I.

Introduction

Atheism (Greek, a, “not”; theos, “god”), lack of belief in any form of deity. An atheist acknowledges no God or gods. Atheism is stronger than agnosticism, which is the view that we have no knowledge either way. An agnostic denies both that we know that God, or gods, exist, and that we know that they do not. An atheist may disagree with this, claiming even to know that no God exists, for example through having a disproof of such existence. But many, or even most, atheists would agree with the agnostic that this is an area where knowledge is not to be had. However, an agnostic could hold that while we lack knowledge, our best bet is that some kind of God exists, so we should fill the gap by trust or faith in the existence of some kind of divinity. An atheist will reject any such leap of faith as well. An atheist holds that the most reasonable attitude is not to believe in any God or gods. Our attitude to a Christian God, or Jehovah, or Allah, should be the same as most contemporary people’s attitudes to the ancient gods of Greece and Rome, or to Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. Belief in any divinity is mere superstition.

II.

Arguments for Atheism

Atheism is defended by a number of considerations. First, atheists will reject traditional attempts to prove the existence of a god. Second, atheists will reject the propriety of a leap of faith, or unsupported claim to the existence of such a being. For atheism, bare faith is not a virtue, but a vice, for it is extravagant and irresponsible to believe in things when there is no reason to do so. In everyday life this is obvious, and we ought to apply the same standards whatever the subject of belief. Atheists typically hold that human beings are drawn to religions by fear of the unknown, against which we defend ourselves in the vain belief that proper prayers and sacrifices can ward off illness, disease, famine, and death. The atheist sees this as immature and regrettable.

Atheists may also try to show that it is highly unlikely that any god exists, since the features ascribed to the deity are too improbable, just as the doings of Santa Claus are too improbable for grown-ups to believe that anyone could perform them. Thus it seems highly improbable that an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful Being would allow the multitude of evils that beset animal and human existence. The standard religious reply—that these are mysteries that it is not open to us to fathom—leaves a concept of God sufficiently far removed from human life not to be worth serious attention.

Finally, atheists will typically stress the dangers of religious belief. These dangers may vary with the exact religion in question, but both in history and in the contemporary world, belief in the jealous, vengeful God of the Bible and the Koran spawns sectarianism and intolerance, bigotry and self-righteousness. There are passages in holy texts that literally command intolerance and hatred of those who are different, contempt of women and shame at sexuality, mistrust of science and reason, and subordination of all other ethical duties to the supreme obligation of the particular religious body or Church.

III.

History of Atheism

Atheism has an ancient history in the East, especially in India, where various early schools espousing rationalism and materialism existed. The most notable was the Lokayata school, perhaps dating from the 7th century bc or earlier. Buddhism, at least originally, was close to atheism, while some schools falling under the umbrella of Hinduism, such as the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara can be regarded as atheistic.

Atheism was seldom voiced in the Christian world until the 18th century, since it was too dangerous to do so. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was the first of the moderns to attract the dangerous label of being an atheist, although his writings are carefully ambiguous. A more common, although risky, halfway house was deism, which followed the belief of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 bc) that while there might be gods, they had no apparent intercourse with human beings, and no apparent interest in their doings. The prevailing climate until the mid-18th century was that no thinking person could possibly be an atheist, and that atheism in practice would dissolve all the morality that ties together civil society. Even David Hume (1711–1776) refused the label of atheist, although he wrote eloquently and convincingly against the involvement of religion in morality, and also against superstition, enthusiasm, reports of miracles, and arguments for the existence of God and the afterlife. In France philosophers such as the Baron d’Holbach (1723-1789) were more forthcoming in avowing atheism, though other leading Enlightenment figures such as Voltaire and Diderot were deists. Perhaps the most remarkable progress was marked by the Constitution of the United States of America, which in Thomas Jefferson’s words entrenched the “wall of separation” of Church from State, effectively confining religion to the sphere of the private, at least in principle.

By the 19th century the climate changed markedly, and writers such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge as well as philosophers were happy to acknowledge their atheism. The emergence of rigorous historical analysis of the Bible and other texts, and then the increasing power of Darwinism to explain what had otherwise seemed divine in nature, both contributed to the increasing secularization of the modern world.

While they reject religious belief, atheists can differ over their attitude to many features of religious expression in art, music, poetry, or architecture. Some may find such expressions too heavily contaminated by what they regard as false dogma to be enjoyable or illuminating. Others may distinguish. A poem or piece of music that is conventionally called religious may be a profound expression of love, hope, despair, or triumph over despair. These are emotions all human beings share and an atheist can value expressions of them for their own sake. Thus while some atheists would feel ashamed of being moved by the words of some of the Psalms, or the Book of Common Prayer, others might accept and admire them as poetical expressions of the emotional needs of mankind. An atheist might be drawn to this more tolerant attitude by reflecting that religion itself is a human invention, and presumably takes something from the better as well as the worse parts of human nature.

This less combative attitude protects atheists against the charge of being shallow or materialistic or lacking higher feelings. It may in turn come close to the position of some modern theologians and churchmen, who, without admitting in so many words that they are atheists, wish to strip away any taint of childish superstition, childish belief in the supernatural, or childish beliefs about historical events, from the practices of religion, which they nevertheless insist on preserving. But in the opinion of most atheists these are desperate strategies to avoid admitting the obvious.