Pansy Project:
A Modern History of English Language Atheism*

* Non-belief, secularism, free thought, agnosticism, skepticism and more

An overview of atheism in the context of Canada and the United States over the last hundred or two years. I hope to work toward a more broad look in other countries around the world. I expect to focus mostly on the history of this century, but would like to sketch an outline in the 1800s and 1900s.

I hope to start by sketching out the following eras:

• Atheism following the Scientific Revolution until the Red Scare.
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  I will be very interested to learn about atheism following the scientific revolution. I recall Matt Dillahaunty mentioning on the Non-Prophets podcast that atheists were quite respected, would often go on speaking and debate tours in the late 1800s. (It may have been on the Atheist Experience.) It also passes for recieved wisdom that in the late 1800s many educated people beleived that relgion largely be dumped in the 20th century. I suspect this is because religions place as a way to understand the natural world around us was being surplanted by science. Today most people who are religious hold to it for other reasons, but it's possible back then understanding creation was a non-trivial part of being Christian. However, in the US the tent revivals seemed to have turned that trend around along with the Red Scare.

  Terms I considered using included:

  • Scientific Era as it follows the scientific revolution.
  • The Age of Engightenment or Age of Reason as it could go from that era to the Red Scare.
  • This include the time that Darwin's Natural Selection was pulished and the influence of Karl Marx and cross fertilization between some atheists and some socialists. It's also around the time of the Second Great Awakening. And Industrialization.

  “Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
  — Richard Dawkins

• Atheism during the Red Scare 1900s.
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  Pop atheism fell out of favour for a lot of this time due to the cold war. Especially within politics. Atheism was linked to communism and in the US being Christian was part of the national project to oppose the Soveit block. That's why they added 'Under God' to the pledge of alliegence. Though that might be too simple a story, as the tent revivals in the US seemed to be spreading anyway. It could be that the Red Scare was used in part to push Christianity rather it being purely a reaction to communism. In counter culture and philosophy atheism was still discussed, of course. George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God is the biggest example of philophical atheism I'm aware of at this. Of course lots of pop culture was from an atheist perspective, including Star Trek. But Star Trek tread lightly and rarely specifically criticized Christianity.

  Could also be called the Cold War or Communist era.

• New Atheism of the early naughts until the early 10's of the 2000s.
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  After

  Could also be called the Online era given how much online discussing forums and early YouTube influenced this. Web 1.0. Pre-social media.

• Current Unamed post New Atheism area.
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  I think there is a lot of worthy information about the links between online atheism and gamer culture, the Alt Right, the rise of Trump and the way the culture wars has evolved.

  Could also be called the Social Media, Trump, Atheist Decline, or Divergence era. Culture War Era? But that could probably apply to any era.