homeopathic cures. She was cremated and her ashes were interred at a secret spot few know about. In 1999 her cremains were buried at her birthplace outside Stockholm. As for her alleged non-belief, no, she was interested in theosophy.

Garborg, Arne (1851—1924) Garborg, founder of Fedraheim (1877), a Norwegian weekly, encouraged reforms in religion and politics as well as in social, linguistic, and agrarian matters. He favored use of Landsmall, a rural dialect based on Old Norse, as a literary language, and he translated the Odyssey into that dialect. In his The Hill of Innocent (1895), he showed how human faith can defeat the powers of darkness. The tragic disintegration of two morally bankrupt and guilt-ridden men was depicted in his novels, Tired Men (1891) and Peace (1892). He is considered in Norway a major writer of the naturalistic school and a clever controversialist. {BDF; Free Inquiry, Winter 1990-91}

Garcia, J. M. Leon (Born 1865) A foremost Venezuelan freethinker, Garcia against his will be placed in the Episcopal school in Caracas by his parents, who hoped he would become a priest. However, he did not, choosing to join the Liberal party and becoming editor of the freethought journals, Eco Publico and El Libre Examen, in which he conducted warfare against the clergy and church. Garcia is one of the founders of the Venezuelan Freethought Societies. Although knowing he was a pronounced materialist, officials appointed Garcia to head public instruction in the territory of Yuruari in 1892. {PUT}

García Lorca, Federico (1898—1936) Internationally recognized as one of Spain’s most prominent lyric poets and dramatists, García Lorca who was murdered by Spanish fascist forces has become a legendary tragic hero. Lorca’s sexual rejection by painter Salvador Dalí and his friendship with filmmaker Luis Buñuel have been well documented by various authors, including a stormy relationship with Emilio Aladrén Peroja, a young sculptor, which led to his “mysterious emotional crisis” that inspired him to move to New York City in 1927. His “Ode to Walt Whitman and an unfinished The Destruction of Sodom revealed his contradictions concerning homosexuality. In Spain, according to Francisco Soto of New York’s College of Staten Island, “Lorca was forced to censure and speak only indirectly of homosexual desire. Even after his death, his homosexuality remained severely closeted in Spain” and continued to be overlooked by many Spanish critics. Soto added, “Although many reasons have been cited for Lorca’s assassination (among them, his liberalism, his rebellion against traditional values, his communist leanings), it is evident that his homosexuality was not absent from the motives of those fascists loyal to Francisco Franco, el caudillo, who tortured and killed him. Spain’s traditional inquisitorial Catholicism refused to permit the expression of a sexuality at variance with the dominant Christian morality. This intolerant environment well explains Lorca’s fears and deliberate concealment of his homosexuality both in his personal life and in his work.” Lorca, who was not a member of any organized religion, had a freethinkers’ outlook and was non-theistic. {GL}

Garcia-Vao, Antonio Rodriguez (1862—1886) A Spanish poet and lawyer, Garcia-Vao wrote for Los Dominicales del Libre Pensiamento. His Echoes of a Free Mind, Love and the Monks was a satire, a study of Greco-Roman philosophy. A promising freethinker, Garcia-Vao was stabbed in the back at Madrid a week before Christmas, 1886. {BDF}

Garde, Jehan de la (16th Century) Garde, a bookseller, was burned together with four little blasphemous books at Paris in 1537. {BDF}

Gardener, Helen Hamilton (1853—1925) In 1885 Gardener wrote Men, Women and Gods (1885) securing a preface by Robert G. Ingersoll. Three of her novels were translated into German. She was a freethought lecturer, a quite uncommon calling in her time. With humor and a knowledge of science, Gardener refuted a current view that women’s inferiority is because of their small brain size. Gardener, an outspoken agnostic, was dubbed “Ingersoll done in soprano” by the New York Sun and “the pretty infidel” by the Chicago Times. (See entry for Woman and the Bible.) {EU, Gordon Stein; FUS; Freethought History #9, 1994; PUT; RAT; RE; WWS}

Gardner, Gerald (20th Century) Gardner, a Pennsylvanian, is on the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Gardner, Martin (1914— ) Gardner, a science commentator, is co-chair of the Council for Secular Humanism’s Center for Inquiry Capital Fund Drive. His second edition of Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957) continues to be cited by various sources. He is the author of On the Wild Side, a collection of provocative essays from his Skeptical Inquirer column. In 1991, he wrote The New Age, Notes of a Fringe Watcher. In 1993, The Healing Revelations of Mary Baker Eddy shows how Eddy “copies shamelessly, often word for word,” not only from John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, and others, but also from Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. Gardner maintains Quimby was the one from whom Eddy took the central idea of Christian Science. The Flight of Peter Fromm (1994) is a novel about a young Pentecostal who loses his faith while a student at the University of Chicago Divinity School. It details the mental journey many in the freethought movement have to make as a minority group. In 1996, he wrote Weird Water and Fuzzy Logic, More Notes of a Fringe Watcher, in which he stated his findings about modern cosmology, the superstring theory, the theology of astronomers, and archeological nonsense. Gardner has been called a “deist” in Free Inquiry, for in The Night Is Large: Collected Essays, 1938—1995 (1996) he states that he believes in God while simultaneously admitting that atheists have the better arguments. In The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, he explains in an entire chapter why he is not an atheist. In short, he states that he is a “philosophical theist,” adding, “I believe because it consoles me.” (See entry for Urantia Book.) {Free Inquiry, Fall 1992}

Garibaldi, Guiseppe (1807—1882) Garibaldi, the famed Italian patriot and soldier, fought in a variety of countries—Italy, Uruguay (where he met Anita Ribeiro da Silva, marrying her in 1842), Sardinia, Sicily—and for a time worked in New York for an Italian soap and candlemaker on Staten Island. Taken prisoner by Victor Emanuel’s troops, he wrote his Rule of the Monk, a work exhibiting his love of liberty and hatred of the priesthood. He hoped to free Rome from the Papal government. He called the church “the Holy Shop,” and his quarrels with Mazzini (who was a theist) were largely over religion. In the preface to his Memoirie Autobiografiche, he wrote, “The priest is the personification of falsehood, the liar is a thief, and the thief an assassin.” His English biographer, Theodore Bent, reported that in his old age Garibaldi grew more and more skeptical. “One of his laconic letters of 1880,” Bent wrote, “illustrates this. It was as follows: ‘Dear friends,—Man has created God, not God man. Yours ever, Garibaldi.’” A member of the Masonic Lodge, Garibaldi called himself a socialist. However, both Marx and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin disagreed, calling him a naturalist. Although he was elected to the Italian parliament in 1874, it was as a great revolutionary hero for the Western world as a whole that he is mainly remembered. Garibaldi’s body was cremated and, although he had his sarcophagus built at Caprera, his family yielded to the wish of the government, and Garibaldi was buried at Rome. {CE; BDF; FO; JM; PUT; RAT; RE; TYD}

GARIFUNA The Garifuna, who are descended from Carib-Arawak Indians and runaway West African slaves, lived in the Caribbean island of St. Vincent during the 1600s but were later deported by the British to Honduras. Over the centuries, there has been little mixing with those of European descent, and the Garifuna continue to speak an African-based language. They constitute less than five percent of the Honduran population. Hudutu—a soup of mashed plantains, fish, and conch meat—is a traditional meal, accompanied by beer and gifiti, a strong aromatic liqueur. “The Island Caribs were said to believe that after death the spirits might become mischievous, annoying, and even bringing harm to the living,” Gonzalez has noted. “To avoid this, the Caribs made spirit offerings of food and drink. Shamans (buwiyes) consulted the spirits from time to time on behalf of afflicted people, and the spirits were also helpful to the society at large in predicting the outcome of battles, counteracting sorcery, and exacting revenge on enemies. The spirits might speak through the buwiyes or through dolls or puppets made of bones of the dead wrapped in cotton, called rioches. Sometimes, too, they would enter into the bodies of women and speak through them.” Such beliefs, their Christian conquerors found, were difficult to replace. In Crotona Park, New York, Garifunans comprise more than half of the immigrant population from Honduras. Traditional Garifuna music does not use Western instruments, and in the Bay Islands off the Honduras coast no electricity was available up until only recently. Some Garifunans, who are named after their leader, Garifuna, have been converted by missionarying Christians. {Nancie L. Gonzalez, Sojourners of the Caribbean, Ethnogenesis and Ethnohistory of the Garifuna, 1988}

GARLIC Hippocrates prescribed garlic for an infected lung. The ancient Egyptians swore oaths on the herb, much as some contemporaries do on the Bible. And Chinese sacrificial lambs were seasoned with garlic. By the first half of the present millennium foods—and cultures—lacking in garlic were generally considered backward. By the 1700s, especially in Britain and America, the smell of this member of the lily family (which includes chives, leeks, and onions) had become synonymous with promiscuous, poor, and superstitious peasant cultures, according to food critic Molly O’Neill. Not that one could smell a Catholic, a wag might quip, but if the person came from the Mediterranean rather than Northern Europe, there was a mathematical probability that the individual was a Catholic of Roman or some other persuasion.During the Elizabethan era, cleanliness was equated with godliness, and strong scents were said to be associated with lustiness and the Devil himself. “Measure for Measure” has Lucio denouncing the Duke as a man who “would eat mutton on Fridays” and “would mouth with a beggar, though she smelt of brown bread and garlic.” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt religiously chewed raw garlic to improve her memory. Contemporary freethinkers, also, have been known to be generous in their use of Allitum sativurm. {The New York Times Magazine, 18 April 1999}

Garner, Richard (20th Century) Garner in Beyond Morality (1994) claims that a compassionate amoralism combined with non-duplicity and clarity about the use and limits of language is more likely to produce a decent world than any secular or religious moral system.

Garnett, Edward William (1868—1937) Garnett, the son of Richard Garnett, was a writer. He wrote the novel, The Paradox Club, three plays, and other works. His rationalism is seen in his completion of his father’s Life of W. J. Fox (1910). {RAT}

Garnett, Lucy Mary Jane (Died 1934) Garnett, a writer, was the daughter of Thomas Garnett. Her works on Greece and Turkey show she discusses the Turks without Christian bias, and she is equally impartial in her Greek Folk-Poesy (1885). {RAT}

Garnett, Richard (1835—1906) Although Garnett could read Greek, German, and Italian at the age of thirteen, he refused to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, he entered the service of the British Museum, becoming superintendent of the reading room. From 1895 to 1897, he was President of the Bibliographical Society. Garnett’s rationalism is found in Twilight of the Gods (1888) and Life of W. J. Fox (1910). His notice in the Dictionary of National Biography states that he “cherished a genuine and somewhat mystical sense of religion which combined hostility to priestcraft and dogma with a modified belief in astrology.” {RAT; RE}

Garramone, Michael (20th Century) Garramone is an editor of the newsletter of the Secular Humanist Community of Upstate New York, Western Massachusetts, and Southern Vermont at PO Box 2148, Scotia, New York 12302. A native Albanian raised as a nominal Catholic, he studied at two seminaries, first an Eastern Orthodox tradition and then one that is Russian Orthodox, but discovered ultimately that he is an atheist.

Garrett, Ruby D. (20th Century) Col. Garrett of Kansas City was a director of the American Humanist Association in 1952. {HNS}

Garrido, Fernando (1821—1883) Garrido was a Spanish writer, author of Memoirs of a Sceptic (1843). He also wrote a work on Contemporary Spain (1862), The Jesuits, and a History of Political and Religious Persecutions, the latter rendered into English in conjunction with C. B. Cayley. {BDF}

Garrimone, Michael (20th Century) Garrimone is an associate editor of the Capital District Humanist Society, PO Box 2148, Scotia, New York 12302.

Garrison, H. D. (19th Century) Dr. Garrison of Chicago, Illinois, wrote a freethought pamphlet, “The Absence of Design in Nature” (1876). {BDF}

Garrison, James H. (20th Century) Garrison wrote Unorthodox Facts (1940). {FUS}

Garrison, William Lloyd (1805—1879) The American abolitionist’s humanistic credo was, “My country is the world, my countrymen are mankind.” Garrison founded the Liberator in 1831, helped organize (1833) the American Anti-Slavery Society, and opposed the Civil War until Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. An outspoken man, Garrison was the most famous of abolitionist leaders. But, as McCabe points out, the clergy have seen to it that Americans do not know Garrison rejected Christianity and was, at the most, a deist if not an atheist. He never went to church and was reviled by the Unitarian clergy as well as the others. “All Christendom professes to receive the Bible as the word of God, and what does it avail?” he wrote. The biography his children wrote says their father “quite freed himself from the trammels of orthodoxy.” Upon falling ill in May 1879, he remarked, “I feel as if the machinery were giving way.” His children remained constantly by his bedside, and he was intermittently delirious but sometimes expressive. When his physician asked if he wanted anything, Garrison said, “To finish it up!” That evening he fell into a twenty-four hour coma and died. {CE; CL; JM; PUT; RAT; RE; TYD}

Garth, Samuel [Sir] (1672—1719) Garth was an English poet, wit, and physician. He helped to establish dispensaries and criticized them negatively in a poem, “The Dispensary.” Sir Samuel was made physician to King George I. Reimmann’s Historia Universalis Atheismi (1725) lists Garth as an atheist. {BDF; RAT; RE}

Garth, Jon: See entry for Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn (1810—1865) Generally known as Mrs. Gaskell, she was the daughter of Unitarian minister William Stevenson and wife of Unitarian minister William Gaskell of the Cross Street Chapel in Manchester, England. She wrote Mary Barton (1848), Cranford (1853), and the Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). In Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (1993), biographer Jenny Uglow states that Mrs. Gaskell is said to have known almost everyone of note in England and is quoted as being a lover of good food: She imagined that heaven must consist largely of “eating strawberries and cream forever.” When Ruth (1853), the story of a “fallen woman” was condemned by reviewers and withdrawn from libraries, Gaskell wrote to a friend that she felt like St. Sebastian tied to a tree and shot through with arrows. The work, however, showed the relevance of Unitarianism as both a religious and a social force. Contemporary critics, who complain that Ruth did not have to die and be punished, find Wives and Daughters (1866) her best work. It describes the joys and sorrows common to middle-class village life. Gaskell was strongly influenced by the rationalists and by the scientific thought of Enlightenment figures such as Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Priestley, and Bentham. She wrote that Unitarians of her day “refused to accept the notion of original sin or the doctrine of atonement: Jesus was revered as a teacher and example, not a vehicle of grace.” {CE; U; UU}

Gaskin, Ida (20th Century) Gaskin, a Shakespearean scholar and educator, is an honorary associate of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists.

Gaskin, J(ohn) C(harles) A(dams) (20th Century) Gaskin’s Varieties of Unbelief: From Epicurus to Sartre (1989) is an anthology of atheistic works and includes Percy Bysshe Shelley’s A Refutation of Deism (1814) and David Hume’s “Of the Immortality of the Soul” and “Of Suicide.” Gaskin is thorough in covering not only major non-believers but also in quoting directly from their works. He includes the following: Ayer; Cicero; Collins; d’Holbach; Epicurus; Feuerbach; Freud; Gibbon; Hobbes; Hume; Lenin; Lucretius; Marx; Nietzsche; Paine; Palmer; Russell; Sartre; Schopenhauer; Sextus Empiricus; Shelley; and Voltaire. His editing of The Epicurean Philosophers (1995) contains translations of the main surviving writings by Epicurus and his followers. Gaskin is a corresponding member from Ireland of The Hume Society, a group engaged in scholarly activity concerning David Hume.

Gasking, Douglas Aidan Trist (1911— ) Gasking is an Australian freethinker, secularist, and philosopher. Son of an Anglican minister in Saskatchewan, Gasking was appointed in 1966 to teach philosophy in Melbourne. He developed a critical theory of knowledge in general and in particular was an antagonist of any alleged “special way of knowing.” Gasking is a contributor to The Australian Rationalist and has spoken against religion to such organizations at the Melbourne University Freethought Society. {SWW}

Gasper, Louis (20th Century) While minister of the Olivet Baptist Church in Cleveland, the Reverend William Gasper in the 1950s wrote the present author concerning humanism:

I am no trinitarian. Of course not. I’m definitely emancipated from polytheistic notions and I can’t even identify what one means by God. I realize that I am lonely in my area because of my views. However, I’m hoping this won’t be for too long. I’m planning on teaching at the college or university level and am working on a Ph. D. in American Culture. I have been having difficulty with this plan, for it is difficult to secure a position with denominational schools, most of which want certain religious statements. Where this is not direct it is requested covertly and quite subtly. There is no help from the gods or others for those who do not follow the party line, as the saying goes nowadays. My only best hit perhaps is a state college. Incidentally, I made overtones to the Unitarians for ministerial fellowship. Evidently, Johnson [not further identified] does not want intruders and wishes to establish himself as a hierarch. The result is that he does not have the decency to present my application to a committee for examination. He must be reverting to some primitive aspect of religious control. [The Humanist editor] Ed Wilson told me I could expect something like that. I have been thinking about writing to the Universalists. Maybe I will with one final thrust before I bid adieu to all conventional religious groups, should that move fail to accomplish anything of a positive nature. How do I hold myself in a Baptist church? Service is the answer. My sermons are historico-comparative. They draw their own inferences, which are very seldom done by the average. Congregations hear but do not usually comprehend. In 1927, Sinclair Lewis had written Elmer Gantry about a similar minister, a work which Gasper must have known about, and it is unknown whether Gasper remained a Baptist. Numerous other ministers expressed similar doubts about continuing to preach about God, but few have gone on record. {WAS, 1955}

Gassendi, Pierre (1592—1655) A French priest who opposed Aristotle’s authoritarianism, Gassendi was a skeptic sometimes called the father of modern materialism. In light of scientific findings of the day, he revived the atomic theory of Democritus and Epicurus, trying to reconcile atomism and Epicurean ethics with Catholicism. His pupil, Cyrano de Bergerac, agreed with much of his philosophic teaching but rejected his religious outlook. During the French Revolution, Maréchal cited Gassendi as one who seems to be an atheist only from the standpoint of the strictest religious orthodoxy. He remained, however, a supernaturalist but one who revived interest in the materialism of Epicurus and Lucretius. {CE; ER; EU, Aram Vartanian; JMR; JMRH}

Gaster, Theodor (1906— ) Professor emeritus of religion at Columbia University, and professor of religion at the University of Florida, Gaster is on the Council for Secular Humanism’s Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion.

Gastineau, Benjamin (19th Century) Gastineau, a freethinker, wrote Voltaire in Exile (c. 1875). {GS}

Gaston, H. (19th Century) Gaston was the French author of a brochure with the 1882 title, “Dieu, voila, l’ennemi” (God, the Enemy). {BDF}

Gatchell, Joseph (17th Century) Gatchell, whose Universalism included the view that Divine mercy could not be satisfied with partial salvation or everlasting punishment, declared, “All men should be saved.” As a consequence, Christians pierced his tongue with a red-hot iron.

Gates, William Henry (28 Oct 1955— ) Gates, the founder and chief executive officer of the Microsoft software company, is reportedly one of the world’s richest men. In a 1995 interview on Public Broadcasting Service’s David Frost program, Gates stated, “I don’t know if there’s a god or not. . . . I don’t [believe in the Sermon on the Mount]. I’m not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I’m a huge believer in. There’s a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion. I think it can have a very, very positive impact. [But] in terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.” His wife, Melinda, is Catholic and wants to raise their child, Jennifer, as a Catholic. “But she offered me a deal,” Gates told a Time reporter. “If I start going to church—my family was Congregationalist—then Jennifer could be raised in whatever religion I choose.” Although tempted, because he said he would prefer that she have a religion that “has less theology and all” than Catholicism, he has not taken up the offer. “Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient,” he told the reporter. “There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.” {CA; E; Time, 13 January 1997}

Gates, William Henry (1955— ) Gates, the founder and chief executive officer of the Microsoft software company, is reportedly one of the world’s richest men. In a 1995 interview on Public Broadcasting Service’s David Frost program, Gates stated, “I don’t know if there’s a god or not. . . . I don’t [believe in the Sermon on the Mount]. I’m not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I’m a huge believer in. There’s a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion. I think it can have a very, very positive impact. [But] in terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.” His wife, Melinda, is Catholic and wants to raise their child, Jennifer, as a Catholic. “But she offered me a deal,” Gates told a Time reporter. “If I start going to church—my family was Congregationalist—then Jennifer could be raised in whatever religion I choose.” Although tempted, because he said he would prefer that she have a religion that “has less theology and all” than Catholicism, he has not taken up the offer. “Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient,” he told the reporter. “There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.” {CA; E; Time, 13 January 1997}

Gaustad, Edwin Scott (20th Century) A freethinker, Gaustad in Dissent in American Religion (1973) discusses “Heretics: Sinners Against Society.” He is author of Revival Revolution and Religion in Early Virginia (1994). {FUS}

Gautama, Siddhartha [The Buddha] (c. 566—483 B. C. E) Siddhartha, the Buddha and the son of a king (Suddhodana), was born in Lumbini in what is now the Kingdom of Nepal. He lacked belief in the Hindu scriptures (the Vedas), which he did not consider divine revelations. According to Lang, he rejected the authority of the priestly class (the Brahmans), the intermediaries between the Indian people and their gods. He believed in immediate experiences and reasoning powers, not revelation, in the search to understand the universe. He taught the middle path, how to avoid the extremes of severe asceticism and sensual indulgence. He believed that enlightenment (perfect enlightenment is the goal of Buddhism) is available to all, that meditation and education are the keys. He denounced the materialists for maintaining that events in the universe are chance occurrences, or determined by fate, independently of the karmic results of meritorious and demeritorious acts. He denied belief in a creator God and an external soul, so for all practical purposes he was an atheist. Little wonder that Bertrand Russell, asked what religion he would choose if he were forced to choose, is said to have mentioned Buddhism. Although there is a mystical element in the Buddha’s outlook, Lang concludes, “Consequently, given the usual definition of atheism as the rejection of belief in a personal creator God, Buddhism is atheistic.” Similarly, Robertson, quoting Max Muller’s Selected Essays, writes, “It cannot be denied that if we call the old Gods of the Veda—Indra and Agni and Yama—Gods, Buddha was an atheist. He does not believe in the divinity of these deities. What is noteworthy is that he does not by any means deny their bare existence. . . . The founder of Buddhism treats the old Gods as superhuman beings.” Robertson adds, “Thus it is permissible to say both that Buddhism recognizes Gods and that it is practically atheistic.” For example, Gautama did write, “If God permits such misery to exist He cannot be good, and if He is powerless to prevent it, He cannot be God.” “[Gautama] is chiefly interesting to us,” wrote McCabe, “from the fact that, though the religion which now goes by the name of Buddhism is a crass and to a great extent corrupt mass of superstitions, he was an atheist. It is admitted that he was educated in the Sankhya philosophy, which was atheistic. Brahmanism had become so abstract a religion, while the mass of the people clung to the grossest myths, that there was a wide spread of atheism at that time. Gautama decided to devote his life to a purely humanist and very simple preaching of ideals of conduct among the people.” McCabe cites Prof. T. Rhys Davids of Cornell as saying that Gautama “denied the existence of any soul” (cosmic or human). The Encyclopaedia of Religion, however, entrusts its article on Buddha to one of the clerical writers who held that Buddha must have believed in God. “These sophists,” argues McCabe, “first argue that atheism is inconsistent with high ideals and then that any man whose ideals they cannot deny must have been a theist. The real authorities agree that Buddha was an atheist.” When Siddhartha died in 483 B. C. E., it is said that four of his teeth and a burnt finger bone were plucked from the cremation pyre. One of the teeth and the finger bone are in China, two of the teeth are in Sri Lanka, and the fourth tooth disappeared in India. Myanmar’s largest and most revered religious shrine, the golden Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, is said to encase eight hairs of the Buddha. The worship of relics has a long tradition in Buddhism, just as it does in other major religions. “Buddha” is a descriptive title, like President or Christ or Mahatma—if one can attain “perfect enlightenment,” that person becomes a Buddha. To the unenlightened of the Western world, however, the Buddha is simply an icon on an ash tray for hoi polloi, a topless fatty with a navel, one upon whom cigarettes and cigars are extinguished. The following have all gone on record as being Buddhists, although it is not clear whether they can be termed atheists or theists: Laurie Anderson, composer; Roberto Baggio, Italian soccer star; Leonard Cohen, poet and musician; Peter Coyote, actor; Harrison Ford, actor; Richard Gere, actor; Allen Ginsberg, poet; Oliver Stone, film director, producer; and Tina Turner, vocalist. (See entry for Allen Ginsberg.) {BDF; CE; CL; ER; EU, Karen Christina Lang; JM; JMR; JMRH}

Gautier, Théophile (1811—1872) A French poet and writer of prose, Gautier wrote no definite work against priestcraft or superstition, but the whole tendency of his writings is pagan and, according to McCabe, shows his disdain for religion. His romanticism is not Christian, states Wheeler, and he made merry with “sacred themes” as well as conventional morality. Baudelaire called him an impeccable master of French literature, and Balzac said that of the two men who could write French, one was Gautier. Gautier was a leading exponent of art for art’s sake, the view that formal, aesthetic beauty is the sole purpose of a work of art. His daughter, Judith, was the first woman to become a member of the Goncourt Academy. The French Academy, however, closed its doors against him on the ground that his Mademoiselle de Maupin was immoral. {BDF; CE; JM; JMRH; RAT; RE}

Gauvin, Marshall Jerome (1881—1978) A Canadian freethinker and author of Where Is Hell? (1926), Gauvin once headed the Winnipeg Rationalist Society and later the New York-based National Liberal League. He was an editor of the atheist publication, Truth Seeker, until 1977, at which time he was ninety-six. According to McKillop, “It should be noted that Gauvin disagreed profoundly with the editorial direction of the magazine in the 1960s, when it set forward violent anti-Black and anti-Semitic views.” One of his most valuable assets, Gauvin stated, was a collection of the writings of Robert G. Ingersoll. Gauvin wrote a foreword for The Biography of Satan, by Kersey Graves. {EU, A. Brian McKillop; FUK; FUS}

Gawn, Joan (20th Century) A former president of the Humanist Association of Canada, Gawn lives in Chilliwack, British Canada. Once an elementary school teacher, she wrote “Raising Children Humanistically” for Humanist in Canada (Summer 1998).

GAY

• “When anyone asks if I’m gay,” said Arthur C. Clarke on New Year’s Eve in 1997, “I answer, ‘No, just slightly cheerful.’ ”

In the 14th century, to be “gay” was to be “merry.” In the 18th and in 19th centuries, the word was a euphemism for those who were sexually available or living an immoral life—invariably, it was applied to prostitutes. Later in the 19th, gay was used by some in Europe to connote “inversion,” or love of the same sex. But in various 20th century countercultures as well as in the Armed Forces, it became an innocent-sounding term used by homosexuals among themselves. The theatrical milieu used the word widely in the mid 1960s and when homosexuals in the late 1960s began to assert themselves openly, “gay” supplanted the various alternative words and was expressed without any discriminatory overtones. In the 1990s, a number of gays started using the derisive term “queer” to describe themselves as well as to taunt homophobes. Gay and lesbian criticism is one of the most recent of the critical and theoretical discourses to emerge from the “liberation” movements (New Left, anti-Vietnam War, counter-culture, black, and feminist) of the 1960s and early 1970s, notes Richard Dellamora of Trent University. His discussion and that of San Diego State University’s Bonnie Zimmerman concerning gay theory and criticism is found in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism (1994). “As the 1990s progress,” Zimmerman observes, “we find particularly rich and fruitful debates ongoing among lesbian critics and theorists over the nature of self, community, gender, and sexuality.” Many gays and lesbians, uncomfortable with what they perceive to be their church’s homophobia, have left the various organized religions or started their own “religious fellowships.” For example, there are Axios Eastern and Orthodox Christians; the Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, which is a member of the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations; Dignity (Catholics); Integrity (Episcopalians); and the Metropolitan Community Church (various Christian denominations). The Metropolitan Community Church was founded in 1968 by the Rev. Troy D. Perry, a Pentecostal minister who lost his church after acknowledging that he was gay. Los Angeles-based, it has an estimated 42,000 members in the United States and abroad. The largest gay church, the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, Texas, has over 1,400 congregants. Qwer Quarterly, North America’s Lesbian and Gay Secular Humanist Newsletter, appeared briefly in 1993, then ceased publication. Its editor was Richard Seymour and included among its contributing editors were leading secular humanists such as Bonnie and Vern Bullough, Gerald Larue, and Rob Tielman. The Council for Secular Humanism, which publishes Free Inquiry, specifically affirms as one of its statement of principles, “We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.” The Council for Secular Humanism promotes the Gay and Lesbian Humanist (PTT, 34 Spring Lane, Kenilworth, Warwickshire CV8 2HB, United Kingdom), which has been published quarterly in London by the Pink Triangle Trust since 1981. George Broadhead is its editor. (See entry for Homosexuality.) {Arthur C. Clarke to WAS, 4 Jan 1998}

GAY AND LESBIAN ATHEISTS AND HUMANISTS NEWSLETTER A monthly, Gay and Lesbian Atheists and Humanists Newsletter, is published at 1718 M. St. NW, Box 157, Washington, DC 20036. E-mail: <klemO@ibm.net>.

GAY AND LESBIAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION (England) (GALHA) The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (34 Spring Lane, Kenilworth, Warwickshire, CV8 2HB, United Kingdom) was founded in 1979 to promote a rational approach to homosexuality and gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights as human rights. Its associated charity, The Pink Triangle Trust (PTT), publishes a quarterly magazine, Gay & Lesbian Humanist The group arranges meetings and provides affirmation ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples. GALHA is an associate member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Officers are novelist Maureen Duffy, President; and Vice-Presidents are Tony Banks, M.P.; Professor Sir Hermann Bondi; Brigid Brophy; Dr. James Hemming; Sir Michael Levey; jazz singer George Melly; Claire Rayner; Dr. H. Stopes-Roe; Barbara Smoker; Prof. Rob Tielman; and Angela Willans. Honorary officers include Mike Savage, Chairperson; George Broadhead, who is Secretary and is the editor of Gay and Lesbian Humanist (Telephone-fax: 01926-858450); Peter Danning, Treasurer; and Keith Porteous Wood, Honorary Auditor. GALHA is a full member of the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Consortium, an umbrella group which has been set up with funding from the Home Office Voluntary and Community Unit. The Pink Triangle is at <http://visitweb.com/ptt>. Katharine Lubar, the women’s contact, is at <KatLubar@compuserve.com>; George Braodchead, <roysaich@humanists.freeserve.co.uk>; and Brett Humphreys, <brett@compuserve.com>. The Equality Alliance is at <http://equality-alliance.diversity.org.uk>. GALHA can be reached by e-mail: <GALHA@bigfoot.com>. GALHA’s website: <http://visitweb.com/galha>. E-mail: Katherine Lubar is at <KatLubar@compuserve.com>; George Broadhead, <roysaich@humanists.freeserve.co.uk>; and Brett Humphreys, <brett@compuserve.com>. The Equality Alliance is at <http://equality-alliance.diversity.org.uk>.

GAY AND LESBIAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION (New York) The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) in New York is headed by Allen Windsor. E-mail: <wasm@idt.net>.

GAY AND LESBIAN MUSLIMS: See entry for Homosexuals, Muslim.

GAY AND LESBIAN UNITARIANS Gay and lesbian Unitarians are on the Web: <qrd.tcp.com/qrd/www/orgs/uua/uu-interweave.html>.

GAY MARRIAGE . . . . Marriage as we understand it—voluntary, monogamous, legally egalitarian, based on love, involving adults only—is a pretty recent phenomenon. For much of human history, polygyny was the rule—read your bible—and in much of Africa and the Muslim world, it still is. Arranged marriages, forced marriages, child marriages, marriages predicted on the subjugation of women—gay marriage is like a fairy tale romance compared with most chapters of the history of wedlock. Gay marriage—it’s not about sex, it’s about separation of church and state. Katha Pollitt, The Nation, 15 Dec 2003

From the African-American perspective, which is the only perspective I can give, our focus is, “God said it, we believe it, and we should promote it.” Michigan Representative Triette Reeves, San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Oct 2003

GAY PARTNERSHIPS At the Europride event in Stockholm in 1998, Rolf Solheim from Norway’s Human-Etisk Forbund joined Bill Schiller and Peter Froberg in a gay partnership ceremony. Schiller is co-ordinator of the international gay and lesbian cultural workers network. Froberg is a rock singer. “There may be occasions in the life of a couple when it must be made certain who is the primary person in your life, who can make decisions on your behalf if necessary,” Solheim said, making it clear that his lover is his next of kin. Following the ceremony, guests—including a Newsweek photographer and the Swedish Minister of Culture—took part in a joyous Norwegian folk-dance. {International Humanist News October 1998}

Gay, Ebenezer (1696—1787) Gay, an early exponent of Arminianism, was a close associate of Charles Chauncy and an opposer of the Great Awakening. He believed in “supernatural” rationalism,” a theology which insisted that the revealed religion of the Bible and the natural religion of rational speculation and scientific observation are in no sense incompatible. His work, including National Religion, as Distinguish’d from Revealed (1759), helped lay the groundwork for the liberalism of William Ellery Channing and his associates. {FUS; U; U&U}

Gay, Peter (1923— ) Gay, a history educator and author, wrote Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet As Realist (1959), The Party of Humanity, Essays in the French Enlightenment (1964), A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis (1987), and Reading Freud: Explorations and Entertainments (1990). My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin (1998) tells of his being not quite ten when Hitler came to power and sixteen when the family fled Germany. “There are three ways of becoming a Jew: by birth, by conversion, by decree,” he wrote. But both his family and he were outspokenly atheists, awed by the Nazi decrees that considered Jews a race. Paul Edwards held that Gay’s research is weak, that he “lies” by omitting balanced views, and that some of his translations of Voltaire are weak. “The elimination of error,” Edwards emphasized, “is almost as important as the discovery of truth.” Gay, he feels, is guilty of not sufficiently giving truthful accounts by willfully omitting certain facts. {FUK; FUS}

Gaylor, Anne Nicol (1926— ) A second-generation freethinker, Gaylor founded with her daughter Annie Laurie and a friend, John Sontarck, the Freedom From Religion Foundation at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1978. The group’s president, she is active in various feminist causes and a contributing editor of Freethought Today. Her awards include Zero Population Growth Recognition Award (1983); Humanist Heroine Award, AHA, Feminist Caucus (1985); Commitment to Women Award, Women’s Political Caucus (Wisconsin, 1989); Feminist of the Year Award, National Organization for Women (Wisconsin,1994); and Citation by the Wisconsin State Senate (1994). She is author of Abortion Is A Blessing (1976) and Lead Us Not Into Penn Station (1983), a collection of essays. Gaylor is on the board of directors of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. {EU, Gordon Stein; HNS2; WAS, 22 Mar 1998; WWS}

Gaylor, Annie Laurie (20th Century) Daughter of Anne Nicol Gaylor and wife of Dan Barker, Gaylor is a freethought activist who edits Freethought Today for the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Wisconsin. She is author of Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So (1981). For the American Humanist Association, she is co-chairperson of the Feminist Caucus. In 1994, she spoke in Rochester, New York, on “Female Freethinkers” at a Robert G. Ingersoll commemoration of Ingersoll’s work on behalf of women’s equality. On the Web: <www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/fttoday/algbio.html>.

Gaylor, Paul (20th Century) Gaylor is a staff photographer for Freethought Today. He is on the board of directors of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis (1778—1850) A renowned French chemist and physicist, Gay-Lussac was a professor at the Sorbonne; made advances in industrial chemistry; improved the methods of analyzing gas mixtures; studied prussic acid and iodine; isolated cynagen. In addition, and in order to test the variation of the earth’s magnetic field and the composition of the atmosphere at varying altitudes, he ascended in a balloon to a height of 7,016 meters (23,000 feet) in 1804. The Gay-Lussac Law, formulated around 1808, states that the volumes of gases that interact to give a gaseous product are in the ratio of small numbers to each other, and that each bears a similar relation to the volume of the product. After the Revolution of 1830, he entered the Chambre as an anti-clerical and became its President. Although he worked politically with the anti-clericals, the restored royalty made him a Peer of France. Gay-Lussac was closely associated with Arago and von Humboldt and shared their atheism. {JM; RAT}

Gazan, Jack (Died 1996) Gazan was president of the Toronto Humanist Association in 1970—1971. He was one of the founders of the Humanist Association of Canada and its second president in 1971—1974. {Humanist in Canada, Summer 1996}

Gazeley, F. (20th Century) Gazeley, of Bradford, Yorkshire, England, was a lecturer in the early 1900s of the British Secular League. {RSR}

Geddes, Patrick [Sir] (1854—1932) Geddes, a Scottish biologist, had a wide range of social as well as scientific interests. He taught at University College, London, at Aberdeen, at St. Andrews, at Bombay, and at the Edinburgh School of Medicine. An honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association, he was a practical idealist. {RE}

Geduld, Harry M(aurice) (1931— ) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Geduld was a professor at Indiana University. He established that school’s first film study course and is the author of numerous works on film. He edited The New York Times Film Encyclopedia (1984). {HM2}

Gee, Maurice (20th Century) Gee is a novelist, a four-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award and a two-time winner of the Wattie Award. He is author of The Big Season (1962), In My Father’s Den (1972), Going West (1992), and Loving Ways (1996). Gee is an honorary associate of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists.

Geeraerts, G. (20th Century) At the International Humanist and Ethical Union’s (IHEU’s) International Peace Conference at Zutphen (1983), Dr. Geeraerts of Belgium addressed the group.

Gehrman, Mary Beth (20th Century) 

The former managing editor of Free Inquiry, Gehrman is one of the editors of On the Barricades, Religion and Free Inquiry in Conflict.

Geiger, George Raymond (1903-1998) Geiger was John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Antioch College in Ohio, a position for which he had been recommended by Dr. Dewey himself. He continued teaching until 1969. Geiger was founding editor of the Antioch Review, a treasurer of the American Philosophical Association, and in the 1950s an associate editor of The Humanist. Geiger wrote The Philosophy of Henry George, The Theory of the Land Question, Toward an Objective Ethics, John Dewey in Perspective, and Science, Folklore and Philosophy. After the death in 1981 of his wife, Louise, his companion was Joan Leon King. {HNS}

Geijer, E(ik) G(ustaf) (1785—1847) A historian, Geijer is called by Robertson “the first recognizable champion of freethought in Sweden.” His history of Sweden “is one of the best European performances of his generation.” In 1820 upon publishing Thorild, he was prosecuted for his attack upon the dogmas of the Trinity and redemption, but he was acquitted by a jury, an acquittal which stayed religious prosecutions in Sweden for at least sixty years. A deist, Geijer was opposed to Unitarian Christianity. {BDF; JMR; RAT; RE}

Geijerstam, Gustaf (Born 1858) Geijerstam was a Swedish novelist, one of the freethinking group called Young Sweden. {BDF}

Geiser, S. W. (20th Century) Geiser wrote “Dr. Ernest Kapp, Early Geographer in Texas,” in Field and Laboratory (January 1946). {Freethought History #15, 1995}

Geisert, Paul (20th Century) Geisert is Vice President of Atheists and Other Freethinkers in Sacramento, California. With Mynga Futrell, he wrote Different Drummers, Nonconforming Thinkers in History (1999).

GEISHA: See entry for Mizuage.

Geismar, Martin von (19th Century) Geismar was editor of a library of German rationalists of the eighteenth century in five parts, including some of the works of Bahrdt, Eberhardt, Knoblauch. {BDF}

Geismar, Maxwell (1909—1979) A “radical” literary critic, editor of Portable Thomas Wolfe (1944) and author of Writers in Crisis (1942) and Walt Whitman Reader (1955), Geismar wrote the present author concerning humanism,

I think that Thomas Mann was right in saying [to the present book’s author] that writers do not and cannot belong to any one “school,” philosophically, politically, and else wise, though they may move from one group to another at different times in their development and draw ideas and feelings from all groups; for the essence of a writer is both high individuality and communal roots. In terms of your listing, I think I would be closest to Classical Humanism and Naturalistic Humanism as a background for my own values. But what I think is really and perhaps desperately needed today is a new synthesis, and a new nourishing of the humanistic tradition; and some way of giving it a new mode of psycho-biological force and depth; of imbuing these ancient and tried human values with a new life spirit. That is what I am looking for in my own work, at least; while I have little patience with the recent movement to a new religious orientation—of “sin” or of social prestige, or both together. I am not particularly interested in Atheism or Communism within this framework of Humanism; but Atheists often have been great humanists, in fact, in what I know of American literature.

{WAS, 7 May 1956}

Geldart, E. M. (19th Century) Geldart, a freethinker, wrote The Living God (c. 1870).

