author
Jacob Hartmann
A late-19th-century physician and freethinking writer, remembered for using science and sharp argument to challenge traditional religious belief. His best-known book, The Creation of God (1893), takes on big questions about scripture, superstition, and how people make meaning.
1 Audiobook
The Creation of God
by Jacob Hartmann
About the author
Jacob Hartmann was a doctor as well as a writer, and the title page of The Creation of God identifies him as M.D., with medical training in St. Louis and Toronto. That background helps explain the tone of his work: he approaches religion less as inherited truth and more as something to be examined, tested, and argued over.
Published in 1893 by the Truth Seeker Company in New York, The Creation of God is the work most clearly tied to his name in surviving public records. The book belongs to a tradition of freethought writing that pushed back against miracles, dogma, and literal readings of scripture, using reason and contemporary science as its main tools.
Very little easy-to-confirm biographical detail about Hartmann seems to survive online beyond his authorship and professional credentials. Even so, his writing leaves a strong impression: direct, skeptical, and eager to replace fear and superstition with inquiry.