Awarded the first place in the 2024 Gospel and Academia Project essay contest for postgraduate students

Introduction

“People of all faiths and of none”—this phrase is commonly used in public discourse to indicate that a certain characteristic applies to individuals with diverse religious affiliations as well as to those who do not align with any particular religion. In his 2023 Christmas Broadcast, for instance, King Charles said: “To care for this creation is a responsibility owned by people of all faiths and of none.”¹ The inclusive intention underlying such a formulation is evident and commendable. But the wording also subtly insinuates a strict dichotomy—a fundamental distinction—between those who profess a religious faith and those who do not. It thereby reinforces the common misconception that ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ are traits exclusive to those who adhere to a religious tradition. However, individuals who do not identify with any particular religion also hold fundamental convictions, which are analogous to a form of belief. The acceptance of a priori starting points is a fundamental aspect of any worldview, whether religious or secular.² ‘Belief’, in this broader sense, is clearly a constant, not an option. Conversely, ‘unbelief’—understood as the rejection of religious truth claims—is by no means exclusive to those who identify as atheists, agnostics, or naturalists. After all, even the most religious people typically disbelieve a host of competing religious truth claims.³ Just as some form of belief is an inevitable component of any non-religious worldview, so too are the experiences of unbelief and doubt integral to the lives of the so-called ‘people of faith’.

What we can see, however, is that ‘unbelief’ is generally perceived and discussed quite differently from ‘belief’. This becomes particularly evident in the field of history. Everyone is aware of the fact that all religions are closely interwoven with the course of human history. We know that religious beliefs can change, spread, clash, or die out. Academic research into the history of religions constitutes an enormously wide field. Hundreds of departments are dedicated to the study of the history of Christianity alone, and there are likewise many researchers working on the history of Judaism, Islam, or any of the other major religious traditions. By contrast, the study of the history of non-religious worldviews does not have a similarly established academic tradition. Still, it goes without saying that those who today profess atheistic or agnostic outlooks, also draw on past experiences, insights, and theorems. Like religions, non-religious worldviews have evolved, meaning they have a history that can be studied and narrated. The rejection of religious claims is just as important a subject of historical inquiry as their acceptance.

In this essay, I want to explore what a Christian perspective can contribute to the historical study of unbelief. This is done with reference to scholarly debates on the existence of atheism in medieval Europe. Before turning to the current state of research, it is important to emphasize that historical scholarship—including intellectual or religious history—is not concerned with adjudicating the truth claims of the viewpoints under investigation. Rather, the aim is to illuminate and understand their changing manifestations over time.

History of Atheism

When we speak of atheism today, we usually take it to mean the conviction that God does not exist. Yet, as a look into the philosophical literature quickly reveals, defining atheism as a philosophical concept is much more complex.⁴ Considering the subject from a historical perspective, we can say that the term “atheism” stems from the ancient Greek ἄθεος, meaning “without God(s)”. In Antiquity, this word was used to denounce people who did not worship the gods or who seemed to have been forsaken by the gods.⁵ As a slur and invective, it labelled various forms of social, political, and religious deviance in the ancient world. It is thus not particularly surprising that early Christians were denounced as atheists too because they did not believe in the Greek and Roman gods.⁶ During the medieval centuries, no direct equivalent of the term was in use. The modern term in the European languages was coined in the 16th century. Through the inter-confessional debates between Protestants and Catholics, atheism once again became a widely used accusation and insult. However, during that time, the term hardly ever referred to direct denials of the existence of God. Instead, it denoted all kinds of ungodliness and impiety, and was polemically exploited to invoke a hostile and distorted image of the confessional opponent: a confrontational label rather than a representation of genuine convictions.⁷ Prior to the 18th century, there are no documented instances of individuals in Europe publicly declaring themselves to be atheists. It was only at the end of the Enlightenment period that atheism began to be conceptualized, openly affirmed, and defended as a philosophically coherent metaphysical position within Western philosophy.⁸ Thus, the development of atheism as a modern worldview, as it is commonly understood by people today, is deeply embedded in the social, political, and technical traits of modernity.⁹ However, adopting an atheistic position in the conceptual sense—i.e., disbelieving in the existence of God—is not necessarily dependent on discursive developments of the term “atheism” or paradigm shifts in Western philosophy, important though they are. This raises a question: Were there individuals before the Enlightenment period who rejected the existence of God or gods in a way comparable to modern atheists? No one today would simply state that the possibility of God’s nonexistence first needed to be ‘discovered’ in Western Europe. But the role of radical unbelief in the lived experiences of pre-modern people remains the subject of historiographical controversy. In this sense, the history of ‘atheism’ is still a field with many open questions.

