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The Ethics of Atheism
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Atheism and deism revalued. Heterodox religious identities in Britain, 1650–1800. Edited by WayneHudson, DiegoLucci and Jeffrey R.Wigelsworth. Pp. xxv + 265. Farnham–Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2014. £70. 978 1 4094 5680 3
Anti-atheism in early modern England, 1580–1720. The atheist answered and his error confuted. By KennethSheppard. (Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 176.) Pp. vii + 339 incl. 13 black-and-white ills. Leiden: Brill, 2015. €138. 978 9 0042 6541 7
The soul of doubt. The religious roots of unbelief from Luther to Marx. By DominicErdozain. Pp. xv + 320. New York–Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. £22.99. 978 0 19 984461 6
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2017
Extract
The history of a sect can scarcely avoid dancing with sectarianism. Even if the sect has vanished from the earth, it is difficult not to become either a defender or a critic, and when there are controversies still living, history cannot help but feed them and feed off them. The only certain way to avoid this is to retreat inside the sect entirely, becoming part of a world where it is the only and obvious subject of interest. And so the histories of religious minorities easily become self-referential ghettoes, where formidable expertise is built up while basic questions about how the subject is framed are left unasked.
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References
1 Amongst the more scholarly of these see Thrower, James, Western atheism: a short history, Amherst, NY 1999 Google Scholar, and Berman, David, A history of atheism in Britain, Abingdon 1990 Google Scholar. For a more muted and sophisticated alternative see Hyman, Gavin, A short history of atheism, London 2010 Google Scholar.
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