Battling The Gods

[onager]

3. Jennifer Hecht covered this is "Doubt" also.

As the subtitle hints. The whole title of her book is...

Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson

One neat point she makes: you know the Buy-bull verse atheists are always having thrown at us, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God?"

Hecht says that just proves non-believers were around and active in the Bronze Age. And already pissing off the believers.

And just like today, when they couldn't logically refute the arguments, they resorted to name-calling.

Hope I'm remembering this right, but maybe not and someone will correct me: IIRC, Hecht mentions one woman in medieval Italy who was a natural atheist. Had learned no knowledge of god, never had any such knowledge, just wasn't interested in any gods. When an Inquisition court asked her how the stars etc. came into existence, she said they had probably always been there. She was burned at the stake.

http://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Doubters-Innovation-Jefferson-Dickinson/dp/0060097957