The languages of evangelical duties used by these people to justify their interference with other people’s values is very alarming. The idea that any ‘Church’ has a duty to act in the public sphere is a pre-modern anachronism – if one church claims it, so will the others. It would be best such people kept their fantasies of revelation to themselves.

Locke’s arguments attempted to carve out a sanctum for private belief within his model of a civil society focused on industrious improvement. He did not celebrate diversity for its own sake. The arguments he used against Catholics and atheists would I have no doubt have been turned against Islam and other ‘faiths’ today.

There are some interesting implications of this. One, clearly the early years of Christianity were very diverse – all sorts of communities adapted their ‘faith’ to their own circumstances and revelations. There was no one foundation – but lots of religious experimentation. Second – the idea of a revealed, inerrant, inspired revelation from God is clearly untenable. As the biblical critics of the seventeenth century showed the surviving text of the scriptures is a copy of a copy of a copy – inevitably it is full of mistakes, contradictions, mistranslations etc. It’s a bit like an instruction manual damaged by damp and poor preservation – its not going to help much.

Both works were exceptionally irreligious: indeed they dismissed Judaism, Christianity and Islam as false religions designed by tyrannical legislators to gain personal power and advantage. All religious ceremony, scripture and doctrine is condemned as false and fraudulent. The motivations for belief are material fear and ignorance. Institutional religion is pathological. These were sceptical and controversial works, only eventually published much later in the eighteenth and nineteenth century (a very modern edition of book works can be found at

www.infidels.org/library/historical/unknown/three_impostors.html

http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/jasher/home.html

He was imprisoned for his troubles.

Scholars around the world are already issuing claims and counter claims regarding the manuscripts authenticity and potentially destructive implications for the history of Christianity. The Vatican has pronounced that the text, which transcribes conversations between Jesus and Judas suggesting that the betrayal was part of a divine mission, is dangerous. The reputation of the lost gospel has long been known to scholars of the early church since it was described by Irenaeus of Lyon in his massive polemic against heresy composed in around 180. Since Irenaeus reports the existence of such a gospel in use by a brand of gnostic Christian sect known as the Cainites it is likely the work was composed in Greek perhaps c. 130. These early beliefs are recorded by Irenaeus as follows – ‘They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion’. In England many newspapers eagerly awaited the publication – even titles like the Sun and the Mail included anxious reports.

The timing of the publication cleverly took advantage, not simply of the festival of Easter, but also of the release of the long awaited film of the bestselling novel the da vinci code. It seems the world cannot have too much of such conspiracy theories. The genuine interest exposes a good deal of the ignorance mainstream Christians have in regard of the text of the Bible. As any scholar of the early church will confirm, the origins of Christianity are not to be found in the claim of one church, one truth, one scripture. In fact Christianity after the death of Christ was a muddle of completing sects and communities, very often with their own sacred texts and sets of doctrines, rituals and sacraments. The version of orthodoxy which defined which books of revelation were sacred and which were apocryphal was a political decision taken at the Council of Laodicea late in the fourth century. As many of the dramatic discoveries of the Nag Hammadi texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls have established early Christianity was much more diverse and exotic than the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions would have the rest of us believe.

About 300 years ago, a very learned but profoundly irreligious scholar, John Toland announced the discovery of another ancient text to Christian Europe with the intention of shaking the foundations of mainstream piety. Well versed in the writings of the early Church fathers like Irenaeus, Toland had long been infamous for passing off early heretics as pious Christians – his point was to expose contemporary Churchmen as fraudulent impostors imposing on the laity and covering up the true Gospel. Toland haunted the archives and libraries of wealthy men. In 1709 rooting through the collection of Eugene of Savoy (defender of Protestant Europe alongside our more famous Duke of Marlborough) he encountered a work which claimed to be the lost Gospel of Barnabas, a version of the early Gospel used by the Jewish Christians known as the Ebionites. A decade later, having provoked most of his Christian contemporaries, Toland published an edition of the work – Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile and Mahometan Christianity (1718). It provoked a fury of responses from around Christian Europe – even Muslim scholars in Constantinople were keen to read it too. Toland claimed that the Gospel proved early Christianity was a diverse and tolerant faith, that Christ was a man rather than a part of the Trinity, and that religion was more about virtue and morality than doctrine and persecution. Rather cheekily, Toland suggested that the three great religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam, were really different aspects of the same faith simply adjusted to different historical and cultural circumstances.

