Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of
belief
A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take ...
in the existence of
deities.
Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist.
In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no deities.
Atheism is contrasted with
theism
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with '' deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred ...
,
which in its most general form is the belief that
at least one deity exists.
The
first individuals to identify themselves as atheists lived in the 18th century during the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
.
The
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
, noted for its "unprecedented atheism", witnessed the first significant political movement in history to advocate for the supremacy of human
reason
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...
.
[Extract of page 22]
In 1967, Albania declared itself the first
official atheist country according to its policy of
state Marxism.
Arguments for atheism range from philosophical to social and historical approaches. Rationales for not believing in deities include the lack of
evidence,
the
problem of evil
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encycl ...
, the
argument from inconsistent revelations
Religious pluralism is an attitude or policy regarding the diversity of religious belief systems co-existing in society. It can indicate one or more of the following:
* Recognizing and tolerating the religious diversity of a society or countr ...
, the rejection of concepts that cannot
be falsified, and the
argument from nonbelief
An argument from nonbelief is a philosophical argument that asserts an inconsistency between the existence of God and a world in which people fail to recognize him. It is similar to the classic argument from evil in affirming an inconsistenc ...
.
Nonbelievers contend that atheism is a more
parsimonious
Occam's razor, Ockham's razor, or Ocham's razor ( la, novacula Occami), also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony ( la, lex parsimoniae), is the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied beyond neces ...
position than theism and that everyone is born without beliefs in deities;
therefore, they argue that the
burden of proof lies not on the atheist to disprove the existence of gods but on the theist to provide a rationale for theism. Although some atheists have adopted
secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
philosophies (e.g.
secular humanism),
there is no ideology or code of conduct to which all atheists adhere.
Since conceptions of atheism vary, accurate estimations of current
numbers of atheists are difficult. Scholars have indicated that
global atheism may be in decline due to irreligious countries having the lowest birth rates in the world and religious countries having higher birth rates in general.
Definitions and types
![AtheismImplicitExplicit3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/AtheismImplicitExplicit3.svg)
Writers disagree on how best to define and classify ''atheism'',
contesting what supernatural entities are considered gods, whether atheism is a philosophical position in its own right or merely the absence of one, and whether it requires a conscious, explicit rejection. However the norm is to define atheism in terms of an explicit stance against theism.
Atheism has been regarded as compatible with
agnosticism,
but has also been contrasted with it.
Range
Some of the ambiguity and controversy involved in defining ''atheism'' arises from difficulty in reaching a consensus for the definitions of words like ''deity'' and ''god''. The variety of wildly different
conceptions of God and deities lead to differing ideas regarding atheism's applicability. The ancient Romans accused Christians of being atheists for not worshiping the
pagan deities. Gradually, this view fell into disfavor as ''theism'' came to be understood as encompassing belief in any divinity.
With respect to the range of phenomena being rejected, atheism may counter anything from the existence of a deity, to the existence of any
spiritual,
supernatural, or
transcendental concepts, such as those of
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...
,
Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
,
Jainism
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle bein ...
, and
Taoism
Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Ta ...
.
Implicit vs. explicit
Definitions of atheism also vary in the degree of consideration a person must put to the idea of gods to be considered an atheist. Atheism is commonly defined as the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas. As far back as 1772,
Baron d'Holbach said that "All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God."
Similarly,
George H. Smith
George Hamilton Smith (February 10, 1949 – April 8, 2022) was an American author, editor, educator, and speaker, known for his writings on atheism and libertarianism.
Biography
Smith grew up mostly in Tucson, Arizona, and attended the Unive ...
suggested that: "The man who is unacquainted with theism is an atheist because he does not believe in a god. This category would also include the child with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved, but who is still unaware of those issues. The fact that this child does not believe in god qualifies him as an atheist." ''Implicit atheism'' is "the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it" and ''explicit atheism'' is the conscious rejection of belief.
For the purposes of his paper on "philosophical atheism",
Ernest Nagel
Ernest Nagel (November 16, 1901 – September 20, 1985) was an American philosopher of science. Suppes, Patrick (1999)Biographical memoir of Ernest Nagel In '' American National Biograph''y (Vol. 16, pp. 216-218). New York: Oxford University Pr ...
contested including the mere absence of theistic belief as a type of atheism.
[
]
reprinted in ''Critiques of God'', edited by Peter A. Angeles, Prometheus Books, 1997. Graham Oppy
Graham Robert Oppy (born 1960) is an Australian philosopher whose main area of research is the philosophy of religion. He currently holds the posts of Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Research at Monash University and serves as CE ...
classifies as ''innocents'' those who never considered the question because they lack any understanding of what a god is. According to Oppy, these could be
one-month-old babies, humans with severe traumatic
brain injuries, or patients with
advanced dementia.
Positive vs. negative
Philosophers such as
Antony Flew
Antony Garrard Newton Flew (; 11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010) was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, Flew worked on the philosophy of religion. During the course of his career he taught a ...
[: "In this interpretation, an atheist becomes: not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God; but someone who is simply not a theist. Let us, for future-ready reference, introduce the labels 'positive atheist' for the former and 'negative atheist' for the latter."] and
Michael Martin have contrasted positive (strong/hard) atheism with negative (weak/soft) atheism. Positive atheism is the explicit affirmation that gods do not exist. Negative atheism includes all other forms of non-theism. According to this categorization, anyone who is not a theist is either a negative or a positive atheist.
The terms ''weak'' and ''strong'' are relatively recent, while the terms ''negative'' and ''positive'' atheism are of older origin, having been used (in slightly different ways) in the philosophical literature
and in Catholic apologetics.
While Martin, for example, asserts that agnosticism
entails negative atheism,
many agnostics see their view as distinct from atheism,
which they may consider no more justified than theism or requiring an equal conviction.
The assertion of unattainability of knowledge for or against the existence of gods is sometimes seen as an indication that atheism requires a
leap of faith
A leap of faith, in its most commonly used meaning, is the act of believing in or accepting something outside the boundaries of reason.
Overview
The phrase is commonly attributed to Søren Kierkegaard; however, he never used the term, as he ...
.
Common atheist responses to this argument include that unproven ''
religious
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
'' propositions deserve as much disbelief as all ''other'' unproven propositions,
and that the unprovability of a god's existence does not imply an equal probability of either possibility.
Australian philosopher
J.J.C. Smart even argues that "sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalized
philosophical skepticism
Philosophical skepticism ( UK spelling: scepticism; from Greek σκέψις ''skepsis'', "inquiry") is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. It differs from other forms of skepticism in that it even reject ...
which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever, except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic."
Consequently, some atheist authors, such as
Richard Dawkins, prefer distinguishing theist, agnostic, and atheist positions along a
spectrum of theistic probability
Popularized by Richard Dawkins in ''The God Delusion,'' the spectrum of theistic probability is a way of categorizing one's belief regarding the probability of the existence of a deity.
Atheism, theism, and agnosticism
J. J. C. Smart argues ...
—the likelihood that each assigns to the statement "God exists".
Definition as impossible or impermanent
Before the 18th century, the existence of God was so accepted in the Western world that even the possibility of true atheism was questioned. This is called ''theistic
innatism''—the notion that all people believe in God from birth; within this view was the connotation that atheists are in denial. There is also a position claiming that atheists are quick to believe in God in times of crisis, that atheists make
deathbed conversion
A deathbed conversion is the adoption of a particular religious faith shortly before dying. Making a conversion on one's deathbed may reflect an immediate change of belief, a desire to formalize longer-term beliefs, or a desire to complete a ...
s, or that "
there are no atheists in foxholes
"There are no atheists in foxholes" is an aphorism used to suggest that times of extreme stress or fear can prompt belief in a higher power. In the context of actual warfare, such a sudden change in belief has been called a foxhole conversion. ...
". There have, however, been examples to the contrary, among them examples of literal "atheists in foxholes". Some atheists have challenged the need for the term "atheism". In his book ''
Letter to a Christian Nation
''Letter to a Christian Nation'' is a 2006 book by Sam Harris, written in response to feedback he received following the publication of his first book '' The End of Faith''. The book is written in the form of an open letter to a Christian in the ...
'',
Sam Harris
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics ...
wrote:
In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non- astrologer" or a "non- alchemist". We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.
Etymology
![Ephesians 2,12 - Greek atheos](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Ephesians_2%2C12_-_Greek_atheos.jpg)
In early
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
, the adjective (, from the
privative ἀ- + "god") meant "godless". It was first used as a term of censure roughly meaning "ungodly" or "impious". In the 5th century BCE, the word began to indicate more deliberate and active godlessness in the sense of "severing relations with the gods" or "denying the gods". The term () then came to be applied against those who impiously denied or disrespected the local gods, even if they believed in other gods. Modern translations of classical texts sometimes render as "atheistic". As an abstract noun, there was also (), "atheism".
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
transliterated the Greek word into the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
. The term found frequent use in the debate between
early Christians and
Hellenists
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 3 ...
, with each side attributing it, in the pejorative sense, to the other.
The term ''atheist'' (from the French ), in the sense of "one who ... denies the existence of God or gods", predates ''atheism'' in English, being first found as early as 1566, and again in 1571. ''Atheist'' as a label of practical godlessness was used at least as early as 1577.
The term ''atheism'' was derived from the
French ,
and appears in English about 1587.
[Rendered as ''Athisme'': ] An earlier work, from about 1534, used the term ''atheonism''.
Related words emerged later: ''deist'' in 1621,
''theist'' in 1662, ''
deism'' in 1675,
and ''
theism
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with '' deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred ...
'' in 1678.
''Deism'' and ''theism'' changed meanings slightly around 1700 due to the influence of ''atheism''; ''deism'' was originally used as a synonym for today's ''theism'' but came to denote a separate philosophical doctrine.
Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong (born 14 November 1944) is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and ...
writes that "During the 16th and 17th centuries, the word 'atheist' was still reserved exclusively for
polemic
Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topic ...
... The term 'atheist' was an insult. Nobody would have dreamed of calling an atheist."
''Atheism'' was first used to describe a self-avowed belief in late 18th-century Europe, specifically denoting disbelief in the
monotheistic Abrahamic god
The concept of God in Abrahamic religions is centred on monotheism. The three major monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, alongside the Baháʼí Faith, Samaritanism, Druze, and Rastafari, are all regarded as Abrahamic reli ...
.
In the 20th century,
globalization
Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...
contributed to the expansion of the term to refer to disbelief in all deities, though it remains common in Western society to describe atheism as "disbelief in God".
Arguments
Epistemological arguments
Skepticism
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...
, based on the ideas of
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...
, asserts that certainty about anything is impossible, so one can never know for sure whether or not a god exists. Hume, however, held that such unobservable metaphysical concepts should be rejected as "sophistry and illusion".
The allocation of agnosticism to atheism is disputed; it can also be regarded as an independent, basic worldview.
[.]
There are three main conditions of epistemology: truth, belief and justification.
Michael Martin argues that atheism is a justified and rational true belief, but offers no extended epistemological justification because current theories are in a state of controversy. Martin instead argues for "mid-level principles of justification that are in accord with our ordinary and scientific rational practice."
Other arguments for atheism that can be classified as epistemological or
ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...
, including
ignosticism
Ignosticism or igtheism is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition.
Terminology
The term ''ignosticism'' was coined in 1964 by Sherwin Wine, a rabbi and ...
, assert the meaninglessness or unintelligibility of basic terms such as "God" and statements such as "God is all-powerful."
Theological noncognitivism
Theological noncognitivism is the non-theist position that religious language, particularly theological terminology such as "God", is not intelligible or meaningful, and thus sentences like "God exists" are cognitively meaningless. It may be c ...
holds that the statement "God exists" does not express a proposition, but is nonsensical or cognitively meaningless. It has been argued both ways as to whether such individuals can be classified into some form of atheism or agnosticism. Philosophers
A. J. Ayer
Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books '' Language, Truth, and Logic'' (1936) ...
and
Theodore M. Drange
Theodore "Ted" Michael Drange (born 1934) is a philosopher of religion and Professor Emeritus at West Virginia University, where he taught philosophy from 1966 to 2001.
Life
After graduating from Fort Hamilton High School, he received a B.A. ...
reject both categories, stating that both camps accept "God exists" as a proposition; they instead place noncognitivism in its own category.
Metaphysical arguments
Philosopher,
Zofia Zdybicka writes:
![Epikouros BM 1843](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Epikouros_BM_1843.jpg)
Most atheists lean toward metaphysical monism: the belief that there is only one kind of ultimate substance. Historically, metaphysical monism took the form of philosophical
materialism, the view that matter formed the basis of all reality; this naturally omitted the possibility of a non-material divine being.
Describing the world as "basically matter" in the twenty-first century would be contrary to modern physics, so it is generally seen as an older term that is sometimes mistakenly used interchangeably with
physicalism. Physicalism can incorporate the non-matter based physical phenomena, such as light and energy, into its view that only physical entities with physical powers exist, and that science defines and explains what those are.
Physicalism is a monistic ontology: one ultimate substance exists, and it exists as a physical reality.
Physicalism opposes dualism (the view that there's physical substance and separate mental activities): there is no such thing as a soul, or any other abstract object (such as a mind or a self) that exists independently of physicality. It also opposes neutral monism, which holds to one kind of substance for the universe but makes no claim about its nature, holding to the view that the physical and the mental are both just differing kinds of the same fundamental substance that is in itself neither mental nor physical.
Physicalism also opposes
idealism
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected t ...
(the view that everything known is based on human mental perception).
Naturalism is also used by atheists to describe the metaphysical view that everything that exists is fundamentally natural, and that there are no supernatural phenomena.
Naturalism focuses on how science can explain the world fully with physical laws and through natural phenomena. It's about the idea that the universe is a closed system. Naturalism can be interpreted to allow for a dualist ontology of the mental and physical.
Philosopher
Graham Oppy
Graham Robert Oppy (born 1960) is an Australian philosopher whose main area of research is the philosophy of religion. He currently holds the posts of Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Research at Monash University and serves as CE ...
references a PhilPapers survey that says 56.5% of philosophers in academics lean toward physicalism; 49.8% lean toward naturalism.
According to Graham Oppy, direct arguments for atheism aim at showing theism fails on its own terms, while indirect arguments are those inferred from direct arguments in favor of something else that is inconsistent with theism. For example, Oppy says arguing for naturalism is an argument for atheism since naturalism and theism "cannot both be true".
Fiona Ellis says that while Oppy's view is common, it is dependent on a narrow view of naturalism. She describes the "expansive naturalism" of
John McDowell
John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ...
,
James Griffin and
David Wiggins
David Wiggins (born 1933) is an English moral philosopher, metaphysician, and philosophical logician working especially on identity and issues in meta-ethics.
Biography
David Wiggins was born on 8 March 1933 in London, the son of Norman ...
as giving "due respect to scientific findings" while also asserting there are things in human experience which cannot be explained in such terms, such as the concept of value, leaving room for theism.
Christopher C. Knight asserts a
theistic naturalism that relies on what he terms an "incarnational naturalism" (the doctrine of
immanence
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, panth ...
) and does not require any special mode of divine action that would put it outside nature.
Nevertheless, Oppy argues that a strong naturalism favors atheism, though he finds the best direct arguments against theism to be the evidential problem of evil, and arguments concerning the contradictory nature of God were He to exist.
Logical arguments
![Seshin_Vasubandhu_Kofukuji](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Seshin_Vasubandhu_Kofukuji.jpg)
Some atheists hold the view that the various
conceptions of gods, such as the
personal god
A personal god, or personal goddess, is a deity who can be related to as a person, instead of as an impersonal force, such as the Absolute, "the All", or the "Ground of Being".
In the scriptures of the Abrahamic religions, God is described as b ...
of Christianity, are ascribed logically inconsistent qualities. Such atheists present
deductive arguments against the existence of God, which assert the incompatibility between certain traits, such as perfection, creator-status,
immutability
In object-oriented and functional programming, an immutable object (unchangeable object) is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created.Goetz et al. ''Java Concurrency in Practice''. Addison Wesley Professional, 2006, Section 3.4 ...
,
omniscience
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In Buddhism, there are diffe ...
,
omnipresence,
omnipotence
Omnipotence is the quality of having unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as one ...
,
omnibenevolence
Omnibenevolence (from Latin ''omni-'' meaning "all", ''bene-'' meaning "good" and ''volens'' meaning "willing") is defined by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as "unlimited or infinite benevolence". Some philosophers have argued that it is impos ...
,
transcendence, personhood (a personal being), non-physicality,
justice
Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...
, and
mercy
Mercy (Middle English, from Anglo-French ''merci'', from Medieval Latin ''merced-'', ''merces'', from Latin, "price paid, wages", from ''merc-'', ''merxi'' "merchandise") is benevolence, forgiveness, and kindness in a variety of ethical, relig ...
.
Theodicean atheists believe that the world as they experience it cannot be reconciled with the qualities commonly ascribed to God and gods by theologians. They argue that an
omniscient
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In Buddhism, there are diffe ...
,
omnipotent
Omnipotence is the quality of having unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as one ...
, and
omnibenevolent
Omnibenevolence (from Latin ''omni-'' meaning "all", ''bene-'' meaning "good" and ''volens'' meaning "willing") is defined by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as "unlimited or infinite benevolence". Some philosophers have argued that it is impos ...
God is not compatible with a world where there is
evil
Evil, in a general sense, is defined as the opposite or absence of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, although in everyday usage it is often more narrowly used to talk about profound wickedness and against common good. It is general ...
and
suffering, and where divine love is
hidden from many people.
A similar argument is attributed to
Siddhartha Gautama
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in Lu ...
, the founder of
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...
. The medieval
Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu
Vasubandhu (; Tibetan: དབྱིག་གཉེན་ ; fl. 4th to 5th century CE) was an influential Buddhist monk and scholar from ''Puruṣapura'' in ancient India, modern day Peshawar, Pakistan. He was a philosopher who wrote commentary ...
(4/5th century) who outlined
numerous Buddhist arguments against God, wrote in his ''Sheath of
Abhidharma
The Abhidharma are ancient (third century BCE and later) Buddhist texts which contain detailed scholastic presentations of doctrinal material appearing in the Buddhist ''sutras''. It also refers to the scholastic method itself as well as the f ...
(
Abhidharmakosha):''
Besides, do you say that God finds joy in seeing the creatures which he has created in the prey of all the distress of existence, including the tortures of the hells? Homage to this kind of God! The profane stanza expresses it well: "One calls him Rudra because he burns, because he is sharp, fierce, redoubtable, an eater of flesh, blood and marrow.
Reductionary accounts of religion
Philosopher
Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book '' The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced gene ...
and psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...
have argued that God and other religious beliefs are human inventions, created to fulfill various psychological and emotional wants or needs, or a projection mechanism from the 'Id' omnipotence; for
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
, in 'Materialism and Empirio-criticism', against the
Russian Machism Russian Machism (//) was a term applied to a variety political/philosophical viewpoints which emerged in Imperial Russia in the beginning of the twentieth century before the Russian Revolution. They shared an interest in the scientific and philoso ...
, the followers of
Ernst Mach, Feuerbach was the final argument against belief in a god. This is also a view of many
Buddhists.
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
and
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,["Engels"](_blank)
'' Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary s ...
, "the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, in theory, and practice." He reversed
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
's aphorism that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him, writing instead that "if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him."
