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Woolsey Teller, 64, Atheist Leader, Dies. New York Times, March 12, 1954.

"Essays of an Atheist"
by Woolsey Teller
©1945 by The Truth Seeker Company, Inc.

"I never knew real contentment and satisfaction of mind until I had completely shaken myself free from all Christian ideals.
To me they are all fantastic and untrue. It is extraordinary that they continue to be preached and accepted by so many - because to practice them is impossible."
- Sir Buckston Browne, F.R.C.S., LL.D.

"As I see it, the supernatural has no support in science, it in incompatible with science, it is frequently an active foe of science. It is unnecessary for the good life."
- Dr. A.J. Carlson, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Science, Feb. 27, 1931).

"These essays, originally published in The Truth Seeker, have been saved from a journalistic existence (as nearly as anything written for a monthly publication can be saved from oblivion in a world of ruthless extinctions) by its editor, Charles Smith, my publisher and companion in arms for many years, who, being a born crusader, has decided to give them an extended lease of life between covers. …Whether one agrees or disagrees with the opinions expressed in this volume is of small moment; what really matters is the degree to which a writer stimulates others to independent research and a reappraisal of conventional doctrines. After all, one must be judged, not by his errors, but by his batting average. If he can keep the mistakes down to a minimum and the score high, he will be contributing in some small way to a better understanding of life and its problems."
-Woolsey Teller

CONTENTS

1. PREFACE
   Preface by Woolsey Teller
2. The Futility of Philosophy
   ...critiques varied famed philosophers throughout history, detailing some of the absurdities and nonsense found in some of their quotes.
3. Mysticism in Modern Physics
   ...aimed to dis-spell misconceptions about the atom.
4. Muddlers of Science
   ...aims to discredit fictitional theories of the day, about atomic particles and Physics.
5. Christian Cowardice and Atheist Courage
   Woolsey Teller gives his review of the old saying ''No Atheists in Foxholes''.
6. Froth and Fraud in Fundamentalism
   ...explores the questions related to science and religion, creation vs evolution, Noah's Flood, Jonah and other issues.
7. Christianity and Insanity
   ... discusses in depth on the History of Christianity, and the belief in demon possession, and the abuses that occurred against the insane.
8. Sea Gulls and Christian Gullibility
   ... written during WWII, questioning the 'miracle' that a Seagull was delivered by Providence, to save men stranded at Sea.
9. Atheism-and Jesuit Duplicity
   ... Teller addresses his critics at a Jesuit Journal, on the poor conditions of many Catholics, and their lack of freedom to be individuals.
10. Christianity and Astrology
    ... the history of astrology, prophecy, and superstition within the Bible, and throughout the History of Christian Church.
11. Whitewashing the Infamous
    ... on the ongoing controversy about Science and Religion, including criticism on historical suppression of science and freethinking.
12. Bigotry: Ally of Religion
    ... criticizing the claim bigotry is kept under control, through religion, but the author points out how bigotry at its worst, was when religion was at its zenith.
13. Sociology in Slumberland
    ... discussing how the world would be more peaceful, for all, without religious bigotry and intolerance.
14. The Ape Ancestry of Man
    ... discusses the question whether Darwin really meant man descended from ape, or is merely a cousin of apes, including quotes by Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel and others.
15. Monkeying with Darwin
    ... criticizing a museum for displaying a sign misleading the public to believe that Darwin did not teach man came from Old World Monkeys.
16. Hamstringing the Health Seekers
    ... criticizes the overwhelming pressure to look good and have a perfect body, emphasizing on the need to build the mind, more than the body.
17. Humanism -- A New Religion
    ... answers, from his perspective, what Humanism is, and what Humanists believe.
18. Egoism and Altruism Considered
    ... in his perspective, explains the reason people do good, is motivated by self-interest.
19. Christianity and Einstein
    ... discusses the subject of Albert Einstein and his particular views on God, Spirituality and Science.
20. "Fictional Biography" and Thomas Paine
    ... defends the reputation of Thomas Paine against a fictional biography about the Founding Father.
21. A Reply to Critics
    ... response to his critics, after publication of his book "The Atheism of Astronomy".
    