Gell-Mann, Murray (1929— ) Gell-Mann, who received a Nobel Laureate in physics (1969), teaches at the California Institute of Technology. A theoretical physicist, he is a member of the science and grants committee of the Leakey Foundation. Also, he is a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism. Before winning the Nobel prize, Dr. Gell-Mann co-authored with Yaval Ne’eman The Eightfold Way (1964), which explains their scheme for classifying interacting particles. He has also written The Quark and the Jaguar, Adventures in the Simple and the Complex (1994). Stephen W. Hawking said it “is about how the wonderful diversity of the universe can arise out of a set of fairly simple basic laws. It is written by an expert in both the fundamental laws and the complex structure that they can produce.” Of the book, Carl Sagan added, “It is always a pleasure to see a first-class mind grappling with the greatest mysteries, and at the same time resolutely resisting mysticism.” In 1994, science reporter William J. Broad of The New York Times (26 April 1994), wrote a front-page news article about Gell-Mann entitled TOP QUARK, LAST PIECE IN PUZZLE OF MATTER, APPEARS TO BE IN PLACE. The journalist described how an international team of 439 scientists working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory had announced that the quest, begun by philosophers in ancient Greece to understand the nature of matter, may have ended in Batavia, Illinois, with the discovery of evidence for the top quark, the last of twelve subatomic building blocks which now are believed to constitute all of the material world. Dr. Gell-Mann took the word quark from a line in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark.” Gell-Mann predicted that quarks in normal matter came in groups of three: two up quarks and one down quark in protons; and two down quarks and one up quark in neutrons. The ideas were radical and strongly resisted, Broad explained, “partly because the fractional charges of his quarks seemed implausible. But his theories explained much, and were soon partly confirmed by particle discoveries.” Although the discovery will not make any difference in everyday life, it is a high intellectual achievement. The Standard Model, which is central to understanding the nature of time, matter, and the universe, has now allegedly been validated. (For a review of The Quark and the Jaguar by Warren Allen Smith, see Free Inquiry, Summer 1996) {CE}

Gellion-Danglar, Eugène (Born 1829) Gellion-Danglar was a French writer, a professor of languages at Cairo who became sous préfect of Compiègne in 1871. He wrote History of the Revolution (1830) and A Study of the Semites (1882). {BDF}

Gellner, Ernest André (1925—1995) In 1979, Gellner was elected an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association. A social anthropologist, intellectual, and philosopher, he wrote Words and Things (1959), an attack on linguistic philosophy; The Devil in Modern Philosophy (1974); Muslim Society (1981); The Psychoanalytic Movement (1985), a sally against a closed self-perpetuating orthodoxy; and a study of rationalism, Reason and Culture (1992), in which he considers whether reason itself is another kind of superstition. For thirty-five years, Gellner 0taught at the London School of Economics. {New Humanist, June 1996}

Gemistus Pletho, Georgios (c. 1355—1452) 

Wheeler lists Gemistus as a non-believer, citing Gennadius, the patriarch of Constantinople, who roundly accused him of paganism. However, Gemistus represented the Orthodox Eastern Church at the Council of Florence in 1439, led Cosimo de’ Medici to found the Florentine Academy, and inspired the study of Plato that characterized the Italian Renaissance. In his Laws he advocated a polytheism similar to that of the ancient Greeks, rejecting Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato. {BDF; CE}

Genard, François (Born c.1722) Genard was a French satirist, writer of an irreligious work called A Parallel of the Portraits of the Age, with the Pictures of the Holy Scriptures. For this, he was placed in the Bastille, where, Wheeler believes, he died. {BDF}

GENDER Gender refers to the grammatical categories: masculine, feminine, neuter. In recent years it has come to refer to sex-based categories (i.e., gender gap; the politics of gender). Rather than saying policeman or stewardess, those who distinguish between gender and sex refer to police officer and flight attendant. Similarly, a physician might evaluate the effectiveness of a medication as depending upon the sex (not the gender) of the patient. Generic man can foster ambiguity, such as in “Man, like other mammals, breast feeds his young.” In practice, variation in usage is high, with sex and gender often being used interchangeably. To avoid gender bias, some women use their initials before their surname. Meanwhile, one is not always sure, because of the spelling of their names, of Terry’s, Evelyn’s, or Jean-Marie’s gender or sex.

GENDER DYSPHORIA: See entry for N. L. Stones, a transsexual.

Gendre, Barbe (1842—1884) A Russian writer in French, Gendre read the works of Büchner, Buckle, and Darwin, becoming a freethinker. Some of her writing was published in La Justice and the Nouvelle Revue. {BDF; RAT}

Gendre, Isaac (19th Century) Gendre, a Swiss freethinker, upon his death received the following notice in the London Echo (29 July 1881):

A second case of death-bed conversion of an eminent Liberal to Roman Catholicism, suggested probably by that of the great French philologist Littre, has passed the round of the Swiss papers. A few days ago the veteran leader of the Freiburg Liberals, M. Isaac Gendre, died. The Ami du Peuple, the organ of the Freiburg Ultramontanes, immediately set afloat the sensational news that when M. Gendre found that his last hour was approaching, he sent his brother to fetch a priest, in order that the last sacraments might be administered to him, and the evil which he had done during his life by his persistent Liberalism might be atoned by his repentance at the eleventh hour. This brother, M. Alexandre Gendre, now writes to the paper stating that there is not one word of truth in this story. What possible benefit can any Church derive from the invention of such tales? Doubtless there is a credulous residuum which believes that there must be “some truth” in anything which has once appeared in print. {FO}

GENEALOGY: See entry for Blood Relatives. In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined genealogy as “an account of one’s descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.”

Gener, Pompeyo (1848—1920) Gener was a Spanish philosopher, a member of the Society of Anthropology and author of Death and the Devil (1880). The work was dedicated to Renan. {BDF}

GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF UNITARIAN AND FREE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

In England, Jeffrey J. Teagle heads the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches (1-6 Essex Street, Strand, London, WC2R 3HV, England).

GENERAL SEMANTICS: See entries for Alfred Korzybski and for Semantics.

GENESIS • It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it. —Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Nonbelievers recognize that they cannot prove the nonexistence of God. They simply argue that a universe without a creator is the most economical premise consistent with all the data. An uncaused, undesigned emergence of the universe from nothing violates no principle of physics. The total energy of the universe appears to be zero, so no miracle of energy created “from nothing” was required to produce it. Similarly, no miracle was needed for the appearance of order. Order can and does occur spontaneously in physical systems. —Victor J. Stenger

The truly prosaic myths about the genesis of life are (a) that life arrived, according to Hesiod, when Aphrodite rose from the foam of the sea where Uranus’s genitals had fallen after he had been mutilated by Kronus, that she (a/k/a Venus) was inseminated by many including Hermes, for whom she bore Hermaphroditus, and the shepherd Anchises, by whom she bore Aeneas; (b) that One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature; (c) that Ahura Mazda came out of nowhere and made the good earth and instructed man to till it; and that (d) the God who chose the Hebrews as his chosen people created a male Adam out of lifeless dust, then, as an afterthought, a subservient Eve to provide a second actor for a soap opera-like plot. “In the beginning,” Genesis erroneously does not state, “was thermophile.” But therein lies the far more exciting and scientific explanation. No ancient ever dreamed of organisms which live in hot springs at the bottom of the oceans, creatures which use iron-containing chemicals as an energy source. “What inventive mind of the Mediterranean world,” asks Oberlin College’s Professor of Physics Daniel F. Styler, “could have imagined creatures as remarkable and diverse as zebras and amoebas?” A thermophile called Methanococcus jannaschi, and which consists of organisms that grow at a high temperature, was first analyzed in 1996 by the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland. Dr. Craig Venter of the lab announced that Methanococcus is the third living organism to have its genome (all of its DNA) fully sequenced. At issue is the revelation that life is divided into three parts:

• eukaryotes—e.g., animals, plants, fungi, single-celled creatures, slime moulds • prokaryotes—cellular organisms such as a bacterium or a blue- green algae sans a distinct nucleus • archea—thermophiles, the third living organism, one which can tolerate heat as much as 94o C. The thermophile recovered in 1996 by the deep sea vessel Alvin from a volcanic vent on the Pacific floor contained genes unlike anything ever before seen in biology.

Commenting on the find, The Economist (24 August 1996) wrote, “The most obvious explanation for why all life on earth might be descended from thermophiles is that the first living creatures were thermophilic. The early earth, after all, was quite a volcanic place, and the chemicals vomited from hot springs offer lots of possible ways in which creatures that do not use photosynthesis (the process that some bacteria and all plants use to generate energy from sunlight) can still make a living. This could imply that the split between the archea and the bacteria happened early in the history of life.” Representing a third kingdom of life, alongside the Prokarya and Eukarya, Archaea makes it clear that Aphrodite was not simply born of foamy seas or Adam simply made from lifeless dust. The universal ancestor has not yet, it becomes clear, been located. A team of researchers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook found that while fossil evidence points to a great explosion of animal species beginning about 565,000,000 years ago, new genetic evidence suggests that their precursors may have emerged and evolved over a much longer period, perhaps a billion to 1.2 billion years. The earliest evidence for life, single-cell organisms resembling bacteria, is 3.6 billion years old. Earth is estimated to be about 4.6 billion years old. But still not explained is how complexity developed. Richard Dawkins in Climbing Mount Improbable stated that “nobody knows how it happened,” that “there are arguments to the contrary,” that we “speculate” when we talk about the origins of life. Some Chinese have denied the “out of Africa” thesis that human life spread after first commencing in Africa. Wu Xinzhi, of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeo-Anthropology in Shanghai, holds that people have been looking hard on that continent and that eventually a Chinse “Lucy”—the equivalent of a famous skeleton of the African hominid who lived 3,500,000 years ago—will be found. For many, the Han are a “pure” race not descended from Africans. In the April 1997 issue of Science, German scientists announced their theory: that life on earth began around a volcano, perhaps at the deep-sea vents where molten lava boils through the ocean floor. Some 3.5- or 3.6-billion years ago, according to Dr. Claudia Huber of the Technical University of Munich, and Dr. Günter Wächtershäuser, a chemist, some kind of natural chemical reactions preceded the emergence of the first living cells. Or, in the words of Nicholas Wade in The New York Times,

The recipe for creating life on a newborn planet consists of mostly lethal ingredients and would read something like this: Drop a handful of fool’s gold (the mineral iron pyrites) and a sprinkle of nickel into water, stir in a strong whiff of rotten eggs (caused by the gas hydrogen sulfide) and carbon monoxide, heat mixture near the crackle and hiss of a volcano, and let simmer for an eon.

Dr. Christian de Duve observed that the theory is “an extremely interesting finding which fits with the idea that life may have originated in a volcanic setting.” The new theory differs from that advanced by Dr. Stanley L. Miller, of the University of California at San Diego. He held that the locale for the origin of life was tidal pools and lightning strikes rather than in deep vents or other geothermal sources. In 1953, Miller had taken some water to represent the ocean, the gases methane, ammonia, and hydrogen to represent the early earth’s atmosphere and sent electric sparks through the mixture to simulate lightning strikes. In several days, he found that many organic chemicals typical of living cells, including ammo acids, had formed within the concoction. His findings led to the view that it was only a matter of time for chemists to figure out how the building blocks might have combined naturally into the complex molecules of life. Wächtershäuser credited the late philosopher Karl Popper for encouraging him in his studies. De Duve has noted that Wächtershäuser “disagrees with Stanley Miller and vice versa” but that their theories likely contained important elements of truth. “Life may have originated in a hot, deep sea environment rich in sulfur,” he added. Observed Wade, “If so, such a dark hellish cradle would be a considerable elaboration on the ‘warm little pond’ in which Darwin, in an often-quoted letter, suggested that life began.” (For the genesis of man, see entry for Evolution. Also, see entries for Flood and for RNA. For how old the universe is, see entry for Universe.) {CE; The Economist, 10 July 1999; Nicholas Wade, “Double Helixes, Chickens and Eggs,” The New York Times Magazine, 29 January 1995; Daniel F. Styler, The New York Times, 28 August 1996; The New York Times, 25 October 1996; Nicholas Wade, The New York Times, 11 April 1997}

GENESIS, THE MYTH Rafael A. Mirabal, from Caguas, Puerto Rico, wrote to the editor of Time (25 November 1996):

Why do intelligent people still spend their time discussing fairy tales written by ignorant men about 2,000 years ago? Genesis’ main lesson is to emphasize man’s dismal failure in trying to create God in man’s own image. The book’s only relevance today is to the Jewish people, whose culture produced Genesis. Apart from its value as literature, Genesis has no meaning for the rest of us. As long as we keep giving this mythology a divine image, it will be impossible for modern man to transcend the dark ages we still carry in our minds.

Genestet, Petrus Augustus de (1829—1861) Genestet was a Dutch poet and agnostic. He studied theology and for a time was a Protestant minister. Leckedichtjes (1860), his volume of poems and epigrams, show his rationalism. {BDF; RAT}

Genet, Jean (1910—1986) A controversial French dramatist noted for his autobiographical narratives about homosexuality and crime, Genet wrote Our Lady of the Flowers (1943), The Balcony (1956), The Blacks (1958), and The Screens (1961), all examples of the theater of the absurd. Amy Farmer, editor of Voices/Writing, has commented that “In the case of the Panthers [in The Blacks], Genet admitted his erotic attraction to black men; likewise, he was aware of the libidinal charge that hedged his fascination with the young soldiers of the PLO. However, erotic attraction leads to the clearer articulation of what Genet’s work had always promised to do: establish a new ethic. Rather than ostracize and eroticize these new attractions, Genet attempts to use them as an incitement to dialogue and self-scrutiny. despite its focus on the male bonds of the military, Prisoner of Love also led to Genet’s most sustained medication on women.” It would have been ironically absurd of Genet to have chosen belief over non-belief. He was a freethinker who, occupied with alleyway sexual escapades and prison-shower gang bangs, failed to go on record. {GL}

Genin, François (1803—1856) Genin was a French philologist who, becoming one of the editors of the National, wrote spirited articles against the Jesuits. He published The Jesuits and the Universities. In 1845, the French Academy awarded a prize to his Lexicon of the Language of Molière. Genin edited Diderot and is known for his researches into the origin of the French language and literature. {BDF; RAT}

GENITAL MAIMING “Circumcision made a lot of sense in primitive times,” states Prof. Anderson in Arthur C. Clarke’s 3001. In the year of 3001, circumcision was no longer practiced because, as Anderson explains, “[S]ome unknown genius coined a slogan—please excuse the vulgarity—’God designed us: circumcision is blasphemy.’ . . . By mid-21st century there had been so many malpractice suits that the American Medical Association had been forced to ban it.” Clarke’s plot wryly noted that anyone who had been “cut” in 3001 would be considered an anachronism. Egypt’s highest court in December 1997 issued a significant ruling: “Circumcision of girls is not an individual right under Sharia. There is nothing in the Koran that authorizes it.” Violations, for anyone removing a girl’s clitoris, to strip females of their sexual feelings, now carries a three-year jail sentence. Women’s rights groups hailed the decision, saying that Islamic scholarship and Islamic jurisprudence look to Egypt for direction and the result would be far-reaching. Sheik Badri, commenting negatively, said the high court had made a mistake and the judge “would have to answer to God” for overturning a practice that had been condoned for fourteen centuries. Islamic conservatives maintain there is nothing wrong with the genital cutting. In extreme cases, some women’s mutilated vaginas are stitched shut, then unstitched before and restitched after intercourse with their husbands, an attempt to make them appear to be permanently virgins. (See entries for Circumcision and for Women, Genital Maiming of.) {The New York Times, 29 December 1997}

GENIUS As to whether philosophic geniuses understand each other, Bertrand Russell in Understanding History (1957) made some points: “A great deal of nonsense has been written about Aristotle and Alexander, because, as both were great men, and Aristotle was Alexander’s tutor, it is supposed that the tutor must have greatly influenced the pupil. Hegel goes so far as to say that Alexander’s career shows the value of philosophy, since his practical wisdom may be attributed to his teacher. In fact there is not the faintest evidence that Aristotle had any effect at all on Alexander, who hated his father, and was rebellious against everyone whom his father set in authority over him. There are certain letters professing to be from Alexander to Aristotle, but they are generally considered spurious. In fact the two men ignored each other. While Alexander was conquering the East, Aristotle continued to write treatises on politics which never mentioned what was taking place, but discussed minutely the constitutions of various cities which were no longer important. It is a mistake to suppose that great men who are contemporaries are likely to be quick to recognize each other’s greatness; the opposite happens much more frequently.”

GENOCIDE Genocide, which is the ultimate crime against humankind, is the deliberate and systematic destruction by a government of a national, racial, political, religious, or cultural group. Although the term was coined recently, in 1944, genocide has been committed many times throughout history and the world. In the early American period, settlers were unmerciful in trying to completely kill off all Indians. In the Ottoman Turkey of 1894—1896 and again in 1915—1916, Armenians were massacred. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, an attempt to destroy European Jewry was made along with the killing of homosexuals and Gypsies. Although in Cambodia more than one million were killed or died from enforced hardships by 1978, that nation’s prime minister, Pol Pot, has been accused of having had as his objective the extermination of all opponents, not just the Khmer people. A United Nations convention, which concluded in 1949, established the principles of the individual accountability of government officials who carried out the extermination policies, defined the crime of genocide, and provided for prosecution by national or international courts.

GENOME: See entries for Genesis, Richard Johnson Goss, and Human or Chimp.

Genovesi, Antonio: See entry for Beccaria.

Gensonné, Armand (1758—1793) Gensonné was a French lawyer, one of the leaders of the Girondists. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1791 and to the Convention in 1792. In the struggle with the Jacobins, Gensonné was an active champion of his party. With his colleagues, he was executed 31 October 1793. {BDF}

GENTILE Gentile is a rendering in English of a Late Latin word (gentilis) used in the Septuagint to mean “non-Jew,” “foreigner,” or “heathen.” Acts 11:20 relates how non-Jews (as distinguished from Jewish proselytes) were first admitted to the Church at Antioch. Paul became known as “apostle to the Gentiles” and before the writing of the Epistle to the Romans Gentile Christianity had come greatly to outnumber Jewish Christianity. Mormons also refer to non-Mormons as Gentiles. Freethinkers have little or no reason to use the word. {ER}

Gentilis, Giovanni Valentino (c. 1520—1566) An Italian heretic, Gentilis fled Naples to Geneva to avoid persecution but, at the instigation of Calvin, was thrown into prison. Fearing the same fate as meted to Servetus, Gentilis recanted, wandered to Poland, joined Alciati and Biandrata, and was banished there for his innovations. Upon Calvin’s death, he went to Switzerland, where he was arrested for heresy and was beheaded. Ladvocat reported that Gentilis “died very impiously, saying he thought himself honored in being martyred for the glory of the Father, whereas the apostles and other martyrs only died for the glory of the Son.” {BDF} Geoffrin, Marie Therèse (1699—1777) A French lady distinguished as a patroness of learning and the fine arts, Geoffrin was a friend of Alembert, Voltaire, Marmontel, Montesquieu, Diderot, and the encyclopedists. She was noted for her benevolence, for the Dictionnaire Encyclopédie was made possible largely through her liberality. {BDF; JMRH; RAT; RE; WWS}

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Étienne (1772—1844) 

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French zoologist, a member (1798–1801) of Napoleon’s scientific staff in Egypt and a professor at the Museum of Natural History (1793—1840). In his Philosophie anatomique (1818—1822, 2 volumes), he outlined his theory that all animals conform to a single plan of structure. At the age of seventeen, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was made a canon of the Church, but he became a deist and turned to science. As he rose to the supreme rank in zoology, he helped prepare the way for the acceptance of evolution, especially by opposing the reactionary Christian zoologist Baron Cuvier. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire remained a Deist with “a fanaticism of humanity as his religion,” according to his biographer, illustrated by the fact that during the Revolution of 1830 he saved the life of the Archbishop of Paris. {CE; JM; RAT; RE}

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Isidore (1805—1861) Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the son of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, was professor of zoology at Bordeaux, then at the Paris Museum (1841), and finally at the Medical Faculty (1850). He wrote a biography of his father, edited his father’s notes on the French expedition to Egypt, and issued the works of Buffon. The founding of the Paris Acclimatisation Society was chiefly due to him. {RAT}

George III (King) (1738—1820) George III, King of Great Britain at the time of the American Revolution, was expert at arranging taxation without representation. When his faithful subjects became not so faithful, they also lost their faith in his being God’s representative on Earth. Nor did they turn the job over to the Pope in the Vatican. Instead, they arranged for the separation of the various religions and the new secular state, setting a revolutionary model for others. George, the Church of England’s leader, suffered greatly because of his former subjects’ defamatory, humiliating, and derogatory insults. The appropriately named blueblood of all bluebloods also suffered from porphyria, a hereditary disease. George’s urine came out blue, his scalp became blistered, to which sucking leeches were applied, and his being administered quinine, camphor, calomel and other emetics and purges led him to awake sounding like a maniac and howling like a dog. Christopher Hibbert’s George III: A Personal History (1998) tells how the king built four libraries at Buckingham Palace that favorably impressed a visiting Dr. Johnson. He liked farce, laughed uncontrollably at slapstick, and enjoyed dressing up. Although a staunch Church of Englander, he tolerated Methodists and Quakers but not Catholics. When anti-Catholic paranoia during the Gordon riots occurred, with rumors that Jesuits were plotting to overthrow him and Benedictines were poisoning the city’s flour, George reufsed to relax the laws against the Catholics.

George, Leonard (20th Century) George is author of Crimes of Perception: An Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics (1995). In other times, George would have had his hands cut off and his book burned for writing such a volume. He details six hundred entries as to what have been considered heresies. George is a psychologist and lecturer who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

George, Lyman Fairbanks (20th Century) George, a freethinker, wrote The Naked Truth of Jesusism from Oriental Manuscripts (1914). {GS}

GEORGIA FREETHINKERS, HUMANISTS Georgia has the following groups:

• American Humanist Association, Mid-Atlantic Region (AHA), A-140, 1 College Row, Brevard, North Carolina 28712. O. Andrews Ferguson is the contact. • Atlanta Freethought Society (FFRF)(ASHS), POB 813392, Smyrna, Georgia 30081 (707) 641-2903. On the Web: <http://www.concentric.net/~theafs>. E-mail: <theafs@cris.com>. • Georgia Institute of Technology freethinkers are at <www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>. • Humanists of Georgia (AHA), POB 2385, Stone Mountain, Georgia 30086. Tom Malone, once its director, has been succeeded by Wanda Randall.

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY The Georgia Institute of Technology campus freethought society is at <http://www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>.

Gerard, Ralph W. (20th Century) 

Author of Food for Life (1965), Gerard is a humanist who at the University of Michigan was a professor of neurophysiology in the Mental Health Institute.

Gerber, Elisabeth M. (20th Century) A professional musician and former orchestral assistant to the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London, Gerber co-edits the Mid-West Freethinker newsletter.

Gerber, John (20th Century) A freethinker, Gerber wrote The Psycho-Neurosis Called Christianity (1969). {GS}

Gerber, Rona M. (20th Century) Gerber reviewed Women Without Superstition for The Freethinker August 1997), finding it “clearly demonstrates the close connection between the institutions of religion and the oppression of the powerless slaves, women, lower-class workers, and children.”

Gerdes, Jürgen (20th Century) Gerdes, of Freie Huministen Niedersachsen, has fought with that German humanist organization against the inclusion of a mention of God in the new constitution of the German Federal Republic. “The law—especially the constitution of a modern democracy,” Gerges has argued, “has to be absolutely free of any references to God. Otherwise a continuously growing part of the society will be discriminated against by a religious majority. As a humanist I can’t accept the attempts of the political establishment, to work as an instrument of the churches.” Gerdes’s E-mail: <gerdes-hannover@t-online.de> (International Humanist News, March 1994)

Gerhard, H. (1829—1886) Gerhard was a Dutch socialist who wrote for De Dageraad and was a correspondent of the Internationale. {BDF}

Gerhard, A. H. (Born 1858) Son of the foregoing, Gerhard was a headmaster of a public school and one of the editors of De Dageraad. {BDF}

Gerling, Fr. Wilhelm (19th Century) Gerling was the German author of Letter of a Materialist to an Idealist (1888), to which Fran Hedwig Henrich Wilhelmi contributed a preface. {BDF}

GERMAN-AMERICAN FREETHOUGHT: See Freethought in the United States by Gordon Stein, which covers the subject of German-American freethinkers.

GERMAN CRITICS OF RELIGION: See entry for Franz Buggle.

GERMAN FREETHOUGHT In 1981, Joachim Kahl (of Marburg) and Erich Wernig (of Köln), wrote a study of freethought in Germany, Freidenker, Geschichte und Gegenuart. North-German Freethinkers are on the Web: <http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/7083>.

GERMAN FREETHOUGHT AND HUMANISM Der Spiegel in 1997 reported that the number of theists had dropped to 45%, down from 50% in 1993. During the same period, the number of avowed atheists rose from 20% to 28%. Only one-fourth of Germans said they believed in Jesus Christ. The decline matched the trend in other West European nations. {The Secular Humanist Bulletin, Winter 1997—1998} German organizations and journals that are members of the International Humanist and Ethical Union are as follows:

• Bund Freireligiöser Gemeinden Deutschlands, Wörthstrasse 6a, 67059 Ludwigshafen

• Diesseits - Zeitschrift fur Aufklarung undHumanismus, a quarterly, is at Hobrechtstrasse 8, D-12045 Berlin <hvdberlin@aol.com>. • Freie Humanisten Nidersachsen, Otto-Brenner-Str. 22, D-30159, Hannover; e-mail: <Gerdes-Hannover@t-online.de> • Friedenker, a monthly, Shonalcher Str. 2, 70597 Stuttgart • Freigeistige Aktion Fasanweg 8, 31535 Neustadt 1 • Freireligiöse Rundschau, Oberer Kirchhaldenweg 59, 70195 Stuttgart, Germany • Humanismus Heute, Zeitschrift für Kultur und Weltanschauung, an academic quarterly of Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands, is at Hobrechtstrasse 8, D - 12043 Berlin, Germany • Humaniste Aktion is on the web: <http://home.t-online.de/home/humanist.aktion/>. • Humanisticher Verband Deutschlands, Hobrechtstrasse 8, D-12043 Berlin; <hvdberlin@aol.com> • Internationaler Bund der Konfessionslosen und Atheisten , Chausseestrasse 8, D-10115 Berlin • Kristall Zeitschrift fur Geistesfreiheit und Humanismus, a quarterly, is at Schillerstrasse 50, D-63263 Neu-Isenburg <ortrun.e.lenz@t-online.de>. • Miz, Wurzberger Strasse 18a, 63739 Aschaffenburg • Wegeohne Dogma, Freireligiose Verlagsbuchandlung, L 10. 4-6, 68161 Mannheim

For information about Freireligiöse Landesgemeinde Pfalz: <http://members.aol.com/FLGPfalz/index.htm>. An umbrella organization of free world view organizations is Dachverband Freier Weltanshauungsgemeinschaften. It is operated by Fritz Bode, Langenstucken 12, 2819 Morsum, Germany.

GERMAN UNITARIANS The Unitarian Fellowship in Germany was an outgrowth of a liberal Protestant movement in the 1870s and was established in 1950 as a lay-led movement which tends toward scientific and philosophical humanism. Its members maintain the liberty of their individual beliefs but agree on a number of basic ideas about religion, life, man, and community. There are thirty-three communities and a cooperative but independent youth fellowship (Bund Deutsch Unitarischer Jugend), all organized according to democratic principles. A Unitarian conference center is at Klingberg, near Hamburg, and its contact is Gunde Hartman, Schulberg 5, D-89435 Finningen, Germany. In Frankfort/Main, Wolfgang Jantz is a contact at Deutscherrnufer 12, 60594 Frankfort/Main. Unitarians in Heidelberg can be contacted by telephoning (49) 621-58-1718; in Kaiserlautern, (49) 6395-8595); in Munich, (49) 821-47-2486 or (49) 89-28-2326; and in Wiesbaden, (49) 612-87-2109.

Garman, Charles W. (20th Century) German, in his Letters, Lectures, Addresses (1909), wrote, “Whatever may be true of men’s creed, nothing is clearer than the fact that the personality and the sovereignty of God are not a large factor in the practical life and thought of our age.” {TYD}

GERMANIC LANGUAGE • In the German language the fish is a he, the scales are she, and the fishwife it. —Mark Twain

GERMANIC PHILOSOPHY: See Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3.

GERMANIC RELIGION  

Like most ancient religions, the Germanic religion was polytheistic and had twelve main gods. Included were Woden (or Odin, the chief god for whom Wednesday is named); Tiw (or Tyr, for whom Tuesday is named); Thor (or Donar, for whom Thursday is named); Balder; Freyl; Freyja; and Frigga (Odin’s wife, queen of the heavens, a deity of love and the household, and for whom Friday is named). All dwelled is Asgard, each in his or her own palace. Woden’s Valhalla was the site of many banquets attended by the Valkyries and dedicated to the dead heroes, who lay dead by day but feasted with the others by night. Unlike gods of other peoples, the Norse gods were not immortal and despite eating the apples of Idun became extinct. It was prophesied that Loki, who led the forces of evil and darkness, would attack Asgard, ending the gods’ existences and resulting in Earth’s being destroyed by fire. Out of its ashes, however, came a mixture of the glacial waters of Nifheim (land of ice and mist) and the warm winds of Muspellsheim (land of fire). A new generation would rise because of the two first creatures—the giant Ymir, who would father a race of giants; and the cow Audhumia, who would give birth to the first god, Buri. His son, Borr, would father Odin, Vili, and Ve. They together destroy Ymir, fashioning heaven and earth from his body. From two trees were fashioned the first humans: Ashr (Ask) and Embia. The gods’ temples were attended by priests who divined the future, accepted presents for the gods, and guarded sacred groves. Near a root of the great ash tree Yggdrasill dwelled Norns, or Fate. Fate was one of the most important concepts of Germanic religion, and humans and gods were subject to it. {CE}

Germond, J.B.L. (19th Century) Germond was editor or Marèchal’s Dictionnaire des Athées (1833). {BDF}

Germond, Jack (20th Century) Germond, a journalist, columnist, and commentator, has gone on record on the telecast, “The McLaughlin Group,” as being a non-theist. {CA; E} Jack Germond, Journalist/Columnist/Commentator media UPDATED

Jack Germond is a member of the panel on the weekly PBS show "Inside Washington" and a journalist for "The Baltimore Sun."

He has remarked publicly a number of times both in the press and television (e.g., on the The McLaughlin Group) about his lack of religious belief.

--JF

In an "Inside Washington" program broadcast February 3, 2001 about President Bush's faith-based initiative, Germond said:

"I don't quarrel with the proposition that faith-based organizations do worthwhile things, they do. They should do it with their own money. The fact is, if we start getting public money in there, it is inevitable that we're going to get a little bit of religion along with it. And for people like me, who are not believers, that is absolutely outrageous, and it's unconstitutional."

--JLee

Geroult de Pival (Died c. 1772) Geroult was a French librarian at Rouen and probably the author of Doutes sur la Religion (1767). {BDF}

Gerrand, James Hamilton (1919— ) Gerrand is an Australian humanist and aviation engineer. He has been editor of The Australian Humanist and was secretary of the Humanist Society of Victoria, the Council of Australian Humanist Societies, and the Rationalist Society of Australia. {SWW}

Gershwin, George (1898—1937) and Gershwin, Ira (1896-1983) The Gershwin brothers were composer and lyricist of some of the best-known and most important American original and popular musical works. George, who did not go on record, may or may not have been interested in organized religion. Ira, however, was so unhappy when George died of an inoperable brain tumor at the age of only thirty-eight that he suffered a guilt complex, saying, according to Michael Feinstein, he would gladly have died in George’s place if he could have, “and for the rest of his life he never believed in God.” The two are noted for “The Back Bay Polka,” which teases the puritanism of Beantown:

Don’t speak the naked truth— What’s naked is uncouth; It may go in Duluth— But not in Boston. . . . Somewhere the fairer sex Has curves that are convex, And girls don’t all wear specs— But not in Boston.

Their opera, Porgy and Bess, had the humorous number “It Ain’t Necessarily So”:

. . . The things that you’re liable To read in the Bible, It ain’t necessarily so. . . . Methus’lah lived nine hundred years. Methus’lah lived nine hundred years. But who call dat livin’ When no gal’ll give in To no man what’s nine hundred years?

	Alan Jay Lerner described Ira as the only man he knew who was “cute.” Harry Warren said Ira never had had a bad word for anyone. Louis Calhern told a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman he needed no such work because he knew Ira. 

In 1937, while playing the piano with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, George lost consciousness, skipped a few bars, then continued as if nothing had happened. Later he said he had had the sensation of smelling burning rubber. Two months later, he had the same experience. Orchestra leader Mitch Miller confirmed Gershwin had told him the same story three years prior. Although Gershwin underwent many tests, refusing to submit to a spinal tap, the tests were inconclusive. Some described him as being a hypochondriac. On July 9th after playing the piano, he fell into a stuporous sleep that deepened into a coma. Neurosurgeons removed a brain tumor, but he died several hours later without regaining consciousness. A biopsy revealed that the tumor was a fulminating growth, one which probably would have recurred even had he survived the initial operation. {PA; The New York Times, 1 December 1996}

Gerson, Simon W. (1909— ) Gerson, a freethinker, was executive editor of the Daily Worker, a major left-of-center publication which included a strong emphasis upon civil liberties and was anti-capitalistic. He wrote Pete: the Story of Peter Cacchione, New York’s First Communist Councilman (1976). Although retired as editor of People’s World, he contributes to the People’s Weekly World.

Gerstein, Joseph (20th Century) Gerstein is president of the Humanist Association of Massachusetts and is co-editor of its newsletter (Box 1125, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238). In 1996, speaking in Vijayawada, India, at the fourth World Atheist Conference, Gerstein suggested that non-theists should not use the word “God” but, instead, should speak of gods or god ideas. On “spirituality,” he explained, we should celebrate art, music, communal experience, and beauty. Equally important, he urged making atheist ethics explicit, adding, “We must not be mere debating societies.” {FD; HNS2}

Gestefeld, Ursula Newell (1845—1921) Gestefeld, a freethinker, wrote A Modern Catechism (1892). {GS}

Geyer, Denton L. (20th Century) Geyer, a professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri, was a naturalistic humanist who has reviewed books for The Humanist.

GHANIAN HUMANISTS Hope N. Tawiah leads the Ghanian humanists at the Rational Centre (IHEU), POB 558 Art Centre, Accra, Ghana.

Ghillany, Friedrich Wilhelm (1807—1876) Ghillany was a German critic who in 1835 became professor of history at Nurenberg. His principal work is on Human Sacrifices Among the Ancient Jews (1842). He also wrote about pagan and Christian authors of the first four centuries. Under the pseudonym of Richard von der Alm, he wrote Theological Letters (1862), Jesus of Nazareth (1868), and a collection of opinions of heathen and Jewish writers of the first four centuries upon Jesus and Christianity. {BDF; RAT}

Ghisleri, Arcangelo (1855—1938) Ghisleri, an Italian geographer, adopted rationalism in his nineteenth year. He founded the Rivista Republicana (1878) and edited Cuore e Critica and La Geografia per Tutti. He said, “The battle of Freethought must also be waged against all who, though they do not believe in God or priest, maintain religion and priests because they are good policemen.” {RAT}

Ghosh, Prabhir (1945— ) Ghosh, president of the Indian Science and Rationalists’ Association, has led a group which since 1949 has busily exposed fraudulent “godmen.” Journalist John F. Burns found Ghosh and India’s “guru busters” are mostly atheists but include activists raised as Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Rationalists are said to number 86,000 members in 300 branches across India. In 1995, when millions of Indians stayed away from work to try to see milk-drinking idols, Ghosh set out to show, reported Burns, “that any liquid, including milk, can be made to rise from a spoon through the porous ceramics used for the idols through capillary attraction.” In 1994, however, he and several companions ended up with cuts, bruises, and fractures after a fracas at the annual meeting in Calcutta of India’s main astrological society. He then had dared the astrologers to write on a piece of paper when Prime Minister Rao, the sitarist Ravi Shankar, and other prominent Indians would die. “They say, ‘It’s possible to forecast anything,’ ” Ghosh said. “So I said, ‘Fine, let’s forecast something that will interest every Indian.’ ” Bouncers were summoned, and Mr. Ghosh ended up in a hospital. For Ghosh, battling the belief in the supernatural has been a lifelong battle. His skepticism, according to Burns, began when he was a teenager living in a town outside Calcutta. Cutting classes at school, he went about bearding holy men who demonstrated their mystical powers on the street by walking on hot coals and by other tricks Mr. Ghosh said were taken from the repertory of country-fair magicians. “I saw how people were being fooled,” he said, “and I saw how this fraudulent spiritualism was being used to exploit the poor.” By his personal record, Ghosh has exposed 150 gurus and swamis as frauds, effectively putting them out of business. In 1993, when Balak Brahmachari, a prominent guru died and was laid out, the disciples claimed he had not died but, instead, had gone into a deep trance. After fifty-five days, police were summoned to carry the badly decomposed body away for cremation, setting off street battles in which scores were hurt. However, Indian Skeptic editor B. Premanand has claimed that the Indian Science and Rationalist Association was started in the 1980s, not in 1949, by Prabir Ghosh. He claims they do not have 86,000 members and 300 centers in India. And he states that Ghosh has now been expelled by his own members. (See entries for Debasis Bhattachariya and for Indian Humanists, Rationalists.) {CA; E; The New York Times, 10 October 1995}

Ghosh, S. (20th Century) In the 1950s when he was Secretary of the Indian Rationalist Association, Ghosh was a correspondent (India) for The Humanist. Ghosh had been a founding member of the Indian Rationalist Association. {FUK}

GHOSTS Ghosts come in three varieties, the first two of which are “believed” in by individuals who have an incomplete understanding of science, the same types of individuals who believe that Heaven is “up” and Hell is “down”:

• apparitions—are spiritualistic manifestations of a person or object in which a form not actually present is seen with such intensity that observers believe in its reality; individuals using polished stones, hypnotic suggestion, incantations, and crystal gazing claim these are evidence of the presence of supernatural spirits.

• poltergeists [German: knocking ghost]—are certain phenomena, such as rapping, movement of furniture, and breaking of crockery, for which there is no apparent scientific explanation; individuals who perform séances claim these are evidence of the presence of supernatural spirits.

The third variety is found in literary works; e.g., Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Henry James’s Turn of the Screw:

• figurative ghosts—writers sometimes include ghosts in their works with the intention of casting a spell or creating a mysterious mood; the Canadian author, Robertson Davies, when asked if he believed in supernatural emanations, said, “I believe in them the way Shakespeare believed in them. They’re a way of exemplifying something which you know to be true but which is very hard to give substance to. Why does Hamlet see his father’s ghost? It’s in order that he may recognize what he knows in the depths of his own mind. It doesn’t really mean that people are floating around in nighties looking for somebody to scare.” (See entry for Holy Ghost.) {CE; The New

York Times Book Review, 5 February 1995}

Giammanco, Roberto (1926— ) Giammanco is editor of La Nuova Ragione, the journal of Italy’s Giordano Bruno Freethought Association. He has written for Free Inquiry. Three of Giammanco’s books are Dialogo Sulla Societa Americana (1964), Black Power (1967), and La Piu Lunga Frontiera dell’Islam (1983). {Free Inquiry, Summer 1991}

Giannone, Pietro (1676—1748) Giannone was an Italian historian who attacked paper power in his History of the Kingdom of Naples. Excommunicated, he fled to Vienna, then to Venice. Seized by night and cast before sunrise on the papal shore, he somehow escaped to Geneva. When enticed to Savoy, he was arrested by order of the King of Sardinia and confined in prison until his death. Giannone’s deistic attacks upon the Papacy were his downfall, but he inspired many by his twenty years of historical work. {BDF; RAT; RE}

Gibbon, Edward (1737—1794) A young convert to Catholicism, Gibbon then formally reconverted to Protestantism. But in writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 volumes, 1776—1788), he became a skeptic and offended the pious by his including historical criticism of Christianity in his mammoth work. Macaulay, for example, thought Gibbon “most unfair” to religion. Less than five feet tall in height and bulbously fat, he was a figure of ridicule, even while serving as a member of Parliament. He opposed the American Revolution but looked with some favor upon the later French Revolution, which he found to be more radical. “Religion,” he wrote concerning why babies are “born” into a church, “is a mere question of geography.” In 1783, the Vatican prohibited his work from being read. Gibbon wrote in History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “A state of scepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision. . . . So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition.” Robertson emphasizes Gibbon’s beginning a new era of historical writing, “not merely by its sociological treatment of the rise of Christianity, but by its absolutely anti-theological handling of all things.” Gibbon was recognized internationally for the scope and quality of his work, and, adds Robertson, “the sheer solidity of [his] work has sustained it against a hundred years of hostile comments.” Not all appreciated Gibbon. Samuel Coleridge once observed, “Gibbon’s style is detestable, but it is not the worst thing about him.”

	His views on Christianity are indicated in a famous fifteenth chapter, called by Foote a masterpiece of grave and temperate irony. When Gibbon wrote that “it was not in this world that the primitive Christians were desirous of making themselves either agreeable or useful,” every sensible reader understood his meaning, Foote added. 

