History of Disbelief

(4 Credits)

This seminar takes up an extended history of atheism and doubt (in the context of a history of religion). It begins with references to anthropology, the Hebrews and India, before discussing the skeptics and the development of disbelief in Greece and Rome. The course then follows the uneven progress of this idea and its consequences in continental Europe during the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Romantic period, and in 19th-century England and America, where disbelief was allied with radical politics. Finally, we move on to the connection between disbelief and realism, modernism and postmodernism. The main arguments for and against the existence of God are considered. However, the main purpose of this course is to force students to confront and grapple with some of the most sophisticated and profound human expressions of disbelief.