Atheism, religions and spirituality
Atheism is not mutually exclusive with respect to some religious and spiritual belief systems, including
Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
,
Jainism
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle bein ...
,
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...
,
Syntheism,
Raëlism
Raëlism, also known as Raëlianism or Raelian Movement is a UFO religion founded in 1970s France by Claude Vorilhon, now known as Raël. Scholars of religion classify Raëlism as a new religious movement. The group is formalised as the Inte ...
, and
Neopagan movements
Movement may refer to:
Common uses
* Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece
* Motion, commonly referred to as movement
Arts, entertainment, and media
Literature
* "Movement" (short story), a short story by Nancy Fu ...
such as
Wicca
Wicca () is a modern Pagan religion. Scholars of religion categorise it as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and w ...
.
Āstika schools in
Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
hold atheism to be a valid path to
moksha
''Moksha'' (; sa, मोक्ष, '), also called ''vimoksha'', ''vimukti'' and ''mukti'', is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release. In its soteriologic ...
, but extremely difficult, for the atheist cannot expect any help from
the divine
Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.[divine< ...](_blank)
on their journey.
Jainism believes the universe is eternal and has no need for a creator deity, however
Tirthankaras
In Jainism, a ''Tirthankara'' ( Sanskrit: '; English: literally a 'ford-maker') is a saviour and spiritual teacher of the '' dharma'' (righteous path). The word ''tirthankara'' signifies the founder of a '' tirtha'', which is a fordable pas ...
are revered beings who can transcend space and time
and have more power than the god
Indra.
Secular Buddhism does not advocate belief in gods. Early Buddhism was atheistic as
Gautama Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in Lu ...
's path involved no mention of gods.
Later conceptions of Buddhism consider Buddha himself a god, suggest adherents can attain godhood, and revere
Bodhisattva
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva ( ; sa, 𑀩𑁄𑀥𑀺𑀲𑀢𑁆𑀢𑁆𑀯 (Brahmī), translit=bodhisattva, label=Sanskrit) or bodhisatva is a person who is on the path towards bodhi ('awakening') or Buddhahood.
In the Early Buddhist schools ...
s.
Atheism and negative theology
Apophatic theology is often assessed as being a version of atheism or agnosticism, since it cannot say truly that God exists. "The comparison is crude, however, for conventional atheism treats the existence of God as a predicate that can be denied ("God is nonexistent"), whereas negative theology denies that God has predicates". "God or the Divine is" without being able to attribute qualities about "what He is" would be the prerequisite of
positive theology in negative theology that distinguishes theism from atheism. "Negative theology is a complement to, not the enemy of, positive theology".
Atheistic philosophies
Axiological
Axiology (from Greek , ''axia'': "value, worth"; and , ''-logia'': "study of") is the philosophical study of value. It includes questions about the nature and classification of values and about what kinds of things have value. It is intimately c ...
, or constructive, atheism rejects the existence of gods in favor of a "higher absolute", such as
humanity. This form of atheism favors humanity as the absolute source of ethics and values, and permits individuals to resolve moral problems without resorting to God. Marx and Freud used this argument to convey messages of liberation, full-development, and unfettered happiness.
One of the most common
criticisms of atheism has been to the contrary: that denying the existence of a god either leads to
moral relativism and leaves one with no moral or ethical foundation,
or renders life
meaningless and miserable.
Blaise Pascal argued this view in his ''
Pensées
The ''Pensées'' ("Thoughts") is a collection of fragments written by the French 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the ''Pensées'' was in many ways h ...
''.
French philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...
identified himself as a representative of an "
atheist existentialism"
concerned less with denying the existence of God than with establishing that "man needs ... to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God."
Sartre said a corollary of his atheism was that "if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and ... this being is man."
Sartre described the practical consequence of this atheism as meaning that there are no ''a priori'' rules or absolute values that can be invoked to govern human conduct, and that humans are "condemned" to invent these for themselves, making "man" absolutely "responsible for everything he does".
Religion and morality
Joseph Baker and Buster Smith assert that one of the common themes of atheism is that most atheists "typically construe atheism as more moral than religion".
Association with world views and social behaviors
Sociologist
Phil Zuckerman
Philip Joseph Zuckerman (born June 26, 1969) is a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He specializes in the sociology of substantial secularity. He is the author of several books, including ''Livi ...
analyzed previous social science research on secularity and non-belief and concluded that societal well-being is positively correlated with irreligion. He found that there are much lower concentrations of atheism and secularity in poorer, less developed nations (particularly in Africa and South America) than in the richer industrialized democracies.
His findings relating specifically to atheism in the US were that compared to religious people in the US, "atheists and secular people" are less
nationalistic
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: T ...
,
prejudiced
Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's perc ...
,
antisemitic,
racist,
dogmatic
Dogma is a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted. It may be in the form of an official system of principles or doctrines of a religion, such as Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Islam o ...
,
ethnocentric
Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead o ...
, closed-minded, and authoritarian, and in US states with the highest percentages of atheists, the murder rate is lower than average. In the most religious states, the murder rate is higher than average.
Irreligion
![Lightmatter buddha3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Lightmatter_buddha3.jpg)
People who self-identify as atheists are often assumed to be
irreligious, but some sects within major religions reject the existence of a personal,
creator deity
A creator deity or creator god (often called the Creator) is a deity responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe in human religion and mythology. In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator. A number of monolatr ...
.
In recent years, certain religious denominations have accumulated a number of openly atheistic followers, such as
atheistic
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...
or
humanistic Judaism
and
Christian atheists. The strictest sense of positive atheism does not entail any specific beliefs outside of disbelief in any deity; as such, atheists can hold any number of spiritual beliefs. For the same reason, atheists can hold a wide variety of ethical beliefs, ranging from the
moral universalism of
humanism
Humanism is a philosophy, philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and Agency (philosophy), agency of Human, human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical in ...
, which holds that a moral code should be applied consistently to all humans, to
moral nihilism, which holds that morality is meaningless. Atheism is accepted as a valid philosophical position within some varieties of
Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
,
Jainism
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle bein ...
, and
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...
. Philosophers such as
Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton (; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British author and philosopher. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published ''Essays in Love'' (1993) ...
and
Alexander Bard
Alexander Bengt Magnus Bard (born 17 March 1961) is a Swedish musician, author, lecturer, artist, songwriter, music producer, TV personality, religious and political activist, and one of the founders of the Syntheist religious movement alongside ...
and
Jan Söderqvist
Jan Söderqvist (born 1961) is an author, lecturer, writer and consultant, and among other things also working as a literary and film critic for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.
Söderqvist has written three books on the Internet revolut ...
, have argued that atheists should reclaim useful components of religion in secular society.
Divine command
According to Plato's
Euthyphro dilemma
The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato's dialogue ''Euthyphro'', in which Socrates asks Euthyphro, "Is the pious ( τὸ ὅσιον) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" ( 10a)
Although it ...
, the role of the gods in determining right from wrong is either unnecessary or arbitrary.
The argument that morality must be derived from God, and cannot exist without a wise creator, has been a persistent feature of political if not so much philosophical debate.
[For ]Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aest ...
, the presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was a practical concern, for "Morality, by itself, constitutes a system, but happiness does not, unless it is distributed in exact proportion to morality. This, however, is possible in an intelligible world only under a wise author and ruler. Reason compels us to admit such a ruler, together with life in such a world, which we must consider as future life, or else all moral laws are to be considered as idle dreams" (''Critique of Pure Reason'', A811).
Moral precepts such as "murder is wrong" are seen as
divine law
Divine law is any body of law that is perceived as deriving from a transcendent source, such as the will of God or godsin contrast to man-made law or to secular law. According to Angelos Chaniotis and Rudolph F. Peters, divine laws are typicall ...
s, requiring a divine lawmaker and judge. However, many atheists argue that treating morality legalistically involves a
false analogy
Argument from analogy or false analogy is a special type of inductive argument, whereby perceived similarities are used as a basis to infer some further similarity that has yet to be observed. Analogical reasoning is one of the most common method ...
, and that morality does not depend on a lawmaker in the same way that laws do.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
believed in a morality independent of theistic belief, and stated that morality based upon God "has truth only if God is truth—it stands or falls with faith in God".
There exist
normative ethical systems that do not require principles and rules to be given by a deity. Some include
virtue ethics
Virtue ethics (also aretaic ethics, from Greek ἀρετή arete_(moral_virtue).html"_;"title="'arete_(moral_virtue)">aretḗ''_is_an_approach_to_ethics_that_treats_the_concept_of_virtue.html" ;"title="arete_(moral_virtue)">aretḗ''.html" ; ...
,
social contract,
Kantian ethics
Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant that is based on the notion that: "It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be conside ...
,
utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.
Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different chara ...
, and
Objectivism
Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. She described it as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievemen ...
. Sam Harris has proposed that moral prescription (ethical rule making) is not just an issue to be explored by philosophy, but that we can meaningfully practice a
science of morality
The science of morality may refer to various forms of ethical naturalism grounding morality in rational, empirical consideration of the natural world. It is sometimes framed as using the scientific approach to determine what is right and wrong, i ...
. Any such scientific system must, nevertheless, respond to the criticism embodied in the
naturalistic fallacy
In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that any reductive explanation of good, in terms of natural properties such as ''pleasant'' or ''desirable'', is false. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in ...
.
Philosophers
Susan Neiman
and
Julian Baggini
Julian Baggini (; born 1968) is a philosopher, journalist and the author of over 20 books about philosophy written for a general audience. He is co-founder of ''The Philosophers' Magazine'' and has written for numerous international newspapers ...
