Z
From Philosopedia.org
Zaborowski Moindrin, Sigismond (Born 1851) Zaborowski was a French scientific writer, author of The Antiquity of Man (1874); Pre-historic Man (1878); Origin of Languages (1879); The Great Apes (1881); and Scientific Curiosities (1883). {BDF}
ZAIREAN HUMANISTS An associate member of the IHEU is Humanism and Solidarity, BP 15849, Kinshasa, Zaire.
Zakarov, Alice Olive (1929– ) Zakarov is an Australian humanist, teacher, and senator. From 1983, she was Labor Senator for Victoria. As a teacher, she was involved in educational counseling and establishing human relations courses, including units on sex education. In 1986, Zakarov received the Humanist of the Year award. {SWW}
Zaluba, Jim (20th Century) Zaluba founded the Free Inquiry Network (Council for Secular Humanism) and has widely distributed its newsletter, Ideas, which contains a directory and a calendar of events for freethought and humanism activities in the greater Chicago area. E-mail: <Jimzaluba@sprintmail.com>. On the Web: <http://www.freeinquirynetwork.com>. {FD}
Zambrini, Francesco (1810–1887) Zambrini was an Italian writer who wrote extensively about literature. He was a freethinker. {BDF}
Zamecki, Joe (20th Century) “Diversity is one of our nation’s greatest attributes. Let’s keep it that way,” Zamecki wrote in The Village Voice (10 August 1999). He was complaining that a right-wing religious leader, Paul Weyrich, was being hypocritical regarding non-Christians in the military. Weyrich’s attitudes, Zemecki wrote, “illustrate why minority religions deserve to be given legitimate status. And I would add that atheists deserve no less acceptance. It’s equally shocking to see their rights being trampled in the name of ‘religious liberty.’” Zamecki is a member of Union County Atheists in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Zamenhof, Ludwig L. (19th Century) Zamenhof, a Polish oculist, was creator of Esperanto, which he believed would make communication easier between speakers of different languages. Zamenhof is termed a freethinker by the Australian writer Stanley Charles W. Stokes, an unbeliever by Nicolas Walter. (See entry for Homaranismo.)
Zanardelli, Giuseppe [Premier] (1826–1903) Zanardelli was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1859 and sat among the members on the left. A liberal and a democrat, he helped improve relations with France during his premiership (1901–1903). A new penal code he helped author was passed in 1890 and remained in force until 1931. Zanardelli served as Minister of Public Works, Minister of the Interior, and Minister of Justice (1881–1883, 1887–1891). In 1894, 1896, and 1898 he was President of the Camera. In face of violent Papal hostility, he worked to pass a measure of divorce; but his health failed and he retired in 1903. {CE; RAT}
Zangwill, Israel (1864–1926) An English author, Zangwill became a journalist and founded Ariel, a humorous paper. He wrote Children of the Ghetto (1892), which later was dramatized and performed in England and America. A prominent Zionist, he wrote The Principle of Nationalities (1917). One of his plays, The Next Religion (1912), was so explicit in its freethought that he could not get it licensed. After that, he was reticent about his views. {CE; JM; RAT; RE; TRI}
Zappa, Frank (1940–1993) Zappa, a musician, vocalist, and composer not only of popular but also of highly structured serious music, came to prominence in the 1960s with his Mothers of Invention band. Known for challenging the dominant culture as well as the counterculture, the group used guest musicians, colorful props, and improvisational dialogue. “200 Motel” was a semi-autobiographical movie and gave his account of the rock scene in American music. In the 1980s he became known for his sarcastic aim at the religious right and for championing the First Amendment. “Anybody who claims that the Road to Righteousness is mapped out in some book (or pamphlet) he’s waving around is an asshole (at least) or (more likely) a fanatic, in the clinical sense of the word,” he exclaimed. A lapsed Catholic, he said, “Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I’m concerned—I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination. “Zappa Volume One” and “Zappa Volume Two” were performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Pierre Boulez conducted Zappa’s “The Perfect Stranger.” Germany’s Ensemble Modern performed his “The Yellow Shark.” He won a Grammy Award for “Jazz From Hell,” an album of instrumentals written and performed on the state-of-the-art Synclavier computer synthesizer. When the Communist system began to collapse, Zappa traveled to Eastern Europe, befriending Czech president Vaclav Havel and serving as an unofficial American envoy for trade and culture. Despite his acceptance in serious music institutions, Zappa is usually thought of as “the Wild Man of Rock.” Zappa particularly appealed to those who felt “I just don’t fit in,” for he responded with the comforting sentiment “Who cares?” He once sold a photo of himself on the toilet and labeled it, “Phi Zappa Crappa.” Upon his death, Zappa’s family announced that “Composer Frank Zappa has left for his final tour.” {Gary Yokie, “A Tribute,” Secular Nation, Fall 1994}
Zappa, Frank (21 Dec 1940 - 4 Dec 1993) Zappa, a musician, vocalist, and composer not only of popular but also of highly structured serious music, came to prominence in the 1960s with his Mothers of Invention band. Known for challenging the dominant culture as well as the counterculture, the group used guest musicians, colorful props, and improvisational dialogue. “200 Motel” was a semi-autobiographical movie and gave his account of the rock scene in American music. In the 1980s he became known for his sarcastic aim at the religious right and for championing the First Amendment. “Anybody who claims that the Road to Righteousness is mapped out in some book (or pamphlet) he’s waving around is an asshole (at least) or (more likely) a fanatic, in the clinical sense of the word,” he exclaimed. A lapsed Catholic, he has said, “Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I’m concerned—I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination. Zappa Volume One and Zappa Volume Two were performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Pierre Boulez conducted Zappa’s The Perfect Stranger. Germany’s Ensemble Modern performed his The Yellow Shark. He won a Grammy Award for Jazz From Hell, an album of instrumentals written and performed on the state-of-the-art Synclavier computer synthesizer. When the Communist system began to collapse, Zappa traveled to Eastern Europe, befriending Czech president Vaclav Havel and serving as an unofficial American envoy for trade and culture. Despite his acceptance in serious music institutions, Zappa is usually thought of as “the Wild Man of Rock.” Zappa particularly appealed to those who felt “I just don’t fit in,” for he responded with the comforting sentiment “Who cares?” He once sold a photo of himself on the toilet and labeled it, “Phi Zappa Crappa.” Upon his death, Zappa’s family announced that “Composer Frank Zappa has left for his final tour.” {Gary Yokie, “A Tribute,” Secular Nation, Fall 1994}
Zaprianov, Iordan (20th Century)
Zaprianov spoke at a 1995 Berlin conference arranged by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), reporting that although no humanist organization currently existed in Bulgaria he thinks a silent majority of non-believers exists and he is interested in creating a Bulgarian association of humanists.
Zarathustra: See entry for Zoroaster.
Zarco, Francisco (1829–1869) A Mexican journalist, Zarco edited El Siglo XIX and La Ilustracion, in which he used the pen name of “Fortun.” Elected to Congress in 1855, Zarco was imprisoned by reactionaries in 1860. Juarez made him Secretary of State and President of Council. Zarco was a friend of Heinrich Christoph von Gagern. {BDF; RAT}
Zarkov (20th Century) Zarkov is part of a pair of writers, Gracie and Zarkov, who write for Mondo 2000. Their Notes From Underground: A Gracie and Zarkov Reader is a personal reference book for psychedelic drugs. Discussing Trence McKenna’s views in Douglass Rushkoff’s Cyberia, Zarkov wrote, “A drug is a tool, like a microscope, a telescope, or a radio. Is it some godlike metaphysical entity? Where I part company with Terence is where he talks about the drug as a metaphysical entity which looks, smells, tastes, and acts like God. I don’t believe in God.” {CA; E}
Zarlenga, Peter (20th Century) Zarlenga wrote Immortal Light of Genius (1979). {GS}
Zarse. Harry (20th Century) Zarse, from Indiana, is on the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Zarse, Lucy (20th Century) Zarse, from Indiana, is on the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Zayed, Martin (20th Century) Zayed, an activist humanist in Canada, signed Humanist Manifesto 2000.
ZDRAVYI SMYSL (Common Sense) A quarterly of the Russian Humanist Society, Zdravyi Smysl, is at 119899 Moscow Vorobjovi Gory, Moscow University, Philosophy Department, Moscow, Russia.
Zdrubek, F. B. (19th Century) In Czech, Zdrubek edited from Chicago a freethought publication called Svornost (1875).
Zea, Leopoldo (1912– ) Zea is author of Positivism in Mexico (1974).
Zebi, Sabbatai (1626–1676) Zebi is illustrative of a false Messiah. He was born in Smyrna, Turkey. Waiting for God to send him a bride, he found Sarah, a Polish prostitute who had long maintained that she was destined to marry the Messiah. When Zebi’s wanton sexual activity and erratic behavior drew fire from Muslim authorities, he was exiled to a remote Albanian seaport where he died on the day of Atonement, in 1676. {LEE}
Zecchitella, Joseph (20th Century) Zecchitella, an agnostic, wrote “A Discussion Among Two Friends and a Minister” (1979). {GS}
Zedd, Nick (20th Century) Zedd is an artist, writer, actor, and director known for his underground filmmaking. In an interview with Alexander Laurence in Querty Arts, Zedd said,
It’s great that Christianity is falling apart. I’m surprised that so many born-again Christians are invading Manhattan. These are people who claim to be creative but mentally they are not too creative, especially if they believe in God. I don’t believe in God. I’m an atheist. I think that religion is really stupid. It’s a sign of weakness.
