Abnormal psychology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Abnormal psychology is the branch of psychology that studies unusual patterns of behavior, emotion and thought, which may or may not be understood as precipitating a mental disorder. Although many behaviors could be considered as abnormal, this branch of psychology generally deals with behavior in a clinical context. There is a long history of attempts to understand and control behavior deemed to be aberrant or deviant (statistically, functionally, morally or in some other sense), and there is often cultural variation in the approach taken. The field of abnormal psychology identifies multiple causes for different conditions, employing diverse theories from the general field of psychology and elsewhere, and much still hinges on what exactly is meant by "abnormal". There has traditionally been a divide between psychological and biological explanations, reflecting a philosophical dualism in regard to the mind-body problem. There have also been different approaches in trying to classify mental disorders. Abnormal includes three different categories; they are subnormal, supernormal and paranormal.

The science of abnormal psychology studies two types of behaviors: adaptive and maladaptive behaviors. Behaviors that are maladaptive suggest that some problem(s) exist, and can also imply that the individual is vulnerable and cannot cope with environmental stress, which is leading them to have problems functioning in daily life in their emotions, mental thinking, physical actions and talks. Behaviors that are adaptive are ones that are well-suited to the nature of people, their lifestyles and surroundings, and to the people that they communicate with, allowing them to understand each other.^[4] Clinical psychology is the applied field of psychology that seeks to assess, understand and treat psychological conditions in clinical practice. The theoretical field known as 'abnormal psychology' may form a backdrop to such work, but clinical psychologists in the current field are unlikely to use the term 'abnormal' in reference to their practice. Psychopathology is a similar term to abnormal psychology but has more of an implication of an underlying pathology (disease process), and as such is a term more commonly used in the medical specialty known as psychiatry.

History

Supernatural traditions

Throughout time, societies have proposed several explanations of abnormal behavior within human beings. Beginning in some hunter-gatherer societies, animists have believed that people demonstrating abnormal behavior are possessed by malevolent spirits. This idea has been associated with trepanation, the practice of cutting a hole into the individual's skull in order to release the malevolent spirits. Although it has been difficult to define abnormal psychology, one definition includes characteristics such as statistical infrequency.

A more formalized response to spiritual beliefs about abnormality is the practice of exorcism. Performed by religious authorities, exorcism is thought of as another way to release evil spirits who cause pathological behavior within the person. In some instances, individuals exhibiting unusual thoughts or behaviors have been exiled from society or worse. Perceived witchcraft, for example, has been punished by death. Two Catholic Inquisitors wrote the Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for "The Hammer Against Witches"), that was used by many Inquisitors and witch-hunters. It contained an early taxonomy of perceived deviant behavior and proposed guidelines for prosecuting deviant individuals.

Asylums

The act of placing mentally ill individuals in a separate facility known as an asylum dates to 1547, when King Henry VIII of England established the St. Mary of Bethlehem asylum in London. This hospital, nicknamed Bedlam, was famous for its deplorable conditions. Asylums remained popular throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance era. These early asylums were often in miserable conditions. Patients were seen as a “burden” to society and locked away and treated almost as beasts to be dealt with rather than patients needing treatment. However, many of the patients received helpful medical treatment. There was scientific curiosity into abnormal behavior although it was rarely investigated in the early asylums. Inmates in these early asylums were often put on display for profit as they were viewed as less than human. The early asylums were basically modifications of the existing criminal institutions.

In the late 18th century the idea of humanitarian treatment for the patients gained much favor due to the work of Philippe Pinel in France. He pushed for the idea that the patients should be treated with kindness and not the cruelty inflicted on them as if they were animals or criminals. His experimental ideas such as removing the chains from the patients were met with reluctance. The experiments in kindness proved to be a great success, which helped to bring about a reform in the way mental institutions would be run.

Institutionalization would continue to improve throughout the 19th and 20th century due to work of many humanitarians such as Dorethea Dix, and the mental hygiene movement which promoted the physical well-being of the mental patients. "Dix more than any other figure in the nineteenth century, made people in America and virtually all of Europe aware that the insane were being subjected to incredible abuses." Through this movement millions of dollars were raised to build new institutions to house the mentally ill. Mental hospitals began to grow substantially in numbers during the 20th century as care for the mentally ill increased in them.

By 1939 there were over 400,000 patients in state mental hospitals in the USA. Hospital stays were normally quite long for the patients, with some individuals being treated for many years. These hospitals while better than the asylums of the past were still lacking in the means of effective treatment for the patients, and even though the reform movement had occurred; patients were often still met with cruel and inhumane treatment.

Things began to change in the year 1946 when Mary Jane Ward published the influential book titled “The Snake Pit” which was made into a popular movie of the same name. The book called attention to the conditions which mental patients faced and helped to spark concern in the general public to create more humane mental health care in these overcrowded hospitals.

In this same year the National Institute of Mental Health was also created which provided support for the training of hospital employees and research into the conditions which afflicted the patients. During this period the Hill-Burton Acts was also passed which was a program that funded mental health hospitals. Along with the Community Health Services Act of 1963, the Hill-Burton Acts helped with the creation of outpatient psychiatric clinics, inpatient general hospitals, and rehabilitation and community consultation centers.

Deinstitutionalisation

In the late twentieth century however, a large number of mental hospitals were closed due to lack of funding and overpopulation. In England for example only 14 of the 130 psychiatric institutions that had been created in the early 20th century remained open at the start of the 21st century. In 1963, President John Kennedy launched the community health movement in the United States as a "bold new approach" to mental health care, aimed at coordinating mental health services for citizens in mental health centers. In the span of 40 years, the United States was able to see an about 90 percent drop in the number of patients in Psychiatric hospitals.

This trend was not only in the England and the United States but worldwide with countries like Australia having too many mentally ill patients and not enough treatment facilities. Recent studies have found that the prevalence of mental illness has not decreased significantly in the past 10 years, and has in fact increased in frequency regarding specific conditions such as anxiety and mood disorders.

This led to a large number of the patients being released while not being fully cured of the disorder they were hospitalized for. This became known as the phenomenon of deinstitutionalization. This movement had noble goals of treating the individuals outside of the isolated mental hospital by placing them into communities and support systems. Another goal of this movement was to avoid the potential negative adaptations that can come with long term hospital confinements. Many professionals for example were concerned that patients would find permanent refuge in mental hospitals which would take them up when the demands of everyday life were too difficult. However, the patients moved to the community living have not fared well typically, as they often speak of how they feel “abandoned” by the doctors who used to treat them. It also has had the unfortunate effect of placing many of the patients in homelessness. Many safe havens for the deinstitutionalized mentally ill have been created, but it is nevertheless estimated that around 26.2% of people who are currently homeless have some form of a mental illness. The placing of these individuals in homelessness is of major concern to their well-being as the added stress of living on the streets is not beneficial for the individual to recover from the particular disorder with which they are afflicted. In fact while some of the homeless who are able to find some temporary relief in the form of shelters, many of the homeless with a mental illness "lack safe and decent shelter".

Explaining abnormal behavior

People have tried to explain and control abnormal behavior for thousands of years. Historically, there have been three main approaches to abnormal behavior: the supernatural, biological, and psychological traditions. Abnormal psychology revolves around two major paradigms for explaining mental disorders, the psychological paradigm and the biological paradigm. The psychological paradigm focuses more on the humanistic, cognitive and behavioral causes and effects of psychopathology. The biological paradigm includes the theories that focus more on physical factors, such as genetics and neurochemistry.

Supernatural explanations

In the first supernatural tradition, also called the demonological method, abnormal behaviors are attributed to agents outside human bodies. According to this model, abnormal behaviors are caused by demons, spirits, or the influences of moon, planets, and stars. During the Stone Age, trepanning was performed on those who had mental illness to literally cut the evil spirits out of the victim's head. Conversely, Ancient Chinese, Ancient Egyptians, and Hebrews, believed that these were evil demons or spirits and advocated exorcism. By the time of the Greeks and Romans, mental illnesses were thought to be caused by an imbalance of the four humors, leading to draining of fluids from the brain. During the Medieval period, many Europeans believed that the power of witches, demons, and spirits caused abnormal behaviors. People with psychological disorders were thought to be possessed by evil spirits that had to be exercised through religious rituals. If exorcism failed, some authorities advocated steps such as confinement, beating, and other types of torture to make the body uninhabitable by witches, demons, and spirits. The belief that witches, demons, and spirits are responsible for the abnormal behavior continued into the 15th century. Swiss alchemist, astrologer, and physician Paracelsus (1493–1541), on the other hand, rejected the idea that abnormal behaviors were caused by witches, demons, and spirits and suggested that people's mind and behaviors were influenced by the movements of the moon and stars.

This tradition is still alive today. Some people, especially in the developing countries and some followers of religious sects in the developed countries, continue to believe that supernatural powers influence human behaviors. In Western academia, the supernatural tradition has been largely replaced by the biological and psychological traditions.

Biological explanations

In the biological tradition, psychological disorders are attributed to biological causes and in the psychological tradition, disorders are attributed to faulty psychological development and to social context. The medical or biological perspective holds the belief that most or all abnormal behavior can be attributed to a medical factor; assuming all psychological disorders are diseases.

The Greek physician Hippocrates, who is considered to be the father of Western medicine, played a major role in the biological tradition. Hippocrates and his associates wrote the Hippocratic Corpus between 450 and 350 BC, in which they suggested that abnormal behaviors can be treated like any other disease. Hippocrates viewed the brain as the seat of consciousness, emotion, intelligence, and wisdom and believed that disorders involving these functions would logically be located in the brain.