(among others) assert that behaving ethically only because of a divine mandate is not true ethical behavior but merely blind obedience. Baggini argues that atheism is a superior basis for ethics, claiming that a moral basis external to religious imperatives is necessary to evaluate the morality of the imperatives themselves—to be able to discern, for example, that "thou shalt steal" is immoral even if one's religion instructs it—and that atheists, therefore, have the advantage of being more inclined to make such evaluations.
The contemporary British political philosopher
Martin Cohen has offered the more historically telling example of Biblical injunctions in favor of torture and slavery as evidence of how religious injunctions follow political and social customs, rather than vice versa, but also noted that the same tendency seems to be true of supposedly dispassionate and objective philosophers. Cohen extends this argument in more detail in ''Political Philosophy from Plato to Mao'', where he argues that the
Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...
played a role in perpetuating social codes from the early 7th century despite changes in secular society.
Criticism of religion
Some prominent atheists—most recently
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...
,
Daniel Dennett,
Sam Harris
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics ...
, and
Richard Dawkins, and following such thinkers as
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
,
Robert G. Ingersoll
Robert Green Ingersoll (; August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899), nicknamed "the Great Agnostic", was an American lawyer, writer, and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, who campaigned in defense of agnosticism.
Personal life
Robert Inge ...
,
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
, and novelist
José Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE ComSE GColCa (; 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010), was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony ith which hec ...
—have criticized religions, citing harmful aspects of religious practices and doctrines.
![Karl Marx](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Karl_Marx.jpg)
The 19th-century German political theorist and sociologist
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
called religion "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the
opium of the people
The opium of the people (or opium of the masses) (german: Opium des Volkes) is a dictum used in reference to religion, derived from a frequently paraphrased statement of German sociologist and economic theorist Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium ...
". He goes on to say, "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."
Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
said that "every religious idea and every idea of God is unutterable vileness ... of the most dangerous kind, 'contagion' of the most abominable kind. Millions of sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical contagions ... are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of God decked out in the smartest ideological costumes".
[Martin Amis(2003). ''Koba the Dread''; London: Vintage Books; ; pp. 30–31.]
Sam Harris criticizes Western religion's reliance on divine authority as lending itself to
authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voti ...
and
dogma
Dogma is a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted. It may be in the form of an official system of principles or doctrines of a religion, such as Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Isla ...
tism.
There is a correlation between
religious fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is a tendency among certain groups and individuals that is characterized by the application of a strict literal interpretation to scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, along with a strong belief in the importance of distinguishi ...
and
extrinsic religion (when religion is held because it serves ulterior interests)
and authoritarianism, dogmatism, and prejudice.
These arguments—combined with historical events that are argued to demonstrate the dangers of religion, such as the
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...
,
inquisition
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
s,
witch trials
A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. The Witch trials in the early modern period, classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and European Colon ...
, and
terrorist attacks
The following is a list of terrorist incidents that have not been carried out by a state or its forces (see state terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism). Assassinations are listed at List of assassinated people.
Definitions of terrori ...
—have been used in response to claims of beneficial effects of belief in religion.
Believers counter-argue that some
regimes that espouse atheism, such as the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
, have also been guilty of mass murder.
In response to those claims, atheists such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have stated that Stalin's atrocities were influenced not by atheism but by dogmatic
Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
, and that while Stalin and Mao happened to be atheists, they did not do their deeds in the name of atheism.
History
While the earliest-found usage of the term ''atheism'' is in 16th-century
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
,
ideas that would be recognized today as atheistic are documented from the
Vedic period
The Vedic period, or the Vedic age (), is the period in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age of the history of India when the Vedic literature, including the Vedas (ca. 1300–900 BCE), was composed in the northern Indian subcontinent, betwe ...
and the
classical antiquity
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...
.
Early Indian religions
Atheistic schools are found in early Indian thought and have existed from the times of the
historical Vedic religion
The historical Vedic religion (also known as Vedicism, Vedism or ancient Hinduism and subsequently Brahmanism (also spelled as Brahminism)), constituted the religious ideas and practices among some Indo-Aryan peoples of northwest Indian Subco ...
.
Among the six
orthodox
Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to:
Religion
* Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pa ...
schools of Hindu philosophy,
Samkhya, the oldest philosophical school of thought, does not accept God, and the early
Mimamsa also rejected the notion of God.
The thoroughly materialistic and anti-theistic philosophical
Cārvāka (or ''Lokāyata'') school that originated in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
around the 6th century BCE is probably the most explicitly atheistic school of philosophy in India, similar to the Greek
Cyrenaic school. This branch of Indian philosophy is classified as
heterodox
In religion, heterodoxy (from Ancient Greek: , "other, another, different" + , "popular belief") means "any opinions or doctrines at variance with an official or orthodox position". Under this definition, heterodoxy is similar to unorthodoxy, w ...
due to its rejection of the authority of
Vedas
upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''.
The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute th ...
and hence is not considered part of the six orthodox schools of
Indian philosophy
Indian philosophy refers to philosophical traditions of the Indian subcontinent. A traditional Hindu classification divides āstika and nāstika schools of philosophy, depending on one of three alternate criteria: whether it believes the Veda ...
. It is noteworthy as evidence of a materialistic movement in ancient India.
Chatterjee and Datta explain that our understanding of Cārvāka philosophy is fragmentary, based largely on criticism of the ideas by other schools, and that it is not a living tradition:
Other Indian philosophies generally regarded as atheistic include
Classical Samkhya and
Purva Mimamsa
The Fourteen Purva translated as ancient or prior knowledge, are a large body of Jain scriptures that was preached by all Tirthankaras (omniscient teachers) of Jainism encompassing the entire gamut of knowledge available in this universe. The pers ...
. The rejection of a personal creator "God" is also seen in
Jainism
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle bein ...
and
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...
in India.
Classical antiquity
Western atheism has its roots in
pre-Socratic
Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as early Greek philosophy, is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates. Pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology, the beginning and the substance of the universe, but the inquiries of thes ...
Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empi ...
,
but atheism in the modern sense was extremely rare in ancient Greece.
Pre-Socratic
Atomists
Atomism (from Greek , ''atomon'', i.e. "uncuttable, indivisible") is a natural philosophy proposing that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components known as atoms.
References to the concept of atomism and its atoms a ...
such as
Democritus
Democritus (; el, Δημόκριτος, ''Dēmókritos'', meaning "chosen of the people"; – ) was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from Abdera, primarily remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. No ...
attempted to explain the world in a purely
materialistic way and interpreted religion as a human reaction to natural phenomena,
but did not explicitly deny the gods' existence, and some scholarship has recognised a rational theology in his thought.
[Vassallo, C. (2018). Atomism and the Worship of Gods: On Democritus' 'Rational' Attitude towards Theology. ''Philosophie antique'', 18 105-125.] Anaxagoras, whom
Irenaeus
Irenaeus (; grc-gre, Εἰρηναῖος ''Eirēnaios''; c. 130 – c. 202 AD) was a Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the dev ...
calls "the atheist", was accused of impiety and condemned for stating that "the sun is a type of incandescent stone", an affirmation with which he tried to deny the divinity of the celestial bodies. In the late fifth century BCE, the Greek
lyric poet
Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.
It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...
Diagoras of Melos
Diagoras "the Atheist" of Melos ( el, Διαγόρας ὁ Μήλιος) was a Greek poet and sophist of the 5th century BC. Throughout antiquity, he was regarded as an atheist, but very little is known for certain about what he actually believed. ...
was sentenced to death in
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
under the charge of being a "godless person" (ἄθεος) after he made fun of the
Eleusinian Mysteries
The Eleusinian Mysteries ( el, Ἐλευσίνια Μυστήρια, Eleusínia Mystḗria) were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Elefsina in ancient Greece. They are th ...
, but he fled the city to escape punishment.
In post-classical antiquity, philosophers such as
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
and
Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus ( grc-gre, Σέξτος Ἐμπειρικός, ; ) was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher and Empiric school physician. His philosophical works are the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman Pyrrhonism, and bec ...
described Diagoras as an "atheist" who categorically denied the existence of the gods,
[''... nullos esse omnino Diagoras et Theodorus Cyrenaicus ...'' Cicero, Marcus Tullius: ''De natura deorum''. Comments and English text by Richard D. McKirahan. Thomas Library, Bryn Mawr College, 1997, p. 3. ][Sext. Emp. ''Pyr''. hyp. 3.218 cf. ''Math''. 10.50–53.] but in modern scholarship Marek Winiarczyk has defended the view that Diagoras was not an atheist in the modern sense, in a view that has proved influential.
On the other hand, the verdict has been challenged by
Tim Whitmarsh, who argues that Diagoras rejected the gods on the basis of the
problem of evil
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encycl ...
, and this argument was in turn alluded to in Euripides' fragmentary play ''
Bellerophon''.
[Whitmarsh, T. (2016). Diagoras, Bellerophon and the Siege of Olympus. ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'', 136 182-186.]
A fragment from a lost Attic drama that featured
Sisyphus
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus or Sisyphos (; Ancient Greek: Σίσυφος ''Sísyphos'') was the founder and king of Ephyra (now known as Corinth). Hades punished him for cheating death twice by forcing him to roll an immense boulder up a hill ...
, which has been attributed to both
Critias
Critias (; grc-gre, Κριτίας, ''Kritias''; c. 460 – 403 BC) was an ancient Athenian political figure and author. Born in Athens, Critias was the son of Callaeschrus and a first cousin of Plato's mother Perictione. He became a leading ...
and
Euripides
Euripides (; grc, Εὐριπίδης, Eurīpídēs, ; ) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars a ...
, claims that a clever man invented "the fear of the gods" in order to frighten people into behaving morally.
[Davies, M. (1989). Sisyphus and the Invention of Religion (Critias ''TrGF'' 1 (43) F 19 = B 25 DK). ''BICS'' 32, 16-32.]