Is secular humanism a step in the right direction, then?
Yes. That means that man is the center of one’s universe, instead of a higher authority or an unseen humanoid deity.
And is it necessary to have some belief system?
No. Belief is not necessary. You live your life and you do things. God is not a necessary concept either. God is dead. I thought people knew this. Nietzsche pointed this out. . . . Anyone with a brain who reads Nietzsche will see the truth. {CA} Zedd, Nick ( ) Zedd is an underground filmmaker in New York. In 1986 at the Ann Arbor International Super 8 Film Festival, he presented a program of 16mm and Super 8 films that he titled The Cinema of Transgression. He made The Right Side of My Brain in collaboration with Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch, a hard-edged cross between blue movies and Hollywood silents in which he parodies both genres. His other films include They Eat Scum (1979), Bogus Man, King of Sex (with Richard Kern), and The Wild World of Lydia Lunch (a prizewinner at the Ann Arbor festival). In Thrust In Me, Zedd plays a female and also a male, one who ended up having intercourse with himself. “I am politically an anarchist,” he has said,
sexually a fascist—and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I have experimented with many different styles of sexuality and I've had personal relationships in which my companion has been equal—that is fine, but I actually prefer to run a sexual relationship into an adventure and so I have adopted a master-slave relationship on occasions. I like to change my sex; that is why I like to become female sometimes. The character I played in Thrust in Me wasn't a transvestite, it was a female. At the time I was making that film I was very depressed and contemplating suicide and I was interested in expressing these feelings of frustration and despair on film, and I wanted to play a male and a female character. The male character embodies the violence and aggression and the more dominant aspects of my personality, whereas the female represented my vulnerability and despair. And the female who commits suicide in the film is discovered by the male: then as a total surprise, he fucks her in the head, and this was intended to convey poetically the notion that she was fucked in the head for having committed suicide. Told that the film shows the intercourse was after she committed suicide, he responded,
Yes. But she was before. I didn't want to show pity for this creature who had destroyed herself because I think we have a right to destroy ourselves, but it is not something to feel sorry for, because it can be a celebratory act to commit self-destruction. But in her case I think she was deluded because she stuck up a picture of Christ which would indicate that she had a belief in an afterlife, or succumbed to that weakness which allows us to believe in unseen humanoid deities for which there is no physical evidence. The male character who desecrated the image of Christ by using it as a piece of toilet paper is one that I would identify with more strongly. However, I also did that film, King of Sex, where I played both a male and female character.
As to his critics, Zedd observed,
There has been resistance from certain quarters of the avant-garde establishment, who are essentially as narrow minded and restricted in their thinking as the politicians and the mass media who are extremely reactionary and conservative. The avant-garde establishment are geriatric throwbacks to the 60's, they are old liberals who have become conservative culturally and sexually. Some of them are feminists who are hypersensitive to any indication of violent eroticism- they're uptight puritans. They don't realise they are the dupes of the moral majority when they exclude statements by myself and other film-makers, which are essentially liberating sexually in the sense that we attempt to show that highest possible plateau of human development is the awareness of the flesh. We absolutely advocate indulgence instead of abstinence.
Zedd admits to having many controversial ideas:
I am anti-art. I hate everything. My films are propaganda, they are statements, an attempt to break through the conditioning of society which states that abstinence rather than indulgence is a noble state of existence, and I disagree. I believe in indulging in all of the seven deadly sins because they are our natural desires, and I don't believe in good and evil.
I like to pervert- to subvert traditional definitions. This is what occurs in our lives all the time and people aren't aware of it. Words such as freedom have totally perverted. The word freedom is totally redefined by all sorts of people, by teachers, by theologians, politicians and cops, and for a broad definition of the term, I am a nihilist- I reject all traditions out of hand.
I think as the scandals increase and word of mouth make people aware that we represent a new definition of underground films. That we reject boredom, and that we constitute an oasis of horror on a desert of boredom.
The films I have been doing with Richard Kern have also been documentary to a certain degree in that, when we portray certain characters, we manifest elements in our psyche which we have always wanted to express but have been unable to because of social conditioning and the disapproval of the people with whom we came into contact. So, in making films in which we enact violent behaviour, we are free to express our deepest and most passionate desires. I think most people try to forget the fact that they are going to die and they invest a cosmology which includes an afterlife, or reincarnation, or mysticism or a god. Those of us within the cinema of transgression have rejected these myths. We have seen death and destruction and realised that all human beings suffer from the same disease—mortality. This awareness of the potential for imminent destruction and total oblivion for eternity makes us enact the most wild, depraved kinds of phantasies which society tries to repress. We want our existence to be an adventure. I have always hated and continued to hate the way I was shackled by convention all my life.
