There are 3 entries for this date: William Shakespeare, Joseph Turner and Peter Watson.

William Shakespeare

On this date in 1564, William Shakespeare was born in England. He died in 1616. The "master" playwright was eulogized by 19th century agnostic orator Robert Green Ingersoll. In one of his famous lectures, Ingersoll said that when he read Shakespeare, "I beheld a new heaven and a new earth." (The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Interviews, Vol. IV, p. 39.) "All well-educated ministers know that the Bible suffers by a comparison with Shakespeare." (Vol. VIII, p. 297) "If Shakespeare could be as widely circulated as the Bible . . . nothing would so raise the intellectual standard of mankind. Think of the different influence on men between reading Deuteronomy and 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' . . . The church teaches obedience. The man who reads Shakespeare has his intellectual horizon enlarged." (ibid, p. 313)

No one knows Shakespeare's personal religious views, although he certainly was not orthodox, and put many different types of sentiments into the mouths of his characters. His philosophy seems most succinctly described in the famous "Seven Ages of Man" speech from "As You Like It," which begins: "All the world's a stage/ And all the men and women merely players:/ They have their exits and their entrances;. . ." ending with "mere oblivion./ Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." Below are several of Shakespeare's most famous irreverencies. D. 1616.

To check out other Freethought of the Day entries, including by name and by topic, scroll down to the calendar and other links at http://ffrf.org/day

 For those not afraid, Harry Potter is on abc and we have a full moon too!!! catholics beware!

During the past week, Sen. Hillary Clinton has presented herself as a working class populist, the politician in touch with small town sentiments, compared to the elitism of her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.

But a telling anecdote from her husband's administration shows Hillary Clinton's attitudes about the "lunch-bucket Democrats" are not exactly pristine.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/16/hillary-clinton-on-workin_n_97017.html

Clarence Darrow

On this date in 1857, Clarence Darrow, later dubbed "Attorney for the Damned" and "the Great Defender," was born. For a time he lived in an Ohio home that had served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. His father was known as the "village infidel." Darrow attended the University of Michigan Law School for one year, then passed the bar in 1878 and moved to Chicago. There he joined protests against the trumped-up charges against four radicals accused in the Haymarket Riot case. Darrow became corporate counsel to the City of Chicago, then counsel for the North Western Railway. He quit this lucrative post when he could no longer defend their treatment of injured workers, then went on to defend without pay Socialist striker Eugene V. Debs. In 1907, Darrow successfully defended labor activist "Big Bill" Haywood, charged with assassinating a former governor. His passionate denunciation of the death penalty prompted him to defend the famous killers, Loeb and Leopold, who received life sentences in 1924.

His most celebrated case was the Scopes Trial, defending teacher John Scopes in Dayton, Tenn., who was charged with the crime of teaching evolution in the public schools. Darrow's brilliant cross-examination of prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan lives on in legal history. During the trial, Darrow said: "I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure--that is all that agnosticism means." Darrow wrote many freethought articles and edited a freethought collection. His two appealing autobiographies are The Story of My Life (1932), containing his plainspoken views on religion, and Farmington (1932). He also wrote Resist Not Evil (1902), An Eye for An Eye (1905), and Crime, Its Causes and Treatments (1925). His freethought writings are collected into Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays. He told The New York Times, "Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either" (April 19, 1936). D. 1938.

May "Ten Commandments Weekend" Proposed By Senate Resolution Sen. Sam. Brownback and Sen. Sam Lieberman have introduced a resolution "recognizing the first weekend of May 2008 as 'Ten Commandments Weekend.' " The resolution was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, chaired by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont. Similar resolutions passed in 2006 and 2007.

What's Wrong With The Ten Commandments?
 
Critics of the Christian bible occasionally can score a point or two in discussion with the religious community by noting the many teachings in both the Old and New Testaments that encourage the bible believer to hate and to kill, biblical lessons that history proves Christians have taken most seriously. Nonetheless the bible defendant is apt to offer as an indisputable parting shot, "But don't forget the ten commandments. They are the basic bible teaching. Study the ten commandments."

Do study the ten commandments! They epitomize the childishness, the vindictiveness, the sexism, the inflexibility and the inadequacies of the bible as a book of morals.

Actually, only six of the ten commandments deal with an individual's moral conduct, which comes as a surprise to most Christians. Essentially, the first four commandments say:

1.Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

2.Thou shalt not make thee any graven images or bow down to them, and if you do I'll get you and your kids and their descendants.

3.Thou shalt not take the name of the lord in vain.

