The March of Reason

In 1697 a young student called Thomas Aitkenhead was hanged in Edinburgh. His crime was to publicly state that he did not believe in God or the doctrines of Christian theology. This execution has become well known, principally because of where it took place.

Within a few decades of this event, Edinburgh was the centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. Men of science and philosophy produced work that seemed to threaten the very notion of religious belief. Amongst other developments, the emerging field of geology indicated that the Earth was much older than suggested in biblical texts.

For many people, the work of the philosopher David Hume was the high point of this movement. Hume, the sceptic, wrote scathingly about the possibility of miracles and was generally thought of as an enemy of religion. Hume was considered a scandalous individual but he was not hanged for his beliefs, or more accurately, he was not hanged for his lack of beliefs. When he died in 1776, his burial in Calton Hill cemetery was controversial, as some believed there would be dire consequences arising from the burial of an atheist on holy ground. As it was, the burial took place without demons rising from the ground or God striking the ceremony with lightning. The danger in a lack of religious belief came not from a divine being, but instead came from man, as Thomas Aitkenhead had discovered. If God did exist, he was obviously not as concerned about atheism as his followers were.

In the centuries that have followed, science has flourished and in doing so has continued to contradict many of the divine revelations of religions. The history of knowledge seemed to be one of a progression from superstition and myth towards rationality.

The world seemed to be a place where the gods were fading from view. One by one they had gone until, in much of the world, there was only one god. For Christians and Jews and Muslims this was the endpoint for religious belief. For many rationalists it was almost the endpoint. They believed in one less god, and once this last superstition had been put behind us, mankind could move forward to a new phase of history, and in doing so, achieve his full potential.

More than two hundred years after the death of David Hume, we are still waiting for one less god. Religion still plays an important role in both individual identity and world politics. Why did the last act in human progress never take place?