Robert G. Ingersoll

Broschiertes Buch

Some Mistakes of Moses

Beschreibung

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-99), the "Great Agnostic," was the greatest freethought orator in the history of the United States. No public speaker before or since has enjoyed the reputation accorded him.After the Civil War, Ingersoll embarked upon a career as a lecturer, touring the United States to make his thoughts on religion, women's rights, and humanism known to all. Some Mistakes of Moses, one of the most popular of these lectures, is a critical examination of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). Ingersoll passionately believed that the alleged divine origins of the Bible were not sufficient reason for a suspension of critical judgement. His diatribe against Old Testament religion is a call for rationality, a quality sorely missing in this time of political upheaval in the world in the name of religion.Ingersoll greatly feared that when the Bible was read as truth rather than as a collection of fables, mankind would destroy itself in its attempt to follow the teachings of Moses to the letter. Ingersoll fervently believed that the most important belief one can have is belief in man. "Theology is a superstition - Humanity is a religion" - this was the credo of Robert G. Ingersoll.Now, a new generation of readers can thrill to Ingersoll's brilliant and witty rhetoric, just as great thinkers Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Eugene V. Debs, and others did almost one hundred years ago.

Autor

Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll ( August 11, 1833 - July 21, 1899) was an American writer and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, who campaigned in defense of agnosticism. He was nicknamed "The Great Agnostic". Robert Ingersoll was born in Dresden, Yates County, New York. His father, John Ingersoll, was an abolitionist-sympathizing Congregationalist preacher, whose radical opinions caused him and his family to relocate frequently. For a time, Rev. John Ingersoll substituted as preacher for American revivalist Charles G. Finney while Finney was on a tour of Europe. Upon Finney's return, Rev. Ingersoll remained for a few months as co-pastor/associate pastor with Finney. The elder Ingersoll's later pastoral experiences influenced young Robert negatively, however, as The Elmira Telegram described in 1890:[1] Though for many years the most noted of American infidels, Colonel Ingersoll was born and reared in a devoutly Christian household. His father, John Ingersoll, was a Congregationalist minister and a man of mark in his time, a deep thinker, a logical and eloquent speaker, broad minded and generously tolerant of the views of others. The popular impression which credits Ingersoll's infidelity in the main to his father's severe orthodoxy and the austere and gloomy surroundings in which his boyhood was spent is wholly wrong. On the contrary, the elder Ingersoll's liberal views were a source of constant trouble between him and his parishioners

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Prometheus
• Seitenzahl: 274
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. September 1986
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 16mm
• Gewicht: 449g
• ISBN-13: 9780879753610
• ISBN-10: 0879753617
• Artikelnr.: 21081636