June 20
Summer Solstice
Happy Summer Solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere)! Depending on the shift of the calendar, the solstice occurs between June 20-22 in the Northern Hemisphere and between Dec. 20-23 in the Southern Hemisphere. June 22 and Dec. 23 solstices are rare. The last June 22 solstice was in 1975 and there won’t be another until 2203.
“Stonehenge, like many other stone circles and standing stones throughout Europe, is aligned to catch the first rays of the summer sun. These moments are part of a universal acknowledgement of the sun as a source of life, fertility, and good fortune. We may know a great deal more today about the physical nature of our native star, but our ancestors knew full well, as do we, that without its light and warmth, there would be no life.”
— John Matthews, "The Summer Solstice: Celebrating the Journey of the Sun from May Day to Harvest" (2002)
Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
Ira Cardiff
On this date in 1873, botanist and humanist author Ira Detrich Cardiff was born in Lynn Township, Ill., the eldest child of Latrobe (Sellon) and Edward Cardiff. After graduation from Knox College, he started teaching school. His career as an educator was interrupted by his service in the Illinois 6th Regiment during the Spanish-American War.
Cardiff directed the agriculture experimental station from 1912–17 at Washington State University, where he was a pioneer in the breeding of high-protein, smut-resistant wheat and where he also headed the botany and plant physiology department. He later founded the Washington Dehydrated Foods Company in Yakima.
In addition to academic publications, Cardiff wrote freethought articles, pamphlets and books, including “The Deification of Lincoln” (1943), in which he took issue with assumptions about President Abraham Lincoln, including that he was a committed Christian. He found it insulting that Lincoln’s successes should be attributed to divine favor.
He edited “What Great Men Think of Religion” (1945), a major skeptical compilation sadly lacking attributions. He also edited “The Wisdom of George Santayana.”
In the introduction of “What Great Men Think of Religion,” his most famous work, Cardiff wrote, “I was reared a Christian; was taught that the good and great were as a matter of course, always religious — Christians to be sure. Being a rather persistent and omnivorous reader, I, soon after reaching the age of discretion, began to discover that many of the great men of the past and present were not religious. In fact a great many seemed anti-religious.”
He started to accumulate those opinions and arranged them alphabetically by author, while qualifying: “It is not maintained that they represent the thought of all great men, or of any certain group or class. The quotations are simply the gleanings from the desultory reading of a busy businessman.”
He concluded, “The collection of quotations does, however, lend decided support to the conclusion … that religious views are held in inverse proportion to peoples’ intelligence.” He died at age 91 in Yakima County, Wash., and was cremated. (D. 1964)
“What would Christ do about syphilis? Well, what should he do? Christ, being possessed of miraculous powers, why does he not obliterate syphilis from the face of the earth? Does Spirochaeta pallida, the organism causing syphilis, perform any useful function in the economy of nature? If not, why not obliterate it? Who is better equipped to do this than Jesus Christ?”
— Cardiff in an undated pamphlet published in The Truth Seeker, c. 1930s
Compiled by Eleanor Wroblewski
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
