Does life have a meaning? Is evolution true? Do spirits exist? These are the issues argued in the three lively debates transcribed in this volume. The featured speakers include: Frank Harris, outspoken journalist, biographer, novelist, and playwright; rationalist Percy Ward; anti-evolutionist George McCready Price; Joseph McCabe, ex-priest and "the world's greatest scholar"; and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and defender of spiritualism. All the issues covered in these classic exchanges are still current and hotly debated: personal immortality versus finitude and death as the fate of humankind; evolution versus creationism; and rational scepticism versus belief in the paranormal. All the combatants make forceful cases for their own side of the issue; each debate will engage and delight the reader.
Frank Harris (1856 - 1931) was an Irish editor, novelist, short story writer, journalist, and publisher; he is perhaps best known for his autobiography, My Life and Loves. Percy Ward was born into a Wesleyan family in York-shire, England, about 1876. Having qualified as a Wesleyan local preacher, Ward considered becoming a Wesleyan minister but abandoned his faith in 1895. From then on, Ward became active in the British secularist movement: he edited the Truth Seeker, "the monthly organ of the North of England Secular Federation," from 1901 to 1902, and in 1903 founded the British Secular League. In early 1909, Ward left England for the United States, where he lectured for the Chicago Freethought Society. Ward's con-version experience is described in "From Wesleyan Pulpit to Secularist Platform," in J. W. Catt's The Truth Seeker 7, no. 11 (March 1901): 1-4. George McCready Price (1870-1963) taught philosophy, chemistry, physics, geology, and philosophy at various schools and colleges in the United States and Europe. Among his many publications are Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science (1902), The Fun-damentals of Geology (1913), The Phantom of Organic Evolution (1924), and Genesis Vindicated (1941). Joseph McCabe (1867-1955), born in England, entered the Franciscan seminary at sixteen; shortly after ordina-tion, however, he left the priesthood and abandoned his Catholic faith. A tireless promoter of freethought, skep-ticism, and anticlericalism, McCabe wrote over 200 essays and books, many of which were published as Little Blue Books by E. Haldeman-Julius, who billed McCabe as "the world's greatest scholar." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), creator of the immortal literary character Sherlock Holmes, trained as a physician and practiced medicine until 1891. Conan Doyle was knighted for his hospital and other work during the South African (Boer) War. After the death of his son in World War I, Conan Doyle turned to spiritualism and became one of its staunchest proponents. His book History of Spiritualism appeared in 1926.
