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  • 11th century

    • 1048: "The Koran! well, come put me to the test— Lovely old book in hideous error drest—  Believe me, I can quote the Koran too, The unbeliever knows his Koran best. And do you think that unto such as you, A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew,  God gave the secret, and denied it me?— Well, well, what matters it! believe that too." - Atheism, Wikiquote.

  • 16th century

    • 1571: Athée), in the sense of "one who denies or disbelieves the existence of God",[15] predates atheism in English, being first attested in about 1571. - Atheism, Wikipedia.
    • 1577: Atheist as a label of practical godlessness was used at least as early as 1577. - Atheism, Wikipedia.
    • 1587: In English, the term atheism was derived from the French athéisme in about 1587. - Atheism, Wikipedia.

  • 17th century

  • 18th century

    • 1700: Deism and theism changed meanings slightly around 1700, due to the influence of atheism; deism was originally used as a synonym for today's theism, but came to denote a separate philosophical doctrine. - Atheism, Wikipedia.
    • 1758: John Baskerville printed works for the University of Cambridge in 1758 and, although an atheist, printed a splendid folio Bible in 1763. - John Baskerville, Wikipedia.
    • 1779: "God's power is infinite, Whatever he wills is executed; But neither man nor any other animal is happy; therefore he does not will their happiness. Epicurus' old questions are yet unanswered. Is he both able and willing to prevent evil? Then whence cometh evil?" - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1793: The chaotic political events in revolutionary Paris eventually enabled the more radical Jacobins to seize power in 1793, ushering in the Reign of Terror. - Atheism, Wikipedia.

  • 19th century

    • 1811: He replied to a charge of Spinozism or atheism, which had been strongly urged against him, by a treatise entitled Des dispositions innees de fame et de l'esprit, which he afterwards incorporated with his greater work. - Franz Joseph Gall, 1911encyclopedia.
    • September 3, 1811: "I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon another." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • September 26, 1833: Charles Bradlaugh (26 September 1833 – 30 January 1891) was a political activist and one of the most famous English atheists of the 19th century. - Charles Bradlaugh, Wikipedia.
    • 1848: In the 19th century, many atheists and other anti-religious thinkers devoted their efforts to political and social revolution, facilitating the upheavals of 1848, the Risorgimento in Italy, and the growth of an international socialist movement. - Atheism, Wikipedia.
    • October 18, 1854: At Sansom Street Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania over three days October 18–20, 1854, Ernestine Rose was chosen president in spite of her atheism. - National Women's Rights Convention, Wikipedia.
    • 1862: "Credit has also been given to the conductor Walter Damrosch (1862-1950)." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1880: There was a huge controversy when the atheist Charles Bradlaugh was elected as a Member of Parliament and then prevented from taking his seat in the House of Commons. - Charles Darwin's views on religion, Wikipedia.
    • 1880: There was a huge controversy when the atheist Charles Bradlaugh was elected as a Member of Parliament and then prevented from taking his seat in the House of Commons. - Charles Darwin's religious views, Wikipedia.
    • 1880: The first declared atheist to win a general election was Charles Bradlaugh at the 1880 UK general election. - United Kingdom general election records, Wikipedia.
    • 1892: His position was seriously compromised by the failure in 1892 to carry an education bill which he had defended by saying that the question at issue was Christianity or Atheism, and he resigned the presidency of the Prussian ministry, which was then given to Count Eulenburg. - Georg Leo Caprivi De Caprera De Montecuccoli, 1911encyclopedia.
    • 1895: "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to religious belief and it's a good thing." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation have become clearer and stronger with advancing years." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "I never believed. I thought all the services at school were ludicrous. Loved the hymns, but the content of the hymns were so absurd. Dense theology, weird stuff." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence, from Jerusalem, of a lunatic asylum." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "Certainly you don't believe in the gods? What's your argument? Where's your proof?" - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "In this subject of the nature of the gods, the first question is, do the gods exist or do they not? It is difficult, you will say, to deny that they exist. I would agree if we were arguing the matter in a public assembly. But in a private discussion of this kind, it is perfectly easy to do so." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: ""If you don't worship me you will burn forever." I always thought that was ugly." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "Crush the infamy! (Écrasez l'infâme!)" - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "By simple common sense I don't believe in God." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "Quoted in BBC Four, Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, unidentified episode, unidentified 2005 date" - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1895: "I do not believe in God, but as I sat there in the damaged [balloon] capsule, hopelessly vulnerable to the slightest shift in weather or mechanical fault, I could not believe my eyes." - Atheism, Wikiquote.

