Robert Ingersoll

I recently finished reading volume 1 of the collected works of Robert Ingersoll.   I had read that Ingersoll influenced Mark Twain and I had seen Matt Dilahunty talk about reading Ingersoll when he was deconverting from Christianity. This made me curious because I respect the work of both Dilahunty and Twain. Mark Twain has long been one of my favorite authors. You can find the collected works of Ingersoll for free at multiple spots on the web: Gutenberg, the University of Adelaide, and Amazon Kindle.

After reading the first volume, I can definitely see how Ingersoll influenced Twain. The soft sarcasm and deep caring for humanity are shared by both men. While Twain preferred to give his lectures and lessons under the cover of fictional satire. Ingersoll is straightforward and factual about his atheism and disdain for religious prejudice. Ingersoll goes further than Twain in spelling out injustice against women, children, and minorities. He speaks candidly about the science and history scholarship of the day and how it does not agree with the Bible. Of course it is somewhat outdated now, because he wrote and spoke over 100 years ago. However, the main ideas remain valid across time. There were a couple of passages which  revealed that in spite of his forward thinking, Ingersoll retained a few prejudices of his time.

I found Robert Ingersoll fairly easy to read and understand. However, by the last lecture in the book, the repetition of themes began to be a little tiring. All in all, I highly recommend reading at least the first volume of his lectures. Especially for any one interested in the history of free thought in America.