A class focusing on "Significant Atheists" - including some who feared their fathers, were depressed or influenced Adolph Hitler - was pulled this week from the College of DuPage's spring course offerings because of its negative bias.

"I couldn't in good conscience allow this course to go forward," Ed Storke, associate dean for liberal arts, said Tuesday.

Storke said the college started looking at canceling the class last week. Rob Sherman of National Atheists joined the debate Monday when he objected to the course's content.

The class, listed in spring course guides and a supplemental Older Adult Institute brochure, takes a distinctly negative, disparaging view of a group of people linked by their theological opinions, Sherman said.

"What it really was about was finding fault with significant atheists," he said.

Storke said his concerns about the class went beyond potential bias.

"I'm not sure that all the information that purports to be factual is generally accepted by all scholars in the field," he said.

The class, scheduled to be taught by part-time instructor Kanan Rosenstein, would have focused on Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.

A course description calls the four, "European men recognized as modern atheism's most significant forerunners."

"They feared brilliant, powerful, domineering fathers ... rejected faith, art and beauty ... were depressed and obsessed with death, sex and fear," according to one of two descriptions of the course. The class also would explore "their influence on Adolph Hitler, Neo-Darwinism ... connection to 20th-Century genocide and ... scientific atheists such as Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre."

Rosenstein, who previously taught a COD class on Hebrew, could not be reached for comment. While his other classes were not-for-credit, this one would have carried three credits. Five people were enrolled in the class with several weeks left for registration.

Regular courses at COD go through a multiphased review process, officials said. But Older Adult Institute course descriptions only pass through the program director and then Storke, who said he saw a "much milder" description of the course on atheists.

The lighter version, which was apparently a later draft, among other things said the course would "explore the similar backgrounds, experiences and spiritual struggles" of the same four men, who it called agnostics and atheists, college spokesman Bill Troller said.

Still, the course was brought to Storke's attention last week before Sherman's call, he said. He decided to consult with "scholars in the field" before making a decision because the college prizes the academic freedom it extends to instructors in developing content. It was after that review, Storke said, that he made his decision.

Sherman said he learned of the class through an online discussion group for atheists, then contacted the Glen Ellyn-based school Monday to request the course be dropped from the schedule.

"My concern is using public tax money to offer a course that condemns a group of people by reference to their theological opinions," Sherman said.