Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2000
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 20, No. 4, Fall 2000, pp. 281-95.
Abstract
Diversity is the hallmark of freethought in Kansas, for freethinkers were never a homogeneous body. The movement was not only religious, or for that matter, anti-religious, although the majority of social and political issues that it addressed had religious grounding. No one specific organized group dominated historical Kansas freethinking. Instead, individuals in the form of editors of various newspapers, journals, and book series became the landmarks by which the course of the movement's history may be most easily traced. Although the attitudes of freethinkers toward religion are the primary concern of this essay, it must be remembered that freethinkers had different ideas about what the movement meant and that opposition to organized religion was only one, but a crucial element of the freethought agenda.
In order to understand the history of freethought in Kansas one must first define the movement and its ideology. Although freethought is most often used to label belief free from the dogmatic assumptions of religion, it also encompasses a wide range of other ethical and social issues. Samuel Porter Putnam, the foremost authority on nineteenth century American freethought, has written, “When, therefore, I use the word Freethought, I use it in the most comprehensive sense, as an intellectual, moral, industrial, political and social power."1 The beliefs of the movement grew out of a rejection of traditional religion, but freethinkers also embraced women's rights, political radicalism, scientific discovery, and controversial prose and poetry.
The terms "atheism" and "agnosticism" are both commonly associated with freethought. To a religious believer the difference between these two terms may be slim, but many freethinkers adamantly defended their respective camps. As Gordon Stein has put it, an atheist is "one who does not have a belief in God, or who is without a belief in God."2 The absence of a deity is based upon an atheist's perception that all proof for the existence of God fails the test of logic. As will be seen later, scientific support for all doctrines is an essential element of freethought.
Agnosticism is more difficult to define. A dictionary explanation describes it as "the doctrine that neither the existence nor the nature of God, nor the ultimate origin of the universe is known or knowable."3 This definition, though popularly accepted, differs from the original meaning of the word coined by Thomas Huxley in 1869, which demanded scientific proof and reason as a justification for the existence of a higher being.4 lt is difficult to draw a clear demarcation between agnosticism and atheism, and this essay will not be preoccupied with defining the various camps within the larger freethought movement, even though many freethinkers considered such distinctions important. For the moment it will suffice to note that Robert Ingersoll, probably the nation's most prominent freethinker, always considered himself an agnostic, while Emmanuel Haldeman Julius, the eminent Kansas publisher, labeled himself an atheist.
Comments
Copyright 2000 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln