The Atheism, Agnosticism and Criticism of Religion of Robert Ingersoll in the Context of the Czech Freethinking Movement

Abstract

In the American society in the 19th century, still prevailingly Christian, proclamations of faithlessness and calls for a purely scientific worldview occasionally appeared. Religion was perceived as an obstacle to efforts toward scientific materialism. A leading representative and popularizer of such an attitude was the American humanist, thinker, orator and lawyer Robert Green Ingersoll, whose works have been translated into many languages, including Czech. Ingersoll became a very popular figure, inspiring freethought circles both in the United States and in Europe. As a keen critic of religion, he ranked among the key American advocates for free thought, humanism, and the propagation of scientific knowledge. The paper discusses his specific form of faithlessness (agnosticism rather than atheism) and introduces a typology categorizing strategies of his criticism of the religious worldview in the context of Czech intellectual and freethinking movement of the first third of the 20th century.