Challenges to Traditional Historiography

The first attempts to write historical accounts of disbelief in the existence of God were undertaken in the 19th century, at a time when the term atheism had ceased to be a confrontational label and was instead proudly embraced by freethinking and progressive intellectuals. Just as early historical accounts of world religions usually originate from within those traditions, the initial efforts to historicize atheism were carried out by individuals who were themselves committed to this worldview. Notable examples include John Mackinnon Robertson (1856–1933), liberal politician and advocate of the contemporary secularist movement, and the critical intellectual Fritz Mauthner (1849–1923).¹⁰ As with confessional history, the agendas that motivated these authors led to significant advances in the exploration of uncharted territory, but they also introduced powerful biases, blind spots, and unquestioned assumptions. Ideas about the history of atheism, therefore, are shaped not only by the verified results of historical scholarship but also by conceptual presuppositions. They persist in a historiographical tradition that, until today, has largely evaded critical historical scrutiny.¹¹ This has to do with the fact that, under the auspices of an atheist worldview, atheism itself appears less as a historically contingent concept but rather as the discovery of a universal truth. The conviction that there is no God is frequently treated as equivalent to a scientific fact, with its eventual discovery seen as inevitable or simply a matter of time. Within the framework of a conceptual de-historicization of the atheist proposition, historiography on the subject gets reduced to the identification of figures from earlier periods who fully or partially grasped the same overarching reality. Similar to how one might assess how close ancient cultures came to today’s scientific consensus on the structure of the solar system, individuals and entire societies are judged as to how close they came to the modern realization that there is no God. It is obvious how this starting point can easily lead to distortions in the representation of historical processes: dissidents and doubters of all stripes are turned into (heroic) harbingers of the modern religious skepticism that ultimately prevailed.¹²The failure of the traditional secularization paradigm has become so evident that critiquing it is now an established academic topos.¹³ However, in the historiography on atheism, its typical assumptions remain alive and well.

This dynamic is particularly evident in the study of unbelief in pre-modern Europe. It is indisputable that societies in the so-called Middle Ages were deeply permeated by religious ideas. Not only ecclesiastical but also worldly leaders at the time extensively relied on God and the supernatural to legitimize their authority; religion played a central role in all areas of life, in politics, economics, the academy, military conflicts, and the exclusion or persecution of social groups. Yet does this dominance of religious ideas in the wider culture mean that belief in (a) God was inevitable? Historian Lucien Febvre (1878–1956) famously argued that atheism did not form part of the mentalities of pre-modern Europeans.¹⁴ In line with this view, it is regularly suggested that people living before the Enlightenment simply lacked the cultural foundation to “break free” from the predominant religious paradigms of their age.¹⁵ Even if the non-existence of God was raised as a theoretical possibility—some may think of the fool from Anselm of Canterbury’s Proslogion (1033–1109)—it was typically dismissed as the height of irrationality.¹⁶ So alien was it to the shared conceptual framework of the time that it seemed virtually inconceivable. It is thus not without justification that belief in God is often depicted as the default for medieval societies, while unbelief is portrayed as an anomaly. However, in recent decades, more and more historical evidence has challenged the validity of generalizing belief in God as a collective mentality for medieval or premodern people. Studies into popular religiosity reveal that many ordinary men and women in premodern Europe were far less in line with official religious dogma than previously expected.¹⁷ What is more, studies into theological, philosophical and spiritual discourses have demonstrated that radical unbelief, including questioning the existence of God, did form part of the lived experiences of individuals in the Middle Ages.¹⁸ This has led historians to oppose an underlying anthropology that denies premodern people the capacity for radical unbelief by insisting on defining the phenomenon exclusively in modern terms. Today, it is recognized that the traditional historiography on atheism and the Enlightenment has left us with an overly simplistic view, one that fails to capture the complexity of belief and unbelief, both in the past and present.¹⁹ The image of the Middle Ages as a monolithic ‘age of faith,’ characterized by uncritical credulity and universal belief, does not hold up to historical scrutiny. Nevertheless, this view persists in contemporary discourses on atheism. Could it be that it endures simply because it aligns too conveniently with the Enlightenment narrative of a modern, skeptical age emancipating itself from a collectively gullible and superstitious past?

