Freethought Across the Centuries: Toward a New Age of Enlightenment - Hardcover

Larue, Gerald A.

9780931779046: Freethought Across the Centuries: Toward a New Age of Enlightenment

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0931779049 ISBN 13: 9780931779046

Publisher: Amer Humanist Assn, 1996

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Larue, Gerald A.

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From the Back Cover:

"The average American has almost no conception of the debt owed to freethinkers of the past 200 years of American history, not to mention those Europeans who distinguished themselves for their courage and clarity of thought.

Once the specific evidence is brought to our attention we can, with the gift of hindsight, perceive the importance of those thinkers who moved bravely against the current of their time. In those times, sad to say, they often paid dearly for taking advantage of that freedom of thought and expression that are so honored by the rest of us, at least as abstractions.

Gerald Larue has produced a volume that can enlighten everyone, believers as well as non-believers."
--Steve Allen, author, comedian and composer

"Dr. Gerald Larue's book, Freethought Across the Centuries, is an adventure epic of human mortals struggling to increase their liberty, including the freedom to think creatively and critically. It is also the account of tyrants and others whose fear of freedom of thought led them to employ violent tactics of repression.

In fascinating chapters, Larue demonstrates that many cultural streams around the world have fed into the vast river of freethought. As an author, he belongs to the noble tradition of humanists who find human heroism behind views and traditions sharply different from their own.

His book shows in detail how we as a species have struggled to solve problems and to make sense of the universe that gave us birth. Upon reading the closing chapter, we cannot help feeling deeper kinship with fellow humans who lived before us.

Larue helps us understand that ours is the responsibility of conserving, generously transmitting, and perhaps rectifying the vast heritage into which we have all in various ways been immersed and by which we have been made into a fearsome and wondrous species."
--Joseph E. Barnhart, philosophy professor, North Texas State University

"In Freethought Across the Centuries, Gerald Larue knocks religion off its pedestal and places it squarely into the arena of inquiry. Larue presents rational skeptics throughout history who questioned and criticized religious dogma and who often died because they questioned.

The book reminds us that, if we fail to question religion as we question all other fields of human knowledge, then we risk forfeiting the sacred balance between church and state.

I urge educators in all disciplines to read Professor Larue's book, to bring its resources into their classroom."
--Lena Ksargian, University of Chicago

From Chapter One: "Concerning Freethought"

This book is about freethought. It is concerned with critical thinking and independent reasoning. It recognizes brave men and women who dared to question, to challenge, and even to upset the claims, opinions, and beliefs of crown and church. It deals with the human quest for understanding the meaning and purpose of life and living. And, finally, it bears upon the kind of thinking and responding that has given birth to democracy and the rights of men and women to be themselves, to rise to their greatest potential while at the same time granting to others the freedom to be different and to express themselves openly and without fear of reprisal.

Freethought is not based on groundless speculation or credulity. It involves conjecture based on reason, logic, analysis, and testing. Ideas that just float in the air so to speak, or that consist of "maybes" and "perhapses," do not constitute freethought. Freethought demands disciplined thinking, careful evaluations, and openness to change and growth whenever new information becomes available. Freethought involves the inquirer in an exciting adventure that keeps the mind and spirit open and live--always probing, questioning, seeking and always with the awareness that "final" answers will never truly be final, and that whatever "ultimate truth" is will always be just beyond our grasp. Freethought is constantly on the cutting edge and in the forefront. It is open to the future with an awareness and an appreciation of the past, but without accepting what has been said in the past simply because it is "old" or "revered." It is cognizant and appreciative of what has been proclaimed as "orthodox" or final authoritative statement without the need to accept that particular claim.

The term "freethought" came into existence in England towards the end of the seventeenth century....[It] is...closely related to "critical thinking" and, perhaps also, to "independent thinking"--each of which calls upon the individual to "think for one's self," to reach conclusions based on reason and open inquiry and not to accept blindly the dogma and opinions espoused by others. Freethought engenders basic questions such as "How do we know this is true?", "What is the evidence supporting this conclusion?", "What are the basic presuppositions underlying this belief and how do we test their validity?", and so forth. Today, in freethought, we employ reason and logic in analysis and utilize a scientific approach which calls for independent testing and re-testing. These approaches automatically leave the door open to change based on new findings.

What this present study will make clear is that both critical and independent thinking are as old as the human race. In every culture where we find written material, there is evidence of challenges made to prevailing concepts and dogmas, and we can assume that such questioning went on for millennia before beliefs were put in written form. What is demonstrated, over and over again, is that, out of the refusal to accept what those in power and authority have claimed to be the ultimate truth, has come ever-widening knowledge of the natural world, as well as human progress in ethics, morals, human behavior, human relations, freedom, and the quality of life.

Unfortunately, today many are not ready to exercise free thinking or critical thinking in all areas of life. All too easily we become locked in to what our particular branch of American culture may proclaim as right, proper, and the ultimate truth. The results of uncritical acceptance of attitudes and beliefs are bigotry, racism, dogmatism, anti-science postures, and a lack of compassion or understanding that endorses limiting the rights and freedoms of others. Thus, dogmas, attitudes, beliefs, behavior, life styles, endorsed or condemned by church or state are accepted without critical examination or judgment, no matter what their effect on society or on human freedom may be. It is at this point that the freethought movement stands apart. Freethought maintains that any theory or thesis or concept is open to challenge and can be accepted or rejected on the basis of logic, reason, and scientific investigation and on the basis of its effect on human well-being and human freedom.

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