Atheism Censorship

Definition: Conscious disbelief in any sort of gods or supernatural beings

Significance: Commonly subject to censorship, atheism has also been the official creed of totalitarian regimes that have censored religious expression

For most of history in most societies, one or more forms of religion have been important in shaping culture, dominating mainstream belief. Though different religious traditions varied in their tolerance of opposing ideas, faith was so widespread that the absence of belief in deities was generally viewed as a deviant outlook. Many cultures actively suppressed any practices they considered atheism, and there are few documented instances of groups or individuals in the West who fully espoused such beliefs until the Enlightenment. Previously, “atheism” also meant “heresy” and served two main rhetorical purposes—either as an expression of theoretical atheism, often mentioned only for subsequent pious refutation, or as an especially freighted invective to hurl at an enemy. Even forms of religious thinking that challenged established ideas were often attacked under charges of atheism. Blunt professions of atheism only began to emerge in late seventeenth century Europe.

A number of early modern cultural factors helped to make atheism intellectually viable. European exploration and trade increased contact with non-European cultures and non-Western religions, familiarizing Europe with radically different systems of belief. This new cosmopolitanism eroded some of the inevitability of believing in God. In addition, the revival and adaptation of ancient materialistic philosophies for scientific purposes provided the means for a nontheological cosmogony. Most important, perhaps, was the Protestant Reformation, which shattered the relative uniformity of religious thought and culture in Europe.

The social and religious discord unleashed by the Reformation promoted vast intellectual and institutional change, not least of which the growth of atheism. Philosopher Francis Bacon, as early as 1612, recognized the ironic trajectory of the Reformation. He pointed out that, if religion were divided into two or more factions (especially warring factions, as the case was in Europe), some people were bound to renounce both sides. In such a climate, arguments and name-calling wielded against one’s religious enemies sometimes served to subvert belief among one’s co-religionists.

Religion and Liberalism

The unrest the Reformation wrought upon Europe also changed the political landscape. To contain the disastrous effects of protracted religious conflict, a set of related political ideas gradually took root in Europe. Gradually, it became less frequent that people were put to death for heresy. Philosophers and political theorists developed the concepts of universal political rights and religious tolerance, which eventually culminated in liberalism, with its wall of separation between church and state. Political rights grant protection to citizens regardless of their religious views. Toleration ensures for religious minorities peaceful coexistence. The liberal doctrine of separation of church and state has three elements. The principle of liberty obligates the state to permit the practice of any religion that does not infringe on the other rights the state must protect. The principle of equality prevents the state from favoring one religion over another. Lastly, the principle of neutrality prevents the state from favoring the religious over the nonreligious.

These innovations, viewed as needed reforms, were designed to preserve civic concord and prevent baneful conflict while acknowledging religious difference. Nevertheless, atheists remained a distinct minority, often viewed with suspicion by mainstream society and therefore subject to both active and passive censorship.

Atheism Censored

That proposed liberal reforms did not secure immediate assent or implementation helps account for the fact that open, avowed atheism did not appear on the European continent until 1770 with the publication of Baron d’Holbach’s System of Nature, and in England until 1782 with the pseudonymously authored Answer to Dr. Priestly’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. Another reason for the slowness of atheism to appear after the events that precipitated it is the near-universal eighteenth century belief that atheism led inexorably to socially pernicious moral license. “Free thought,” the common eighteenth century English term to designate all sorts of religious unorthodoxy, including atheism, draws attention to the political and social implications of atheism. Originally, “freethinker” made reference to a general mode of inquiry not bound by scholastic precedent, but by 1700 it came to designate religious views in self-conscious violation of judicial or legislative precedent. To its bearer the term ascribed defiance of the censorship of unorthodox speculation. It advertised liberty of inquiry from both overt state sponsored suppression and the coercion exerted by the boundaries of conventional thought. This term’s ubiquity in the eighteenth century attests to the nascent state of theological liberalism and toleration. Significantly, both the German and the French languages adopted a translated equivalent for “free thought.”

