When: Thursday 21st May 2015, 7.30pm
Where: Catford (map)
Speaker: Dr. Steven Butler
“The Unfinished Revolution: Reason vs. Faith in 21st Century America.”
We are very excited to have a speaker from America who will be talking about and reflecting on the situation of religion in America and how it differs from our experience here.
The title refers to a paragraph in Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason,” in which he wrote: Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited, by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow [and] human inventions and priest-craft would be detected.
Dr. Steven Butler is a professor of history and published freelance writer whose most recent article, “The Texas Infamy,” about a nineteenth century freethinker who was horsewhipped for his “infidelity,” appears in the May 2015 issue of The Truthseeker, the oldest continuously-published freethought journal in the United States. Professor Butler has also lectured on the topics of atheism and religion at the College of Complexes, a weekly free speech forum that meets in Dallas, Texas. He is a member of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. One of his most memorable experiences was shaking hands with Professor Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, on the steps of the Texas state capitol.
