The Downfall of God

In this second volume of his expansive history of atheism, S. T. Joshi examines the major trends in the last four centuries. The Scientific Revolution, culminating in the work of Galileo and Newton, expressed an increasing awareness of the natural functioning of the universe without the intervention of a god. In spite of the emergence of major religious figures in philosophy (Descartes, Spinioza) and literature (Pascal, Milton, Bunyan), the trend was toward secularism. This trend erupted in the French Enlightenment in the 18th century, with such titans as Voltaire, Diderot, Holbach, and Hume, some of whom were the first explicit atheists in Western history. In the 19th century, biblical criticism and the advance of science (especially Darwin’s theory of evolution) destroyed the remaining intellectual pillars supporting religion. This work reached a pinnacle in the 20th century, when atheism and secularism flourished in such figures as Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and, at the beginning of the 21st century, the New Atheists. Throughout this period, however, the forces of religion continued to wage a rearguard struggle to maintain their supremacy in government, society, and culture; but their efforts were increasingly feeble, as a plethora of literary, philosophical, and cultural figures shed religious belief and propounded a purely secular view of life. Joshi traces all these issues in detail, consulting primary and secondary sources to portray a Western civilization where secularism is now the dominant mode of thought and action.