These ideas of Hippocrates and his associates were later adopted by Galen, the Roman physician. Galen extended these ideas and developed a strong and influential school of thought within the biological tradition that extended well into the 18th century. 

Medical: Kendra Cherry states: "The medical approach to abnormal psychology focuses on the biological causes on mental illness. This perspective emphasizes understanding the underlying cause of disorders, which might include genetic inheritance, related physical disorders, infections and chemical imbalances. Medical treatments are often pharmacological in nature, although medication is often used in conjunction with some other type of psychotherapy."

Psychological explanations

Underdeveloped Superego

According to Sigmund Freud's structural model, the Id, Ego and Superego are three theoretical constructs that define the way an individual interacts with the external world as well as responding to internal forces. The Id represents the instinctual drives of an individual that remain unconscious; the superego represents a person's conscience and their internalization of societal norms and morality; and finally the ego serves to realistically integrate the drives of the id with the prohibitions of the super-ego. Lack of development in the Superego, or an incoherently developed Superego within an individual, will result in thoughts and actions that are irrational and abnormal, contrary to the norms and beliefs of society.

Irrational beliefs

Irrational beliefs that are driven by unconscious fears, can result in abnormal behavior. Rational emotive therapy helps to drive irrational and maladaptive beliefs out of one's mind.

Sociocultural influences

The term sociocultural refers to the various circles of influence on the individual ranging from close friends and family to the institutions and policies of a country or the world as a whole. Discriminations, whether based on social class, income, race, and ethnicity, or gender, can influence the development of abnormal behavior.

Multiple causality

The number of different theoretical perspectives in the field of psychological abnormality has made it difficult to properly explain psychopathology. The attempt to explain all mental disorders with the same theory leads to reductionism (explaining a disorder or other complex phenomena using only a single idea or perspective). Most mental disorders are composed of several factors, which is why one must take into account several theoretical perspectives when attempting to diagnose or explain a particular behavioral abnormality or mental disorder. Explaining mental disorders with a combination of theoretical perspectives is known as multiple causality. 

The diathesis–stress model emphasizes the importance of applying multiple causality to psychopathology by stressing that disorders are caused by both precipitating causes and predisposing causes. A precipitating cause is an immediate trigger that instigates a person's action or behavior. A predisposing cause is an underlying factor that interacts with the immediate factors to result in a disorder. Both causes play a key role in the development of a psychological disorder. For example, high neuroticism antedates most types of psychopathology.

Recent concepts of abnormality

• Statistical abnormality – when a certain behavior/characteristic is relevant to a low percentage of the population. However, this does not necessarily mean that such individuals are suffering from mental illness (for example, statistical abnormalities such as extreme wealth/attractiveness)
• Psychometric abnormality – when a certain behavior/characteristic differs from the population's normal dispersion e.g. having an IQ of 35 could be classified as abnormal, as the population average is 100. However, this does not specify a particular mental illness.
• Deviant behavior – this is not always a sign of mental illness, as mental illness can occur without deviant behavior, and such behavior may occur in the absence of mental illness.
• Combinations – including distress, dysfunction, distorted psychological processes, inappropriate responses in given situations and causing/risking harm to oneself.

Approaches

• Somatogenic – abnormality is seen as a result of biological disorders in the brain. This approach has led to the development of radical biological treatments, e.g. lobotomy.
• Psychogenic – abnormality is caused by psychological problems. Psychoanalytic (Freud), Cathartic, Hypnotic and Humanistic Psychology (Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow) treatments were all derived from this paradigm. This approach has, as well, led to some esoteric treatments: Franz Mesmer used to place his patients in a darkened room with music playing, then enter it wearing a flamboyant outfit and poke the "infected" body areas with a stick.

Classification

DSM-5

The standard abnormal psychology and psychiatry reference book in North America is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The current version of the book is known as DSM-5. It lists a set of disorders and provides detailed descriptions on what constitutes a disorder such as Major Depressive Disorder or anxiety disorder. It also gives general descriptions of how frequently the disorder occurs in the general population, whether it is more common in males or females and other such facts. 

The DSM-5 identifies three key elements that must be present to constitute a mental disorder. These elements include:

• Symptoms that involve disturbances in behavior, thoughts, or emotions.
• Symptoms associated with personal distress or impairment.
• Symptoms that stem from internal dysfunctions (i.e. specifically having biological and/or psychological roots).

The diagnostic process uses five dimensions, each of which is identified as an "axis", to ascertain symptoms and overall functioning of the individual. It is important to note that the DSM-5 no longer uses this axis system. These axes are as follows:

• Axis I – Clinical disorders, which would include major mental and learning disorders. These disorders make up what is generally acknowledged as a disorder including major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, and substance dependence. To be given a diagnosis for a disorder in this axis the patient must meet the criteria for the particular disorder which is presented in the DSM in that particular disorders section. Disorders in this axis are of particular importance because they are likely to have an effect on the individual in many other axes. In fact the first 3 axes are highly related. This axis is similar to what would be considered an illness or disease in general medicine.
• Axis II – Personality Disorders and a decrease of the use of intellect disorder. This is a very broad axis which contains disorders relating to how the individual functions with the world around him or herself. This axis provides a way of coding for long lasting maladaptive personality characteristics that could have a factor in the expression or development of a disorder on Axis I although this is not always the case. Disorders in this axis include disorders such as antisocial personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and paranoid personality disorder. Mental retardation is also coded in this axis although most other learning disabilities are coded in Axis I. This Axis is an example of how the Axes all interact with one another help to give an overall diagnosis for an individual.
• Axis III – General medical conditions and "Physical disorders". The conditions listed here are the ones that could potentially be relevant to the managing or understanding of the case. Axis III is often used together with an Axis I diagnosis to give a better rounded explanation of the particular disorder. An example of this can be seen in the relationship between major depressive disorder and unremitting pain caused from a chronic medical problem. This category could also include use of drugs and alcohols as these are often symptoms of a disorder themselves such as substance dependence or major depressive disorder. Due to the nature of Axis III it is often recommended that the patient visit a medical doctor when he or she is being assessed in order to determine if the problem could potentially require medical intervention such as surgery. When the first 3 axes are used multiple diagnosis are often found which is actually encouraged by the DSM.
• Axis IV – Psychosocial/environmental problems, which would contribute to the disorder. Axis IV is used to inspect the broader aspects of a person’s situation. This axis will examine the social and environmental factors that could affect the person’s diagnosis. Stressors are the main focus of this axis and particular attention is paid to stressors that have been present in the past year; however it is not a requirement that the stressor had to form or continued in the past year. Due to the large number of potential stressors in an individual’s life, therapists often find such stressors via a checklist approach which is encouraged by the DSM. An example of the checklist approach would be examine the individual’s family life, economic situation, occupation, potential legal problems and so on. It is crucial that the patient is honest in this section as environmental factors can have a huge impact on the patient especially in certain schools of therapy such as the cognitive approach.
• Axis V – Global assessment of functioning (often referred to as GAF) or "Children's Global Assessment Scale" (for children and teenagers under the age of 18). Axis V is a score given to the patient which is designed to indicate how well the individual is handling their situation at the current time. The GAF is based on a 100-point scale which the examiner will use to give the patient a score. Scores can range from 1 to 100 and depending on the score on the GAF the examiner will decide the best course of action for the patient.“According to the manual, scores higher than 70 indicate satisfactory mental health, good overall functioning, and minimal or transient symptoms or impairment, scores between 60 and 70 indicate mild symptoms or impairment, while scores between 50 and 60 indicate moderate symptoms, social or vocational problems, and scores below 50 severe impairment or symptoms”. As GAF scores are the final Axis of the DSM the information present in the previous 4 axes are crucial for determining an accurate score.

ICD-10

The major international nosologic system for the classification of mental disorders can be found in the most recent version of the International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10). The ICD-10 has been used by World Health Organization (WHO) Member States since 1994. Chapter five covers some 300 mental and behavioral disorders. The ICD-10's chapter five has been influenced by APA's DSM-IV and there is a great deal of concordance between the two. WHO maintains free access to the ICD-10 Online. Below are the main categories of disorders:

• F00–F09 Organic, including symptomatic, mental disorders
• F10–F19 Mental and behavioral disorders due to psychoactive substance use
• F20–F29 Schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders
• F30–F39 Mood [affective] disorders
• F40–F48 Neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders
• F50–F59 Behavioral syndromes associated with physiological disturbances and physical factors
• F60–F69 Disorders of adult personality and behavior
• F70–F79 Mental retardation
• F80–F89 Disorders of psychological development
• F90–F98 Behavioral and emotional disorders with onset usually occurring in childhood and adolescence
• F99 Unspecified mental disorder

Perspectives of Abnormal psychology

Psychologists may use different perspectives to try to get better understanding on abnormal psychology. Some of them may just concentrate on a single perspective. But the professionals prefer to combine two or three perspectives together in order to get significant information for better treatments.