    BRIEFER COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS

22. A Hill-Billy Book
    ... responding to a Fundamentalist, who published "The Bible Defeats Atheism", after the Rimmer Trial, on science and religion.
23. Sociological Pipe-Dreams
    ... on Sociology, and its futility to predict human behavior.
24. Is the Bible Valuable?
    ... discussion between Woolsey Teller and a Geography Researcher, Yale University, asking if the Bible is a valuable book.
25. That Jonah Stuff Again
    ... commentary on the story of Jonah and the Whale, and a Chicago University Professor who presumably crawled into the belly of a Sperm Whale.
26. Chameleonic Christianity
    ... criticizes a claim by a Christian, that the WWII was being fought to preserve Christian values.
27. St. Patrick's "Gift" to Ireland
    ... criticizing Saint Patrick's contribution of Christianity to Ireland.
28. Dr. Gregory and Religion
    ... criticizes Sir Richard Gregory, President of the British Association, for his views on religion being a necessity for morality.
29. Sideline Criticism
    ... his personal view on the Historicity of Jesus, and his lack of belief that Jesus performed miracles.
30. Our Gun-Powder Survival
    ... commentary about mathematical probabilities relating to the fear that "the human race may drive itself to extinction" by war.
31. Super-Sensory Superstition
    ... skeptical viewpoint, about a documented case in the 1940's, of a Clairvoyant who could read symbols on cards, at a distance.
32. Telepathy: a Vulgar Delusion
    ... ghosts, poltergeists, telepathy and telekinesis, which include a critical comparison between science and superstition.
33. Politicians and Prayer
    ... commentary during World War II, on the futility of prayers offered up by politicians.
34. A Non-Kosher Tax-Payer Speaks
    ... on kosher killing, and the government protecting the practice, through the Bureau of Kosher Enforcement.
35. Kosher-Killing Cruelty
    ... on a trial that took place in the 1940s, on the issue of kosher killing. The author describes it as cruelty to animals.
36. Flouting the Bill of Rights
    ... a proposed Bill, which would prohibit citizens from criticizing any religion, treading on rights of freedom of press and speech.
37. Evolution Implies Atheism
    ... discusses evolution, and the seemingly non-intelligent randomness in nature.
38. Molasses or Vinegar?
    ... on atheists who fear to call themselves atheists, encouraging fellow atheists to be aggressive with their beliefs.
39. A Columnist Barks up the Wrong Tree
    ... criticizing a newspaper reporter for his defense of the Catholic Church.
40. The Fallacy of Free Will
    ... discusses free will, and the doubts that people are guided by religious beliefs, but more by environmental conditioning.
41. The Miracle Joint at Lourdes
    ... on the Lourdes Shrine, where people report miraculous healing. Briefly explains the history, and the fallacies of this famed shrine.
42. Vivisection, Euthanasia, and Cremation
    ... in support of animal experimentation, euthanasia, and cremation.
43. Miscellaneous Notes
    ... collection of thoughts responding to current issues of the day, relating to the discrepancies between science, spirituality and religion.

Essays of an Atheist by Woolsey Teller, ©1945, The Truth Seeker Company, Inc.
Transcription to web provided by Sharon Mooney. Original publication, courtesy of the library owned by David Mooney.

Monkeying With Darwin

DARWIN, in his "Descent of Man", specifically states that man is,descended from "Old World monkeys". You will find the statement in next to the last Paragraph of Chapter Six. His precise language is worth remembering :

"The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World Monkeys; and from the latter at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the universe, proceeded."

In spite of this, there are those who will deliberately misrepresent Darwin by stating that he never claimed we are descended from monkeys. Thus if you go to Rochester, N, Y., and visit the Rochester Museum of Art and Sciences, you will find there, in a case exhibit of man's family tree, a card bearing these words:

"As Darwin pointed out, there is no reason to believe that man descended from any monkey or ape ..."

