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)
