Atheism

Atheism is the non belief in, or the positive denial of, the existence of a God or gods.
Western atheism has its roots in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, but did not emerge as a distinct world-view until the late Enlightenment. Criticism of Christianity became increasingly frequent in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and England. The first known atheist who bluntly denied the existence of any god, was Jean Meslier, a French priest who lived in the early 18th century. In 1785 the first ever openly atheistic book was published in Britain by Liverpool physician Matthew Turner. It was titled Answer to Dr Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. A few years later the French Revolution took atheism outside the salons and into the public sphere.
Three more landmarks in the progress of atheism followed in the first half of the 19th century:
(a) 1810 Two students at Oxford, Percy Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg sent a radical anti religion pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism, to the heads of the colleges. Both students refused to answer questions about the pamphlet and were sent down.
(b) 1835 David Frederick Strauss, a 27-year-old German writer and theologian, published his critique The Life Of Jesus. In his controversial book, he dismissed the supernatural elements of the Gospel as a collection of historical myths created by popular legend and argued that it was the early church, which made Jesus into the Messiah. Therefore, he surmised, the Gospel accounts couldn't be taken as fact as they were written by people expressing their own faith. The Life Of Jesus aroused a great deal of passion from the church and Strauss received much criticism for his scepticism.
1841 The German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, published The Essence of Christianity, which promoted humanistic atheism. The book argued that mankind had invented God as a spiritual answer to their needs, hopes and fears. His work was a great influence on Karl Marx.
The 20th century saw the political advancement of atheism, spurred on by interpretation of the works of Marx and Engels. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union and other communist states promoted state atheism and opposed religion, often by violent means
A 2005 survey published in Encyclopedia Britannica found that the non-religious made up about 11.9% of the world's population, and atheists about 2.3%. This figure did not include those who follow atheistic religions, such as some Buddhists.