• Behavioral- the perspective focus on observable behaviors
• Medical- the perspective focus on biological causes on mental illness
• Cognitive- the perspective focus on how internal thoughts, perceptions and reasoning contribute to psychological disorders

Cause

Genetics

• Investigated through family studies, mainly of monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins, often in the context of adoption. Monozygotic twins should be more likely than dizygotic twins to have the same disorder because they share 100% of their genetic material, whereas dizygotic twins share only 50%. For many disorders, this is exactly what research shows. But given that monozygotic twins share 100% of their genetic material, it may be expected of them to have the same disorders 100% of the time, but in fact they have the same disorders only about 50% of the time
• These studies allow calculation of a heritability coefficient.

Biological causal factors

• Neurotransmitter [imbalances of neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin and GABA (Gamma aminobutryic acid)] and hormonal imbalances in the brain
• Genetic vulnerabilities
• Constitutional liabilities [physical handicaps and temperament]
• Brain dysfunction and neural plasticity
• Physical deprivation or disruption [deprivation of basic physiological needs]

Socio-cultural factors

• Effects of urban/rural dwelling, gender and minority status on state of mind
• Generalizations about cultural practices and beliefs may fail to capture the diversity that exists within and across cultural groups, so we must be extremely careful not to stereotype individuals of any cultural group

Systemic factors

• Family systems
• Negatively Expressed Emotion playing a part in schizophrenic relapse and anorexia nervosa.

Biopsychosocial factors

• Illness dependent on stress "triggers".^[32]

Therapies

Psychoanalysis (Freud)

Psychoanalytic theory is heavily based on the theory of the neurologist Sigmund Freud. These ideas often represented repressed emotions and memories from a patient's childhood. According to psychoanalytic theory, these repressions cause the disturbances that people experience in their daily lives and by finding the source of these disturbances, one should be able to eliminate the disturbance itself. This is accomplished by a variety of methods, with some popular ones being free association, hypnosis, and insight. The goal of these methods is to induce a catharsis or emotional release in the patient which should indicate that the source of the problem has been tapped and it can then be helped. Freud's psychosexual stages also played a key role in this form of therapy; as he would often believe that problems the patient was experiencing were due to them becoming stuck or "fixated" in a particular stage. Dreams also played a major role in this form of therapy as Freud viewed dreams as a way to gain insight into the unconscious mind. Patients were often asked to keep dream journals and to record their dreams to bring in for discussion during the next therapy session. There are many potential problems associated with this style of therapy, including resistance to the repressed memory or feeling, and negative transference onto the therapist. Psychoanalysis was carried on by many after Freud including his daughter Ana Freud and Jacques Lacan. These and many others have gone on to elaborate on Freud's original theory and to add their own take on defense mechanisms or dream analysis. While psychoanalysis has fallen out of favor to more modern forms of therapy it is still used by some clinical psychologists to varying degrees.

Behavioral therapy (Wolpe)

Behavior therapy relies on the principles of behaviorism, such as involving classical and operant conditioning. Behaviorism arose in the early 20th century due to the work of psychologists such as James Watson and B. F. Skinner. Behaviorism states that all behaviors humans do is because of a stimulus and reinforcement. While this reinforcement is normally for good behavior, it can also occur for maladaptive behavior. In this therapeutic view, the patients maladaptive behavior has been reinforced which will cause the maladaptive behavior to be repeated. The goal of the therapy is to reinforce less maladaptive behaviors so that with time these adaptive behaviors will become the primary ones in the patient.

Humanistic therapy (Rogers)

Humanistic therapy aims to achieve self-actualization (Carl Rogers, 1961). In this style of therapy, the therapist will focus on the patient themselves as opposed to the problem which the patient is afflicted with. The overall goal of this therapy is that by treating the patient as "human" instead of client will help get to the source of the problem and hopefully resolve the problem in an effective manner. Humanistic therapy has been on the rise in recent years and has been associated with numerous positive benefits. It is considered to be one of the core elements needed therapeutic effectiveness and a significant contributor to not only the well being of the patient but society as a whole. Some say that all of the therapeutic approaches today draw from the humanistic approach in some regard and that humanistic therapy is the best way for treat a patient. Humanistic therapy can be used on people of all ages; however, it is very popular among children in its variant known as "play therapy". Children are often sent to therapy due to outburst that they have in a school or home setting, the theory is that by treating the child in a setting that is similar to the area that they are having their disruptive behavior, the child will be more likely to learn from the therapy and have an effective outcome. In play therapy, the clinicians will "play" with their client usually with toys, or a tea party. Playing is the typical behavior of a child and therefore playing with the therapist will come as a natural response to the child. In playing together the clinician will ask the patient questions but due to the setting; the questions no longer seem intrusive and therapeutic more like a normal conversation. This should help the patient realizes issues they have and confess them to the therapist with less difficulty than they may experience in a traditional counseling setting.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (Ellis and Beck)

Cognitive behavioral therapy aims to influence thought and cognition (Beck, 1977). This form of therapy relies on not only the components of behavioral therapy as mentioned before, but also the elements of cognitive psychology. This relies on not only the clients behavioral problems that could have arisen from conditioning; but also there negative schemas, and distorted perceptions of the world around them. These negative schemas may be causing distress in the life of the patient; for example the schemas may be giving them unrealistic expectations for how well they should perform at their job, or how they should look physically. When these expectations are not met it will often result in maladaptive behaviors such as depression, obsessive compulsions, and anxiety. With cognitive behavior therapy; the goal is to change the schemas that are causing the stress in a persons life and hopefully replace them with more realistic ones. Once the negative schemas have been replaced, it will hopefully cause a remission of the patients symptoms. CBT is considered particularly effective in the treatment of depression and has even been used lately in group settings. It is felt that using CBT in a group setting aids in giving its members a sense of support and decreasing the likelihood of them dropping out of therapy before the treatment has had time to work properly. CBT has been found to be an effective treatments for many patients even those who do not have diseases and disorders typically thought of as psychiatric ones. For example, patients with the disease multiple sclerosis have found a lot of help using CBT. The treatment often helps the patients cope with the disorder they have and how they can adapt to their new lives without developing new problems such as depression or negative schemas about themselves.

According to RAND, therapies are difficult to provide to all patients in need. A lack of funding and understanding of symptoms provides a major roadblock that is not easily avoided. Individual symptoms and responses to treatments vary, creating a disconnect between patient, society and care givers/professionals.

Constructivist epistemology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Constructivist epistemology is a branch in philosophy of science maintaining that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, who seek to measure and construct models of the natural world. Natural science therefore consists of mental constructs that aim to explain sensory experience and measurements.

According to constructivists, the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction. Constructivism opposes the philosophy of objectivism, embracing the belief that a human can come to know the truth about the natural world not mediated by scientific approximations with different degrees of validity and accuracy.

According to constructivists there is no single valid methodology in science, but rather a diversity of useful methods.

Origin of the term

The term originates from psychology, education, and social constructivism. The expression "constructivist epistemology" was first used by Jean Piaget, 1967, with plural form in the famous article from the "Encyclopédie de la Pléiade" Logique et connaissance scientifique or "Logic and Scientific knowledge", an important text for epistemology. He refers directly to the mathematician Brouwer and his radical constructivism. 

The terms Constructionism and constructivism are often, but should not be, used interchangeably. Constructionism is an approach to learning that was developed by Papert; the approach was greatly influenced by his work with Piaget, but it is very different. Constructionism involves the creation of a product to show learning. It is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender, as well as tables, chairs and atoms are socially constructed. Marx was among the first to suggest such an ambitious expansion of the power of ideas to inform the material realities of people's lives.

History

Constructivism stems from a number of philosophies. For instance, early development can be attributed to the thought of Greek philosophers such as Heraclitus (Everything flows, nothing stands still), Protagoras (Man is the measure of all things). Protagoras is clearly represented by Plato and hence the tradition as a relativist. The Pyrrhonist sceptics have also been so interpreted. (Although this is more contentious.)

Following the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, with the phenomenology and the event, Kant gives a decisive contradiction to Cartesians' epistemology that has grown since Descartes despite Giambattista Vico calling in Scienza nuova ("New Science") in 1725 that "the norm of the truth is to have made it". The Enlightenment's claim of the universality of Reason as the only true source of knowledge generated a Romantic reaction involving an emphasis on the separate natures of races, species, sexes and types of human.