Following is an excerpt of part of an interview with Alexander Laurence in Query Arts,:
AL: What sort of spirituality are you interested in and does this influence your work? Do you have any thoughts on Christianity? NZ: It's great that Christianity is falling apart. I'm surprised that so many born-again Christians are invading Manhattan. These are people who claim to be creative but mentally they are not too creative, especially if they believe in God. I don't believe in God. I'm an atheist. I think that religion is really stupid. It's a sign of weakness. AL: Do you think that secular humanism is a step in the right direction? NZ: Yes. That means that man is the center of one's universe, instead of a higher authority or an unseen humanoid deity. That belief in higher intelligence dictating one's existence, or being there to bail you out after you die, is really a form of cowardice that I don't respect. It's intellectually weak. I am surprised that there are so many people in the "so called" art scene in Manhattan that fall for this. There are a lot of weak people, I guess. New York City is the center of the world to them, so they figure that they can leech off other people's ideas, or become part of the art scene. There are a lot of fraudulent people who zero in on the East Village and Manhattan in general. They're not threatening the status quo. They're just opportunists looking for some of the limelight. They are not offering us anything new, especially if they're going to church on Sunday. AL: Is it necessary to have some belief system to live? NZ: No. Belief is not necessary. You live your life and you do things. God is not a necessary concept either. God is dead. I thought people knew this. Nietzsche pointed this out. But I'm shocked that there are people who are ignorant enough to think that Nietzsche has something to do with Hitler. He has nothing to do with Hitler. That's what the powers that be did to denigrate and demonize Nietzsche, because his ideas are revolutionary. Nietzsche hated nationalism and militarism. He's the exact opposite of Hitler, who used these things to enslave millions of people and caused the Holocaust. Anyone with a brain who reads Nietzsche will see the truth.
Zedong, Mao: See entry for Mao.
Zeid, Nasr Abu (20th Century) Zeid, an Egyptian Muslim academic, outraged fundamentalists because of his writings on the Qur’an. Condemned a non-believer, he was instructed by a religious court to separate from his wife. Mr. and Mrs. Zeid, however, fled to The Netherlands after taking part in a 1994 Council for Secular Humanism-sponsored conference in Cairo.
Zeilstra, Anne (20th Century) Zeilstra is associated with the Humanists of Utah (AHA). (See entry for Utah Atheists, Humanists.) {FD}
ZEITGEIST Zeitgeist is German for “time-spirit,” which is a general, moral, intellectual, and cultural climate of an era. For example, the Zeitgeist of England in the Victorian Period included a belief in industrial progress. {DCL}
Zeller, Eduard (1814–1908) Zeller was a German critic who, although he studied theology at Tübingen and Berlin, gave up theology for philosophy. He did, in fact, lose a job as a professor of theology because of his skepticism. In philosophy, he maintained that he was a liberal Christian, but upon making a profound study of Greek thinkers he became an agnostic, as shown by his three-volume Philosophy of the Greeks. Zeller wrote a memoir of D. F. Strauss, his close friend, in 1874, and he is noted for having written Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy (1883) and Frederick the Great as a Philosopher (1886). {BDF; JM; RE}
Zellner, William W. (20th Century) Zellner is president of the Association for the Scientific Study of Religion. In Oklahoma, he is a professor of sociology at East Central University.” His Countercultures, a Sociological Analysis (1995) studies American cults. Zellner has written for Freethought Today.
Zemel, Joe (20th Century) Zemel is an editor of The Greater Philadelphia Story, newsletter of The Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia (FSGP).
ZEN and ZEN KOANS Zen is an approach to religion, arising from Buddhism. It seeks religious enlightenment by meditation, in which there is no consciousness of self. Deliberately irrational statements are sometimes used in Zen to jar persons into realizing the limits of the common uses of the intellect. A Zen koan is a riddle in the form of a paradox, and it is used in meditation to gain intuitive knowledge (rather than knowledge which can be documented). “What does one think of while sitting?,” a monk asked Yueh-shan. “One thinks of not-thinking,” the Master replied. “But how does one think of not-thinking?” the monk asked. “Replied the Master, “Without thinking.”
• A Zen koan “What is the sound of one hand clapping?
• A typical secular humanist response: “Castanets.”
