freethinker
and atheist
who was born in Montgomery, Alabama
. At the age of nine he left school to find employment and became mostly self-educated. Lewis developed his ideas from reading, among others, Robert G. Ingersoll
and Thomas Paine
.
In 1920, Lewis moved to New York
where he became the president of Freethinkers of America (a title he would keep for the rest of his life). He later started his own publishing company, the Freethought Press Association, where he published literature about freethought written by himself and others.
A precept claiming infallibility should certainly possess the universality of the law of gravitation and the perfection of the arithmetical table. If it fails to possess these undeviating qualities, its imperfection is self-evident and its value either greatly diminished or useless.
If Atheism writes upon the blackboard of the Universe a question mark, it writes it for the purpose of stating that there is a question yet to be answered. Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved? Does not the word "God" only confuse and make more difficult the solution by assuming a conclusion that is utterly groundless and palpably absurd?
Facts and not merely opinions are what we want. Emotionalism is not a substitute for the truth.
Man's inhumanity to man will continue as long as man loves God more than he loves his fellow man.
As superstition is the weed of the brain, it grows perfusely, once started.
Praying as a public function, particularly when led by a clergyman, is a vulgar display of an exclusively personal matter.
Of the ten crimes which Biblical Hebrew law punished by stoning, nine have ceased to be offenses in modern society.
Imagine using as an authority in the matter of marriage the opinion of a celibate priest!
When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.
On too many occasions, especially in matters concerning purported conversations and messages from gods, mystery has been employed by charlatans to hoodwink the people.