A Christian Perspective

What can a Christian perspective contribute to the historical study of unbelief? First, it can offer a productive and balancing corrective. In the study of worldviews, research conducted within a closed bubble is always problematic. While modern historical scholarship often prides itself on rising above all ideological and political debates of the past, any honest scholar must acknowledge that no perspective is entirely neutral. Adopting methodological naturalism is often justified but the dominance of reductionist explanations of religious beliefs and practices has its own biases and can also hinder the analysis.²⁰ Dialogue and critical exchange are therefore essential. Just as the history of religious traditions benefits from being studied by skeptical outsiders, so too can the history of unbelief be enriched by the perspectives of scholars with a religious affiliation. In the historical and sociological study of religion, scholars who are convinced of (dare I say, believe in) the ultimate emptiness of all religious beliefs clearly make up the majority.²¹Therefore, those with differing perspectives—be they theologians, philosophers, or historians—should not hesitate to contribute to the discussion.²²

Second, Christians can approach the topic based on the rich tradition of theological anthropology.²³ It has already become clear that some of the weaknesses in existing historiography on the subject are rooted in anthropological presuppositions made within the unquestioned confines of materialism. Christian theology, with its creator-creation distinction, offers a separate framework for examining the subject. At the heart of the Christian interpretation of man is the complex dynamic between two focal points: first, the conviction that every human being is created in the image of God, and second, that all humanity is alienated from God and in need of salvation.²⁴ Regardless of varying theological emphases and interpretations, the tension between image-bearing and fallenness affirms a shared human condition that transcends cultural and historical boundaries. This condition is necessarily not static but dynamic (‘historical’) and thereby resists simple essentialist reductions.²⁵ Christian anthropology thus enables us to evaluate and study mankind’s religious capacities—including the ability to believe and disbelieve—as something personal and situational (i.e., historically contingent), while remaining embedded in the same overarching relational history between God and humanity. Such a perspective prevents anachronistic conflations without imposing an overly alien perspective on the past. Historical research, guided by this understanding, can illuminate how individuals in vastly different circumstances were nevertheless confronted with and reacted to similar existential questions. And not unlike us today, they were able to affirm or reject the various and conflicting explanations of the world they saw themselves confronted with. By recognizing both the inherent dignity and agency of all humans, Christian anthropology challenges any reductionist views of belief and unbelief in history, including the notion that individuals in earlier eras were inherently confined by religious paradigms.

Thirdly, doubt and unbelief can be examined from within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible itself bears testimony to a nuanced understanding of belief as part of the human psyche. In the Old Testament, the book of Job and the Psalms powerfully illustrate that people in the Biblical corpus experienced and expressed a lack of belief. Similarly, the New Testament demonstrates how unbelief and doubt could be very real for people at the time. Here, one only needs to think of the Apostle Thomas, of John the Baptist or the father of the boy possessed by an impure spirit.²⁶ According to a biblical understanding, doubts are part of the believer’s journey. The acceptance of what God has revealed is precisely not presented as easy or inevitable.²⁷ Of course, this does not make the believer an ‘atheist’ in the narrower sense, but he or she can sympathize with the reasons and feelings that lead people to question or deny the existence of God.²⁸

Finally, it must be observed that the histories of belief and unbelief are often treated as fundamentally separate narratives. In reality, however, they are far more intertwined than commonly assumed. From the very beginning, the history of Christianity has also been a continuous engagement with skepticism and the absence of faith.²⁹ This entanglement is an invitation to reflect on the continuities and discontinuities between secular and religious worldviews.³⁰ Many arguments developed in the speculative theology of medieval scholastics, for example, as well as attacks forged in interreligious and interconfessional polemics, were later turned against religious belief per se. Theological debates, not least during the medieval and early modern periods, thus acted as facilitators of the emergence of the atheistic worldview.³¹ Whether, as Tom Holland suggests, modern atheism should be understood as an inevitable outgrowth of Christianity remains an open question.³² What is evident, though, is that, in many respects, today’s atheists are likewise “swimming in Christian waters.”³³ Illuminating the complex interplay between belief and unbelief, as mediated through the historical interactions of theology and philosophy, is an essential task for the Christian scholar, whose unique perspective can enrich a discourse often dominated by self-identified atheists or materialists.³⁴

