Feb27 Alt ?s Freethinker by Jacoby (Intro-2).

1.   Why did Robert Ingersoll praise the framers of the Constitution? (1).

2.   Who was the first American freethinker to be labeled an atheist? (5).

3.   Trying to discern the true religious opinions of the founders from their voluminous writings is rather like searching for what? (13).

4.   Where was the significance of Virginia’s religious freedom act recognized immediately? (25).

5.   William Cobbett referred to Thomas Paine as Judas and characterized his name as malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous. When did he eventually change his mind? (36).

6.    That many Americans could embrace evangelical revivalism while voting for the deist Jefferson attest to what? (46).

7.    Reverend William Bentley played a significant role in the spread of freethought throughout their communities because he did what? (51).

8.   Elihu Palmer thought the importance of Enlightenment philosophy, and of the consequent upheavals in religion and government lay in the what? (55).

9.   Where do the bones of Thomas Paine rest today? (64-5).

 Alternative discussion questions.

1.   As early as 1789, conservatives were issuing warnings of a deist-atheist-radical conspiracy. How would you compare and contrast that reaction to conservatives’s creation of the Moral Majority about two hundred years later?

2.    What do you think of Benjamin Franklin’s advice to an acquaintance who was planning to circulate a pamphlet setting forth his arguments against the existence of God? Would Pam Zerba from Atheists in America page 192 have agreed with him? How have things changed from Franklin’s time to Pam’s or have they?