4.Keep the Sabbath holy.

The exact terminology is found in chapter five of Deuteronomy. Two other versions of the "ten commandments" can be found in the Old Testament. One version, in Exodus 20, differs slightly from the Deuteronomy version, while a third, in Exodus 34, is wildly different, containing commandments about sacrifices and offerings and ending with the teaching: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk." This is the only version referred to in scriptures as the "ten commandments."

In essence, the first four commandments all scream that "the lord thy god" has an uneasy vanity, and like most dictators, must resort to threats, rather than intellectual persuasion, to promote a point of view. If there were an omnipotent god, can you imagine him or her being concerned if some poor little insignificant creature puttered around and made a graven image? Do you think that any god, possessing the modicum of good will you could expect to find in any neighbor, would want to punish children even "unto the third and fourth generation" because their fathers could not believe? How can anyone not perceive the pettiness, bluster, bombast and psychotic insecurity behind the first four commandments? We are supposed to respect this!

"Honor thy father and thy mother" is the fifth commandment, and it is, of course, an extension of the authoritarian rationale behind the first four. Honor cannot be bestowed automatically by an honest intellect. Intellectually honest people can honor only those who, in their opinion, warrant their honor. The biologic fact of fatherhood and motherhood does not in and of itself warrant honor. Until very recently parenthood was not a matter of choice. It still is a mandatory, not optional, happening for many of the world's people. Why should any child be commanded to honor, without further basis, parents who became parents by accident--who didn't even plan to have a child? All of us know children who have been abused, beaten or neglected by their parents. What is the basis for honor there? How does the daughter honor a father who sexually molests her? "Honor only those who merit your honor" would be a more appropriate teaching, and if that includes your parents, great! "Honor your children" would have been a compassionate commandment.

Commandments six through nine--thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, steal or bear false witness--obviously have merit, but even they need extensive revision. To kill in self-defense is regrettable, but it is certainly morally defensible, eminently sensible conduct. So is the administration of a shot or medication that will end life for the terminally ill patient who wishes to die.

Adultery, the subject of the seventh commandment, again raises the question of an absolute ban. For the most part fidelity in marriage is a sound rule, making for happiness; but some marriages may outlast affection. Some couples may agree to live by different rules. Until relatively recent times Christian marriages were not dissolvable except by death, so the ban of divorce coupled with the ban of adultery obviously created great distress. Adultery, it must be remembered, involves an act between consenting adults. How much more relevant and valuable it would be to have, for instance, a commandment that forbids the violent crimes of rape and incest.

"Thou shalt not steal" raises questions regarding the usefulness of a blanket condemnation, and may put squatter's rights ahead of public and private welfare. Should people who are cold or ill steal to ameliorate their situations? Should the child who is hungry steal? Surely this commandment cries for some amending clauses. One is reminded of the comment of Napoleon, who really had religion figured out: "How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares, 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping people quiet."

In general, to bear false witness is construed to mean "don't lie," and that is a valuable moral precept, except again it is stated in absolute terms. Lies have saved lives, they have preserved relationships, and every day they save hurt feelings. The truth is not always a reasonable or kind solution. Interestingly, in biblical times the dictum not to bear false witness against a neighbor was a tribal commandment and meant to apply only to persons within the tribe--it was quite all right to bear false witness against "strangers."

Finally, the tenth commandment, which riles the feminist blood, says: "Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor's." In addition to rating a wife with an ox and an ass, the bible loftily overlooks the woman who might desire her neighbor's husband. Covetousness somehow does not seem like such a crime. If you can't have a comfortable house or a productive farm, what is the great harm in wishing you did? Covetousness may be nonproductive and unpretty, but to make a big, bad deal out of it is ridiculous. Bible apologists sometimes will excuse the triviality of the tenth commandment on the basis that to covet, in a more superstitious age, meant "to cast an evil eye." Someone who coveted "his neighbor's house" was purportedly casting an evil eye on that property with a view toward its destruction. Whether one accepts the apologist's definition of covet or the more popular meaning, the tenth commandment lacks real importance.

Little in Christianity is original. Most of it is borrowed, just as the celebration of Christmas was borrowed from Roman and earlier pagan times. When the "lord" supposedly wrote his commandments on two tablets of stone and delivered them to Moses (Deut. 5:22), he was only aping earlier gods: Bacchus, Zoroaster and Minos.