• Gaston Bachelard, who is known for his physics psychoanalysis and the definition of an "epistemologic obstacle" that can disturb a changing of scientific paradigm as the one that occurred between classical mechanics and Einstein's relativism, opens the teleological way with "The meditation on the object takes the form of the project". In the following famous saying, he insists that the ways in which questions are posed determines the trajectory of scientific movement, before summarizing "nothing is given, all is constructed" : "And, irrespective of what one might assume, in the life of a science, problems do not arise by themselves. It is precisely this that marks out a problem as being of the true scientific spirit: all knowledge is in response to a question. If there were no question, there would be no scientific knowledge. Nothing proceeds from itself. Nothing is given. All is constructed.", Gaston Bachelard (La formation de l'esprit scientifique, 1934). While quantum mechanics is starting to grow, Gaston Bachelard makes a call for a new science in Le nouvel esprit scientifique (The New Scientific Spirit).
• Paul Valéry, French poet (20th century) reminds us of the importance of representations and action: "We have always sought explanations when it was only representations that we could seek to invent", "My hand feels touched as well as it touches; reality says this, and nothing more".
• This link with action, which could be called a "philosophy of action", was well represented by Spanish poet Antonio Machado: Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.
• Ludwik Fleck establishes scientific constructivism by introducing the notions of thought collective (Denkkollektiv), and thought style (Denkstil), through which the evolution of science is much more understandable, because the research objects can be described in terms of the assumptions (thought style) that are shared for practical but also inherently social reasons, or just because any thought collective tends to preserve itself. These notions have been drawn upon by Thomas Kuhn.
• Norbert Wiener gives another defense of teleology in 1943 Behavior, Intention and Teleology and is one of the creators of cybernetics.
• Jean Piaget, after the creation in 1955 of the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva, first uses the expression "constructivist epistemologies" (see above). According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget is "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing" (in An Exposition of Constructivism: Why Some Like it Radical, 1990) and "the most prolific constructivist in our century" (in Aspects of Radical Constructivism, 1996).
• J. L. Austin is associated with the view that speech is not only passively describing a given reality, but it can change the (social) reality to which it is applied through speech acts.
• Herbert A. Simon called "the sciences of the artificial" these new sciences (cybernetics, cognitive sciences, decision and organisation sciences) that, because of the abstraction of their object (information, communication, decision), cannot match with the classical epistemology and its experimental method and refutability.
• Gregory Bateson and his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972).
• George Kelly (psychologist) and his book The Psychology of Personal Constructs (1955).
• Heinz von Foerster, invited by Jean Piaget, presented "Objects: tokens for (Eigen-)behaviours" in 1976 in Geneva at a genetic epistemology symposium, a text that would become a reference for constructivist epistemology.
• Paul Watzlawick, who supervised in 1984 the publication of Invented Reality: How Do We Know What We Believe We Know? (Contributions to constructivism).
• Ernst von Glasersfeld, who has promoted since the end of the 70s radical constructivism (see below).
• Edgar Morin and his book La méthode (1977–2004, six volumes).
• Mioara Mugur-Schächter who is also a quantum mechanics specialist.
• Jean-Louis Le Moigne for his encyclopedic work on constructivist epistemology and his General Systems theory (see "Le Moigne's Defense of Constructivism" by Ernst von Glasersfeld).
• Niklas Luhmann who developed "operative constructivism" in the course of developing his theory of autopoietic social systems, drawing on the works of (among others) Bachelard, Valéry, Bateson, von Foerster, von Glasersfeld and Morin.

Constructivism and sciences

Social constructivism in sociology

One version of social constructivism contends that categories of knowledge and reality are actively created by social relationships and interactions. These interactions also alter the way in which scientific episteme is organized. 

Social activity presupposes human beings inhabiting shared forms of life, and in the case of social construction, utilizing semiotic resources (meaning-making and signifying) with reference to social structures and institutions. Several traditions use the term Social Constructivism: psychology (after Lev Vygotsky), sociology (after Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, themselves influenced by Alfred Schütz), sociology of knowledge (David Bloor), sociology of mathematics (Sal Restivo), philosophy of mathematics (Paul Ernest). Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy can be seen as a foundation for social constructivism, with its key theoretical concepts of language games embedded in forms of life.

Constructivism in philosophy of science

Thomas Kuhn argued that changes in scientists' views of reality not only contain subjective elements, but result from group dynamics, "revolutions" in scientific practice and changes in "paradigms".^[4] As an example, Kuhn suggested that the Sun-centric Copernican "revolution" replaced the Earth-centric views of Ptolemy not because of empirical failures, but because of a new "paradigm" that exerted control over what scientists felt to be the more fruitful way to pursue their goals.

But paradigm debates are not really about relative problem-solving ability, though for good reasons they are usually couched in those terms. Instead, the issue is which paradigm should in future guide research on problems many of which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve completely. A decision between alternate ways of practicing science is called for, and in the circumstances that decision must be based less on past achievement than on future promise. ... A decision of that kind can only be made on faith.

— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp 157-8

The view of reality as accessible only through models was called model-dependent realism by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. While not rejecting an independent reality, model-dependent realism says that we can know only an approximation of it provided by the intermediary of models. These models evolve over time as guided by scientific inspiration and experiment.

In the field of the social sciences, constructivism as an epistemology urges that researchers reflect upon the paradigms that may be underpinning their research, and in the light of this that they become more open to consider other ways of interpreting any results of the research. Furthermore, the focus is on presenting results as negotiable constructs rather than as models that aim to "represent" social realities more or less accurately. Norma Romm in her book Accountability in Social Research (2001) argues that social researchers can earn trust from participants and wider audiences insofar as they adopt this orientation and invite inputs from others regarding their inquiry practices and the results thereof.

Constructivism and psychology

In psychology, constructivism refers to many schools of thought that, though extraordinarily different in their techniques (applied in fields such as education and psychotherapy), are all connected by a common critique of previous standard approaches, and by shared assumptions about the active constructive nature of human knowledge. In particular, the critique is aimed at the "associationist" postulate of empiricism, "by which the mind is conceived as a passive system that gathers its contents from its environment and, through the act of knowing, produces a copy of the order of reality."

In contrast, "constructivism is an epistemological premise grounded on the assertion that, in the act of knowing, it is the human mind that actively gives meaning and order to that reality to which it is responding". The constructivist psychologies theorize about and investigate how human beings create systems for meaningfully understanding their worlds and experiences.

Constructivism and education

Joe L. Kincheloe has published numerous social and educational books on critical constructivism (2001, 2005, 2008), a version of constructivist epistemology that places emphasis on the exaggerated influence of political and cultural power in the construction of knowledge, consciousness, and views of reality. In the contemporary mediated electronic era, Kincheloe argues, dominant modes of power have never exerted such influence on human affairs. Coming from a critical pedagogical perspective, Kincheloe argues that understanding a critical constructivist epistemology is central to becoming an educated person and to the institution of just social change.

Kincheloe's characteristics of critical constructivism:

• Knowledge is socially constructed: World and information co-construct one another
• Consciousness is a social construction
• Political struggles: Power plays an exaggerated role in the production of knowledge and consciousness
• The necessity of understanding consciousness—even though it does not lend itself to traditional reductionistic modes of measurability
• The importance of uniting logic and emotion in the process of knowledge and producing knowledge
• The inseparability of the knower and the known
• The centrality of the perspectives of oppressed peoples—the value of the insights of those who have suffered as the result of existing social arrangements
• The existence of multiple realities: Making sense of a world far more complex that we originally imagined
• Becoming humble knowledge workers: Understanding our location in the tangled web of reality
• Standpoint epistemology: Locating ourselves in the web of reality, we are better equipped to produce our own knowledges
• Constructing practical knowledge for critical social action
• Complexity: Overcoming reductionism
• Knowledge is always entrenched in a larger process
• The centrality of interpretation: Critical hermeneutics
• The new frontier of classroom knowledge: Personal experiences intersecting with pluriversal information
• Constructing new ways of being human: Critical ontology

Constructivist trends

Cultural constructivism

Cultural constructivism asserts that knowledge and reality are a product of their cultural context, meaning that two independent cultures will likely form different observational methodologies.

Radical constructivism

Ernst von Glasersfeld was a prominent proponent of radical constructivism. This claims that knowledge is not a commodity which is transported from one mind into another. Rather, it is up to the individual to "link up" specific interpretations of experiences and ideas with their own reference of what is possible and viable. That is, the process of constructing knowledge, of understanding, is dependent on the individual's subjective interpretation of their active experience, not what "actually" occurs. Understanding and acting are seen by radical constructivists not as dualistic processes, but "circularly conjoined".

Constructivist Foundations is a free online journal publishing peer reviewed articles on radical constructivism by researchers from multiple domains.

Relational constructivism

Relational constructivism can be perceived as a relational consequence of the radical constructivism. In contrary to social constructivism, it picks up the epistemological threads and maintains the radical constructivist idea that humans cannot overcome their limited conditions of reception (i.e. self referentially operating cognition). Therefore, humans are not able to come to objective conclusions about the world. 

In spite of the subjectivity of human constructions of reality, relational constructivism focusses on the relational conditions applying to human perceptional processes. Björn Kraus puts it in a nutshell:

It is substantial for relational constructivism that it basically originates from an epistemological point of view, thus from the subject and its construction processes. Coming from this perspective it then focusses on the (not only social, but also material) relations under which these cognitive construction processes are performed. Consequently, it‘s not only about social construction processes, but about cognitive construction processes performed under certain relational conditions.“

Critical constructivism

A series of articles published in the journal Critical Inquiry (1991) served as a manifesto for the movement of critical constructivism in various disciplines, including the natural sciences. Not only truth and reality, but also "evidence", "document", "experience", "fact", "proof", and other central categories of empirical research (in physics, biology, statistics, history, law, etc.) reveal their contingent character as a social and ideological construction. Thus, a "realist" or "rationalist" interpretation is subjected to criticism. Kincheloe's political and pedagogical notion (above) has emerged as a central articulation of the concept.

While recognizing the constructedness of reality, many representatives of this critical paradigm deny philosophy the task of the creative construction of reality. They eagerly criticize realistic judgments, but they do not move beyond analytic procedures based on subtle tautologies. They thus remain in the critical paradigm and consider it to be a standard of scientific philosophy per se.

Genetic epistemology

James Mark Baldwin invented this expression, which was later popularized by Jean Piaget. From 1955 to 1980, Piaget was Director of the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva.