{DCL}
Zeno of Elea (c. 490–c. 430 B.C.E.) Zeno of Elea was a philosopher of the Eleatic school along with Melissos of Samos and Parmenides. Zeno supported Parmenides by demonstrating that it is logically impossible to have motion and multiplicity. Aristotle claimed that Zeno was the first to employ the dialectical method. If, Zeno held, a whole consists of parts, then each part is divisible into units and each of these is divisible ad infinitum. His argument against motion was that whatever moves can never come to the end of a line, for first it must cover half the line, then half of what remains, and so on ad infinitum. Through logical reasoning, then, he dramatized the errors of commonplace notions concerning time and space. Using a specific example: An arrow can never reach its target, because the distance it must travel can be divided into an infinite number of sub-distances, and therefore the arrow must take an infinite amount of time to arrive at its destination. In the 18th century, the paradox was resolved with the recognition that an infinite number of terms could have a finite sum: 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 etc. = Z. {CE; AF; JM; JMR; JMRH; OCP; RE; TYD}
Zeppetello, Philip (20th Century) A freethinker in Syracuse, New York, Zeppetello has described in “A Son’s Gift: Dying With Dignity” (Free Inquiry, Summer 1999) how his aging and ill father escaped an undignified death of “assisted living” with its diapers, pills, pablum, and sad loss of self, choosing euthanasia instead.
Zerffi, George Gustavus (1821–1892) Zerffi wrote The Origin and the Abstract and Concrete Nature of the Devil (1874). His Spontaneous Dissolution of Ancient Creeds (1876) is agnostic and strongly worded. {GS; RAT}
Zerritsch, Veronika (1741–1754) Zerritsch, a girl of only thirteen, was executed for witchcraft in Bavaria. When Joe Vikin read about this while researching the Inquisition, he was moved to tears and wrote the following in her memory:
You had not begun to live yet; your womanhood was still to blossom, your bosom was at a budding stage, your monthly flow had not begun to stain your legs.
Your sexual needs had not awakened when your life was cut short after they kindled dry wood under your feet.
Your execution ordained by clerics who feared women, hated beauty, envied youth, mistrusted laughter:
Those men were made eunuchs by their beliefs, destroyers of what they could not possess.
Veronika, your memory will live, while decent humanity will curse the men who caused your death.
Zerwick, James (20th Century) Zerwick, from Wisconsin, is on the board of directors of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Zetkin, Klara (1857–1933) A German Communist leader and feminist, Zetkin was a founder and theoretician of the Socialist woman’s movement. She established the party’s paper for women, Gleichheit, editing it until 1916. In 1919 she was a chief founder of the German Communist party and from 1920 to 1932 was a Communist member of the Reichstag. Her Reminiscences of Lenin was translated into English in 1929. An atheist, Zetkin is not known to have written extensively about religion. {CE}
Zeuch, William E. (20th Century) Dr. Zeuch has contributed articles to The American Rationalist. In the 1950s he was an editorial associate for Humanist World Digest, A Quarterly of Liberal Religion.
ZEUS: See entry for God. Zeus, unlike the Judeo-Christian God, enjoyed wine, women, men, and song. A wag has suggested that Hispanic fathers, instead of naming their sons Jesús, could name their children Zeus, then be heard to beckon, “Hey, Zeus!”
Zeyed, Marvin (20th Century)
Zeyed, a distinguished Arab philosopher, is Chairperson of the International Society for Islamic Secularization (ISIS, PO Box 229, Buffalo, NY 14215).
Ziegler, Heinrich Ernst (Born 1858) A German embryologist, Ziegler was a professor at Freiburg and Jena. He edited the Zoologisches Wörterbuch (1907–1908). Also, he wrote Lehrbuch der vergleichenden Entwickelungsgeschichte der niederen Wirbelthiere (1902), and Die Vererbungslehre in der Biologie (1905). Ziegler was one of the founders of the German Monist Association. {RAT}
Ziegler, Theobald (Born 1846) A German educationist, Ziegler taught in the Schönthal Theological Seminary for a time, then quit the clerical world and became a professor of pedagogy at Strasbourg University. In 1899–1900 he became Rector of that university. His rationalism finds expression in his David Friedrich Strauss (2 volumes, 1908). {RAT}
Ziehen, Georg Theodor (Born 1862) Ziehen was a German pathologist, an authority on the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the nervous system. He edited Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinne. His technical works show him to be a materialist. {RAT}
Zijde, Karel van der (Born 1838) Zijde was a Dutch writer, a teacher at Rotterdam who under the pen name of M. F. ten Gergen wrote The Devil’s Burial (1874). {BDF}
Zimmerman, Brett (20th Century) Zimmerman is an instructor of English and Humanities at York University in Toronto. He has published Herman Melville: Stargazer (1998) and articles in magazines and scholarly Canadian, American, and British journals. {Humanist in Canada, Winter 1999-2000}