For Toland, the point of publication was to challenge the stranglehold the Churchmen of his day had on claims to religious orthodoxy – if he could show that in the times of Christ there was much more tolerance and diversity of faith then he hoped to reform the practices of his own times. He knew that there was a sense in which the general public were fascinated with ancient documents, fragments of what might be called the title deeds of their beliefs. Publishers today, no doubt, recognise that this same fascination will make them vast profits. Contemporary religious authorities are always profoundly sceptical of the value of such textual disinterment – however, if, like John Toland hoped, the revelation of new revelations makes modern believers think a little harder about why they believe, and perhaps more importantly what they believe, then perhaps there will be a little more tolerance of diversity in the world?

I’m going to try and use this blog to write a short book which proposes to explore the grounds for believing that thinking about the history and nature of ‘atheism’ is a powerful and timely response to the current ‘religion wars’ confronting global security. At a moment when political and social order are threatened by fundamentalisms in a range of ‘faiths’, when domestic controversy is driven by squabbles over the symbols and ritual of religious identity (the veil in schools and the cross on planes), or by debate about the creation of ‘faith’ schools and their provisional exemption from anti-discrimination laws – it may be that of the secular atheist is the only position capable of seeing a way through the conflict and contradiction of the contemporary situation. The foundation of the book will be an historical account of the key issues.

Section 1: Who?

Every one thinks they know what an atheist is: an evil person, who in denying God, probably lives an immoral life driven by self interest and greed. The label has been one applied to many thinkers in the past and present – it’s a disabling and dangerous identity to adopt. This book will explore why people have thought this a risk worth taking. The current perception is that the forefront of the assault upon a religious worldview is a product of the achievements of modern science – men like Dawkins, Dennett, and Wolpert – have turned the sharp edge of scientific knowledge against the mysteries of faith. Whether challenging notions of divine revelation, the immortal soul, or a transcendent God) or the consequent ceremonies and rituals of religious practice this polemic has been firmly rooted in the understandings of a modern scientific worldview. Many, therefore, regard the question of atheism as simply a battle between faith and science, and, as such, a reasonably recent thing. Section 1 will explore then the traditions of naturalism that underpinned the rejection of God and organised religion.

The Kingdom of Darkness will explore the much longer and more varied traditions of atheism in the West.

• The Classical Tradition: It was Seneca, in a perennially popular aphorism – post mortem, nihil est, mors est nihil (after death there is nothing, death is nothing) – who defines some of the earliest critiques of public religion. The book will explore the naturalism of classical thinkers like Epicurus, Lucretius, the Stoics and Cicero. The relationship between this Hellenism and early Christianity will be explored: it is a little known irony that the first reception of Christianity dismissed the faith as ‘atheist’. The classical discussion not only of the fictional nature of the Gods, but also of the political criticism of organised religion, will be significant to establishing a central point about the relationship between criticism of the heavens and political commitments.

• The Enlightenment Tradition: key in laying the groundwork for much modern atheism was the materialism of men like Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and Spinoza. These men undertook the rejection of scriptural revelation, miracles, mysteries and the ‘magic’ of priestly ritual and sacramental beliefs. The more philosophical traditions of Enlightenment thinkers like Hume, D’Holbach and La Mettrie will also be examined.

• The rise of modern paganism: this sub-section will review the growth of a more profound and hostile public atheism in the nineteenth century – the debates prompted by Darwin are merely one element – more significantly the achievements of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud – all offered sets of arguments, metaphysics and evidence that contradicted ‘Faith’ without simply invoking the master narrative of a ‘scientific’ worldview.

Section 2: What? No religion at all, is better than a mischievous religion:

It is probably an uncontroversial statement to make – but atheists have never had a good press – before the nineteenth century atheists were living under conditions of profound censorship, persecution, ultimately in fear of execution. Even today modern polemicists are regarded as wild eyed and, in some sense, fanatical polemicists displaying overweening hubris in their attacks on the pious and Godly.