Sceptical statements about popular religion have also been attributed to the philosopher
Prodicus
Prodicus of Ceos (; grc-gre, Πρόδικος ὁ Κεῖος, ''Pródikos ho Keios''; c. 465 BC – c. 395 BC) was a Greek philosopher, and part of the first generation of Sophists. He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos, and became known ...
:
Philodemus reports that Prodicus believed that "the gods of popular belief do not exist nor does he know them, but primitive man,
ut of admiration, deifiedthe fruits of the earth and virtually everything that contributed to his existence". More recent scholarship has reappraised the evidence in
Philodemus and concluded that
Prodicus
Prodicus of Ceos (; grc-gre, Πρόδικος ὁ Κεῖος, ''Pródikos ho Keios''; c. 465 BC – c. 395 BC) was a Greek philosopher, and part of the first generation of Sophists. He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos, and became known ...
defended his own philosophical theology against popular religious belief, rather than radical atheism.
[Vassallo, C. (2018). Persaeus on Prodicus on the Gods' Existence and Nature: Another Attempt Based on a New Reconstruction of Philodemus'Account. ''Philosophie antique'', 18 153-167.][Kouloumentas, S. (2018). Prodicus on the Rise of Civilization: Religion, Agriculture, and Culture Heroes. ''Philosophie antique'', 18 127-152.] Protagoras has sometimes been taken to be an atheist, but rather espoused agnostic views, commenting that "Concerning the gods I am unable to discover whether they exist or not, or what they are like in form; for there are many hindrances to knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life."
The Athenian public associated Socrates (–399 BCE) with the trends in pre-Socratic philosophy towards naturalistic inquiry and the rejection of divine explanations for phenomena.
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his for ...
' comic play ''
The Clouds
''The Clouds'' ( grc, Νεφέλαι ''Nephelai'') is a Greek comedy play written by the playwright Aristophanes. A lampooning of intellectual fashions in classical Athens, it was originally produced at the City Dionysia in 423BC and was not ...
'' (performed 423 BCE) portrays Socrates as teaching his students that the traditional Greek deities do not exist.
Socrates was later tried and executed under the charge of not believing in the gods of the state and instead worshipping foreign gods.
Socrates himself vehemently denied the charges of atheism at his trial
[ in ] and all the surviving sources about him indicate that he was a very devout man, who prayed to the rising sun and believed that the
oracle at Delphi
Pythia (; grc, Πυθία ) was the name of the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. She specifically served as its oracle and was known as the Oracle of Delphi. Her title was also historically glossed in English as the Pythoness ...
spoke the word of
Apollo
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label= Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label ...
.
From a survey of these 5th-century BCE philosophers,
David Sedley
David Neil Sedley FBA (born 30 May 1947) is a British philosopher and historian of philosophy. He was the seventh Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University.
Early life
Sedley was educated at Trinity College, Oxford where ...
has concluded that none of them openly defended radical atheism, but since Classical sources clearly attest to radical atheist ideas Athens probably had an "atheist underground".
[Sedley, D. (2013). The atheist underground. In Harte and M. Lane (edd.), ''Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy''. Cambridge, 329-48.]
Religious scepticism continued into the
Hellenistic period
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
, and from this period the most important Greek thinker in the development of atheism was the philosopher
Epicurus ( 300 BCE).
Drawing on the ideas of Democritus and the Atomists, he espoused a materialistic philosophy according to which the universe was governed by the laws of chance without the need for divine intervention (see
scientific determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
).
Although Epicurus still maintained that the gods existed,
he believed that they were uninterested in human affairs.
The aim of the Epicureans was to attain ''
ataraxia
''Ataraxia'' (Greek: ἀταραξία, from ("a-", negation) and ''tarachē'' "disturbance, trouble"; hence, "unperturbedness", generally translated as "imperturbability", " equanimity", or "tranquility") is a Greek term first used in Ancient ...
'' ("peace of mind") and one important way of doing this was by exposing fear of divine wrath as irrational. The Epicureans also denied the existence of an afterlife and the need to fear divine punishment after death.
A slightly later contemporary to
Epicurus,
Euhemerus ( 300 BCE) published his view that the gods were only the deified rulers, conquerors and founders of the past, and that their cults and religions were in essence the continuation of vanished kingdoms and earlier political structures. Although not strictly an atheist, Euhemerus was later criticized for having "spread atheism over the whole inhabited earth by obliterating the gods". In the 3rd-century BCE, the
Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
philosophers
Theodorus Cyrenaicus and
Strato of Lampsacus
Strato of Lampsacus (; grc-gre, Στράτων ὁ Λαμψακηνός, Strátōn ho Lampsakēnós, – ) was a Peripatetic philosopher, and the third director (scholarch) of the Lyceum after the death of Theophrastus. He devoted himself especia ...
were also reputed to deny the existence of the gods.
Sceptical ideas concerning the gods continued into the
Second Sophistic
The Second Sophistic is a literary-historical term referring to the Greek writers who flourished from the reign of Nero until c. 230 AD and who were catalogued and celebrated by Philostratus in his ''Lives of the Sophists''. However, some recent ...
. The
Pyrrhonist
Pyrrho of Elis (; grc, Πύρρων ὁ Ἠλεῖος, Pyrrhо̄n ho Ēleios; ), born in Elis, Greece, was a Greek philosopher of Classical antiquity, credited as being the first Greek skeptic philosopher and founder of Pyrrhonism.
Life
...
philosopher
Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus ( grc-gre, Σέξτος Ἐμπειρικός, ; ) was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher and Empiric school physician. His philosophical works are the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman Pyrrhonism, and bec ...
(approx. 160-210 CE) compiled a large number of ancient arguments against the existence of gods, recommending that one should
suspend judgment regarding the matter. His relatively large volume of surviving works had a lasting influence on later philosophers.
[Stein, Gordon (Ed.) (1980).]
The History of Freethought and Atheism
". ''An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism''. New York: Prometheus. Retrieved 2007-APR-03.
The meaning of "atheist" changed over the course of classical antiquity.
Early Christians were widely reviled as "atheists" because they did not believe in the existence of the Graeco-Roman deities.
During the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...
, Christians were executed for their rejection of the
Roman gods
The Roman deities most widely known today are those the Romans identified with Greek counterparts (see ''interpretatio graeca''), integrating Greek myths, iconography, and sometimes religious practices into Roman culture, including Latin lite ...
in general and the
Imperial cult of ancient Rome
The Roman imperial cult identified emperors and some members of their families with the divinely sanctioned authority ('' auctoritas'') of the Roman State. Its framework was based on Roman and Greek precedents, and was formulated during the ear ...
in particular.
[Maycock, A.L. and Ronald Knox (2003). ]
Inquisition from Its Establishment to the Great Schism: An Introductory Study
''. . There was, however, a heavy struggle between Christians and pagans, in which each group accused the other of atheism, for not practicing the religion which they considered correct.
When Christianity became the state religion of Rome under
Theodosius I
Theodosius I ( grc-gre, Θεοδόσιος ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also called Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. During his reign, he succeeded in a crucial war against the Goths, as well as in two ...
in 381,
heresy
Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...
became a punishable offense.
Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance
During the
Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...
, the
Islamic world experienced a
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the '' Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the G ...
. Along with advances in science and philosophy, Arab and Persian lands produced rationalists and
freethinkers
Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other methods ...
who were skeptical about
prophecy
In religion, a prophecy is a message that has been communicated to a person (typically called a '' prophet'') by a supernatural entity. Prophecies are a feature of many cultures and belief systems and usually contain divine will or law, or pr ...
and revealed religion, such as
Muhammad al Warraq (fl. 9th century),
Ibn al-Rawandi
Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Ishaq al-Rawandi ( ar, أبو الحسن أحمد بن يحيى بن إسحاق الراوندي), commonly known as Ibn al-Rawandi ( ar, ابن الراوندي; 827–911 CEAl-Zandaqa Wal Zanadiqa, by Moham ...
(827–911), and
Abu Bakr al-Razi
Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (full name: ar, أبو بکر محمد بن زکریاء الرازي, translit=Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī, label=none), () rather than ar, زکریاء, label=none (), as for example in , or in . In m ...
(–925), as well as outspoken atheists such as
al-Maʿarri
Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī ( ar, أبو العلاء المعري, full name , also known under his Latin name Abulola Moarrensis; December 973 – May 1057) was an Arab philosopher, poet, and writer. Despite holding a controversially irreli ...
(973–1058). Al-Ma'arri wrote and taught that religion itself was a "fable invented by the ancients"
[Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, 1962, ''A Literary History of the Arabs'', p. 318. Routledge] and that humans were "of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains". Despite the fact that these authors were relatively prolific writers, little of their work survives, mainly being preserved through quotations and excerpts in later works by Muslim
apologists attempting to refute them.
In Europe, the espousal of atheistic views was rare during the Early Middle Ages and
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
(see
Medieval Inquisition);
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
and theology were the dominant interests pertaining to religion.
There were, however, movements within this period that furthered heterodox conceptions of the Christian god, including differing views of the nature, transcendence, and knowability of God. Individuals and groups such as
Johannes Scotus Eriugena,
David of Dinant,
Amalric of Bena
Amalric of Bena (french: Amaury de Bène, Amaury de Chartres; la, Almaricus, Amalricus, Amauricus; died ) was a French theologian, philosopher and sect leader, after whom the Amalricians are named. Reformers such as Martin Luther considered him t ...
, and the
Brethren of the Free Spirit maintained Christian viewpoints with
pantheistic
Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical with divinity and a supreme supernatural being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity still expanding and creating, which has ...
tendencies.