On calling attention to the obvious error, Mr. Arthur G. Cromwell of the Rochester Society of Freethinkers with whom I visited the Museum, received a letter from one of the Museum's officials, William A. Ritchie, archaeologist attempting to justify the statement on the card, Mr. Ritchie responded as follows:

"I have your letter of September 14th, addressed to Dr. Parker, concerning a supposed error in a label which I wrote for the exhibiter titled 'The Family Tree of the Primates". Apparently the offensive clause in this label is the statement, 'As Darwin pointed out, there is no reason to believe that man descended from any monkey or ape,' rather all were descended from some unspecialized common ancestor, probably far back in the Miocene or early Pliocene periods'. I then proceed to explain that divergence with specialization for their respective modes of life has operated with the result that the current products of this evolutionary process are far more dissimilar than their progenitors."This is precisely what Darwin stated, as expressed in the folder you enclose, and in another statement from the same chapter of 'The Descent of Man", viz., "The early descendants of this progenitor, before they had converged to any considerable extent from each other, would still have formed a single natural group', etc. (p. 175, Home Library edition).

"Most modern anthropologists, in view of all the evidence now existing (which of course Darwin lacked) still concur in the opinion of a common anthropoid ancestor far the Primates and a divergence of the genera and species, so that it is absolutely correct to say that no known monkey or ape can be designated the ancestor of man, albeit they are his distant cousins."

It is easy to see that Mr. Ritchie doesn't know what he is talking about, and that his letter, glutted with irrelevancies, sidesteps the point at issue. Did Darwin say mankind is descended from "monkeys"? He did. And he named them as "Old World" monkeys.

There are men, psychologists tell us, who can look directly at a printed page, read what it says and inject an opposite.

Thus Mr. Ritchie reads the Darwin statement:

"New World and Old World monkeys... from the latter... Man... proceeded."

The words immediately become:
"New World and Old World monkeys ... from the latter... Man... DID NOT proceed."

Why does this happen? Maybe because the word "monkeys" is emotionally upsetting. Maybe because of some religious prejudice. Maybe because he doesn't like the Darwinian doctrine and is trying to face it in the easiest way he knows how. Whatever the cause, the Rochester Museum gets a fraudulent label.

There are men who, because of a peculiar twist of temperament, or because they believe they are children of God, revolt at the idea that men are descended from monkeys. Henry Fairfield Osborn was one of them. Yet he got over it in time and lived to see the day when he could write: "the ancestors of man, namely, the Lemurs, Monkeys, and Apes." You will find these words on page 274 of his "Origin and Evolution of Life". If the late President of the American Museum of Natural History could do it, maybe there is yet hope for the archaeologist at the Rochester Museum.

Darwin castigated those who, admitting our descent from savages, balk at our monkey descent. "For my own part," said he, "I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrades from a crowd of astonished dogs -- as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions."

Let us put a direct question to Mr. Ritchie and ask him to give us an unequivocal reply.

Where, in any of his writings, does Darwin state that man is NOT descended from "any monkey or ape"? We challenge Mr. Ritchie to cite chapter and page. We challenge him further to substantiate his claim that Darwin "pointed out" that "there is no reason to believe" that man came from simian stock. "There can, consequently," says Darwin, "hardly be a doubt that man is an off-shoot from the Old World Simian stem and that under a genealogical point of view he must be classed with the Catarrhine division." The Catarrhine group is classified by Darwin as "Old World monkeys".

If Mr. Ritchie is so sure that Darwin did not teach the monkey descent of man, we challenge him to put the Darwin passage in the Museum's exhibit case next to his own card, and let the people of Rochester decide for themselves. It would make a unique exhibit. On the one hand would be Mr. Ritchie's card, reading:

"As Darwin pointed out, there is no reason to believe that man descended from any monkey or ape." On the other hand would be Darwin's statement: "The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter at a remote period, Man ... proceeded," Who do you suppose would get the big laugh? And what kind of a reputation do you think the Museum would get locally for veracity of statement?

