404. History of Atheism

We are witnessing a rise of professing atheists and practical atheism in the 21st century. Where did all this unbelief come from? Today on our journey back through the archives, Dr. Stephen Nichols traces the development of atheism in the modern world.

Hello, thanks for tuning in to 5 Minutes in Church History. We’re taking a break from releasing new episodes on the podcast, but what you’re about to hear is one of my favorite episodes from the archives. We’ll be back with new episodes in the new year, but until then we hope you enjoy this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. 

On this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History, we are trying something a little different. Usually we talk about things within theism and we are very much interested in a theistic tradition. But today let's talk about the opposite of that and the history of atheism. Well, you could say atheism goes all the way back to the very beginning, back to the garden. You can say it goes back to the Psalms, isn't it Psalm 14 verse one that says, "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God."

But what we are talking about on this episode is the history of atheism in the modern world. As an English term, the first time we see it is in the middle of the 1500s, but we see it, especially in the modern world of the 19th and 20th centuries. If we look at today's landscape, the latest poll I saw, it goes back to 2014, but it says that just under 3% of Americans claim to be atheist. Now, if you throw into that category the so called nuns, these are folks with no religious affiliation and really no religious inclination. Then we're up in the 20 percentile, you might call them practical atheists. So we've got confessing atheists and practical atheists. Where did they all come from?

Well, back in the 1720s, we find an atheist, but he seems to be a literary creation. This is Tom Puzzle, and this figure, Tom Puzzle, a fictional literary creation, which show up in the pages of various magazines in the colonies. And he would be used from time to time to comment on current events or to add some color to current events. But what we really find in the 1700s and into the 1800s is the precursor to atheism, which is deism. So theism, of course, believes in a God who created the world, a God who is active in sustaining the world. Theism has with it, the idea of sovereignty and providence, that God is controlling his universe, controlling as R.C. Sproul would say, every single molecule, there are no maverick molecules. And also very active in the lives of people and in his universe through the doctrine of providence. God is intimately involved, not only in creating the world, but sustaining the world and bringing it to the fruition and fulfillment of his good pleasure. That's theism.

Deism removes God from the daily life and removes God from actively involved in sustaining creation. God sort of creates the earth, sort of like you start a top and you get it spinning, then you just let it go. Well, that's what God did, he created the world and then he just lets it go. He's a little removed. That's deism. That's a precursor to atheism and what we see in the 19th and 20th century as deism floats around, especially in the Academy and gains traction among the sort of intellectual and philosophical class.

We see the various philosophical schools that promote atheism. We see this in Europe and we see it in America. We see it in thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, who come to the conclusion that God is dead and that we have killed him. That we have arrived at a point in the modern world where God is no longer a tenable thesis and out of that comes a very desperate, despairing, dark philosophy and worldview called Nihilism. We see it in some of the schools of thought that are apparently more sophisticated in the 20th century. We see it in the logical positivism and some of those more scientific or properly, we should say, scientism worldviews that want to reduce everything that is knowable to what is observable by the five senses. And so creation, the act of creation, God himself, the transcendent world, the spiritual world, the world of faith, all of this is outside of the realm of science, according to scientism. And so God is not part of that equation.

Well, that's a brief sketch of the history of atheism and I think we're taken right back to Psalm 14 one, aren't we? "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God." Well I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.