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Religious Skepticism, Atheism, Humanism, Naturalism, Secularism, Rationalism, Irreligion, Agnosticism, and Related Perspectives) Unbelief (Religious Skepticism, Atheism, Humanism, Naturalism, Secularism, Rationalism, Irreligion, Agnosticism, and Related Perspectives) A Historical Bibliography Compiled by J. Gordon Melton ~ San Diego ~ San Diego State University ~ 2011 This bibliography presents primary and secondary sources in the history of unbelief in Western Europe and the United States, from the Enlightenment to the present. It is a living document which will grow and develop as more sources are located. If you see errors, or notice that important items are missing, please notify the author, Dr. J. Gordon Melton at [email protected]. Please credit San Diego State University, Department of Religious Studies in publications. Copyright San Diego State University. ****************************************************************************** Table of Contents Introduction General Sources European Beginnings A. The Sixteenth-Century Challenges to Trinitarianism a. Michael Servetus b. Socinianism and the Polish Brethren B. The Unitarian Tradition a. Ferenc (Francis) David C. The Enlightenment and Rise of Deism in Modern Europe France A. French Enlightenment a. Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) b. Jean Meslier (1664-1729) c. Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789) d. Voltaire (Francois-Marie d'Arouet) (1694-1778) e. Jacques-André Naigeon (1738-1810) f. Denis Diderot (1713-1784) g. Marquis de Montesquieu (1689-1755) h. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) B. France and Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century a. August Comte (1798-1857) and the Religion of Positivism C. France and Unbelief in the Twentieth Century a. French Existentialism b. Albert Camus (1913 -1960) c. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) United Kingdom A. Deist Beginnings, Flowering, and Beyond a. Edward Herbert, Baron of Cherbury (1583-1648) b. Charles Blount (1654-1693) c. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) d. Matthew Tindal (1657-1733) e. Thomas Chubb (1679-1747) f. John Toland (1670-1722) g. Anthony Collins (1676-1729) h. Peter Annet (1693-1769) i. David Hume (1711-1776) B. Unitarianism in Great Britain a. Joseph Priestley (1733- 1804) C. Unbelief in England—the Nineteenth Century a. Percy Shelley (1792-1822) and the Romantics b. William Godwin (1756-1836) c. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) d. Richard Carlile (1790-1843) e. George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906) and Austin Holyoake (1827-1874) f. The Agnostic Tradition g. Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) and the National Secular Society h. Annie Besant D. Twentieth-Century Humanism and Atheism in England a. John Mackinnon Robertson (1856-1933) b. Joseph Martin McCabe (1867-1955) c. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) d. Antony Flew (1923-2010) E. Unbelief in Australia and New Zealand Germany A. Enlightenment Beginnings a. Gottfried Wilhem von Leibnez (1646–1716) b. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) c. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) d. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) e. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) B. Unbelief in Germany in The Nineteenth Century a. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) b. The Young Hegelians c. Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) d. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) e. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) C. Karl Marx and Marxism a. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) b. Developing Marxism—the Soviet Union and China c. Marxism D. Freud, Psychoanalysis, and Religion North America A. American Freethought—Eighteenth-Century Deism a. John Adams and Abigail Adams b. Ethan Allen c. Benjamin Franklin d. Thomas Jefferson e. James Madison f. James Monroe g. Thomas Paine h. Elihu Palmer i. George Washington B. Unitarianism and Universalism a. Benjamin Rush b. William Ellery Channing c. John Murray and Judith Sargent Murray d. Hosea Ballou e. Theodore Parker f. Free Religious Association g. Francis Ellingwood Abbot and the American Liberal Union C. Nineteenth-Century American Freethought a. Abner Kneeland b. Robert Green Ingersoll c. D.M. Bennett D. Freethought Women Leaders and Writers E. Twentieth Century a. Individual Freethinkers/Atheists i. Joseph Lewis ii. Clarence Darrow iii. Marcet Haldeman and Emanuel Julius iv. Mangasar Magurditch Magasarian v. Charles Lee Smith and the AAAA vi. H.L. Mencken b. Unbelief in the Jewish Community i. Felix Adler and Ethical Culture a. Eustace Haydon b. Herbert Wallace Schneider c. Joseph L. Blau d. Howard B. Radest ii. Horace Meyer Kallen iii. Jewish Humanist Movement c. Atheism in North America—Post World War II i. Madalyn Murray O’Hair and American Atheists ii. African-American Unbelief a. W. E. B. Du Bois b. Hubert H. Harrison d. Humanism—North America i. The