Nicholas of Cusa
Nicholas of Cusa (1401 – 11 August 1464), also referred to as Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus (), was a German Catholic cardinal, philosopher, theologian, jurist, mathematician, and astronomer. One of the first German proponents of Re ...
held to a form of
fideism
Fideism () is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths (see natural theology). The word ''fideism'' c ...
he called ''
docta ignorantia'' ("learned ignorance"), asserting that God is beyond human categorization, and thus our knowledge of him is limited to conjecture.
William of Ockham
William of Ockham, OFM (; also Occam, from la, Gulielmus Occamus; 1287 – 10 April 1347) was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and Catholic theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small vil ...
inspired anti-metaphysical tendencies with his
nominalistic limitation of human knowledge to singular objects, and asserted that the divine
essence
Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...
could not be intuitively or rationally apprehended by human intellect. Followers of Ockham, such as
John of Mirecourt John of Mirecourt, also known as ''Monachus Albus'' ('the White Monk'), was a Cistercian scholastic philosopher of the fourteenth century, from Mirecourt, Lorraine. He was a follower of William of Ockham; he was censured by Pope Clement VI.
Life a ...
and
Nicholas of Autrecourt
Nicholas of Autrecourt ( French: ''Nicholas d'Autrécourt''; Latin: ''Nicolaus de Autricuria'' or ''Nicolaus de Ultricuria''; c. 1299, Autrecourt – 16 or 17 July 1369, Metz) was a French medieval philosopher and Scholastic theologian.
Life a ...
furthered this view. The resulting division between
faith and reason influenced later radical and reformist theologians such as
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe (; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; 1328 – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of ...
,
Jan Hus
Jan Hus (; ; 1370 – 6 July 1415), sometimes anglicized as John Hus or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as ''Iohannes Hus'' or ''Johannes Huss'', was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and the insp ...
, and
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation and the namesake of Lutherani ...
.
The
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
did much to expand the scope of free thought and skeptical inquiry. Individuals such as
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
sought experimentation as a means of explanation, and opposed
arguments from religious authority. Other critics of religion and the Church during this time included
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli ( , , ; 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527), occasionally rendered in English as Nicholas Machiavel ( , ; see below), was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. ...
,
Bonaventure des Périers
Bonaventure ( ; it, Bonaventura ; la, Bonaventura de Balneoregio; 1221 – 15 July 1274), born Giovanni di Fidanza, was an Italian Catholic Franciscan, bishop, Cardinal (Catholic Church), cardinal, Scholasticism, scholastic theologian ...
,
Michel de Montaigne, and
François Rabelais.
Early modern period
Historian
Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including '' The Tyranny ...
wrote that the
Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
had paved the way for atheists by attacking the authority of the Catholic Church, which in turn "quietly inspired other thinkers to attack the authority of the new Protestant churches".
Deism gained influence in France, Prussia, and England. In 1546, French scholar
Etienne Dolet was executed upon accusation of being an atheist.
The philosopher
Baruch Spinoza was "probably the first well known 'semi-atheist' to announce himself in a Christian land in the modern era", according to Blainey. Spinoza believed that natural laws explained the workings of the universe. In 1661, he published his ''Short Treatise on God''.
Criticism of Christianity
Criticism of Christianity has a long history which stretches back to the initial formation of the religion during the Roman Empire. Critics have challenged Christian beliefs and teachings as well as Christian actions, from the Crusades to moder ...
became increasingly frequent in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and England, where there appears to have been a religious
malaise, according to contemporary sources. Some Protestant thinkers, such as
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influ ...
, espoused a materialist philosophy and skepticism toward supernatural occurrences, while Spinoza rejected
divine providence in favor of a
panentheistic
Panentheism ("all in God", from the Greek grc, πᾶν, pân, all, label=none, grc, ἐν, en, in, label=none and grc, Θεός, Theós, God, label=none) is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends bey ...
naturalism. By the late 17th century, deism came to be openly espoused by intellectuals such as
John Toland
John Toland (30 November 167011 March 1722) was an Irish rationalist philosopher and freethinker, and occasional satirist, who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on political philosophy and philosophy of religion, which are early expressions o ...
who coined the term "pantheist".
The first known explicit atheist was the German critic of religion
Matthias Knutzen in his three writings of 1674. He was followed by two other explicit atheist writers, the Polish ex-Jesuit philosopher
Kazimierz Łyszczyński
Kazimierz Łyszczyński (; 4 March 1634 – 30 March 1689), also known in English as Casimir Liszinski, was a Polish nobleman, philosopher, and soldier in the ranks of the Sapieha family, who was accused, tried, and executed for atheism in 168 ...
and in the 1720s by the French priest
Jean Meslier
Jean Meslier (; also Mellier; 15 June 1664 – 17 June 1729) was a French Catholic priest (abbé) who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism and materialism. Described by the author as ...
. In the course of the 18th century, other openly atheistic thinkers followed, such as
Baron d'Holbach,
Jacques-André Naigeon
Jacques-André Naigeon (15 July 1738, Paris – 28 February 1810, Paris) was a French artist, atheist– materialist philosopher, editor and man of letters best known for his contributions to the ''Encyclopédie'' and for reworking Baron d'Hol ...
, and other
French materialists
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ...
.
John Locke in contrast, though an advocate of tolerance, urged authorities not to tolerate atheism, believing that the denial of God's existence would undermine the social order and lead to chaos.
The philosopher
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...
developed a skeptical epistemology grounded in
empiricism, and
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
's philosophy has strongly questioned the very possibility of metaphysical knowledge. Both philosophers undermined the metaphysical basis of natural theology and criticized classical
arguments for the existence of God
The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized ...
.
![Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Ludwig_Andreas_Feuerbach.jpg)
Blainey notes that, although
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
is widely considered to have strongly contributed to atheistic thinking during the Revolution, he also considered fear of God to have discouraged further disorder, having said "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." In ''
Reflections on the Revolution in France
''Reflections on the Revolution in France'' is a political pamphlet written by the Irish statesman Edmund Burke and published in November 1790. It is fundamentally a contrast of the French Revolution to that time with the unwritten British Const ...
'' (1790), the philosopher
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (; 12 January NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS">New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS/nowiki>_1729_–_9_July_1797)_was_an_NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">N ...
denounced atheism, writing of a "literary cabal" who had "some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This object they pursued with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been discovered only in the propagators of some system of piety ... These atheistical fathers have a bigotry of their own". But, Burke asserted, "man is by his constitution a religious animal" and "atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and ... it cannot prevail long".
Baron d'Holbach was a prominent figure in the
French Enlightenment
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ...
who is best known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being ''
The System of Nature
''The System of Nature or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World'' (French: ) is a work of philosophy by Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789).
Overview
The work was originally published under the name of Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud, ...
'' (1770) but also ''
Christianity Unveiled
''Christianity Unveiled, or examination of the principles and effects of the Christian religion'' () is a book that criticizes Christianity attributed to Baron d'Holbach, probably published in 1766.
In his religious criticism, Holbach focuses ...
''. One goal of the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
was a restructuring and subordination of the clergy with respect to the state through the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Attempts to enforce it led to
anti-clerical
Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to ...
violence and the expulsion of many clerics from France, lasting until the
Thermidorian Reaction
The Thermidorian Reaction (french: Réaction thermidorienne or ''Convention thermidorienne'', "Thermidorian Convention") is the common term, in the historiography of the French Revolution, for the period between the ousting of Maximilien Robespie ...
. The radical
Jacobins
, logo = JacobinVignette03.jpg
, logo_size = 180px
, logo_caption = Seal of the Jacobin Club (1792–1794)
, motto = "Live free or die"(french: Vivre libre ou mourir)
, successor = P ...
seized power in 1793, ushering in the
Reign of Terror. The Jacobins were deists and introduced the
Cult of the Supreme Being
The Cult of the Supreme Being (french: Culte de l'Être suprême) was a form of deism established in France by Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution. It was intended to become the state religion of the new French Republic and a re ...
as a new French state religion. Some atheists surrounding
Jacques Hébert instead sought to establish a
Cult of Reason
The Cult of Reason (french: Culte de la Raison) was France's first established state-sponsored atheistic religion, intended as a replacement for Roman Catholicism during the French Revolution. After holding sway for barely a year, in 1794 it ...
, a form of atheistic pseudo-religion with a goddess personifying reason. The
Napoleonic era
The Napoleonic era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislativ ...
further institutionalized the secularization of French society.
In the latter half of the 19th century, atheism rose to prominence under the influence of
rationalistic and freethinking philosophers. Many prominent German philosophers of this era denied the existence of deities and were critical of religion, including
Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book '' The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced gene ...
,
Arthur Schopenhauer,
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt (25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen a ...
,
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
, and
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
.
In 1842,
George Holyoake
George Jacob Holyoake (13 April 1817 – 22 January 1906) was an English secularist, co-operator and newspaper editor. He coined the terms secularism in 1851 and " jingoism" in 1878. He edited a secularist paper, the ''Reasoner'', from 1846 to J ...
was the last person imprisoned in Great Britain due to atheist beliefs.
Stephen Law
Stephen Law (born 1960) is an English philosopher. He is currently Director of the Certificate in Higher and Education and Director of Philosophy at The Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford. Law was previously Reader in Ph ...
notes that he may have also been the first imprisoned on such a charge. Law states that Holyoake "first coined the term '
secularism
Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on secular, naturalistic considerations.
Secularism is most commonly defined as the separation of religion from civil affairs and the state, and may be broadened to a sim ...
'".
Since 1900
Atheism, particularly in the form of practical atheism, advanced in many societies in the 20th century. Atheistic thought found recognition in a wide variety of other, broader philosophies, such as
existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
,
Objectivism
Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. She described it as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievemen ...
,
secular humanism,
nihilism,
anarchism,
logical positivism,
Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
,
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
,
[ in ] and the general scientific and
rationalist movement
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy'' ...
.
