According to studies, the world as it stands today is 2.01% Atheist, and a further 16% Non-Religious. The only places in which the majority of people are non-religious are in East Asia, such as China. In the Western world, we see ourselves as progressive, forward thinking- but an American survey showed that Atheists are the least trusted of any minority. So, in a world that distrusts people who make decisions based on evidence and fact, let’s have a look at the development of Atheism in Europe through the centuries.
As early as 50 B.C Lucretius of Rome was writing philosophical poetry which introduced the Romans to an Epicurean ideology. Although Lucretius does not deny the existence of the Gods, he wrote that “Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods.” Lucretius believed that fear of divine power over our lives was the root of human misery, and wrote to eliminate the belief that the Gods were omnipotent. I use the example of Lucretius because he was an early voice that delivered a remarkably similar message to that of Richard Dawkins, or Sam Harris. Summed up by Lucretius himself- “O Science, lift aloud your voice that stills The pulse of fear”. This is the message that regardless of personal faith, scientific thought is one unifying advocate of logic and reason.
The next figure in this very selective summary is Nietzsche. I choose the 19th Century German philosopher because, with the Roman Lucretius we established an ideology of reason and science, but did not address the issue of morals. So if humans without interventionist Gods can be free from fear, what happens when it is boldly proclaimed “God is Dead.”? Nietzsche pondered a world after the ‘death’ of God, i.e a world in which fear of Godly repercussions is no longer a moral compass. He described nihilism in ‘Will To Power’, believing that a nihilistic crisis was looming- “What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. . . . For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end.”
So if Nietzsche predicted the fall of widespread faith over a hundred years ago, where does that leave us today? Still religious, if the statistics I sited earlier are to be believed. Let’s narrow that down and focus on the UK. An assimilation of studies taken by bodies such as YouGov suggests that 30-40% of British citizens do not believe in a God. So this is around double the Global figure of 18%. In the UK at least, there is a sense that we have made a gradual shift away from our label as a Christian country, so much so that when David Cameron stated earlier this year that Britain should “be more confident about our status as a Christian country”(The Church Times), 50 authors, broadcasters, comedians and other prominent figures signed their names to a Daily Telegraph article claiming that Britain is in fact a largely “non-religious society”.
Modern Atheists such as Richard Dawkins are treating the existence of a God as they would any scientific hypothesis. The dichotomy of a society educated in the ideas of Darwin that still wears the intellectual shackles of religion is our norm in the Western world, a blind faith no longer enforced but now unthinkingly followed. The New Atheist movement, spearheaded by intellectuals Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and David Dennet, states that “religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises”(The Rise of the New Atheists). We have reached a point on the journey away from theism. Comedian Bill Maher uses the term ‘Intellectual Slaveholders’ to define religious leaders, and it is highly appropriate. The journey to Atheism is increasingly focussed on equality, whether it be women’s rights or gay marriage, and an unbiased education for all. Now who can argue with that?
Perhaps the answer to religions resiliance lies in man’s fear of their own impermanence. In other words, people want to believe in the afterlife. I’ll leave you with a segment of Lucretius’ On The Nature Of Things, which sums it up beautifully-
Moreover, within the hollows of the earth,
When from one quarter the wind builds up, lunges,
Muscles the deep caves with its headstrong power,
The earth leans hard where the force of wind has pressed it;
Then above ground, the higher the house is built,
The nearer it rises to the sky, the worse
Will it lean that way and jut out perilously,
The beams wrenched loose and hanging ready to fall.
And to think, men can’t believe that for this world
Some time of death and ruin lies in wait,
Yet they see so great a mass of earth collapse!
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