Sam Harris - Misconceptions About Atheism

Atheism has long been the target of hostility. In the Laws, Plato recommended various degrees of punishment for atheists. Thomas Aquinas held that unbelievers should be - shut off from the world by death. John Locke's famous doctrine of toleration stopped short with atheists. In the Eighteenth Century, David Hume, perhaps the greatest philosopher ever to write in the English language, was denied a university post because he was suspected of atheism. As recently as the Nineteenth Century, atheists in Britain could be prosecuted for blasphemy. In the United States during the 1950's, atheism was practically synonymous with communism. It is small wonder that a doctrine so despised has been the object of calumny. Even today many misconceptions about atheism persist.