![Bezbozhnik u stanka 22-1929](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Bezbozhnik_u_stanka_22-1929.jpg)
In addition,
state atheism
State atheism is the incorporation of positive atheism or non-theism into political regimes. It may also refer to large-scale secularization attempts by governments. It is a form of religion-state relationship that is usually ideologically l ...
emerged in Eastern Europe and Asia during that period, particularly in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
under
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
and
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
, and in
Communist China under
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
. Atheist and anti-religious policies in the Soviet Union included
numerous legislative acts, the outlawing of religious instruction in the schools, and the emergence of the
League of Militant Atheists
The League of Militant Atheists (), also Society of the Godless () or Union of the Godless (), was an atheistic and antireligious organization of workers and intelligentsia that developed in Soviet Russia under influence of the ideological and ...
.
Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including '' The Tyranny ...
; ''A Short History of Christianity
''A Short History of Christianity'' is a non-fiction book on the history of the Christian religion written by the Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey. First published in 2012 by Penguin Books, it describes the history of Christianity, from i ...
''; Viking; 2011; p. 494 After Mao, the
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
remains an atheist organization, and regulates, but does not forbid, the practice of religion in mainland China.
While Geoffrey Blainey has written that "the most ruthless leaders in the Second World War were atheists and secularists who were intensely hostile to both Judaism and Christianity", Richard Madsen has pointed out that Hitler and Stalin each opened and closed churches as a matter of political expedience, and Stalin softened his opposition to Christianity in order to improve public acceptance of his regime during the war. Blackford and Schüklenk have written that "the Soviet Union was undeniably an atheist state, and the same applies to Maoist China and Pol Pot's fanatical Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in the 1970s. That does not, however, show that the atrocities committed by these totalitarian dictatorships were the result of atheist beliefs, carried out in the name of atheism, or caused primarily by the atheistic aspects of the relevant forms of communism."
Logical positivism and
scientism paved the way for
neopositivism,
analytical philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
,
structuralism, and
naturalism. Neopositivism and analytical philosophy discarded classical rationalism and metaphysics in favor of strict empiricism and epistemological
nominalism
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings ...
. Proponents such as
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
emphatically rejected belief in God. In his early work,
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is con ...
attempted to separate metaphysical and supernatural language from rational discourse.
A.J. Ayer
Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books '' Language, Truth, and Logic'' (1936) a ...
asserted the unverifiability and meaninglessness of religious statements, citing his adherence to the empirical sciences. Relatedly the
applied structuralism of
Lévi-Strauss sourced religious language to the human subconscious in denying its transcendental meaning.
J.N. Findlay and
J.J.C. Smart argued that the existence of God is not logically necessary. Naturalists and materialistic monists such as
John Dewey considered the natural world to be the basis of everything, denying the existence of God or immortality.
Other developments
Other leaders like
Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, a prominent atheist leader of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, fought against
Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
and
Brahmins
Brahmin (; sa, ब्राह्मण, brāhmaṇa) is a varna as well as a caste within Hindu society. The Brahmins are designated as the priestly class as they serve as priests ( purohit, pandit, or pujari) and religious teachers (guru ...
for discriminating and dividing people in the name of
caste and religion. This was highlighted in 1956 when he arranged for the erection of a statue depicting a Hindu god in a humble representation and made
antitheistic statements.
Atheist
Vashti McCollum was the plaintiff in a landmark 1948
Supreme Court case that struck down religious education in US public schools.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair was one of the most influential American atheists; she brought forth the 1963 Supreme Court case ''
Murray v. Curlett'' which banned compulsory prayer in public schools. In 1966, ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' magazine asked "Is God Dead?" in response to the
Death of God theological movement, citing the estimation that nearly half of all people in the world lived under an anti-religious power, and millions more in Africa, Asia, and South America seemed to lack knowledge of the Christian view of theology. The
Freedom From Religion Foundation
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is an American nonprofit organization, which advocates for atheists, agnostics, and nontheists. Formed in 1976, FFRF promotes the separation of church and state, and challenges the legitimacy of many ...
was co-founded by Anne Nicol Gaylor and her daughter,
Annie Laurie Gaylor, in 1976 in the United States, and incorporated nationally in 1978. It promotes the
separation of church and state
The separation of church and state is a philosophical and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular sta ...
.
Since the fall of the
Berlin Wall, the number of actively anti-religious regimes has declined considerably. In 2006, Timothy Shah of the
Pew Forum noted "a worldwide trend across all major religious groups, in which God-based and faith-based movements in general are experiencing increasing confidence and influence vis-à-vis secular movements and ideologies."
However,
Gregory S. Paul
Gregory Scott Paul (born December 24, 1954) is an American freelance researcher, author and illustrator who works in paleontology, and more recently has examined sociology and theology. He is best known for his work and research on theropod dino ...
and Phil Zuckerman consider this a myth and suggest that the actual situation is much more complex and nuanced.
A 2010 survey found that those identifying themselves as atheists or agnostics are on average more knowledgeable about religion than followers of major faiths. Nonbelievers scored better on questions about tenets central to Protestant and Catholic faiths. Only Mormon and Jewish faithful scored as well as atheists and agnostics.
In 2012, the first "Women in Secularism" conference was held in Arlington, Virginia. Secular Woman was organized in 2012 as a national organization focused on nonreligious women. The
atheist feminist movement has also become increasingly focused on fighting sexism and
sexual harassment within the atheist movement itself.
In August 2012, Jennifer McCreight (the organizer of
Boobquake
Boobquake was a rally which took place on April 26, 2010, which served to protest news reports of controversial beliefs blaming women who dress immodestly for causing earthquakes. It was inspired by blogger Jey McCreight.
Inception
The Boobquake r ...
) founded a movement within atheism known as Atheism Plus, or A+, that "applies skepticism to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, politics, poverty, and crime".
In 2013 the first atheist monument on American government property was unveiled at the
Bradford County Courthouse in Florida: a 1,500-pound granite bench and plinth inscribed with quotes by
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...
,
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
, and
Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
New Atheism
"New Atheism" is a movement among some early-21st-century atheist writers who have advocated the view that "religion should not be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."
The movement is commonly associated with
Sam Harris
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics ...
,
Daniel Dennett,
Richard Dawkins,
Victor J. Stenger
Victor John Stenger (; January 29, 1935 – August 25, 2014) was an American particle physicist, philosopher, author, and religious skeptic.
Following a career as a research scientist in the field of particle physics, Stenger was associated ...
,
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...
, and to some extent
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (; ; Somali: ''Ayaan Xirsi Cali'':'' Ayān Ḥirsī 'Alī;'' born Ayaan Hirsi Magan, ar, أيان حرسي علي / ALA-LC: ''Ayān Ḥirsī 'Alī'' 13 November 1969) is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist and former politicia ...
. Several best-selling books by these authors, published between 2004 and 2007, form the basis for much of the discussion of "New" Atheism. In best-selling books, the religiously-motivated terrorist
events of 9/11 and the partially successful attempts of the
Discovery Institute to change the American science curriculum to include
creationist
Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 'th ...
ideas, together with support for those ideas from
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
in 2005, have been cited by authors such as Harris, Dennett, Dawkins, Stenger, and Hitchens as evidence of a need to move toward a more secular society.
Demographics
It is difficult to quantify the number of atheists in the world. Respondents to religious-belief polls may define "atheism" differently or draw different distinctions between ''atheism'', non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious and spiritual beliefs. A
Hindu atheist would declare oneself as a
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
, although also being an atheist at the same time. Most of the time this happens because atheism and irreligion are not officially recognised in India.
Apostasy
Apostasy (; grc-gre, ἀποστασία , 'a defection or revolt') is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that ...
is allowed under the right to
freedom of religion
Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freed ...
in the
Constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed.
When these princ ...
(but blasphemy is prohibited), there are no specific laws catering to atheists and they are considered as belonging to the religion of their birth for administrative purposes. A 2010 survey published in ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'' found that the non-religious made up about 9.6% of the world's population, and atheists about 2.0%, with a very large majority based in Asia. This figure did not include those who follow atheistic religions, such as some Buddhists.
The average annual change for atheism from 2000 to 2010 was −0.17%.
Broad estimates of those who have an absence of belief in a god range from 500 million to 1.1 billion people worldwide. Scholars have indicated that
global atheism may be in decline as a percentage of the global population due to irreligious countries having the lowest birth rates in the world and religious countries generally having higher birth rates.
[Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century](_blank)
by Eric Kaufmann
Eric Peter Kaufmann is a Canadian professor of politics at Birkbeck, University of London. He is a specialist on Orangeism in Northern Ireland, nationalism, and political and religious demography. He has authored, co-authored, and edited multipl ...
, Belfer Center, Harvard University/Birkbeck College, University of London[London: A Rising Island of Religion in a Secular Sea](_blank)
by Eric Kaufmann
Eric Peter Kaufmann is a Canadian professor of politics at Birkbeck, University of London. He is a specialist on Orangeism in Northern Ireland, nationalism, and political and religious demography. He has authored, co-authored, and edited multipl ...
, ''Huffington Post'', February 20, 2013
According to global
Win-Gallup International studies, 13% of respondents were "convinced atheists" in 2012,
11% were "convinced atheists" in 2015,
and in 2017, 9% were "convinced atheists".
, the top 10 surveyed countries with people who viewed themselves as "convinced atheists" were
China (47%),
Japan (31%), the
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
(30%),
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
(29%),
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...
(15%),
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
(15%),
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
(14%),
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
(10%),
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
(10%),
Australia (10%), and the
Republic of Ireland
Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 Counties of Ireland, counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern ...
(10%). A 2012 study by the NORC found that East Germany had the highest percentage of atheists while Czech Republic had the second highest amount.
The number of atheists per country is strongly correlated with the
level of security for both the individual and society, with some exceptions.
