A well-known passage in John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography reads: ‘I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has, not thrown off religious belief, but never had it’ (CW I, 45). Judging by this statement, a reader would perhaps think that Mill has little to say about religion. After all, he admits to never having been religious, which seems like a clear-cut and unproblematic statement. But often non-religious thinkers are among those who elaborate on the question most profusely.

Works by Stephen Bullivant (2013) and Michael Ruse (2015) have made clear that defining ‘atheism’ can be a daunting task, given that it implies grappling with what authors understand by religion. In this sense, the following pages are in debt to the insights provided by Talal Asad (1993), Brent Nongbri (2013), and Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1962). Moreover, in most of the western world the process of secularization, understood as the historical course by which the civic, the economic, the political, and the social realms are separated from any religious subjugation or dependency, was largely absent by the end of the eighteenth century, when this examination starts.

Hugo Grotius is considered one of the paradigmatic figures in international relations theory.His thought is often contrasted with that of Thomas Hobbes, who is portrayed as the standard bearer of political realism, and the universalist orientation of Immanuel Kant.The centre piece of the so-called Grotian tradition is the theory of international society, which accommodates the claims of independent states without granting them absolute justification.The pursuit of advantage is subject to common standards that oblige rather than merely counsel moderation and restraint.The chapter proceeds in three parts.Part one examines the legal and political narratives that account for the emergence of the Grotian tradition.Part two examines revisionist scholarship that considers Grotius’ thought in the context of relations between Europeans and non-European ‘others’.Neither the standard nor the revisionist narrative provides an adequate account of obligation, without which the theory of international society collapses in confusion.Part three responds to this problem by exploring a part of Grotius’ thought that has been excised from international relations theory: theology.This illuminates an account of obligation that rescues the Grotian tradition from the coarse world of moral scepticism and power politics.

Darwinian evolution is an overarching explanatory framework that makes sense of the characteristic patterns of the biological world. Evolutionary science is a progressive research program that is as well-confirmed as findings in other scientific disciplines. In this sense, it is not different from chemistry or physics. There is one significant difference, however, in that evolution continues to be subjected to regular attacks from some religious quarters, especially in the United States, where the issues have had considerable political, legal, and sociocultural significance.

In this chapter five main themes emerge with respect to the historiographical side of Grotius' works: (1) the polarity between constitutionalism and patriotism on the one hand, and reason of state and Scepticism on the other; (2) Grotius’ ‘secularising’ reading of history; (3) the close correlation between scholarship and politics; (4) Grotius’ use of sources and his relation to contemporary developments in Antiquarianism; and (5) the important role of historical perspectives in his other works such as De Jure Belliand the Annotationeson the New Testament.

To expound the law relating to war was a primary purpose of Hugo Grotius in the writing of his famous treatise, De jure belli ac pacis (1625). In Grotius’ opinion, a ‘very serious error’ had taken hold of the popular mind, to the effect that there was no law regulating the manner in which the combatants went about their deadly business. The events of the Thirty Years War, raging in central Europe at the time the book was written, could easily have given rise to such a notion. Be that as it may, one of Grotius’ central concerns was to refute this pernicious misconception. Even in time of war, he insisted, the opposing sides remain part of a common moral community, governed by the general law of nature, and also by the body of customary and contractual law known as the law of nations.

The subject of atheism in the Reformation era is caught awkwardly between two ill-fitting facts. First, ‘atheism’, strictly defined, was rare if not actively impossible in this period. Second, accusations of atheism, and moral panic about its spread, were nevertheless ubiquitous. It is in trying to reconcile these two facts that we can reach some understanding of how the Reformation era proved to be a decisive phase in the history of unbelief.

The claim that atheism was inconceivable in the Reformation age is usually associated with the great French literary scholar Lucien Febvre, and it is conventional for modern historians of the subject to begin by ridiculing this claim as overblown, but in fact Febvre’s position was subtler than is usually allowed.

This Chapter’s objective is to present Grotius’ literary writings as an integral part of his intellectual legacy and to highlight its pertinence to the understanding of his social tenets and moral programme. It addresses this objective from two perspectives, by verifying the heavy moral and political overtones of Grotius’ literary outpourings and by falsifying claims as to the irrelevance, let alone anomaly of the literary input in his legal and political writings. To prove its point, the paper establishes the programmatic overlap of both domains throughout Grotius’ life. It closely links the literary themes from his early years, whether as a playwright or historiographer, to the political bottlenecks of the Dutch Revolt and the socio-religious riddles of the Remonstrant Troubles. It underpins its thesis with reference to Grotius’ later plays on fratricide and exile as reflecting on the pits and peaks of his dramatic personal life. Finally, it identifies the intellectual epitome of Grotius’ literary outpouring in his comprehensive programme to salvage the Greek literary tradition in the social maelstrom of his times, a fitting counterpart to his ambitions to lay down a legal framework of universal appliance and a creed to serve all Christian denominations.

Lord Bertrand Russell (3rd Earl Russell, 1872–1970) is a grandmaster in twentieth-century philosophy and likely its foremost freethinker and public intellectual. Were it not so well documented, Russell’s biography might appear exaggerated or even fantastical. He was a member of the British aristocracy, the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the past century,1 a Nobel laureate (literature, 1950), and an indefatigable champion for social justice. Russell’s convictions twice landed him in prison (once at the age of 80), cost him academic positions, and at times ostracized him from all but his closest confidants. Russell was also incredibly industrious with the pen. Combining his popular and academic publications, he authored more than 70 books and over 2000 articles. As a man of letters, he penned in the tens of thousands, including correspondences with numerous heads of state, cultural icons, and the who’s-who of the twentieth-century intelligentsia.