As a preamble to establishing Kingdom of Darkness , the book will explore the origins of this bad reputation, and explain why, despite the threat of social stigma, prosecution and even death, many (in history and today) continue to hold their beliefs with conviction and sincerity.

• Inventing God and killing priests: The fundamental starting point of the atheist position is that all religious beliefs and institutions are conventional – that is, that religion is man made, and that the consequences of this cause a number of social and political problems.
  

• Against Ghostly government: this sub-section explores the arguments against the delusion and terror prompted by the doctrines of the soul, heaven and hell, ghosts, purgatory etc.
  

• The reasonable mind: much of the argument about the invention of God rests upon an understanding of human psychology. From the ancients to modern scientists, the suggestion that a disposition to religious belief is hardwired into the human condition, has been the basis of the critique of religious truth. The section will explore the core conviction that as the nature of the human mind is the origins of most public religion, so is it the agent of disenchantment.
  

• Dreams and revelations: one of the claims made by most faiths, and vigorously disputed by atheists, is that God has spoken either through the media of revealed books or directly (and privately) to prophets. This section will review arguments against the three great religious texts.
  

• Which religion? One of the early planks of a naturalistic understanding of religion was the acknowledgement that all religions claimed truth status. This section will explore arguments about religious relativism.

Section 3 How?
The third part of The Kingdom of Darkness will address the current relationship between atheism and politics. For most of human history atheists have lived private lives suffering death upon exposure: in the twenty-first century atheism has become bolder.

• The moral atheist: The book will address one of the fundamental difficulties about describing atheist beliefs – they are regarded as resolutely negative, against value rather than for anything. So for example, it is a commonplace that with out God there can be no certain and universal ethical value. The section will challenge the still persistent assumption that to be an atheist, is to be an immoral and bad person. On the contrary, to be an atheist, is to value and cherish the central values and identity of humanity.

• Against creationism: this sub-section will explore and outline the current debate about the teaching of Darwinian evolutionary theory or a brand of creationism in schools. This discussion will broaden into a consideration of ‘faith’ schools.

• Free expression is no offence: historically atheists have always had to trim their sails to avoid the prevailing force of cultural censorship. Even today, with a blasphemy act still on the statutes and increasingly militant faith communities willing to invoke either the law or mob violence the liberty of public thought is constrained. The sub-section will explore the limits of what can be said (rather than thought) about God and religion.

Section 4 Where to next? ‘I see a darkness’ (Bonnie Prince Billy)

In a world where (whether in the Lebanon, in Bradford or Washington) the religious commitments of world-leaders, faith communities and individual believers, shape international and domestic politics, to be an atheist means necessarily adopting a political position. The stock phrase ‘there are no atheists in the trenches’ might be rewritten – ‘there would be no need for trenches, if there were more atheists’.

The liberal consensus currently is in a pickle because of its commitment to the principle of the liberty of all religious belief – arbitrating between contested claims from Judaism, Christianity and Islam is increasingly involving the civil state in profound difficulties. Perhaps, instead of defending the right to the expression of religious belief, the atheist position of demanding a state premised on civic values free from all religious commitments might be a more sensible way forward. This concluding section will briefly explore the implications of a non-faith based political culture.

The assumption that the Enlightenment had seen off the twilight of medieval superstition in the eighteenth century seems to be flawed. In a post-Darwinian age one might have expected the Age of Faith to be in retreat: the secularising processes associated with technological progress and the social trauma of world wars, massive urbanisation and global economic prosperity, (many academics suggested in the 1960s and 1970s) ought to have led to a disenchantment of the world. The sacred canopy that protected the kernel of true religion should have cracked exposing the seeds of faith as a dwindling and increasingly marginal phenomenon.

Admittedly mainstream Christian church attendances are in decline, but the evangelical fringes prove ever popular. This, it has been suggested, does not reflect a fracturing of certainties, or decay in core values, but a rebirth of commitment. The splintering of Christian evangelism is far from evidence of a guttering flame – from Waco to the Whitehouse, the potential power of such new believers is profound. The flames of religious conviction have been reignited rather than doused. Just as the Christian evangelical traditions reacted with fundamentalist vigour to the perceived promiscuous and permissive impiety of modern consumerist society, so have some elements of Islam. Where the Christian West had confronted the question of confessional diversity and the consequences of economic and social change with a series of radical reformations in the sixteenth centuries, so now have some Islamic societies. Confronted by the consequences of global capitalism: increased urbanisation, the growth of literacy and mass culture, the radical imams have called for a ‘reformation’ to counter the perceived threat to the traditional structures of those essentially agrarian societies,.

