A Rough History of Disbelief

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''A Rough History of Disbelief'', known in the United States as ''Atheism: A Brief History of Disbelief'', is a 2004 television documentary series written and presented by

Jonathan Miller Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE (21 July 1934 – 27 November 2019) was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1 ...

for the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

and tracing the

history of atheism Atheism is in the broadest sense a rejection of any belief in the existence of deities. in : "The terms ''ATHEISM'' and ''AGNOSTICISM'' lend themselves to two different definitions. The first takes the privative ''a'' both before the Greek ''theo ...

. It was first shown on BBC Four and was repeated on BBC Two. It was first shown in the U.S. on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

in 2007. The series includes extracts from interviews with

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are ''All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...

, Richard Dawkins,

Steven Weinberg Steven Weinberg (; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interac ...

Colin McGinn Colin McGinn (born 10 March 1950) is a British philosopher. He has held teaching posts and professorships at University College London, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, and the University of Miami. McGinn is best known for his work ...

Denys Turner Denys Alan Turner (born 5 August 1942) is a British-born American philosopher and theologian. He is Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology emeritus at Yale University having been appointed in 2005, previously having been Norris ...

Pascal Boyer Pascal Robert Boyer is a French-American cognitive anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, mostly known for his work in the cognitive science of religion. He taught at the University of Cambridge for eight years, before taking up the posit ...

and Daniel Dennett. The series also includes many quotations from the works of atheists,

agnostics Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. (page 56 in 1967 edition) Another definition provided is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficient ...

and

deists Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin ''deus'', meaning " god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation of ...

, all read by

Bernard Hill Bernard Hill (born 17 December 1944) is an English actor. He is well recognized for playing King Théoden in ''The Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy, Captain Edward Smith in ''Titanic'', and Luther Plunkitt, the Warden of San Quentin Prison in t ...

. The series consists of three 60-minute episodes: * "Shadows of Doubt" * "Noughts and Crosses" * "The Final Hour" A series of six supplementary programmes was made from material that did not fit into the program; this was dubbed ''

The Atheism Tapes ''The Atheism Tapes'' is a 2004 BBC television documentary series presented by Jonathan Miller. The material that makes up the series was originally filmed in 2003 for another, more general series, '' Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief'', bu ...

''.

Content

The bulk of the presentation is a historical review of atheism in the West with asides to the author's personal experience. Miller notes, as is implicit in the title, how only recently atheism was publicly acknowledged in the modern West, with none willing to state flat rejection of religious beliefs until Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789). He examines why d'Holbach is not better known or celebrated. The first episode, "Shadows of Doubt", starts with Miller in the Reading Room at the British Museum describing the purpose of the series, and gives a brief montage of the interviewees. Miller starts his journey in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and states that the attacks of 11 September 2001 were "inconceivable without religion". Miller goes on to describe how he is conducting the series to explore the history of atheism, but he says he is rather "reluctant" to call himself an atheist because "it hardly seems worthwhile having a name for something which scarcely enters my thoughts at all". There follows a brief montage of people explaining their atheism: Sir Geoffrey Lloyd, Polly Toynbee,

Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and e ...

and

. Miller then describes his Jewish upbringing sitting in the pews of the New London Synagogue in St John's Wood. In order to explore the philosophy of what it is people are talking about when they discuss beliefs, Miller talks to Colin McGinn, who notes that the word belief covers things as diverse as "I believe there is a table in front of me" to "I believe in democracy", and also argues that beliefs are dispositional or implicit rather than occurrent. McGinn goes on to explain that the question of beliefs only comes up when one is faced with a question which is debatable, and gives religion and politics as examples. Miller then states that politics differs from religion in being about what ''ought'' to be, while religion primarily deals with what ''is'' the case. Miller then asks whether it is possible to bring about belief voluntarily (an issue philosophers refer to as doxastic voluntarism).

American broadcast

Broadcast of the series in the United States was delayed until 2007. PBS's usual corporate sponsors were not enthusiastic about the series. After a title change (including removal of the word "atheism"), the series was finally underwritten by the Center for Inquiry, the American Ethical Union, the American Humanist Association, the

Institute for Humanist Studies The Institute for Humanist Studies (IHS) is a think tank based in Washington, DC, USA, that says it is "committed to information and practices meant to address the sociopolitical, economic and cultural challenges facing communities within the Uni ...

, and the Harold K. Hochschild Foundation.

Soundtrack

The program features a

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

score by

Evelyn Glennie Dame Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie, (born 19 July 1965) is a Scottish percussionist. She was selected as one of the two laureates for the Polar Music Prize of 2015. Early life Glennie was born in Methlick, Aberdeenshire in Scotland. The in ...

, wherein the main themes are Paul Smadbeck's "Rhythm Song" and Keiko Abe's "Mi-Chi" (from ''Rhythm Song'', 1990). Other tracks are "Shadow Behind the Iron Sun", "The Council", "First Contact", "Warrior's Chant" and "Wind Horse" (from ''Shadow Behind the Iron Sun'', 1999).

References

External links

''A Brief History of Disbelief''
– official PBS series site *

''A Rough History of Disbelief''
on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

: *
Part I: "Shadows of Doubt"
*
Part II: "Noughts and Crosses"
*
Part III: "The Final Hour"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rough History of Disbelief, A Atheism in the United Kingdom Atheism publications BBC television documentaries about history 2004 British television series debuts 2004 British television series endings 2000s British documentary television series British English-language television shows

Content

American broadcast

Soundtrack

See also

References

External links