Reflect for a moment that almost anyone reading this nontract could write a kinder, wiser, more reasonable set of commandments than those that Christians insist we honor. Try it!

http://ffrf.org/nontracts/10comm.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are 4 entries for this date: Mattie Parry Krekel, Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson and George J. Holyoake.

Mattie Parry Krekel

On this date in 1840, freethought lecturer Mattie Parry Krekel was born in Goshen, Indiana, to John M. Hulett and Lucinda Jay (a direct descendant of revolutionary John Jay). Mattie liked to thank her parents for being liberal in their religious views, noting that her life had not been twisted or distorted by ecclesiastical influences which enslave the mind. She began lecturing at age 15 in Rockford, Illinois, and retired only in 1900. Mattie married T.W. Parry in 1862 and had six children, four sons and two daughters. Following his death she later married Judge Arnold Krekel of Missouri. She was well-known on the freethought lecture circuit, or "Liberal platform." Freethought biographer S.P. Putnam called her "one of the bravest and staunchest lecturers in the field. . . eloquent, scholarly, logical, ready for any hardship; has plenty of grit. . . . She is well informed on subjects pertaining to science and reform, and is in thorough sympathy with those who suffer and toil because of ignorance and superstition." (Four Hundred Years of Freethought, 1894). "Up to the beginning of the present century there were few names more familiar to readers of The Truth Seeker than Mattie Parry Krekel," noted George E. Macdonald, one of the freethought newspaper's longest-lived editors (Fifty Years of Freethought, 1929, 1931). D. 1921.

There are 2 entries for this date: Robert Louis Heilbroner and Joel Barlow.

Robert Louis Heilbroner

On this date in 1919, distinguished economist and social thinker Robert Louis Heilbroner was born into such a wealthy New York City family that he told the New York Post in 1972: "I was reared during the Great Depression and never knew there was one." He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1940 with B.A.s in history, govenment and economics. His doctorate was earned from the New School of Social Research in 1963. In 1972, the New School made Heilbroner the first Norman Thomas Professor of Economics, named for the Socialist Party presidential candidate. Heilbroner served during World War II and was awarded a Bronze Star. The most famous of Heilbroner's 20 books on economics is The Worldly Philosophiers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (1953). Known for its inviting writing style and humanization of economics, the book has been translated into 20 languages, has sold 4 million copies, and is a topselling college textbook. According to Who's Who in Hell, edited by Warren Allen Smith, Heilbroner "has gone on record as being a nontheist." He died of a stroke at age 85. D. 2005.

Joel Barlow

On this date in 1754, Joel Barlow was born in the United States. Educated at Dartmouth College and Yale, he served as chaplain in the revolutionary war. His edition of The Book of Psalms, issued in 1785, was widely used by the Congregationalists. Barlow left the ministry, and took up law, admitted to the bar in 1786. As a writer and poet, he was a member of the well-known "Hartford Wits," and made his name with "The Vision of Columbus," written in 1787. (His enduring work is the mock-heroic humorous poem, "The Hasty Pudding.") Barlow became a deist after traveling in France, according to C.B. Todd, who wrote the Life and Letters of J. Barlow, 1886. Barlow translated Ruins by Volney. Barlow's claim to freethought fame was as counsel to Algiers, when he secured the release of prisoners and negotiated the Treaty with Tripoli of 1796-97, which stated that the United States was not a Christian nation. It was written in Algiers in Arabic, and signed at Tripoli on Nov. 4, 1796. Barlow translated the treaty, which was ratified by the U.S. Senate on May 29, 1797, and proclaimed in Philadelphia on June 10, 1797. George Washington was president when the treaty was signed in Tripoli, but it was signed by Pres. John Adams. Barlow also befriended Thomas Paine, and was responsible for getting Paine's The Age of Reason published during Paine's imprisonment in Paris. Barlow became American ambassador at Napoleon's court in 1811, and died in Poland traveling to meet Napoleon during his retreat from Moscow. D. 1812.

There are 2 entries for this date: Erich Fromm and William Smith.

Erich Fromm

On this date in 1900, psychoanalyst and humanist philosopher Erich Fromm was born in Frankfurt, Germany. Grandfathers on both sides of the family were rabbis. He earned his Ph.D in sociology in 1922 from the University of Heidelberg, and trained at the Psychological Institute in Berlin. By 1926, Fromm had rejected Orthodox Judaism. Fromm took the story of Adam and Eve and turned it into an allegory in praise of the quest for knowledge, the questioning of authority and the use of reason. He moved in 1930 to Geneva to escape Nazism, then emigrated to the United States in 1934. Fromm taught at Columbia University and became a citizen in 1940. His pinnacle work, Escape from Freedom, was published in 1941, followed by Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (1947). Fromm moved to Mexico in 1950 to become a professor at the National Autonomous University, where he taught until 1965. The Art of Loving (1956) became an international bestseller. That was followed by The Sane Society (1955), You Shall Be as Gods (1966), The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), and To Have or to Be (1976). Fromm began teaching in the United States again in the late 1950s, at Michigan State University and later New York University. He was a co-founder of several institutes, including the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology. As a critic of McCarthyism and the Vietnam War, he helped found the international peace group, SANE.