In 1994, two versions of the Gibbon history were issued, the first with an introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper, the second edited by David Womersley. The former includes Oliphant Smeaton’s editorial footnotes in addition to Gibbon’s own. The latter leaves Gibbon’s text but includes the “Vindication” in which Gibbon trounced critics of his treatment of Christianity. Lord Russell also believed Gibbon is a major historian because of his historic exposure of the crimes and futility of Christianity. In his Understanding History (1957), Russell wrote: “His chief virtue is that, although his portraits of individuals are often disappointing, his sense of the march of great events is sure and unerring. No one has ever presented the pageant of history better than he has done. To treat in one book the whole period from the second century to the fifteenth was a colossal undertaking, but he never lost sight of the unity of his theme, or of the proportions to be presented among its several parts. This required a grasp of a great whole which is beyond the power of most men, and which, for all his shortcomings, puts Gibbon in the first rank among historians.” A similar view was expressed by Robert D. Kaplan, who wrote of the three volumes that “they constitute a general theory of history, a controversial interpretation of the birth of Christianity, an extended essay on military elites and the fickleness of public opinion, and an unequaled geographical and cultural primer on Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.” Gibbon, whom McCabe labeled a deist “on the way to agnosticism,” died of dropsy, in London. After being tapped in November, he removed to the house of his devoted friend, Lord Sheffield. The last volumes of the Decline and Fall had been published in May of 1788, and a week before he expired in 1794 he returned to his lodgings in St. James Street, London. Lord Sheffield described his final moments:

During the evening he complained much of his stomach, and of a feeling of nausea. Soon after nine he took his opium draught and went to bed. About ten he complained of much pain, and desired that warm napkins might be applied to his stomach. He almost incessantly expressed a sense of pain till about four o’clock in the morning, when he said he found his stomach much easier. About seven the servant asked whether he should send for Mr. Farquhar (the doctor). He answered, no, that he was as well as the day before. At about half-past eight be got out of bed and said he was “plus adroit” than he had been for three months past and got into bed again without assistance, better than usual. About nine he said he would rise. The servant, however, persuaded him to remain in bed till Mr. Parquhar, who was expected at eleven, should come. Till about that hour be spoke with great facility. Mr. Farquhar came at the time appointed, and he was then visibly dying. When the valet-de-chambre returned, after attending Mr. Farquhar out of the room, Mr. Gibbon said, “Pourquoi est-ce que vous me quittez?” (Why do you leave me?) This was about half-past eleven. At twelve o’clock he drank some brandy and water from a teapot, and desired his favourite servant to stay with him. These were the last words he pronounced articulately. To the last he preserved his senses; and when he could no longer speak, his servant having asked a question, he made a sign to show that he understood him. He was quite tranquil, and did not stir, his eyes half shut. About a quarter before one he ceased to breathe. (The valet-de-chambre observed that he did not, at any time, evince the least sign of alarm or apprehension of death: Last Days of Gibbon, in Milman’s edition of Gibbon, Vol. I., Introduction.) (See entry for John XII, a pope whom Gibbon described as an adulterer.) {BDF; CE; FO; FUK; ILP; JMR; JMRH; Robert D. Kaplan, The Atlantic Monthly, March 1997; PUT; RAT; RE; TRI; TYD}

Gibbon, J. M. (1875—1952) Gibbon’s Atheism and Faith (1904) was a provocative book in its time. The author was a dedicated atheist.

Gibbs, Kenneth (20th Century) Gibbs is active with the Humanist Society of Greater Fort Walton beach in Niceville, Florida. (See entry for Florida Atheists, Humanists.) {FD}

Gibran, Khalil [Jubran Khalil Jubran] (1883-1931) Gibran, a Lebanese poet, novelist, and painter, wrote The Prophet 1923) and Jesus, the Son of Man (1928). His work expresses his deeply religious and mystical nature. Some feel that the platonic love shown in his correspondence with fellow Lebanese author May Ziadeh is evidence of his using her as his “beard” and her using him as her “skirt,” a reference to their homosexuality.

Gibson, Ellen Elvira (1821—1901) Gibson, an American, was a public school teacher whose study of the Bible brought her to the freethought platform. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, she organized Ladies’ Soldiers’ Aid societies and was elected chaplain to the 1st Wisconsin Volunteer Artillery. President Lincoln endorsed the appointment, which was questioned. In fact, the Secretary of War refused to muster her in because she was a woman. By an act of Congress in 1869, she received pay for her services as chaplain. While in her line of duty, she contracted malaria and was almost totally disabled from its effects. Gibson wrote anonymously Godly Women of the Bible (c. 1875) and has contributed to the Truthseeker, Boston Investigator, and Ironclad Age, under her own signature and that of “Lilian.” Of the Bible, she wrote

Away with its false teachings, fables, pagan mythology, and abuse of woman, and assist her to free herself from these shackles and to overcome these vile aspersions descending down from the dark ages and settling like a pall over her existence and the existence of the race. {BDF; PUT; WWS}

Gibson, Roland (1902— ) When Gibson signed Humanist Manifesto II, he was President of the Art Foundation of Potsdam, New York. He wrote Japanese Abstract Art (1964). {HM2}

Gilson, Étienne (1884-1978) A French historian of medieval philosophy, Gilson along with Jacques Maritain is a Thomist.

Gicca, Francisco (20th Century) In Argentina, Gicca edited Progresso from 1908 to 1912.

Giddings, Franklin Henry (1855—1931) Giddings was a leading American sociologist, a professor at Columbia University, a president of the American Sociological Society, and author of many works including The Scientific Study of Human Society (1924). His explanation of social phenomena was based on the principle of “consciousness of kind”—his theory that each person has an innate sense of belonging to particular social groups. Giddings’s freethought is best seen in his Pagan Poems (1914). {CE; JM; RAT; RE}

[[Gide, André (1869—1951) 

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, Gide, a French Protestant, raised many eyebrows with his works. The Immoralist (1902), which revels in hedonism and describes bisexuality, portrays a young person contravening ordinary moral standards. His If It Die (1924) was an autobiographical account of some of his own homosexual experiences, for the Protestant in him could not resist confessing. When he visited Algeria and stayed there for three years, Gide found no Protestant obfuscations about same-sex love, falling for “a voluptuous native boy, Athman,” according to A. L. Rowse in Homosexuals in History. Then at the age of forty-three and although married, he had a sexual relationship with sixteen-year-old Marc Allégret, who later became a well-known film producer. Critics have noted that by expressing adolescents’ unrest, his works had a large and favorable following among adolescents. Gide’s work showed humans seeking out their own natures, even though they might conflict with the majority’s view of ethics. He used myth in the satirical story, Prometheus Misbound (1899), and he helped bring about a reform of French colonial practices in Africa in his Travels in the Congo (1927). In 1950, the last volume of his Journal, which he commenced in 1889, was published. Among other things, it described his long-standing (although non-sexual) friendship with Oscar Wilde. The work contained more than a million words, described his search for God and his moral crises. Ann Sheridan’s André, A Life in the Present (1999) explains how Gide’s travels to North Africa distanced him from the stiff upbringing he had had. In the Kasbah, he met men who did not shield themselves from sensuality. Although Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas paid young Arab boys in order merely to watch them, Gide is said to have found the sexual union something close to being sacred, not in the religious sense but in the sense that without hope of Heaven one can be transported by the sexual act into a world of joy and reverence. Although he refused a nomination to the French Academy, he accepted in 1947 an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. The Vatican prohibited all his works in 1952, after his death and after his having won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (See Anthony Lane’s “The Man in the Mirror,” which describes Gide’s “unmatched hedonism,” The New Yorker, 9 August 1999.) {CE; GL; ILP, additus, 15 December 1961; TRI}

GIDEON Gideon, or Jerubaal, was a 12th-century Israelite warrior of the tribe of Mannasseh. A judge of Israel, he opposed the Baal cult and defeated the Midianites, which led to a generation of peace for Israel. Many American hotels have copies of a Gideon Bible which have been contributed by an international laymen’s association, The Gideons. That group was organized in 1899 by John H. Nicholson, Samuel E. Hill, and William J. Knights of the Janesville, Wisconsin, YMCA, with the evangelical intent of putting Bibles not only in hotel rooms but also in hospitals and penitentiaries. Wisconsin freethinkers, however, supply an adhesive label to be placed inside the Gideon bibles. It cites Judges, chapters 6-9, to indicate that Gideon was not a person of exemplary character, adding the following:

• Gideon slaughtered thousands in battle by plotting with the “Lord” to use treachery. • Gideon murdered thousands more for worshipping “false gods.” • Gideon plundered the bodies of his victims (to fashion a jeweled priestly vestment). • Gideon fathered an offspring who killed sixty-nine of his stepbrothers.

“Millions of people have been hoodwinked by what their clergy and leaders have told them of the Bible,” the label distributed by Freethought Today explains. “Make up your own mind about the Bible—read it for yourself.” (See entry for Emily Hahn, whose father said of the Gideon Bible, “Read it and laugh.”)

Gielgud, John [Sir] (1904— ) A consummate actor who has excelled in plays by Pinter, Wilde, and Shakespeare (notably Hamlet), Gielgud starred in the telecast, “Brideshead Revisited,” and appeared in movies like “Arthur,” which earned him an Oscar. United States officials once denied him an entrance visa, citing his 1953 arrest on gay sex charges in London, at which time he was fined a small sum for “importuning.” Gielgud lives in Buckinghamshire with his companion Martin Hensler in a 17th-century house which once belonged to Sir Arthur Bryant, the historian. Asked by interviewer David Frost in 1992 if he had ever wanted to be a father, the eighty-eight-year-old replied, “I never wanted to have children. I’d be terrified they’d inherit all my worst qualities.” Asked what he was like as a child, the son of a stockbroker replied, “Very conceited, very effeminate, much too fond of my voice.” And asked if he believed in God or a hereafter, Sir John graciously replied, “No, I’m afraid not.” {CA; CE; E}

Gielgud, John [Sir] (14 Apr 1904 - 21 May 2000) A consummate actor who excelled in plays as diverse as those by Chekhov, Pinter, Shakespeare, Shaw, and Wilde, Gielgud thrilled audiences for more than seventy years—he purposely avoided performing in plays by Samuel Beckett. An actor, director, producer, and author, he said, “Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself.” And “Acting has rid me of my frustrations and satisfied many of my ambitions. It is more than an occupation or a profession; for me it has been a life.” Gielgud, whose father was of Lithuanian-Polish descent and whose mother was a Terry, one of England’s great theatrical families, had a walk-on part when he was seventeen in a production of Henry V at the Old Vic in London, but delivery of his sole line—“Here is the number of the slaughter’d French”—made such a bad impression that he was given no lines in later walk-ons. At the age of nineteen, he played the part of Romeo, and the following year he understudied Sir Noël Coward, later taking over the part when the author left the cast. In his autobiography, Early Stages, Gielgud observed that for several years he was on “the fringe of real success” while in danger of being typecast as a neurotic, rather hysterical young man. When he joined the Old Vic, it was in Richard II that he “began to feel at last that I was finding my feet in Shakespeare.” At the age of twenty-five, he played Hamlet, leading English critic James Agate to say that his performance was “the high water mark of English Shakespearean acting in our time.” In 1938 he played Hamlet on Broadway, with Jessica Tandy as his Ophelia. In hi first film, the silent Who is the Man?” (1925), he played a drug addict, a role originally performed onstage by Sarah Bernhardt and one he later said was “the most ridiculous part I played on screen.” He played Disraeli in The Prime Minister (1940) and was in Arthur (1970, receiving an Oscar), and Prospero’s Books (1991). In 1953 he was knighted, and in 1985 he received a special Laurence Olivier Award for his services to the theatre. He wrote An Actor in His Time (1979), Backward Glances (1989), and Notes from the Gods (1994). In addition, he performed in modern plays, some by Edward Albee and David Storey, and he was featured in such films as Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Shining Through, and Power of One. In 1994 the London Globe Theatre was renamed after him. Early on, to develop his voice, Gielgud (who did not listen to those who said he should change his often misspelled and unpronounceable name) spoke before a mirror. Alec Guiness described the voice he developed as “a silver trumpet muffled in silk.” John Steinbeck called it “great music” by “a great musician.” Not all critiques were positive. His first drama teacher, Constance Benson, burst out laughing in the middle of a rehearsal, saying Gielgud walked “like a cat with rickets.” Ivor Brown said, “He has the most meaningless legs imaginable.” After seeing Gielgud in a one-man show, Ages of Man, Kenneth Tynan offered the backhanded compliment that he was “the finest actor on earth from the neck up,” leaving other anatomical claims to Lord Olivier. Some disliked the vulgar dialogue he spoke in Arthur. Sir John was known for his faux pas. While directing Richard Burton in Hamlet, he went backstage after the performance and said, “We’ll go to dinner when you’re better” (instead of ready). Once, while lunching with playwright Edward Knoblock, he pointed to a person coming in, saying, “He’s the biggest bore in London—second only to Edward Knoblock.” Then, realizing who was seated next to him, he added, “Not you, of course. I mean the other Edward Knoblock.” Gielgud’s first joint household was with John Perry in Oxfordshire, but Perry was stolen from him by Binkie Beaumont, who had helped make Gielgud a West End matinee idol. The public knew little about Gielgud’s homosexuality until in 1953 a person elicited a pass in a public lavatory, leading to sex charges and a small fine for “importuning.” The tabloids turned the event into a scandal, and although those in the theatre rallied to his defense (Dame Sybil Torndike embraced him, saying, “Oh John, you have been a silly bugger!”) United States officials later denied Gielgud an entrance visa, citing the scandal. With his second companion, Martin Hensler, he lived in Buckinghamshire in a 17th-century house that once belonged to Sir Arthur Bryant, the historian. Asked by interviewer David Frost in 1992 if he had ever wanted to be a father, the eighty-eight-year-old replied, “I never wanted to have children. I’d be terrified they’d inherit all my worst qualities.” Asked what he was like as a child, the son of a stockbroker replied, “Very conceited, very effeminate, much too fond of my voice.” And asked if he believed in God or a hereafter, Sir John graciously replied, “No, I’m afraid not.” When he witnessed the circus-like memorial held for Laurence Olivier, Gielgud stipulated that there be no memorial service whatsoever for him. Drama critic John Simon, known more for his acerbic comments than his praise, remarked in a favorable review of Jonathan Croall’s Gielgud, A Theatrical Life, that “At the height of his success, he was still seeking to learn, worked tirelessly and self-critically, and was much less hard on others than on himself.” {CA; CE; E; Mel Gussow, The New York Times, 23 May 2000; John Simon, The New York Times book Review, 12 Aug 2001}

Gienke, Martin A. (20th Century) While an undergraduate in San Diego, California, Gienke became a Unitarian. After serving in the United States Air Force in England for three years, he married a Cambridge girl and became active in the Cambridge Unitarian congregation, where he has served as a Council member. Also, in the 1980s he was chairman of the Publicity Committee for the General Assembly. E-mail: <mag2@cam.ac.uk>.

Gier, Audra and Delta Gier (20th Century) The Giers are active with the Kansas City Mid-Continent Humanists (AHA). (See entry for Missouri Humanists.) {FD}

Giessenburg, Rudolf Charles d’Ablaing van (Born 1826) One of the most notable of Dutch freethinkers, Giessenburg was an unbeliever in youth. With Junghuhn and Günst, he started De Dageraad and from 1856 to 1868 was one of the contributors, usually under his name, “Rudolf Charles.” A man of great erudition, Giessenburg wrote Het verbond der vrije gedachte (The Alliance of Freethought); de Tydgenoot op het gebied der Rede (The Contemporary in the Reign of Reason); De Regtbank des Onderzoeks (The Tribunal of Inquiry); Curiosities van allerlei aard (Curiosities of Various Kinds). {BDF; RSR}

Gieve, Edouard C. (20th Century) Gieve, a freethinker, wrote What Christianity Has Done For This World (19—?). {GS}

Gifford, Adam [Lord] (1820—1887) Gifford, founder of the Gifford Lectures, was a Scottish judge made a lord for his distinction in law. He left $400,000 to the Scottish universities to promote lectures “for the study of natural theology.” The plan fell through, as all such foundations by freethinkers do, states McCabe, because the clergy influenced changes which Gifford had not envisioned. Not only was Gifford no Christian but also he was no theist—he enthusiastically followed Emerson in ethics and Spinoza in philosophy. “We are,” he wrote, “parts of the Infinite—literally, strictly, scientifically.” The Gifford Lectures, in short, were arranged by a pantheist. {JM; RAT; RE}

Gifford, William (20th Century) A freethinker, Gifford wrote The Seekers: Why Christian Orthodoxy is Obsolete (1954). {GS}

Gift, Mary (20th Century) Gift, a freethinker, edited Truth is a Shattered Mirror (1946). {GS}

Gil, Gilberto (1942— ) A noted Brazilian-born musician and songwriter, Gil served for a time on the city council of Salvador, his hometown in the Afro-Brazilian state of Bahia. He spoke out against racism and social injustice while championing the environment. When he resigned that office, he blamed his “lack of talent in politics. I’m a humanist, and politics is not humanist.” “During the dictatorship,” Gil has observed, “there was a lack of other means for political expression, so music became one of the most important ones. That’s not the situation now [in 1994], but music is still an important tool because it deals with ideas and feelings and visions—everything that matters for life.” {New York Daily News, 29 June 1994} Gil, Gilberto (29 Jun 1942 - ) Gilberto Gil was born in the city of Salvador, in the northern state of Bahia Brazil. Just after his birth, his family moved to the interior of the state, where he spent his childhood. He grew up listening to the duels of violeiros (a kind of improvised musical battle of blind singers and guitar players) at the local markets, street bands, and on the radio. When he was eight, he went back to Salvador, where he was influenced by Trio Eletrico (a group formed by heavy percussion and typical electric guitars) in carnival time and started to play the accordion. By the end of the 1950's, Gil was playing in the forros (a kind of popular dance party) with a group called Os Desafinados (The out of tunes). At about this time, Gil heard singer and guitarist Joao Gilberto on the radio for the first time. Gil was so impressed that he bought himself a guitar and learned how to sing and play the Bossa Nova. This influence is clear in his first song, “Felicidade Vem Depois.” While he was composing and recording jingles for advertisements and starting out a career in music, he studied business administration and in 1964 was on Nos Por Exemplo, a show of bossa nova and traditional Brazilian songs. In 1965 he moved to Sao Paulo. After playing and singing in various shows, he got his first hit when Elis Regina recorded his song, “Louvacao.” He then recorded his first album, also called Louvacao. With the influences of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, his musical conception became more urban. In the following years he was one of the leaders of "Tropicália," a cultural movement that influenced all aspects of artistic manifestation in Brazil (cinema, drama, music, poetry, literature). In 1969, Gil was forced to leave Brazil by the military regime and went to live in London. However, before leaving the country, he sang a farewell song “Aquele Abraco,” in a concert in Salvador. “During the dictatorship,” Gil observed, “there was a lack of other means for political expression, so music became one of the most important ones. That’s not the situation now [in 1994], but music is still an important tool because it deals with ideas and feelings and visions—everything that matters for life.” In London Gil mastered his technique on electric and acoustic guitars, exposed his music to audiences outside Brazil, and recorded his first album in English. He since has returned to Brazil, recorded in the United States, performed at the jazz festival in Switzerland, played at the MIDEM Festival, and performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Gil has toured with great success throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, South and North America. His many albums Um Banda Um (1982), Extra (1981) and Raca Humana (1984).

	Gil has received the “Knights of Arts and Letters” by Jack Lang, the French Minister of Culture, and the Cruz da Ordem de Rio Branco, by Itamarity in Brazil, for overall career excellence. 

For a time Gil served on the city council of Salvador, his hometown, where he spoke out against racism and social injustice while championing the environment. When he resigned that office, he blamed his “lack of talent in politics. I’m a humanist, and politics is not humanist.” {E; New York Daily News, 29 June 1994}

Gilbert, Amos (19th Century) 

Gilbert wrote Memoir of Francis Wright (1855). {FUS}

Gilbert, Claude (1652—1720) Gilbert was a French advocate who, in 1700, had a book printed which contained neither the name of the author or the printer. Entitled Histoire de Calejava, ou de l’isle des hommes raisonables, avec le paralelle de leur Morale et du Christianisme, the volume was suppressed because of its attack on Judaism and Christianity. Only one copy escaped destruction, and that was purchased in 1784 by the Duc de La Vallière for 120 livres. The 329-page book was in the form a dialogue. {BDF}

Gilbert, John Mark (1964— ) “I think that humankind would be better off without the concept of God,” Gilbert holds. A Minnesota software engineer, he is an amateur astronomer, a philosophical materialist, a humanist, a liberal libertarian, an internationalist, and an atheist. Gilbert has supplied much internet research concerning noted “dead non-theists.” E-mail: <mark.gilbert@pobox.com>.

Gilbert, Richard S. (1936— ) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Gilbert was minister of the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York. He is a contributing editor of Religious Humanism. {HM2}

Gilbert de la Porée (1075—1154) Gilbert was a philosopher, one of the brilliant scholars who during the eleventh century dared to try throwing off the shackles of dogma. He was closely associated with Abélard and shared his conviction that reason has its rights against faith. Although Abélard’s bitter enemy, Bernard of Clairvaux, attacked him, Gilbert escaped condemnation for his heresies. {RE}

Gildon, Charles (1665—1724) An associate of the most prominent freethinkers of the 1690s, and himself a radical freethinker, Gildon wrote The Deist’s Manual (1705). A Roman Catholic, he befriended Charles Blount and upon reading Charles Leslie’s Short and easie method with the deists (1698) became a militant Christian. He was not overly certain of any divine creation, writing, “. . . since our Correspondence with China, we have found they have Records & Histories of four or six thousand years date before our Creation of the World; and who knows but some other Nations may be (!) found out hereafter, that may go further.” Berman finds that although Gildon appears to suppress atheism, his “bare theistic avowals were belied by weighty argumentation that pointed to atheism.” {HAB}

Giles, John Allen (1808—1884) Giles was headmaster of the City of London School, which post he left for the Church. The author of over one hundred fifty volumes of education works, Rev. Giles privately was a confirmed freethinker, intimate with Birch, Scott, and others. His heresy shows both in Hebrew Records (1850) and Christian Records (1854). {BDF}

Giles, Philip Randall (1917— ) Giles, who had been minister of various New England Universalist churches, helped in the merger of the Universalists and the Unitarians, which had its origins in the 19th century but which Giles and others made possible. An administrator, he became vice-president for field relations of the Unitarian Universalist Association from 1961 to 1963. Giles was the last Universalist general superintendent, and his last parish was the Universalist in Provincetown, Massachusetts. {U&U}

GILGAMESH

Gilgamesh is the hero of a work of some 3,000 lines, written on 12 tablets c. 2000 B.C.E. It was discovered among the ruins at Nineveh. The story tells about Gilgamesh, whose ancestor Ut-napishtim had been the only survivor, along with his wife, of a great flood and had told him about a plant that gave eternal life. But when the plant was left unguarded, a serpent carried it off to Gilgamesh’s embarrassment. When Enkidu, his companion (described in The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature [1998]), dies, Gilgamesh tries to find from his friend’s ghost what the afterlife is like and learns that it is not very pleasant. Freethinkers note that the tablets pre-date the Jewish Old Testament, with its references to a flood, an afterlife, and a serpent as well as the love of David for Jonathan described in the first and second books of Samuel (c. 1012-872 B.C.E.). {CE}

Gill, Charles (Born 1824) Dublin-born Gill published anonymously a work, The Evolution of Christianity (1883), which was quoted by Mr. Foote in his defenses before Judge North and Lord Coleridge. Gill also wrote a pamphlet on the blasphemy laws and edited, with an introduction, Archbishop Laurence’s Book of Enoch (1883). {BDF}

Gilligan, Frank (20th Century) A freethinker, Gilligan wrote Free Thought and Humor (1900s). {GS}

Gilliland, M.S. (Born 1853) Miss Gilliland wrote The Future of Morality (1888) from the agnostic standpoint. {BDF}

Gilling, Bridget Sabina (1922— ) Gilling is an Australian humanist who migrated from England. During World War II, she served in the Voluntary Aid Department and married an Australian serviceman. Gilling is an executive member of the Council for Civil Liberties, the Australian Consumer Association, the Penal Reform Council, and the Humanist Society of New South Wales. {SWW}

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson (1860—1935) A Unitarian, Gilman wrote one of the first books on feminist theology, His Religion and Hers: A Study of the Faith of Our Fathers and the Work of Our Mothers (1923). She was admired by H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Theodore Dreiser, Zona Gale, and, in 1924, was called by Rebecca West “the greatest woman in the world today.” Although she appeared to be a loose Deist, Gaylor has written, making reference to a “God” as a “naturally possessed power,” Gilman rejected the unprovable afterlife, faith, obedience, sin, belief, “past-worship,” rites, ceremonies, and holy books.” A firm believer in euthanasia, she took her own life, using chloroform, when pain from inoperable breast cancer became unbearable.

Gilmartin, Aaron S. (20th Century) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Gilmartin was minister of the Mount Diablo Unitarian Church in Walnut Creek, California. He had also been minister in Seattle of the University Unitarian Church. {HM2}

Ginger, Ray (20th Century) Ginger, a freethinker, wrote Six Days or Forever? (1958), the story of the Tennessee trial of John Thomas Scopes. He also wrote The Bending Cross (1992). {GS}

Gingold, Hermione (1898—1987) Gingold was unique in showbusiness. “I believe in trying everything once—except country dancing and incest,” the eccentric comedian once stated. “My father, James Gingold, was a stockbroker, and my mother also had a lot of time on her hands.” When Gingold’s marriage to Michael Joseph broke up, she said, “He asked me whether I wanted the children and I said no, he was welcome to them, but I’d like my cat.” Other such comments are found in her How To Grow Old Disgracefully (1989). Gingold was the British answer to Mae West, both mistresses of the double entendre. She hated dirty jokes and smutty material and, as late as 1969, refused to say the word lavatory on stage. Performing in South Africa in 1970 in “Fallen Angels,” she found “Johannesburg and all it stood for” deeply repugnant. Of a play she wrote, she explained, “My play was taken from the original Russian—and I had trouble getting it away from him.” Rarely without a lover, when eighty-one she was in love with a man of twenty-six and their relationship lasted longer than either of her marriages. “After I turned eighty-five,” she remarked regretfully, “I found sex wasn’t as important to me as it had been when I was eighty.” Although her father became a Buddhist, her parents never tried to influence her or her sister to choose a particular religion. “The more I see of life, the less I feel I know about it, so I’m still trying to make up my mind which religion I should choose. You could say I’m open to offers.” In her late eighties she thought of planning her funeral and recording her own eulogy as a way of avoiding sanctimonious remarks by a clergyman: “This is the last time I’ll be talking to you; I do hope you all have a jolly funeral and champagne will shortly be served.” Gingold died of pneumonia complicated by heart disease. {Sarah Lawson, “Wit and Irreligion,” New Humanist, November 1989}

Gingold, Hermione (9 Dec 1897 - 24 May 1987) Gingold was unique in showbusiness. “I believe in trying everything once—except country dancing and incest,” the eccentric comedian once stated. “My father, James Gingold, was a stockbroker, and my mother also had a lot of time on her hands.” When Gingold’s marriage to Michael Joseph broke up, she said, “He asked me whether I wanted the children and I said no, he was welcome to them, but I’d like my cat.” Other such comments are found in her How To Grow Old Disgracefully (1989). Gingold was the British answer to Mae West, both mistresses of the double entendre. She hated dirty jokes and smutty material and, as late as 1969, refused to say the word lavatory on stage. Performing in South Africa in 1970 in Fallen Angels, she found “Johannesburg and all it stood for” deeply repugnant. Of a play she wrote, she explained, “My play was taken from the original Russian—and I had trouble getting it away from him.” Rarely without a lover, when eighty-one she was in love with a man of twenty-six and their relationship lasted longer than either of her marriages. “After I turned eighty-five,” she remarked regretfully, “I found sex wasn’t as important to me as it had been when I was eighty.” Although her father became a Buddhist, her parents never tried to influence her or her sister to choose a particular religion. “The more I see of life, the less I feel I know about it, so I’m still trying to make up my mind which religion I should choose. You could say I’m open to offers.” In her late eighties she thought of planning her funeral and recording her own eulogy as a way of avoiding sanctimonious remarks by a clergyman: “This is the last time I’ll be talking to you; I do hope you all have a jolly funeral and champagne will shortly be served.” Gingold died of pneumonia complicated by heart disease. {Sarah Lawson, “Wit and Irreligion,” New Humanist, November 1989}

Gingrich, Candace (20th Century) Gingrich, a lesbian and gay rights activist, is a non-theist. She has stated,

I would have to be considered an agnostic at best. In my own life, I haven’t found a need for organized religion. With all the hostile messages coming at me, including from the emissaries of various faiths, it’s more urgent to believe in myself. Ultimately, we all have a responsibility to remind ourselves of our ability to be compassionate, respectful, and generous.

Her half-brother, Republican leader Newt Gingrich, has ingenuously expressed displeasure with the “life style” she has “chosen.” Candace Gingrich, Gay Rights Activist society

Gingrich is the half-sister of House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

On page 178 of her autobiography, The Accidental Activist, she wrote:"I would have to be considered an agnostic -- at best. In my own life, I haven't found a need for organized religion. With all the hostile messages coming at me, including from the emissaries of various faiths, it's more urgent to believe in myself. Ultimately, we all have a responsibility to remind ourselves of our ability to be compassionate, respectful, and generous. I would rather rely on the nonviolent philosophies of the more open-minded Eastern religions for my moral guidance than the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament."

According to Candace's sister Sarah, "Newt became a Baptist when he married, Rob and I are Presbyterian, and Candace is a vegetarian."

(Secular Nation, January 1999)

Ginguene, Pierre Louis (1748—1816) Ginguene was a French historian who, with Parny, was educated by Jesuits. He embraced the Revolution, wrote on Rousseau and Rabelais, and collaborated with Chamfort in the Historic Picture of the French Revolution. Thrown into prison during the Terror, he escaped on the fall of Robespierre and became Director of Public Instruction. Ginguene’s principal work was a Literary History of Italy. {BDF; RAT}

Ginsberg, Allen (1926—1997) Known as the “poet of the Beat Generation,” Ginsberg—whether sober or, as referred to by The Economist, as sometimes “chemically enhanced”—memorably attacked American values in Howl (1956). The work, dedicated to Solomon, has had over 50 printings and led to his being tried on obscenity charges. It contained, for example, images of people who “walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium.” He also wrote Kaddish and Other Poems (1961) and Mind Breaths (1978). Ginsberg grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, and became the protégé of William Carlos Williams, who lived nearby and was a major influence. Known for his outrageousness, he played finger cymbals at the Albert Hall in London. He called Ché Guevara “cute” and was expelled from Cuba. He sang duets with Bob Dylan. He chanted “Hare Krishna” on conservative William F. Buckley’s television program. Once at a poetry lecture attended by John Lennon and his wife Yoko, Ginsberg said, “Poetry is best read naked,” then removed his clothes and hung a hotel notice, “Do Not Disturb,” on his penis. The Lennons left in disgust. Well-known as a homosexual, he was described by Saul Bellow, “Under all this self-revealing candor is purity of heart. And the only authentic living representative of American Transcendentalism is that fat-breasted, bald, bearded homosexual in smeared goggles, innocent in his uncleanness.” Ginsberg once pointed out that he slept with Neal Cassady, who slept with Gavin Arthur (the grandson of President Chester Arthur), who slept with Edward Carpenter, who slept with Walt Whitman, a “cosmic daisy chain” with poetic overtones and a circle ending. Ginsberg once tweaked Fidel Castro’s beard for Cuba’s harshness to homosexuals. Another of Ginsberg’s lovers was Jack Kerouac. In 1994 his Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Songs and Poems (1948—1993), a set of four compact disks, was issued. Ginsberg reads from his various works, including “Kaddish (for Naomi Ginsberg 1894—1956),” which is about the insanity and death of his mother, who had been a left-wing Russian emigrant. His voice connotes a deep sorrow as he hymns his mother’s death for more than an hour, including an ambiguous observation, “I know where you’ve gone—it’s good.” In his “Capital Air,” he writes a protest against respectability, puritanism, politeness:

I don’t like Communist censorship of my books I don’t like Marxists complaining about my looks I don’t like Castro insulting members of my sex Leftists insisting we got the mystic fix

I don’t like Capitalists selling me gasoline Coke Multinationals burning Amazon trees to smoke Big corporation takeover media mind I don’t like the top bananas that’re robbing Guatemala banks blind.

Asked to comment specifically about humanism, Ginsberg wrote the present author,

“Buddhist Humanism” might describe the union of Prajna (Wisdom of Emptiness) to Upaya (Skillful Means), characteristic of Dharma.

His reference was to Dharma, which, in addition to referring to Buddhist teaching as being the highest truth, denotes a quality or a condition of being or any existing thing or phenomenon. In the previous two centuries, Kant, Coleridge, and Emerson, also intrigued by Asian concepts in religion and philosophy, included them in their transcendentalistic outlook. But in the present century, Ginsberg was one of the few Americans who drew upon such concepts. Ginsberg died of liver cancer, and two Buddhist services were held in New York City’s Chelsea district at the Shambhala Meditation Center, one in English, one in Tibetan. A practicing Buddhist, he studied at the Center. Sitting in a lotus position, many mourners sat on pillows. Philip Glass, Amiri Baraka, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. were among those at one of the four-hour services. “There is no birth and no cessation,” mourners chanted as gongs were struck, bells chimed, and incense burned. After his stepmother, Edith Ginsberg, said, “We’ll all miss him desperately. So be it. Peace,” “Kaddish,” about his mother’s death, was read. Ginsberg’s cremains were divided into three parts to be kept at a Buddhist center in Colorado; at the Jewel Heart Buddhist Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and in the family plot at the B’nai Israel Cemetery in Newark. As for the Buddhist view on reincarnation, Ginsberg never quite accepted it, according to his personal assistant, Bob Rosenthal. But Rosenthal added that should Ginsberg not return as one of the enlightened, he would at least “find a copulating couple and climb aboard.” Aghast at that comment, Orlovsky hoped that in such a case Ginsberg would not attach himself to a pair of copulating crack addicts on Avenue D. (See the entry for John Cage.) {CE; GL; The New York Times, 13 April 1992; WAS, 3 June 1992}

Ginzburg, Vitalii L. (20th Century)

Ginzburg, chairperson of the Department of Physics and Astrophysics at Moscow University, signed Humanist Manifesto 2000. He is an advisor to the Russian Academy of Sciences. An atheist, Ginzburg believes “in the rational approach to interpreting facts and phenomena (even those that cannot be explained at first), to living life, to critically examining scientific data, and the materialistic viewpoint.” He adds

Modern humanism, in my view, is not possible without an active anticlerical position, materialism, and a scientific approach. I also have a commitment to moral and ethical principles, which have been developed by humanity during its long history. The church pretends to be the monopolistic interpreter of those principles, but that is not justified. The religious use them to confirm their dogmas and myths. . . . Religion and true science are not compatible. Religion, in essence, is not different from astrology or any other false science. The church is not a savior to society. It leads the “lost souls,” using its own expression, away from reality. The church does not heal people but paralyzes their will; it does not inspire, but produces people with an impoverished spirit. For a normal, healthy person in a normal society, religion is like chains. {“The Failure of Faith in Russia,” Free Inquiry, Winter 1998-1999}

Gioja, Melchiorre (1767—1829) Gioja was an Italian political economist who advocated republicanism and was appointed head of a bureau of statistics. For his La Scienza del Povero Diavolo he was expelled from Italy in 1809. Gioja also wrote Merit and Rewards and The Philosophy of Statistics. {BDF; RAT}

Giono, Jean (1895—1970) Giono, during the period between the two wars, wrote in praise of nature. He is said to have exemplified a new secular humanism that illustrated the simplicity of the pagan ideal. {CE; EU, Vivien Thweatt}

Giordano, Catherine April (20th Century) Giordano, a secular humanist activist in New York City, upon moving to Florida was instrumental in the founding of the Free Inquiry Society of Central Florida (PO Box 196481, Longwood, Florida 32791). She edits the group’s newsletter, Veritas. E-mail: <fisocf@aol.com>.

Giotto (1267—1336) Giotto, the Italian painter whose real name was Ambrogio Bordone, was one of the great pioneers of Italian painting in the Renaissance period. His work appears to depict the lives of St. Francis of Assisi and his early followers with sympathetic tenderness. But Vasari revealed that while Giotto painted these he relieved his feelings in a poem in which he drastically condemned the friars and their ideals. Vasari’s passage is omitted from the English translation and all English biographies of Giotto, but there is a summary of the poem in Sir A. Crowe and G. Cavalcaselle’s New History of Painting (1912). {RE}

Girard, Kansas Girard, Kansas, was the town in which the Haldeman-Julius “Little Blue Books” were published. (See entry for Emanuel Haldeman-Julius.)

Girard, Ralph W. (20th Century) Girard has been a member of the American Humanist Association. {HNS}

Girard, Stephen (1750—1831) Girard, a French-born philanthropist, settled in Philadelphia as a shipowner and helped finance the U.S. in the War of 1812—in fact, he lent the government five million dollars. He called his vessels after the names of the philosophers Helvetius, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau. A freethinker, he bequeathed $6,000,000 to found Girard College for fatherless boys. By a provision of his will, no ecclesiastic or minister of any sect whatever was to hold any connection with the college, or even be admitted to the premises as a visitor; however, the institution officers were required to instruct the pupils in secular morality and allow them to adopt their own religious opinions. His will, according to Wheeler, “has been most shamefully perverted.” In a lawsuit which went all the way to the Supreme Court (Vidal v. Girard’s Executors), the Court ruled the will did not actually aid infidelity or attack Christianity. Had it done either, the Court stated the will would have been invalid. Commenting, McCabe has stated that a favorite argument of the clergy is that freethinkers never found charitable institutions, so the clergy finds ways to change the original intent of the philanthropist. McCabe estimates that the estate of Girard—whom he cites as being a deist—was worth an estimated $40,000,000 in the mid-1940s. {BDF; CE; FUS; JM; PUT; RAT; RE}

Giraudoux, Jean (1882—1944) Giraudoux is the French novelist whose drama, The Madwoman of Chaillot (1945), is a satirical work about materialism. He also completed several imaginative reinterpretations of Greek myths. In Judith (1931), he wrote, “In times of death and famine, reason is on the side of the priests—who have their own kind of logic which cries for miracles and, on occasion, invents them.” {TYD}

Girsh, Faye (20th Century) Girsh, a Unitarian Universalist, became in 1997 the executive director of the Hemlock Society USA, a national right-to-die group. She is President of the San Diego Psych-Law Society and Psychologists in Addictive Behavior. A Harvard graduate, she spoke in 1999 at the American Atheists Inc. conference in St. Louis, Missouri.

Girshman, Karl and Girshman, Rita (20th Century) The Girshmans spoke at the 1994 convention of the Freedom from Religion Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. They recounted how a Christian ministry operates in over seventy national parks, monuments, and forests, utilizing the services of over 350 student ministers, to which the Girshmans objected not only to the National Park Concessions at Big Bend but also to the National Park Service. Their complaint was that one morning while camping and lying in the nude after just having showered, a student minister used a pass key to enter and leave a printed invitation to come worship “our Lord and Savior” on Sundays and “Come as you are!” Suing, they won in a U.S. District Court, which agreed in 1995 that a Christian Ministry group is not allowed to use the symbol of the National Park Service on its stationery and that the Federal organization must post a disclaimer on park bulletin boards that it does not endorse any group or message and that “religious affiliation cannot be considered in hiring.”

Gisborne, Maria (1770—1836) Gisborne, a friend through Godwin of Shelley, was an atheist, according to Shelley’s poetical “Letters to Maria Gisborne.” {RAT; RE}

Gismo, Josiah (1818—1883) Gismo founded the Leicester Secular Society. He was a mechanical engineer who came under the influence of the idealistic rationalism which Owen inaugurated and Holyoake sustained. In 1881 a hall was erected for the society, and Gismo lectured and debated there, giving it financial assistance. {FUK; RAT; RSR; TRI; VI}

Gismo, Sidney Ansell (Born 1860) Gismo, the third son of Josiah Gismo, was also a mechanical engineer. He became president of the Secular Society and is an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association. {FUK; RAT; RSR; TRI; VI}

Gissing, George Robert (1857—1903) 

Gissing, a novelist, developed rationalist opinions during a course of study at Jena, and he was for some years tutor to the sons of Frederic Harrison. An agnostic and a skeptic as regards immortality, he wrote that he felt there was “some purpose” in life but he could not accept “any of the solutions ever proposed.” In New Grub Street (1891), Gissing depicts the dilemma of the poverty-stricken artist in an alien world. His friend, H. G. Wells, noted that Gissing was twice married, unhappily, to proletarian girls and that Gissing “felt that to make love to any woman he could regard as a social equal would be too elaborate . . . so he flung himself at a social inferior whom he expected to be eager and grateful.” {CE; RE; RAT}

Gittos, M. (20th Century) Gittos, a freethinker in Auckland, wrote Is Progress Possible? (1943). {GS}

Givishvili, Givi (20th Century) Givishvili, a professor at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere, and Radiowave Propagation, signed Humanist Manifesto 2000.

Gizycki, Georg von (1851—1895) A German ethicist, Gizycki taught at Berlin University and was one of the leaders of the Berlin Ethical Society. He wrote studies of Hume and Shaftesbury and was joint editor of The International Journal of Ethics. Gizycki rejected all theology. {RAT}

Gjellerup, Karl (1857—1919) A Danish poet and Nobel Prize winner, Gjellerup in his youth was devoted to the work of Herbert Spencer, then fell under the influence of Schopenhauer. McCabe states that his later work contained a rather grim idealism. Gjellerup’s work shows the influence of Buddhism and Indian thought. {RE}

Gladstone, Herbert (20th Century) Gladstone, who was born in New York City’s Harlem, served in the U. S. Army during World War II, after which he was elected to the third highest office in the New Jersey State Assembly. He was appointed to the state’s Civil Rights Commission, becoming its director. He is an active member now and member of the Executive Committee of the Humanists of the Palm Beaches in Florida, where he has retired.

