Free Inquiry Quotes
Note the language used to describe the American government at the time. To the founders, it was an EXPERIMENT. Nothing like that had ever been tried before. And none of them were sure it would work. After defeating the British, they could have chosen for their new independent nation any one of dozens of well-established forms of government. But these were all flawed. So they risked the new nation on a form that had little or no precedent and might or might not survive. Centuries later many national leaders and legislators were fearful to try anything that they were not highly certain would be effective. Experiments were rare until there were crises so great that none of the orthodox solutions would be sufficient, and even then the innovators were criticized such as with Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They were candid enough to admit that they were experimenting. FDR in particular announced experimentation as a policy with rapid change for the experiments that did not work out of which there were several.
In many nations, including the United States on occasion, governments have made laws as to what is valid science and what is not. Tennessee and other Bible-Belt States have and still do on occasion. The latest being Evolution, which even in the beginning of the 21st century, Kansas determined that it was not proven science, when it is as proven as any science has ever gotten.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. Oppenheimer was the great physicist who directed the successful development of the atomic bomb so as to build the weapon before Hitler did in World War II. However, as the technology evolved, he had doubts as to the wisdom of creating even more powerful hydrogen weapons. His viewpoint was hurting the administration’s policy of rapid unlimited nuclear weapons development, and he was the victim of a character assassination whereby his security clearance was withdrawn. The “father” of the atomic bomb was the first American casualty of atomic weapons development.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