In The Sane Society, Fromm distinguishes "intelligence" ("thought in the service of biological survival") from "reason," which "aims at understanding." "In observing the quality of thinking in alienated man, it is striking to see how his intelligence has developed and how reason has deteriorated. . . . Even from the nineteenth century to our day, there seems to have occurred an observable increase in stupidity, if by this we mean the opposite to reason, rather than to intelligence." Those with "outstanding reason in our midst . . . think apart from the general herd thought, and they are looked upon with suspicion--even if they are needed for their extraordinary achievements in the natural sciences." Fromm called ethics "inseparable from reason." About conscience, Fromm wrote: "To the degree to which a person conforms he cannot hear the voice of his conscience, much less act upon it." Fromm eventually moved to Switzerland, where he died just before his 80th birthday. D. 1980.

William Smith

On this date in 1769, William Smith, known as the "Father of Geology," was born in Oxfordshire, England. Smith, who trained as an apprentice surveyor, single-handedly produced the world's first geological map in 1815 (of England, Wales, and part of Scotland), spending 15 years on the project. Smith, "whose agnosticism was well known," according to biographer Simon Winchester (The Map That Changed the World), produced a "map that heralded the beginnings of a whole new science . . . a map that laid the foundations of a field of study that culminated in the work of Charles Darwin. It is a map whose making signified the start of an era, not yet over, that has been marked ever since by the excitement and astonishment of scientific discoveries that allowed man at last to stagger out from the fogs of religious dogma, and to come to understand something certain about his own origins and those of the planet." [page 2]

Winchester also noted: "For the first time the earth had a provable history, a written record that paid no heed or obeisance to religious teaching and dogma, that declared its independence from the kind of faith that is no more than the blind acceptance of absurdity. A science . . . had now at last broken free from the age-old constraints of doctrine and canonical instruction." [page 139] Smith went bankrupt, spending weeks in a debtor's prison, and was denied membership in the Geological Society until he was old. His ideas were right, and his methods are still used today. He won the first Wollaston Medal, which is the "Nobel Prize" for Geology. (There is no Nobel Prize for Geology, an unfortunate oversight.) His fossil collection is currently housed in the Natural History Museum (formerly part of the British Museum) in London. D. 1834.

To check out other Freethought of the Day entries, including by name and by topic, scroll down to the calendar and other links at http://ffrf.org/day

There are 3 entries for this date: Maxim Gorky, James Madison and Rosa Bonheur.

Maxim Gorky

On this date in 1868, Alexei Maximovitch Peshkov, who later renamed himself Maxim Gorky, was born in the village of Nizhny Novgorod, today called Gorky. After his father died when Alexei was 5, he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents. His grandfather made him quit school at age 8 to go to work. At 12, he ran away, and endured so many bitter hardships trying to survive that he later adopted the name "Gorky," which means "The Bitter One." After trying unsuccessfully at age 21 to commit suicide by shooting himself, Peshkov suffered from lifelong bouts of tuberculosis as the result of damage to his lungs. Gorky undertook a 2-year walking journey as a "tramp," becoming familiar with Russia's oppressed underclass. At 24, he became a reporter and began writing sympathetically about the outcasts, derelicts, petty criminals and prostitutes he had encountered, thus becoming a folk hero. His first collection of short stories was published to great acclaim in 1898. Chekhov befriended Gorky, introducing him to theatrical producers, who invited him to write his first plays. "The Smug Citizen" (1902), created an uproar, although "The Lower Depths" (1902) has endured. He was invited by a host of writers and dignitaries to speak in the United States in 1906. When the New York World pilloried Gorky for supposedly traveling with a woman he was not married to, many sponsors, such as Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt, withdrew their support, although some, such as H.G. Wells, stood by him. Gorky, sympathetic to the Marxist cause to overthrow the government, was periodically jailed, and finally exiled from Russia for several years. Critical of the Bolsheviks and Lenin, he went on a self-imposed exile throughout the 1920s, until one of his harshest critics, Stalin, invited him home. Although Gorky was criticized for endorsing some of Stalin's policies, he is credited with saving the lives of several writers. Gorky's many books and plays include Summer Folk (1903), Barbarians (1906), Enemies (1906), The Last Ones (1908), The Counterfeit Coin (1926), Yegor Bulychov (1931), and an autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood (1914), In the World (1916), and My Universities (1923). The circumstances of his death were murky. While it is possible he may finally have succumbed to tuberculosis or natural causes, he may also have been ordered killed by Stalin. His writings are strongly humanistic and rationalist. D. 1936.