Glanzman, Marge (20th Century) Glanzman is active with the Humanists of North Carolina. (See entry for North Carolina Humanists.) {FD}

Glasgow, Ellen (1873—1945) Glasgow, who won a Pulitzer in 1941 for In This Our Life, wrote many novels of note. In an essay quoted in New Humanist, she wrote,

As a very small child, I was a believing animal. I believed in fairies; I believed in witches; I believed in white and gray and black magic; I believed in Santa Claus and in Original Sin; I believed in souls—not only in the souls of men and women and children and animals, but in the souls, too, of trees and plants, and of winds and clouds. I believed that, by some miraculous performances, all this countless multitude of souls would be taken care of, through a Sabbath day without ending, in an infinite Heaven. But in one thing, I cannot recall that I ever believed; and that was in the kind of God who had once savored the smoke of burnt offerings, and to whose ghost, in churches everywhere, good people were still chanting hymns of immelodious praise. From the paternal stock, I had inherited the single-minded Scottish creed of generations. On the distaff side I derived my free and easy faith from the gentler piety of the Episcopal Church. . . . I was only ten, I remember, when I told myself with a kind of cheerful desperation, “If I am damned, I am damned, and there is nothing to be done about it.” What ever happened to the larger unredeemed part of creation, I would stand, with my mother, on the side of the heathen, and on the side, too, of our lesser brethren, the animals; for none of these disinherited tribes, I was assured, could expect so much as a crust or crumb of divine grace in the exclusive plan of salvation. Then gradually, as I grew up, these questions dissolved and evaporated, and at least ceased to disturb me. . . . I believe that there are many evils, but that the only sin is inhumanity; and I believe, too, that benign laughter is the best tonic for life. If life is sad, it is also a laughing matter, and it has its moments of rapture.

Ira Glass, Radio Host media

Glass is host of "This American Life" for PRI (Public Radio International). He discussed his atheism recently in the Chicago Tribune with staff writer Robert K. Elder (publish date: December 14, 2000):

I just find I don't believe in God. It just doesn't seem to be true, and no amount of thinking about it seems to make it true. It seems inherently untrue. And the thing that's hard about honing that position is, as a reporter, I've seen many times how a belief in God has transformed somebody's life. In all the ways I feel like you can witness God's work here on earth, I feel like I've seen that. I've met a lot of people -- it's been the thing that's changed them, that's sustained them in a way that I wish I could believe. But I simply find I don't and I don't feel like it's something I have a choice about. I could pretend I believe a God exists, but the world seems explainable to me without it.

I remember, even when I was growing up a little kid, it all seemed, especially the Christian version -- arbitrary. That the entire universe would be created, and the system that was set up was: you could actually lead a perfectly good life, and a life organized around good deeds and caring for others, and yet if you simply didn't accept Jesus himself, the Creator of the Universe would feel so vengeful about that you'd be condemned to an eternity of torture. It just seemed like a really weird system. Like what difference would it make to the Creator of Everything? The whole thing seemed really arbitrary. Even as a kid, I felt like, "Well, if that's the system: fine. I accept my damnation. I don't think it's a fair system. But fine." I just don't believe.

http://chicagotribune.com/leisure/tempo/printedition/article/0,2669,SAV-0012140051,FF.html

--JC Jean Luc Godard, Director ent Internet Movie Database

In his film La Chinoise, a voice over -- which can easily be attributed to Godard himself, engages in the following Q&A.

Woman: "god, why have you forsaken me?" Man: "because I don't exist."

--GM Al Goldstein, Publisher of Screw Magazine business

Al Goldstein refers to himself as an atheist in an interview in the Winter 1997 issue of Davka, an avant-garde Jewish cultural magazine.

--JCP

Godard, Jean-Luc (3 Dec 1930 - ) Godard, according to the internet’s Atheist Celebrities, is a non-believer. A motion picture director, he has directed such movies as Opération Béton (1954); Breathless (1959) which won the Jean Vigo Prize and is noted for its elliptical editing; Weekend (1968), with its analysis of social ideas; Every Man For Himself (1980); and written as well as directed Passion (1982) and King Lear (1988). Godard’s Hail Mary caused riots by believers and smiles to non-believers. His highly personal films are marked by a free-wheeling approach to content and style. In La Chinoise, a voiceover engages in the following:

Woman: God, why have you forsaken me. Man: Because I don’t exist. {CE; E}

Nadine Gordimer, Writer art

From a June 1999 profile in The Daily Star:

NADINE Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel prize for literature, was born and brought up in South Africa. She is widely known as an eminent writer of fiction whose novels and stories are mainly set in her native South Africa. Ever since she began her writing career in 1937, her steady flow of fiction has reflected the constantly changing social, moral, and political condition of life in South Africa.

There are apparently numerous references to her atheism. One of them is from a 1991 article in the Legal Studies Forum:

Gordimer's personal history is well documented. She was born, in 1923, in the small gold-mining town of Springs, about 30 miles east of Johannes- burg, the youngest of two daughters of Isidore Gordimer, a Jewish-Lithuanian emigrant. Gordimer, an atheist, states that her father was a "mystery" to her. In her Paris Review interview, she says that he "went through the whole Jewish pogrom syndrome," and wonders whether this "timid" man did not burn himself out while emigrating.

--EH

the celebrity atheist list with some agnostics and other non-theists an offbeat collection of notable individuals who have been public about their lack of belief in deities [MESSAGE BOARD] [faq] [contributors] [changelog] [return to main]

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Glasser, Annabelle (20th Century) When she signed Humanist Manifesto II, Glasser was a director of the American Ethical Union. She has been President of the American Ethical Union. {HM2}

Glazer, Gabriel (20th Century) An Israeli who has been active with Secular Humanist Judaism, Glazer participated in a panel on secularism in the Middle East at the 1996 Humanist World Congress held in Mexico City. Also, he was a participant in the IHEU’s 1999 conference in Mumbai. An Israeli barrister and solicitor, he is the IHEU’s chairperson of the Committee on Religious Extremism and Rational Inquiry. His e-mail: <glazer@netvision.net.il>.

Gledhill, Lee (20th Century) Gledhill is a British member of GALHA, the gay and lesbian humanist association. {Gay and Lesbian Humanist, Winter 1998}

Glennie, John Stuart Stuart (19th Century) An English barrister, Glennie wrote In the Morningland (1873), or the law of the origin and transformation of Christianity. Scott published one of its chapters in Christ and Osiris. With H. T. Buckle, Glennie also wrote Pilgrim Memories (1875). {BDF; RAT}

Glicksberg, Charles I. (Born 1901) When he reviewed books for The Humanist in the 1950s, Glicksberg was on the staff of Brooklyn College. {HNS}

Glimmer, James P. (1860—1941) In Scotland, J. P. Glimmer of Glasgow was a leading freethought figure. He joined the Eclectic Society in 1879 and became active in local affairs as well as with the National Secular Society. One of the main critics of G. W. Foote in the 1890s, Glimmer then associated himself with the Freethought Federation. {FUK; RSR; TRI}

Glisson, Francis (1597—1677) Glisson was an English anatomist and physician. For forty years he was appointed Regius Professor of Physics at Cambridge University. He discovered what is called Glisson’s capsule in the liver, and he was the first to attribute irritability to muscular fibre. Dr. Glisson was eulogized by Harvey, and Boerhaave called him “the most accurate of all anatomists that ever lived.” {BDF; RAT}

GLOSSOLALIA: See entry for Speaking in Tongues.

Glossop, Ronald J. (1933— ) Glossop, a Unitarian and a professor at Southern Illinois University, is author of World Federation? A Critical Analysis of Federal World Government (1993).

Glouberman, Mark (20th Century) Glouberman, in Israel, is a corresponding member of The Hume Society, a group engaged in scholarly activity concerning David Hume. GNOSTICISM • Gnostics, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusionmanagers. —Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary

Gnosticism was a dualistic religious and philosophical movement of the late Hellenistic and early Christian eras. An occult group, it posed a threat to Christianity in the 2nd century, for Gnosticism taught a popular view that the spirit was held captive by evil archons. However, through the use of secret formulas, that spirit could be freed at death and restored to the heavenly abode. Had Gnosticism triumphed, Christianity would have become just another Greco-Roman mystery cult, according to Conrad Moehlman of the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, New York. Gnosticism eventually merged with Manichaeism, and in Iran and Iraq the Mandaeans represent the only Gnostic sect extant. Harold Bloom, in Omens of Millennium (1996), holds that Gnosticism was not a creation of the real, hidden God. Rather, it was created by a rebellious Demiurge, a “bungler.” It follows, Gnostics hold, that mankind predates the Fall, a divine spark of the real God exists in everyone’s deepest self, and mankind has “the God within.” (See entry for Devil.) {CE}

Gobineau, Joseph Arthur [Count] (1816—1882) A French Orientalist, Gobineau was a leading authority on Persian history. He had the reputation of being the chief early proponent of the theory of Nordic supremacy, of being anti-democratic and anti-Semitic. McCabe states the allegation is an exaggeration but does not document his reasons. The count was a deist. His Catholic friends tried in vain to convert him in his last days and, failing to change his mind, administered the sacrament to him while he was unconscious. {CE; JM; RAT; RE}

Goblet, René (1828—1905) Goblet, a French statesman said to have had a major influence later on Adolf Hitler, worked with the anti-clerical Liberals of the Third Empire. In 1871, he was appointed General Procurator to the Court of Appeal at Amiens. Later, entering the Chambre, he became Minister of the Interior, Minister of Education, Premier, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. As Minister of Education, he excluded the clergy from the schools, and as leader of the Radical-Socialists he supported every measure against the Church. {RAT; RE}

Goblet D’Aviella, Eugene [Count] (1846—1925) Goblet d’Aviella was a Belgian anthropologist and a professor at Brussels University, where he taught the history of religions. He was so well known as a freethinker, however, that when he was invited to deliver the Hibbert Lectures at Oxford, the authorities of Balliol College refused the use of a room for the purpose (1891). {JM; RAT; RE}

GOD God is a class name, like “angel“ or “demon.” When capitalized to show what believers call “respect,” it is a title, like President, Christ, Mahatma, Buddha, Pfc. (private first class). Many mistake the word to be the sole name of the divinity of three monotheistic religions. They assume, as if they are on a first-name basis, that it is God, Bill, Jesus, Mohandras, Siddhartha, and Pfc. Luis Fantauzzi they are talking to or about. But God’s name is not God. The ancient Hebrews considered YHWH, one of the various names for the divinity, as taboo and not to be uttered. They substituted Adonai, “my Lord,” in order to avoid the ineffable, or that which should not be uttered. Elohim was the most common name for God in the Old Testament. As explained by Rolland Emerson Wolfe of Tufts College, “Elohim is a plural form which usually should be translated ‘gods’ (in contrast with individual deities such as Yahweh, Dagon, Bel, etc.) in documents written before the exile. During this period the singular form became so obsolete that, when monotheism came, elohim was retained in the plural but understood in the singular sense of ‘God.’ Usually, Hebrew writers speak of gods (elohim) and Yahweh (their god) before the exile but God (elohim) thereafter.” God’s name also appears, though rarely, as Shaddai. Sub-standard slang expressions concerning God are numerous, with few speakers recognizing the origin of “gosh” or “golly” (euphemisms for God) and “gee” and “jeepers” (euphemisms for Jesus). Nor are they aware of the anatomic vulgarity “oddballs,” or of the colorful epithet “bloody,” an irreverent description of the dripping, crucified, and dying second person of the Trinity (as utilized by a mad and cursing Hamlet: “‘Sblood, do you think that I am easier to be played on than a pipe?”). Similarly, “zounds” is a reference to Jesus’s (His) wounds upon being crucified. Jehovah (Yahweh, Jahve) was the personal name of Israel’s god, but some hold that it is based on a mistake inasmuch as scholars believe the form Yahweh is not scripturally reliable. R. B. Y. Scott of the United Theological College in Montreal, Canada, notes that when for the first time vowels were inserted in the Hebrew Bible in the 7th century, the vowels of the word “aDoNaY” were written with the consonants YHWH, a tetragrammaton, in order to emphasize reverence. (Tetragrammaton refers to a four letter word such as the not-to-be-uttered name of God, YHWH, which is to be spoken only with the vowels of Adonai or Elohim. It is noteworthy that most Hebrew words have only three consonants.) “The form ‘Jehovah’ is a transliteration of the resulting hybrid, and first came into use in the 14th century through the failure of Christian scholars to recognize the origin and purpose of the vocalization; it has now by usage acquired by independent standing in English,” Scott states. Non-believers ordinarily capitalize God when referring to the major divinity of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They would also make such observations as the following:

• God, if the original Original, by definition would have been hermaphroditic and would not, as is the case with hermaphroditic snails, be addressed as “He.” • Typical of weak religious reasoning is the statement by Samuel S. Cohon, of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, that “the worship of Yahweh as Israel’s covenant God and Savior, the revelation of His will to the prophets and its embodiment in the various codes that comprise the Torah, and His demand of moral conduct from His worshipers are permanent elements of Judaism, which run unbroken from the days of Sinai to the present.” • Another illogical concoction by theologians is the concept of the Trinity, a dogma accepted by all Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians and by the principal Protestant churches that, as explained by Charles W. Lowry Jr. of the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, “God is one in being (or substance), power, and majesty, but subsists eternally in three co-equal, perfect persons or hypostates, to which are appropriate respectively the individual names Father, Son or Word (Logos), and Holy Spirit.” • Paul E. Johnson, of the Boston School of Theology, points out a conflict between the various religionists: that it is sacrilegious, according to some, not to believe that the proper name for God is Allah (or Al-lah) and that “There is no God but Allah.”

The idea of a woman incarnating the Holy Spirit occurred around 1270 when an Italian prophetess, Gugliemites Gugliema, was considered by her followers as that incarnation—she also was said by some to have been the prototype of the Female Pope (also the High Priestess) card in the Tarot deck. In the early 1300s, Prous Beneta, a Beguine in Provence, was similarly thought to such an incarnation. The English-born founder of the American sect of celibate utopians called Shakers, “Mother” Ann Lee, taught that God had incarnated her just as He had incarnated the man, Jesus. Another woman, Jemima Wilkinson (1752—1819), was regarded as Christ returned, which she did not deny. Theologians generally concede that the existence of God is unverifiable and must be accepted on faith. Immanuel Kant thought he had destroyed the ontological argument for God, that God must exist because God represents the highest concept and must have existence as one attribute. Kant argued that existence has no part of the content of an idea, which concept existentialists have emphasized and which they have used as an argument to support atheism. In essence, non-believers generally avoid the word except when referring to the God theologians preach about. They recognize that a Lutheran believes in God and that a Catholic and a Jew believe, also. But, in practice, non-believers are apt to relegate the concept to a collection of terms such as the following: male gods such as Uranus, his son Cronus, and his son Zeus; or the goddesses such as Uranus’s mother and wife, Gaea (who was also mother and wife of Pontus, god of the sea); Cronus’s wife and sister Rhea (who also was mother of Zeus); and Zeus’s wife and sister, Hera. Of these, it is Cronus who fathered the great gods—Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Hestia. His father, Uranus, had fathered Titans, Cyclops, and Hundred-handed Ones. But Cronus, dethroning his father, castrated him, whereupon Uranus’s blood fell onto Earth, producing the vengeful Furies. And from Uranus’s discarded flesh and the sea Aphrodite arose. What distinguishes the Hebrew’s God from a Greek god is the latter’s interest, shown in the Greek classics, in sex, marriage, pleasure, and humor. The various names, then, are descriptive terms of myths, traditional stories that involve supernatural elements and have occurred in a timeless past. “And where did the Milky Way come from?” the Greek child might ask. “When Hera was breast-feeding,” would come the answer, “her baby bit her teat, she cried out, and as she pushed him away the milk spilled out onto the sky.” The Greek myths are of value, like the myth of Santa Claus. Unless taken literally. Philosophers who use the term ”God” to describe any unifying concept (for example, cosmic energy, number, mind, world soul) are sure to confuse adherents to the major religions, who oppose the use of original Original, or Goodness. Carl Sagan, for example, has stated that if by “God” one simply means the set of physical laws that are found in the universe, “then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying. It does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.” Bertrand Russell has written much on the subject, for example in What I Believe (1925):

God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science. It cannot be said that either doctrine is essential to religion, since neither is found in Buddhism. . . . I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so many the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.

On a recording, “Speaking Personally,” Russell said, “The whole attitude of the Christian toward God is based on Oriental tyrannies, monarchies. It’s the attitude one took toward the King. And it’s an attitude which a modern man should consider abject and contemptible.” In a 1950 Australian radio program, he further elaborated upon his not believing in God: “It is to the possible achievements of Man that our ultimate loyalty is due, and in that thought the brief troubles of our unquiet epoch become endurable. Much wisdom remains to be learned, and if it is only to be learned through adversity, we must endeavor to endure adversity with what fortitude we can command. But if we can acquire wisdom soon enough, adversity may not be necessary, and the future of Man may be happier than any part of his past.”

God and god

The present work treats God as a proper noun, like Calcutta; e.g., “Some intelligent people worship God.” The plural of God is gods; e.g., “Some intelligent people worship gods”—gods is an example of a common noun, like doppelgänger. Although the common practice is to write “the God of Christianity,” the common noun for a deity is god, not God; ergo, writing “the god of Christianity” is entirely logical. Of the gods, Woden and Jehovah and other such names are examples of proper nouns and are capitalized. If an indefinite article precedes God, it is a common noun and not capitalized; e.g.,

• gad, a minced pronunciation of God as found in an exclama- tion such as “Egad!” or “Gadzooks,” which possibly is a refer- ence to “God’s hooks,” the nails used in the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. • godalmighty, as an interjection expresses surprise or dismay • god-a-mercy, an expression of mercy or thanks • godawful (slang), a stressing of awful in its colloquial sense • god-botherer (slang), a parson; also, god-pesterer (slang), a bishop • god box (slang), the remote control device for TV • godcept (obsolete), gossip • goddam, goddamn (slang since 1640), used to express displeasure • god in the box (slang), a radio set • goddery, an assemblage of gods • godfather (slang), the leader of an organized crime family • godfearing refers to having a reverent feeling toward God; being devout • godforsaken or godforsaken refers to a forlorn or dismal area • godfright (obsolete), god-fearing, devout, pious • godful (obsolete), full of God, pious • the godhead refers to God existing in three persons (God, Jesus, Holy Ghost) • godhood refers to divinity, or the quality or state of being a god • goddize, to make into a god or deify • godify, to make into a god or deify • godless refers to not acknowledging a god or gods • godlet, a petty god or deity • godlike, resembling God in some quality • godliness, the quality of being godly • godling is one of the lesser or minor gods; a godkin • god love her (slang), Mother • godly (slang) means “cool”; godly, of or pertaining to God • godman, one who is both God and man, which is said of Jesus • godoxious, a combination of godawful and obnoxious; repellent • god rep (slang), the college chaplain • god-slot (slang), a religious program on radio or television • god squad, the, the forces of organized religion, especially in evangelical form; the phrase has been applied scornfully to the Salvation Army, doorstep zealots, and university Christian Unions alike • God’s Acre is capitalized if it refers to a specific churchyard’s area • god’s balls (slang), usually shortened to oddballs • godsbodikins, an irreverent reference to the deity’s body • godsend is something desirable that has come unexpectedly • godship, used jocularly to refer to a god’s position or personali ty, as in “your godship” • godspeed, as in “I wish you godspeed,” refers to success or good fortune. The reference is to speden, to prosper, and sped, Old English for success.

GOD AND THE PHILOSOPHERS: See a definitive article by Paul Edwards, “God and the Philosophers,” in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy.

“GOD BLESS YOU”: See entry for Superstition.

GOD (HIMSELF) God, after emerging from primal chaos, created the cosmos and the life which would populate it. Then after a period of time He realized that His creation was terribly flawed. Worse, He found that He no longer could control what He had created. If corrections of the flaws were to be realized, those correction would of necessity have to come from the created, not the creator. “Amid all that rotation of boulders in the void, I saw the small, derisory grain in the cosmic forest as the shelter of my only possible hope. Earth! . . . Earth was the flower of hope to which the cosmos had given birth,” He lamented. Whereupon, He wrote a God’s-eye history of what He saw. And it came to pass that He encountered Moses, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Gautama (the one Eastern intruder among all the other Westerners), Jesus, Augustine, Isidore of Seville, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Columbus, Galileo, Shakespeare, Caravaggio, Mozart, Rousseau, Hölderlin, Melville, Freud, and Einstein. And He called his history The Life of God (As Told By Himself).

Or so the Italian novelist and Rutgers University professor of literature Franco Ferrucci imagined in a 1996 work. Jack Miles, who wrote God: A Biography, observed that “Though mentioning neither Hegel nor Darwin, Mr. Ferrucci, in effect, fuses their visions but writes his own ending. For him, the ascending arrow is now in descent. Earth, in all its majesty, is beyond repair. God will miss it—’It won’t be easy to abandon such beauty’—but He can do nothing about it.” The work, he concludes, is a charming expression of Ferrucci’s “boundless hopes for, and poignant disappointment in, his own human kind.” {The New York Times Book Review, 14 July 1996}

GOD, ACCORDING TO JOHN DEWEY: See entry for Pragmatism.

GOD, DEFINED And God said unto them, “And whom do you say I am? And they replied, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed.” And God said unto them, “What?” {Quoted on the Web}

GOD, GOODNESS AND MERCY OF Anyone who is teary-eyed about the goodness and mercy of God, said a Manhattan Unitarian Universalist, should work for awhile in a hospital on a children’s ward.

GOD, MESSAGES FROM In Huddersfield, England, Shaista Javed, a 14-year-old Muslim, sliced a tomato in half and found a “miracle message” from God written inside. On one side of the tomato she read, “There is only one God.” On the other, “Muhammed is the messenger.” To the Daily Mail, she revealed the revelation, adding, “God made me buy that tomato. The Reuter news agency reported that a local storeowner said demand for tomatoes had soared.

GOD, NATURE OF Rather than attribute cause and effect to a supernatural or supreme deity, secularists focus on the nature of man and the nature of the universe. (See entry for God.)

GOD, ON TELEVISION Norman Lloyd, the director of “Steambath,” a PBS Hollywood Television Theatre, portrayed God as a Puerto Rican locker-room attendant.

GOD, PHALLUS OF: See entry for John Allegro.

GOD, QUIPS ABOUT: • Not even God is wise enough. —Nigerian proverb

• Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. —Thomas Paine

• God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters. —H. L. Mencken

• If God created us in his image we have more than reciprocated. —Voltaire

• Beware of the man whose God is in the skies. —George Bernard Shaw

• God, that dumping ground of our dreams. —Jean Rostand

• God is all-powerful, and God is all-loving—and the world is what it is! How are you going to explain that? —Lord Salisbury

• For me, the single word “God” suggests everything that is slippery, shady, squalid, foul, and grotesque. —André Breton

• God is the Celebrity-Author of the World’s Best-Seller. We have made God into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness. —Daniel Boorstin

• I do not believe in God. I believe in cashmere. —Fran Lebowitz

• The impotence of God is infinite. —Anatole France

• Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is. 

—Jean Anouilh

• God: the Old One. —Albert Einstein

• Whom the mad would destroy, first they make gods. —Bernard Levin

• Some people think God is a Christian. Some people think God is a Moslem. Or a Jew. Or a Catholic. Or a Baptist. If you think about it, they can’t all be right. —Dan Barker

• Some people say it is not nice to question God. They think that believing the myth is more important than finding out what is really true. —Dan Barker

• We can explain phenomenon without any need to refer to gods or God. —Paul Edwards (See the entry for Great Mother Goddess. Also, see Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3. ) {CE; EH; ER; JMRH; RE}

God, Ubiquitous Perpetuity (20th Century) According to the New Haven Register (15 February 1996), a San Rafael, California, man by the name of God was jailed on the latest of eighteen indecent exposure convictions. Mr. God had changed his name years ago (from Enrique Silberg) so that his “flashed” victims could receive “some type of awareness of God.” Pundits noted that upon his death, the former Mr. Silberg would be memorialized with headlines such as “GOD DIES.”

GOD, WRATH OF Judith Hayes, writing in Freethought Today (April 1995), provided a partial list of wrathful killing by God, as purported by the Old Testament:

• The entire population of the earth at the time of Noah, except for eight survivors (Genesis 7:23) • Everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19: 24, 25) • Amalek and his people (Exodus. 17:8-16) • 3,000 Israelites (Exodus 32: 27,28) • 14,700 Jews (Numbers 16:44-49) • The people of Og: “So they smote him, and his sons, and all his people, until there was none left him alive: and they possessed his land.” (Numbers 21: 33-35) • 24,000 people (Numbers 25: 4-9) • All Midianite males (Numbers 31: 6-12) • The Ammonites (Deuteronomy 2: 19-21) • The Horims (Deuteronomy 2:22) • The Amorites: “. . . utterly destroyed the men and the women and the little ones.” (Deuteronomy 2:33-35) • The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites: “ . . . thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them.” (Deuteronomy 7:1-5) • Everyone in Jericho but one family (Joshua 6:20, 21) • 12,000 people of Ai (Joshua 8:19-29) • All the people of Makkedah, Libnah, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron (Joshua 8 and 10) • All the inhabitants of the land of Goshen: “ . . . until they had destroyed them, neither left they any to breathe.” (Joshua 11:14) • The inhabitants of Hormah, Gaza, Askelon, Ekron (Judges 1:17-19) • 10,000 Moabites, 10,000 Perizzites and Canaanites, 600 Philistines, 120,000 Midianites, 1,000 Philistines, 25,100 Benjaminites, and all the hosts of Sisera (Judges 1, 3, 4, 8, 15, and 20) • 50,070 people of Bethshemesh (1 Samuel 6:19) • All the Amalekites: “Slay man and woman, infant and suckling. . . . “ (1 Samuel 15: 3, 7) • 200 Philistines, to obtain their foreskins, in order to buy a bridge (1 Samuel 18:27) • 22,000 Syrians, 70,000 people, 40,000 Syrians, and the Ammonites of Rabbah, tortured to death by the great King David (2 Samuel 8, 10, 12, 14) • Every man in Edom (1 Kings 11:15) • All the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40) • 100,000 Syrians (1 Kings 20: 28, 29) • Moabite captains, and “fifties” (2 Kings, 1:9-14) • 42 children and 185,000 Assyrians (2 Kings 2 and 19) • 500,000 men of Israel, 20,000 Edomites, and 120,000 Judeans (2 Chronicles 13, 25, 28) • 75,000 people (Esther 9: 15,16)

Godard, Jean-Luc (1930— ) Godard, according to Atheist Celebrities on the internet, is a non-believer. A motion picture director, he has directed such movies as Opération Béton (1954); Breathless (1959) which won the Jean Vigo Prize and is noted for its elliptical editing; Weekend (1968), with its analysis of social ideas; Every Man For Himself (1980); and written as well as directed Passion (1982) and King Lear (1988). His highly personal films are marked by a free-wheeling approach to content and style. In La Chinoise, a voiceover engages in the following: “Woman: ‘God, why have you forsaken me.’ Man: “Because I don’t exist.’ ” Godard’s Hail Mary caused riots by believers and smiles to non-believers. {CE; E}

Goddard, George J. (20th Century) Goddard is a freethinker who wrote Billy Sunday’s Goat: More Harm Than Good in Revival (1917). {GS}

Godden, G. M. (20th Century) Godden, a freethinker, wrote Militant Atheism (1933). {GS}

GODDESSES Dr. Marija Gimbutas (1921—1994), a native of Vilnius, Lithuania, received her doctorate in archeology from Tubingen University in Germany, then taught at Harvard and the University of California. An archeologist with a feminist view, she wrote three books which challenged traditional views of prehistoric societies: Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974); The Language of the Goddess (1989); and The Civilization of the Goddess (1991). Dr. Gimbutas’s controversial thesis was that peace existed during the Stone Age, for goddesses were worshiped in a female-centered society. The two sexes, she held, lived together in harmony until about 6,000 years ago when a European culture of patriarchal invaders replaced the life-giving goddesses with war-like gods. Mythologist Joseph Campbell found her thesis had some merit, but others denied what they claimed is without any possible proof. Journalist Richard D. Lyons quotes University of Wisconsin historian Gerda Lerner, “that although Dr. Gimbutas’s theory could never be proved, it could ‘challenge, inspire, and fascinate’ simply by providing an imaginative alternative to male-centered explanations.” (See entry for Great Mother Goddess.)

Godfrey, W. S. (Born 1855) Godfrey was a writer, a devout “Plymouth Brother” until 1888, when he changed the shade of his theology and entered Spurgeon’s Pastors’ College. From 1890 to 1895 he served as a Baptist minister, and in the latter year he abandoned Christianity. Thereafter, he occasionally lectured at South Place Chapel. His agnosticism is expounded in Theism Found Wanting. {RAT}

Godfrey, Walter Scott (20th Century) Godfrey, a freethinker, wrote Still Found Wanting, or the Critic Criticized (1921). {GS}

Godin, Dave (20th Century) Godin has written “Up Front” in England for The Freethinker. He writes on a variety of topics, including an obituary (February 1996) for the atheist actress Butterfly McQueen .

Godin, Noel (20th Century) A Belgian prankster, Godin is known as L’Entarteur (the Pie Man) because, in his words,

I’m part of a gang of bad hellions that has declared a pie war on all the unpleasant celebrities in every kind of domain. We began by targeting “empty” celebrities from the artistic world who appeared to think that they were the cat’s meow. Then we attacked the French TV news business, and soon we began to pie political figures as well. . . . In November 1969 we pied Marguerite Duras, whose work represented for us the “empty” novel. . . . [We pied] Bill Gates because in a way he is the master of the world. Bill Gates was at the top of our list of victims because he could have been a utopian but he prefers being the lackey of the establishment. The attack against him is symbolic; it’s against hierarchical power itself. Our war cry was explicit: “Let’s pie! Let’s pie the polluting lolly!”

Those involved in the gloupinesques (pie pranks) do not throw the pies—they put the pies point-blank in the face of the victim. At least four pies touched Gates’s face, to the amazement of photographers who captured the scene for evening telecasts as well as newspaper front pages. If the Microsoft billionaire were to return to Belgium, Godin was asked, would he and his cohorts pie him again?

We shall see. But we declare war on all the governments of the world: on Tony Blair, on Bill Clinton, on the Pope. When the Pope last came to Belgium, if we’d had a traitor sponsoring us, we’d have pied him. We had a strategy. For us, the Pope is a dangerous serial killer because he is against birth control. On our pie list, you will also find Demi Moore; and Tom Cruise and John Travolta, who are both members of Scientology. {Harper’s, May 1998}

Godkin, Edwin Lawrence (1831—1902) Godkin, a journalist, was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman. In college, he rejected his early beliefs, became a journalist, and founded and edited The Nation. McCabe labels Godkin “a non-Christian theist.” {JM; RAT; RE}

GODMEN AND GODWOMEN Indian rationalists describe ministers of gods as “godmen” or “godwomen” and, in counteracting their influence, call themselves “guru busters.” (See entries for Prabhir Ghosh and Debasis Bhattachariya.)

GODPARENTING Freethinkers who wish to have a special relationship to someone—becoming a protector, benefactor, friend, etc.—but who dislike terms such as “godfather” or “godmother” are sometimes known as compadre, co-father, or comadre, co-mother. (See entries for comadre and compadre.)

GODS: See entry for Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of learning.

GOD’S ARMY The Army of God is a shadowy group which in 1997 took credit for two Atlanta bombings, one at an abortion clinic, one at a gay nightclub. It might have planted the nail-studded bomb that killed a woman and hurt one hundred at the 1996 Olympics. The purpose of God’s Army, or “AoG” and the Army of God, is apparently to carry out the members’ views as to what the Bible teaches. {Secular Humanist Bulletin, Fall 1997}

GOD’S PLAN Theists, when asked why a particularly deserving person should have died so young or in such an unfortunate manner, frequently respond, “It’s God’s plan.” “What better proof that God is mad!” freethinkers have been known to retort.

Godwin, George (20th Century) A freethinker, Godwin wrote Priest or Physician: A Study of Faith Healing (1942). {GS}

Godwin, Mary: See entry for Mary Wollstonecraft.

Godwin, William (1756—1836) Godwin, the son of a dissenting minister, was an English philosopher, a skeptic, and “an anarchist.” He greatly influenced Shelley, who married his daughter, Mary, author of Frankenstein (1818). (A doctor himself, Godwin must have mused at what he had wrought.) With the dramatist Holcroft, he developed an atheism which showed in his various works, including the posthumous Essays Never Before Published. In that work, he urges the abolition of all government, names the Christian God as the worst possible governor, one who destroys all that is good in human beings. His influence extended to Coleridge, who convinced him at one time to adopt a pantheistic worship of nature, and to Robert Southey and William Wordsworth. Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) recorded the view that men are ultimately guided by reason and therefore, being rational creatures, could live in harmony without laws and institutions. His novels, Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), St. Leon (1799), and Fleetwood (1805) contain similar humanistic views. Godwin’s last years, during which he tended to become more conservative and was a vague pantheist, were spent in poverty. A few days before his death, he wrote as follows to his daughter, Mrs. Shelley: “I leave behind me a manuscript, in a considerable state of forwardness for the press, entitled, ‘The Genius of Christianity Unveiled: in a Series of Essays.’ I am most unwilling that this, the concluding work of a long life, and written, as I believe, in the full maturity of my understanding, should be consigned to oblivion. It has been the main object of my life, since I attained to years of discretion, to do my part to free the human mind from slavery. I adjure you therefore, or whomsoever else into whose hands these papers may fall, not to allow them to be consigned to oblivion.” Mrs. Shelley appears to have disregarded this solemn adjuration, for the work was not published until 1873. Godwin is buried in a family plot with Mary Shelley, her son, and her husband Percy’s heart, or possibly liver, at St. Peter’s Church in Bournemouth, England. The tombstone reads, “William Godwin, Author of Political Justice, Born Mar 3, 1756 Died Apr 7, 1839 Age 50.” (See entries for Mary Shelley and for Percy Bysshe Shelley.) {BDF; CE; EU, Peter H. Hare; FO; HAB; JM; JMR; JMRH; RAT; RE}

Goebbels, Paul Joseph (1897—1945) The Baltimore Sun (28 July 1944) carried the following item: “The thanks of the German people, through the lips of Goebbels ‘to the Almighty because he has taken the Führer into his gracious protection,’ and their request through the same channel that ‘he should continue to protect the Führer’ is but a normal expression of the official German attitude. The belief often expressed in Allied countries that the Germans do not rely on Providence is mistaken. German soldiers still wear on their belt buckles the motto, ‘God With Us.’ ” {CE}

Goeringer, Conrad (20th Century) Goeringer, a contributing editor and senior researcher for American Atheist Magazine, has noted that “we’re becoming a nation of constipated prudes when it comes to just about anything which might offend the sensibilities of different groups, many of them religious.” He is American Atheists’ director of online services and supervises the production of AANews. In 1999 he spoke at that group’s “Opposing Theocracy” conference in St. Louis, Missouri, using slide presentations as he discussed Vatican politics, the murder of Roberto Calvi, and the involvement of the Holy See’s bank with financial scandals.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749—1832) Goethe is said by Lamont to have had “a vague pantheistic belief.” His Faust (1808) “is sometimes called The Divine Comedy of modern Humanism.” No writer of his time begins to reach the heights of Faust. Goethe once recorded in a notebook that early in his seventh year (1 November 1758) the great Lisbon earthquake filled his mind with religious doubts. Goethe was influenced by Rousseau, Spinoza, and Schiller. With Schiller, he led the emancipation of Germany, according to McCabe and, especially in their Xenien (a collection of caustic epigrams, including many of religion), founded a freethought literature in Germany. He called the “fairy-tale of Christ” unacceptable, and Chancellor von Müller remarked that, at times at least, Goethe doubted everything and believed in nothing. The crucifix, Goethe held, is “the most repugnant thing under the sun.” In letters to Lavater, according to Robertson, Goethe “wrote quite explicitly that a voice from heaven would not make him believe in a virgin birth and a resurrection, such tales being for him rather blasphemies against the great God and his revelation in Nature.” “We are pantheists when we study nature,” wrote Goethe, “polytheists when we poetize, monotheists in our morality.” Goethe also had been influenced by deism, for he was a member of the Masonic Lodge. He affirmed that he was unchristian, not anti-Christian, that he revered Jesus, as he did the Sun. But such views irked believing Christians, who called him “the great Pagan.” Not one to be disturbed by criticism that his mind was in a state of verbalizing confusion, he boasted, “After all, I never thought about thinking.” Robertson notes, “the permanently interesting teaching of his Faust is precisely that which artistically utters the doubt through which he passed to a pantheistic Naturalism.” Writing to Lavater in 1772, Goethe said, “You look upon the gospel as it stands as the divinest truth: but even a voice from heaven would not convince me that water burns and fire quenches, that a woman conceives without a man, and that a dead man can rise again. To you, nothing is more beautiful than the Gospel; to me, a thousand written pages of ancient and modern inspired men are equally beautiful.” Goethe’s hostility to everything fundamental in Christian theology was unyielding, according to Foote, and continued from about his seventeenth year to the end of his long life. Heine, in his De l’Allemagne, notices Goethe’s “vigorous heathen nature” and his “militant antipathy to Christianity.” On the Continent hardly anyone would impugn the accuracy of this statement, Foote noted. As a young man Goethe’s antagonism to the historic faith caused a marked estrangement between him and some of his friends. In 1788, after his return from his prolonged stay in Italy, he openly declared himself a pagan whose ideals and world-view accorded largely with those of Lucretius. Some of his letters to Lavater, Jacobi, Schiller and Zelter, contain unsparing criticism of Christianity and the claims made for it. Goethe’s “truly Julian hatred of Christianity” became less intense with advancing years, Foote wrote; but throughout life he rejected its cardinal doctrines on intellectual grounds and regarded some of them as serious hindrances to the growth of personality. Christianity’s attitude to Nature, the doctrine of total depravity, the cult of sorrow, and its extremely unfavorable influence on art, and the orthodox scheme of salvation generally—all these elements of the faith strongly repelled Goethe. Edward Carpenter, in The Intermediate Sex, implied that Goethe was bisexual. He cited Wilhelm Meister, the Diwan lyrics, and an essay on Winckelmann. Edgar Lee Masters in his biography of Whitman also suggests that Goethe along with Whitman, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Michelangelo were “Uranians.” In Goethe’s case, no hard evidence is available and, as other writers have said, had he written about the pain of giving birth to a baby one would never have speculated that he had done that. Similarly, Kurt R. Eissler’s psychological studies reinforced a scholarly school of thought ascribing latent homosexuality or bisexuality to him. Karl Hugo Pruys, however, after a ten-year examination of 2,500 letters by Goethe and his contemporaries wrote The Caresses of the Tiger: An Erotic Goethe Biography (1997). He held that Goethe was not just a repressed homosexual or bisexual but was actively gay. Goethe’s letters to the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi suggested that the two men had a physical, homosexual relationship. He adds that Goethe had no known heterosexual relationship until his tryst in Rome with Christiane Vulpius, when he was thirty-nine. Pruys, referring to the poem “To the Moon,” in which Goethe wrote about the joy of holding a friend to one’s bosom and enjoying him. In his later years Goethe avowed to Eckermann, a kind of German Boswell who in “Conversations with Goethe” included notes on the poet and his Weimar circle of friends, that the name which he would prefer to all others was Befreier (“liberator”). According to Foote, eleven days before his death, writing to Eckermann, Goethe said that Biblical questions can be viewed from two standpoints: either as a study in religious origins; or from the standpoint of the Church, which, feeble and transitory as it is, will continue as long as there are weak human beings in existence to need her good offices. In his letters to Zelter, the musician, one of the dearest of all his friends—Goethe’s last letters, written after he had entered his eighties—are numerous passages showing his repugnance to Christianity’s low estimate of human nature. His last letter to Zelter, a long one dated 11 March 1832 does not contain a word directly bearing on religion, but near the end there is the following remark: “It is strange that the English, the French, and now the Germans, too, like to express themselves incomprehensibly, just as others like to listen to what is incomprehensible.” Again and again Goethe detested obscurantism, of that verbiage which expressed nothing real, the kind for which religionists are noted. As to whether or not he believed in immortality, Goethe wrote as follows:

• This occupation with ideas of immortality is for people of rank, and especially for ladies who have nothing to do. But a man of real worth who has something to do here, and must toil and struggle to produce day by day, leaves the future world to itself, and is active and useful in this. • The sensible man leaves the future world out of consideration.

