Abstract

Paul Kurtz will be long remembered as the late twentieth century’s pre-eminent philosophical defender of freethinking rationalism and skepticism, the scientific worldview to replace superstition and religion, the healthy ethics of humanism, and democracy’s foundation in secularism. Reason, science, ethics, and civics – Kurtz repeatedly cycled through these affirmative agendas, not only to relegate religion to humanity’s ignorant past, but mainly to indicate the direction of humanity’s better future