Atheism Goes to Germany

Dangerous Germans

            If atheism was most at home among French thinkers in the late 1700s, it moved to Germany in the next century. And the first leading German atheist was a man who said that human beings created God in their own image.

            Ludwig Feuerbach, born in 1804, was pretty weird for an atheist: he didn’t attack religion much. He was more interested in where it came from. Humanity’s ideas of God, he said, came from its ideas about itself. “[You] believe that God is a wise and benevolent being because you know nothing better in yourself than wisdom and benevolence,” Feuerbach wrote in his most famous work, The Essence of Christianity.[1]

            The claim that man created God rather than vice versa was so unsettling that it dropped Feuerbach into the same mess as Hume. He wanted work as a professor, and his views made schools push him away.

            But they hit other atheists like the light from a sunrise. When one of Feuerbach’s younger fans wrote an essay that attacked religion, he sent a copy to Feuerbach with a letter that said, “I am glad to have an opportunity of assuring you of the great respect and -- if I may use the word -- love, which I feel for you.”[2]

            The young fan became probably the most famous atheist of all time -- and the most infamous: Karl Marx.

            Marx launched his best-known assault on religion in the essay that he sent to Feuerbach. “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,” Marx said. “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”[3]

            Marx is trouble for atheists. His main doctrine, communism, is basically an economic plan that involves wiping out private business; but it’s inspired governments worldwide to stomp nearly all freedoms, including freedom of religion. Communist governments in Russia, China, and elsewhere have outlawed churches and killed believers. In anti-communist countries like the United States, many people came to feel that atheists -- even non-communist atheists -- might be associated with communism and in any event couldn’t be trusted.

            Marx’s comments on religion appeared in just three years after Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity. A few months later, in October 1844, Friedrich Nietzsche was born.

            Nietzsche is another problem for atheists, because one of his fans was Adolf Hitler. In books such as Thus Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche preached disgust for both religion and rationalism. He praised the monstrous, masterful “superman” or “overman,” whose indomitable will and passion for power entitled him to rule people who suffer from such weaknesses as pity and morality.[4]

            Nietzsche’s most famous statement is “Gott ist todt” -- “God is dead.”[5] Neither God nor religion should control the superman, he thought. The Marquis de Sade would probably have agreed.

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[1] Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, Introduction part 2 (“The Essence of Religion in General”) (1841), http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/ec01_2.htm

[2] Karl Marx, letter to Ludwig Feuerbach (August 11, 1844), http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/letters/44_08_11.htm

[3] Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” Introduction, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher (February 1844), translated by Joseph O’Malley, Oxford University Press (1970), http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Critique_of_Hegels_Philosophy_of_Right.pdf

[4] William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book One, Chapter 4 (“The Mind of Hitler and the Roots of the Third Reich”) (1960), New York, Simon & Schuster

[5] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 125 (1882), translated by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books (1974) http://atheism.about.com/library/weekly/aa042600c.htm

America's Pioneer Unbeliever

Paine’s Pains

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Thomas Paine[1]

            Americans know Paine as the writer of Common Sense (1776), a rousing defense of American independence. That book and his other writings for human rights and individual freedoms made Paine a hero of the American Revolution.

            But unlike his friends George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin, Paine kept demanding more revolutions even after the Americans won theirs. In 1787, he sailed for England and eventually began agitating for greater human rights there. When his 1791 book The Rights of Man attacked (among other things) the British monarchy, the English government charged Paine with treason. Paine fled to France, which was fighting its own revolution.

            There may have been something heady for Paine about living in the country of d’Holbach and company. That’s where he wrote The Age of Reason. The book came out in two parts -- the first in 1794, the second in 1796 -- and was an all-out attack on organized religion:

            “All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish [by Turkish, Paine means Muslim], appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind.”[2]

            Paine was especially hard on the main faith of Europe and America:

            “Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.”[3]

            And he was no fan of the Good Book:

            “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. . . . I sincerely detest it.”[4]

            When Paine returned to America in 1802, he found that his countrymen no longer remembered him as a hero but instead shunned him for denouncing their faith. He died seven years later, alone and nearly penniless.

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[1] Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I, Section 1 (1794), http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/singlehtml.htm

[2] Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I, Section 1

[3] Paine, The Age of Reason, Part II, Section 21

[4] Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I, Section 4

Those Faithless Frenchmen

The Secret Sinner

Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality.

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach[1]

            In 1764, Hume went to the hottest party in Paris. It was one of a series of exclusive dinners for eighteen of Europe’s smartest celebrities. The host -- Paul-Henry Thiry, a rich aristocrat with the title of Baron d’Holbach -- liked to toss around radical ideas with guests such as superstar actor David Garrick, scientist Joseph Priestly (who discovered oxygen) and diplomat Benjamin Franklin. When the talk turned to atheists, Hume -- possibly playing it cautious about revealing his own views -- said, “I do not believe in their existence. I never met with any.”