Zimmerman, Marvin (20th Century) A professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Zimmerman is author of Contemporary Problems of Democracy (1972). He signed both the Humanist Manifesto II and the Secular Humanist Declaration. He has been chairman of the New York City chapter of the American Humanist Association. {HM2; PK; SHD}
Zimmern, Helen (1846–1895) Although born in Hamburg, Germany, Zimmern became a naturalized English citizen. She wrote lives of Schopenhauer and Lessing as well as a paraphrase of Firdusi’s Shah Nahmeh. {BDF; JM; RAT; RE}
Zindler, Frank (20th Century) Zindler, an atheist leader in Columbus, Ohio, has been a professor of biology and geology. A debate he had with John P. Koster is published under the title of Does God Exist?: A Debate (1990). Zindler, an ex-Lutheran minister and a supporter of Internet Infidels, hosts a Channel 21 American Atheist TV Forum in Columbis, Ohio. (See entry for Ohio Atheists, Humanists.) {FD}
ZIONISM • . . . the only good Zioinist is a dead Zionist . . . . we must take a lesson from Hitler. —Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture, 1941-1998), former Black Panther and coiner of “black power”
Zionism is the “movement for the return of the Jews to the Promised Land, i.e., Palestine,” according to Louis Lipsky, who once was an editor of The New Palestine and Vice President of the Zionist Organization of America. The dispersion of the Jews was considered only a temporary incident, Israel being punished “for its sins.” But Jews believed a time would come when God would forgive them and bring them back to the Promised Land, at which time the Messiah would, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “gather the children of Israel around him and march to Jerusalem; and then after overcoming the hostile powers establish the Temple and set up his own dominion.” Theodor Herzl in 1907 convened the first World Zionist Congress. Under Chaim Weizmann, the movement was helped by the 1917 Balfour Declaration that promised Jews a national homeland in Palestine. After World War II, Zionism divided between followers of individuals such opponents as David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. When the state of Israel was created in 1948, the World Zionist Congress was separated from the Israeli government. Zionists today assist immigration to Israel and encourage cultural and educational activities in Israel as well as elsewhere. A historian of American Judaism, Murray Polner, has described the American Council for Judaism as being opposed to Zionism. Set up in 1942, it acted to combat the founding of a Jewish state in what was then Palestine. “The Council comprised wealthy, acculturated, Reform German Jews,” Polner declared. Its organization of 14,000 members was accused of being “indifferent if not hostile to Jews who had lived through the Holocaust and had nowhere to go.” Rabbi Elmer Berger, the Council’s executive vice president from 1943 to 1967, was noted for being a foe of Zionism as well as of Israel. {CE; ER}
ZIPPERS “Peeling your girlfriend (or your boyfriend) is the work of a moment.” That description by Alison Lurie, author of The Language of Clothes, identifies the clothes fastener invented by Whitcomb L. Judson in 1893, perfected by Gideon Sundback in 1917, and named by B. F. Goodrich Company, which put zippers on galoshes in the 1920s. “When you’re talking about zippers, you’re already talking about sex.” Not only are these under-appreciated humanistic devices efficient but also they make taking clothes on, or off, pragmatically speedy.
Zoethout, C. M. (20th Century) In 1995, Zoehout, a Dutch humanist, spoke in Delphi, Greece, at the first International Multidisciplinary Conference on Human Behaviour and the Meaning of Modern Humanism.
Zola, Émile Édouard Charles Antoine (1840–1902) Zola is the leading exemplar of literary naturalism, which utilized the methods of science to depict life as it really is. Many objected to the sordid details of his work, but his response was that he wished to present humans as they exist, not as the romanticists wish they would exist. Alcoholism, disease, and degeneracy are shown in Les Rougon-Macquart (1871–1893). Lower-class life is shown in L’Assommoir (The Dram-Shop) (1877), Nana (1880), and Germinal (1885), the latter a “proletarian” novel of life in a coal-mining area. In 1886, he was quoted as saying, “We have stopped believing in God, but not in our own immortality.” A noted anti-Catholic, Zola was added to the Vatican’s index of prohibited reading from 1894, for he was on record as believing that civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest. When the clericals accused him of simply making money out of “immoral books,” according to McCabe Zola retorted by exposing the hypocrisy of the Church in a trio of novels on Lourdes, Rome, and ecclesiastical Paris. Because of his part in the Dreyfus Affair, writing an article, “J’accuse” (1898) in L’Aurore, he fled to England until an amnesty was arranged for his return to France. His publisher was imprisoned in 1888. Inasmuch as Zola had previously been thought to live only for his art, his surprising championing of the Dreyfus Affair, Henry James wrote, was “the act of a man with arrears of personal history to make up . . . treating itself at last to a luxury of experience.” Zola, after the massacre of the Commune during which the regular army gunned down an estimated