The Golden Age of Freethought

We have some great atheist writers in the early 21st Century, but really everything that needed to be said for people to free themselves from the chains of religion was said more than a hundred years ago, and said very well. In the last couple of decades, the works of these great writers are being rediscovered. They wrote plainly, for the average person, with razor sharp clarity and bravery. The greatest of them, Robert Green Ingersoll, became the most successful public speaker of the times. His arguments against religion are still unanswered. It seemed that Freethought and enlightenment would carry the day. The Golden Age of Freethought, however, was effectively crushed by government-backed religious opposition who successfully associated atheism with communism in the early 20th Century, near the time of the Russian revolution. While it's true that some of the members of the Communist movement in America were also atheists, their movement furnished the perfect opportunity for Christian politicians to put a halt to the tremendous Freethought momentum that had been growing since the third quarter of the 19th century. The imprisonment of D.M. Bennet, the Palmer Raids, the suppression of their works, caused the Dark Ages to return by the 1920's.

This website is dedicated to those brave men and women, the original Bringers of Light.

Some of the greats

You can find some of their writings here, but also freely throughout the Internet. Robert Green Ingersoll. John Remsburg. D.M. Bennet. J.M. Robertson. L.K. Washburn. Maria M. Ricker. M.M. Mangasarian. Watson Heston. There are many, many more. Electronic copies of their books can be obtained directly at the Bank of Wisdom (bankofwisdom.com).