            “You are now at [a] table with seventeen,” d’Holbach answered.[2]

            In fact, France in the 1700s was the raw edge of unbelief.

            • D’Holbach’s friend, the intellectual Denis Diderot, went to prison for writing against religion.

            • Atheist writer Julien Offray de La Mettrie created anti-church books so scandalous that theists publicly burned them, and he was pressured to leave France. He landed in Holland but eventually had to get out of that country, too.

            • Donatien Alphonse François de Sade -- better known as the Marquis de Sade -- liked to beat women and girls with whips and drug them with poisons. He rationalized his abuses under the excuse that since there was no god to restrain him, he had the right to do anything he could get away with. (Some theists think that all atheists subscribe to that attitude.)

            But the most radical, at least in his opinions, may have been d’Holbach himself. Here’s d’Holbach on where religion came from: “It was man’s imagination, guided by his ignorance, under the influence of fear, that gave birth to his gods.”[3]

            D’Holbach on idiots:

            “The more men are deficient in knowledge and reason, the more zealous they are in religion.”[4]

            D’Holbach on beliefs:

            “Religious opinions are ancient monuments of ignorance, credulity, cowardice, and barbarism of their ancestors. . . . Modern religions are only ancient follies revived, or presented under some new form.”[5]

            Even though he had money and a high position in society, d’Holbach didn’t feel secure enough to let the world outside of his dinner parties know that these were his opinions, so he published them under other names. He was pretty smart to work that way, considering what had happened to Diderot and La Mettrie, and what would happen to an English-born American named Thomas Paine.

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[1] Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach, Le Bon Sens, ou Idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles (Good Sense, or Natural Ideas Opposed to Supernatural Ideas), section 206 (1772), http://www.reasoned.org/dir/lit/goodsens.pdf or http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7319/7319-h/7319-h.htm#2H_4_0034

[2] Samuel Romilly, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, quoted in The Oracle of Reason: Or, Philosophy Vindicated, uncredited (1843), http://books.google.com

[3] Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach, Système de la Nature (The System of Nature), Part II, Chapter VII, 1770, translated by Samuel Wilkinson (1820), http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8910/pg8910.txt

[4] d’Holbach, Le Bon Sens, ou Idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles (Good Sense, or Natural Ideas Opposed to Supernatural Ideas), section 138 (1772), http://www.ftarchives.net/holbach/good/gs2.htm#138

[5] d’Holbach, Good Sense, section 120, http://www.ftarchives.net/holbach/good/gs2.htm#120

The Scandalous Scot

Mild, Gentlemanly, and Dangerous

Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are any thing but sick men’s dreams.

David Hume[1]

            The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls Hume “the most important philosopher ever to write in English.”[2] He was also bad news for religion.

            Hume was born in 1711, and his life -- he was a college dropout who became a teacher, writer, government official, and librarian -- wasn’t terribly startling. Neither was his personality; he was a fairly mild-mannered gentleman.

            But his ideas were explosive.

            Take his 1748 essay, “Of Miracles,” which said that miracles don’t happen and that anyone who believes in them is fooling himself. As a result, “Of Miracles” says that Christianity doesn’t hold up: “The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.”[3] The essay is so dangerous that Christians still attack it.[4]

            Hume wanted a job as a college professor, but his opinions angered (or scared) university administrators into turning him down. He might have played safe and stayed away from controversy -- but every now and then, he turned out a book like The Natural History of Religion (1757) that infuriated theists all over again by saying that religion has no connection to rational thought or verifiable facts.

            Some of his works carried ideas so hot that he didn’t dare let them out. His Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) might have angered religious people into killing him if he hadn’t died three years earlier. It’s in that book that Hume wrote an opinion that could be his epitaph:

            “If the religious spirit be ever mentioned in any historical narration, we are sure to meet afterwards with a detail of the miseries which attend it. And no period of time can be happier or more prosperous, than those in which it is never regarded or heard of.”[5]

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[1] David Hume, The Natural History of Religion, Section 15 (1757), http://www.davidhume.org/texts/?text=nhr

[2] Uncredited, “David Hume,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website (May 15, 2009), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

[3] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 10 (“Of Miracles”) (1748), http://www.bartleby.com/37/3/15.html

[4] Michael Gleghorn, “Hume’s Critique of Miracles,” Probe Ministries website, 2010, http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.5924027/k.8661/Humes_Critique_of_Miracles.htm; Daniel Schrock, “Hume’s Argument Against Belief in Miracles,” Reformed Forum website (2009), http://reformedforum.org/files/2010/08/schrock_humes_article_against_miracles.docx; Arnie Gentile, “Miracles, Part 2: Defeating David Hume,” My Christian Apologetics website (November 8, 2009), http://mychristianapologetics.com/2009/11/08/miracle-part-2-defeating-david-hume.aspx

[5] David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm and http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/5/8/4583/4583.txt

The English Revolt

Deism, the Gateway Drug

            In the 1600s, England was becoming a safe place for dangerous viewpoints. Controversial English writers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were encouraging people to take their beliefs from facts, not faith -- and they got away with it. No mobs tore them apart or burned them at the stake, although some religious people might have wanted to.

