atheism
The theory or belief that God does not exist. The word comes (in the late 16th century, via French) from Greek atheos, from a- ‘without’ + theos ‘god’.
Necessity of Atheism
A prose pamphlet by P. B. Shelley and his friend T. J. Hogg, published anonymously at Oxford, 1811. Using the sceptical arguments of Hume and Locke, the authors smartly demolish the grounds for a ...
Diagoras
Of Melos, lyric poet active in Athens in the last decades of the 5th cent. bc (Hermippus fr. 43 K–A; Aristophanes Aves 1071ff., Nubes 828ff.). Renowned for his ‘atheism’ (Cicero ...
Marxism and Islam
Diverse forms of Marxism agree that social ills result from oppression of the poor by the wealthy (class conflict) but differ on strategies to overcome poverty and establish social harmony. Marxism ...
William Hammon
(probably a pseudonym: fl. 1782)William Hammon was one of the two putative writers of the first English work of open, avowed atheism, An Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to ...
Thomas Jefferson Hogg
(1792–1862),educated at Oxford with Shelley and sent down with his friend on the publication of the latter's Necessity of Atheism. His Life of Shelley appeared in 1858. Peacock, in his Memorials of ...
Daniel Scargill
(fl. 1669)We know little of Daniel Scargill's life. According to Venn, he was a native of Cambridgeshire, who was admitted sizar at Corpus Christi, Cambridge in 1661, matriculating in ...
Paul Rée
(1849–1901).German philosopher, noted for his radical empiricism and uncompromising rejection of metaphysics and religion. The son of a wealthy Prussian landowner, Rée fought in the Franco-Prussian ...
Nicolas Boindin
(1676–1751).French scholar and man of letters, elected in 1706 to the Académie des Inscriptions. A sceptical philosophe, he frequented cafe society, supported the modernes [see Querelle], and ...
freethinkers
People whose opinions and ideas, especially on matters of religion, are not influenced by canon law or dogma. The original freethinkers were part of a post-Reformation movement that sought to ...
Athenagoras
(2nd cent.), Apologist. His ‘Apology’ or ‘Supplication’, addressed c.177 to Marcus Aurelius and his son, sought to rebut the current calumnies against the Christians, namely atheism, Thyestian ...
Clandestine Literature
In order to understand the cultural and intellectual context in which clandestine philosophical literature circulated, we must first call into question the notion of “crisis of conscience” proposed ...
Anthony Florian Madinger Willich
(d. 1804)Anthony Willich was born at Rössel, Ermland, in East Prussia (now Retzel, Poland) and died in February 1804 at Kharkov in the Ukraine. He was a doctor who ...
Tinkler Ducket
(c.1711–c.1774)Tinkler Ducket was admitted to Caius College, Cambridge as a sizar in 1727 at the age of 16. He was the son of Henry Ducket, a farmer of Spixworth ...
Sylvain Maréchal
(1750–1803).French dramatist and publicist whose early works—for which he suffered—hinted heavily at the atheism he would later preach openly. An early Jacobin, he was ardent in the popular cause ...
Matthew Turner
(c.1715–c.1790)Matthew Turner seems to have spent much of his active life in Liverpool. Most of the meagre information we have about him comes from a long note, by Thomas ...
J—h T—r
(fl. 1728)J—h T—r are the initials of a putative atheistic and mortalistic figure, active in Dublin in 1728–9. Our information on him comes from Wetenhall Wilkes, a clergyman based ...
John Leonard Watling
(1923–2004)John Watling was born in East Sheen, near London on 18 December 1923 and died at his home in Petersham, Surrey on 10 July 2004. His mother, taking God ...
John Richardson
(fl. 1797–1836)John Richardson was born in Aberdeen around 1775. In 1794 he was in Germany, where he enrolled at the University of Jena on 20 November of that year ...
