Taken and paraphrased from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_atheism. Accessed June 21, 2009.
Historically, the first accounts and ideas of atheism come from what is known as the far east. Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism all had aspects of atheism within their early practices, although the practices declined, for the most part, as the centuries wore on. Carvaka, an exceptionally atheist establishment, also professed atheism, but declined and died out in the 15th century.
In Greece and Rome, atheism was merely the disacknowledgement of belief in any of the state-supported gods. If you did not believe in and worship the state-accepted gods, you were persecuted and perhaps even executed as an atheist. Despite this, there were several known atheists in greek culture:
- Diagoros of Melos
- Leucippus
- Democritus
- Protagoras
- Socrates (accused for political reasons)
- Epicurus
- Lucretious
In the Middle ages, people were persecuted for heresy under the times of the inquisition.
Thomas Aquinas' five proofs of God's existence as well as
Anselm's ontological argument implicitly acknowledged the validity of the question about god's existence. The charge of atheism was used primarily as way of attacking one's political or religious enemies.
During the Renaissance, several people of note were accused and in some cases, murdered for their beliefs:
- Étienne Dolet
- Giulio Cesare Vanini
- Kazimierz Łyszczyński
- Jean-François de la Barre
- Denis Diderot
- Thomas Hobbes
- Christopher Marlowe
The charge of atheism in Western society lost some of its vigor and people were able to finally speak their views. Important people and writings during the Enlightenment were:
- Paul Baron d'Holbach
- Matthew Turner
In the 19th century, Percy Bysshe Shelley, a child of the Age of Enlightenment, was expelled from Oxford University in 1811 for submitting to the Dean an anonymous pamphlet that he wrote titled The Necessity of Atheism.
Charles Bradlaugh (1833–1891) was repeatedly elected to the British Parliament, but was not allowed to take his seat after his request to affirm rather than take the religious oath was turned down (he then offered to take the oath, but this too was denied him). After Bradlaugh was re-elected for the fourth time, a new Speaker allowed Bradlaugh to take the oath and permitted no objections: he became the first outspoken atheist to sit in Parliament, where he participated in amending the Oaths Act.
In 1844, Karl Marx (1818–1883), an atheistic political economist, wrote in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right:
Quote:
"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is 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.
Friedrich Nietzsche, a prominent 19th century philosopher, is well-known for coining the aphorism "God is dead" (German: "Gott ist tot");
In the recent centuries, atheism became essential to communist nations. Response to this was by characterizing those nations as godless, and during the Cold War, America took the following steps:
Quote:
...the United States often characterized its opponents as "Godless Communists,"which tended to reinforce the view that atheists were unreliable and unpatriotic. Against this background, the words "under God" were inserted into the pledge of allegiance in 1954,and the national motto was changed from E Pluribus Unum to In God We Trust in 1956.
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