            Deism was evolving around the same time. Deism is the belief that God or some other supernatural entity created the universe, put the laws of physics in charge of making it run, and shuttled off to some celestial retirement home. To deists, a rainbow is an optical phenomenon of light passing through water, not a symbol of the Lord’s covenant with the creatures of the Earth. The deist version of God didn’t throw down plagues, spark up miracles, or chat with prophets.

            Deism became popular among some people who valued rational thought so much that they couldn’t accept churchly preachings about a virgin birth, a snake talking Eve into biting an apple, and other impossible events. In England’s American colonies, deists included Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.

            Since deism denied that God did most of the things that the Bible says he did, it was something of a stepping-stone toward atheism. The leading deist (or possibly atheist) who took the next step was a skeptical Scot named David Hume.

Unbelief in the Age of Faith

Under the Church

There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.

Ruth Hurmence Green, atheist author[1]

            In the spring of 415, Egyptian philosopher Hypatia discouraged a local governor from becoming a Christian. A furious Christian mob retaliated by literally ripping Hypatia’s body apart.[2]

            That was just a taste of what would happen to anyone who opposed Christianity.

            You can say a lot of things about the Christian regimes that spread after the Roman empire collapsed in the fall of 476, but you have to give them credit for consistency. Century after century, they repressed any kind of open, public freethinking. As late as February 17, 1600, Catholic Church officials tied Italian astronomer-priest Giordano Bruno to a stake and burned him alive -- apparently just for denying the church’s Bible-based claim that the sun orbits the Earth.[3] (Thirty-three years later, they arrested Galileo for saying the same thing but didn’t burn him.) Between Hypatia and Bruno, the number of influential heretics and doubters in the wide and growing Christian world was roughly zero.

            Other parts of the planet don’t seem to have produced many prominent dissenters, either.

            • Starting in the early 600s, the prophet Muhammad and his followers spread Islam throughout the Middle East and surrounding regions -- and opposed atheism as passionately as the Christians.

            • Most of Asia doesn’t seem to have grown many scandalous atheist leaders or infamous atheist books, possibly because the question of whether or not gods existed wasn’t as big a deal there as it was in Europe or the Middle East. (See Chapter Four, if you haven’t already, for Asian beliefs that have an atheist or agnostic stripe.)

            • And if any atheists became influential in North America, South America or Africa before the 1700s, no one’s found much evidence of them.

            But you can’t keep a good heresy down forever.

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[1] Annie Laurie Gaylor, editor, Women Without Superstition: No Gods -- No Masters, Madison, Wisconsin, Freedom From Religion Foundation (1997)

[2] Socrates Scholastics, Ecclesiastical History (undated), http://www.cosmopolis.com/alexandria/hypatia-bio-socrates.html and http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/hypatia.html; Bishop John of Nikiu, Chronicle (undated), http://www.cosmopolis.com/alexandria/hypatia-bio-john.html

[3] Uncredited, “Giordano Bruno,” Catholic Encyclopedia website (undated), http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03016a.htm; uncredited, “Giordano Bruno,” The Galileo Project website (undated), http://galileo.rice.edu/chr/bruno.html

Rome vs. the Christians

The Christian Atheists

            Move forward about 300 years. The Romans have conquered Greece -- and, for that matter, the world from England to Egypt. And they’re steamed at some tribes who are, from the Roman viewpoint, atheists. The upstarts won’t treat the Roman emperor as a god-like being, don’t worship Jupiter or other Roman gods, and refuse to believe that the gods even exist.

            Some of these stiff-necked infidels were troublesome enough when they were simply Jews. But now, a splinter group of Jews, ex-Jews and others are following the teachings of a radical rabbi called Jesus. Even worse, they’re attracting more and more people to their atheistic ways, which they call Christian. The Romans tried to stop the Christians by tossing some of them to lions.

            The Romans didn’t think of the Christians as atheists for long, though. By 312 CE, when the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, the faith had soaked into the empire and soon became the official, government-sponsored religion.

            Unfortunately for atheists, the Christians were tougher on infidels than the Romans were.