Up to his eighty-second birthday, Goethe was in good health. Catching a cold on March 15, 1832, he lived only another week, with his friends and family present at the end. “Light! Light! More light!“ he cried out in his sleep at one point. An hour later, he said to his daughter, Ottilie, “Come my little one, and give me your little hand.” Then, writing figures and letters on the air with a forefinger, according to biographers Emil Ludwig and George H. Lewes, he succumbed. Eckermann, who saw the body prepared for burial, described it: “a perfect man lay in great beauty before me.” On 2 November 1970, seven people, including the former rector of Jena University and a director of the Museum of Early History in Weimar, exhumed Goethe’s corpse, dragged it off to a nearby museum, and worked on its preservation for three weeks, after which the remains were returned to their crypt in the city of Weimar. The operation had begun as an attempt to repair a broken lock on the sarcophagus, but when the advanced state of decomposition of Goethe’s remains was discovered, a more elaborate project was devised. According to a report not released until reported by the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung (18 March 1999), the poet’s skeleton was 5 feet 5 1/2 inches long, giving him a probable living height of 5 feet 6 1/2 inches, about average for his time. His high forehead, pointed chin, and sharp nose were strikingly similar to the portrait of him painted at the time of his death by Friedrich Preller. At the time of the exhumation, the plan was to preserve Goethe’s remains in a glass coffin, like Lenin’s, but that idea was dropped. Apart from the maceration and bone-reinforcement completed by the scientists, an intricate operation was undertaken to strengthen the laurel wreath that was found attached to Goethe’s skull. The laurel wreath’s leaves were washed and disinfected in alcohol before being treated in a solution to protect them against the mold. The wreath was then reattached to Goethe’s skull. As for what was in the cranium, according to Roger Cohen (The New York Times, 19 March 1999), the scientists found only “a dustlike mass.” {Alan Cowell, The New York Times, 21 September 1997; BDF; CE; FO; Freethinker, 31 January and 7 February 1932; HNS2; JM; JMRH; RAT; RE; TYD}

Goetz, Sidney M. (20th Century) Goetz is on the Board of Directors of the American Humanist Association and was a former president of Humanists of Florida. He is the founder of the Thomas Jefferson Societies and an American Civil Liberties Union attorney. He spoke on the subject “Separation of Church and State—Why We Should Preserve It” at the 1999 convention of Humanists of Florida. {FD}

Goffin, Nicolas (Died 1884) Goffin was founder of the Societé de la Libre of Liége and was president of La Libre Pensée of Brussels. He was one of the General Council of the International Federation of Freethinkers. {BDF}

Gogineni, Rajaji Ramanadha Babu (1968—	)

Babu, as most people call Mr. Gogineni, was once was the youngest certified French language teacher in Hyderabad, India. He served as Joint Secretary of the Indian Radical Humanist Association until his 1996 appointment as Executive Director of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. As such, he is one of the best-known humanists in international circles. At the time of moving to London, Babu was founder General Secretary of the South Asia Humanist Network; Trustee of the Indian Renaissance Institute; a secretary of the Indian Radical Humanist Association; and General Secretary of the Rationalist Association of India. He has contributed articles to the French and English language press in India and Europe and co-edited two books, Rationalist Essays published in Chirala and The Humanist Way. Babu has participated in international humanist conferences at Brussels in 1990, in Amsterdam in 1992, in Mexico City in 1996, and in Mumbai in 1999. He became editor in 1999 of the International Humanist News as well as the husband of Sahana, an award-winning presenter on Telugu Satellite Channel Gemini TV. In Birmingham, England, at the centenary conference of the Rationalist Press Association in 1999, Babu, who thinks one’s outlook would do well to include humor, jocularly entitled his lecture, “Humanism and Ketchup.” He is a signer of Humanist Manifesto 2000. His e-mail: <babu@iheu.org>. {International Humanist News, December 1996}

Gogol, Nikolai Vasilyevich (1809—1852) Gogol was one of the most eminent of all Russian writers. His Dead Souls (1842) is a picaresque novel about a rogue who buys the names of dead people in order to profit by mortgaging them. The work was a call to reform society and free the serfs. But, outraged at that reaction, the politically conservative Gogol published Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (1846) in which he openly spoke his political mind. According to the University of California’s Simon Karlinsky, Gogol believed that “Slavery was justified in the Bible and must not be abolished; social stratification had been decreed by God; and any reform or political change is an offense against Christianity.” When in 1852 Gogol, a strong believer in Christianity, confessed his homosexuality to Father Matthew Konstantinovsky, the bigoted and sinister priest prescribed abstinence from sleep and food in order to cleanse Gogol’s “inner filth.” In obeying, Gogol renounced literature and food, burned most of the second part of Dead Souls, and died of starvation a month later with the help of his doctors, “who in order to help him, bled him profusely and subjected him to treatments that were physical tortures.” {GL}

Goguel, Maurice (1880—1955) Goguel, a freethinker, wrote Jesus the Nazarene—Myth or History (1926). {GS}

Gohdes, Clarence (20th Century) Gohdes wrote Periodicals of American Transcendentalism (1931). {GS}

Goicoechea, David (20th Century) A professor of philosophy at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, Goicoechea is one of the editors of The Question of Humanism, Challenges and Possibilities (1990). At the 1994 Toronto conference of the Coalition for Secular Humanism, Atheism, and Freethought (CSHAFT), Goicoechea spoke on “Humanism, Postmodernism, and Feminism.” In essence, he is opposed to secular humanism and is a post-modern Catholic.

Goldberg, Henry (20th Century) Goldberg, a freethinker, wrote Christianity: Its Foundation and Its Final Death (1908). {GS}

Goldberg, Isaac (1887—1938) A freethinker, Goldberg wrote Dictatorship Over the Intellect (1935). {FUK; GS}

Goldberg, Stuart C. (20th Century) Goldberg, formerly an Assistant United States Attorney, wrote God on Trial 2000 (1999). The work denies the arguments of those who try to inject religion into our political life. He specifically indicts God for crimes against Job.

Goldberg, Whoopi (1955— ) Goldberg, an actress, in 1987 was honored with the Hans Christian Andersen Award for outstanding achievement by a dyslectic. She has starred in numerous movies, including “The Color Purple” (1985), and received an Oscar Award for “Ghost” in 1990 as best supporting actress, the second African American woman to win the honor. She also has appeared on the Broadway stage and in numerous telecasts, hosting her own talk show from 1992 to 1993. In 1999 she was the key participant on the telecast “Hollywood Squares.” Her original name was Caryn Johnson and, according to Celebrity Atheists online, Goldberg is a non-theist. However, some skeptics question this because of her frequent reference to “spiritual” subjects. Other skeptics await her own view in writing. {E}

Goldblum, Rebecca (20th Century) When she signed Humanist Manifesto II, Goldblum was a director of the American Ethical Union. {HM2}

Goldhawke, J. H. (19th Century) Goldhawke in Solar Allegories (1853) writes that the greater number of personages mentioned in the Old and New Testaments are allegorical beings. {BDF}

GOLDEN RULE The advice to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is undesirable, not golden, according to William Harwood:

Suppose, for example, that a person earning minimum wage wants one of this planet’s billionaires to give him a million dollars. The impossible rule would have him give the billionaire a million dollars, as clearly he is incapable of doing. Similarly, he might want the United Nations to appoint him President of Earth. Again, the universe is beyond his capacity. And what of the man who fantasizes about a supermodel ripping off his clothing and mating with him with callous indifference to his own desires or feelings? The golden rule says that he should do the same to her. In most jurisdictions that would be called rape.

Harwood finds preferable Zoroaster’s admonition that one should not do to another whatever is hateful to himself, which is similar to the same advice given by Gautama, the Hindu Mahabharata, the Pharisee-authored Tobit, and the rabbi Hillel. {The American Rationalist, January-February 1999”

Goldie, George Dashwood Taubman [Sir] (1846—1925) The founder of Nigeria, Goldie refused to have that country named Golderia. “The work’s everything, the man’s nothing,” he reasoned. At one time he was president of the Royal Geographical Society and was in the Privy Council. In her memoir, Sir George Goldie (1934), Lady Goldie stated that her husband was an agnostic, had “left England to escape from the sound of the Church bells.” Goldie had a great disdain of Christian doctrines and used to say that Christians had “always been hypocrites.” Lady Goldie added that she was in complete agreement. {RAT; RE}

Goldin, Hyman Elias (Born 1881) Goldin, a freethinker and secular humanist, wrote The Case of the Nazarene Reopened (1948). Before his retirement, he was a professor at Boston University. {GS}

Golding, Harry L. (20th Century) Golding, when he reviewed books for The Humanist, was on the chemistry faculty at DePauw University.

Golding, Henry (20th Century) From 1923 to 1931, British businessman and Ethical layman became a Leader of the Ethical Society in New York, 1923 to 1931. {EU, Howard B. Radest}

Golding, William [Sir] (1911—1993) Golding is the English novelist who wrote Lord of the Flies (1954), a book which describes the struggle between good and evil and depicts youngsters who, marooned on a deserted island by a plane crash during a global atomic war, regress into blood-curdling tribal savagery. Reminiscing about World War II, Golding once said that it had been a turning point for him: “I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.” At another time he said, “Look out, the evil is in us all.” Martin Gardner has pointed out two science blunders in Golding’s Lord of the Flies. In the book’s second chapter, Ralph starts a fire by using the spectacles of the myopic Piggy; however, nearsighted (myopic) persons wear lenses that are concave, and only convex lenses can focus sunlight on a small spot. Second, in the fifth chapter Golding writes that the sun has just set, stars have appeared, and a “sliver of moon” is rising above the horizon—a moon rising after sunset, however, has to be full, not crescent-shaped. After writing The Spire (1964) and The Rites of Passage (1980), Golding in 1983 was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Richard Monte, writing about Golding’s reaction against rationalism, terms Golding “a pessimist and his work as a statement against rationality.” If Sea Trilogy is counted as one, Monte notes that in nine of Golding’s novels “the fallen nature of humanity and hubris predominate. . . . His message is a powerful reminder of the task which faces humanity as it struggles to find ways of living humanely and rationally in a godless universe, where irrational forces and desires are a permanent threat to civilisation.” (New Humanist, February, 1994). “I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller,” Sir William said of his works, adding that he was not entirely a pessimist: “I think good will overcome evil in the end. I don’t know quite how, but I have that simple faith.” As for death, he remarked, “I’d rather there wasn’t an afterlife, really. I’d much rather not be me for thousands of years. Me? Hah!”

Goldman, Edwin Franko (1878—1956) Once a pupil of Dvorak, Goldman composed over one hundred marches and in 1918 inaugurated a series of public outdoor concerts. His son, Richard, succeeded him as leader of the Goldman Band which was well-known for its free performances in New York City’s Central Park. In the 1950s, Goldman was on the advisory board of Charles Francis Potter’s First Humanist Society of New York. {CE}

Goldman, Emma (1869—1940) An advocate of birth control, an anarchist, and a freethinker, Goldman believed that each generation needs to discard “the burdens of the past, which hold us all in a net.” A major unbeliever, she was as unbelieving of Christianity as she became of the Russian Revolution, after having been deported from the United States to Russia after having obstructed the draft. “Religion is a superstition that originated in man’s inability to solve natural phenomena,” she wrote. “The Church is an organized institution that has always been a stumbling block to progress.” Goldman insisted upon the libertarian principle that “liberty is the mother of order, not its daughter,” that this constitutes the highest wisdom yet developed. As such, she condemned the Bolshevik state as she had condemned the soulless church for its “cold, inhuman authoritarianism,” writes Reichert. Gay historians Jonathan Katz, Adrien Saks, and Lynne Yamnaguchi Fletcher imply that letters from Almeda Sperry to Goldman were of a lesbian nature. {CE; EU, William O. Reichert; TYD; WWS}

Goldman, Solomon (1893—1953) A religious humanist, Rabbi Goldman has been a member of the American Humanist Association. He wrote The Ten Commandments (1956). His refusal to sign Humanist Manifesto I has been described in Edwin H. Wilson’s The Genesis of a Humanist Manifesto (1995). {HNS}

Goldsmith, Abbie (20th Century) Goldsmith, the Board Secretary of Humanists of Florida, spoke on the subject “Abortion, Welfare Reform, and Sexual Orientation Issues” at the 1999 convention of Humanists of Florida.

Goldsmith, James [Sir] (1933—1997) “Sir James Goldsmith is a protean figure: high-flying financial buccaneer, crusading politician, famously unconventional family man, who shares homes in London, Paris, Burgundy, Spain, and Mexico with his aristocratic wife, Annabel, his ex-wife and former secretary, Ginette, and his mistress, Laure Boulay de la Meurthe.” So starts Sally Bedell Smith’s article, “Billionaire with a Cause” in Vanity Fair (May 1997). Goldsmith’s mother was French Catholic, his father Jewish. The mother, although educated by nuns, had not made Catholicism a factor in his upbringing. “English and French,” his brother Teddy has said of the brothers. “You are both, but you are neither. Catholic and Jewish. You are both but neither. You are a professional foreigner. We don’t really belong, but we can look from the outside. We see what others don’t see.” Sir James’s father, Frank, had been born in Frankfurt into the prosperous German Goldschmidt family, which was distantly related to the Rothschilds. Faced with anti-Semitism, his family had moved to England, where the name changed to Goldsmith and Frank Goldsmith defeated George Bernard Shaw for a seat on the London County Council, later being elected to Parliament as a Conservative in 1909. A Jew whose family had been freethinkers for generations, he raised his children not as part of an established church.

Goldsmith, Oliver (1730?—1774) Goldsmith’s philosophic poem, The Traveler (1764), brought him early fame, and as one of Samuel Johnson’s circle he became well-known. The Good-Natured Man (1768) and She Stoops To Conquer (1773) added to his reputation, particularly being liked because of their humor and warm humanity. The Vicar of Wakefield is his best-known novel. In 1823 the Vatican added to its list of prohibited books his An Abridged History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Death of George II. His appetite for food and fine clothing nearly matched his inability to pay for either, according to his biographers (S. Gwynn, John Foster, and Ralph M. Wardle). When he was dying of a kidney ailment, Goldsmith had his pulse taken by the attending physician. “Your pulse is in greater disorder than it should be from the state of fever which you have. Is your mind at ease?” asked Dr. Turton. “No,” the famed critic responded briefly in his last words, “it is not.” {CE; ILP}

Goldsmith, William (20th Century) Goldsmith, a freethinker, wrote Evolution and Christianity (1924). {GS}

Goldstein, Al (1935— ) Screw’s editor, Goldstein, is a frank and confrontational sex-industry mogul. The son of a New York Daily Mirror worker, he started his weekly magazine in 1968 and, he has said, “It was the first newspaper to have a gay column. We accepted sex ads, we used four-letter words, we’ve never been euphemist—and that’s my pride in the paper.” He has been arrested at least nineteen times on charges of obscenity, observing, “I march to my own drummer, and my drummer talks about the one absolute, which is freedom. None of us can be sure what is right, so let’s have all voices be heard.” In short, he does not defend pornography per se, but does defend its right to exist. His first sexual experience occurred, he has stated, when he was sixteen. His mother had told his uncle to take him to a prostitute. Goldstein has been married four times and once ran unsuccessfully for Sheriff of Broward County in Florida. In one journal, he is quoted, “I always read Stuart Mill to [my son, Jordan]. I brainwashed him like they do in Catholic school, but instead of reading him the Bible I read from the humanists and the liberals. The real liberals—not the phony New York liberals.” In another journal, however, he is quoted, “I actually see myself as a thoughtful cerebral intellectual. . . . I am very conscious of being a Jew named Goldstein. And I am very proud that my son, who went to Georgetown, a Jesuit college; [of its] 781 students—he finished first. He won the two-year Oxford scholarship. He’s there now, and he’s accepted for Harvard. So there’s a Jewish word, kvell—”to be proud.” I am so haimish and so bourgeois, and so proud of my son.” This shows, Goldstein insisted, that he exemplifies family values. His will specifies that the son may not inherit the father’s pornographic business. In short, on the one hand Goldstein comes across as a nontheist, on the other, a cultural Jew. {CA; E; Paper, January 1997; New York, 10 February 1997; Spy, September-October 1997}

Goldstein, Al (1935 - ) Screw’s editor, Goldstein, is a frank and confrontational sex-industry mogul. The son of a New York Daily Mirror worker, he started his weekly magazine in 1968 and, he has said, “It was the first newspaper to have a gay column. We accepted sex ads, we used four-letter words, we’ve never been euphemist—and that’s my pride in the paper.” He has been arrested at least nineteen times on charges of obscenity, observing, “I march to my own drummer, and my drummer talks about the one absolute, which is freedom. None of us can be sure what is right, so let’s have all voices be heard.” In short, he does not defend pornography per se, but does defend its right to exist. In one journal, he is quoted as saying, “I always read Stuart Mill to [my son, Jordan]. I brainwashed him like they do in Catholic school, but instead of reading him the Bible I read from the humanists and the liberals. The real liberals—not the phony New York liberals.” In another journal, however, he is quoted as saying, “I actually see myself as a thoughtful cerebral intellectual. . . . I am very conscious of being a Jew named Goldstein. And I am very proud that my son, who went to Georgetown, a Jesuit college; [of its] 781 students—he finished first. He won the two-year Oxford scholarship. He’s there now, and he’s accepted for Harvard. So there’s a Jewish word, kvell—”to be proud.” I am so haimish and so bourgeois, and so proud of my son.” This shows, Goldstein insisted, that he exemplifies family values. His will specifies that the son may not inherit the father’s pornographic business. Goldstein is a cultural Jew and an atheist, he told the present author, mooning and embarrassing him as the two entered a New York City radio station for an interview. {CA; E; Paper, January 1997; New York, 10 February 1997; Spy, September-October 1997; WAS, several interviews in 2000}

Goldstuecker, Theodor (1821—1872) Goldstuecker, a Sanskrit scholar who was “of Jewish birth” but a freethinker by conviction, was a democrat in politics. Upon moving to England he helped Prof. Wilson prepare his Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Goldstuecker contributed important articles on Indian literature to the Westminster Review, the Reader, the Athenaeum, and Chambers’ Encyclopedia. {BDF; RAT}

Goldziher, Ignacz (1850—1921) Goldziher was a Hungarian Orientalist who taught Semitic Philology in Budapest. He wrote Mythology Among the Hebrews and other works on Semitic theology and literature. {BDF; RAT}

Goleman, Daniel (20th Century) Goleman wrote Emotional Intelligence (1995), telling about the neurology of emotion and dealing with how poor emotional control interferes with the management of our lives. Love relationships break up because of poor communication and because partners do not know how to avoid damaging others’ emotions. “For Humanists this is an important issue,” he wrote, “and is one where religious conservatives are squarely on the other side. As conservative Catholic Dale O’Leary says: Fear of the Lord, not self esteem, is the beginning of wisdom. . . . Schools exist to educate children, not to please them. Schools should be run on the principle that children, lacking education and experience, do not know what they need.” {Newsletter of the Humanist Association of Massachusetts, May-June 1996}

Golly, Ed (20th Century) Golly, a Floridian, is assistant secretary of Atheists of Florida. Upon his return from a humanist convention, when his airplane crashed, he wrote “On a Wing and No Prayer” for Free Inquiry, explaining why his not having died in the crash had nothing to do with the supernatural. E-mail: <athalfle@aol.com>.

Gomberg, Louis R. (20th Century) A humanist counselor who signed Humanist Manifesto II, Gomberg is on the editorial board of The Humanist. In 1979, he was President of the American Humanist Association. {HM2}

Gomes, Peter (20th Century) Gomes, minister of Harvard’s Memorial Church, wrote Fighting for the Bible, a book that made him one of the most highly paid openly gay authors in the United States. At the inaugurations of both Presidents Reagan and Bush, he delivered benedictions.

Gomme, George Lawrence [Sir] (1853—1916) A folklorist, Gomme was one of the chief authorities on the subject and founded the Folklore Society. He was knighted in 1911 and in 1916 became president of the Anthropological Section of the British Association. Gomme was a rationalist. {RAT; RE}

Gompers, Sophia Julian (1833?—1920) Gompers, the wife of the American labor leader—Samuel Gompers, 1850-1924—who helped found the American Federation of Labor in 1886, was a member of Charles Francis Potter’s New York Humanist Society. {Humanist Newsletter, November-December 1953}

Gomperz, Heinrich (1873—1942) An Austrian philosopher, Gomperz taught philosophy at Berne University in 1900 and at Vienna University in 1905. In his philosophical works, he expounds an idealistic monism, similar to that of Avenarius. {RAT}

Gomperz, Theodor (1832—1912) Gomperz was an Austrian philosopher. His Greek Thinkers (1901—1912) gave him a European reputation and was candid in dealing with the skepticism of the Greek philosophers. Gomperz was a friend of J. S. Mill and edited the German translation of Mill’s works. {JMRH; RE}

Goncourt, Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de (1822—1896) Goncourt, Jules Alfred Huot (1830—1870) The Goncourt brothers, so closely associated in art and literature that everyone termed them les deux Goncourts, were art critics and historians of art, unsuccessful dramatists, promoters of Japanese art, and, in collaboration, authors of well-known novels of the naturalist school such as Soeur Philomène (1861) and Mme. Gervaisais (1869). Their Journals des Goncourt (9 volumes, 1887—1896) described Parisian society over a period of forty years. After Jules’s death Edmond provided for the founding of the Goncourt Academy (which was officially recognized in 1903). It awards the annual Goncourt Prize for fiction. According to Robertson, both were rationalists; McCabe calls both atheists. In a collection of epigrams (Idées et sensations) the two Goncourts define religion as “part of a woman’s sex”; supernatural religion as “wine without grapes”; and life as “the unfruct of an aggregation of molecules.” {CE; JM; JMR; RAT; RE}

Gonsalves, Howard (20th Century) Gonsalves is president of the Humanist Society of Berkeley (AHA). (See entry for California Atheists, Humanists.) {FD}

Gooch, G(eorge) P(eabody) (1873—1968) Gooch, in a foreword to John A. Hobson’s Rationalism and Humanism, wrote, “Rationalism . . . is an attitude rather than a creed—a refusal to accept beliefs, conventions, and institutions merely because we find them in possession of the field. The progress of mankind is mainly due to the eager, inquiring, critical, inventive spirit, ceaselessly feeling its way towards a richer and more intelligent life.” Gooch was one of the first English writers on German 18th-century history. His History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (1913, 1946) has been termed one of the most valuable books of modern historiography. From 1906 to 1910, Gooch was a Liberal member of Parliament. {CE}

GOOD For many secularists, “God” is simply a mis-spelling of Good. Good for others can be defined as the opposite of bad; and conforming “to the moral order of the universe” can be the majority’s idea of goodness. For example: “He was a good man” uttered at his funeral; “This is a good painting” uttered by an auctioneer; and “Heroin is good stuff” uttered by an addict—all imply differing shades of morality. Similarly, Jeremy Bentham, John Dewey, and G. E. Moore have differing views as to what constitutes good and goodness. (Their differences are detailed in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3.) “Whereas the Christian church connects the power for goodness with one name in the world’s history,” John H. Dietrich wrote, “humanism recognizes that goodness springs from many sources, so that its formula of worship would base itself, not upon the name of Jesus or Buddha [Siddhartha] or Mohammed alone, but would express reverence for the divergent forces of the universal good.” Bertrand Russell, in What I Believe (1925), wrote, “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” Upon this, he elaborated: “To live the good life in the fullest sense a man must have a good education, friends, love, children (if he desires them), a sufficient income to keep him from want and grave anxiety, good health, and work which is not uninteresting. All these things, in varying degree, depend upon the community, and are helped or hindered by political events. The good life must be lived in a good society and is not fully possible otherwise.” For the Tarahumara Indians in northern Mexico, good and evil are unimportant concepts. Instead, their world is one in which there is only that which is useful. Romayne Wheeler, a concert pianist who lives with them, reported that when he extolled the fiery sunset that raged across the western sky, the Tarahumara told him there was nothing beautiful about it because it meant there would be no rain. {Anthony DePalma, “Creel Journal,” The New York Times, 19 December 1995}

GOOD FRIDAY Good Friday has no relevance for freethinkers, except that Iowa farmers consider it a good time to plant potatoes The Friday before Easter Sunday is commemorated as the Crucifixion of Jesus. (See entry for Humanist Holidays.)

GOOD LIFE “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge,” wrote Bertrand Russell. The sentiment has become the motto of the Bertrand Russell Society. (See entry for Industrialism, which includes his indictment.)

Goodell, N. D. (19th Century) Goodell was a pioneer freethinker of Sacramento, California, a “Forty-niner” who took three months to travel over the vast plains in order to search for gold. An architect, he erected many buildings in the Sacramento area. Goodell was early drawn into the Universalist church, and he became a radical freethinker. He was vice-president of the California Liberal Union. {PUT}

Goodheart, Lawrence B. (1945— ) Goodheart is author of Abolitionist, Actuary, Atheist: Elizur Wright and the Reform Impulse (1990).

Goodman, Barbara [Dame] (20th Century) Goodman, an Auckland City Councillor and convenor of the Campaign for Tolerance in 1985-1986, is an honorary associate of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists.

Goodman, Saul (20th Century) Goodman is author of The Faith of Secular Jews. A Yiddishist, he holds that Jewish secularism is a lineal descendant of the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) and that it is viable for committed Jewish humanists.

Goodsell, Willystine: See entry for Ancient Humanism.

Goodwin, Joan W. (20th Century) A Unitarian, Goodwin wrote The Remarkable Mrs. Ripley: The Life of Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (1998). The work includes details about the transcendental movement.

Gopal, Kamal G. (20th Century) Gopal is a National Council member of the Indian Rationalist Association and is managing editor of Modern Freethinker.

Gora (Goparaju Rama-chandra Rao) (1902—1975) Editor of The Atheist and founder and head of the Atheist Center in Vijayawada, India, Gora developed a social, political, and economic program there. He fought not only superstition but also the system of castes. He has written, “Faith is an expression of the slave mentality” and “The essence of atheism is freedom of man. . . . Its objective is equality, its method sincerity, its instrument political action, its motor moral freedom.” He is included by Jose M. F. Santana in the Swedish Uskonnottomien Kalenteri (The Non-Believer’s Calendar, 1983). According to Deodhekar, “The reforms Gora fought for, such as the abolition of the caste system, with its inhumane system of untouchability, were also championed by theists such as Gandhi. But Gora’s challenge was more fundamental. The root cause of social ills for Gora was the belief in God, which implied subordination of man to the divine will or karma or fate. He fearlessly and persistently demanded the uprooting of this unfounded belief, thus restoring self-confidence and free will to men and women.” In 1990, on its Golden Jubilee, the Atheist Centre was visited by a number of foreign dignitaries—from England there were Barbara Smoker, President of the National Secular Society; Dr. Harry Stopes-Roe, former Chairman of the British Humanist Association; Eric Stockton, Editor of the Scottish Humanist; and Jim Herrick. The celebration was presided over by Prof. Sir Hermann Bondi, President of the Rationalist Press Association. Said Bondi, “The Atheist Centre is an example which humanists throughout the world can quote from morn to night to demonstrate that our attitude can produce beneficial results. It’s the best known example in the world of what unbelief can do for mankind.” (New Humanist, May, 1990). Gora was a founding member of the Indian Rationalist Association. (See entries for Ramendra and for G. Vijayam.) {EU, Govind N. Deodhekar; FUK; HNS2; PK}

Gora, Saraswati (1912— ) Gora, with her husband, founded the Atheist Centre in Vijayawada, India. At a November 1992 conference on social progress and women, she and her husband were described as “champions of human equality and human liberation” who “worked vigorously for the development of women as equal partners in progress.” At the 1996 Fourth World Atheist Conference, she stated that “Human welfare is of paramount importance for us. Atheism is universal, transcending all boundaries. It is human centered. It aims for all round development of the personality. Human freedom and human dignity must be achieved. . . . Atheism is not an armchair philosophy or mere criticism of god or religion. It is a way of life to increase the moral freedom of the individual. Atheism is comprehensive in its approach and outlook.” In 1997 in Bombay, she was awarded the Jankidevi Award for her work in behalf of socio-economic change in rural India. In 1998 she was awarded by the Telugu University of Hyderabad the Kaviraju Tripuraneni Ramaswami Chowdary Award for the promotion of rationalism. {The Atheist, February 1997; New Humanist, February 1996}

Gorani, Guiseppe [Count] (1740—1819) Gorani, an Italian count, was an intimate and freethinking friend of Beccaria, d’Holbach, and Diderot. He wrote a treatise on Despotism (1770), defended the French Revolution, and was made a French citizen. He died, however, in Switzerland. {BDF; RAT; RE}

Göransson, Mikael (1942— ) In 1995, Göransson was elected President of Sweden’s Human-Etiska Forbundet. He worked during his presidency to arrange a course for officiants of civil funerals. Swedish humanists have worked with Norwegian humanists for freedom of thought and religion in school. Göransson, who owns a company named MIGÖR!AB, explains that “Gör!” means “do,” that he tries to bring theory and practice together in such a way that people “learn by doing.” E-mail: <mikael.goransson@migor.se>. {International Humanist News, April 1996}

Gorbachev, Mikhail S. [President of the USSR] (1931— ) When President of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev was asked by Peter Jennings of ABC News (6 Sep 91) about his personal religious beliefs, to which he responded, “I am an atheist. But I (and I’ve never concealed this) I respect the feelings and the religious beliefs of each citizen, of each person. This is a question of personal sovereignty, and we have done a good deal so as to, in a legislative sense, guarantee each person the right to call himself what he wants, to allow each person to select his own religion. And I wanted—but I did feel it necessary to add that I personally am an atheist.” (The NY Times, 7 September 1991) (In the same interview, Boris Yeltsin said personally he is superstitious and sometimes goes to church services “because during the service there’s a kind of internal feeling of moral cleansing, as it were.”) According to Svetozar Stojanovic, a Yugoslavian professor who is in the International Academy of Humanism, Gorbachev inadvertently became the great liquidator of communism. “He didn’t want nor did he plan it. . . . He tried only to reform communism but at the decisive moments he didn’t want to try to save it by force.” Stojanovic terms Gorbachev, whose mother was Christian, a Marxist humanist. Inasmuch as Gorbachev once wrote a foreword for a Siloist publication, secular humanists muse as to whether he knew about Siloism or whether he approved of that group’s interest in “green” and “humanism.” The concensus within the secular humanist organization is that he did not. In Free Inquiry (Winter 1997—1998), Gorbachev wrote about humanism:

I believe strongly that the humanistic worldview of regarding humanity as one’s main reference point, main goal, and highest value is inherent in human nature. On the other hand, we have to admit that human nature is not one-dimensional. Coupled with the good, the humane, is the opposite. We have all come across ideas and acts that are very remote from humanism. It is conditions and social relations in which humans find themselves that are partly responsible for that. But in spite of that, we could say that antihumanism contradicts the essence of Homo sapiens. . . . The experience of perestroika was multifacted, and here I would like to single out two aspects. One is that humanistic reforms are possible even in a society that is affected, even deeply, by totalitarianism. Such reforms are recognized and supported by society and people. If we consistently abide by humanistic principles, if we do not deviate from the moral approach, we can achieve very much. And perestroika achieved very much indeed—above all, the liquidation of totalitarianism and the establishment of democratic principles in our country. Naturally, it was impossible to achieve everything we expected and strived for. The second aspect of the perestroika experience is that the authentic humanistic, democratic transformation of society is not a simple task. One collides with the forces of the past. Moreover, Russian society does not have a tradition favoring such a transformation. Then there are the complexities of the reform itself. All this holds true especially for our own experiment, and in a country that had lived many years under an antihumanistic regime. But I believe that establishing authentic humanistic values even in democratic societies is not an easy task—the deficit of humanism is felt everywhere. . . .Humanism cannot be reduced to ideas and declarations of values. Above all else humanism means activism. In the name of humanity. This is my conviction.

Some question if Gorbachev has changed his thinking. At the end of a November 1996 interview on CSPAN’s “Booknotes,” he said, “I don’t know how many years God will be giving me [or] what his plans are.” Others say he was simply “speaking down” to hoi polloi. Raisa Gorbachev (1932-1999), his wife who died of leukemia, like her husband was a freethinker. The daughter of a railway engineer, she attended the University of Moscow and met her husband while studying philosophy. Her doctoral disseration was entitled The Emergence of New Characteristics in the Daily Life of Collective Farm Peasantry.” Until her husband became General Secretary of the Communist Party, she taught philosophy at Moscow University. {CA; E; Free Inquiry, Summer 1996}

Gordin, Harry Mann (20th Century) Gordin, a freethinker, wrote Science, Truth, Religion, and Ethics as Foundations of a Rational Philosophy of Life (1924). {GS}

Gordon, A. R. Jr. (20th Century) Gordon, who describes himself as an “atheistic humanist,” is an oceanographer. A retired Air Force colonel, he has written freethought materials in Freethought Today.

Gordon, Adam Lindsay (1833—1870) Gordon was an Australian poet. In 1865 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of South Australia. His rationalism is shown in works such as Sea Spray and Smoke and Bush Ballads. {RAT; RE}

Gordon, Alexander (1692?—1754?) The Vatican in 1733 prohibited the reading of Gordon’s The Lives of Pope Alexander VI and His Son Caesar Borgia, Comprehending the Wars in the Reigns of Charles VIII and Lewis XII, Kings of France, and the Chief Transactions and Revolutions in Italy, from 1492 to 1506, with an Appendix of Original Pieces. A secretary of the Society of Antiquarians of the Egyptian Society, he once undertook to solve the mysteries of hieroglyphics and to illustrate “all the Egyptian mummies in England.” Because of his business failures, he moved to South Carolina in 1741 as secretary to the newly appointed governor of the province, James Glenn. {ILP}

Gordon, Ann (20th Century) A freethinker, Gordon in 1995 at Rutgers University had as a project the editing of the papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Freethought History #9, 1994}

Gordon, Eleanor Elizabeth (1852—1942) A close friend and associate of Mary Safford, the leader of the “Iowa Band” of “Iowa Sisterhood,” Gordon was committed to liberal religious values and to the cause of fuller women’s rights. She was an assistant minister of the Unitarian Church, Sioux City, Iowa (1885—1889), and minister from 1889 to 1896. Also, she was a minister in Iowa City, Burlington, and Des Moines as well as in Fargo, North Dakota, and Orlando, Florida. {U&U}

Gordon, Gene (20th Century) Gordon is author of “Cyrano de Bergerac: The Man Who Thumbed His Nose at God,” in Free Inquiry (Fall, 1991).

Gordon, Harold N. (20th Century) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Gordon was a vice president of the American Ethical Union. {HM2}

Gordon, Henry(20th Century) Gordon, a columnist for The Toronto Sun, has entertained many humanist events with his professional magic acts.

Gordon, Jesse (Died 1993) Gordon was a leader of the Humanist Society of Metropolitan New York, a chapter of the American Humanist Association, from 1974 to 1993. He also had been on the editorial board of The Humanist. {FD}

Gordon, Rusty (20th Century) Gordon is treasurer and membership chairperson of Humanists of the Palm Beaches in Florida.

Gordon, Sol (1923—	) 

When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Gordon was a professor at Syracuse University. He now is professor emeritus of child and family studies there. With his wife, Judith, he has written You Would If You Loved Me (1978), Did the Sun Shine Before You Were Born?: A Sex Education Primer (1992), and Girls Are Girls and Boys Are Boys: So What’s the Difference? (1991). The books encourage six-year-olds to teenagers to understand sexual differences and relate his findings that “young people who are knowledgeable about their sexuality are more likely to delay their first sexual experience. Knowledge isn’t harmful; [yet] virtually all opposition in this country to sex education is based upon the supposition that knowledge is harmful.” In 1990, Gordon received the American Humanist Association’s Humanist Distinguished Service Award. {HM2; HNS2}

Gordon, Thomas (c. 1684—1750) A Scottish deist and political reformer, Gordon wrote a series of papers against the clergy in London, which D’Holbach translated into French. Walpole made him First Commissioner of the Wine Licenses. He translated Tacitus, Sallust, and Cicero. He was amanuensis to Trenchard, with whom he published Cato’s Letters and a periodical entitled The Independent Whig, which he continued some years after Trenchard’s death. Gordon married Trenchard’s widow. {BDF; RAT; RE}

Gordon, William (Bill) (1925— ) Gordon, a sailor during World War II, survived an attack from the Japanese while on an aircraft carrier during which four hundred were killed. When he observed people thanking God for being saved, he told fellow Ohio atheists, his reaction was “God damn you God for killing them.” Gordon is a radio personality who is active with the Free Inquirers of Northeastern Ohio. {FINO Newsletter, August 1997}

Gore, Albert Jr. (1948- ) Gore, the Vice President of the United States commencing in 1993, is a Baptist who believes in Heaven and in God.

Gore, Thomas Pryor [Senator] (1870—1949) Gore, who was Gore Vidal’s grandfather, was blind from ten years old. First the Populist Party’s ablest and best known stump speech-maker, he then became a Democrat. A friend of Clarence Darrow, Gore backed the Indians against the oil interests in Oklahoma, where he was senator. His grandson has written, “The odds are very much against losing an eye in an accident, but to lose two eyes in two separate accidents is positively Lloydsian.” Vidal spent much of his youth reading to his grandfather, who, as shown in Palimpsest (1995), was a major influence in his life. The Senator, such an outstanding speaker that he was known as the “Blind Orator,” was once asked by a group of Baptist ministers to become a minister, for which he would receive an excellent salary and a fine house. When he declined, saying he did not believe in God, the ministers shot back, “Come now, Mr. Gore, that’s not the proposition we made you.”

Gorham, Charles Turner (20th Century) Gorham is a freethinker and rationalist who wrote, in addition to over a dozen books and pamphlets, The Gospel of Rationalism (1949). {FUK; FUS; RAT}

Gornik, David J. (20th Century) Comedy is a soothing way to get beyond the initial sting of attacking core values, Gornik (Box WWH, 36335 Reading Avenue, Willoughby, Ohio 44094) believes. Therefore he has written lyrics that espouse the compelling virtues of humanism and has put them to the tune of classic Christmas carols. Samples: • We Wish You a Merry Solstice • Arrest Ye Merry Gentlemen • Deck the Halls with Calls of Folly • Away with the Deranger • Come All Ye Mournful {Free Inquiry, Spring 1999}

Gorky, Maxim (pseudonym of Alexei Maximovitch Peshkov) (1868—1936) A Russian novelist, Gorky “showed distinct Humanist leanings” in his work, according to Corliss Lamont. Maxim (or Maksim) Gorky was a pseudonym of Maximovich Pyeshov Aleksey. Gorky once wrote, “This ‘search for God’ business must be forbidden for a time—it is a perfectly useless occupation.” The father of Soviet literature, he founded the literary doctrine of socialist realism, now completely passé. It has never been established which anti-Soviet group, if any, assassinated him by poisoning his food. Lenin used to lecture Gorky, “All worship of a divinity is necrolatry [worship of the dead]. . . . Any religious idea, any idea of any god at all, even any flirting with a divinity is the most inexpressible . . . [and] dangerous foulness, the most hideous ‘infection.’ ” Ironically, Gorky became known as a foggy God-builder.” Robertson, however, calls him “an absolute Naturalist,” and McCabe says Gorky was contemptuous of all religion. In Culture and the People (1939), Gorki wrote, “Paradise is one of the crass fictions invented by high-priests and fathers of the Church, a fiction whose purpose it is to requite the hellish torments of people on earth with the soap-bubble of a hope of peace in another place.” Many have speculated that Gorky was murdered, that while he was under medical treatment he was killed by a group known as “The Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites.” {CE; CL; EU, Jerry G. Pankhurst, Rolf H. W. Theen, Hugh McLean; JM; JMR; PA; RAT; RE; TRI; TYD}

Gorlaeus, David (17th Century) Gorlaeus was a Dutch philosopher accused of being an atheist on account of his speculations in a work published after his death, Exercitations Philosophicae (1620). {BDF}

Gorman, Joe (20th Century) Gorman is active with the Humanists of the Pomona Valley (AHA). (See entry for California Atheists, Humanists.) {FD}

Goron, Sol (20th Century) Goron, who signed Humanist Manifesto 2000, is an emeritus professor of Syracuse University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Gorski, Tim (20th Century) Gorski, who also writes under the name of Timotheus, is editor of The Freethought Observer (Box 202447, Arlington, Texas 76006), which commenced in 1994. A physician, he was one of the founders of the North Texas Church of Freethought. “Secular humanists do not deny that religious beliefs play a role in people’s lives,” he has written. “Yet it was the insight of the Founding Fathers, who represented all points on the religious spectrum, that the government of a civil society ought to be neutral and aloof on religious matters, as the First Amendment mandates.” Gorski’s “Alternative Medicine Looks a Lot Like Religion” in Secular Nation (April-June 1998) points out homeopathy’s and acupuncture’s limitations. He is President of the Dallas/Fort Worth Area Council Against Health Fraud, Pastoral Director of the North Texas Church of Freethought, a supporter of Internet Infidels, a director of the Atheist Alliance Board, and a representative of the Metroplex Atheists. {The New York Times, 9 March 1996}

Gortner, Marjoe (1944— ) When four years old in 1949, Gortner performed his first marriage, having been ordained as a minister in the Church of the Old Time Faith. In the 1970s, however, he visited the American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas, reporting that he had abandoned all religious ideas. Steven Gaines wrote a book about Gortner’s life, Marjoe (1973, which was turned into an Academy Award Winning documentary film.

Gorton, Ron (20th Century) In Britain, Gorton is active with the Reigate and Dorking Humanist Group.

Gorton, Samuel (1592—1677) Gorton, a pioneer of Christian Universalism, was driven out of Massachusetts because of his political and religious “radicalism.”

