The Necessity of Atheism

I recently came across a remarkable essay written by the famous English Romantic poet, Percy Shelley titled 'The Necessity of Atheism'. It was first published in 1811 when the author was merely nineteen and its "audacious content" led to his immediate rustication from Oxford. What surprises me is not that such an essay could be conceived and written nearly two-hundred years before this day- there had been a sufficient maturation of the scientific method and philosophical literature (with the exception evolutionary biology) for thinkers to be motivated in this direction and Shelley was by no means ordinary in his capacity to do so-, but that in spite of the avalanche of scientific work that was accomplished in the following two hundred years the kind of nonsense attacked in this essay still persists in the minds of the educated class (not the 'opiate masses' as Marx condescendingly put it). Shelley was writing at a time when western colonial powers engaged in slavery with impunity, sati and untouchability was shamelessly prevalent in India and the world was still in its infancy of socio-economic and political thinking. Undoubtedly, many of us can rationalize (Dawkins' saw-toothed shaped Zeitgeist curve for instance) as to why we haven't progressed in this direction - a big factor in contention is the championing of religion (or conservatism in a broader sense) by many managers of political power across the world to facilitate the propagation of their self-interest. But let me be infantile here for a moment and shout - this shouldn't be the case!

Sir W. seems to consider the atheism to which it leads as a sufficient presumption of the falsehood of the system of gravitation; but surely it is more consistent with the good faith of philosophy to admit a deduction from facts than an hypothesis incapable of proof, although it might militate, with the obstinate preconceptions of the mob. Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher.

Mind you, this was penned nearly sixty years before Bertrand Russell was born in Victorian England and readers would note that what I have marked as bold can be considered a trite version of Russell's famous 'celestial teapot' argument. What is more inexplicable is the observation that a book like 'The God Delusion' should be a bestseller two centuries later! In no way do I intend to disparage Dawkins' excellent book; I have to admit that in some manner, it led to my own 'conversion' or at least facilitated it greatly. Many of my friends would agree to this too. That is, until you read Russell and realize that he was much broader than Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens (the three 'bright' Musketeers of the present) put together. Perhaps in another ten years I will say the same thing about Kant and Bacon. But let me be childish yet another time and expostulate - My parents should have introduced me to this shit!