Despite this evident resurgence of faith, Dawkin’s many critics accuse him of being unnecessarily brutal and shrill. As one commentator (Madeline Bunting in the Guardian) recently complained ‘there’s the unmistakable whiff of panic’ about the rationalist attack on religion. The progress of modernity seems to have been hobbled by the reins of faith. It was ever so. Dawkins’ angle has been to eviscerate the false claims of faith by the cool instrument of scientific reason. If societies in the past were superstitious it was because they were scientifically immature: the age of reason ought to have heralded the destruction of ignorance and irrational belief. That it did not it one sense bewilders Dawkin – it also exposes one of the flaws in his style of polemic. Showing by rational argument that the assumption of Mary is silly, will not persuade the Godly. Their priests will tell them Dawkins is a fallen man, a heretic, at the very least infused with the hubris of the sinner. Simple theology is not at fault – belief in the miraculous, the implausible, the daft and the divine is not necessarily evil – it’s what people do with those beliefs that is problematic. This was a point made elegantly by the English radical Thomas Hobbes who pointed out that when we have faith in a religious ‘truth’ we give our assent not simply to the proposition, but to the person making the claim to truth. The most corrosive parts of religion are not the doctrinal or ritual elements but the power relationships between priest and believer.

Those thinkers of the early Enlightenment who prefigured Dawkins three centuries ago – Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle – all regarded traditional religious institutions as pathological – they ridiculed the ‘mystery’ of belief, while reserving the full thrust of their criticism for the Churchmen. As Voltaire, much later, insisted, the war against religion was conducted in a campaign against the men in black. All known history, in their understandings, was a battle between ignorance and liberty: priests crafted the mental shackles that empowered political tyranny. Exploiting the natural fear the ignorant manifested when faced with the unknown the ‘unpleasing priests’ fabricated beliefs to reinforce their own authority and status. It is little wonder then that the slogan ‘may the last king be strangled in the bowels of the last priest’ became a radical commonplace in the nineteenth century. Not only did such thinkers challenge the political power of religion, they also made the point that it was entirely plausible for atheists to be sociable, firmly breaking the assumption that all social and political order rested on religious orthodoxy. It is possible to be moral without being religious.

The thrust of much of Dawkins’ analysis suggests that religion is pathological because it’s philosophically wrong. The deeper Enlightenment critique suggested that while religious doctrine may have been a human phenomenon its corrosive qualities were primarily political. Enlightenment writers exposed the absurdity of organised religion with satire and ridicule – at its most extreme, in the clandestine manuscripts of the eighteenth century, Judaism, Christianity and Islam were damned as imposture and fraud, the scriptures were fables, the afterlife a misunderstanding, and God reduced to matter. As Marx later to remarked what started off as a critique of heaven ended up as a fundamentally political project.

Dawkins is correct to be anxious about the resurgence of faith in contemporary political life – whether it’s manifest in the apocalyptic evangelism that underlies George Bush’s foreign policy, or the motivation behind the assassinations of film makers in the Netherlands, or the proposal for ‘Faith’ schools in the UK the claims of churchmen, imams, rabbis, pastors, priests demand attention and shape the parameters of modern life. The most urgent manifestation of this is the ongoing debate about the tension between freedom of speech and the claims of religious conscience. Much is made of the liberty of religious expression: now all citizens are entitled to select their belief system from a veritable smorgasboard of rival faiths. Certainly no religious minority currently suffers legal discrimination for their beliefs, whereas those like Dawkins who express their sincere convictions are vilified as heretics and unbelievers. This ironic since it seems that the forms of tolerance that underpin the diversity of faiths evident in modern Britain are still hemmed in by religious principle.

We have then, it seems, the freedom to believe any type of theological absurdity we see fit, but we’d rather marginalise and condemn those who claim to be free from any such religious commitments and wish to encourage others to share this insight. To adjust Isaiah Berlin’s famous two concepts: we’re free to be religious, but not free from it.