Hi, I’m John Green, and welcome  to Crash Course Religions!

So this one will be fun and not at all stressful.

God is dead, and we’ve killed him.

At least according to 19th-century  German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Nietzsche was an atheist, meaning  he didn’t believe in a deity.

He was also a harsh critic of  Christianity and religion in general.

But this wasn’t his way of  bragging; it was an alarm bell.

A warning that there may be some downsides to   conceiving of a universe governed  by physics, and not divine will.

Without God, who will we  look to for moral guidance?

The death of God could spell  the end of European society!

Of the whole world!

And yet, the world has continued to spin.

So were rumors of God’s death an exaggeration?

Maybe.

But Nietzsche’s generation wasn’t the  first to give up their belief in God,   and certainly wouldn’t be the last, either.

Today we’ll talk about what it means to live in a   world where more and more people do not  believe in gods–and whether approaching   those atheistic beliefs through the  lens of religion can be informative.

Which won’t make anyone mad.

[THEME MUSIC] The word “atheism” comes from the Greek  word atheos, meaning “without a God.” And that’s pretty much what atheism is  today: a lack of belief in a higher power.

But the word's meaning, like the folks who  identify with it, has changed over time.

Like, back in the 16th and 17th centuries,  when the word first gained traction in Europe,   the Protestant Reformation was in  full swing and people needed a new   vocabulary to describe the splintering  of religious beliefs that was happening.

The word “atheist” was  originally coined as an insult,   something few people would have identified with.

English dictionaries from the 1600s  defined atheism as a quote “damnable   doctrine” and often included quotes meant  to discourage people from becoming atheists.

Which… I mean, I guess dictionaries  have never been impartial?

But it didn’t stick.

French philosophers like Voltaire and  Diderot in the late 17th and early 18th   centuries made the idea of non-belief  a lot more mainstream and visible,   even as they struggled with  their own faiths personally.

Similarly, some of the founders of the United  States, while not technically atheists,   were into deism, where they  thought God technically existed,   but after making the universe, he just  left it alone – like a watchmaker, or like my personal hero Charles Alderton,   who invented the perfect soda recipe Dr. Pepper  and then left it alone to take over the world.

Different deists were more or less prone to  reject Christianity, with some interested in   Christianity’s moral and ethical teachings  while ignoring, like, the god stuff.

Like, Thomas Jefferson, for instance, spent years privately  cutting every reference to the supernatural   out of a Bible, while pasting and moving  around certain teachings on morals and ethics.

Atheism really took off during the 19th  century with the writings of folks like   Nietzsche, Charles Darwin, and Karl Marx.

While Darwin himself was neither here  nor there on the existence of a god,   his theories about human evolution were often seen  as in opposition to the Christian creation story.

And Darwin’s friend and fellow  scientist Thomas Huxley even   debated the highly regarded Bishop of Oxford  on the topic, and essentially told the bishop,   “I’d rather have an ape for a  grandfather than a guy like you.” While atheists are still often  stereotyped as immoral or even dangerous,   atheism itself continues to grow in popularity.

In 2024, studies showed that roughly 28 percent of  Americans identified as religiously unaffiliated.

Of course, all those unaffiliated  folks aren’t necessarily atheists.

Within this category, there’s  a pretty big crew of agnostics,   which comes from a word that  means “without knowledge.” Appropriately, agnostics say they  simply don’t know whether there’s a god.

Many think it’s impossible  to prove or disprove God’s   existence and that there’s no point in trying.

Then you have your materialists who believe that   everything that exists can  be studied through science.

Which isn’t an outright denial of  God’s existence, but a way of saying,   if a god did exist, it would have  to do so within the laws of physics.

And plenty do identify as atheists.

But even within atheism, we  find variations in philosophy.

There’s explicit atheism, which asserts  positively that no higher power exists,   and implicit atheism, which is a passive  lack of belief in a higher power.

Oh, boy, I’m getting a call from… a blocked  number, which I didn’t know was even possible… [Devil’s Advocate] Heyyyy broski don’t hang up.

I just got a question, one that’s been  bugging me.

That’s what you guys do here,   right?

You answer questions.

[John] I mean, that doesn’t even  begin to describe everything we   do here at Crash Course, but sure, go ahead.

[Devil’s Advocate] Isn’t believing in  God a better bet than not believing?

Like, I mean, if the atheists are right, then  believing in God doesn’t change anything.

But if they’re wrong, we lose everything!

Wouldn’t  it be easier just to hedge your bets and believe?

[John] That’s actually a pretty popular  philosophical argument called Pascal’s Wager.

It’s the idea that belief in  God is, like, the safer bet.

So, I’ll bite, which one  do you have your money on?

[Devil’s Advocate] Well, that’s a silly question.

God, the Father.

Capital-G.

The one from the Bible.

[John] So, not the West African god Anansi?

Or maybe the Egyptian war goddess Neith?

Don’t even get me started listing the  literal millions of Hindu deities.

And then, of course, there’s always  the possibility that the one true god   belongs to a religion that doesn’t even exist yet… [Devil’s Advocate] Right, but I don’t  believe in any of those gods… Oh.

[John] What makes Zeus or Demeter  untrue but your God the only Truth?