Goss, C. W. F. (20th Century) Goss wrote A Descriptive Bibliography of the Writings of George Jacob Holyoake (1908). {FUK; FUS}

Goss, Richard Johnson (1925—1996) Goss, emeritus professor of biology at Brown University, in Freethought Today (October, 1992) wrote about a study in which 293 patients were divided into two groups, 192 of whom were to be the object of prayers seeking divine intercession on their behalf and the other 201 were not specifically to be prayed for. The study, “Positive therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care unit population” (Southern Medical Journal 81:826-829), concluded that intercessory prayers to the Judeo-Christian God did exert a positive effect on the recovery of cardiac patients. Finding the study quite unscientific, Goss retorted, “If my doctor prays for my recovery, I would consider a malpractice suit.” He also questioned “what kind of benevolent God would ignore the plight of innocent controls.” As for the human soul, Goss noted that clergymen, even those who accept evolution, cannot seem to explain how primates without souls became people “when a pair of ape parents begat a human baby.” An embryologist, Goss has devoted his professional career to the study of the regeneration of animal appendages and the regulation of organ and tissue growth. He wrote The Physiology of Growth (1978), Deer Antlers: Regeneration, Function, and Evolution (1983), and Regulation of Organ and Tissue Growth (1972). In “God and the Patent Office” (Free Inquiry, Fall 1995), Goss complained that “Representatives of all major religious denominations have now officially staked their claim to the human genome, the sum total of all genes that define what we are.” He argued that it is highly debatable whether or not human genes should ever be patentable.

Gotesky, Rubin (Born 1905) A teacher in the department of philosophy at the University of Georgia, Gotesky was an associate editor in the 1950s of The Humanist. {HNS}

Gott, J. W. (1866—1923) Gott, who was imprisoned for blasphemy no less than four times between 1911 and 1922, founded the monthly Truthseeker in 1894. A businessman in the clothing trade, he was treasurer of the British Secular League in 1903. George William Foote was concerned that Gott would bring disrepute to the freethought movement because of his egotism, but others thought he carried on a commendable attack upon Christianity. {EU, Victor E. Neuburg; FUK; RSR}

Gottesman, Rick (20th Century) Gottesman is a newsletter editor for the Capital District Humanist Society in Scotia, PO Box 2148, New York 12302. Gottheil, Elias (19th Century) A London freethinker, Gottheil was secretary of the East London Secular Society. He also was editor of the Secularist (1856). {VI}

Gottlieb, Sheldon Fred(1932— ) “I am Jewish—a humanistic skeptic if not outright atheist, but still a Jew,” declared Gottlieb, professor of biological sciences at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. He added, “I respect—and selectively practice—many aspects of Jewish ritual, not because of their deistic mandates, but because of their great humanistic and ethical values.” Like others into “humanistic Judaism,” Gottlieb finds Judaism is in harmony with the finest humanist traditions, that it emphasizes deeds, not faith. For him, “Judaism is unlike other religiously based belief systems in that Jews may relinquish the deistic aspects of the religion and still consider themselves to be culturally and ethnically Jewish. Also, rational rejection must be distinguished from self-hate or anti-Semitic renunciation of the deistic aspects of Judaism.” His Who’s Who listing is “Do not permit nonsense, ignorance, mythology, superstition, irrationality, fear, and hate to spread.” A fearless defender of Darwin in the Bible Belt, Gottlieb has organized conferences dealing with the implications of evolution. {Free Inquiry, Fall 1993}

Gottlieb, Theodore (11 Nov 1906 - 5 Apr 2001) Brother Theodore scared hundreds of Greenwich Village nightclubbers for nearly two decades with his one-man shows about life, death, and broccoli. With his sonorous, German-accented voice, he would flirt with the meaning of life or, just as likely, with the woman sitting in the front row. He called his act stand-up tragedy, and woe be unto the onlooker Gottlieb would approach and demand, “What are you laughing at!” or “Why aren’t you laughing!” “I’ve gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed into me,” he would say, “and neither of us liked what we saw.” Or, “It’s my sincere wish that after my death, my head be severed and replaced with a bunch of broccoli. It’s the artist in me.” The artist was born to great wealth in Germany, however, for his father published fifty-two fashion magazines that might have been worth $80 million, he told friends. When Hitler came to power, he and his family fled to Vienna, where he was taken to Dachau on his thirty-second birthday and released only when he signed over the family’s great fortune for a single mark. At the death camp, according to Who’s Who in Comedy, he saw men eaten alive by dogs while Nazi guards laughed. Eight members of his family, including his parents and grandmother, died in the Holocaust. According to Douglas Martin, Einstein, said by some of Mr. Gottlieb’s friends to have been his mother’s lover, helped him get to the United States from Switzerland, which deported him because he was a chess hustler. But once in America, he found himself working as a janitor at Stanford University, where he managed to defeat thirty professors at chess . . . simultaneously. Later, he worked as a dockworker in San Francisco, where he performed a one-man show during which he read poems by Poe. In 1946, he had a bit part in Orson Welles’s film, The Stranger, leaving for New York after Welles appeared to show a romantic interest in his young wife. In New York, he worked at a Schrafft’s restaurant while perfecting his monologue at small Bohemian clubs in Greenwich Village. The Village Voice once described him as “a rabble-rouser without a cause—unless his cause is to promote the power of negative thinking and the glorification of anguish and despair.” Certainly, he was eccentric, once campaigning to get people to give up two-legged locomotion in favor of using all four limbs: “Down, I say, down on all fours, and you’ll have everything you want, be everything you want to be. Quadrupedism is the key to every lock, the power that heals, the real McCoy.” With the arrival of television, Brother Theodore made three dozen appearances with Merv Griffin as well as many with Steve Allen. After fading to cult popularity in the 1970’s, he emerged as one of David Letterman’s regular guests in the 1980s. After one performance, he told the present author that he was non- but not anti-religious, then railed at the indecency of having been asked such a stupid question about his philosophic outlook. People in the audience sensed Gottlieb’s distaste for humanity, but to the present author he denied such, saying it was part of his character always to see the best as well as the worst sides of any subject. “If I die, best wishes for the rest of your life,” he was quoted as having told friends following a 1990 operation to correct breathing problems caused by having his nose broken in Dachau. “If I don’t . . . I’ll phone you.” {Douglas Martin, The New York Times, 6 Apr 2001; WAS, an interview in the 1950s and again in 1972 or 1973}

Gottschalk, Charles (20th Century) Gottschalk was President of the Humanist Quest of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, being succeeded in 1996 by Wendell J. Harris. {Freethought Observer, November-December 1996}

Goud, J. D. (20th Century) Dr. Goud, a professor of zoology, is an active member of the Andhra Pradesh Rationalists Association in India.

Goueffic, Louise (20th Century) In Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Goueffic since 1983 has edited Atheism in Canada.

Gould, Frederick James (1855—1938) Gould was a British Ethical Culture leader. He has edited the Leicester Reasoner, and he wrote The Agnostic Island (1891) and Life-Story of A Humanist (1923). After serving as an Ethical Culture leader, he moved from London to run the Leicester Secular Society. Gould claimed to be an agnostic, atheist, ethicist, freethinker, Marxist, positivist, and secularist. His Pioneer of Johnson’s Court (1929) is a history of the Rationalist Press Association from 1899 on. {CL; FUK; HNS; HNS2; RE; RSR}

Gould, Lawrence (20th Century) Gould was on the advisory board of Charles Francis Potter’s First Humanist Society of New York.

Gould, Morton (1913—1995) Gould, a composer of numerous works including “Cowboy Rhapsody,” “Lincoln Legend,” and “American Salute,” headed the American Society of Composers, Authors, & Publishers (ASCAP) from 1986 to 1994. Asked by the present author for his views of humanism, Gould responded:

I think I fit in No. 1 (the lexicographic term, a devotion to human interests, and a study of the humanities) in the sense of a concern for human beings and the human condition, not necessarily always with love, but hopefully always with compassion.

{Bernard Holland, The New York Times, 22 February 1996; WAS, 4 June 1992}

Gould, Stephen Jay (1941— )

	A Harvard paleontologist, Dr. Gould is a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism. His work on evolution is found in Ever Since Darwin (1977); Hen’s Teeth and Horses’ Toes (1982); Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (1996); and Dinosaur in a Haystack, Reflections in Natural History (1996). In 1972, with Niles Eldredge, Gould proposed an evolutionary theory, of “punctured equilibrium,” described by the Columbia Encyclopedia as “stating that many species may evolve relatively quickly, rather than through a continuous slow accretion of tiny species variations, then persist virtually unchanged for perhaps millions of years. The ‘missing links’ in evolutionary development sought since the time of Charles Darwin may thus not exist, the two hold. Elaboration of these concepts has led to extensive scientific debate.” Eight Little Piggies, Reflections in Natural History (1992) is his sixth in a series of essay collections drawn from “a 208 monthly essay streak” in Natural History.

To Life (December 1988), Gould explained his outlook:

We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a “higher” answer—but none exists.

In a 1993 speech at Columbia University, Gould contended that evolution is really like a big lottery. Natural history, he held, is not inspired by any survival of the fittest, as so many Darwinians hold, but by the survival of the luckiest. He debunks the view that the ascent of humans began with single cell organisms, then moved through slimy fish and reptiles and from hunched hairy beasts to homo sapiens in some progressive and orderly fashion. Rather, he says, evolution is a risky, messy business in which mass extinction can wipe out a highly species and spare other species. “You can be the most beautiful fish that ever swam,” he says. “You can be perfectly equipped to survive. Then, one day the pond you live in dries up, and that’s it, you die, no matter how fit you are.” As proof, in Wonderful Life, he cites an inland sea that covered Western Canada some 570 million years ago in the rocks of what has been called the Burgess Shale. In that sea were creatures which have no existing relatives today, none that fit into existing classes, none whatsoever. “Why did some of the Burgess Shale species perish, while others lived to pass on their lineage to today’s life forms?” He answers, “Nothing about many of the forms that didn’t make it suggests that they were not fit for survival. In fact, many of those that died off were beautiful, elegant, highly successful life forms, challenging the long-held notion that from early life forms, such as those found in the Burgess Shale, we could tell which species would emerge later on.” Therefore, he concludes, evolution is random, not progressive. Survival is just the luck of the draw. In Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist’s Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown (1998), the title tell it all. He tells how the concept of the millennium sifted from some future thousand-year period of righteousness to a specific period in time based on an arbitrary calendar by a sixth-century monk Dionysius Exiguus. He even tells how “millennial” has two n’s but “millenarian” has only one. And he delights in telling that the earth completes its circuit in just over eleven minutes less than 365 days and a quarter, resulting in the calendar’s needing to make up for the mathematical difference. “What hath God wrought?” he asks, sarcastically. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (1999) makes the point that science and religion do not need to be in conflict. However, “many crucial problems in our complex lives find better resolution under the opposite strategy of principles and respectful separation.” Using the Principle of NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria), he shows that creationism is “a distinctively American violationof NOMA,” that it is “political and specific, not religious at all.” E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins have rejected his NOMA thesis. So has Peter B. Denison, who summarized Gould’s thesis as being simply “that there should be no controversy between science and religion.” But “Gould wants to give religion authority over values and morals. Certainly secular philosophers also have much to say on those issues. . . . Gould would be almost right if we can truly separate true religion from superstition and the supernatural. Humanist religions like Ethical Culture can live quite happily with science, no matter how materialistic it is. But even then, when Humanists consider ethical problems they should be willing to use scientific methods of thinking.” At an Arkansas creationism trial, Gould and six other expert witnesses showed, he said, that “‘creation science’ is nothing but a smoke screen, a meaningless and oxymoronic phrase invented as sheep’s clothing for the old wolf of Genesis literalism, already identified in the Epperson case as a partisan theological doctrine, not a scientific concept at all—and clearly in violation of First Amendment guarantees.” Gould has been described as a respected scholar in his field, tropical snails, and one of the most entertaining contemporary writers of popular science. (CA; See “Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism,” The New York Review of Books, 27 June 1997, which delineates his differences with Daniel Dennett. Also see the entry for paleontology, in which a basic Gould theory is questioned.) {CE; E; “Non-Overlapping Magisteria,” Skeptical Inquirer, July-August 1999; Peter Denison, Newsletter of the Humanist Association of Massachusetts, January 2000}

Gould, Theresa (20th Century) When she signed Humanist Manifesto II, Gould was a secretary with the American Ethical Union. {HM2}

Goulder, Michael (20th Century) Selections from Goulder’s writing are included in A World Religions Reader under Secular Humanism.

Gourmont, Rémy de (1858—1915) A French critic, novelist, and leading critical apologist for the symbolists, de Gourmont wrote, “God is not all that exists; he is all that does not exist.” He also declared, “Religions revolve madly around sexual questions.” An atheist, he wrote in Promenades philosophiques that “while religion was always a paganism to the crowd, paganism was almost always the religion of superior minds.” Among his works are Les Chevaux de Diomède (The Horses of Diomedes) (1923); Le Problème du style (1902), a linguistic study; and Promenades littéraires (1904—1928, 7 volumes), a critical collection. {CE; JM; RAT; RE; TYD}

GOUT • Gout, n. A physician’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient. —Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary

Skeletal remains from the second millennium B.C.E. have been found indicating that gout was present at that early age. The condition, a painful swelling of the joints, particularly of the feet and hands, was mentioned by Plato, Seneca, Ovid, and Hippocrates. Lucian in the second century wrote two mock-tragedies, Tragopodagra and Swift-of-Foot, about the condition. Caused by a build-up of uric acid crystals in small blood-vessels and joints, it is avoided by eating sensibly, avoiding rich food, and drinking lots of water. Sufferers have included Helvétius, Gibbon, Benjamin Franklin. Wits with a knowledge of the drinking habits—port, madeira, benedictine—of the members of religious orders often associate them with the condition. {Roy Porter and C. S. Rousseau, Gout: The Patrician Malady [1998]}

Gouvea, Antonio (1505—1565) Gouvea, or Govea, was a Portuguese jurist and poet. Calvin classed him with Dolet, Rabelais, and Des Periers as an atheist and a mocker. Govea wrote in Latin. {BDF}

GOVERNMENT

The late Samuel Edward Finer (1915—1993), an eminent British historian, wrote The History of Government from the Earliest Times (1997). The Economist (18 October 1997) reviewed the three-volume set of 1,776 pages, finding it “simply the best.” In the work, states The Economist, Finer includes the ancient states of Sumer, Egypt, Persia, and Assyria; the classical states of Greece and Rome; the Byzantine and Caliphate empires of the near east; the Han, Tang, and Ming regimes of China; Tokugawa Japan; and the emergence of the “modern” states of Europe and North America. Finer found that since 3200 B. C. E., an infinite variety of governmental forms have appeared. Four important forms he detailed:

  • the “nobility polity,” in which a group of aristocratic families dominate the state to the exclusion of both the monarch (if one exists) and the common people. Such polities, he found, are inherently unstable inasmuch as the aristocratic families usually fight among themselves with one of them coming out on top; however, there was the pure nobility polity in Poland in the late 17th and 18th centuries; and local landowners (pseudo-nobles) were the dominant power in much of 19th-Century Latin America.

  • the “church polity,” in which an organized priesthood comes to exercise state power; e.g., the old papal states under the bishop of Rome and Tibet under the lamas between 1642 and 1949. Because there is no Islamic priesthood in this sense, he argued that true church polities cannot emerge in the Islamic world.

  • the “palace regime,” which is the dominant form of polity during most of recorded history and is often admixed with clerical and noble elements. The supreme decision-making power rests with one individual, the monarch (king, prince, emperor, tyrant, dictator) even though the individual opts to delegate. Examples: Ancient Egypt; the Mesopotamian kingdoms; the Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, and Chinese empires; the absolutist monarchies of 18th-Century Europe.

  • the “forum polity,” which may not be democratic, as in much of post-revolutionary France, the form of a plebiscitary dictatorship. Forum regimes have in common the fact that authority to govern is conferred on the rulers from below, and what the people have given, the people may take away. Accountability is the dominant principle, persuasion rather than force its dominant method. Finer found Athens astonishingly well-run by the standards of its day, and Athenian democracy, having endured for 188 years, was overthrown only by external power.

  • the “nobility polity,” in which a group of aristocratic families dominate the state to the exclusion of both the monarch (if one exists) and the common people. Such polities, he found, are inherently unstable inasmuch as the aristocratic families usually fight among themselves with one of them coming out on top; however, there was the pure nobility polity in Poland in the late 17th and 18th centuries; and local landowners (pseudo-nobles) were the dominant power in much of 19th-Century Latin America.

	According to Finer, the Chinese invented bureaucracy. The Jews invented limited monarchy (because only God was accorded supreme power). The Romans invented checks and balances; and medieval Europe invented parliaments and the idea of representation.

Govett, Frank (19th Century) Govett wrote Pains of Life (1889), a pessimistic reply to Sir J. Lubbock’s Pleasures of Life. Govett entirely rejects the consolations of religion. {BDF}

Govindan (20th Century) Govindan is a leading radical humanist in India. He is well-known as a Malayalee litterateur and is the recipient of the Sahitya Academy Award.

GOY 

Goy is a term used especially by Jews to speak disparagingly about non-Jews:

• . . . sure that any Jew is . . . superior to any goy. —Charles Angoff • . . . time enough for you to eat pork and be a goy. —Charles Angoff • . . . our children won’t fall into the hands of the goyim. —Isaac Metzker

The plural of goy (or goi) is goyim (or goys). The Yiddish word comes from the Hebrew goy, meaning people or nation.

GOYIM: See entry for goy.

Gozdzik, Michael (20th Century) Gozdzik is a Polish Unitarian minister. (See entry for Polish Unitarians.)

GRACE Grace is a theological invention involving the favor, love, and protection of God. According to the New Testament, God’s grace that leads to salvation is a gift. Children, particularly at summer camps, offer their understanding of grace to the kitchen staff:

Rub-a-dub-dub, Thanks for the grub.

Humanists refer to the Graces of Greek and Roman mythology, three sister goddesses (Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia), who dispense charm and beauty. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary, jokingly defined them as “three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to be blowing. {DCL}

Grady, Charles Wesley (20th Century) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Grady was a minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Arlington, Maine. {HM2}

Graff, E. J. (20th Century) The author of What Is Marriage For? (1999), Graff describes same-sex marriages from the time of Old Testament Hebrews through medieval Catholic theologians to 19th century Utopians. She has called upon churches to recognize committed partners, to make it clear that if a couple wants to get married the congregation would be delighted to marry them, and to get involved in the local marriage politics, whatever they are. She and her partner, Madeline, had their ceremony and exchanged rings at a friend’s house. “Essentially,” she told World (March-April 1999) when asked if opening up marriage to gay and lesbian couples will lead to the acceptance of polygamy, “same-sex marriage can only happen in a society that considers men and women to be not the same but equal. Polygamy, on the other hand, thrives only in societies where men are in charge and consider their wives part of their property. So philosophically, polygamy and same-sex marriage are completely opposed. One is feminist and one is patriarchal in the root sense of the word.”

Graffin, Greg (20th Century) Graffin, a vocalist in the group called Bad Religion, is a non-theist who believes neither in God nor Hell, as shown by his works: In “Do What You Want” on the album Suffer; I don’t know if the billions will survive, But I’ll believe in God when 1 and 1 are 5. In “God Song” on Against the Grain: Religion is just synthetic frippery Unnecessary in our expanding global culture efficiency. In “Don’t Pray On Me”: I don’t know what stopped Jesus Christ From turning every hungry stone into bread And I don’t remember hearing how Moses reacted When the innocent first-born sons lay dead. Well, I guess God was a lot more demonstrative Back when he flamboyantly parted the sea. Now everybody’s praying. Don’t pray on me. Greg Graffin, Vocalist in group Bad Religion music

Graffin was asked by MAB: Q: Do you even believe in Hell? GG: No. Q: In God? GG: No.

From "Do What You Want", on the album Suffer:

   I don't know if the billions will survive,
   but I'll believe in God when one and one are five.

From "God Song" on Against the Grain:

   Religion is just synthetic frippery
   unnecessary in our expanding global culture efficiency...

and "Operation Rescue" from the same disc:

   If no one believed in fairy tales
   there would be nothing they could do but fail
   yet everywhere we look someone is trying to
   reassure our moral benevolence as a people...

and "Don't Pray On Me":

   I don't know what stopped Jesus Christ
   from turning every hungry stone into bread
   And I don't remember hearing how Moses reacted
   When the innocent first born sons lay dead
   Well I guess God was a lot more demonstrative
   back when he flamboyantly parted the sea
   Now everybody's praying

   Don't pray on me

Contributions by L, DS and Pa.

{CA;E} Graffin, Greg ( ) A vocalist in the musical group known as Bad Religion, Graffin expresses his non-theism quite clearly in his songs.

On Suffer’s “Do What You Want”: I don’t know if the billions will survive, But I’ll believe in God when one and one are five. On Against the Grain’s “God Song”: Religion is just synthetic frippery Unnecessary in our expanding global culture efficiency. On Against the Grain’s “Operation Rescue”: If no one believed in fairy tales There would be nothing they could do but fail; yet everywhere we look someone is trying to Reassure our moral benevolence as a people. And on Against the Grain’s “Don’t Pray on Me”: I don’t know what stopped Jesus Christ from turning every hungry stone into bread, and I don’t remember hearing how Moses reacted when the innocent first-born sons lay dead. Well, I guess God was a lot more demonstrative back when he flamboyantly parted the sea. Now everybody’s praying - Don’t pray on me.

Asked by an interviewer online if he believed in God or in Hell, he succinctly replied, “No. No.” {CA}

Graham, Allen D. (19th Century)

A freethinker, Graham wrote On Faith (1872) and Cruelty and Christianity” (1874). {GS}

Graham, Heather (29 Jan 1970 - ) Called a bombshell, a leggy blond actress, and a sexy star, Graham has a large following and a length résumé. She played the part of Felicity Shagwell in the Austin Power film, The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999). She has been in numbers of other films: Alien Love Triangle (1999); Bowfinger’s Big Thing (1999); Committed (1999); Kiss and Tell (1999); Lost in Space (1998); Scream 2 (1997); Boogie Nights (1997); Kiss and Tell (TV, 1997); Two Girls and a Guy (1997); Swingers (1996); Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story (1996); Desert Winds (1995); Terrified (1995); Don’t Do It Again (1994); Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994); Toughguy (1994); The Ballad of Little Jo (1993); Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993); and Six Degrees of Separation (1993, playing the part of Elizabeth). She made a guest appearance in “Resurrection” in the telecast The Outer Limits (1995). Graham is the daughter of a children’s book author, who urged her to become a nun, and an ex-FBI agent. She is quoted as saying she has not spoken to her parents in six years, despite their trying to make contact, because they objected to the sex in some of her films. In Talk (February 2001), she ripped into the Catholic Church as being a group of close-minded men who believe a woman’s sexuality is evil. “Organized religion, in my experience, has been destructive. Why do I have to do what all these men are saying? Why is a woman’s sexuality supposed to be so evil?” From the time she was growing up, the outspoken star who rocketed to fame as a roller-skating nymph in Boogie Nights complained, Catholicism has stigmatized her sexuality, clouding her view of what relationships should be. “I was afraid to put myself on the line. I would always try to go out with someone who liked me more than I liked them. That way if they hurt you, you say, ‘Oh, I was never really into them.’ I wanted someone to pursue me so that I didn’t have to worry about getting rejected,” she explained, adding that she has gotten “braver as I get older.” See the Web: <http://hem.passagen.se/indish/heather.htm.> {Bill Hoffmann, New York Post, 2 Jan 2001}

Graham, Jewel (20th Century) Graham, a social welfare educator and a Unitarian, became President of the World YWCA.

Graham, Lloyd (20th Century) Graham wrote Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975), a work that discusses misconceptions concerning derivations of biblical characters and events.

Graham, William (1839—1911) Graham was an economist who became a professor of jurisprudence at Queen’s College, Belfast. His Creed of Science (1881), a Spencerian work, admits an unknown Power but rejects immortality as “a doctrine begot of men’s presumption.” {RAT}

GRAMMAR • Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction. —Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary

Grams, Phyllis Belle Stevenson (1915—1996) Grams was an intrepid freethinker and activist in Wisconsin. A teacher, she was an early member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and served on its Board of Directors. A tribute to Grams was published by Freethought Today (June-July 1996}.

Grange, John (19th Century) Grange, in the 1890s, was active with J. W. Gott in reviving a Bradford, England, secular group. He wrote Secularism (c. 1910). {FUK; RSR}

Grant Duff, Mountstuart Elphinstone [Sir] (1881—1886) The Right Honourable Grant Duff was M.P. for Elgin Burghs (1857—1881), Under-Secretary for India (1868—1874), and Governor of Madras. In 1901 he was admitted to the Privy Council. Grant Duff was an admirer of Renan and agreed with him that it is “impossible to control the human intellect by creeds or (1829—1906) articles of any sort or kind.“ He was a theist.

Grant, David (20th Century) Grant, a freethinker, wrote A Worker Looks at Jesus (1938). {GS}

Grant, Dorothy Sweet (1905— ) For half her lifetime, Grant, a nonagenarian, has been active in Unitarian Universalist activities. She was one of four who organized the Cedar Falls, Iowa, Unitarian Fellowship in 1950, serving in several offices of that Black Hawk County organization and being its Director of Religious Education for nine years. During the 1950s, she organized seventeen new Fellowships and became the chairperson for the ninety-seven other Fellowships in the Midwest district. In 1985 and in 1986, she was named the Prairie Star District’s “Unsung Unitarian Universalist.” Grant has written a number of works: Symbols and Golden Rules (1960); Universalism in Iowa: 1830—1963, Symbols and Golden Rules of World Religions, a manual for religious education directors (1960); Record of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Black Hawk County 1962—1980; Excerpts from the Histories of Churches, Fellowships, Societies in the Prairie Star Unitarian Universalist District (1987); Thumb Nail Histories of Churches, Fellowships, Societies in the Prairie Star Unitarian Universalist District (1987); A Religious Journey (1992); A Lay-Woman’s Unitarian World. (1992); and The Supper Club (1993). In 1994 when she was eighty-nine, she wrote The Unitarian Universalist Society of Black Hawk County, a 131-year history (1863—1994) of the group and which includes a descriptive inventory of its acquisitions. A Lay-Woman’s Unitarian World. (1992) is autobiographical, telling of her father—a streetcar conductor in Minneapolis who was half-Swedish and half-Yankee and not into churchgoing—and her mother, a Norwegian immigrant. Although as a youth she had been a Presbyterian, Grant and her mother became interested in the views of Dr. John Dietrich, who spoke at the Shubert Theater in Minneapolis, and she enjoyed the lectures in such “sacrilegious” surroundings, the silent meditation rather than a vocal prayer, the absence of collecting money during the service, and the fact that printed leaflets of previous sermons were sold in the lobby, all characteristics of a different kind of religion and one which she joined and never left. At a Halloween dance in a young adult meeting of the Plymouth Congregational Church, she met Martin Grant, a botany grad student at the University of Minnesota. His father was a Congregational minister in Indiana. By Valentine’s day the two were engaged, attended Unitarian services, and on one occasion listened to a Unitarian-sponsored lecture by Margaret Sanger “on the taboo subject of birth control.” The work tells how with John Cowley, another professor at the University of Northern Iowa where both taught, a Humanist Club was formed at which the most active student was Warren Allen Smith and at which spoke the Rev. Kenneth Patton from Boston, the Rev. Edwin Wilson from Antioch, Ohio, and the Rev. Grant Butler from Des Moines. That club was to become the Cedar Falls Unitarian Fellowship. For thirty-seven years of their marriage, she was secretary and assistant for Martin L. Grant. The first year of their marriage was spent in Tahiti, where she was initiated into doing botanical work for Martin. When they were in Hawaii (1934), she continued working for him, in the Bishop Museum. Later, when he worked for the government in Colombia during the war, she continued doing secretarial and botanical work. When they lived in Iran for two years while Martin taught at Pahlavi University, she went on all the field trips as log-keeper and assistant in the drying process of the ten thousand plants they collected. In Shiraz, she mounted one complete set of two thousand plants to give to Pahlavi, then made a similar set for the University of Northern Iowa. After thirty-seven years of marriage, she divorced Martin, charging cruelty. At the age of sixty-two, needing to earn her own living, she became a classroom teacher at Head Start and, after a semester at the University of Nebraska, was made the Supervisor of Education for the Head Start program in Black Hawk and Buchanan counties, in charge of fifty adults and three hundred children. After four years, she did Early Childhood Education research for the next four years. Part-time for fifteen years, she worked for the Museum of the University of Northern Iowa. At the age of seventy, she resigned from Home Start and, at 80, retired from the Museum. Grant in 1996 finished My Norwegian Heritage, a story principally about her mother who was born in Norway. Martin and Dorothy had three children—Gordon, Barbara Jean, and Lois—all of whom earned doctorates in astronomy, nursing, and anthropology, respectively. Although the Grants were both humanists, once playing host when Edwin H. Wilson visited the University of Northern Iowa campus, friends have suggested that Martin was the theoretical, Dorothy the applied humanist. (See entry for Martin L. Grant.)

Grant, Gregory O. (20th Century) When he signed the Humanist Manifesto II, Grant was a captain in the United States Air Force. {HM2}

Grant, Kerr [Sir] (1878—1967) 

Grant, who was secretary of the Victoria Rationalist Association of Victoria about 1906, was an Australian who taught physics at the University of Adelaide. He co-invented the Steele-Grant micro-balance, which was sensitive to one-millionth of a milligram. Although brought up a Presbyterian, Grant described himself as a “tolerant agnostic with a strong sense of humour.” {RAT; SWW}

Grant, Martin L. (1907—1968) Grant was the son of an Indiana Congregationalist minister. While a professor of biology at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Grant in 1948 co-sponsored with John Cowley, a professor of literature, a Humanist Club. The school’s 1948 yearbook, Old Gold, described it as a “deep thinkers club” with the following aims:

Believing their college training alone does not supply the integration of ideas so necessary in the development of a personal philosophy, the members meet weekly and discuss their own and others’ individual philosophies. Subjects cover all fields, including ethics, aesthetics, determinism, planned economies, social action, and Unitarianism. Although larger campuses have clubs of similar purpose, this is the first of its name on any campus.

In 1930—1931 he had a fellowship to collect the native plants of Tahiti, after which he was expected to write Flora of Tahiti for his University of Minnesota doctorate. The work was never finished. After his death, however, others completed the work. His wife, Dorothy, accompanied him to Tahiti for the first year of his marriage. In 1934, the two went to Hawaii, where they did botanical research in the Herbarium of the Bishop Museum. In 1936, he earned his Ph. D. and became a professor at the University of Northern Iowa. For many summers he taught plant taxonomy at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, Lake Okoboji, Iowa. In 1944 and 1945, he was sent by the government to Colombia to locate Cinchona officinalis, the bark of which was collected by natives and sent to the United States to be made into Quinine for treating the military who contracted malaria in the various war zones. Although a work, Flora of Colombia, was contemplated, it was never finished. From 1963 to 1965, the Grants lived in Shiraz, Iran, where Martin taught at the new Pahlavi University. The duo collected over ten thousand plants. The importance of Grant’s botanical journals has been described by Dorothy S. Grant, F. Raymond Fosberg, and H. M. Smith’s “Partial flora of the Society Islands: Ericaceae to Apocynaceae” in Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 17:i–vii, 1-85 (1974). After thirty-seven years of marriage, the Grants were divorced. He then married a twenty-five year-old but, a month after the divorce, fell, broke his arm, and multiple myaloma (cancer of the bone) was discovered. He died a year later. (See entry for Dorothy S. Grant and for Warren Allen Smith.)

Grant, Robert (19th Century) Grant, who at Edinburgh had instructed Charles Darwin about marine biology, was an outspoken atheist. Inasmuch as Darwin was wary about speaking out about religious issues, Darwin dropped Grant as a close friend, according to Adrian Desmond and James Moore in Darwin (1992).

Grant, Robert (20th Century) Grant is one of the IHEU’s representatives to the United Nations. A humanist counselor, he is author of American Ethics.

Grant, Ulysses S(impson) [President] (1822—1885) 

Appointed by President Lincoln the commander in chief of the Union forces, Grant wore out the Confederates by sheer attrition, receiving Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865. In 1868, Grant was elected the nation’s 18th President. Once expelled by West Point for his alcoholism, Grant, a Methodist, in an 1875 speech declared, “Keep the church and the state forever separated.” His defending public schools against Roman Catholic schools was widely publicized, as was his statement, “I suggest the taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation.” Religionists fought back, pointing to Grant’s notorious 1862 order expelling all Jews from his military department—he accused them of speculating in cotton. “No political party can, or ought to, exist when one of its cornerstones is opposition to freedom of thought,” Grant wrote in his Memoirs (Vol. 1, p. 213). “If a sect sets up its laws as binding above the state laws, whenever the two come in conflict, this claim must be resisted and suppressed at any cost.” Despite being fatally ill from cancer of the throat, Grant wrote the two-volume Personal Memoirs (1885-1886), which are ranked as being among the great military narratives of history. John Keegan, a British military historian, wrote, “If there is a single contemporary document which explains ‘why the North won the Civil War,’ that abiding conundrum of American historical inquiry, it is the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant.” Mark Twain, smarting at how publishers had exploited him in the past, persuaded Grant not to accept 10% royalties from any publisher but, instead, to allow his new firm to publish the work in return for seventy percent of the net proceeds by subscription. Grant earned $450,000 for his family. Hamlin Garland, his biographer, wrote that Grant “subscribed to no creed.” The Rev. M. J. Cramer, however, said that Grant “believed the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion,” which McCabe retorts is like saying that a good freethinker has to be “a good Christian in the true sense.” General Hallock, commenting upon Grant’s sobriety, said it was remarkable for “a man who is not a religious man.” At the end of his life when unconscious, Grant was baptized, and when he unexpectedly recovered he exclaimed that he was surprised at what they had done to him. With his wife’s remains, Grant lies in New York City in a tomb that was constructed in 1897 and made a national memorial in 1959. {CE; FUS; JM; RE; TYD}

Grassl, Gary C. (20th Century) Grassl has an article, “Christian Profundity,” in The American Rationalist (January-February 1993). The doctrine of the Trinity, he elucidates, holds that

God the Father (the First Person of the Holy Trinity) begot God the Son (the Second person of the Trinity. God the Father and God the Son together brought forth God the Holy Spirit (the Third Person of the Trinity). God the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin Mary begot God the son (Jesus Christ). Therefore, God the Father is the father and grandfather of God the Son, the father of God the Holy Spirit, and the father-in-law of the Blessed Virgin. God the Son (Jesus) is the son and grandson of God the Father, the father, son, and brother of God the Holy Spirit as well as the son, father-in-law and brother-in-law of the Blessed Virgin. God the Holy Spirit is the son of God the Father, the son, father and brother of God the Son (Jesus) and the husband of the Blessed Virgin. The Blessed Virgin is the wife of God the Holy Spirit, the daughter-in-law of God the Father, and the mother, daughter-in-law and sister-in-law of God the Son (Jesus).

Grassl then wryly observes,

If Jesus is His father’s father, does that mean He is His own grandfather?

If so, Grassl concludes,

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Wisdom without end. Amen.

Grassl has offered the following poetry as “acceptable irreligious satire”:

Pagan Bestiality There once was a god known as Zeus, who used many a ruse to seduce. But when he was swain to sweet Leda, he dove as a swan straight upon her, besmirching her virginal honor.

Immaculate Conception

There still is a God known as Ghost, all manner of shapes he can boast. But when he fecundates Madonna, he flies as a dove right upon her, untainting her virginal honor.

Grasso, James V. (20th Century) Grasso was an editorial assistant of The Humanist who wrote “Humanism in the Eighteenth Century” (July-August 1951). He set up a Humanist Club at Harvard University in 1950, at the time one was founded at Columbia University. John Dewey hailed the establishment of the two groups and was informed that the first such club had been founded in 1948 at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. Grasso was executive director and a member of the board of directors of the American Humanist Association’s Humanist Fellowship of Boston. (See entries for John Dewey, English Humanism, and Warren Allen Smith.)

Gratiolet, Louis-Pierre (1815—1865) Gratiolet was a French naturalist noted for his research on the comparative anatomy of the brain. {BDF}

Grattan, C. Hartley (1900—1980) Hartley, an economist and social analyst, wrote The Critique of Humanism (1930), The Three Jameses: A Family of Minds (1932, 1962), and The Quest of Knowledge (1955). Asked by the present author about humanism he responded:

I am flattered that you should have concluded that I am an expert on the subject of humanism, but I must resign the post forthwith. I cannot qualify for the high honor. As you remark, everybody is a humanist today, unless he is a bitter Communist, for even the Communists of softer hearts claim to be humanist on occasion. I suppose I should claim the title, too, if pressed to do so, but I do not find it necessary to hold systematic views on the subject. Maybe humanism is to most people simply a synonym of good will. In fact, I think that is the case. Most of us manage to live with bits and pieces of philosophy strewn around our lives, but feel no strong urge to formulate a system or even fit our thinking into other people’s systems. By and large I suppose my own thinking has been most strongly influenced, as far as philosophy goes, by John Dewey and William James. I really don’t know, though, for I have not, in recent years, inspected the fragments of philosophy that clutter my mind. This is a rather sorry confession and it causes me to resolve to repair my deficiencies in this line. But as of this moment I’m afraid you’ll have to demote me to the class of the hopelessly un-philosophical.

{WAS, 1 April 1949}

GRAVE • Grave, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student. —Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary

Graves, Charles (20th Century) A Unitarian minister, Graves wrote

The one real purpose of real religion, Unitarians believe, is not to prepare people for another life, but to inspire them to live this life as it ought to be lived. . . . Foreign missions have never commanded a general interest on the part of Unitarians. Their dislike of the proselytizing spirit, their intense love of liberty for others as well as themselves, and the absence of sectarian feeling have combined to make them, as a body, indifferent to the propagation of their faith in other countries. . . . No churches were organized by the representative of the American Unitarian Association. Those which have come into existence (India, Brazil, Switzerland, Japan, Holland, Norway, Denmark, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) have been wholly at the initiative of the natives themselves. . . . There is no official census of Unitarian membership. This is due to the fact that usually Unitarian ministers have no great interest in church membership and also to the fact that the basis of membership is very different from what it is in other bodies. . . . The idea that immersion or sprinkling or signing with the cross with water upon adults or babes can effect any spiritual regeneration or in any way change the relation between human beings and deity is rejected. . . . An ancient ritual is a poor medium through which to convey modern ideas.

Graves is the author of Proto-Religions in Central Asia (1994). {UU}

Graves, Kersey (1813—1883) Graves wrote The Biography of Satan, or a Historical Exposition of the Devil and His Fiery Dominions. The book was published in 1924 as a reprint of an 1873 edition published for the Truthseeker Company. Graves also wrote The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1900), listing the following (which Gerald Larue, the humanist scholar, states is not historically accurate):

Krishna (of India), crucified 1200 B. C. E. Crite (of Chaldea), crucified 1200 B. C. E. Attis (of Phrygia), crucified 1170 B. C. E. Thammuz (of Syria), crucified 1160 B. C. E. Esus (of the Celtic Druids), crucified 834 B. C. E. Bali (of Orissa), crucified 725 B. C. E. Indra (of Tibet), crucified 725 B. C. E. Iao (of Neoak) crucified 622 B. C. E. Sakia (a Hindu God), crucified 600 B. C. E. Alcestis (of Euripedes) crucified 600 B. C. E. Mithra (of Persia), crucified 600 B. C. E. Quexalcoatl (of Mexico), crucified 587 B. C. E. Aeschylus (Prometheus), crucified 547 B. C. E. Wittoba (of the Telingonese), crucified 522 B.C.E. Quirinus (of Rome), crucified 506 B. C. E. Jesus the Christ, crucified in 28 or 32 C. E.

In The Bible of Bibles: Twenty-Seven “Divine Revelations,” Graves describes twenty-seven bibles along with 2000 alleged biblical errors. Wheeler describes his research as being “of some vogue, but little value.” {BDF; FUS}

Graves, Philip E. (20th Century) Graves, a member of the Economics Department at the University of Colorado in Boulder, favors a voucher system as an alternative approach to curing the weaknesses of the present public schools. An atheist, he feels the primary beneficiaries will be inner-city poor who are currently “the most harmed” by the American public school system. {Free Inquiry, Summer 1999}

Graves, Robert (1895—1985) Graves, an English poet, novelist, Renaissance figure, critic, and son of an Irish bishop, is best known for his poetry and for novels on Roman history. For a time, he taught literature in Egypt. He spent the Second World War in England, then went to Majorca, settling there permanently. A prodigious writer, Graves wrote an autobiography, Goodbye To All That (1929), which described his unhappy schooldays, the horrors of the trenches during the First World War, and the breakdown of his first marriage. At first a homosexual and friend of Siegfried Sassoon, Graves married a feminist artist, Nancy Nicholson, then left her and her thyroid condition, and moved on to Laura Riding, daughter of one of the founders of the American Socialist Party. When Graves introduced Riding to his mother and told her she was “a Jewess,” he did so to taunt his mother, who, however, according to a Graves nephew, was not disapproving. When the two moved to Deyá, Majorca, in 1930, villagers assumed she was an eccentric spinster accompanied by her manservant, so commanding was she. According to Miranda Seymour’s Robert Graves, Life on the Edge (1995), Laura could do no wrong, not even when she refused for years to have sex. At one point, she talked Graves into helping her win the husband of one of their married selves; but when the attempt failed, she had hysterics and jumped from a third-floor window, saying, “Goodbye, chaps.” He jumped to reach her, but from a window not so high. Riding, who broke her pelvis in three places and suffered a bent spinal cord and four broken vertebrae, claimed Graves ran after her down a fire escape. But Miranda Seymour, in Robert Graves: Life on the Edge, disbelieves Riding’s story, finding there was no such fire escape. The incident only increased his matriarchal subservience, and to help pay the medical bills he wrote the war memoir, Goodbye to All That, finishing the first draft in two months. His works include I, Claudius and Claudius the God (both 1934); The White Goddess, a 1948 work which argued that true poets derive their gifts from the primitive, matriarchal Moon Goddess; The Greek Myths (1955), and The Hebrew Myths (1963, with R. Patai). Graves always denied that he had invented the White Goddess, claiming in 5 Pens In Hand (1958) he had studied ancient beliefs and “the effects of such beliefs on worshippers.” Asked by the present author in 1951 about the several categories of humanism, Graves wrote:

You give me credit for reading a number of philosophical books which I have never read and would not think of reading. I am a poet, and also a historian, and regard philosophy as a threat to my integrity in both fields. Humanism conveys nothing to me, unless a system of thinking based on the so-called humanities of mediaeval education; and these were based on Aristotle and forensic rhetoric, so what? “That bird’s dead,” as they say; and a neo-bird won’t fly. If you want to know my views on the practical question of what is to be the future of religion in the West, see an article which appeared in Tomorrow about a year ago. It is an extra chapter for my White Goddess. My views on Socrates and the philosophical revolution he started will appear in the Spring number of the Hudson Review among other White Goddess addenda. Sorry to seem intransigent, but I really have found philosophy so blind an alley and there are so many poems to be written and historical problems to solve—I have just finished a book on the principles of textual distortion in the Gospels, and until this problem is settled and Jesus’ sayings properly established, what the hell is the point of talking about Christianity?—that I lose my patience with the philosophs.