Humanist Manifestos ii. John Dewey iii. Sidney Hook iv. Corliss Lamont v. Paul Kurtz vi. The Chicago School F. Canada Science and Pseudoscience A. 1800-1960 B. Darwin, Evolution, and Creationism C. 1960-Present D. The Magicians: Houdini to Randi Contemporary Unbelief A. Current Advocates B. The Death of God Movement C. Neo-Atheism a. Major Exponents b. New Atheism and the Community of Unbelief c. Muslim Critiques of Neo-Atheism d. Christian Critiques of Neo-Atheism D. Global Perspectives E. Unbelief—Sociological and Demographic Studies ****************************************************************************** Introduction This bibliography is focused on the English-language literature generated by and representative of the history of Unbelief in the Western World from the sixteenth century to the present. While there is a longer tradition of non-theistic belief reaching back to the ancient Mediterranean Basin, especially ancient Greece, such belief was largely nonexistent in the Middle Ages and had to struggle to reassert itself. As James Turner noted in his study of Unbelief [in God] in America, until the sixteenth century questioning the belief in God was extremely difficult, if not impossible, for any length of time. Disbelief in God emerged somewhat tentatively in the seventeenth century and could be found among the elites of the intellectual world through the eighteenth century. Through the nineteenth century, the situation changed significantly and the first atheists, even a few atheist groups, emerged in public. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it was, as Turner put it, “a fully available option.” As the twenty-first century begins, Unbelief (operating under a number of names) has become a dominant option for thinking about the world in several countries and a prominent if still a minority option throughout the Western world. Its core spokespersons are enthusiast about its future and believe that (1) atheism to be the coming majority way of comprehending the universe and (2) that belief in God will drop by the wayside as a basis for organizing human society. The steps by which the Western World has reached such a situation—in which large numbers of people can celebrate Unbelief, work for its coming, and fervently believe in its future—now stands as one of the great stories in intellectual history. That story begins in the sixteenth century where, in the context of the Protestant Reformation, a spectrum of more radical reformers appeared, including a small number who began to challenge core items constituting what had been orthodox Christian faith since the fourth century C.E. Most notable among the radical reformers was one Michael Servetus (1511-1553), who wrote a book on the Christian doctrine of the Triune god, which he found without biblical support. He compared the Triune God with the three-headed hound of Hell. He also joined the Anabaptists in their subversive attack upon the then existing institutional church by challenging the practice of infant baptism. For his effort, he would be arrested, tried, and executed. Servetus’ challenge to the state church—both its theology and practice—would find its life in the circle of inquirers that formed around the Italian Faustus Socinus (aka Fausto Paolo Sozzini, 1534-1604), a small groups of Eastern European believers known as the Polish Brethren, and the original Unitarian church in Transylvania. Together, these variant strains of non-Trinitarian Christianity became known as the Socinian movement, and from Eastern Europe, Socinian thought would spread to Western Europe and find a home in England among both left-wing Puritans (the Baptists) and within the Church of England where the attempt to unite Protestants and Catholics through the Prayer Book, left space for dissenting theological speculation among those who found both perspectives lacking. Meanwhile, as Unitarianism penetrated church life in England, a new form of dissent emerged in Germany. Rosicrucianism, the first form of post-Reformation Esotericism to gain a following, would provide a very different challenge to the dominance of Christianity, but would, if more indirectly, challenge the doctrine of the Trinity. It did not so much directly challenge the doctrine, as ignore the Trinity in its affirmation of a single transcendent and somewhat distant deity. Early circles of discourse for the discussion of the new Esotericism would give way in the eighteenth century to the speculative Masons and its Great Architect of the Universe. Freemasonry and Unitarianism provided the main currents upon which the next major challenge to the pervasive Trinitarian theology of both Catholic and Protestant churches—Deism. Deism would draw out the implication of the esoteric model of the deity—utterly transcendent and distant from creation—especially as such a deity related to prayer, miracles and providential care. One could perceive an important difference between the Deists and their Unitarian predecessors. That difference would make them the first upon whom their critics
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