Ingersoll

CFS Spring 2024
Six-weeks

Course Title: Robert Green Ingersoll: Freethinking Agnostic

Course Description: Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), was one of the most popular speakers in 19th Century America. Son of a minister, his entertaining orations on religion drew believers and non-believers alike. Audiences were both amused and agitated by his humanism and humor. Through lecture, discussion and video, respectful students who identify as agnostics, atheists or theists will engage a great mind, whose reasonable rhetoric may be even more relevant in the midst of the religious divisions of our time.

Recommended texts: Susan Jacoby, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought. Yale University Press, 2014. ISBN: 978-0300205787

Instructor: Chris Highland has taught in the Reuter Center since 2016. A humanist freethinker, he was a minister and chaplain in the San Francisco Bay Area. Author of over 20 books, he writes the weekly “Highland Views” column for the Asheville Citizen-Times. For more information: “Friendly Freethinker” (www.chighland.com)

Week One (March 28): Life & Work

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Chronology

Tom Flynn on Ingersoll (Truth Seeker)

Freethought Trail (NY)

Week Two (April 4): Agnosticism, Atheism & Humanism