The purpose of this introductory sketch is to offer a biographical frame that helps the reader to place the articles in this companion in their historical context. The overview of Grotius’ life contains the most important chronological facts, publications and professional occupations that gave shape to his personal, political and scholarly career. Special attention is paid to his research in the fields of law, philology, ecclesiastical politics and exegesis. Much of the information gathered here is to be found in Henk Nellen, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). A lifelong struggle for peace in Church and State (Leiden: Brill, 2014), but in order to avoid falling back into a downright summary of this biography some new material has been included. The story of Grotius’ eventful life is told along lines offered by a triptych of friendships that determined his scholarly efforts to a large extent: he successively kept close relations with Daniel Heinsius, who rivalled with him in many literary activities, Gerardus Joannes Vossius who assisted him in realizing his political-theological objectives, and Denis Pétau who advised him on his exegetical works. A succinct description of Grotius’ Nachleben serves to show that long after his death his theological works attracted an international readership and enjoyed an acclaim that is comparable to the one he attained in the fields of natural law and international law.

Atheists in Latin America have been and are a small minority. Regardless, they have exerted an important influence in the region; specifically, within the realms of academia, politics, and the arts. In this chapter we study them also in connection with the religiously unaffiliated (“nones”), which include different groupings. First, atheists, who affirm there is no God. Second, agnostics, who think it is not possible to answer the question of God‘s existence and refrain from giving one. Third, “functional agnostics,” who think that if there is a God it has nothing to do with their lives here and now and belief has no consequence of importance in practical terms, which makes them indifferent to religion. Fourth, religiously unaffiliated persons who, while not belonging to a religious organization/tradition, do have religious/spiritual interests, which for some are strongly felt.

On the question of God, both religious and non-religious thinkers typically regard naturalism as the obvious and primary way to challenge supernaturalism. Naturalism is distinctive among philosophical worldviews for its reliance on the sciences. Other chapters recount how developments in specific scientific fields, such as biology, affected the intellectual climate around the question of God’s existence. Naturalism’s own role also deserves to be told. Naturalism as a comprehensive worldview only congealed during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and confronted God with the staunchest atheist philosophy to ever challenge supernaturalism. Modern naturalism elevated four main approaches to prominence for refuting supernaturalism: (1) scientific theorizing is genuinely explanatory, while religion is not; (2) nature’s energies are causally closed, forbidding divine interaction; (3) scientific skepticism is warranted toward alleged revelations and miracles; and (4) naturalistic theories explaining religion’s origin and function need no deities.

Sigmund Freud’s critical theory of religion continues to generate controversy and dismay within and beyond psychoanalysis. A number of his critics attempt to separate his views on religion from the rest of psychoanalysis, a misguided and fruitless enterprise, as I will demonstrate in this chapter. Such critics appear to think that religious experiences and beliefs must be protected from psychoanalytic theories such as unconscious fantasy and projection in order to maintain the illusion that religious realities possess their own sui generis essence or inherent nature that renders them immune to critical examination and explanation. From the perspective of psychoanalysis, transcendent dimensions are not independently existing ontological realities that are apprehended by human minds. Rather, they are mental creations that are culturally constituted, shaped, and expressed. While it is not unreasonable to interpret Freud’s writings in a broadly colloquial sense as atheistic, it is woefully insufficient for scholarly analysis.

The movement of thought and culture in Europe now known as the Enlightenment reached its peak in the eighteenth century. Having its roots in the humanism of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, it embraced a confident and optimistic outlook on the prospects for human progress. Human reason, in the guise of scientific advance, could not only understand the world but also change it. Kepler and Newton in the seventeenth century had uncovered the elegant and simple principles that lay behind the cosmos. The puzzling trajectories of the planets against the background of the fixed stars proved impossible to account for on the old Ptolemaic astronomy without the introduction of ad hoc complexity. Planetary motion, however, became completely comprehensible once it was understood that they moved in elliptical orbits round our sun.

This chapter investigates Grotius’s broader intellectual involvement with the doctrine of predestination. Grotius deliberately renounced the religious importance of predestination as he called for religious concord in a time of fierce inter-confessional strife in the United Provinces - an endeavour that almost cost him his life. Considering his abhorrence for religious dogmas about divine predestination and human free will, two of his writings, Meletius and Ordinum pietas, display a remarkable restraint on Grotius’s part on the matter. Social and political order was not to be found in unrelenting dogmatic questions of certainty about what Grotius’s viewed as theologically non-essential religious principles. Rather it required a commitment to religious toleration. This chapter argues that Grotius’s involvement in the Dutch predestination debates reveals important philosophical connections between his religious and political ideas and allows for further explication of two central aspects of Grotius’s political theory: natural sociability and the impious hypothesis. From a careful contextualisation of predestination in Grotius’s religious oeuvre, emerges an account of socialisation independent of the predestination question, and establishes the infamous ‘etiamsi daremus’ statement as an obligation device that served his pursuit for religious and political accord.

Two informed estimates of the numbers of atheists and/or agnostics in the world, each published in the last fifteen years by reputable social scientists in major reference works, place the figure around or above half a billion people (Zuckerman 2007; Keysar and Navarro-Rivera 2013). Both rely, in very large measure, on what their authors readily admit to being reasonable guesswork. There is no shame whatsoever in this. Rigorous, nationally representative surveys don’t exist in large swathes of the world. In many places where they do, respondents may have reasonable anxieties about declaring, even on a seemingly confidential poll, a politically ‘wrong’ answer – in either direction. For example, China and Vietnam are the world’s first and fifteenth most populous countries, both are officially atheist, and neither is famous for freedoms of conscience or religion.