Atheism: No God, What Now?

Origin Story

This time: the tumultuous history of Atheism. The concept has been around since the ancient world but for centuries it was demonised and suppressed. Who could believe such a thing? Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey track the ultimate heresy from the earliest days of western civilisation to the freethinkers of the Enlightenment and the bare-knuckle oratory of the New Atheists.

What’s the difference between atheism, agnosticism, secularism and deism? What does it stand for? Can it explain the world while also satisfying the need for meaning and community? Was totalitarianism the monstrous zenith of atheism or just a substitute religion?

Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, Percy Shelley, Albert Camus, Richard Dawkins and more feature in the story of the fight for the right not to believe in God.

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• “Every day around the world it is incalculable the amount of damage done by religions saying; you can’t go there, you can’t marry them, you can’t say that.” – Ian Dunt
• “Declaring oneself an atheist is still a bold claim.” – Dorian Lynskey
• “It’s quite a humbling experience to think it’s taken us 1,500 years to get back to the position we were in in 300AD.” – Ian Dunt

Reading List:

Julian Baggini – Atheism: A Very Short Introduction

David Berman – A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell

Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus

John Gray – Seven Types of Atheism

Christopher Hitchens – God Is Not Great

Christopher Hitchens (ed.) – The Portable Atheist

Susan Jacoby – Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Necessity of Atheism

James Thrower – A Short History of Western Atheism

Tim Whitmarsh – Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production and music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Episode art by James Parrett. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

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