Contributing to the History of Unbelief from a Christian Perspective

Someone who has recently contributed to the history of unbelief from a Christian perspective is Alec Ryrie. He is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and has mostly worked on the history of Protestantism and the Reformation. In Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt Ryrie examines manifestations of unbelief and doubt in early modern English sources.³⁵ His approach is characterized by the fact that he does not elevate himself above the people he writes about; rather, he takes their unbelief seriously. He engages with the subject in a rigorous and methodologically precise manner. In the introduction to his book, Ryrie writes: “No one can claim to be fully objective on this subject. We were born into this world, and we are going to die here; we all have a stake in this and are forced to make our wager. My own position is that I am a believer with a soft spot for atheism. […] I hope readers will find that I have treated unbelievers with due respect – if not always with kid gloves. This is the reason why, throughout the book, I write about what ‘you’ or ‘we’ might have experienced as medieval or early modern believer or unbeliever […].³⁶ Through his approach of putting himself in the shoes of past unbelievers, Ryrie gains a new perspective on its history and can show how evolving manifestations of unbelief are shaped not only by philosophical and scientific insights but also by the raw and unpredictable flow of human emotions.

Ryrie’s findings were well received by historians specializing in early modern English history. As is often the case, outside of specialized fields, an individual historical study tends to attract limited attention. The book was noted by some atheist activists but dismissed as not really relevant. A book review in the New Humanist suggests that while it is commendable for the Christian historian to explore the history of unbelief, there is a lingering suspicion, as the reviewer notes, that his efforts are merely “a post facto justification from someone whose side has lost the argument.”³⁷ Others, however, have admitted that the history of unbelief remains an under-researched subject and that there is little interest among atheist scholars in scrutinizing the history of their own worldview. In a recent review, atheist blogger Tim O’Neill writes: “The history of unbelief needs more insightful books by good scholars and the professional polemicists of anti-theism are definitely not capable or even very interested in writing them. If some are going to be written by believers, it is good when they are authored by believers like Ryrie – ones who can be careful and fairly objective.³⁸

Christian historians should resist the temptation to study the history of atheism merely to defend their own beliefs and instead approach the subject for its intrinsic value. If they adhere to the highest standards of scholarly rigour, impartiality, and heuristic transparency, they can offer a valuable lens for exploring unbelief and doubt across different periods.  

Nuancing a Simplistic Enlightenment Narrative

Research by Ryrie and others into radical unbelief and religious skepticism in the Middle Ages is just one example of how historians over the past 50 years have challenged popular assumptions about the rise of European modernity. However, public discourse has yet to reflect these nuances. A simplistic Enlightenment narrative persists, according to which people in the 17th and 18th centuries first managed to “break free” from an all-encompassing religious paradigm. Thanks to advances in scientific knowledge and Enlightenment philosophy, so the idea goes, people were increasingly able to look behind the façade of nature: they recognized the processes and laws that govern our universe and began to understand that we do not live in some magical realm, but in a world that can be understood through science. As man’s scientific understanding of the world increased, the need for religious belief diminished. In this view, European history can be divided into a credulous, pre-modern (or “medieval”) era and a modern world defined, at least in theory, by rationalism and secularization. While this is obviously a huge generalisation, a similar understanding of European history is still accepted, even if implicitly, by many people today. Unbelief and religious skepticism are an integral part of the identity of modern people, whereas blind faith and religious naivety are seen as collective characteristics of a pre-modern past.

