lthough many scholars trace atheism, the disbelief in God or denial of his existence, back to eighteenth-century philosopher and historian David Hume or to Thomas Hobbes of the previous century, avowed atheism begins in 1782, the year that Matthew Turner, a physician from Liverpool, published his Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. Until Turner, atheists concealed their disbelief in God by pretending to be deists or by stating such disbelief in some esoteric form comprehended only by the initiate.
Although almost all major Victorian authors experienced major crises of faith, some ending agnosticism or idiosyncratic belief, few authors became declared atheists, like the poet James Thompson, though Ruskin and Carlyle both seem to have gone through an atheistic phase.
Two recent books on the subject may be consulted, David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell (Croom Helm, 1988) and Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), which emphasizes the sources of atheism in French rationalism.
Related Materials
- Working-class atheism, materialism, and evolution
- Atheistic satires on Christianity
A Bibliography of Available E-Texts
Charles Bradlaugh, A Few Words About the Devil (HTML at Infidels.org)
Charles Bradlaugh, A Plea for Atheism
Charles Bradlaugh, What Did Jesus Teach? (HTML at Infidels.org)
Charles Bradlaugh, Who Was Jesus Christ? (HTML at Infidels.org)
Percy B. Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism (HTML at Infidels.org)
Last modified 7 December 2008