twenty thousand men and women in the streets of Paris, served as a nonpartisan journalist. In 1892, however, in the closing chapters of La Débâcle, he described the streets of unburied corpses and portrayed a fictitious Communard dying in the arms of a former comrade against the background of a Paris consumed in flames. Zola was an honorary associate of the British Rationalist Press Association, and their initial appeals for £1,000 carried his signature. Although a candidate twenty-four times, he never made the French Academy, which considered him a writer of pornography. Inhaling fumes from a blocked fireplace chimney which had a defective flue, he was asphyxiated by carbon monoxide fumes in his sleep and died in 1902. This was four years before Dreyfus was rehabilitated. Zola’s remains were removed in 1908 to the Panthéon. On the centennial in 1998 of the publication of his J’accuse, France’s Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and others went to the Panthéon and saluted Zola’s having come to the defense of the Jewish captain in the French Army who had unjustly been convicted of treason in 1894. “Truth is on the march, and nothing can stop it,” Zola had written in his manifesto. “History proved him right,” Mr. Jospin said at the ceremony. (See a biography, Zola, A Life, by Frederick Brown [1995].) {BDF; CE; CL; ILP; JM; RAT; TRI; TYD}
ZOMBI OR ZOMBIE In the Bantu language of Mbundu or Kimbundu, a zombi is a ghost, a departed spirit. Caribbean French and English Creole vocabularies describe a zombi as being related to a snake god. In voodoo, a zombi has a supernatural power or spell that can enter into and bring a corpse back to life. In West Africa, Haiti, and the southern United States a zombi is avoided at all costs. With the advent of large numbers of drug addicts, individuals who are so addicted appear to be walking corpses, “living dead.” In spiritualists’ descriptions, zombies are therefore “without soul.” Physicians, however, sometimes trace the zombie-like condition to puffer fish, which have a toxin used to make the prized but dangerous Japanese dish fugu. Such a toxin makes a person go into a death-like trance—to revive the person, a potion is administered that has been made from the seeds of a hallucinogenic plant known as the zombie cucumber. {The Economist, 31 October 1998}
Zoroaster (c. 628–c. 551 B.C.E.) Zoroaster, ancient Persian religious teacher and prophet, is derived from the Greek form of Zarathustra (or Zarathustra), his Persian name. Ancient Persia’s Avesta or the Zend Avesta describes Zoroaster’s monotheistic god, Ahura Mazdah (also Ormadzd, or Ormuzd, supreme knowledge). In his time, Zoroaster taught that Mazdah headed the good spirits. He was assisted by six deities, the Amesha Spentas, who were as follows: Vohu Manah (good thought); Asha Vahista (highest righteousness); Khshathra Vairya (divine kingdom); Spenta Amaiti (pious devotion); Haurvatat (salvation); and Ameretat (immortality). The six eventually became archangelic. Their opposite was Ahriman, who led the evil spirits known as daevas, or divs. Zoroastrianism describes the war between these two supernatural forces. Upon an individual’s death, he crosses the Chinvato Peretav (bridge of the separator), which spans a kind of Hell. If the bridge narrows, he has been adjudged a reprobate and falls to perdition; if, however, the bridge widens, he enters the realm of light. Saoshyant, the savior, will one day appear, the dead will rise to be rewarded or punished, and the good will reign eternally—this concept has proven so popular that much of it has been “borrowed” by other religions. Until the 6th Century B.C.E., Mithra (called Mitra in India) was a minor Zoroastrian figure, but by the 5th Century .B.C.E. Mithra was the principal Persian deity, the good of light and wisdom and associated with the sun. In the 2nd Century of the Christian Era, Mithraism was popular with the Roman legions, inasmuch as he was an ideal fighter and comrade. Zoroastrianism’s main aspect was that of describing the struggle between good and bad forces. The Good God was not omnipotent, so if the ideal world was to be won it would be necessary that all creatures help. Devotees were given hope of blessed immortality, and rituals such as the sacred banquet and baptism eventually were adopted by other religions. By the 3rd Century of the Christian Era, it was superseded mainly by Christianity which by this time, remarkably, had similar theological ideas. (See Ninian Smart’s entry on Zoroaster in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 8. For an estimate of the number of Zoroastrians worldwide, see the entry for Hell.) {CE; ER}
Zorrilla, Manuel Ruiz (Born 1834) A Spanish statesman, Zorrilla was prosecuted for having written a brochure against the neo-Catholics. In 1870 he became President of the Cortes but later was exiled for his Republicanism. {BDF; RAT; RE}
ZUCCHETTO When a strong wind reportedly “blew away the Pope’s zucchetto” in 1999 while he was in Slovenia, some freethinkers mistakenly assumed a variety of squash had flown off his head. Zucca, a gourd, is related to the Late Latin cucatia. A zucchetto, however, is a Catholic skullcap worn by clerics. Depending upon its color, the zucchetto signifies the wearer’s rank. Jesus, who did not wear one, is theistically unrankable.