Europe
![Europe No Belief enhanced 2010](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Europe_No_Belief_enhanced_2010.png)
According to the 2010 Eurobarometer Poll, the percentage of those polled who agreed with the statement "you don't believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force" varied from a high percentage in France (40%), Czech Republic (37%), Sweden (34%), Netherlands (30%), and Estonia (29%); medium-high percentage in Germany (27%), Belgium (27%), UK (25%); to very low in Poland (5%), Greece (4%), Cyprus (3%), Malta (2%), and Romania (1%), with the European Union as a whole at 20%.
In a 2012 Eurobarometer poll on discrimination in the European Union, 16% of those polled considered themselves non-believers/agnostics, and 7% considered themselves atheists.
According to a
Pew Research Center survey in 2012, about 18% of Europeans are
religiously unaffiliated, including agnostics and atheists.
According to the same survey, the religiously unaffiliated are the majority of the population only in two European countries: Czech Republic (75%) and Estonia (60%).
Asia
There are another three countries, and
one special administrative region of China or regions where the unaffiliated make up a majority of the population:
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...
(71%),
Japan (57%), Hong Kong (56%), and China (52%).
Australasia
According to the
Australian Bureau of Statistics, 30% of Australians have "no religion", a category that includes atheists.
In a 2013 census, 42% of
New Zealanders
New Zealanders ( mi, Tāngata Aotearoa), colloquially known as Kiwis (), are people associated with New Zealand, sharing a common history, culture, and language (New Zealand English). People of various ethnicities and national origins are citiz ...
reported having no religion, up from 30% in 1991.
United States
According to the
World Values Survey
The World Values Survey (WVS) is a global research project that explores people's values and beliefs, how they change over time, and what social and political impact they have. Since 1981 a worldwide network of social scientists have conducte ...
, 4.4% of Americans self-identified as atheists in 2014.
However, the same survey showed that 11.1% of all respondents stated "no" when asked if they believed in God.
In 1984, these same figures were 1.1% and 2.2%, respectively. According to a 2014 report by the Pew Research Center, 3.1% of the US adult population identify as atheist, up from 1.6% in 2007; and within the religiously unaffiliated (or "no religion") demographic, atheists made up 13.6%. According to the 2015 General Sociological Survey the number of atheists and agnostics in the US has remained relatively flat in the past 23 years since in 1991 only 2% identified as atheist and 4% identified as agnostic and in 2014 only 3% identified as atheists and 5% identified as agnostics.
According to the American Family Survey, 34% were found to be religiously unaffiliated in 2017 (23% 'nothing in particular', 6% agnostic, 5% atheist). According to the Pew Research Center, in 2014, 22.8% of the American population does not identify with a religion, including atheists (3.1%) and agnostics (4%). According to a PRRI survey, 24% of the population is unaffiliated. Atheists and agnostics combined make up about a quarter of this unaffiliated demographic.
Arab world
In recent years, the profile of atheism has risen substantially in the
Arab world
The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western A ...
.
In major cities across the region, such as
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...
, atheists have been organizing in cafés and social media, despite regular crackdowns from authoritarian governments.
A 2012 poll by Gallup International revealed that 5% of Saudis considered themselves to be "convinced atheists".
However, very few young people in the Arab world have atheists in their circle of friends or acquaintances. According to one study, less than 1% did in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Jordan; only 3% to 7% in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Palestine.
[Muslim Millennial Attitudes on Religion and Religious Leadership, Arab World](_blank)
, Tabah Foundation, Abu Dhabi, 2016 When asked whether they have "seen or heard traces of atheism in
heirlocality, community, and society" only about 3% to 8% responded yes in all the countries surveyed. The only exception was the UAE, with a percentage of 51%.
Wealth, education, and reasoning style
Various studies have reported positive correlations between levels of education, wealth and
IQ with atheism.
In a 2008 study, researchers found intelligence to be negatively related to religious belief in Europe and the United States. In a sample of 137 countries, the correlation between national IQ and disbelief in God was found to be 0.60.
According to evolutionary psychologist
Nigel Barber
Nigel William Thomas Barber (born November 7, 1955, in Tullamore, Ireland) is an Irish-born American biopsychologist and author.
Biography
Barber emigrated from his native Ireland to the United States in 1982. He received his Ph.D. in biopsycholo ...
, atheism blossoms in places where most people feel economically secure, particularly in the
social democracies of Europe, as there is less uncertainty about the future with extensive social safety nets and better health care resulting in a greater quality of life and higher life expectancy. By contrast, in underdeveloped countries, there are far fewer atheists.
The relationship between atheism and IQ, while statistically significant, is not a large one, and the reason for the relationship is not well understood.
One hypothesis is that the negative relationship between IQ and religiosity is mediated by individual differences in nonconformity; in many countries, religious belief is a conformist choice, and there is evidence that more intelligent people are less likely to conform. Another theory is that people of higher IQ are more likely to engage in analytical reasoning, and that disbelief in religion results from the application of higher-level analytical reasoning to the assessment of religious claims.
In a 2017 study, it was shown that compared to religious individuals, atheists have higher reasoning capacities and this difference seemed to be unrelated to sociodemographic factors such as age, education and country of origin. In a 2015 study, researchers found that atheists score higher on cognitive reflection tests than theists, the authors wrote that "The fact that atheists score higher agrees with the literature showing that belief is an automatic manifestation of the mind and its default mode. Disbelieving seems to require deliberative cognitive ability." A 2016 study, in which 4 new studies were reported and a meta-analysis of all previous research on the topic was performed, found that self-identified atheists scored 18.7% higher than theists on the cognitive reflection test and there is a negative correlation between religiosity and analytical thinking. The authors note that recently "it has been argued that analytic thinkers are not actually less religious; rather, the putative association may be a result of religiosity typically being measured after analytic thinking (an order effect)," however, they state "Our results indicate that the association between analytical thinking and religious disbelief is not caused by a simple order effect. There is good evidence that atheists and agnostics are more reflective than religious believers." This "analytic atheist" effect has also been found among academic philosophers, even when controlling for about a dozen potential confounds such as education.
However, some studies do not detect this correlation between atheism and analytic thinking in all of the countries that they study, suggesting that the relationship between analytic thinking and atheism may depend on culture. There is also evidence that gender may be involved in the so-called analytic atheist effect: because men have been found more likely to endorse atheism, and men often perform slightly better on tests of analytic thinking when not controlling for variables such as math anxiety, the correlation between atheism and analytic reasoning may be partly explained by whatever explains observed gender differences in analytic thinking.
Attitudes toward atheism
![States with death penalty for apostasy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/States_with_death_penalty_for_apostasy.png)
Statistically, atheists are held in poor regard across the globe. Non-atheists, and possibly even fellow atheists, seem to implicitly view atheists as prone to exhibit immoral behaviors ranging from mass murder to not paying at a restaurant. In addition, according to a 2016
Pew Research Center publication, 15% of French people, 45% of Americans, and 99% of Indonesians explicitly believe that a person must believe in God to be moral. Pew furthermore noted that, in a U.S. poll, atheists and Muslims tied for the lowest rating among the major religious demographics on a "
feeling thermometer". Also, a study of religious college students found that they were more likely to perceive and interact with atheists negatively after considering their mortality, suggesting that these attitudes may be the result of
death anxiety
Death anxiety is anxiety caused by thoughts of one's own death, and is also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death). Death anxiety differs from necrophobia, which is the fear of others who are dead or dying.
Psychotherapist Robert Langs ...
.
See also
*
Antireligion
Antireligion is opposition to religion. It involves opposition to organized religion, religious practices or religious institutions. The term ''antireligion'' has also been used to describe opposition to specific forms of supernatural worship ...
*
Apatheism
Apatheism (; a portmanteau of ''apathy'' and ''theism'') is the attitude of apathy towards the existence or non-existence of God(s). It is more of an attitude rather than a belief, claim, or belief system. The term was coined by Robert Nash, theo ...
* ''
A Rough History of Disbelief''
*
Brights movement
The Brights movement is a social movement whose members since 2003 refer to themselves as Brights and have a worldview of philosophical naturalism.
Most Brights believe that public policies should be based on science (a body of knowledge obtain ...
*
Dysteleology
Dysteleology, also known as the argument from poor design, is the philosophical view that existence has no ''telos'' - no final cause from purposeful design
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for th ...
*
Lists of atheists
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the lack of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. This is a compilation of the various lists of atheists with articles on Wikipedi ...
*
National Day of Reason
*
Outline of atheism
*
Religious trauma syndrome
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
alternate URL
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
Bradlaugh, Charles,
Annie Besant and others. (1884) ''The Atheistic Platform: 12 Lectures''. London: Freethought Publishing
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Howson, Colin (2011). ''Objecting to God''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*
Ronald F. Inglehart, Inglehart, Ronald F., "Giving Up on God: The Global Decline of Religion", ''
Foreign Affairs'', vol. 99, no. 5 (September / October 2020), pp. 110–118.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Rosenberg, Alex (2011). ''The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions''. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
*
*
*
* Smolkin, Victoria. ''A Sacred Space is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism'' (Princeton UP, 2018
online reviews*
* Walters, Kerry (2010). ''Atheism: A Guide for the Perplexed''. New York: Continuum.
* Whitmarsh, Tim. (2015), ''Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World''
*
*
External links
*
*
*
*
The New Atheists ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
* . Includes links to organizations and websites.
Religion & Ethics—Atheismat
bbc.co.uk.
Secular Web library Library of both historical and modern writings, a comprehensive online resource for freely available material on atheism.
Is Agnosticism Just Timid Atheism? A Dialogueby Ted Cadsby 2017, ''HuffPost''
{{Authority control
Criticism of religion
Irreligion
Philosophy of religion
Skepticism