Historical Atheists - Freethinkers Doubters Deists Agnostics

Charles Darwin

(1809-1882)

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection turned nineteenth-century Christian worldviews upside down. Contradicting the Bible's book of Genesis, the theory claims that living things developed without plan or guidance over untold millions of years. Belief in evolution can coexist with belief in God, yet atheists often credit Darwin with making their breaks with religion possible. Darwin himself slowly abandoned his Christian beliefs, both because of the death of his daughter and the cruelty and wastefulness he observed in nature. By the end of his life, he was a firm agnostic, though he always used great discretion in speaking of his own beliefs.

In his own words: "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have created the ichneumeonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice."

Thomas Paine

(1737-1809)

Before Paine, atheism was an idea that most of the upper classes kept to themselves. Thomas Paine took radical thinking about politics and religion out of the salons of the rich, then distilled it into works anyone could understand. Paine argued convincingly for the American Revolution in his bestselling pamphlet Common Sense. His Rights of Man helped to inspire the French Revolution. Paine was a deist, not an atheist; he penned his most controversial work, The Age of Reason, with the aim of purifying, not destroying, religion. Nonetheless, over centuries The Age of Reason been a rallying cry in support of rationalism over blind faith.

In his own words: "Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave and seeks to pursue us into eternity."

Baron Paul Heinrich Dietrich D'Holbach

(1723-1789)

A leading figure of the French Enlightenment, D'Holbach is probably the first modern thinker to declare himself explicitly an atheist--as opposed to being called an atheist by one's enemies. At his Paris home, D'Holbach entertained such luminaries as Denis Diderot, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Joseph Priestley, and even Benjamin Franklin. D'Holbach wrote some 400 articles for Diderot's Encyclopedie, a mammoth reference work slyly crammed with ideas contrary to orthodoxy.

In his own words: "If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods, that fancy, enthusiasm or deceit adorned them, that weakness worships them, that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them, in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests."

Thomas Hobbes

(1588-1579)

As a political scientist, Hobbes saw primitive life as a "war of all against all." People could protect themselves from this war only by forming political communities. As a philosopher, Hobbes was the first Westerner to revive the ancient tradition of thoroughgoing materialism, rejecting any hint of the supernatural. In his masterwork, Leviathan, he not only introduced concepts that would influence future political thought but stated his materialism in unmistakable terms.

In his own words: "The universe, the whole mass of all things that are, is corporeal, that is to say body and have the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is a body and that which is not body, is no part of the universe. And because the universe is all, that which is no part of it, is nothing and consequently...nowhere."

Epicurus

(341-270 BCE)

Epicurus is perhaps the best known of a coterie of ancient Greek philosophers who focused on matters of this world, cared little for the gods, and rejected the idea of immortality. Epicurus authored some 300 works; his masterpiece, On Nature, presented many of his atheistic ideas. Epicurus led a community of thinkers who focused on the pleasures of knowledge, friendship, and bodily experience. He taught that for a good life, we must overcome fear of pain and fear of the gods.

In his own words: "Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

Who Will Speak for Atheists?

As religion takes center stage in American public life, non-believers are left in the wings Read next feature >