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Woolsey Teller (March 22, 1890 - March 11, 1954) was an American atheist writer and white supremacist.[1]

Teller was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was an associate editor of the Truth Seeker of New York City, where his cousin Charles Lee Smith was editor. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism.[1]

He wrote The Atheism of Astronomy (1938), which is a refutation of the design argument and Essays of an Atheist (1945).[1]

Teller was a white supremacist, and favored eugenics.[2]

In his book Essays of an Atheist he included five racist essays with titles such as "Grading the Races" and "There are Superior Races". Teller argued that the white race is superior with a bigger brain size and the black race is genetically inferior. He has been described as a "leading freethought bigot".[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c Flynn, Tom. (2007). The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. Prometheus Books. p. 746. ISBN 978-1-59102-391-3
  2. ^ Flynn, Tom. (2007). The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. Prometheus Books. p. 28. ISBN 978-1-59102-391-3 "James Hervey Johnson, the former editor of The Truth Seeker, and essayist Woolsey Teller were among the worst offenders. In 1945 the Truth Seeker Company published Teller's Essays of an Atheist. Teller wrote five especially racist essays: "Grading the Races," "Brains and Civilization," "There Are Superior Races," "Shall We Breed Rationally?" and "Natural Selection and War." In "Grading the Races," Teller discusses an essay by the African American atheist and historian John G. Jackson (1907-93) called "Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization." Teller calls Jackson "a mulatto" and argues that "the ancient Egyptians were dominantly Caucasian." Moreover, he argues that the "Caucasian skull, anatomically considered, is the highest in the world.""
  3. ^ Allen, R. Norm. Where Humanism Is, and Where It Is Head in This Non-Humanist World. In Monica R. Miller. (2017). Humanism in a Non-Humanist World. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 107. ISBN 978-3-319-57909-2
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