Quotations

• Verum esse ipsum factum, Giambattista Vico

"the norm of the truth is to have made it," or

"the true is precisely what is made"

• Verum et factum convertuntur, Giambattista Vico

"the true and the made are convertible"

• Et, quoi qu'on en dise, dans la vie scientifique, les problèmes ne se posent pas d'eux-mêmes. C'est précisément ce sens du problème qui donne la marque du véritable esprit scientifique. Pour un esprit scientifique, toute connaissance est une réponse à une question. S'il n'y a pas eu de question, il ne peut y avoir de connaissance scientifique. Rien ne va de soi. Rien n'est donné. Tout est construit, Gaston Bachelard in "La formation de l'esprit scientifique" (1934)

"And, irrespective of what one might assume, in the sciences, problems do not arise by themselves. It is, precisely, because all problems are posed that they embody the scientific spirit. If there were no question, there would be no scientific knowledge. Nothing proceeds from itself. Nothing is given. All is constructed."

• On a toujours cherché des explications quand c'était des représentations qu'on pouvait seulement essayer d'inventer, Paul Valéry

"We have always sought explanations when it was only representations that we could seek to invent"

• Ma main se sent touchée aussi bien qu'elle touche ; réel veut dire cela, et rien de plus, Paul Valéry

"My hand feels touched as well as it touches; real means this, and nothing more"

• Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself, Jean Piaget en "la construction du réel chez l'enfant" (1937)

Criticisms

Numerous criticisms have been leveled at Constructivist epistemology. The most common one is that it either explicitly advocates or implicitly reduces to relativism. This is because it takes the concept of truth to be a socially "constructed" (and thereby socially relative) one. This leads to the charge of self-refutation: if what is to be regarded as "true" is relative to a particular social formation, then this very conception of truth must itself be only regarded as being "true" in this society. In another social formation, it may well be false. If so, then social constructivism itself would be false in that social formation. Further, one could then say that social constructivism could be both true and false simultaneously. 

Another criticism of constructivism is that it holds that the concepts of two different social formations be entirely different and incommensurate. This being the case, it is impossible to make comparative judgements about statements made according to each worldview. This is because the criteria of judgement will themselves have to be based on some worldview or other. If this is the case, then it brings into question how communication between them about the truth or falsity of any given statement could be established.

The Wittgensteinian philosopher Gavin Kitching argues that constructivists usually implicitly presuppose a deterministic view of language which severely constrains the minds and use of words by members of societies: they are not just "constructed" by language on this view, but are literally "determined" by it. Kitching notes the contradiction here: somehow the advocate of constructivism is not similarly constrained. While other individuals are controlled by the dominant concepts of society, the advocate of constructivism can transcend these concepts and see through them.

History of atheism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Atheism (derived from the Ancient Greek ἄθεος atheos meaning "without gods; godless; secular; denying or disdaining the gods, especially officially sanctioned gods") is the absence or rejection of the belief that deities exist. The English term was used at least as early as the sixteenth century and atheistic ideas and their influence have a longer history. Over the centuries, atheists have supported their lack of belief in gods through a variety of avenues, including scientific, philosophical, and ideological notions.

In the East, a contemplative life not centered on the idea of deities began in the sixth century BCE with the rise of Jainism, Buddhism, and various sects of Hinduism in India, and of Taoism in China. Within the astika ("orthodox") schools of Hindu philosophy, the Samkhya and the early Mimamsa school did not accept a creator deity in their respective systems. The Vedas of Ceylon admitted only the possibility that deities might exist but went no further. Neither prayers nor sacrifices were suggested in any way by the tribes.

Philosophical atheist thought began to appear in Europe and Asia in the sixth or fifth century BCE. Will Durant, in his The Story of Civilization, explained that certain pygmy tribes found in Africa were observed to have no identifiable cults or rites. There were no totems, no deities, and no spirits. Their dead were buried without special ceremonies or accompanying items and received no further attention. They even appeared to lack simple superstitions, according to travelers' reports.

Indian philosophy

In the East, a contemplative life not centered on the idea of deities began in the sixth century BCE with the rise of Jainism, Buddhism, and various sects of Hinduism in India, and of Taoism in China. These religions offered a philosophic and salvific path not involving deity worship. Deities are not seen as necessary to the salvific goal of the early Buddhist tradition, their reality is explicitly questioned and often rejected. There is a fundamental incompatibility between the notion of gods and basic Buddhist principles, at least in some interpretations.

Within the astika ("orthodox") schools of Hindu philosophy, the Samkhya and the early Mimamsa school did not accept a creator-deity in their respective systems.

The principal text of the Samkhya school, the Samkhya Karika, was written by Ishvara Krishna in the fourth century CE, by which time it was already a dominant Hindu school. The origins of the school are much older and are lost in legend. The school was both dualistic and atheistic. They believed in a dual existence of Prakriti ("nature") and Purusha ("spirit") and had no place for an Ishvara ("God") in its system, arguing that the existence of Ishvara cannot be proved and hence cannot be admitted to exist. The school dominated Hindu philosophy in its day, but declined after the tenth century, although commentaries were still being written as late as the sixteenth century. 

The foundational text for the Mimamsa school is the Purva Mimamsa Sutras of Jaimini (c. third to first century BCE). The school reached its height c. 700 CE, and for some time in the Early Middle Ages exerted near-dominant influence on learned Hindu thought. The Mimamsa school saw their primary enquiry was into the nature of dharma based on close interpretation of the Vedas. Its core tenets were ritualism (orthopraxy), antiasceticism and antimysticism. The early Mimamsakas believed in an adrishta ("unseen") that is the result of performing karmas ("works") and saw no need for an Ishvara ("God") in their system. Mimamsa persists in some subschools of Hinduism today.

Cārvāka

The thoroughly materialistic and antireligious philosophical Cārvāka school that originated in India with the Bārhaspatya-sūtras (final centuries BCE) is probably the most explicitly atheist school of philosophy in the region. The school grew out of the generic skepticism in the Mauryan period. Already in the sixth century BCE, Ajita Kesakambalin, was quoted in Pali scriptures by the Buddhists with whom he was debating, teaching that "with the break-up of the body, the wise and the foolish alike are annihilated, destroyed. They do not exist after death." Cārvākan philosophy is now known principally from its Astika and Buddhist opponents. The proper aim of a Cārvākan, according to these sources, was to live a prosperous, happy, productive life in this world. The Tattvopaplavasimha of Jayarashi Bhatta (c. 8th century) is sometimes cited as a surviving Carvaka text. The school appears to have died out sometime around the fifteenth century.

Buddhism

The nonadherence to the notion of a supreme deity or a prime mover is seen by many as a key distinction between Buddhism and other religions. While Buddhist traditions do not deny the existence of supernatural beings (many are discussed in Buddhist scripture), it does not ascribe powers, in the typical Western sense, for creation, salvation or judgement, to the "gods", however, praying to enlightened deities is sometimes seen as leading to some degree of spiritual merit.

Buddhists accept the existence of beings in higher realms, known as devas, but they, like humans, are said to be suffering in samsara, and not particularly wiser than we are. In fact the Buddha is often portrayed as a teacher of the deities, and superior to them. Despite this they do have some enlightened Devas in the path of buddhahood.

Jainism

Jains see their tradition as eternal. Organized Jainism can be dated back to Parshva who lived in the ninth century BCE, and, more reliably, to Mahavira, a teacher of the sixth century BCE, and a contemporary of the Buddha. Jainism is a dualistic religion with the universe made up of matter and souls. The universe, and the matter and souls within it, is eternal and uncreated, and there is no omnipotent creator deity in Jainism. There are, however, "gods" and other spirits who exist within the universe and Jains believe that the soul can attain "godhood"; however, none of these supernatural beings exercise any sort of creative activity or have the capacity or ability to intervene in answers to prayers.

Classical Greece and Rome

Socrates

In Western classical Antiquity, theism was the fundamental belief that supported the legitimacy of the state (the polis, later the Roman Empire). Historically, any person who did not believe in any deity supported by the state was fair game to accusations of atheism, a capital crime. For political reasons, Socrates in Athens (399 BCE) was accused of being atheos ("refusing to acknowledge the gods recognized by the state").

Christians in Rome were also considered subversive to the state religion and persecuted as atheists. Thus, charges of atheism, meaning the subversion of religion, were often used similarly to charges of heresy and impiety as a political tool to eliminate enemies.

Presocratic philosophy

The roots of Western philosophy began in the Greek world in the sixth century BCE. The first Hellenic philosophers were not atheists, but they attempted to explain the world in terms of the processes of nature instead of by mythological accounts. Thus lightning was the result of "wind breaking out and parting the clouds", and earthquakes occurred when "the earth is considerably altered by heating and cooling". The early philosophers often criticized traditional religious notions. Xenophanes (6th century BCE) famously said that if cows and horses had hands, "then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cows like cows". Another philosopher, Anaxagoras (5th century BCE), claimed that the Sun was "a fiery mass, larger than the Peloponnese"; a charge of impiety was brought against him, and he was forced to flee Athens.

The first fully materialistic philosophy was produced by the atomists Leucippus and Democritus (5th century BCE), who attempted to explain the formation and development of the world in terms of the chance movements of atoms moving in infinite space.

Euripides (480–406 BCE), in his play Bellerophon, had the eponymous main character say:

Doth some one say that there be gods above?
There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.

A fragment from the lost satyr play Sisyphus, which has been attributed to both Critias and Euripides, claims that a clever man invented "the fear of the gods" in order to frighten people into behaving morally. This statement, however, originally did not mean that the gods themselves were nonexistent, but rather that their powers were a hoax.

Aristophanes (ca. 448–380 BCE), known for his satirical style, wrote in his play the Knights: "Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?"

