The history of atheism and its relationship with women has been a rocky one; the continuing schism between feminism and atheism has been a staple from the early days of atheism as a social movement. This has puzzled many, since the two movements have often seemed to share common interests, but despite this outward compatibility, women have struggled to find their place and have their voices heard within the movement (Miller 2013). When the history of unbelief has been written, the perspective has continued to be that of a white male. This chapter is driven by the question: what can we learn when we look at the history of atheism from the perspective of women?

In 1879, Darwin wrote to John Fordyce, a Scottish-born congregationalist minister and author, who had asked about the state of the evolutionist’s religious beliefs. Darwin wrote that his judgement often fluctuated. ‘In my most extreme fluctuations’, Darwin told Fordyce, ‘I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. – I think that generally (and more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind’ (Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter no. 12041). Since this was just three years before Darwin’s death, this can be taken as a fairly definitive statement of his mature views. Darwin, and many of the Darwinians who supported his evolutionary theory, depicted themselves as agnostics. But both critics on their right and on their left accused them of trying to use agnosticism as a disguise for their true position: materialistic atheism.

According to a 2015 survey, 72.2 percent of all philosophy professors in the United States are atheists (Bourget and Chalmers 2014). This is a striking figure, especially considering that the United States overall is far more religious than other western nations. According to the Pew Research Center, only about 3.1 percent of Americans are atheists (Pew Research Center 2015). Furthermore, the high percentage of atheists among American philosophy professors is not found among American academics as a whole. Even in that group, the proportion of atheistic philosophy professors is still more than twice as high (Gross 2007). Notwithstanding some prominent Christian philosophers, American philosophers are a very atheistic group indeed.

The laws of war, as expounded by Grotius, resulted from an interplay of natural law and the voluntary law (or law of nations), which was a customary law based on state practice.Important ways in which the voluntary law departed from natural law were in according equal rights to belligerents in war, without regard to the justices of the respective causes.The predominant principle governing the conduct of war was necessity, which had both a permissive and a restrictive character.Grotius was a firm supporter of moderation in the exercise of the rights of belligerency.This worked particularly to the benefit of civilians and prisoners of war.He insisted that principles of good faith must operate in war, so that perfidious acts were prohibited, though ordinary ruses of war were allowed.The voluntary law, to Grotius, allowed the unlimited taking of property belonging to enemy nationals.Grotius also gave careful attention to modern concerns such as targeted killing.An important contributions was to lay the groundwork for the law of neutrality, setting out rules on the treatment of neutral-owned property in war and on the treatment of enemy-owned property in the custody of neutrals.

The present article examines Grotius’ views on the relationship between church and state. He composed most of the works dealing exclusively with this theme in the years before 1618, but his later work is discussed as well. The historical and intellectual background to Grotius’ views is examined, such as the Dutch religious troubles, toleration, Jewish history and Erastianism. This is followed by Grotius’ general views on church and state as expressed in his works and his views on specific aspects, such as lawgiving, the right of resistance by the church, synods, ecclesiastical hierarchy, divine and natural law. It is concluded that Grotius held that there is only one, indivisible sovereign government, and that this is civil government: all external acts in the public space are subject to the sovereign. Abuse of this absolute power is restricted by the fact that the sovereign has to render account to God. Grotius’ lifelong ideal was that of a state based on these principles, with a Christian public church, where toleration of religious differences was practised.

The nineteenth century is the first century in which definitions circumvented the globe, promoting discussion of their helpfulness in describing the universe that humankind found itself within. This impetus is especially exemplified by the growth of unbelief into a movement in the nineteenth century. From its inception right through to its mutation in the twentieth century it would, throughout, be obsessed with such words and labels. Oftentimes these were attempts to escape from the unhelpfulness of a previous label as much as to forge something innovative and helpful with a new one.

The term atheism infers one of three basic definitions. Someone who considers him or herself an atheist may simply lack a belief in the existence of supernatural, divine forces. Some, more narrowly, may outright reject such a belief, and still others, in the strictest sense, take the position that there really is no debate to be had.

At a glance, directly associating Chinese tradition with even the more open-ended definition of atheism (a mere lack of belief) would seem rather forced. While it is true that certain religious beliefs were suppressed by those higher up the ladder throughout Chinese history and that some of China’s brightest and most intellectual voiced vehement suspicion, disregard, and even stark criticism, these actions still fell very far short of what it means to be atheist. The same could also be said for commoners, who took a more pragmatic (as opposed to a theist/atheist) approach when it came to religious observance and practice.

One of the most interesting features of the twenty-first century is the emergence of atheist discourses within Muslim-majority countries. Largely enabled by the Internet (see Chapter 55), atheist ideas appear to be acquiring an unprecedented audience in regions where such things are not merely outré, but actively illegal and even dangerous, as attested by several well-publicized instances of bloggers being imprisoned or even executed on conviction of apostasy.

Viewed from the perspective of the global history of modern atheism, Germany stands out for its contribution to three distinct varieties: the theoretical atheism promulgated by philosophers and cultural critics between the late Enlightenment and the interwar period; the mass atheism that has grown with religious indifference since the late twentieth century; and the secularist atheism embedded within popular anticlerical movements between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth centuries. Whereas the first two varieties of atheism have been the subject of extensive study, the third has received less scrutiny. Yet, arguably secularist atheism had the greatest impact on the course of modern German religious and political history. In order to make this case, this chapter will summarize the histories of theoretical and mass atheism and then focus on the dynamics and developments of secularist atheism.

