James Leuba

From Philosopedia

Leuba, James H(enry) (1867–1946)

A psychologist and an expert on religious mysticism, Leuba was on the advisory board of Charles Francis Potter’s First Humanist Society of New York. Earlier, he had been a leader of the Ethical Culture Society.

One of his provocative books is The Belief in God and Immortality (1916). He also wrote A Psychological Study of Religion (1912), in which his own agnosticism is explained, The Psychology of Religious Mysticism (1925), and God or Man (1933). Leuba in an early issue of The Humanist wrote,

History is the record of the many dead that are still alive; and of the reasons why so many who expected to live on are dead.

His study in 1914 revealed that of 1000 randomly selected scientists 42% affirmed their belief in a personal God who answers prayers, while the same percentage denied this. Another 17% defined themselves as agnostics. A later study by Edward Larson and Larry Witham came up with similar statistics.

William James, in a 17 April 1904 letter to Leuba, whose position he called "dogmatic atheistic naturalism," wrote,

• My personal opinion is simple. I have no living sense of commerce with a God. I envy those who have, for I know the addition of such a sense would help me immensely.

(See 1998 reference to Leuba's 1916 study. Also see a reference by Paul Karr).

{CL; EU, Howard B. Radest; FUS; HNS; HNS2; JM; RAT; RE; TRI}