Critic Denis Donoghue in The New York Review of Books (4 April 1996) supplies another side of his life: “It is true that Graves’s worldly muses were not loyal to him and left him one after another. Riding consorted with Geoffrey Phibbs and Norman Cameron before turning to Jackson. The next Muse, Judith Bledsoe, distributed her favors among several men. Margot Callas left Graves for Alastair Reid and later for Mike Nichols. Cindy Lee left him for Howard Hart. Juli Simon preferred Robert Page to Graves. But Graves, for his part, treated Nancy badly and Beryl worse. Beryl survived by giving much of her attention to animals and plants. When Riding stopped sleeping with Graves—because, she said, ‘bodies have had their day’—he got Elfriede Faust pregnant, and colluded with both women to have the pregnancy terminated, Laura standing at the foot of Elfriede’s bed the while to witness the operation.” In 1972, he began to lose his short-term memory. He told Edwin Newman that male homosexuality was “partly due to heredity, partly to environment, but largely because men now drink too much milk.” Also in his later years he was instructed in Sufism by Idries Shah, then developed a sister for the White Goddess, a Goddess of Wisdom—”call her the Black Goddess”—who represents “miraculous certitude in love” and ordains “that the poet who seeks her must pass uncomplaining through all the passionate ordeals to which the White Goddess may subject him.” Those around him recognized toward the end of his life that he mixed sense with nonsense. By 1980 it was obvious to them that his physical and mental health had greatly failed. At the end, an old, old Graves spent much time sleeping and, on 7 December 1985, died. (See entry for Alastair Reid.) {WAS, 1 March 1951}

GRAVITY With his discovery of gravity, Newton taught that understanding the cosmos is not confined to the divine. Alan Lightman, a senior lecturer in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained the significance:

[F]or centuries Western culture was ingrained with the notion that some areas of knowledge are inaccessible, or forbidden, to human possession. In this view, humankind is entitled to comprehend only what God deigns to reveal. Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock for giving fire, the secret of the gods and the wellspring of advanced civilization, to mortal man. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) distinguished between scientific knowledge, discoverable by the human mind, and divine knowledge, “higher than man’s knowledge.” Divine knowledge could “not be sought by man through his reason, nevertheless, once . . . revealed by God [it] must be accepted by faith.” When Dante asks the divine Beatrice about the mysteries of the moon, she replies that “the opinion of mortals errs where the key of sense does not unlock.” When Adam, in Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (1667), questions the angel Raphael about celestial mechanics, Raphael offers some vague hints and then says that “the rest from Man or Angel the great Architect did wisely to conceal, and not divulge His secrets to be scann’d by them who ought rather admire.” . . . However, a number of developments over the 16th and 17th centuries did succeed in introducing a new belief: that the entirety of the universe, at least its physical parts, was knowable and discoverable by human beings. This new belief, a belief in the unfettered entitlement to knowledge, was the most important intellectual development along the lengthy time line of the past millennium. Perhaps the most glorious culmination of the new thinking was Isaac Newton’s “Principia” (1687). This monumental treatise established fundamental ideas like inertia and force, articulated general laws of motion of bodies under general forces, and proposed a specific law for the force of gravity. {Alan Lightman, “In God’s Place,” The New York Times Magazine, 19 Sep 1999}

Gray, Asa (1810—1888) An American naturalist, Gray was the first to introduce Darwinism in America. He wrote an Examination of Darwin’s Treatise (1861) and was professor of natural history at Harvard University. Gray succeeded Agassiz as Governor of the Smithsonian Institute. {BDF}

Gray, Benjamin Kirkman (1862—1910) Gray, an economist, was a Congregationalist minister who, in 1894, transferred to the Unitarian ministry. Three years later, he left the Unitarians and devoted himself to social work and economics. Gray was a Socialist and a “mystic and freethinker.” (RAT}

Gray, Carole (20th Century) Gray operates Black Cat Enterprises (POB 21201, Columbus, Ohio 43221), which publishes Solstice notecards and “Women of Freethought” calendars. In The Humanist (Jan-Feb 1996), she wrote, “Atheism and Activism: The Life and Work of Eliza Mowry Bliven.” {FD}

[[Gray, Douglas (20th Century)

Gray has reviewed books for The American Rationalist (January-February 1999). Richard Rorty, whom he calls an heir to the American pragmatist legacy of William James and Sidney Hook, is said in his Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America to detect in postmodernist detachment “something very like religious fervor” and an interest in Derrida and Lacan to “satisfy the urges that theology used to satisfy.”

Gray, Mora (20th Century) Gray is Vice-President of Humanists of the Palm Beaches in Florida.

Gray, Ronald (20th Century) Gray is a Life Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and the author of books on Goethe, Kafka, Brecht, Ibsen, and others. In “Is There Antisemitism in the Gospels?” (New Humanist, March 1999), he describes anti-Semitism in Europe, discusses Jesus as a Jew, and generally concludes that “there are passages in the Gospels which can be and have been used to justify and encourage hatred and persecution of the Jews,” that “the Bible and the Jesus it presents—not necessarily Jesus as he really was—are to be regarded as fallible products of history.”

Gray, Spalding (1941— 2004) Gray, an actor, writer, and performance artist, starred in a monologue later made into a movie, “Monster in a Box” (1992), in which he states that he once believed in God and an afterlife but no longer does. He has acted in “The Killing Fields” (1984); “Swimming to Cambodia” (1987); and “Straight Talk” (1982). {E} Spalding Gray, Raconteur/Writer/Actor art Internet Movie Database Jumped from the Staten Island ferry

In the film version of his stage monologue, Monster in a Box, Gray relates a story of returning to New England, where he (paraphrased) "used to believe in God and an afterlife."

Gray, Spalding (5 June 1941 - ) Gray, in the film version of his stage monologue, Monster in a Box, relates a story of returning to New England where he used to believe in God and an afterlife.” {CA}

Grayling, Anthony C. ( ) was named an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association in 2001.

Gréard, Octave Vallery Clément (1828—1904) Gréard was a French educationist. Catholics forced Jules Simon to dismiss him from his position as Inspector-General although he had been credited for creating “the new [secular] education in the primary schools of the Republic.” Gréard was an atheist. {RAT}

GREAT ATTRACTOR Astronomers in the 1990s found evidence for the existence of the Great Attractor, so called because it is a huge region of matter that is drawing in the Milky Way galaxy with its gravitational pull. According to Dr. Renée Kraan-Korteweg, an astronomer at the Observatory of Paris-Meudon outside Paris, she and her colleagues in 1996 sighted a massive galaxy cluster that appears to be at the Great Attractor’s core. That cluster appears to be about three hundred million light-years away, in the direction of the constellation Norma. It perhaps contains ten percent of the Great Attractor’s mass. Freethinkers and other non-theists, rather than concentrating upon theological divinations such as “the ontological argument,” are particularly interested in realistic findings which astronomers continue to make and which lead to new theories about the nature of the universe. (See entry for astronomy.)

GREAT BRITAIN UNITARIANS The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches includes 183 member congregations in Scotland, England, Ireland, and Wales. Membership in 1998 included about 6,700 adults and 800 children. There are 137 ministers and 7 lay pastors, of whom over fifty are retired. Some serve congregations of the non-subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, a sister movement of the General Assembly which has congregations predominantly in Northern Ireland. Unitarians are found in Great Britain as far back as the 15th century. The first Unitarian place of worship was Essex Church in London on the site of the present headquarters (Essex Hall, 1-6 Essex Street, London, WC2R 3HY). The inaugural service took place there in 1774. The British and Foreign Unitarian Association was founded in 1825. The General Assembly, its successor, was established in 1928. According to the Assembly, Unitarians recognize that each person has the right and responsibility to think for himself or herself on religious matters. Understanding is gleaned from diverse sources—science, the arts, the exercise of human reason and reflection upon personal experience, as well as from scriptures of the world faith traditions. British Unitarians stress the value of congregational life, both as a support in one’s personal spiritual journey and as a beacon of liberal religious values and social action in the local community. Many find the focus of their faith in the liberal Christian tradition whereas others adopt the religious humanist, theist, or other standpoints. On the Web: <http://www.unitarian.org.uk>.

GREAT MOTHER GODDESS In the ancient Middle Eastern religions, the great symbol of the earth’s fertility was Great Mother Goddess. Creatively, she was the mother of all things, the periodic renewer of life. Adonis, Attis, and Osiris have variously been considered her son, lover, or both, and her death and resurrection are symbolized by earth’s regenerative powers. The Great Mother Goddess was also worshiped in Greece, Rome, and Western Asia. In Phrygia and Lydia, she was known as Cybele. Among the Babylonians and Assyrians she was identified as Ishtar. In Syria and Palestine she appeared as Astarte. Egyptians called her Isis. In Greece she was variously worshiped as Gaea, Hera, Rhea, Aphrodite, and Demeter. In Rome she was identified as Maia, Ops, Tellus, and Ceres. In Turkey, feminists find evidence of Diana of Ephesus, whose cult spread as far as Marseilles and who persists to the present day. A statue of her at the Naples Museum shows her as having a generous supply of fecundity symbols, and scholars noting that the multiple (over one dozen) breasts do not have nipples speculate as to whether they are meant to be bulls’ testicles. “Many attributes of the Virgin Mary,” states the Columbia Encyclopedia, “make her the Christian equivalent of the Great Mother, particularly in her great beneficence, in her double image as mother and virgin, and in her son, who is God and who dies and is resurrected.” {CE}

GREATER MANCHESTER HUMANIST NEWSLETTER A quarterly, Greater Manchester Humanist Newsletter is at 64 Arbory Ave., Manchester M40 5HJ, United Kingdom.

GREATER PHILADELPHIA STORY A bi-monthly of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia’s chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Greater Philadelphia Story is at Box 242, Pocopson, Pennsylvania 19366-0242. E-mail: <downey1@cris.com>.

Grebstein, Sheldon Norman (20th Century) Grebstein wrote Sinclair Lewis (1962). {GS}

Greco, Karyl (20th Century) Greco is on the Executive Board of the Humanist Society of Metropolitan New York. She is a humanist activist and practitioner of Rational Emotive Therapy.

GREED Numbers of world leaders have embezzled funds, according to Transparency International, which estimates the amounts as following:

Suharto ((Indonesia, 1967-1998), $15- to $35-billion Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines, 1972-1986) $5- to $10-billion Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-1997), $5 billion Sani Abacha (Nigeria, 1993-1998), $2 to $5-billion Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1989-2000), $1-billion Jean-Claude Duvalier (Haiti, 1971-1986), $300- to $800-million Alberto Fujimori (Peru, 1990-2000), $600-million Pavlo Lazarenko (Ukraine, 1996-1997), $114- to $200-million Arnold Aleman (Nicaragua, 1997-2000), $100-million Joseph Estrada (Philippines, 1998-2001), $78- to $80-million

GREEK ACADEMY I. G. Kidd, in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3, describes the public park and academy, equipped with a gymnasium and lecture facilities, which was a mile northwest of the Dipylon Gate of Ancient Athens. The Academy figured heavily in Ancient Greek thought and went through three phases: the Old Academy of Plato, Speusippus, and Xenocrates lasted from about 387 B. C. E. to 250 B. C. E. the Middle Academy of Arcesilaus and Carneades lasted until about 150 B. C. E.; and the New Academy of Philo of Larisa, which lasted until about 110 B. C. E. Emperor Justinian closed it in 529 of the Christian Era. {CE}

GREEK AND ROMAN GODS Ancient Greek parents told their children that originally Gaea (the Earth) and Uranus (the heaven) had six sons and six daughters called Titans and Titanesses: Cronus, Iapetus, Hyperion, Oceanus, Coeus, Creus, Theia, Rhea, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Themis. Uranus feared that his children might dethrone him and (as Freud later postulated) it so happened the Cronus with the help of his mother, Gaea, did castrate his father, thereby taking away his power. (Endogmatists, who believe in marriage within a specific group as required by custom or law, point to Cronus’s having married his sister Rhea.) Uranus’s blood, falling on Earth, gave birth to the three Furies, goddesses of revenge. In turn, Cronus, fearing he, too, would be overthrown by one of his children, ate them, except that Rhea had replaced one—Zeus—with a stone, and Zeus tricked his father into disgorging the children, then overthrew him, thereby becoming god of all the gods. Zeus with the help of the Olympians in defeating Cronus then punished his Titans: Atlas was consigned to holding the sky on his shoulders (which children were told is why the sky does not fall); Hecate, no longer the benevolent goddess, now became associated with ghosts and witchcraft; Helios became the sun god who rose in the morning and in his golden chariot crossed the sky; Prometheus, who according to one story created man out of clay and water, stole fire from the gods, and displeased the gods by giving fire plus hope to mankind, was spared punishment inasmuch as he had sided with Zeus; in other, Prometheus was chained to a mountain peak in the Caucasus, where an eagle preyed on his liver; and Selene, Helios’s sister, became the moon goddess. So the parents of children with questions about revenge, castration, sex, and power had gods with which they could supply answers. How to explain life’s admixture of goodness and evil? The Titans divided the universe into lots: the sea went to Poseidon (who carried a Trident and could cause earthquakes); the heavens and earth went to Zeus (who sired Ares and Hebe with his sister Hera); and the underworld fell to Hades (also called Pluto, god not only of the dead but also of fertility on earth). Zeus, quite the lover, fathered many gods. Among his male loves was Ganymede. Among his female loves were Callisto, Demeter, Dione, Eurynome, Leto, Maia, Mnemosyne, and Themis. Also, there were Danaë, Europa, Io, Leda, Semele, and Thetis. Among his offspring were Amphitryon, Athena (who sprung from his head), Dardanus, and Hercules. He ruled from his throne on Mt. Olympus, upheld morality, represented law and order, and punished evil. He was the one who sent thunderbolts, and he was possessor of aegis, a weapon used to terrify enemies and protect friends. Athena’s aegis was a breastplate, covered with goatskin, bordered with snakes, depicting in the middle the head of the Gorgon Medusa. People, children were told, are judged not only by their fellows but also by the gods. Tantalus and Sisyphus, for example, are symbolic of wickedness. When people die, a coin is put in their mouth and they are buried with a honeycake. Their spirit travels from earth to a westerly place, Hades, which contains the rivers named for their characteristics: Acheron (woeful); Cocytos (wailing); Lethe (forgetfulness); Phlegethon (fiery); and Styx (hateful). Charon meets the newly dead, transports them across the Styx and pockets the coins from their mouths while Cerberus, the dog with many heads and a tail of snakes, accepts the honeycake and insures that no unauthorized spirits can enter as well as no spirits can leave. It is here that Pluto and Persephone, the rulers of Hades, watch as the judges of the dead—Aeacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus—consign the heroic and virtuous to the Elysian Fields or, if they are wicked, to Tartarus. Tantalus, who had divulged some of the gods’ secrets and murdered his son Pelops was sent to Tartarus. His punishment included being hanged from the bough of a fruit tree; when he reached for a fruit, wind blew it away; when he bent to drink, the water receded. Sisyphus, whose cunning was such that he claimed to outwit Death, was consigned to pushing a heavy rock up a steep hill, toiling vainly (and inspiring Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus). The Romans, renaming the Greek gods, called Hades Orcus, Dis, and Avernus. The Roman religion was essentially animistic, and human destiny was thought to be controlled by numina, forces or spirits which existed in natural objects. Some of the gods were Vesta, guardian spirit of the hearth and fire; Lares and Penates, guardians of the house; Janus, guardian of the door who honored Terminus, protector of property boundaries. Offerings were made to the Lemures, to placate the spirits of the dead, and to the Manes, deities of the underworld. The supreme triad of gods during the earliest period of Roman state religion were Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus. Later gods included Dionysus and Apollo. When the religious fervor diminished and state ceremonies no longer satisfied the populace, religious feeling degenerated. People then turned toward religious mysteries and the Middle Eastern cults: the Great Mother, Osiris, Sol, and Mithra. The new cults promised personal salvation and a blessed afterlife, and this led to Christianity’s taking root at a time when people were tired of the old impersonal and controlled Roman worship. (Also, see entries for God and Great Mother Goddess.) {CE; ER}

GREEK CIVILIZATION The “Hellenes” presumed that they were the descendants of a man called Hellen, just as the Dorians were of Doros, the Ionians of Ion. As to Hellen’s parents, they were Deucalion and Pyrrha, a couple said to have survived “the Flood.” The classical antecedents of Western civilization have long served to justify the study of ancient Greece and Rome. However, particularly in the latter quarter of the twentieth-century Western scholars have pointed out that the Chinese did something on their own in philosophy and science, the Assyrians excelled in astronomy, and the Indians developed a unique architecture. (See entries for Afrocentrism and for Martin G. Bernal.)

GREEK HUMANISTS The Delphi Society aims to contribute to great issues such as the prevention of global catastrophe, the creation of an environment supportive of peace and progress, and the prevention of a sixth mass extinction of life on the planet. The group belongs to the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Dennis V. Razis, of the Delphi Society, signed Humanist Manifesto 2000.

GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH: See entry for Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Greeley, Andrew Moran (1928— ) Greeley is author of Religion: A Secular Theory (1982), The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics (1990), and Religion as Poetry (1995). A noted scholar in the sociology of religion, he was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in 1954.

Greeley, Dana McLean (1908—1986) In 1961 Greeley became the first president of the newly formed Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), the result of the merger of the American Unitarian Association (AUA) with the Universalist Church of America (UCA), a post he held until 1969. An early admirer of Theodore Parker and John Haynes Holmes, he also headed the Unitarian Service Committee before his election. Although he disliked seeing the end of the AUA, Greeley saw the merger with the Universalists as a necessary step in the progress of liberal religion. After his service as head of the UUA, Greeley returned to the parish ministry in Concord, Massachusetts. He has written 25 Beacon Street and Other Recollections. When he met Pope John in 1962 and told him he was the UUA president, Pope John told him,

The Unitarians are the people who made a religion of all our heresies.

{U; U&U}

Greeley, Horace (1811—1872) After founding the New-Yorker in 1834 (not be confused with The New Yorker, which began in 1925), Greeley combined it with other publications to form the New-York Weekly Tribune. As its editor and owner, he advised adventurers to “go West.” A regular attendant at the Universalist church on Broadway and Orchard Street in New York City, he fought for black suffrage and amnesty for all Southerners following the Civil War. “There is no doctrine of Christianity,” he wrote, “but what has been anticipated by the Vedas.” Editor Greeley signed the bail bond which released Jefferson Davis from prison. Running for president in 1872 on the Liberal Republic Party ticket, he was soundly defeated by the incumbent President, U.S. Grant. {CE; TYD; U; UU}

Greeley, Roger E. (20th Century) Greeley, a long-time Unitarian minister in Kalamazoo, Michigan, has appeared widely as an impersonator of Robert G. Ingersoll, dressing in clothing of the time, and quoting word-for-word what Ingersoll said on almost any subject which might be brought up. He has written The Best of Humanism (1987), The Best of Robert Ingersoll (1982), and Thomas Jefferson’s Freethought Legacy (1995). Greeley is Associate Dean of the Humanist Institute, a Secular Humanist Mentor of the Council for Secular Humanism, and a member of The Truth Seeker’s editorial board. {FUS; HNS2}

Greeley, W. Bradford (20th Century) 

A Unitarian minister, Greeley welcomes non-believers and is author of The Faith of a Religious Atheist.

GREEN LIGHT Green Light is the newsletter of the International Naturalist Church. {See entry for International Naturalist Church.)

Green, Benny (1927-1998) Green, the son of David Green, a Jewish tailor and jazz saxophonist, was voted “the most promising new jazz musician” by a Melody Maker poll in 1953. He wrote what Barbara Smoker called “a shelf of books”—among them, literary biographies of P. G. Wodehouse and Bernard Shaw—and wrote the lyrics for several musicals, including Boots with Strawberry Jam) based on Shaw’s early life), Bashville and Valentine’s Day (based on two of Shaw’s plays), and Oh Mr. Porter (about Cole Porter). He edited the four-volume Wisden Anthology, was jazz critic of The Observer from 1958 to 1977, was a regular book reviewer for The Spectator from 1970 to 1980, and was film critic for Punch from 1972. Married to actress Toni Kanal and the father of four children, he actively participated in the Shaw Society and was an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. Long before he died of cancer at the age of seventy-one, he wrote an obituary for a newspaper:

Benny Green, who died yesterday in his 99th year, was always adamant that he would live to be 100. However, arithmetic was never his strong suit. In the course of a life devoted to self-indulgence broken by idleness, he published more than 50 books. He practised no religion, which may explain why he finally died laughing.

At his funeral at Golders Green Crematorium, a jazz band played. As he had wished, his family scattered Green’s ashes the following day in Regents Park. {Barbara Smoker, The Freethinker, July 1998}

Green, Christopher (20th Century) Green, while a student at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, was one of the founding members of Campus Freethought Alliance. {International Humanist News, December 1996}

Green, Daniel (1907— ) Green has been an executive director of the American Red Cross in New York. He also worked for the New York Children’s Aid Society and the Graham Home for Children. In his 80s, he published Late Start (1989) and On Second Thought (1993), both written after his eighty-second birthday. One poem, “Faith,” starts, “Best friends deplore my lack of faith/ in god, the essence of their firm beliefs,” ending, “No god, if he were god, would be/ so merciless. Man’s sins, if any,/ are remnants of his brute beginnings./ Civility to be learned and earned/ by his will alone./ Heaven’s help’s a myth.” Green is a retiree in Sarasota, Florida. {Freethought History #12, 1994}

Green, Henry L. (1828—1903) In Chicago, Green edited Free Thought Magazine (1894—1903) in Buffalo, New York. In 1880, he compiled a listing of freethought works. Green was chairman of the executive committee of the National Liberal League and secretary of New York State Freethinkers’ Association. {BDF}

Green, John Richard (1837—1883) Green, a British historian, became irreligious at Oxford, was converted and ordained, then rejected Christianity and the belief in immortality. His heresies are confined to his letters, in which he sets out to “fling to the owls and the bats those old and effete theologies of the world’s childhood.” McCabe calls Green’s Short History of the English People a classic. {JM; JMRH; RAT; RE}

Green, Joseph Frederic (Born 1855) Green was a positivist who had been a minister of the Church of England from 1880 to 1886. Quitting the Church, he became secretary of the International Arbitration and Peace Association and a member of the Positivist Church and English Positivist Committee. {RAT}

Green, M. W. (20th Century) A New Zealand freethinker, Green with C. Bright wrote The Divine Origin of Christianity (1879?). {GS}

Green, Ronald (20th Century) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Green was an assistant professor at New York University. {HM2}

Green, Ruth Hurmence (1915—1981) Green was a board member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. A Missouri grandmother, she wrote The Born Again Skeptic’s Guide to the Bible (1979; revised 1999) and The Book of Ruth (1980). “For his companions in eternity,” she said, God “prefers not the accomplished, the brilliant, the stimulating, not the outstanding achievers who may not conform, but the docile, the gullible, the child-like, the nondescript nonentities with nothing to recommend their selection but blind belief.” If these are the meek who will inherit the Earth, she reasoned, “Is it not your omnipotent, omniscient god who bestows such qualities? Where is the free will which would give justice to his reward and retribution?” When she was diagnosed with throat cancer, which made her life intolerable, she told few and, although she carried on normally as long as she could, she eventually took her own life by swallowing painkillers. {WWS}

Seth Green, Actor ent Internet Movie Database

In the September 6, 2000 edition of The Onion A.V. Club titled "Is There A God?", celebrities were asked the question. Green was among those asked.

Seth Green is an occasional cast member of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, a voice on The Family Guy, and a star of the Austin Powers movies and the upcoming Josie And The Pussycats.

The Onion: Is there a God?

Seth Green: Is there a God? It really depends on what religion you subscribe to.

O: Oh, man, that's cheap. Everyone else was like, "I don't know. Maybe."

SG: God is, to me, pretty much an idea. God is, to me, pretty much a myth created over time to deny the idea that we're all responsible for our own actions.

See the feature at http://avclub.theonion.com/avclub3631/avfeature_3631.html.

Green, Seth (8 Feb 1974 - ) Green is a cartoon voicist and a television and movie actor. He is an occasional cast member of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, a voice on The Family Guy, and a star of the Austin Powers’s The Spy Who Shagged Me Asked with other celebrities on The Onion A.V. Club (6 Sep 2000) if there is a God, he responded:

Green: Is there a God? It really depends on what religion you subscribe to. Onion: Oh, man, that’s cheap. Everyone else was like, “I don’t know. Maybe.” Green: God is, to me, pretty much an idea. God is, to me, pretty much a Myth created over time to deny the idea that we’re all responsible for our own actions. (http://avclub.theonion.com/avclub3631/avfeature_3631.html) {CA}

Greenaway, Kate (1846—1901) Greenaway was a painter whose work was praised by Ruskin. In her letters, she described herself as “religious in my own way,” but she was agnostic about any belief in a future life and was not a theist. She thought it “strange beyond anything I can think to be able to believe in any of the known religions.” {RAT; RE; TYD}

Stephen Greenblatt, Literary Critic/Editor art

Greenblatt is a research scholar at Berkeley who writes on early modern culture. From his book Shakespearean Negotiations (California, 1998):

"[T]he stance [Atheism] that seemed to come naturally to me as a green college freshman in mid-twentieth-century America seems to have been almost literally unthinkable to the most daring philosophical minds of late sixteenth-century England ... I am not arguing that atheism was literally unthinkable in the late sixteenth century but rather that it was almost always thinkable only as the thought of another. This is one of its attractions as a smear; atheism is a characteristic mark of otherness[.]"

Greene, Betty (20th Century) According to the American Library Association’s Banned Books (1998), Greene has a book, I Know You, Al, which does not uphold the principles of the United States which were “established on the moral principles of the Bible.” Her brand of freethought was not cited. (See entry for Banned Books.)

Greene, Brian (20th Century) Greene is the Columbia University physicist who is noted for his radical research involving the string, or superstring, theory. In 1998-1999 he and several colleagues received a grant from the National Science Foundation to restructure high-level courses in the Columbia math department, with the hope of broadening their application to physics. (See entry for String Theory.)

Greene, (Henry) Graham (1904—1991) Graham, a famed English novelist and playwright, joined the Catholic Church in 1927. His Brighton Rock (1938) contains a Catholic message, introducing as it does the concept of “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” He wrote about personal, religion, and political dilemmas as well as visited Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Africa, and elsewhere in order to understand what matters in life. Haitians, for example, were angry at Greene’s depiction in The Comedians (1966) of their dictator François (Papa Doc) Duvalier rule. In one scene the hotel-owner narrator speaks to a Haitian Communist, during which Greene contrasts the dedicated Communist with the faithless “comedians” of the world. The two speak of the corpse of a Haitian victim:

“So he’s gone,” I said. “He died.” “A natural death?” “Violent deaths are natural deaths here. He died of his environment.”

Biographers Norman Sherry and Michael Sheldon in 1995 painted a picture of the author’s mysterious life. He may, or may not, have been a liar, a whoremaster, a masochist, a quasi-pedophile, a racist, a snob, an anti-Semite, a spy, an adulterer. They write of his pleasure in receiving pain—cigarette burns, for example—during lovemaking, and they note his written records of befriending prostitutes in his various underworld explorations. Greene once called Mexicans “hideous,” described a victim during the Blitz as a “large fat foreign Jew” (which was later edited to a “large fat foreigner’), and openly betrayed not just Vivien, his wife and mother of his two children, but also Dorothy Glover, his mistress for nearly a decade: he took on as mistress Catherine Walston, twelve years his junior and a rich American. Meanwhile, he took tea with Ho Chi Minh, was friendly with Kim Philby, the spy, and took comfort in Charles Péguy’s maxim that “The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity.” Was Greene the great Catholic mystery writer? According to Alexander Cockburn [Nation, 19 April 1991), Greene and Cockburn’s father spoke with John Cornwell on the subject of Greene’s beliefs. Do you believe in Satan, Greene was asked. “No, I don’t think so.” Do you believe in Hell? “I don’t believe in Hell.” Do you contemplate God in a pure, disembodied way? “I’m afraid I don’t,” replied Greene. Cockburn then quotes from his father’s description of Greene’s conversion to Catholicism, tape-recorded by Greene’s biographer Norman Sherry in 1977. The elder Cockburn says that Graham quite early on “said to me that he had fallen madly in love with this girl, but she wouldn’t go to bed with him unless he married her.” So marry her, he was advised. “The trouble is that she won’t marry me unless I become a Catholic.” So, become a Catholic. “You of all people, a noted atheist!” responded Greene to his friend. “Go right ahead,” said Cockburn, “take instruction or whatever balderdash they want you to go through, if you need this for your fuck, go ahead and do it.” And Greene did, leading Cockburn later to observe, “So then I felt perhaps I’d done the wrong thing.” Meanwhile, the plot of Heart of the Matter (1948) had almost gotten Greene excommunicated because of his treatment of the subject of suicide—its epigraph was from Péguy: Le Pécheur est au coeur même de chrétienté . . .” (“The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity”). End of the Affair (1951) is told by an agnostic in love with a religious woman. And his complex and tortured relationship with the church is exemplified by words he penned on the endpapers of Frei Betto’s Fidel and Religion: “I am for Doubt and against Dogma. A doubting catholic [sic] can work easily with a doubting communist.” As for his personal life, Greene wrote some titillating descriptions of his affair with Catherine Walston, who was half-English by birth but American by nationality and upbringing. In one letter he wrote of wanting to lie in bed with her, reading Saint John of the Cross. In another, he told her he wanted to bugger her. In another, he wrote, “My dear, the important cigarette burn has completely gone. It must be renewed,” a sadomasochistic reference. Catholics, denying his weaknesses and downplaying his anti-Semitism, insistently claim him as one of their own. {CE; OEL}

Greene, John Gardner (20th Century) Greene has been a member of the American Humanist Association. {HNS}

Greene, Robert (1558—1592) Greene was something of a feckless drunkard, a writer who abandoned his wife and children to throw himself on the mercies of tavern hostesses and courtesans. He wrote pamphlets and plays as a last resort when his credit failed, turning out excellent work for “Hee inherited more vertues than vices.” Greene is known for his connections with Shakespeare, whom he attacked as an “upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers.” Shakespeare, however, liked Greene’s Pandosto, using it as his source for The Winter’s Tale. C. S. Lewis has cited the following as evidence of Greene’s “genuinely didactic verse, verse utterly unadorned and dependent for interest almost exclusively on its intellectual content”:

Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity!

Borne under one Law, to another bound. Vainely begot, and yet forbidden vanity, Created sicke, commanded to be sound.

David Tribe cites Greene as being an avowed atheist, one who died of a surfeit of Rhenish wine and pickled herrings, although it may also have been plague, of which there was a severe outbreak in 1592. {OEL; TRI}

Greenhill, James A. (Born 1828) Greenhill, a Scot, was brought up a Presbyterian. In 1851 he moved to New York, then Chicago, then to Clinton, Iowa in 1873. When he read Ingersoll’s Mistakes of Moses, Greenhill decided he was no longer a Christian and, after reading Paine, concluded that he was a freethinker. Greenhill’s occupation was that of a carpenter. {PUT}

Greening, Thomas C. (1930— ) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Greening was editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. He is author of Frank and Ernest Career Advice (1990). {HM2}

Greenly, Edward (1861—1951) A British geologist, Greenly wrote The Geology of Anglesey (2 volumes); The Earth: Its Nature and History; A Hand Through Time (a biography of Annie Greenly); and, with Howel Williams, Methods in Geological Surveying. In 1927 he wrote The Historical Reality of Jesus, in which he downplays the importance of Jesus, suggesting that a Joshua-cult had been in existence before the dawn of the Christian era and that “when alluded to in Greek-written documents the name would appear as ‘Jesus.’ ” He was a member of the Rationalist Press Association. {RAT}

Greenough, John James (20th Century) Greenough, a freethinker, wrote The Origin of Supernatural Conception and Development of Religions from Prehistoric Times (1906). {GS}

Greenspan, Louis (20th Century) Greenspan is one of the members of the IHEU’s Committee on Religious Extremism and Rational Inquiry.

Greenwald, Harold (1910—1999) An author, lecturer, and psychoanalyst who became known as an expert on the psychology of prostitutes, Greenwald was active in the San Diego Humanist Fellowship. He wrote a best-selling book, The Call Girl: A Social and Analytic Study (1958), and a Hollywood movie, “Girl of the Night.” As a psychoanalyst, he interviewed sixteen prostitutes, six of whom were in analysis with him and ten who were interviewed by three of the women in analysis. He humanized the women, explaining why they had chosen their line of work, often because they had felt little love from either parent. Other of his books were Great Cases in Psychoanalysis (1969); Emotional Maturity in Love and Marriage (1971) with Lucy Freeman; The Sex-Life Letters (1972) with his wife, Ruth Greenwald; Active Psychotherapy (1974); Direct Decision Therapy (1974); and The Happy Person (1984). Greenwald, after graduating from Columbia University in 1956, gained quick prominence in psychoanalytic circles as a leading student of the Freud disciple Theodore Reik. He taught at Hofstra University in 1968 and 1969 and in Norway at the University of Bergen. In 1975 he became a Distinguished Professor at United States International University in San Diego, and he served as president of the Academy of Psychologists in Marital and Family Therapy as well as president of the division of Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association. “What he founded was the opposite of psychoanalysis, which is what he started in,” fellow secular humanist Albert Ellis said of Greenwald. “He said you make a decision to upset yourself; you don’t get upset because of something that happened in your childhood.” In short, Greenwald developed direct decision therapy, an offshoot of rational emotive behavior therapy. Instead of long sessions of quiet listening, he showed individuals that they are free to change decisions throughout life. In his view, decisions are the key to understanding personality and dysfunctional patterns. Even happiness, he argued, could be made as a decision. {Nick Ravo, The New York Times, 2 April 1999}

Greenwald, Ruth (1916—1994) Greenwald was born in Minsk, Belarus, and obtained her doctorate at the age of sixty-four. At first a dancer, she became a psychotherapist. The wife of Harold Greenwald, she was an active member of the Humanist Fellowship of San Diego.

Greenway, Peter (20th Century) Greenway, an atheist, is author and director of a movie, “The Baby of Mâcon,” which in 1993 was described by critic Philip Ward “as the most direct attack on anti-humanist values in recent years.” The film exposes the manipulation of humanity by totalitarian systems such as the Roman Catholic Church and, remarks Ward, “If the Roman Catholic church issued fatwas, the Pope would certainly have to single this movie out for its blasphemies, its subversive intent, and its brilliant use of Christian imagery mocked and derided in a way that Brueghel and Bosch would have recognised.” Greenway, however, holds that an atheist cannot in the nature of his beliefs be guilty of blasphemy.

GREENWICH VILLAGE HUMANIST CLUB In 1953, John Collins and Warren Allen Smith founded the Greenwich Village Humanist Club in New York City. Appealing to intelligentsia who were anti-existentialistic, they caroused with Dorothy Day followers in the White Horse Tavern and with New York University, Columbia, and other students at the Rienzi on MacDougall Street. Priority items which the club discussed in 1953: (a) proselytizing the city’s intelligentsia by publicizing the basic concepts of naturalistic humanism; (b) setting up an “ethical clearing house” committee whose members would be on guard to back up, in public statements, difficult or unpopular moral actions which individuals have taken and which are felt to be particularly humanistic; (c) forming a committee to help orient foreign students who want to learn about the U. S. “without being treated as heathens who are expected to join whatever sect the guide happens to belong to”; (d) visiting sects or groups desirous of comparing, sharing, or modifying our . . . or their . . . views; (e) listing worthy organizations already in existence, such as the Eye Bank, the World Calendar Association, or the Prison Association of New York, whose goals are commendable humanistic. “Carry a Humanist magazine in your hand, and don’t dress up,” members were advised in order that they could recognize each other in some of the “dingy dives” they dared to demonstrate. At the White Horse Tavern, some Dorothy Day Catholics once angrily shouted to a formally dressed Smith, “Go back, ya bum, to the East Side!” But Collins with an Irish brogue was able to convince those who were throwing the insults that these particular humanists were on the same, not on the opposite, side so far as social action was concerned. (See entry for John Collins.)

[[Greenwood, George [Sir] (1850—1928) 

A politician, Greenwood entered Parliament in 1906 and was knighted in 1916. Under the pen-name of George Forest, he wrote Faith of an Agnostic (1903). Greenwood was a member of the Rationalist Press Association. {RAT; RE; TRI}

Greg, William Rathbone (1809—1881) Greg was one of the founders of the Manchester Statistical Society. In 1840 he wrote on “Efforts for the Extinction of the African Slave Trade,” followed in 1850 by his Creed of Christendom. Wheeler said of Greg, “His works exhibit a careful yet bold thinker and close reasoner.” His son, Percy Greg, edited The Reasoner during Holyoake’s illness (1879). {BDF; VI; RAT}

Gregorovius, Ferdinand (1821—1891) Gregorovius was a German historian. McCabe cites his History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages as a work that “has never been superseded and is a mine of amusing information about the series of ‘Holinesses.’ It was translated into many languages and it is a symptom of the progress made fifty years ago that the critic of the Popes was enrolled as an honorary citizen of Rome. He was a non-Christian theist.” In Baroness von Suttner’s album, Gregorovius wrote, “Priests place themselves between man and the Deity only as shadows.” {JM; JMRH; RAT; RE}

Gregory, Richard Armand [Sir] (1864—1952) Sir Richard Gregory, a naturalistic humanist, wrote Gods and Men, A Testimony of Science and Religion (1949). He was an astronomer, editor of Nature from 1919 to 1939, and President of the British Association (1940). In Religion in Science and Civilization (1940), Gregory accepted the word “God” in an impersonal sense. Sir Richard was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association. {HNS; RE}

Gregory, William Henry [Sir] (1817—1892) Gregory was M. P. for Dublin (1842—1847) and for Galway (1857—1871), but this did not prevent him from expressing his rationalist views and strongly advocating the Sunday opening of museums, and other reforms. From 1871 to 1877 Gregory was Governor of Ceylon, some of whose citizens called him “our God.” He was known for being “eminently latitudinarian and indifferent to dogmatic religion.” {RAT; RE}

Gregg, William (20th Century) Gregg is a freethinker living in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

Grenier, Pierre Jules (1838—1873) Grenier was a French positivist, an author of a medical examination of the doctrine of free will (1868), which drew out a letter from Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, who implored him to repudiate his impious doctrines. Grenier also wrote Aphorisms on the First Principles of Sociology (1873). {BDF}

Grethenbach, Constantine (20th Century) Grethenbach, a freethinker, wrote A Secular View of the Bible (1902). {GS}

Greville, Charles Cavendish Fulke (1794—1865) In Greville’s Memoirs is a detailed diary of a politician and man of public affairs who for many years was clerk to the Privy Council. From 1820 to 1860 Greville told of his life in the inner circles of politics and power, and because he was trusted both by the Whigs and Tories he included lively portraits which, for example, include tales about people’s unbelief. He was, according to Sir H. Taylor, “avowedly Epicurean.” {RAT; RE}

Grévy, François Paul Jules [President] (1813—1891) Grévy became President of the French Republic. A Paris lawyer and freethinker, he had taken part on the anti-clerical side in the Revolution of 1848. After the coup d’état of Napoleon, he abandoned politics and became President of the Advocates. From 1879 to 1885, the period of the final collapse of Catholic Power, Grévy became the Republic’s President. {RAT; RE; TRI}

Grey, Albert Henry George [Earl] (1851—1917) Grey was a British statesman, at one time the Administrator of Rhodesia and later the Governor of Canada. Grey wrote that “the four men who opened the eyes of mankind most widely to the truths of human brotherhood” were Christ, Mazzini (a non-Christian theist), Robert Owen (an atheist), and Holyoake (an agnostic). Three out of four, McCabe implies, is not bad. {JM; RAT; RE}

Grey, Antony (1927— ) Grey, a rationalist, is author of Quest for Justice: Towards Homosexual Emancipation and Speaking of Sex (1992). He was one of the first active campaigners in England who supported the Wolfenden Report. In 1962, Grey became Secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society and the Albany Trust. In the 1960s and 1970s he was on the executive committee of the National Council for Civil Liberties in England. Grey, a leading English figure in the 1960s campaign to decriminalize male homosexuality, is a frequent contributor to New Humanist. His Speaking Out: Sex, Law, Politics and Society, 1954-95 (1997) was issued on the 30th anniversary of the passing of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. “Coming out about one’s orientation . . . must now be regarded as a positive duty,” he wrote, “and those who remain in the closet should be left in no doubt that their self-serving hypocrisy is letting every other gay person down.” Upon being presented with the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association’s 1998 Pink Paper Lifetime Achievement Award, Grey remarked that he was gratified by the award, not just for himself but because it recognized the courage and dedication of the staff and volunteers who worked with him at the Homosexual Law Reform Society and the Albany Trust. However, he expressed disappointment that thirty years on from the 1967 law reform “we are still so far from achieving the equality of esteem and full social acceptance that is our due in the modern world.” {Gay & Lesbian Humanist, Spring, 1998 and Winter 1998; New Humanist, August 1997; TRI}

Grieg, Edvard Hagerup (1843—1907) Grieg was a composer who developed a strong nationalistic style that has come to be known as “the voice of Norway.” Founder of the Norwegian Academy of Music, Grieg—aided by his wife, the singer Nina Hagerup Grieg who interpreted his songs—became a leading composer in his day. His “Concerto in A Minor for Piano and Orchestra” received excellent reviews, and in its first performance he was the solo pianist. Grieg is particularly known for his “Peer Gynt” (1876). His interest in Unitarianism is described by David Monrad-Johansen in a 1945 biography in which Grieg is quoted: “During a visit to England in 1888 I was very much impressed by Unitarian opinions (trust in God alone—belief in a three-in-one God and in a son co-equal with Him is barred) and in the nineteen years that have passed since then I have stood by this conclusion.” Upon his death, his wife gave in his honor an organ to the Copenhagen Unitarian Church. Not so well known, according to Marin Greif, was Grieg’s interest in the “dazzlingly good-looking Australian composer and pianist Percy Grainger,” whose good looks also dazzled Vachel Lindsay. {CE; EG; U}

Grierson, R. C. (19th Century) Grierson, a freethinker, wrote A Superhuman View of Mankind. {GS}

Grieve, C. M. (1892—1978) Grieve wrote under the pseudonym of Hugh MacDiarmid. He was a poet, a critic, and founder in 1928 of the National Party of Scotland. Expelled by the National Party in 1933, he joined the Communists and was expelled by them in 1938. In his Stony Limits (1934), Grieve offered a subtle statement of the MacDiarmidian metaphysic: “I will have nothing interposed / Between my sensitiveness and the barren but beautiful reality.” His later work comprises a series of long, linguistically dense, poems amounting to a modern epic of the Celtic consciousness. According to David Tribe, Grieve was an avowed freethinker. {OEL; TRI}

Griffin, F. R. (Died 1983) Griffin wrote Humanist Attitudes (1976) and was a founder and leading member of the Tyneside Humanists in England.