Every fundamentalist knows that Darwin taught the monkey descent of man. Mr. Ritchie has not yet caught up with them, but he can. Let him write to Dr. Hooton of Harvard, whose Family Tree of Man is exhibited in the Rochester Museum, and ask him whether, in his judgment Darwin upheld our "monkey" origin. I know Hooton's hilarious sense of humor and the kind of answer he will give.

And while he is about it let him turn to Hooton's book, "Apes, Men, and Morons", and see what Hooton himself says about our monkey descent. "I still believe," says he, "that man's stock separated from the large anthropoid ape trunk in the Miocene." Wouldn't that be nice to place in the exhibit case next to Mr. Ritchie's remarks?

We suggest that, if it doesn't want to become the laughing stock of science in America, the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences hire an anthropologist or an anatomist, rather than an archaeologist engaged in collecting arrow-heads and Indian relics, to label its exhibits bearing on the descent of man.

As for "modern anthropologists" who, Mr. Ritchie claims, have access to "evidence" which Darwin lacked'", there is not one of them of any distinction today who does not subscribe-and subscribe fully--to the monkey descent of man, precisely as Darwin did. The list includes Keith, Elliot Smith, Gregory, Tilney, Hooton, Wilder, Schwalbe, Sonntag, and ten times as many we could name.

We challenge Mr. Ritchie to give us a single citation from any of these authorities which states, as he himself states on his card in the Museum, that "there is no reason to believe that man descended from any monkey or ape" All of them, on the contrary, definitely hold that man is descended from a primitive ape stock, just as definitely as they hold that man's more remote ancestors were fish, and, still earlier, worms.

"All the evidence now at our disposal," writes Sir Arthur Keith "supports the conclusion that man has arisen, as Lamarck and Darwin suspected, from an anthropoid ape not higher in the zoological scale than a chimpanzee."

And Dr. William K. Gregory of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York writes: "Man, like his less ambitious cousins, the modern anthropoid apes, is a descendant of the late Tertiary dryopithecine ape stock of Europe, Asia, and Africa."

Where, then, does Mr. Ritchie's label fit in?. Nowhere but at the Rochester Museum, where it stands convicted, not only as a perversion of Darwin's views, but as a misrepresentation of what our leading anthropologists teach concerning the ape origin of man. It is false in every line.

What is all this trash that Mr. Ritchie writes about our "unspecialized common ancestor"? Our "common ancestor" was a highly "specialized" animal, described by Darwin as "a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits", and possessing a high degree of "specialization'' in its prehensile extremities. Such was the primitive monkey from which we are descended. It is the monkey which Thomas Henry Huxley and Emst Haeckel recognized as the ancestor of man.

Our "unspecialized common ancestor" is as mythical as Adam and Eve. In man's Family Tree will be found the lemur, the tailed monkey, the anthropoid ape, and ape-man--all highly "specialized". Each, in its own time and place, was a "specialized" organism, as indicated by skeletal remains. There is nothing blurry about our "common ancestor''. Comparative anatomy supplements the paleontological record. Blood tests show even our close relationship to present-day apes.

All Mr. Ritchie's rigmarote about an "unspecialized common ancestor" of the human race and our present-day anthropoid apes, amounts to nothing more than an evasion of the issue and an attempt to avoid the word "monkey" in man's ancestral tree.

If, as Mt. Ritchie admits and as anatomical evidence shows, our present-day apes are merely our "distant cousins'', what does he think our "common ancestor" looked like? An elephant? Look at Man's Family Tree again, Mr. Ritchie, and you will; find that the word "primate" in our remote ancestral line is only a nice word for a primitive monkey, hidden in the fork of the tree where man and our modern monkeys branch but. You can no more duck this point than you can cover up the fact, among those who can read plain English and are honest in the matter, that Darwin taught that men are descended from monkeys.