The Sophists

In the fifth century BCE the Sophists began to question many of the traditional assumptions of Greek culture. Prodicus of Ceos was said to have believed that "it was the things which were serviceable to human life that had been regarded as gods", and Protagoras stated at the beginning of a book that "With regard to the gods I am unable to say either that they exist or do not exist".

In the late fifth century BCE, the Greek lyric poet Diagoras of Melos was sentenced to death in Athens under the charge of being a "godless person" (ἄθεος) after he made fun of the Eleusinian Mysteries, but he fled the city to escape punishment. Later writers have cited Diagoras as the "first atheist", but he was probably not an atheist in the modern sense of the word. Somewhat later (c. 300 BCE), the Cyrenaic philosopher Theodorus of Cyrene is supposed to have denied that gods exist and wrote a book On the Gods expounding his views.

Euhemerus (c. 330–260 BCE) published his view that the gods were only the deified rulers, conquerors, and founders of the past, and that their cults and religions were in essence the continuation of vanished kingdoms and earlier political structures. Although Euhemerus was later criticized for having "spread atheism over the whole inhabited earth by obliterating the gods", his worldview was not atheist in a strict and theoretical sense, because he differentiated that the primordial deities were "eternal and imperishable". Some historians have argued that he merely aimed at reinventing the old religions in the light of the beginning of deification of political rulers such as Alexander the Great. Euhemerus' work was translated into Latin by Ennius, possibly to mythographically pave the way for the planned divinization of Scipio Africanus in Rome.

Epicureanism

The most important Greek thinker in the development of atheism was Epicurus (c. 300 BCE). Drawing on the ideas of Democritus and the Atomists, he espoused a materialistic philosophy according to which the universe was governed by the laws of chance without the need for divine intervention (see scientific determinism). Although Epicurus still maintained that the gods existed, he believed that they were uninterested in human affairs. The aim of the Epicureans was to attain ataraxia ("peace of mind") and one important way of doing this was by exposing fear of divine wrath as irrational. The Epicureans also denied the existence of an afterlife and the need to fear divine punishment after death.

One of the most eloquent expressions of Epicurean thought is Lucretius' On the Nature of Things (1st century BCE) in which he held that gods exist but argued that religious fear was one the chief cause of human unhappiness and that the gods did not involve themselves in the world.The Epicureans also denied the existence of an afterlife and hence dismissed the fear of death.

Epicurians denied being atheist but their critics insisted. One explanation for this kind of crypto-atheism, is that they were afraid of persecutions.

Epicureans were not persecuted, but their teachings were controversial and were harshly attacked by the mainstream schools of Stoicism and Neoplatonism. The movement remained marginal, and gradually died out by the end of the Roman Empire.

Persecution of atheists

The ancient world was not all roses for atheists though. After some drawbacks in the peloponnesian war, especialy after the failed Sicilian Expedition, society took a conservative turn and laws against atheism and foreign religions were promptly taken (Decree of Diopeithes). Anaxagoras was the first to be exiled under this new law. 

The Middle Ages

Islamic world

In medieval Islam, Muslim scholars recognized the idea of atheism and frequently attacked unbelievers, although they were unable to name any atheists. When individuals were accused of atheism, they were usually viewed as heretics rather than proponents of atheism. However, outspoken rationalists and atheists existed, one notable figure being the ninth-century scholar Ibn al-Rawandi, who criticized the notion of religious prophecy, including that of Muhammad, and maintained that religious dogmas were not acceptable to reason and must be rejected. Other critics of religion in the Islamic world include the physician and philosopher Abu Bakr al-Razi (865–925), the poet Al-Maʿarri (973–1057), and the scholar Abu Isa al-Warraq (fl. 9th century). Al-Maʿarri, for example, wrote and taught that religion itself was a "fable invented by the ancients" and that humans were "of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains."

Europe

The titular character of the Icelandic saga Hrafnkell, written in the late thirteenth century, says, "I think it is folly to have faith in gods". After his temple to Freyr is burnt and he is enslaved, he vows never to perform another sacrifice, a position described in the sagas as goðlauss, "godless". Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology observes,

It is remarkable that Old Norse legend occasionally mentions certain men who, turning away in utter disgust and doubt from the heathen faith, placed their reliance on their own strength and virtue. Thus in the Sôlar lioð 17 we read of Vêbogi and Râdey â sik þau trûðu, "in themselves they trusted".

citing several other examples, including two kings. Subsequent to Grimm's investigation, scholars including J.R.R. Tolkien and E.O.G. Turville-Petre have identified the goðlauss ethic as a stream of atheistic and/or humanistic philosophy in the Icelandic sagas. People described as goðlauss expressed not only a lack of faith in deities, but also a pragmatic belief in their own faculties of strength, reason and virtue and in social codes of honor independent of any supernatural agency.

In Christian Europe, people were persecuted for heresy, especially in countries where the Inquisition was active. Prominent examples of dissent included the Cathers and the Waldensians. These sects, however antagonistic to the Church, are not examples of Atheism. While rebellions against the Church occurred, none could be considered exactly Atheist.

Another phenomenon in the Middle Ages was proofs of the existence of God. Both Anselm of Canterbury, and later, William of Ockham acknowledge adversaries who doubt the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas' five proofs of God's existence and Anselm's ontological argument implicitly acknowledged the validity of the question about God's existence. Frederick Copleston, however, explains that Thomas laid out his proofs not to counter atheism, but to address certain early Christian writers such as John of Damascus, who asserted that knowledge of God's existence was naturally innate in man, based on his natural desire for happiness. Thomas stated that although there is desire for happiness which forms the basis for a proof of God's existence in man, further reflection is required to understand that this desire is only fulfilled in God, not for example in wealth or sensual pleasure.

The charge of atheism was used to attack political or religious opponents. Pope Boniface VIII, because he insisted on the political supremacy of the church, was accused by his enemies after his death of holding (unlikely) positions such as "neither believing in the immortality nor incorruptibility of the soul, nor in a life to come".

John Arnold's Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe discusses individuals who were indifferent to the Church and did not participate in faith practices. Arnold notes that while these examples could be perceived as simply people being lazy, it demonstrates that "belief was not universally fervent". Arnold enumerates examples of people not attending church, and even those who excluded the Church from their marriage. Disbelief, Arnold argues, stemmed from boredom. Arnold argues that while some blasphemy implies the existence of God, laws demonstrate that there were also cases of blasphemy that directly attacked articles of faith. Italian preachers in the fourteenth century also warned of unbelievers and people who lacked belief.

Renaissance and Reformation

During the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation, criticism of the religious establishment became more frequent in predominantly Christian countries, but did not amount to atheism, per se. 

The term athéisme was coined in France in the sixteenth century. The word "atheist" appears in English books at least as early as 1566. The concept of atheism re-emerged initially as a reaction to the intellectual and religious turmoil of the Age of Enlightenment and the Reformation, as a charge used by those who saw the denial of god and godlessness in the controversial positions being put forward by others. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word 'atheist' was used exclusively as an insult; nobody wanted to be regarded as an atheist. Although one overtly atheistic compendium known as the Theophrastus redivivus was published by an anonymous author in the seventeenth century, atheism was an epithet implying a lack of moral restraint.

The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza contended in the 17th century that God did not interfere in the running of the world, but rather that natural laws explained the workings of the universe.

 

According to Geoffrey Blainey, the Reformation in Europe had paved the way for atheists by attacking the authority of the Catholic Church, which in turn "quietly inspired other thinkers to attack the authority of the new Protestant churches". Deism gained influence in France, Prussia and England, and proffered belief in a noninterventionist deity, but "while some deists were atheists in disguise, most were religious, and by today's standards would be called true believers". The scientific and mathematical discoveries of such as Copernicus, Newton and Descartes sketched a pattern of natural laws that lent weight to this new outlook Blainey wrote that the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza was "probably the first well known 'semi-atheist' to announce himself in a Christian land in the modern era". Spinoza had been expelled from his synagogue for his protests against the teachings of its rabbis and for failing to attend Saturday services. He believed that God did not interfere in the running of the world, but rather that natural laws explained the workings of the universe. In 1661 he published his Short Treatise on God, but he was not a popular figure for the first century following his death: "An unbeliever was expected to be a rebel in almost everything and wicked in all his ways", wrote Blainey, "but here was a virtuous one. He lived the good life and made his living in a useful way. . . . It took courage to be a Spinoza or even one of his supporters. If a handful of scholars agreed with his writings, they did not so say in public".

How dangerous it was to be accused of being an atheist at this time is illustrated by the examples of Étienne Dolet, who was strangled and burned in 1546, and Giulio Cesare Vanini, who received a similar fate in 1619. In 1689 the Polish nobleman Kazimierz Łyszczyński, who had denied the existence of God in his philosophical treatise De non-existentia Dei, was imprisoned unlawfully; despite Warsaw Confederation tradition and king Sobieski's intercession, Łyszczyński was condemned to death for atheism and beheaded in Warsaw after his tongue was pulled out with a burning iron and his hands slowly burned. Similarly in 1766, the French nobleman François-Jean de la Barre, was tortured, beheaded, and his body burned for alleged vandalism of a crucifix, a case that became a cause célèbre because Voltaire tried unsuccessfully to have the judgment reversed.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was also accused of atheism, but he denied it. His theism was unusual, in that he held god to be material. Even earlier, the British playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe (1563–1593) was accused of atheism when a tract denying the divinity of Christ was found in his home. Before he could finish defending himself against the charge, Marlowe was murdered.