  • 20th century

    • 1905: The Republic is based on the principle of laïcité, that is of freedom of religion (including of agnosticism and atheism) enforced by the Jules Ferry laws and the 1905 law on the separation of the State and the Church, enacted at the beginning of the Third Republic (1871–1940). - Culture of France, Wikipedia.
    • 1909: On hearing Billy Sunday preach in 1909 he became an atheist and shortly afterward became a socialist and an IWW member. - Ammon Hennacy, Wikipedia.
    • 1917: After the Russian Revolution of 1917, increased religious freedom for minority religions lasted for a few years, before the policies of Stalinism turned towards repression of religion. - Atheism, Wikipedia.
    • 1927: An inverse correlation between religiosity and intelligence has been found by 39 studies carried out between 1927 and 2002, according to an article in Mensa Magazine. - Atheism, Wikipedia.
    • 1929: A new phase of the anti-religious persecution in the Soviet Union began in 1929 with the drafting of new legislation that severely prohibited religious activities and called for a heightened attack on religion in order to further disseminate atheism. - USSR Anti-Religious Campaign (1928–1941), Wikipedia.
    • April 12, 1930: It was one of the main centres of atheist propaganda in the USSR and on April 12, 1931 it gave a demonstration of Copernicus’s theory. - Antireligious Museum, Wikipedia.
    • November 22, 1934: Nicolas Hardy Walter (22 November 1934 – 7 March 2000) was a British anarchist and atheist writer, speaker and activist. - Nicolas Walter, Wikipedia.
    • February 21, 1936: "I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1941: Only after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin finally started to scale down the campaign of militant atheism, seeking the moral support of the Church in the war. - Patriarch Sergius I of Moscow, Wikipedia.
    • 1945: Although many Albanians have been either atheists or agnostics since Enver Hoxha's imposition of state atheism and persecution of those of a religious disposition during the period between 1945 until 1990, Christianity has played an active role in the development of the Albanian society since the time of the Byzantine Empire. - Orthodoxy in Albania, Wikipedia.
    • 1948: His atheism was the subject of a scandal in 1948 when the muralist Diego Rivera painted a mural at the Del Prado Hotel with Ramírez holding a sign reading, "Dios no existe" [2] ("God does not exist"). - Ignacio Ramírez, Wikipedia.
    • 1953: "The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • January 3, 1954: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • December 14, 1955: "1, with acknowledgement to Buchan, and was again used by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in Look magazine (December 14, 1955)." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1956: This was highlighted in 1956 when he made the Hindu god Rama wear a garland made of slippers and made antitheistic statements. - Atheism, Wikipedia.
    • 1958: These findings broadly agree with a 1958 statistical meta-analysis by Professor Michael Argyle of the University of Oxford. - Atheism, Wikipedia.
    • January 24, 1959: David Mills (born January 24, 1959) is an American atheist and an author who argues that science and religion cannot be successfully reconciled. - David Mills (author), Wikipedia.
    • 1959: A museum of atheism was opened in one of the confiscated church buildings in 1959. - Pochayiv Lavra, Wikipedia.
    • 1967: From year 1967 to the end of the totalitarian regime, religious practices were banned and the country was proclaimed officially atheist, marking an event that happened for the first time in world history. - Religion in Albania, Wikipedia.
    • 1968: "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1972: However, the book Positive Atheism by Gora, first published in 1972, introduced an alternative use for the phrase. - Atheism, Wikipedia.
    • 1972: The terms negative atheism and positive atheism were used by Antony Flew in 1972, although Jacques Maritain used the phrases in a similar, but strictly Catholic apologist, context as early as 1949. - Weak and strong atheism, Wikipedia.
    • 1979: Implicit atheism and explicit atheism are subcategories of atheism coined by George H. Smith (1979, p.13-18). - Implicit and explicit atheism, Wikipedia.
    • 1981: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1983: Two friends involved in the southern California atheist and freethought movements, Al Seckel and John Edwards, co-created the Darwin fish design, which was first used on a freethought leaflet entitled "Darwin's Views on Religion" for Atheists United in 1984. - Parodies of the ichthys symbol, Wikipedia.
    • 1986: "Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • August 27, 1987: "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1992: The Cuban leadership was officially atheist until 1992 when the Communist Party agreed to allow religious followers to join the party. - Human rights in Cuba, Wikipedia.
    • 1997: "The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front."" - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • March, 1998: "The question of the origin of the matter in the universe is no longer thought to be beyond the range of science -- everything can be created from nothing…it is fair to say that the universe is the ultimate free lunch." - Atheism, Wikiquote.
    • 1998: A letter published in Nature in 1998 reported a survey suggesting that belief in a personal god or afterlife was at an all-time low among the members of the U.S. - Atheism, Wikipedia.

  • 21st century







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