Reason, Tolerance, and Christianity: The Ingersoll Debates

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This important volume contains three spirited debates, “Rome or Reason,” “Controversy on Christianity,” and “The Limits of Toleration,” between the great American freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll (1833 – 1899) and leading churchmen and public figures of his own day. The combatants are Cardinal Edward Manning; British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone; lawyer and Catholic activist F. R. Coudert; and New York lieutenant governor and minister to Spain, Steward L. Woodford. Topics of the debates are the still hotly contested issues of evolution versus creationism, science versus revelation, and the doctrine of original sin versus faith in human progress. Ingersoll argues that reason is a more reliable guide for living than religious orthodoxy, and that the truth about human origins will be revealed through scientific inquiry and not through a code of outmoded dogmas promulgated by a church that has too often relied on oppression and persecution to procure and maintain power.