Early modern European governments commonly resisted liberal neutrality. In France, freethinkers were often forced to publish in Holland and the atheism of Denis Diderot’s Letter on the Blind (1749) cost him six months in prison. In England the Act of 1697 “for the effectual suppressing of blasphemy and profaneness” made it criminal to “deny any one of the persons in the holy Trinity to be God, or . . . assert or maintain there are more Gods than one, or deny the Christian religion to be true, or the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be of divine authority.” Thomas Woolston died in prison after prosecution in 1729 for his Discourses Our Saviour’s Miraculous Power of Healing, which was published in 1730. Designed to promote orthodoxy and aimed primarily at the deists (those who admit a creator deity, but deny God’s providence—that is, his control or interest in the physical events or moral affairs of the universe), the Blasphemy Act ironically served to promote atheism. Strong evidence suggests that Richard Carlile, imprisoned in 1823, Jacob Holyoake, who in 1842 was the last individual imprisoned for atheism in Britain, and Charles Bradlaugh, who was charged with atheism in 1868, all, in response to their persecution, either actually became atheists or were strengthened in their atheistic convictions. The same dynamic influenced one of Britain’s most famous atheists, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who while not persecuted by the government, became hardened in his atheism after being expelled from Oxford for having penned The Necessity of Atheism (1811).

In twentieth century America, public education became the arena for conflict about censorship and atheism. In 1963 Madalyn Murray O’Hair, an outspoken atheist, brought suit against the city of Baltimore, charging that required prayer in school violated the constitution’s wall of separation. Reaffirming an earlier ruling, the Supreme Court in Murray v. Curlett ruled in her favor, citing the first amendment establishment clause (that the government not legislate “respecting establishment of religion”). Since the mid-1970s Christian Fundamentalists have contended that this interpretation of the wall of separation, through the school culture and curriculum which it promotes, in effect violates the principle of neutrality. They characterize the schools as imbued with “secular humanism,” an antireligious outlook which arrogates for humanity God’s rightful place. Accordingly, they have recently fought to restore a forum for prayer in school and to include creation science (biblical creationism clothed in the protocols of science) or intelligent design in the curriculum.

Although tolerance of atheism increased in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, especially in Europe and Asia, atheists continued to subject to censorship. For decades, polls showed that voters in the US held atheism as the least attractive belief system for a presidential candidate, although by 2015 a Gallup poll indicated a record 58 percent of Americans would potentially vote for an atheist. Meanwhile, works by atheists that satirize religion have frequently raised controversy over the line between freedom of speech and alleged hate speech or blasphemy. Blasphemy laws in Great Britain were not repealed until 2008. In 2015 the group American Atheists objected when billboard advertisements promoting their national convention were edited by the advertising company in an effort to avoid conflict with the religious community in Nashville, Tennessee.

Around the world, censorship of atheism varies. While some countries, such as China and the Scandinavian nations, have relatively large populations of nonbelievers who enjoy relative tolerance, others actively persecute atheists. Examples of media censorship include a 2015 a court order in Turkey that banned several websites involving atheist ideology. Other forms of repression can be harsher, and in 2014 at least thirteen countries had legislation allowing atheists to be refused citizenship, to be refused the right to marry, or even killed, according to the American Humanist Association. In 2015 well-known atheist blogger Avijit Roy was murdered in Bangladesh due to his controversial writings. The killing highlighted a growing trend of atheist persecution and censorship in countries with an Islamic majority; other incidents included jail sentences and other lashings for atheist and secular writers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Saudi Arabia passed a law explicitly banning all forms of atheist thought, likening them to terrorism.

Censorship by Atheism

Occasionally governments have actively transgressed the principle of neutrality not to suppress atheism, but rather to promote it. The Soviet Union makes a case in point. The Bolshevism that emerged dominant after the Russian Revolution subscribed to a version of Marxism that explains religion as an illusion of the oppressed class, fostered by the bourgeoisie. Religion of any kind officially became an obstacle to socialist equality. Early Bolshevik legislation, nevertheless, entertained liberal ideology of tolerance. Article 13 of the 1918 constitution of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic permitted both religious and anti-religious propaganda. The same year the Decree on the Separation of Church from State and School from Church was enacted. Within a few years, however, the principle of neutrality was broached, and the suppression of the Russian Orthodox Church began. In 1928 the Bolsheviks actually put the Bible itself on trial. The 1929 Law on Religious Associations further eviscerated the earlier liberalism. This legislation forbade religious instruction outside the home to anyone under the age of eighteen, prohibited religious libraries and reading rooms, and suspended the constitutional right to religious propaganda. This latter provision meant that Bibles and religious journals could no longer be published. Through these legal means and through means more covert, the Soviet Union actively suppressed religion throughout its history.

Bibliography

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Gledhill, Ruth. "Hacked to Death for Unbelief: The Rise of Atheist Persecution." Christian Today. Christian Today, 12 Mar. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

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Lesley, Alison. "Why are American Atheist Convention Billboards Being Censored? The Controversy Explained." World Religion News. WorldReligionNews.com, 24 Mar. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

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