Zucker, Frances Hancock (Died 1999) Zucker was a member of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, which in 1998 gave her its “Sweetheart of the Year” Award. This was in recognition of the work she had completed in placing freethought books on library shelves and for gathering grant information.
Zucker, Louis C. (20th Century) A professor of English at the University of Utah in the 1950s, Zucker was a naturalistic humanist.
Zucker, Sydney A. (20th Century) Zucker was an editor of Progressive World.
Zueblin, Charles (Born 1866)
In 1891 Zueblin founded the North Western University Settlement, and in the following year he was appointed secretary of the Chicago Society for University Extension. He taught sociology at Chicago University and edited the Twentieth Century Magazine (1911–1912). His rationalism is given in his Religion of a Democrat (1908). {RAT}
Zúñiga, Hernán (20th Century) Zúñiga in 1994 won second prize in Ecuador for what appears to be a shrine to the Virgin Mary but, upon closer inspection, is of Lorena Bobbitt holding the dismembered penis of her husband, a scene which titillated large numbers of feminists and others in the 1990s. Church officials were both startled and angered by his artistic creation. (See entry for Virgin Mary Shrines.)
Zuppetta, Luigi (Born 1810) Zuppetta was an Italian patriot and jurist. After studying at Naples, he took part in the democratic movement of 1848, was exiled, and returned in 1860 to become professor of penal law at the University of Pavia. {BDF; RAT}
Zweig, Stefan (1881–1942) Zweig was an Austrian biographer, poet, and novelist. He wrote biographies of Marie Antoinette, ´rasmus, Mary Queen of Scots, Magellan, Balzac, and ◊erlaine. His autobiography, published posthumously in 1943, was entitled The World of Yesterday. Under National Socialism Zweig went into exile in England. In 1941 he and his second wife went to Brazil, where they committed suicide.
Zwicker, Barry (20th Century) A Canadian journalist, formerly with the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and Detroit News, Zwicker is Vision TV’s regular media critic. A humanist, he has written for Humanist in Canada (Winter 1998-1999).
Zwicker, Daniel (1612–1678) In 1653, the States of Holland forbade the publication of all Unitarian books and all Socinian worship. But when the Unitarian physician Zwicker, according to Robertson, “found his own country (Danzig) too hot to hold him, hold him, he came to Holland ‘for security and convenience.’ He was able to publish at Amsterdam in 1658 his Latin Irenicum Irenicorum, where he lays down three principles for the settlement of Christian difficulties, the first being ‘‘he universal reason of mankind,’ while Scripture and tradition hold only the second and third places. His book is a remarkable investigation of the rise of the doctrines of the Logos and the Trinity, which he traced to polytheism, making out that the first Christians, whom he identified with the Nazarenes, regarded Jesus as a man.” Surprisingly, Zwicker escaped serious persecution and died peacefully in Amsterdam. {JMR; JMRH}
Zwinge, Randall: See entry for James Randi.
Zyp Zyp is an as-yet-unborn-deity. S(h)e will be the husband as well as the wife of Aag. The two are scheduled to be metaphysically worshiped commencing at 00:01, 1 January 2001, after their creation by immaculate abiogenesis. In keeping with 1990s political correctness, each will have male as well as female sexual organs—like yin and yang, each will complement, not predominate, the other. Around 1845, Baron Karl von Reichenbach discovered a new force which he named Od. That force, he explained, is only apparent to sensitive humans, whom he called sensitives. Od, a coinage to honor the Norse Odin, is behind such otherwise unexplained natural phenomena, he felt, as hypnotism, faith healing, and water dowsing. In an attempt to explicate, it should be pointed out that the baron is not categorically behind the quiddity of Aag and Zyp: he only exemplifies—in words only a learnèd Ivy League metaphysician could write—”how some individuals are easily attracted to the possibility that such a quasi-panentheistic quid pro quo will come about through a miracle-like cosmic stridulation, that as certain as aglets and octothorpes exist there in truth is something spiritual ‘out there’ which will, some day, become evident and result in all numbers of I-told-you-so’s.” Aag and Zyp are expected formally to announce at the very moment the 21st century commences that Od had been their inspiration, that Od not only exists, for real, but also was the Original Original, that all sensitives including God and all believers in supernaturalism and/or life after death are therefore, thereunto, thereabouts, and thereinafter to be referred to as “one of the Od”—analogous to the expressions “one of the Christians,” “one of the Jews,” “one of the Hindus,” et cetera. A sci-fi writer, who will insist on anonymity, is rumored already writing a script to satirize religion in general, superstition in particular, and humankind’s most ignoble century: the 20th. The film—which a Hollywood executive will turn into the greatest boxoffice hit to date and which one British philosopher will predict will bring an end to organized religions as freethinkers now know them—will be entitled “The Od Ones.” (See entries for Immaculate Abiogenesis and William Jensen.)
