|
|
 Read About this Emblem |
 |
Read About this Emblem |
|
|
Free DHTML scripts provided by |
|
|
CLICK THE STICKER Join us in our campaign to have Governor Gregg Abbott impeached for violating his consitutional oath by acting like a tyrant and showing his contempt for the First Amendment right to freedom of speech! |
|
|
They Dared to Differ (2025) They Dared to Differ: A History of the Dallas Freethinkers, 1879-1904, by Steven R. Butler, is now available at AMAZON.COM $12.99 plus tax and shipping. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an era known as the "Golden Age of Freethought in Texas," the Dallas Freethinkers, and other groups just like them, instead of passively accepting "revealed religion" as a blessing, saw reason, rationality, and science as humanity's savior instead. By meeting together on a regular basis and offering free-to-the-public lectures in which their ideas were openly discussed and debated, they hoped that people who came to listen would see the sense of their arguments, and thus, over time, they would woo folks away from religion, resulting in a world in which evidence-based decisions and behaviors were the norm instead of society being bound by ancient Biblical injunctions that, in their view, stood in the way of progress and artificially divided people into "them" and "us." The author makes the case that in the end, the Freethinkers were unsuccessful not due to unsound ideas, but rather to the advantages of money, power, and tradition that established religion enjoyed, and still enjoys to this day. Illustrated. ISBN 978-0-9982065-8-5 |
|
|
Another Texas Freethought Reader (2025) Another Texas Freethought Reader, by Steven R. Butler, is now available at AMAZON.COM $12.99 plus tax and shipping. ANOTHER TEXAS FREETHOUGHT READER, a companion to GUIDED by REASON: The GOLDEN AGE of FREETHOUGHT in TEXAS, is a collection of some of the best, previously "lost," free thought literature produced by four of the most intelligent, articulate Texas freethinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: John R. Spencer, Ross Winn, Richard Potts, and T. A. Hutchins. As relevant today as when originally written, this selection of articles, essays, and letters calls into question the veracity of one of humankind's most enduring myths and appeals to people everywhere, for the sake of the planet, to abandon ancient superstitions, unsupported by evidence, in favor of reason, rationality, and the scientific method. Illustrated in color and black-and-white. ISBN 978-0-9982065-9-2 |
|
|
The Unfinished Revolution (2025) The Unfinished Revolution, by Steven R. Butler, is now available at AMAZON.COM $15.99 plus tax and shipping. The Unfinished Revolution, a treatise on the incomplete separation of church and state in the United States, was inspired by a presentation made by the author while on a visit to Great Britain in 2015. The author points out that the revolution in religion that Thomas Paine thought would naturally follow America's political revolution has not been realized and points to the various ways that government on all levels, federal, state, and local, contradict and contravene the First Amendment's prohibition regarding an establishment of religion. Illustrated in color and black-and-white. ISBN 978-0-9982065-7-8 |
|
|
Fifteen Famous Freethinkers (2023) Fifteen Famous Freethinkers, by Steven R. Butler, available NOW at AMAZON.COM $15.99 plus tax and shipping. Fifteen Famous Freethinkers consists of brief biographies of a group of celebrated British and American soldiers, scientists, statesmen, inventors, lawyers, and social activists who were not only outstanding in their chosen fields, but also independent thinkers in regard to religion. Some were Deists, some were Agnostics, and some were Atheists, but all were intelligent, esteemed people who also left, in addition to the legacy of their accomplishments, a written record of how and why they embraced reason, rationality, and science rather than blind faith and superstition. Full color illustrations. ISBN 978-0-9982065-7-8 |
|
|
The Gospel According to Potts, Book Two (2021) The Gospel According to Potts, Book Two, by Richard Potts, with an Introduction by Steven R. Butler, is now available at AMAZON.COM $12.99 plus tax and shipping. For more than 30 years, Richard Potts, the feisty, radical, bespectacled editor of The Common Herd, "the only Freethought publication in Texas," entertained and informed his readers about a whole host of topics including politics, economics, health, current events, but mostly religion, which he eschewed. A former Baptist Sunday School teacher-turned-atheist, Potts took every opportunity to point out the flaws of Christian theology in particular, as well the whole idea of religion in general. He was also a social activist who unsuccessfully ran for public office multiple times, while actively supporting prohibition, women's rights, African-American civil rights, a simplified system of taxation, and free speech. In addition to religion, he also opposed the Ku Klux Klan, repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, war, and capital punishment. The Gospel According to Potts, Book Two, consists of selected short articles critical of religion, which were published between 1924 and 1925, as well as the text of a pamphlet called “Uncle Dick’s Concordance.” ISBN 978-0998206554 |
|
|
The Gospel According to Potts, Book One (2020) The Gospel According to Potts, Book One, by Richard Potts, with an Introduction by Steven R. Butler, is now available at AMAZON.COM $10.99 plus tax and shipping. For more than 30 years, Richard Potts, the feisty, radical, bespectacled editor of The Common Herd, "the only Freethought publication in Texas," entertained and informed his readers about a whole host of topics including politics, economics, health, current events, but mostly religion, which he eschewed. A former Baptist Sunday School teacher-turned-atheist, Potts took every opportunity to point out the flaws of Christian theology in particular, as well the whole idea of religion in general. He was also a social activist who unsuccessfully ran for public office multiple times, while actively supporting prohibition, women's rights, African-American civil rights, a simplified system of taxation, and free speech. In addition to religion, he also opposed the Ku Klux Klan and the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. The Gospel According to Potts, Book One, consists of selected short articles critical of religion, which were published between 1922 and 1923. ISBN 978-0998206547 |