In early modern times, the first explicit atheist known by name was the German-languaged Danish critic of religion Matthias Knutzen (1646–after 1674), who published three atheist writings in 1674.

Kazimierz Łyszczyński, a Polish philosopher (executed in 1689, following a hasty and controversial trial) demonstrated strong atheism in his work De non-existentia Dei:

II – the Man is a creator of God, and God is a concept and creation of a Man. Hence the people are architects and engineers of God and God is not a true being, but a being existing only within mind, being chimaeric by its nature, because a God and a chimaera are the same.
IV – simple folk are cheated by the more cunning with the fabrication of God for their own oppression; whereas the same oppression is shielded by the folk in a way, that if the wise attempted to free them by the truth, they would be quelled by the very people.

The Age of Enlightenment

Notre Dame of Strasbourg turned into a Temple of Reason

 

While not gaining converts from large portions of the population, versions of deism became influential in certain intellectual circles. Jean Jacques Rousseau challenged the Christian notion that human beings had been tainted by sin since the Garden of Eden, and instead proposed that humans were originally good, only later to be corrupted by civilization. The influential figure of Voltaire, spread deistic notions of to a wide audience. "After the French Revolution and its outbursts of atheism, Voltaire was widely condemned as one of the causes", wrote Blainey, "Nonetheless, his writings did concede that fear of God was an essential policeman in a disorderly world: 'If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him', wrote Voltaire".

Arguably the first book in modern times solely dedicated to promoting atheism was written by French Catholic priest Jean Meslier (1664–1729), whose posthumously published lengthy philosophical essay (part of the original title: Thoughts and Feelings of Jean Meslier ... Clear and Evident Demonstrations of the Vanity and Falsity of All the Religions of the World) rejects the concept of god (both in the Christian and also in the Deistic sense), the soul, miracles and the discipline of theology. Philosopher Michel Onfray states that Meslier's work marks the beginning of "the history of true atheism".

By the 1770s, atheism in some predominantly Christian countries was ceasing to be a dangerous accusation that required denial, and was evolving into a position openly avowed by some. The first open denial of the existence of God and avowal of atheism since classical times may be that of Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) in his 1770 work, The System of Nature. D'Holbach was a Parisian social figure who conducted a famous salon widely attended by many intellectual notables of the day, including Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Benjamin Franklin. Nevertheless, his book was published under a pseudonym, and was banned and publicly burned by the Executioner. Diderot, one of the Enlightenment's most prominent philosophes and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopédie, which sought to challenge religious, particularly Catholic, dogma said, "Reason is to the estimation of the philosophe what grace is to the Christian", he wrote. "Grace determines the Christian's action; reason the philosophe's". Diderot was briefly imprisoned for his writing, some of which was banned and burned.

In Scotland, David Hume produced a six volume history of England in 1754, which gave little attention to God. He implied that if God existed he was impotent in the face of European upheaval. Hume ridiculed miracles, but walked a careful line so as to avoid being too dismissive of Christianity. With Hume's presence, Edinburgh gained a reputation as a "haven of atheism", alarming many ordinary Britons.

Fête de la Raison ("Festival of Reason"), Notre Dame, 20 Brumaire (1793)

 

The culte de la Raison developed during the uncertain period 1792–94 (Years I and III of the Revolution), following the September massacres, when Revolutionary France was rife with fears of internal and foreign enemies. Several Parisian churches were transformed into Temples of Reason, notably the Church of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis in the Marais. The churches were closed in May 1793 and more securely 24 November 1793, when the Catholic Mass was forbidden.

1819 Caricature by English caricaturist George Cruikshank. Titled "The Radical's Arms", it depicts the infamous guillotine. "No God! No Religion! No King! No Constitution!" is written in the republican banner.

 

Blainey wrote that "atheism seized the pedestal in revolutionary France in the 1790s. The secular symbols replaced the cross. In the cathedral of Notre Dame the altar, the holy place, was converted into a monument to Reason..." During the Terror of 1792–93, France's Christian calendar was abolished, monasteries, convents and church properties were seized and monks and nuns expelled. Historic churches were dismantled. The Cult of Reason was a creed based on atheism devised during the French Revolution by Jacques Hébert, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, and their supporters. It was stopped by Maximilien Robespierre, a Deist, who instituted the Cult of the Supreme Being. Both cults were the outcome of the "de-Christianization" of French society during the Revolution and part of the Reign of Terror. 

The Cult of Reason was celebrated in a carnival atmosphere of parades, ransacking of churches, ceremonious iconoclasm, in which religious and royal images were defaced, and ceremonies which substituted the "martyrs of the Revolution" for Christian martyrs. The earliest public demonstrations took place en province, outside Paris, notably by Hébertists in Lyon, but took a further radical turn with the Fête de la Liberté ("Festival of Liberty") at Notre Dame de Paris, 10 November (20 Brumaire) 1793, in ceremonies devised and organised by Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette.

The pamphlet Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever (1782) is considered to be the first published declaration of atheism in Britain—plausibly the first in English (as distinct from covert or cryptically atheist works). The otherwise unknown William Hammon (possibly a pseudonym) signed the preface and postscript as editor of the work, and the anonymous main text is attributed to Matthew Turner (d. 1788?), a Liverpool physician who may have known Priestley. Historian of atheism David Berman has argued strongly for Turner's authorship, but also suggested that there may have been two authors.

Modern history

Nineteenth century

The French Revolution of 1789 catapulted atheistic thought into political notability in some Western countries, and opened the way for the nineteenth century movements of Rationalism, Freethought, and Liberalism. Born in 1792, Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a child of the Age of Enlightenment, was expelled from England's Oxford University in 1811 for submitting to the Dean an anonymous pamphlet that he wrote entitled, The Necessity of Atheism. This pamphlet is considered by scholars as the first atheistic tract published in the English language. An early atheistic influence in Germany was The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872). He influenced other German nineteenth century atheistic thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Stirner, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900).

The freethinker Charles Bradlaugh (1833–1891) was repeatedly elected to the British Parliament, but was not allowed to take his seat after his request to affirm rather than take the religious oath was turned down (he then offered to take the oath, but this too was denied him). After Bradlaugh was re-elected for the fourth time, a new Speaker allowed Bradlaugh to take the oath and permitted no objections. He became the first outspoken atheist to sit in Parliament, where he participated in amending the Oaths Act.

Karl Marx

In 1844, Karl Marx (1818–1883), an atheistic political economist, wrote in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." Marx believed that people turn to religion in order to dull the pain caused by the reality of social situations; that is, Marx suggests religion is an attempt at transcending the material state of affairs in a society—the pain of class oppression—by effectively creating a dream world, rendering the religious believer amenable to social control and exploitation in this world while they hope for relief and justice in life after death. In the same essay, Marx states, "[m]an creates religion, religion does not create man".

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Friedrich Nietzsche, a prominent nineteenth century philosopher, is well known for coining the aphorism "God is dead" (German: "Gott ist tot"); incidentally the phrase was not spoken by Nietzsche directly, but was used as a dialogue for the characters in his works. Nietzsche argued that Christian theism as a belief system had been a moral foundation of the Western world, and that the rejection and collapse of this foundation as a result of modern thinking (the death of God) would naturally cause a rise in nihilism or the lack of values. While Nietzsche was staunchly atheistic, he was also concerned about the negative effects of nihilism on humanity. As such, he called for a re-evaluation of old values and a creation of new ones, hoping that in doing so humans would achieve a higher state he labeled the Overman (Übermensch).

Atheist feminism also began in the nineteenth century. Atheist feminists oppose religion as a main source of female oppression and gender inequality, believing that the majority of religions are sexist and oppressive to women.

Twentieth century

Atheism in the twentieth century found recognition in a wide variety of other, broader philosophies in the Western tradition, such as existentialism, Objectivism, secular humanism, nihilism, logical positivism, Marxism, anarchism, feminism, and the general scientific and rationalist movement. Neopositivism and analytical philosophy discarded classical rationalism and metaphysics in favor of strict empiricism and epistemological nominalism. Proponents such as Bertrand Russell emphatically rejected belief in God. In his early work, Ludwig Wittgenstein attempted to separate metaphysical and supernatural language from rational discourse. H. L. Mencken sought to debunk both the idea that science and religion are compatible, and the idea that science is a dogmatic belief system just like any religion.

A. J. Ayer asserted the unverifiability and meaninglessness of religious statements, citing his adherence to the empirical sciences. The structuralism of Lévi-Strauss sourced religious language to the human subconscious, denying its transcendental meaning. J. N. Findlay and J. J. C. Smart argued that the existence of God is not logically necessary. Naturalists and materialists such as John Dewey considered the natural world to be the basis of everything, denying the existence of God or immortality.

The historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that during the twentieth century, atheists in Western societies became more active and even militant, though they often "relied essentially on arguments used by numerous radical Christians since at least the eighteenth century". They rejected the idea of an interventionist God, and said that Christianity promoted war and violence, though "the most ruthless leaders in the Second World War were atheists and secularists who were intensely hostile to both Judaism and Christianity" and "Later massive atrocities were committed in the East by those ardent atheists, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong". Some scientists were meanwhile articulating a view that as the world becomes more educated, religion will be superseded.

State atheism

Mao Zedong with Joseph Stalin in 1949. Both leaders repressed religion and established state atheism throughout their respective Communist spheres.

