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History of atheism

Atheism is the rejection of an assertion that a deity exists.[1][2][3][4] In a narrower sense, hard atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities, effectively taking the stance of a positive claim in regards to the existence of any goddess or god.[1][2][5][6] The English term 'atheist' was used at least as early as the sixteenth century and atheistic ideas and their influence have a longer history.

Philosophical atheist thought began to appear in Europe and Asia in the sixth or fifth century BCE. In ancient Greece, playwrights expressed doubt regarding the existence of gods and the antireligious philosophical school Cārvāka arose in ancient India. Materialistic philosophy was produced by the atomists Leucippus and Democritus in 5th century BCE, who explained the world in terms of the movements of atoms moving in infinite space.


The Enlightenment fueled skepticism and secularism against religion in Europe.[7]

Alexander, Nathan G. (2019). Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850-1914. New York/Manchester: New York University Press/Manchester University Press.  978-1-5261-4237-5

ISBN

Armstrong, K. (1999). A History of God. London: Vintage.  0-09-927367-5

ISBN

Berman, D. (1990). A History of Atheism in Britain: from Hobbes to Russell. London: Routledge.  0-415-04727-7

ISBN

Buckley, M. J. (1987). At the origins of modern atheism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Drachmann, A. B. (1922). Atheism in Pagan Antiquity. Chicago: Ares Publishers, 1977 ("an unchanged reprint of the 1922 edition").  0-89005-201-8

ISBN

, ed. (25 October 2007). The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-59102-391-3. OL 8851140M.

Flynn, Tom

McGrath, A. (2005). The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World.  0-385-50062-9

ISBN

(1998). "Atheism". In Edward Craig (ed.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-07310-3. Retrieved 9 April 2011.

Rowe, William L.

Sedley, David (2013). Stephen Bullivant; Michael Ruse (eds.). . OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-964465-0.

The Oxford Handbook of Atheism

(2007). The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0393071047.

Stewart, Matthew

Thrower, James (1971). A Short History of Western Atheism. London: Pemberton.  1-57392-756-2

ISBN

Le Beau, Bryan F. (2003). . NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-5285-2.

The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O'Hair

LeDrew, Stephen. The evolution of atheism: The politics of a modern movement (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Ford, James C. (2023). Atheism at the agora: a history of unbelief in ancient Greek polytheism. London: Routledge.  9781032492995.

ISBN

Meagher, Richard J. Atheists in American politics: Social movement organizing from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries (Lexington Books, 2018).

(1989). "The Atheism of Epicurus". Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies. 30 (2): 187–223.

Obbink, Dirk

(1999). Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn Al-Rāwandī, Abū Bakr Al-Rāzī, and Their Impact on Islamic Thought. Leiden: Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004452848. ISBN 978-90-04-31547-1.

Stroumsa, Sarah

Winiarczyk, Marek (2016). . Beiträge zur Altertumskunde. Vol. 350. Translated by Zbirohowski-Kościa, Witold. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110448047. ISBN 978-3-11-044377-6.

Diagoras of Melos: A Contribution to the History of Ancient Atheism

Dr. Gordon Stein, at positiveatheism.org.

The History of Freethought and Atheism

Dag Herbjørnsrud, "" at the Blog of the American Philosophical Association (APA), June 2020.

The untold history of India's vital atheist philosophy