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Imagine What happens when belief in God is removed — and what takes its place?
In this second part of our series on atheism, the Curious team invite us to meet some of the thinkers who profoundly shaped modern unbelief: Feuerbach, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud and Russell. Their challenges to Christianity went far beyond simply saying, “God does not exist.” Was God a projection of human longing? Was religion a tool of oppression? Could evolution remove the need for a Creator? And when Nietzsche announced that “God is dead”, was he celebrating the disappearance of Christianity — or warning the West about what might happen when the foundations beneath morality, meaning and purpose were removed?

The episode then turns its attention to the extraordinary rise — and subsequent fragmentation — of the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. Why did their books capture the imagination of so many people after 9/11, and why did a movement united by opposition to religion later find itself divided over morality, identity and what atheism actually stood for? Along the way the team ask an even more basic question: what does it actually mean to be an atheist?
From strong atheism and agnostic atheism to apatheism, misotheism and John Gray’s “seven types”, this episode asks whether atheism is simply the absence of belief — or whether every account of reality ultimately has to answer the deeper questions of meaning, morality, dignity, purpose and hope.

Further Reading
Here’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles, for and against, that compliment this episode….

https://sharedveracity.net/2021/12/11/how-believers-become-unbelievers-a-review-of-alec-ryries-emotional-history-of-doubt/

https://learn.ligonier.org/podcasts/5-minutes-in-church-history-with-stephen-nichols/history-of-atheism


What we’re reading?
As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy!

John Gray—
Seven Types of Atheism

Alec Ryri—
Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt

Alister McGrath—
The Twilight of Atheism

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