 

Often, the state's opposition to religion took more violent forms. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn documents widespread persecution, imprisonments and torture of believers in his seminal work The Gulag Archipelago. Consequently, religious organizations, such as the Catholic Church, were among the most stringent opponents of communist regimes. In some cases, the initial strict measures of control and opposition to religious activity were gradually relaxed in communist states. Pope Pius XI followed his encyclicals challenging the new right-wing creeds of Italian Fascism (Non abbiamo bisogno, 1931) and Nazism (Mit brennender Sorge, 1937) with a denunciation of atheistic Communism in Divini redemptoris (1937).

The Russian Orthodox Church, for centuries the strongest of all Orthodox Churches, was suppressed by the Soviet government. In 1922, the Soviet regime arrested the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin, with his rejection of religious authority as a tool of oppression and his strategy of "patently explain," Soviet leader Joseph Stalin energetically pursued the persecution of the Church through the 1920s and 1930s. Lenin wrote that every religious idea and every idea of God "is unutterable vileness... of the most dangerous kind, 'contagion of the most abominable kind". Many priests were killed and imprisoned. Thousands of churches were closed, some turned into hospitals. In 1925 the government founded the League of Militant Atheists to intensify the persecution. The regime only relented in its persecution following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Bullock wrote that "A Marxist regime was 'godless' by definition, and Stalin had mocked religious belief since his days in the Tiflis seminary". His assault on the Russian peasantry, wrote Bullock, "had been as much an attack on their traditional religion as on their individual holdings, and the defense of it had played a major part in arousing peasant resistance . . . ". In Divini Redemptoris, Pius XI said that atheistic Communism being led by Moscow was aimed at "upsetting the social order and at undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization":

The central figure in Italian Fascism was the atheist Benito Mussolini. In his early career, Mussolini was a strident opponent of the Church, and the first Fascist program, written in 1919, had called for the secularization of Church property in Italy. More pragmatic than his German ally Adolf Hitler, Mussolini later moderated his stance, and in office, permitted the teaching of religion in schools and came to terms with the Papacy in the Lateran Treaty. Nevertheless, Non abbiamo bisogno condemned his Fascist movement's "pagan worship of the State" and "revolution which snatches the young from the Church and from Jesus Christ, and which inculcates in its own young people hatred, violence and irreverence."

The Western Allies saw the war against Hitler as a war for "Christian Civilisation", while the atheist Stalin re-opened Russia's churches to steel the Soviet population in the battle against Germany. The Nazi leadership itself held a range of views on religion. Hitler's movement said it endorsed a form of Christianity stripped of its Jewish origins and certain key doctrines such as belief in the divinity of Christ. In practice his government persecuted the churches, and worked to reduce the influence of the Christianity on society. Richard J. Evans wrote that "Hitler emphasised again and again his belief that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on modern science. Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition [. . .] 'In the long run', [Hitler] concluded in July 1941, 'National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together' [. . .] The ideal solution would be to leave the religions to devour themselves, without persecutions' ".

Party membership was required for civil service jobs. The majority of Nazi Party members did not leave their churches. Evans wrote that, by 1939, 95 percent of Germans still called themselves Protestant or Catholic, while 3.5 percent were gottgläubig (lit. "believing in god") and 1.5 percent atheist. Most in these latter categories were "convinced Nazis who had left their Church at the behest of the Party, which had been trying since the mid 1930s to reduce the influence of Christianity in society". The majority of the three million Nazi Party members continued to pay their church taxes and register as either Roman Catholic or Evangelical Protestant Christians. Gottgläubig was a nondenominational Nazified outlook on god beliefs, often described as predominantly based on creationist and deistic views. Heinrich Himmler, who himself was fascinated with Germanic paganism, was a strong promoter of the gottgläubig movement and didn't allow atheists into the SS, arguing that their "refusal to acknowledge higher powers" would be a "potential source of indiscipline".

Across Eastern Europe following World War II, the parts of the Nazi Empire conquered by the Soviet Red Army, and Yugoslavia became one party Communist states, which, like the Soviet Union, were antipathetic to religion. Persecutions of religious leaders followed. The Soviet Union ended its truce against the Russian Orthodox Church, and extended its persecutions to the newly Communist Eastern bloc: "In Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and other Eastern European countries, Catholic leaders who were unwilling to be silent were denounced, publicly humiliated or imprisoned by the Communists. Leaders of the national Orthodox Churches in Romania and Bulgaria had to be cautious and submissive", wrote Blainey. While the churches were generally not as severely treated as they had been in the USSR, nearly all their schools and many of their churches were closed, and they lost their formally prominent roles in public life. Children were taught atheism, and clergy were imprisoned by the thousands.

Albania under Enver Hoxha became, in 1967, the first (and to date only) formally declared atheist state, going far beyond what most other countries had attempted—completely prohibiting religious observance and systematically repressing and persecuting adherents. Article 37 of the Albanian Constitution of 1976 stipulated, "The state recognizes no religion, and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people." The right to religious practice was restored with the fall of communism in 1991.

Further post-war communist victories in the East saw religion purged by atheist regimes across China, North Korea and much of Indo-China. In 1949, China became a Communist state under the leadership of Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China. China itself had been a cradle of religious thought since ancient times, being the birthplace of Confucianism and Daoism, and Buddhists having arrived in the first century AD. Under Mao, China became officially atheist, and though some religious practices were permitted to continue under State supervision, religious groups deemed a threat to order have been suppressed—as with Tibetan Buddhism from 1959 and Falun Gong in recent years. Today around two-fifths of the population claim to be nonreligious or atheist. Religious schools and social institutions were closed, foreign missionaries expelled, and local religious practices discouraged. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao instigated "struggles" against the Four Olds: "old ideas, customs, culture, and habits of mind". In 1999, the Communist Party launched a three-year drive to promote atheism in Tibet, saying intensifying propaganda on atheism is "especially important for Tibet because atheism plays an extremely important role in promoting economic construction, social advancement and socialist spiritual civilization in the region".

Other developments

Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

 

In India, E. V. Ramasami Naicker (Periyar), a prominent atheist leader, fought against Hinduism and the Brahmins for discriminating and dividing people in the name of caste and religion. This was highlighted in 1956 when he made the Hindu god Rama wear a garland made of slippers and made antitheistic statements.

During this period, Christianity in the United States retained its popular appeal, and, wrote Blainey, the country "was the guardian, militarily of the "free world" and the defender of its religion in the face of militant communism". During the Cold War, wrote Thomas Aiello the United States often characterized its opponents as "godless communists", which tended to reinforce the view that atheists were unreliable and unpatriotic. Against this background, the words "under God" were inserted into the pledge of allegiance in 1954, and the national motto was changed from E Pluribus Unum to In God We Trust in 1956. However, there were some prominent atheist activists active at this time. Atheist Vashti McCollum was the plaintiff in a landmark 1948 Supreme Court case (McCollum v. Board of Education) that struck down religious education in U.S. public schools. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was perhaps one of the most influential American atheists; she brought forth the 1963 Supreme Court case Murray v. Curlett which banned compulsory prayer in public schools. Also in 1963 she founded American Atheists, an organization dedicated to defending the civil liberties of atheists and advocating for the complete separation of church and state.

Twenty-first century

Professor of Mathematics John Lennox (left) debating religion with atheist author Christopher Hitchens

 

The early twenty-first century has continued to see secularism, humanism and atheism promoted in the Western world, with the general consensus being that the number of people not affiliated with any particular religion has increased. This has been assisted by non-profit organizations such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation in the United States (co-founded by Anne Nicol Gaylor and her daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor, in 1976 and incorporated nationally in 1978, it promotes the separation of church and state), and the Brights movement, which aims to promote public understanding and acknowledgment of science through a naturalistic, scientific and irreligious worldview, defense of irreligious people's human, civil and political rights who share it, and their societal recognition. In addition, a large number of accessible antireligious, antitheist and secularist books, many of which have become bestsellers, have been published by scholars and scientists such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence M. Krauss, Jerry Coyne, and Victor J. Stenger.

This period saw the rise of the "New Atheism", a label that has been applied, sometimes pejoratively, to outspoken critics of theism and religion, prompted by a series of essays published in late 2006, including The God Delusion, Breaking the Spell, God Is Not Great, The End of Faith, and Letter to a Christian Nation. Richard Dawkins also propounds a more visible form of atheist activism which he light-heartedly describes as "militant atheism".

Richard Dawkins with Ariane Sherine at the Atheist Bus Campaign launch

 

Atheist feminism has also become more prominent in the 2010s. In 2012 the first "Women in Secularism" conference was held. Also, Secular Woman was founded on 28 June 2012 as the first national American organization focused on non-religious women. The mission of Secular Woman is to amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious women. The atheist feminist movement has also become increasingly focused on fighting misogyny, sexism and sexual harassment within the atheist movement itself, especially since the upheaval following Michael Shermer's allegations of sexual assault and coverage of his violent behavior applied by James Randi.

In 2013 the first atheist monument on American government property was unveiled at the Bradford County Courthouse in Florida; it is a 1,500-pound granite bench and plinth inscribed with quotes by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

In 2015, Madison, Wisconsin's common council amended their city's equal opportunity ordinance, adding atheism as a protected class in the areas of employment, housing, and public accommodations. This makes Madison the first city in America to pass an ordinance protecting atheists.

On 16 December 2016, Barack Obama signed into law the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, which amends the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 by specifically extending protection to non-theists as well as those who do not claim any particular religion.