Against this generalization, it has been pointed out how deeply embedded the curiosity of some pioneers of Western science was in their (Christian) beliefs.³⁹ Advances in scientific knowledge do not automatically lead to a decline in religious faith, neither on an individual nor a societal level. Historically speaking, a stark juxtaposition between ‘religion’ and ‘science’ is evidently misleading.⁴⁰ However, the simplistic Enlightenment narrative outlined above demands more comprehensive scrutiny. A sole focus on individual Christian scholars in the past cannot achieve this, as it risks the same kind of anachronistic distortions found in the portrayal of pre-modern doubters and dissenters as heroic precursors of modern atheism. Historical narratives that emphasize the achievements of belief while overlooking the impact of doubt and unbelief fail to do justice to the complexity of Christian anthropology. Instead, recognizing the lack of belief as an integral part of individuals’ lived experiences—including in pre-modern periods—actually supports the value of a Christian perspective. From the standpoint of theological anthropology, one would expect that questions surrounding faith in (the existence of) God are—and have always been—deeply existential. Neither scientific discoveries, Enlightenment philosophy nor the historical self-assurance of modernity have made these questions any less meaningful. As in times gone by, we today must face and answer them for ourselves. Of course, questions of personal faith go beyond the scope of historical scholarship and scientific inquiry altogether. Still, priding oneself on modern skepticism and rationality while relegating religious belief to an unenlightened and irrational past is a stance that, ironically, requires a significant degree of ‘faith’ itself.

Recently, a number of public intellectuals have described themselves as “lapsed atheists” because they cannot live with the paradigms of a naturalistic worldview, or because they feel that denying the existence of God has led to personal, social or political shortcomings.⁴¹ To return to the quote mentioned at the beginning, these intellectuals no longer wish to identify as “nones”—people of “no faith.” Still, its proponents tend to shy away from saying what they do actually believe in. Their a-atheism is arguably more than merely the negation of a negation. Yet it remains uncertain whether adopting religious traditions and concepts while trying to remain neutral regarding their truth claims can provide a solid foundation for addressing life’s most existential questions. Beyond merely critiquing the limitations of other worldviews, here too Christianity offers an alternative worth considering: a living faith in a living God.

Thomas Kaal works as an Associate Lecturer at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he completed a PhD in Medieval History. Previously, he was a Teaching and Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on medieval debates about belief and unbelief, as well as interreligious relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims on the medieval Iberian Peninsula.

