Atheism

History

Rituals related to spirits and deities were deeply embedded in every known culture of the ancient world. In the West, the concept of atheism arose in Greece in the second half of the 5th century. But even then, according to J. M. Bremmer, the term atheist was generally used as an accusation rather than as a self-description. The first prominent philosopher to be labeled an atheist, Protagoras of Abdera (ca. 490–420 BCE), was by his own words an agnostic. Socrates (ca. 470–399 BCE) was charged with refusing to acknowledge the gods of Athens, yet he was not clearly an atheist. Epicurus (341–270 BCE) came close to atheism in his atomistic materialism, which influenced later thinkers such as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Epicurus held that nothing should be believed except that which was tested through direct observation and logical deduction. As noted by Bremmer, Epicurus held that to attain pleasure in moderation was the highest good, that the soul does not survive beyond death, and that the gods have no influence on humanity.

Atheism reemerged in Western thought during the Enlightenment, the 18th-century European intellectual movement that put reason above faith. The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) developed a naturalist philosophy that verged on atheism, although Hume professed to believe in God. More openly atheistic was Hume's French contemporary Denis Diderot (1713–1784), general editor of the Encyclopédie. Scientific discoveries such as Charles Darwin's theory of evolution strengthened the case for atheism in the 19th century. Karl Marx described religion as the opium of the people, while Nietzsche built his entire oeuvre on his conviction that God is dead.

By the 20th century, atheism had become dominant in many intellectual circles, as well as a founding principle of the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China. In the West, Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), mathematician and philosopher, helped set the course of thought with his 1927 pamphlet Why I Am Not a Christian. But contrary to the expectations of secularization theorists, religious belief hardly withered away as the 20th century wore on. At the start of the 21st century, a new school of militant atheists renewed the attack on religion.

...