Reason Revolution is a media venture that articulates and advocates for secular humanism’s broader social and moral benefits. In doing so, we focus on the thinkers that have distilled insights about humanism and secularism: arguments, ideas, and perspectives we can utilize to deepen and widen the meaning and benefits of secular humanism. Please enjoy our introductions to major thinkers in history in Humanist Histories and thinkers today in the Skeptic’s Guide series.
“Raw, rancorous, and always controversial, Emma Goldman’s iconoclasm reads nearly as modern as anything by O’Hair or Hitchens. It’s this boldness—a desire to own one’s radicalism—that electrifies her writing. This disregard for pleasant spectacle in the service of radical truth reaffirms Goldman’s rightful place in the pantheon of American humanism.”
“A Hoosier freethinker, W. H. LaMaster’s freethought newspaper, the Iconoclast, became a staple of Indianapolis thought through the 1880s, where he continued writing columns until his death in 1908. LaMaster advocated for religious skepticism, scientific advancement, and was a staunch anti-temperance proponent. LaMaster, alongside notable freethinkers like Ambrose Bierce, Clemens Vonnegut, and Robert Ingersoll, helps us understand the rich religious diversity in the Midwest during the late nineteenth century.”
“This inner battle of the psyche, borne out in myth, provides the profound problem of life with a profound language. Peterson believes that we can’t create our own values because values have evolved with us, implicit in competence hierarchies, then articulated in our myths and, now, abstract concepts. He finds Plato’s idea that all knowledge is remembrance true in a deep, even Darwinian, sense. We weren’t born just thirty years ago, but we’re also the product of human language and history, and over 12 billion years of evolution. We are descendents of the great heroes of the past. So Jung’s idea is we have to go back to the myths and extract the archetypes. Peterson’s claims essentially boil down to making Jung’s ideas more rational and articulate: ‘I’m trying to resurrect the dormant logos.'”