1. “King Charles’s Christmas Message in Full,” BBC News, December 25, 2023. [↩]
2. For an exploration of the role of foundational beliefs in epistemology, including the debates surrounding external world skepticism and foundationalism, see John Greco, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). [↩]
3. This fact forms the basis for the “one god further” statement for atheism, as popularized by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006), 47–53. [↩]
4. See Graham Robert Oppy, ed., A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy (Hoboken, Chichester: Blackwell, 2019). [↩]
5. See Jan N. Bremmer, “Atheism in Antiquity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 11–26. [↩]
6. Tim Whitmarsh, “‘Away with the Atheists!’ Christianity and Militant Atheism in the Early Empire,” in Christianity in the Second Century: Themes and Developments, ed. James Carleton Paget and Judith Lieu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 281–293. [↩]
7. Fraser Buchanan, English Literature and the Invention of Atheism, 1564–1611 (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2020), 77–84. [↩]
8. See, for example, Winfried Schröder, Ursprünge des Atheismus. Untersuchungen zur Metfaphysik- und Religionskritik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Quaestiones. Themen und Gestalten der Philosophie, 11 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1998). [↩]
9. See, most famously, Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Ethnographic studies show that doubting or denying the existence of god(s) can occur in very different contexts, see Ruy L. Blanes and Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic, Being Godless: Ethnographies of Atheism and Non-Religion (Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2017). [↩]
10. John M. Robertson, A Short History of Freethought: Ancient and Modern (London: Watts & Co., 1914–1915) and Fritz Mauthner, Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendlande (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1920–1923). [↩]
11. The first isolation and critical evaluation of the modern discourse on the history of atheism, particularly with regard to the medieval period, can be found in Dorothea Weltecke, Der Narr spricht: „Es ist kein Gott“: Atheismus, Unglauben und Glaubenszweifel vom 12. Jahrhundert bis zur Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2010). [↩]
12. See, for example, Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007), 6. [↩]
13. The literature the secularization paradigm is enormous and is already evaluated on a meta-level; refer to Adrian Pabst, “The Paradox of Faith: Religion beyond Secularization and Desecularization,” in The Deepening Crisis, ed. Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian, 157–182 (New York: New York University Press, 2011). [↩]
14. Lucien Febvre, Le problème de l’incroyance au XVIe siècle. La religion de Rabelais (Paris: Albin Michel, 1942). [↩]
15. John Sommerville, “Religious Faith, Doubt and Atheism,” Past & Present 128 (1990): 152–155. [↩]
16. Ronald L. Barnette, “Anselm and the Fool,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6, 4 (1975): 201–218. [↩]
17. See, among many others, John H. Arnold, Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (London: Bloomsbury, 2005). [↩]
18. See Susan Reynolds, “Social Mentalities and the Cases of Medieval Scepticism,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1 (1991): 33 and Dorothea Weltecke, Der Narr spricht: „Es ist kein Gott“, 369–448. [↩]
19. John H. Arnold, “Believing in Belief: Gibbon, Latour and the Social History of Religion,” Past & Present 260 (2023): 236–268. [↩]
20. Brad S. Gregory, “The Other Confessional History: On Secular Bias in the Study of Religion,” History and Theory 45, 4 (2008): 132–149. [↩]
21. Sometimes a personal commitment to disbelief is seen as a prerequisite for a serious comparative study of religion, see Emil M. Cioran, “Beginnings of a Friendship,” in Myths and Symbols: Studies in Honor of Mircea Eliade, ed. Joseph M. Kitagawa and Charles H. Long (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 414: “It is impossible to imagine a specialist in the history of religions praying. Or, if indeed he does pray, he thus betrays his teaching […]”. [↩]
22. See, for instance, David W. Bebbington, Patterns in History: A Christian Perspective on Historical Thought, 4th ed. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018). [↩]
23. Joshua R. Farris and Charles Taliaferro, eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). [↩]
24. See, most importantly, Genesis 1:27. For commentary on this verse, see Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2001), 70–73. For various theological approaches to the imago Dei, refer to David Tarus, “Imago Dei in Christian Theology: The Various Approaches,” Online International Journal of Arts and Humanities 5 (2016): 18–25. For a historical overview of soteriology, see Justin S. Holcomb, Christian Theologies of Salvation: A Comparative Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2017). [↩]
25. See Ecclesiastes 3:11; Romans 1:20; Acts 17:16–31. There is no need to pin the doctrinal affirmation of anthropological universals against historicity, compare Gordon D. Kaufman, “The ‘Imago Dei’ as Man’s Historicity,” The Journal of Religion 36, 3 (1956): 139–205. [↩]
26. See John 20:24–31; Matthew 11:1–15; Mark 9:14–29. [↩]
27. See 2 Corinthians 10:5; Hebrews 11. [↩]
28. Stephen Strehle, “The Doctrine of Faith, Doubt, and Assurance: A Historical, Philosophical, and Theological Analysis,” Religions 15, 8 (2024): 960. [↩]
29. For the early Christian period, see, for instance, Benjamin Schliesser, “Shades of Faith: The Phenomenon of Doubt in Early Christianity,” Religious Studies 59, 3 (2023): 479–494. For the Middle Ages, refer to Frances Andrews, Charlotte Methuen, and Andrew Spicer, eds., Doubting Christianity: The Church and Doubt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). [↩]
30. See, for example, Morteza Hashemi, Theism and Atheism in a Post-Secular Age (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). [↩]
31. Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 14. [↩]
32. Tom Holland, interview by Andrew Brown, Premier Christianity, September 27, 2019. [↩]
33. Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (New York: Basic Books, 2019). [↩]
34. See in a truly idiosyncratic fashion, Slavoj Žižek, Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). [↩]
35. Alec Ryrie, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019). [↩]
36. [2] Ibidem, 11. [↩]
37. Bill Cooke, “Book Review: Unbelievers,” New Humanist, August 17, 2020. [↩]
38. Tim O’Neill, “Review – Alec Ryrie Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt,” History for Atheists, December 2, 2023. [↩]
39. See Clive S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (London: Collins, 1982), 110 and John Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Oxford: Lion Books, 2009), 20–21. [↩]
40. See, among others, Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). [↩]
41. Carl R. Trueman, “In Our Chaotic Age, Some Atheists Are Rethinking Secularism,” First Things, July 27, 2023. [↩]