Debates on the Meaning of Life, Evolution and Spiritualism (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780879758288)

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.