James Madison

On this date in 1751, James Madison was born in Virginia. The Deist, who became primary author of the secular U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and fourth President of the United States, originally contemplated the ministry as a career. After graduating from Princeton, Madison was appointed a delegate to the Virginia state convention. There he was responsible for the adoption of a freedom of conscience clause in the state constitution. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect," Madison wrote William Bradford (April 1, 1771). After being elected to the Virginia state legislature, his famous "Memorial and Remonstrance" defeated a bid to force mandatory tithing in 1785. His memorial warned: "it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties." Madison was elected to the first House of Representatives, was Secretary of State under Jefferson, and served two terms as president, from 1809 to 1817. His "Detached Memorabilia," written between 1817 and 1832, revealed his regrets over the appointment of chaplains to the two Houses of Congress. Madison called it "a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles." He equally argued against chaplains in the military, and religious proclamations by the president for thanksgivings, writing that such acts "imply a religious agency." Madison's personal correspondence was free of religion. D. 1836.

Rosa Bonheur

On this date in 1822 (some sources give March 22), painter Rosa Bonheur was born in Bordeaux, France, to a nominally Jewish family. All four children in the family became artists. Inspired by George Sand, Rosa began dressing in boys' clothes in order to study animal anatomy, a sartorial habit of freedom she never abandoned. She visited slaughterhouses and also sketched at the horse market. her painting, The Horse Fair, 1853, made her an international celebrity. Rosa Bonheur, the 19th century's most admired woman artist, was known for her unsentimental and realistic renderings of animals. She was exhibited regularly at Paris salons, and became the first woman to receive the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Bonheur was considered an agnostic by peers. D. 1899.

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

Anniversary of McCollum v. Board of Education Decision

On this date in 1948, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, McCollum v. Board of Education, barring religious instruction in public schools, was handed down, with a vote of 8 to 1. The dramatic case was brought by Vashti McCollum, a mother in Champaign, Ill., on behalf of her son, Jim. In her enduring book about the challenge, One Woman's Fight, Vashti described how Jim was punished by teachers and teased by students for not taking part in religious instruction illegally taught in his public school. Although she lost at the first two court levels and was treated as "a very unpopular woman," Vashti did not give up. Her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court resulted in a stunning victory for separation of church and state, which is still the prevailing precedent in public school law today. Vashti, who is now in her 90s, is an Honorary Officer of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Today is International Women's Day.

There are 2 entries for this date: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the Anniversary of McCollum v. Board of Education Decision.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

On this date in 1841, jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the namesake and son of a famed physician. Holmes graduated from Harvard in 1861 and immediately enlisted in the Army, where he was seriously wounded three times. After the Civil War, Holmes entered Harvard Law School, where his best friend was William James. The New York Times obituary on Holmes reported that the two young men went to Europe together: "while James went on, continuing in Germany his search for the meanings of the universe, Holmes decided that 'maybe the universe is too great a swell to have a meaning,' that his task was to 'make his own universe livable,' and he dove deep into the study of the law." Holmes was admitted to the bar in 1866. He became coeditor of the American Law Review in 1870. Holmes wrote his legal treatise, The Common Law, in 1881, a 15-year labor predicated on his belief that "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." His recodification of the law from religious foundations to modern jurisprudence was pivotal to the evolution of legal scholarship. Holmes urged "judicial restraint," or the divorcing of private views from legal opinions. A professor at Harvard Law School, he was appointed at age 41 as an associate justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Court, eventually becoming chief justice. Pres. Teddy Roosevelt appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1902. He retired in 1932, as the oldest judge to serve. Holmes earned the sobriquet, "The Great Dissenter," for his many famous dissents, which have long since been adopted as mainstream by courts. Among his well-known legal adages: "The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye: the more light you shine on it, the more it will contract." "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater. . ." "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." Holmes, like his father, was a Unitarian, who believed in a god, but was creedless. D. 1935.