View
The City of
No God
Graeme Hunter on the Most Challenging Thought Experiment of All Time
Around the beginning of the seventeenth century, daring provocateurs invented the most challenging thought experiment of all time: Try to conceive of a world in which there is no God. Mainstream thinkers quickly became aware that this project had "gone viral," as we would say nowadays. In 1623, long before there was a single documentable atheist in the known world, the philosopher and scientist Marin Mersenne guessed that there were over 50,000 of them in Paris alone.
That sounds less strange once you realize that atheism meant something vaguer back then than it does today. Then it meant having false opinions about God, not denying his existence altogether. There were plenty of people with false opinions, but none yet so extreme and deluded as to say there was no God.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Graeme Hunter is a contributing editor to Touchstone and Research Professor of Philosophy at Dominican University College in Ottawa. He is the author of Radical Protestantism in Spinoza's Thought (Ashgate).
• Not a subscriber or wish to renew your subscription? Subscribe to Touchstone today for full online access. Over 30 years of publishing!
personal subscriptions
Purchase Print &
Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives including pdf downloads for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
gift subscriptions
GIVE Print &
Online Subscription
Give six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for the reduced rate of $29.95. That's only $2.50 per month!
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
kindle subscription
OR get a subscription to Touchstone to read on your Kindle for only $1.99 per month! (This option is KINDLE ONLY and does not include either print or online.)
Your subscription goes a long way to ensure that Touchstone is able to continue its mission of publishing quality Christian articles and commentary.
more from the online archives
31.5—September/October 2018
The Secular State Without the Decalogue by James M. Kushiner
19.4—May 2006
The Culture War Is Between Religious Believers on Both Sides by Howard P. Kainz
21.10—December 2008
Early Christian Teaching on the Incarnation & Redemption by Patrick Henry Reardon
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