Recently, there have been attempts to study atheism in different disciplines, from historians to anthropologists, going beyond the conventional trajectory of studying only the west. Scholars have looked at different histories of atheism in many locations, and in that process have challenged the idea that atheism is essentially a western phenomenon. When atheism is seen as a western idea, the non-west is mostly perceived as spiritual and metaphysical. The politics involved in making certain places atheistic and certain places spiritual has to be understood, and anthropologists and historians have looked at different locations and places, and studied various forms of atheism and unbelief. This chapter is an attempt to discuss atheism in India, and to see its many meanings and many histories. In that process it challenges the monolithic reading of atheism.

In letter 30, Spinoza states that he intends to write a treatise that would bring to a close the endless stream of accusations of atheism made by common people. Five years later, in 1670, the treatise known as the Theological-Political Treatise (TTP) was published anonymously. However, one could argue that the TTP takes the existence of God for granted. Spinoza berates men who only know God inadequately ‘through created things, of which they know not the causes’ and who accuse of atheism philosophers in possession of real knowledge of God. Such men believe in miracles, which, being ‘in contravention to God’s nature and laws’, inevitably ‘leads them to atheism’. But Spinoza’s attempt to turn the tables did not convince the radical Cartesian Lambert van Velthuysen (1622–85), whose critique of the TTP in letter 42 deals with three main topics, which all seem to imply more than atheism

Contracts must be regulated by equality, which stipulates that the party who has obtained less because of an inequality shall have a right of action. Grotius proposed a broad concept of equality, which concerns various elements: acts preceding the conclusion of a contract, the principal act, and the subject matter of the agreement. Grotius’s teachings on the law of treaties reflect those illustrated for promises and contracts, but also encompass some differences. For example, Grotius does not condemn treaties with unequal terms.

Historical critical biblical scholarship, particularly as it pertained to the study of the historical Jesus and the many “lives” of Jesus that were published and that popularized this scholarship, contributed to the broader skeptical culture of the radical Enlightenment. Although in this chapter I will refer to the radical more skeptical Enlightenment as “Enlightenment,” in reality we could speak more accurately of several “Enlightenments,” including Catholic, Jewish, and other religious Enlightenments that all occurred from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries (Brown 1990, 286; Hess 1999; Sorkin 2008; Lehner 2010, 166–78; 2016). The more radical form of the Enlightenment was marked by its skepticism, and this skepticism spread outside of academic circles to a more popular audience, not least by way of the popularizations of more skeptical biblical scholarship in works like David Friedrich Strauss’ famous 1835 Life of Jesus.

As the present volume demonstrates, atheism has a long history that spans multiple countries and eras, but even more than that, the history of atheism itself has a history. The goal of this chapter is to offer a look at how historians and other scholars over time have tried to tell the story of atheism. Because of space limitations, this cannot approach a comprehensive study of works on the history of atheism. Rather, I focus specifically on those works that discuss the history of atheism on a large scale, across many centuries and multiple countries.

This chapter highlights some of the key issues in writing the history of atheism, and the various ways these might be addressed. To draw out these issues, I have divided histories of atheism into two main schools: those writing from an atheist or secular perspective and those writing from a Christian or theological perspective.

The history of atheism is usually narrated around a watershed separating a modern “speculative” atheism defined with scientific precision from older traditions in which atheism functioned as a pejorative denoting not just godlessness but various forms of heresy and libertinism. According to such accounts, a diffuse tradition of polemical abuse was gradually refined into the defined dogmatism of modern philosophical atheism. Alan Charles Kors influentially argued that medieval and early modern atheism was largely a boogeyman projected by orthodox writers interesting in honing their own apologetical skills. The Cartesian revolution disrupted these orthodox efforts, without adequately replacing their arguments for theism (Kors 1990). A similar timeline is proposed in Michael Buckley’s At the Origins of Modern Atheism, in which he attributes modern atheism to ill-fated Christian apologists attempting to use the new science to prove, rather than deny, God (Buckley 1990).

When I first started thinking about atheism in Tunisia, I carried with me the certainty that atheism does not exist as a possibility in Tunisian society. With the passing years, the term Mulhid (atheist) has become common not merely in intellectual circles, but in rap songs, social media, and even classrooms. However, the existence of atheism as a possibility does not necessarily entail its acceptance. In fact, the identity of the Tunisian citizen, of the one who truly belongs to the nation, rests on a discursive process in which non-Muslims are defined as ‘foreigners’, ‘alienated’, and others. In this national imaginary of belonging, the non-Muslim Tunisian occupies a position that is thought to be improper and dangerous, even a threat to the sense of identity and the social order of the Tunisian nation. This form of abjection is one in which the non-Muslim existence is cast as the antithesis of the Arab-Muslim identity of a Tunisian and its core values.

Grotius lived through a time of great upheaval in Europe as well as in his country of birth, the Dutch Republic. The religious, political and constitutional convulsions that struck the Republic destroyed Grotius' career but also, in combination with fundamental changes in the intellectual outlook of early seventeenth-century Europe formed his views of God, nature, society, politics and law. This chapter introduces the extraordinary polymath Grotius was from the perspective of this background and offers a map to the five parts of this volume, and their respective chapters.