The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

“Ingersoll himself made no distinction between atheists and agnostics. In 1885, he was asked by an interviewer for a Philadelphia newspaper, “Don’t you think that the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer that that of the Atheist?” He replied succinctly, “The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: ‘I do not know; but I do not believe there is any god.’ The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a God: but we know that he does not know. The Atheist [too] cannot know that God does not exist.” 13 This critical point remains a source of both confusion and willful distortion in American discourse, in large measure because the word “atheist” has a much harsher sound to American ears than the word “agnostic.”* Indeed, the more equivocal, bland tone of the latter is arguably the main reason for its invention in the late nineteenth century, since atheism and atheist had long been considered extreme pejoratives. Ingersoll frequently pointed out that the labels “atheist” and “infidel” had generally been applied as epithets to anyone, religious or not, who refused to accept biblical stories that were scientifically impossible. That had happened to Thomas Paine, who was also called a Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, and archbeast by his religiously orthodox contemporaries. Had he done nothing else, Ingersoll’s lifelong effort to restore Paine’s reputation should have earned him a permanent place in American intellectual history. The future president Theodore Roosevelt dismissed Paine in 1888 as a “filthy little atheist … that apparently esteems a bladder of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity.” 14 In this cultural climate, Ingersoll subtitled his standard lecture about Paine, “With His Name Left Out, The History of Liberty Cannot Be Written.” He made it one of his missions not only to remind citizens in America’s second century of Paine’s indispensible rhetorical contributions to the revolutionary cause but to link those ideals to Paine’s fierce defense of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.” — The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

“Ingersoll himself made no distinction between atheists and agnostics. In 1885, he was asked by an interviewer for a Philadelphia newspaper, “Don’t you think that the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer that that of the Atheist?” He replied succinctly, “The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: ‘I do not know; but I do not believe there is any god.’ The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a God: but we know that he does not know. The Atheist [too] cannot know that God does not exist.” 13 This critical point remains a source of both confusion and willful distortion in American discourse, in large measure because the word “atheist” has a much harsher sound to American ears than the word “agnostic.”* Indeed, the more equivocal, bland tone of the latter is arguably the main reason for its invention in the late nineteenth century, since atheism and atheist had long been considered extreme pejoratives. Ingersoll frequently pointed out that the labels “atheist” and “infidel” had generally been applied as epithets to anyone, religious or not, who refused to accept biblical stories that were scientifically impossible. That had happened to Thomas Paine, who was also called a Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, and archbeast by his religiously orthodox contemporaries. Had he done nothing else, Ingersoll’s lifelong effort to restore Paine’s reputation should have earned him a permanent place in American intellectual history. The future president Theodore Roosevelt dismissed Paine in 1888 as a “filthy little atheist … that apparently esteems a bladder of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity.” 14 In this cultural climate, Ingersoll subtitled his standard lecture about Paine, “With His Name Left Out, The History of Liberty Cannot Be Written.” He made it one of his missions not only to remind citizens in America’s second century of Paine’s indispensible rhetorical contributions to the revolutionary cause but to link those ideals to Paine’s fierce defense of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.” — The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

‘ I’m Worried About Weimar America’

Dreher: Well, Friedrich Nietzsche famously said in the late 19th century, “God is dead and we have killed him.” Nietzsche didn’t believe in God. He was talking about the idea of the Christian God in Western civilization. Nietzsche was not a romantic about this. He saw that it would be very dark and difficult for humanity to find some sense of meaning if God were dead.

And he was right. We can’t make our own meaning. Nietzsche was not a Nazi, but the ideological convulsions that came in the 20th century with Soviet Communism, with Nazism in Germany, and so forth, all of them are products of the death of God... [or maybe just good?]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/opinion/america-politics-weimar-rod-dreher.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Happy credo

If It’s not the only good, it’s still one of the better ones. “While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself; and my creed is this. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. The creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life, strong enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed.” — Robert Ingersoll Susan Jacoby, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought

Does U.F.O. Disclosure Threaten Faith?

Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” is a movie in which characters argue about whether the discovery of extraterrestrial life would be a threat to religion, something that a great many people have decided to argue about since the Pentagon started releasing tranches of U.F.O.-related files.

The film’s formal perspective, not surprisingly given that Spielberg has always been both alien-obsessed and friendly to religious ideas and motifs, is that extraterrestrial encounters need not be a threat to faith in God. A nun who asks why a divinity would “make such a vast universe, yet save it only for us” seems to be speaking for the film itself.

But the story also illustrates why one of the popular conceptions of extraterrestrial encounters is a potential challenge to organized religion, with aliens stepping into the role that’s traditionally occupied by popes and prophets and mystics, angelic messengers or the Holy Spirit…

Ross Douthat 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/opinion/disclosure-day-ufo-religion.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion

No!: 

“…we need to take seriously the religious beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices of adherents of alternative, belittled, and discredited religious movements. It is far too easy to dismiss the members of Heaven’s Gate as either insane or victimized, and in both cases we fall into the same sort of trap of demonization that colors the dehumanizing political discourse of the twenty-first century…"*

I can take seriously the vulnerable, flawed, delusional humanity of True Believers of every sort, whether in the religious mainstream or on the alternative fringes of convention (and sanity). I cannot take their “beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices” seriously if that means suspending rational judgement and normalizing what is so clearly a derailed, destructive, perverse relation to reality.
Taking experience seriously means trying to understand why and how the events in someone’s life have led them to whatever relations they bear. It means viewing their errors, misjudgments, and mistakes with compassion and empathy, and asserting our own perspectives with humility and a recognition that we too are prone to error, misjudgment and mistake. It does not mean giving a pass to blatant irrationalism and human dysfunction.

"Applewhite attended Austin College in Sherman, Texas, where he was remembered as an extrovert with a magnetic personality that “he put to only positive uses,” in the words of a former college roommate.10 He served as a campus leader in the a cappella group, judiciary council, and association of prospective Presbyterian ministers, and graduated with a degree in philosophy…

Yet Applewhite also dabbled in astrology, and he clearly was somewhat of a religious seeker…

following their predicted martyrdom and resurrection, a UFO would descend in a technological enactment of the rapture wherein it would hover midair to pick up the Two and anyone else who believed them and accepted their message. The UFO would then return to outer space, delivering its passengers to a heavenly utopia. The bodies of the Two and their followers would transform through biological and chemical processes into perfected extraterrestrial beings, and they would live indefinitely in the “Next Level” or “Evolutionary Level Above Human,” as the Two later called it, in a state of near-perfection…”

*Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion by Benjamin E Zeller, Robert W Balch

Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion

I can take seriously the vulnerable, flawed, delusional humanity of True Believers of every sort, whether in the religious mainstream or on the alternative fringes of convention (and sanity). I cannot take their “beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices” seriously if that means suspending rational judgement and normalizing what is so clearly a derailed, destructive, perverse relation to reality. Taking experience seriously means trying to understand why and how the events in someone’s life have led them to whatever relations they bear. It does not mean giving a pass to blatant irrationalism and human dysfunction. “…we need to take seriously the religious beliefs, practices, worldviews, and life choices of adherents of alternative, belittled, and discredited religious movements. It is far too easy to dismiss the members of Heaven’s Gate as either insane or victimized, and in both cases we fall into the same sort of trap of demonization that colors the dehumanizing political discourse of the twenty-first century.” — Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion by Benjamin E Zeller, Robert W Balch