Griffin, Lepel Henry [Sir] (1838—1908) Griffin entered the Indian Civil Service and became in time Superintendent of the Kapurthala State, Chief Secretary of the Punjab, and agent to the Governor-General of Central India. Upon returning to England in 1889, he became Chairman of the Imperial Bank of Persia. An agnostic, Griffin occasionally used theistic language in a loose sense. For example, in his section on “Sikhism and the Sikhs,” in Great Religions of the World (1901), he says that Brahmanism “provided conceptions of the Deity as noble and exalted as those to be found in any religions of the West,” and he recommended “that state of suspension of judgment which is somewhat inadequately designed Agnosticism.” {RAT; RE}

Griffith Jones, George C. (19th Century)

 	A freethinker, Griffith Jones wrote By Bread Alone (1887). {FUK; GS}

Griffin, Nicholas (20th Century) Griffin, a philosophy professor at McMaster University in Canada, is author of The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell (1993) and Russell’s Idealist Apprenticeship (1992). Griffin is one of the youngest surviving genuine correspondents of a man who, as a boy, knew people born in the 18th century, and in the 1960s he elicited thoughtful replies on the Vietnam War from Russell. He is on the board of directors of the Bertrand Russell Society. At the 1994 Toronto conference of the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CSHAF), Griffin pointed out that Russell recognized the need for a plurality of “goods” for different people. The problem of providing a good life is a social as well as a person one, he added, because without food, shelter, and peace, it is not possible to lead the good life.

Griffith, William E. (20th Century) Griffith wrote Religion, the Courts, and the Public Schools (1960). {GS}

Griffiths, Donald Islay (1901—1979) Griffiths was an Australian rationalist, humanist, and builder. Born in Scotland, he lived in Fiji where his grandfather had been one of the earliest white settlers and had founded the Fiji Times. The American mother of Mr. Griffiths was the first editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly. Griffith was president of the Rationalist Society of Queensland for more than fifteen years and attended the 1965 Council for Australian Humanist Societies as a rationalist delegate. {SWW}

Rachel Griffiths, Actor ent Internet Movie Database

The Australian actress in a magazine profile (Madison, May/June 2000) was asked, "Are you religious?" to which she answered: "Although I'm not Christian, I was raised Christian. I'm an atheist, with a slight Buddhist leaning. I've got a very strong sense of morality -- it's just a different morality than the loud voices of the Christian morality...I can't tell you how many films I've turned down because there was an absence of morality. And I don't mean that from any sort of Judeo-Christian/Muslim point of view. I'm not saying they're wrong and can't be made. But, fundamentally, I'm such a humanist that I can't bear to make films that make us feel humanity is more dark than it is light."

Griffiths, Rachel ( ) An Australian actor, Griffiths was asked by an interviewer for Madison (May-June 2000) if she was religious. She responded: “Although I'm not Christian, I was raised Christian. I'm an atheist, with a slight Buddhist leaning. I've got a very strong sense of morality—it's just a different morality than the loud voices of the Christian morality. . . . I can't tell you how many films I've turned down because there was an absence of morality. And I don't mean that from any sort of Judeo-Christian/Muslim point of view. I'm not saying they're wrong and can't be made. But, fundamentally, I'm such a humanist that I can't bear to make films that make us feel humanity is more dark than it is light.” {CA}

Grigg, Bill (20th Century) Grigg, a freethinker in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, has written for Freethought Perspective (June 1999).

Griggs, Edward Howard (20th Century) Griggs was one of the first to use humanism in a contemporary sense such as used by religious humanists. He wrote Humanism: Studies in Personal and Social Development (1899). His outlook combined elements of Christianity and classicism.

Grigoroff, Isabella (20th Century) An Ottawa-based writer and communications consultant, Grigoroff wrote “Stephen Lewis on the Rise and Fall of Social Justice” (Humanist in Canada, Summer 1998). Lewis was Canada’s former Ambassador to the United Nations and laments the significant decline in social justice over the past few years in Canada and the world.

Griggs, Henry (20th Century) Griggs, a freethinker, wrote The Book of Truth (1914). {GS}

Griggs, William Clark (1932— ) Griggs wrote Parson Henry Renfro: Free Thinking on the Texas Frontier (1994). {Freethought History #15, 1995}

Grillparzer, Franz (1791—1872) Grillparzer was an Austrian dramatist. His first tragedy, Die Ahnfrau, was presented at Vienna in 1817. In 1847 he was admitted to the Austrian Upper House. A great admirer of Kant and Goethe, Grillparzer was a theist. {RAT}

Grim, LeRue (20th Century) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Grim was a secretary of the American Humanist Association. He is president of Fellowship of Humanity, which was founded in 1935 and is one of the oldest continuously existing humanist organizations. {FD; HM2}

Grimké, Sarah Moore (1792—1873) A Quaker, Grimké was a leading American abolitionist and advocate of woman’s rights. Although the daughter of an aristocratic slaveholding family, she wrote An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1830), in which she urged abolition of slavery. She and her sister, Angelina, were the first women who dared to speak in public for the black slave and then for woman’s rights. (See entry for Gerda Lerner.) {CE}

Grimm, Friedrich Melchior von (1723—1807) Baron Grimm was a German philosophic writer in French, best known for his literary correspondence with Diderot which was published in seventeen volumes (1812—1813). Grimm was an acquaintance of D’Holbach and with Rousseau, although Rousseau later found the two had become enemies. After the Revolution, Grimm was appointed by Catherine of Russia her minister at Hamburg. {BDF; RAT; RE}

Grimmond, Jo (20th Century) A member of the British Parliament, Grimond addressed the Fifth International Humanist and Ethical Union World Congress held in Boston (1970).

Grin, S. Spencer (1928— ) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Grin was publisher of Saturday Review/World. He co-authored World Education, Emerging Concepts (1978). {HM2}

Gringore, Pierre (c. 1475—1544) Gringore was a French poet and dramatist who satirized the pope and clergy, as well as the early reformers. {BDF}

Grisebach, Eduard (1845—1906) 

Grisebach was a German writer who became consul at Bucharest, Petersburg, Milan, and Haiti. He wrote many poems, the best known of which was “The New Tannhaüser” (1875). He also translated Kin Ku Ki Kuan, Chinese novels. Grisebach was a follower of Schopenhauer, whose bibliography he compiled (1888). {RAT}

Griswold, N. F. (Born 1824) Griswold was raised in New York and Connecticut. He learned the tinner’s trade. A Universalist, he came across Colonel Ingersoll’s work, then heard Ingersoll lecture in New Haven, and invited him to speak in Meriden. However, the Universalists refused the church for such a meeting, so Griswold left the group and became a freethinker. For him, the church was a prop of the rich man and the leech of the poor man. {PUT}

Groen van Prinsterer, Guillaume (20th Century) A freethinker, Groen van Prinsterer wrote Unbelief in Religion and Politics (1975). {GS}

Groening, Matthew (1954- ) Groening, writer and cartoonist of “Life in Hell,” wrote Love is Hell (1985), Work is Hell (1986), School is Hell (1987), With Love from Hell (1989), and numerous works about “The Simpsons,” a program that is well known to television viewers. When asked by David Wallis (The New York Times Magazine, 27 December 1998) how he responds to critics who consider Bart Simpson “a dreadful role model for children,” he replied, “If you don’t want your kids to be like Bart Simpson, don’t act like Homer Simpson.” When told that he poked a lot of fun at organized religion and asked what is the most comical story in the Bible, Groening responded,

I was very disturbed when Jesus found a demon in a guy and He put the demon into a herd of pigs, then sent them off a cliff. What did the pigs do? I could never figure that out. It just seemed very un-Christian. Technically, I’m an agnostic, but I definitely believe in hell—especially after watching the fall TV schedule. {CA; Freethought Today, February 1999} Groening, Matthew (15 Feb 1954 - ) Groening, writer and cartoonist of Life in Hell, wrote Love is Hell (1985), Work is Hell (1986), School is Hell (1987), With Love from Hell (1989), and numerous works about The Simpsons, a program that is well known to television viewers. When asked by reporter David Wallis how he responds to critics who consider Bart Simpson “a dreadful role model for children,” he replied, “If you don’t want your kids to be like Bart Simpson, don’t act like Homer Simpson.” Told that he poked a lot of fun at organized religion and asked what is the most comical story in the Bible, Groening responded,

I was very disturbed when Jesus found a demon in a guy and He put the demon into a herd of pigs, then sent them off a cliff. What did the pigs do? I could never figure that out. It just seemed very un-Christian. Technically, I’m an agnostic, but I definitely believe in hell—especially after watching the fall TV schedule. {CA; Freethought Today, February 1999; David Wallis, The New York Times Magazine, 27 December 1998)}

Groethe, David (20th Century) Groethe is vice-president Rockies of the Executive Council of the Freedom For Religion Foundation.

Groethe, Mary (20th Century) Groethe, a South Dakotan, is on the board of directors of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Grof, Stanislaw (20th Century) Grof, a believer in reincarnation, is cited by Paul Edwards as being, along with Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, one of the most credulous persons who ever lived.

Groh, Israel W. (19th Century) Groh, a freethinker, wrote How Can We Be Saved? (1890?). {GS}

Grollet, Philippe (20th Century) Grollet is President of Centre d’Action Laïque, which inaugurated a five-floor headquarters in Belgium in 1997. The headquarters is at the campus of the Université Libre de Brussels.

Groome, Francis Hindes (1851—1902) Groome was a writer, the son of the Archdeacon of Suffolk. He married a woman of Gypsy blood and became one of the highest authorities on the Gypsies. In his appreciation of Fitzgerald (Two Suffolk Friends, 1895), Groome endorses his skepticism. {RAT} [[Groos, Karl (1861—1937) Groos was a German psychologist who taught at Giessen and at Basle University. Groos followed the pantheistic philosophy of Schelling. {RAT; RE}

Groppali, Alessandro (Born 1874) Groppali was an Italian sociologist, a member of the Italian Positivist School. He called Ardigò “our greatest thinker and agreed with him in regard to religion. {RAT}

Grosboll, Thorkild (1948- ) A Lutheran pastor in Tarbaek, Denmark, Grosboll was suspended by his church in 2003 for saying, “I do not believe in a physical God, in the afterlife, in the resurrection, in the Virgin Mary. And I believe that Jesus was a nice guy, who figured out what man wanted. He embodied what he believed was needed to upgrade the human being.” In his book, A Stone in the Shoe, he states that he does believe “in something divine” but “God is not an argument. God is only a question. He is supposed to be a constant stone in the shoe.” On the day he was suspended after refusing to recant for not believing in a “physical God,” he repeated that he does not believe in a physical God who “created man and ant,” an afterlife, a Virgin Mary, or anything that smacks of the metaphysical. (Weekend Avisen, Tarbaek, Denmark, 22 May 2003; The New York Times, 8 July 2003)

Gross, Dick (1954— ) Gross wrote “Altruism and Atheism” in the New Humanist (February 1995). He explains that goodness is not the preserve of the religious and that humanists need to build on this knowledge.

Gross, Paul R. (20th Century) “Downsizing Darwin,” by Harvard University’s Gross, makes the point that the anti-Darwinist crusaders are not just asking that creationism be co-taught along with evolution but are working to insure that science be defeated wherever it conflicts with religion. {Humanist Monthly, Capital District Humanist Society, Scotia, New York, November 1998}

Grot, Nikolai Yakolevich (1852—1899) Grot, a Russian psychologist, wrote numerous works on psychology and philosophy. He was strongly opposed to mysticism and metaphysics early on but later accepted metaphysics and natural religion, finally returning to empirical psychology and monistic pantheism. {RAT}

Grote, George (1794—1871) Allegedly the author of The Analysis of the influence of natural religion on the temporal happiness of mankind (1822), Grote is believed by Berman to have been the writer who used the pseudonym Philip Beauchamp. However, John Stuart Mill who saw the work in manuscript thought it was “understood to have been partly compiled from manuscripts of Mr. [Jeremy] Bentham.” The work is a masterpiece of atheism. Grote, who was descended from a Dutch family, was the historian of Greece. His History of Greece (11 volumes) took from 1846 to 1856, and this was followed by Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates. In 1833, he was elected as Radical M.P. for the City of London and retained his seat until 1841. In Parliament, he was chiefly known for his advocacy of the ballot. Grote’s review of J. S. Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1861) shows that he retained his freethought until the end of his life. “The great historian,” wrote the Rev. Peter Anton, author of Masters of History, “passed away tranquilly and without pain, and thus was brought to a close a career singularly devoted, conscientious, and laborious, a life rich in virtue and honour and the esteem of the wise and the good.” Mrs. Grote also wrote of the end: “Early in the month of June, a marked change supervened, and at the end of three weeks his honourable, virtuous, and laborious course was closed by a tranquil and painless death.” Grote, although an atheist as was his wife Harriet, was buried in Westminster Abbey. Remarked Foote, “Three centuries ago Grote might have been burnt to death; but the custodians of Westminster Abbey are now anxious to enrich their precincts with celebrities, and the atheist historian is interred there with freethinkers like Ephraim Chambers, Sir Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin.” {BDF; FUK; HAB; JM; RAT; RE}

Grote, Harriet (1792—1878) Mrs. George Grote shared her husband’s opinions and wrote his life story. {BDF; RAT}

Grotius, Hugo (Huigh de Groot) (1583—1645)

Grotius, a distinguished Dutch jurist and humanist, is credited with having written the first definitive text on international law. He contended that natural law prescribes rules of conduct for nations, not just for private individuals. Drawing from the Bible as well as classical history, he maintained that it is criminal to wage war except for certain causes. A leading student of theology and biblical criticism, he observed, “He who reads ecclesiastical history reads nothing but the roguery and folly of bishops and churchmen.” {CE; TYD}

GROUNDSWELL Groundswell (PO Box 174, Prospect Park, Pennsylvania 19076) is a monthly edited by Ben Price and Tom Mulliam. It has poetry, cartoons, articles on politics, the economy, and subjects that explore the exploitation of conservative ideology and its effective campaign to obstruct personal and individual freedoms.

Gruber, E. L. (20th Century) In the February 1958 issue of The Rationalist Reporter, Vol. I, #2 of a monthly bulletin of the New York Chapter of the Rationalist Press Association, Gruber wrote an editorial attacking the “visitors” who had almost succeeded in breaking up the group’s previous meeting. The bulletin announced that the 28 February 1958 lecture would be held at the Henry George School with Prof. Paul Edwards of New York University speaking on “Clarence Darrow, American Heretic.” The bulletin’s masthead noted that Bertrand Russell was then president of the Rationalist Press Association. Gruber was the group’s local secretary.

Grudin, Robert (20th Century) Grudin, professor of English at the University of Oregon, is author of On Dialogue: An Essay in Free Thought and Time and the Art of Living. In 1995 he founded the Endowment for Civic Humanism, which supports civic service programs in schools and research in civic humanism at universities.

Gruen, Karl (1817—1887) A German author, Gruen was a friend to Proudhon and translated his Philosophy of Misery. In 1849 Gruen was arrested and condemned to exile, whereupon he moved to Brussels until 1962, then became a professor at Frankfort and later at Colmar. Gruen established a radical journal, the Mannheim Evening News, and he wrote biographical studies of Schiller (1844) and Feuerbach (1871). {BDF}

Gruet, Jacques (Died 1547) Gruet was accused of being a heretic, but in actuality the charges against him were political, according to Robertson. He was tortured, but he refused to incriminate anyone else. Charged with having written against John Calvin, Gruet finally pleaded guilty to the charges and prayed for a speedy death. That came when by order of Calvin “on July 26, 1547, his half-dead body was beheaded on the scaffold, the torso being tied and the feet nailed thereto.” Observed Robertson, “Such were the judicial methods and mercies of a reformed Christianity, guided by a chief reformer.” Wheeler called Gruet a Swiss freethinker, adding that after his execution Gruet’s papers were burned by the common hangman. {BDF; JMR; JMRH}

Grün, Karl (1817—1887) Grün was a German author who wrote about Goethe, Schiller, and Feuerbach. He also wrote cultural histories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (RAT}

Grünbaum, Adolf (1923— ) Grünbaum is the Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy and Chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. A Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism, he is a contributing editor for Free Inquiry and Philo and a signer of Humanist Manifesto 2000. He has written, “The supposition that the godless lead meaningless lives is just an ideological phantasm.” In Foundations of Psychoanalysis, A Philosophical Critique (1984), Grünbaum “argues that Freud rests his case for the theory of repression on the superior therapeutic effectiveness of psychoanalysis in treating neuroses, and that such evidence is not available,” writes Thomas Nagel in The New York Review of Books (12 May 1994). “His reading of Freud, and of the evidence, clinical and extraclinical, has been extensively criticized, notably by David Sachs, ‘In Fairness to Freud,’ Philosophical Review, Vol. 98, No. 3 (July 1989), and by various commentators in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 9 (June 1986). More recently he has published Validation in The Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis (1993), a further discussion of these issues, which include both new material and versions of previously published essays, some predating The Foundations of Psychoanalysis.” Nagel, a professor of law and philosophy at New York University, contrasts the views concerning Freud which are held by Grünbaum, Richard Wollheim, and Paul Robinson. Paul Robinson, in Freud and His Critics (1993), lists three main anti-Freudians: Jeffrey Masson, who blames Freud’s phallic-centered psychology for adding to the sufferings of women and children; Frank Sulloway, a philosopher of science; and Grünbaum, whom he considers the most influential. According to a review of the Robinson book in The Economist (28 Aug 1993), Grünbaum launches a three-pronged attack:

His first target was the philosophers known as the hermeneutists, some of whom tried to transfer psychoanalysis from the sciences to the humanities by claiming that it was acausal. Mr. Grünbaum is understandably keen to demolish this line of intellectual retreat. It would render redundant his scientific critique of psychoanalysis. Mr. Grünbaum’s second target is Karl Popper’s claim that psychoanalysis is a pseudo-science because it is a catch-all that can explain every state of affairs. If this is true, it is immune to contradictory evidence and from being tested by Mr. Popper’s rigorous method of falsifiability. It can only pass the less rigorous inductive test of reasoning from observable data. However, Mr. Grünbaum maintains that there are many propositions in psychoanalysis that can be falsified—e.g., Freud’s theory of paranoia that sees it as a defence against active homosexuality. Mr. Grünbaum suggests that an epidemiological study carried out among active homosexuals in San Francisco could verify or falsify this theory. Mr. Grünbaum’s third target is Freud himself. He attacks the methodology used to support Freudian claims for the efficacy of psychoanalysis—i.e., evidence from the couch. This does not measure up to his inductive method of scientific testing because it is too susceptible to charges of placebo effect—i.e., suggestibility on the part of the analyst. But Mr. Grünbaum over-emphasizes cure in psychoanalysis. It is more of a journey into the self. Freud himself was not much concerned with the notion of cure. In his main case histories, only the “Rat-Man” can be seen as a therapeutic success.

However, Grünbaum is said to be an admirer of Freud and sees himself as a constructive critic of psychoanalysis, not someone “out to get psychoanalysis.” The Economist’s reviewer added that Robinson finds “the density of Mr. Grünbaum’s prose serves to make it impenetrable to the lay reader.” Grünbaum’s essay, “In Defense of Secular Humanism,” is included in Challenges to the Enlightenment, In Defense of Reason and Science (1994). His essay, “Theological Misinterpretations of Current Physical Cosmology,” appeared in the initial copy of Philo (Spring-Summer 1998). “My Exodus to Secular Humanism” (Free Inquiry, Fall 1999) tells how his reading of Schopenhauer’s essays “soon disposed me toward atheism.” By the age of thirteen, he explained, he had become a full-fledged atheist and would have declined to go through with the Bar-Mitzvah except that he did not want to embarrass his parents. He added,

I have remained a lifelong atheist for two reasons: I do not know of any cogent argument for the existence of God, and I think there is telling evidence against it. As to the first reason, I find no merit at all, for example, in recent attempts to invoke the Big Bang cosmogony as a basis for divine creation. (See entry for Fëodor Dostoyevsky.)

Grupp, Mel Michael (20th Century) Grupp has been a Leader since 1965 of the Ethical Culture Societies in Southern Connecticut, Queens, Westchester, and Brooklyn. He has been a frequent youth worker and teacher of ethics. Emphatically refusing to sign Humanist Manifesto II, he explained that he regarded it as too rationalistic and non-religious for Ethical Culture. (See entry for Ethical Culture.) {EU, Howard B. Radest}

Grycz-Smilowski, Karol (Died 1959) Grycz-Smilowski was a Polish pastor who re-activated Unitarianism in the first three decades of the century. (See entry for Polish Unitarians.)

Gruyer, Louis August Jean François-Philippe (1778—1866) Gruyer, a Belgian philosopher, wrote an Essay of Physical Philosophy (1828), Tabletès Philosophiques (1842), and Principles of Physical Philosophy (1845). He held the atomic doctrine, that matter is eternal. {BDF; RAT}

Guadet, Marguerite Elie (1758—1794) Guadet, an advocate, threw himself enthusiastically into the Revolution. He was elected Deputy for the Gironde. His vehement attacks on the Jacobins contributed to the destruction of his party, after which he took refuge. However, he was arrested and beheaded at Bordeaux. {BDF}

Gubrud, Lewis M. (20th Century) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Gubrud was executive director of the Mediator Fellowship in Providence, Rhode Island. {HM2}

Guccione, Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini (1930— ) A publisher, Guccione has published several magazines and founded Penthouse, a controversial publication with sex-oriented materials. He has been a cartoonist and greeting card design and produced a number of films, including “Caligula” (1979). Television shows he has produced include “Omni: Visions of Tomorrow,” and “The New Frontier.” Peter Occhiogrosso’s Once A Catholic quotes Guccione as saying, “I am not an atheist; I am probably an agnostic.” However, he has insisted on sending his children to parochial schools and, on one occasion, encouraged one of his ex-wives to convert to Catholicism. {CA; E}

Guccione, Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini (17 Dec 1930 - ) A publisher, Guccione has published several magazines and founded Penthouse, a controversial publication with sex-oriented materials. He has been a cartoonist and greeting card design and produced a number of films, including Caligula (1979). Television shows he has produced include Omni: Visions of Tomorrow and The New Frontier. Peter Occhiogrosso’s Once A Catholic quotes Guccione as saying, “I am not an atheist; I am probably an agnostic.” However, he has insisted on sending his children to parochial schools and, on one occasion, encouraged one of his ex-wives to convert to Catholicism. {CA; E}

Guedeville, Nicolas (1654—1720) A French writer, Gueudeville at first was a Benedictine monk and a distinguished preacher, but the boldness of his opinions drew on him the punishment of his superiors. He escaped to Holland and publicly abjured Catholicism. He wrote the Dialogue of the Baron de la Hontan with an American Savage (1704), a dialogue which is a bitter criticism of Christian usages. Guedeville translated Erasmus’s Praise of Folly (1713), More’s Utopia, and C. Agrippa on the Uncertainty and Vanity of Sciences (1726). {BDF}

GUELPH UNIVERSITY HUMANISTS

The Humanist Club of the University of Guelph is at <www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>.

Guépin, Ange (1805—1873) Guépin was a French physician who taught at Nantes. He formed the first scientific and philosophical congress, which was held in Nantes in 1833. In 1854 he published his Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. After the fall of the Empire, Guépin became Préfet of La Loire Inférieure but resigned because of ill health. Guépin was buried without any religious ceremony. {BDF; RAT}

Guéroult, Adolphe (1810—1872) Guéroult early in life became a follower of Saint Simon. He wrote to the Journal des Debats and founded l’Opinion National. Guéroult was elected to the legislature in 1863, at which time he advocated the separation of church and state. {BDF; RAT}

Guerra-Junqueiro Abilio (Born 1850) A Portuguese poet, Guerra Junqueiro wrote The Death of Don Juan and The Death of Jehovah, the latter an assault upon the Catholic faith from the standpoint of pantheism. {BDF; RAT}

Guerrero, Praxedis (1882—1910) A Mexican anarchist and revolutionary, Guerrero was a leading member of the Partido Liberal Mexicano. During the revolution, he was killed. “Religion,” he wrote in Regeneración (1910), “is the tool of tyrants in both home and presidential palace; its mission is to break people’s spirits. . . . By whatever name, it is the most terrible enemy of woman. Pretending consolation, it destroys her consciousness. In the name of a sterile love, it snatches away real love, source of life, and human happiness. . . . It is the right arm of domestic and national despots; its mission is to domesticate; through the caress or whip, cage or noose, it’s all employed toward one end: to tame. First the woman, because the woman is the mother and teacher of the child, and the child will be the man.”

Guerrini, Olindo (1845—1916) Guerrini was an Italian poet who sometimes wrote under the name of Lorenzo Stecchetti. In the preface to Nova Polemica, he declares, “Primo di tutto dice, non credo in Dio (First of all I say do not believe in God).” {BDF; RE}

Guedeville, Nicolas (1654—1720) Guedeville was a French writer who, distinguishing himself as a Benedictine monk, preached so boldly that he drew the punishment of his superiors. He escaped to Holland and publicly abjured Catholicism. Guedeville translated Erasmus’s Praise of Folly (1713), More’s Utopia (1715), and C. Agrippa on the Uncertainty and Vanity of Sciences (1726). {BDF; RAT}

Guesde, Jules Basile (Born 1845) Guesde was a French politician who established the first French Socialist organ, L’Égalité. Because of his advanced opinions while working in the Foreign Office, he was compelled to fly to Switzerland. Guesde was a strong rationalist and humanitarian. {RAT}

Guggenberger, Louisa Sarah Bovington (1845—1897) A Quaker poet, Guggenberger was a Darwinian whose work Darwin appreciated although he confessed he seldom read poetry. Guggenberger submitted articles to The Nineteenth Century, Mind, and other publications. {BDF; RAT; RE}

Guichard, Victor (1803—1884) Guichard was the Mayor of Sens and was elected deputy for the Yonne department. Exiled in 1852, he was again elected in 1871. Guichard’s principal work is La Liberté de Penser, fin du Pouvoir Spirituel (1806). {BDF}

Guignebert, Charles (1867—1939) Guignebert, a professor of history at the Sorbonne, was a leading authority on the Greek-Roman world about the beginning of the Christian Era. He wrote Jesus (1935) and The Jewish World in the Time of Jesus (1939). Guignebert was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association. {RE}

Guild, E. E. (Born 1811) Guild, born in Connecticut, became a Christian minister in 1835. But after numerous debates he turned Universalist. In 1844 he published The Universalist Book of Reference, followed by Pro and Con, in which he gives the arguments for an against Christianity. {BDF}

Guild, Polly and Ted Guild (20th Century) The Guilds are program directors of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists. They can be reached at 4 Kendal Common, Weston, Massachusetts 02193.

GUILLOTINE • Guillotine, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason. —Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary

GUILT • You know how Catholics are—passion in the dark and guilt the next morning. —David Hare, “The Blue Room,” a Broadway play (For a discussion of moral and legal or quasi-legal guilt, see the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 3.)

Guimet, Etienne Emile (Born 1836) Guimet was a French traveler, musician, anthropologist, and philanthropist. The son of the inventor of ultramarine, whose business he continued, Guimet visited most parts of the world and collected objects illustrating religions. In Lyons, his fine museum which cost several million francs was presented to France, then was moved to Paris where he acted as curator. In 1880 he published Annales du Musée Guimet, in which original articles appeared on oriental religions. He attended the International Congress of Freethinkers at Paris in 1889. {BDF; RAT}

Guirlando, Giulio (Died 1562) An Italian heretic, Guirlando was put to death at Venice for anti-trinitarian heresy. {BDF}

Gulbrandsen, Natalie W. (20th Century) Gulbrandsen was the fourth moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, serving from 1981 to 1993.

Gull, William Withey [Sir] (1816—1890) Gull, a physician to the Queen, was Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution (1847—1849) and physician and lecturer at Guy’s from 1856 onwards. A friend of James Hinton, he shared his pantheistic views. {RAT; RE}

GULLAH Gullah is a historic African-English language spoken mainly in coastal South Carolina. (For a translation of De Good Nyews Bout Jedus Christ Wa Luke rite [The Gospel According to Luke], see entry for Bible.)

Gumplowicz, Ludwig (1838—1909) A German jurist, Gumplowicz became a professor of public law at Gratz University. He regarded religion as a natural psychological-sociological phenomenon, and ethics as a code imposed on the individual by the group. {RAT}

Gunasekara, Victor (20th Century)

Gunasekara is the Australian secretary of the Humanist Society of Queensland. E-mail: <slsoc@uq.net.au>.

Gundling, Nicolaus Hieronymus (1671—1729) Gundling was a German scholar and a deistic philosopher. He wrote History of the Philosophy of Morals (1706) and The Way to Truth (1713). One of the first German eclectics, he took much from Hobbes and Locke, with whom he derived all ideas from experience. {BDF; RAT}

Gunn, John (20th Century) Gunn, a freethinker, wrote Haldeman-Julius, the Man and His Work (1924). (GS}

Gunnarson, Staffan (20th Century) Gunnarson, who is active in Sweden’s Human Etiska Forbundet, has written for the International Humanist News, questioning the wisdom of the International Humanist and Ethical Union’s Declaration of Human Values. That declaration states that some things can “enable us to understand without reasoning, which he feels lets the doors fling widely open to religious claims on understanding without explanation, thus leading to an uncontrolled subjectivist chaos.” He holds that humanists must remain rationalists who use scientific methods, that there are better ways to explain insight and creativity. {International Humanist News, October 1993 and December 1997}

Gunning, William D. (Died 1888) Gunning was an American professor who had studied under Agassiz. He wrote Life History of Our Planet (1876) and contributed to The Open Court. {BDF}

Gunst, Frans Christiaan (1823—1886) Gunst was a Dutch writer and publisher. With Junghuhn, he started De Dageraad, the organ of the Dutch freethinkers, which he edited from 1855 to 1867. For many years he was president of the Independent Lodge of Freemasons, and he wrote on Adon Hiram, the Oldest Legend of the Freemasons. Other of his works described the martyrs of the Spanish Inquisition, and he made comparisons of pagan and Jesuit morals. {BDF; RAT}

Gurbarg, Josephine R. (20th Century) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Gurbarg was secretary of the Humanist Society of Greater Philadelphia. {HM2}

Gurbarg, Samuel J. (20th Century) Gurbarg signed Humanist Manifesto II. {HM2}

Gurney, Edmund (1847—1888) Gurney, a n English writer, assisted in founding the Society of Psychical Research (1882) and, with Myers and Podmore, published Phantoms of the Living (1886). In his Tertium Quid (2 volumes, 1887), while rejecting a personal God and expressing only a hope of a future life, he pleaded for an intermediate attitude between orthodoxy and positivism. {RAT}

Gurney, Joseph (Died 1894) Gurney, a draper turned accountant, was secretary of the Northampton Freehold Land Society. He was a leader of Northampton secularists in the 1850s and 1860s. {RSR; RE; VI}

Gurney, Rod (20th Century) Gurney, University of California at Los Angeles psychiatrist, was host in 1994 of the 14th annual HUMCON conference sponsored by the Alliance of Humanist, Atheist, and Ethical Culture Organizations of Los Angeles County. He is author of The Human Agenda.

GURU

A guru in Hinduism and Buddhism is a teacher or spiritual leader. He gives initiation into spiritual practice and instructs disciples, often maintaining a close relationship with them. Freethinkers and humanists on a diet might refer to someone as being the Guru of Lean, but the word is used only in a jocular way only.

Gustafson, Jodi (20th Century) Gustafson is a Vice President of the University of Minnesota Atheists and Humanists.

Gustavus III of Sweden: See entry for Emanuel Swedenborg.

Gustofson, Walter (20th Century) A member of the Department of English at Upsala College, East Orange, New Jersey, Gustofson wrote the present author concerning humanism:

I would certainly call Pär Lagerkvist a humanist. He is not easy to place, and is therefore challenging and provocative. He is always evolving, never has his mind completely made up. In general, I suppose he is fundamentally a scientific naturalist, sceptical, empirical, especially in his periods of expressionism and despair. But other factors enter in, particularly artistic considerations; he may be an artist as much as a philosopher. He clings to humanistic ideals such as democracy, love, the nobility of the common man, little children, and so on. He hopes in the possible evolution of a superior type of religion. Christ, though possibly not a God, was a fine influence. Immortality, though it cannot be proved, can be the subject of longing. There are many facets to this work—life as set forth in his work is a fusion, a kind of fugue of many opposites, all necessary and important in the pattern.

Gustofson’s own personal philosophy was not stated. {WAS, 25 August 1954}

Gutenburg, Larry (Died 1995) Gutenburg, who was the president in New York City of People With Aids (PWA) in 1990 and remained a board member, was an atheist who helped found AASH (Agnostics, Atheists, and Secular Humanists Who Are Infected / Affected with AIDS / HIV Illness) in 1992. A political as well as a gay activist, Gutenburg co-founded in 1980 the Gay People’s Radio Group at WBAI-FM in New York City and from 1983 to 1994 co-hosted “The Gay Show” at that station. He was a popular organizer who arranged interviews with manufacturers of drugs and helped arrange the lowering of drug costs to individuals whose immunization systems are assaulted by HIV. During his long illness, Gutenburg’s parents and brothers were supportive and had, he wrote, “an open door policy towards me. AIDS has not interfered in my relations with my family,” a situation of which he was proud. Gutenburg for a time worked on The Body Positive, a magazine about HIV/AIDS. The end of his life was similar to that of other fellow AASH members, and just as he had visited them they visited him. When Gutenburg died, his friend Randy Wicker, owner of a Greenwich Village lamp shop, placed the cremains in the store’s window, as had been pre-planned by the two jokesters, “so he could watch the boys go by.”

Gutenberg’s Mazarin Bible (c. 1455): See entry for incunabulist. For the individual who actually invented the printing press, see entry for Printing.

Gutmann, James (1897—1988) A philosopher at Columbia University and author with Corliss Lamont of Dialogue on George Santayana (1959), Gutmann when asked about humanism by the present author wrote:

Let me begin by paraphrasing the classical Nihil humanum mihi alienum puto and rendering it—No humanistic philosophy is alien to me. However, though dubious as to the value of pigeon-holing ideas and of much labeling in philosophy, I feel sure that of the categories which you list, “naturalistic humanist” fits me best. Without wishing to be fussy I should prefer “humanistic naturalis”’ to “naturalistic humanism” both because Nature includes Human Nature and because it is the setting in which men discover the pluriverse or creatively conceive it as a universe. This view of humanism, in its essentials, is, I believe, shared by all naturalistically inclined thinkers from the ancients to our day and even appeals to certain supernaturalists. Among the ancients, pre-Socratic philosophy, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all seem to make most sense when interpreted in these terms. This tradition of interpretation I first learned from F. J. E. Woodbridge forty years ago when he was expounding it along with George Santayana and John Dewey. Irwin Edman learned much from these men and carried on these teachings as have my other Columbia University colleagues, each in his own way and without constituting a “school of thought,” since we would rather be a school of thinking and value variety and diversity of viewpoints as becomes the humanistic tradition. Besides the ancients—including Hellenistic philosophers—I think I have learned most from the works of Spinoza, Schelling, and Nietzsche among the classics and, among contemporaries, from Felix Adler, John Dewey, and Ernst Cassirer. Most of them could appropriately be called both scientific and religious teachers and the values implied in both adjectives are precious to me. Though such use of the term “religious” may seem inadmissible (especially in the minds of those who identify religion with supernaturalism and theological or even ecclesiastical concerns), I believe that humanism can make room for a non-dogmatic, naturalistic, and ethical mysticism which will discover ever-increasing possibilities in human nature and its achievements.

Gutmann is editor of Spinoza’s Ethics (1968) and author of The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard (1978). {WAS, 16 August 1956}

Guttierrez Galindo, Blanca (20th Century) Guttierrez, a Mexican, spoke on “Art in Mexico, an Ethical Perspective,” at the 1996 Humanist World Congress held in Mexico City.

Guttmacher, Alan F. (1894—1974) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Guttmacher was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. {HM2}

Guyau, Jean Marie (1854—1888) Guyau, a French author, is cited by Corliss Lamont as being a naturalistic humanist in his outlook. Guyau had been crowned at the age of nineteen by the Institute of France for a monograph on utilitarian morality. His principal works are La Morale d’Epicure (The Morality of Epicurus) and Morale Anglaise Contemporaine (Contemporary English Ethics). He wrote about the irreligion of the future and was an atheist and follower of M. Fouillée, his step-father. All of Guyau’s works were original and showed that his chief doctrine is the expansion of life. Nicolas Walter, lamenting that Guyau is almost unknown in the English-speaking world, has said that, like W. K. Clifford, Guyau died young of tuberculosis. “He had very original ideas about the ‘irreligion of the future’ and ‘a morality without sanction or obligation.’ ” {BDF; CL; RAT; RE}

Guyau, M. (1854—1888) Gauyau, a freethinker, wrote A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction (1898). {GS}

Guynemer, A.M.A. de (19th Century) Guynemer was the French author in 1852 of a dictionary of astronomy as well as an anonymous unbelievers’ dictionary in 1869. {BDF}

Guyot, Yves (1843—1928) An eminent French economist and statesman, Guyot was a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and also the English Royal Statistical Society. He was president of several French societies and, at one time, was Minister of Public Works. Early in life, when he edited a freethought paper, Guyot was an outspoken atheist and wrote several works criticizing religion. {JM; RAT; RE}

GWUP GWUP is the acronym for Germany’s Society for the Scientific Examination of Para-Science. (See entry for Armadeo Sarma.)

Gwynne, George (Died 1873) Gwynne was a freethought writer in the Reasoner and National Reformer. He wrote under the pen name of Aliquis and was a patron of secularism. {BDF; VI}

Gyllenborg, Gustaf Fredrik (1731—1808) Count Gyllenborg was a Swedish poet, one of the first members of the Academy of Stockholm and Chancellor of Upsala University. He published satires, fables, and odes that were named The Passage of the Belt. Gyllenborg’s opinions were deistic, rationalist, and satiric. {BDF; RAT; RE}

GYPSIES: See entry for

G