[Devil’s Advocate] Listen man,  I… uh, gotta make some calls.

You know, I’m starting to think I might  actually be getting through to him.

[phone buzzes] Ah, he, uh, sent me a picture of a  butt with the caption, “this is you”.

So that’s nice.

But our friend the Devil’s Advocate has brought up   a good point – just not the  one he was trying to make.

Atheism, as we know it today, is often  brought up in opposition to Christianity.

But the idea itself is considerably older and  more diverse than that comparison suggests.

In many cultures throughout history,  there have been groups who didn’t care   if the gods and goddesses of  their people were really real,   and others who specifically didn’t believe  in the popular deities of their day.

Up to twenty percent of people who  identify as Christian aren’t sure they   believe the God of the Bible is Really Real,  and therefore might be classified as agnostic.

And in other religious traditions,  including Judaism, it’s even more common.

Ancient India saw multiple schools within Hinduism   that denied the existence of  an eternal or personal god.

Buddhism was founded by a guy who  didn’t have much use for deities.

Jainism— a religion that was founded in the 5th   century and influenced the nonviolent  ideologies of people like Gandhi and   Martin Luther King Jr.—has no rules  about believing in a higher power.

In many cases, though, these weren’t  the atheists we’d think of today.

Scholars often use the term “nontheism”  instead of “atheism” for ancient traditions;   these nontheists were simply concerned with  questions other than “Does god exist?” Cultures in ancient China, Greece, and Rome all  had their nontheism cliques at various times.

In the last couple centuries though,  especially in the United States,   atheism has broadened into a way  to critique religion, society,   and politics–especially the places where  society is shaped by religious traditions.

The American writer and  abolitionist Frederick Douglass,   who was formerly enslaved, criticized  the hypocrisy of slave-owning Christians.

He once wrote, “I should regard being the slave of   a religious master the greatest  calamity that could befall me.” Suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage  pointed out similar religious   hypocrisy while fighting for the rights of women.

And in the 21st century, we’ve seen  the rise of a movement known as   “New Atheism,” popularized by writers  like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.

Other writers, like Ta-Nahesi Coates,   have written about civil rights within  the framework of a godless universe.

In “Between the World and Me,” Coates  imagines no moral arc of the universe   bending toward justice, a response to  a famous line from Martin Luther King.

Where Nietzsche warned about the death of God, and  what it might mean for a moral society, the New Atheists have advocated explicitly for an ethical  obligation to reject the idea of God— centered   around the belief that we could solve a lot of our  problems if we did away with religion entirely.

The New Atheists have at times been labeled “dogmatic” and even “fundamentalist”  in their belief that there’s no God.

Which has led some to wonder  if atheism is also a religion.

Now, I admitted in episode one that  I don’t know what a religion is,   which means we’re in dicey territory.

And, as we’ve seen throughout this series,   defining a religion can be a bit like trying  to guess how many stars are in the sky.

Like you could say at least  five or at least five million,   and both answers would be right  and wrong in their own way.

But let’s pursue this question by looking at some   common features associated with religions  and seeing how they stack up in atheism.

Obviously, the whole  supernatural-higher-power-thing is out.

But religions also serve as a framework that help  people organize, shape, and make sense of life.

For some atheists, the critique  of religion fits that bill.

Deconstructing religion and religious   power is a moral imperative and an  organizing principle in their lives.

Of course, for lots of others, atheism  isn’t a “framework for sense-making.” We might also look for shared  practices or gatherings.

And there are non-religious communities, like  the American Atheists and the Sunday Assembly,   who gather for events and experiences   kinda like churches, but who  specifically don’t believe in god.

So shared practices are on the table,   although only a tiny percentage of  atheists attend such gatherings.

And what about shared belief?

Well, this one clearly varies too.

Just like we’ve discovered the incredible  diversity in the beliefs within each religion,   atheists share some beliefs and convictions  and also have a lot of different priorities.

So this one gets a solid maybe as well.

Finally, there’s doubt.

Doubt is the foundation of atheism.

And it might also be one of the most  universal experiences humans share.

We’ve all experienced doubt.

In ourselves, in the world, in each other.

And yet we continue to believe in the possibility  of a better world – despite our doubts.

Atheism is just another way  of contending with reality.

It can mean a strong commitment to a  particular kind of ethical thinking   and behavior, without the looming  judgment of a god to enforce it.

It can also mean simply having too  much going on to think about religion,   or believing that the only things that matter  are the things we can measure scientifically.

Atheism defies broad-brush-painting.

But perhaps the biggest hallmark of atheism is  that it has always existed alongside theism.

It’s not a reaction to, but a complement of,  the religious frameworks that guide many lives.

Whether it can be called a  religion is up for debate.

I think it boils down to whether you see  religion primarily as whatever lenses through   which you consider moral imperatives and  ultimate concerns–in which case atheism   is perhaps at least for some a religion–or  whether you see religion primarily as a way of   seeking connection to and understanding of the  less empirical parts of consciousness–in which   case atheism is a rejection of religion,  and best considered outside of it.

And if you think I’m going to  come to a firm conclusion here,   you haven’t been watching the rest of this series.

Next time, we’re talkin’  religious texts—who wrote them,   who’s equipped to interpret them,  and how they influence our lives.