|
|
Sinai and Olympus (2020) Sinai and Olympus, by a Texas Pagan (Charles Littleton Edwards), is now available at AMAZON.COM $10.99 plus tax and shipping. First published in 1899, Sinai and Olympus is a classic, an outstanding example of the thoughtful, reasoned, and well-researched sort of writing that characterized Texas' Golden Age of Freethought, an era that began shortly after the Civil War and lasted until just before the First World War began. For reasons that have been lost to history, its author, who is now known to have been a prominent Dallas lawyer, chose to mask his identity by humorously styling himself "A Texas Pagan." The author's message, which is just as compelling today as it was at the end of the nineteenth century, is quite clear: There is ample evidence that all deities are human constructs and that the most recent, the Judaeo-Christian god of today, is the result of plagiarism, that he and other biblical figures are recognizably-similar versions of the earlier so-called "pagan" gods that were invented and worshiped by the ancient Greeks and Romans. In the book's final chapters, he implores his readers to free themselves from the "despotism of a false religion," a "frightful superstition that poisons every source of happiness and blights every joy in, perhaps, the only life we shall ever live" and come into the light of reason. ISBN 978-0998206530 |
|
|
Guided by Reason: The Golden Age of Freethought in Texas (2017) Steven R. Butler's Guided by Reason is now available in paperback at AMAZON.COM $15.99 plus tax and shipping, or in hardcover at $23.99 pluse tax and shipping.. The “Golden Age of Freethought” was an approximately fifty-year-long period, from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of U.S. involvement in the First World War, during which time American atheists and agnostics who called themselves “freethinkers,” “liberals,” or “infidels,” sought to strengthen the “wall of separation between church and state” and to reshape American society by appealing to their fellow-citizens to abandon their religious faith and to embrace a culture of science, reason, and rational thought instead. During this era, in which a vibrant freethought press flourished and “liberal” associations could be found in towns and cities all over the country, Texans were among not only some of the most active and enthusiastic participants but also leaders in the movement. Shortly after one of the first (and perhaps the very first) “liberal” associations in the United States was formed in Bell County in 1873, the respected physician that served as its leader was brutally horse-whipped by Christian zealots who objected to his “infidelity.” Undeterred, other groups of “liberals” or “freethinkers,” many of them highly respected doctors, lawyers, and businessmen, began meeting regularly in towns and cities all across the Texas, such as Austin, Dallas, Denison, Houston, San Antonio, and Waco, just to name a few. For nearly two decades (1875-1894), there was even a town in East Texas called Ingersoll, named in honor of Robert G. Ingersoll, America’s celebrated “Great Agnostic” lecturer, who toured Texas twice, in 1896 and 1898. Periodically, other prominent freethought lecturers, such as John E. Remsburg, Mattie P. Krekel, Samuel P. Putnam, and Charles Watts also toured the state. In 1890, the formation of a Texas Liberal Association was spearheaded by one of the movement’s foremost freethought publishers, J. D. Shaw of The Independent Pulpit. Other Texas-based freethought publications included Capt. Richard Peterson’s Common Sense and Dallas printer John R. Spencer’s The Agnostic. Many intelligent, well-read Texans, such as Denison’s T. V. Munson, Austin’s James P. Richardson and Randolph’s J. M. Gilbert, were regular contributors to freethought periodicals. In Guided by Reason: The Golden Age of Freethought in Texas, historian Steven R. Butler has combined original research with first-hand nineteenth century accounts to narrate the previously untold story of a little known but noteworthy era in Texas history. ISBN 978-0998206509 |
|
|
A Texas Freethought Reader (2017) A Texas Freethought Reader is now available at AMAZON.COM $15.99 plus tax and shipping. A TEXAS FREETHOUGHT READER, a companion to GUIDED by REASON: The GOLDEN AGE of FREETHOUGHT in TEXAS, is a collection of some of the best, previously “lost” free thought literature produced by four of the most intelligent, articulate Texas freethinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Jasper M. Gilbert, Chas. H. Jones, Thomas Volney Munson, and James Dickson Shaw. As relevant today as when it was originally written, this selection of articles, essays, and letters calls into question the veracity of one of humankind’s most enduring myths and appeals to people everywhere, for the sake of the planet, to abandon ancient superstitions, unsupported by evidence, in favor of reason, rationality, and the scientific method. ISBN 978-0998206516 |
|
|
A Biblical Merry-go-Round and Other Essays by Arthur Babb (2015) A Texas Freethought Reader is now available at AMAZON.COM $9.99 plus tax and shipping. Arthur Babb (1865-1951) was a farmer, railroad carpenter, building contractor and self-taught bookbinder. Despite a lack of formal education he was also a studious man, a voracious reader and a freethinker. In 1944 and 1945, when he was seventy-nine years of age, Babb wrote two long essays in which he recorded his thoughts and opinions regarding religion. These essays, together with two short pieces composed nearly twenty years earlier and another written in 1946, make up this posthumous work in which the author asks in an occasionally humorous and conversational style of writing some thought-provoking questions that challenge the veracity of one of humankind's oldest and most sacred concepts. ISBN 978-0692609361 |
|
Established October 31, 2015 Copyright © 2015-2025 The Freethought Press of Texas. All rights reserved. |
