Imagine There's No Heaven by Mitchell Stephens

"As Mitchell Stephens reveals in this gripping narrative history of atheism, many brave souls have come out of the atheist closet over the centuries to challenge the religious dogma of their day, and many paid the ultimate price for so doing.
We all stand on the shoulders of these giants so artfully brought to life—along with their ideas—in this important contribution to the burgeoning literature on unbelief." Michael Shermer

The historical achievements of religious belief have been large and well chronicled. But what about the accomplishments of those who have challenged religion? Traveling from classical Greece to twenty-first century America, Imagine There’s No Heaven explores the role of disbelief in shaping Western civilization.

Mitchell Stephens tells the often-courageous tales of history’s most important atheists— like Denis Diderot and Salman Rushdie. Stephens makes a strong and original case for their importance not only to today’s New Atheist movement but to the way many of us—believers and nonbelievers—now think and live. Amazon


Most Helpful Customer Reviews

The one-star review is warped!
By lorax21 on June 30th 2014
Format: Hardcover

The text is admirably clear, and a terrible injustice is done to it by the reviewer who calls himself The History Detective. For example, The History Detective accuses this book of "using Newton as an example of almost a closet atheist". In truth, however, the book's author asserts: "the men who made the
Scientific Revolution appear to have sensed God... Isaac Newton, the greatest of these natural philosophers, shared the awe... he was a believer". The book's author adds: "Yet Newton and these other 17th century scientists generally managed to keep their awe from interfering with their investigations. The first edition of Newton's Principia did not contain any discussion of... theology whatsoever. It was only after his book was criticized by Leibniz and others for impiety... that Newton added a section discussing God's role."
Obviously, leaving theology out of a science text is not the same as (almost) atheism. Shame on "The History Detective" for this and other errors of fact.


An extremely important book
By Sharon Robideaux on August 9th 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
This book is one of the most important I have ever read. Its scope is broad but its thesis is narrow. Atheism is a very old idea, responsible for much of human progress. I particularly enjoyed the connection between human rights and religiosity. Religions enjoy claiming for themselves the honors congruent with civil liberties, when in fact religions have been the conservators of the status quo, a status that perpetuates slavery, misogyny, homophobia, and colonialism. I hope that the author is correct in his assessment that even in the USA, religion is fading and being diluted until it will eventually be mere history.


Surprise
By Garry on April 14th 2014
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This history of atheism didn't just cover the major players who ran into trouble with a disgruntled church. It also reported many instances where the average unheard of person just wasn't buying what the church is trying to sell. Many still feel that the power of the church to hold its members is declining as science answers those questions and in essence kills off a little more of the deity controlled universe. Garry L. Loucks


A vibrant history and thoughtful argument
By David K. Chivers on March 12, 2014
Format: Hardcover
In “Imagine There’s No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create The Modern World” author Mitchell Stephens delivers a readable, vibrant history of disbelief and atheistic thought, and argues persuasively that intellectual challenges to religious belief were a major catalyst to increasing knowledge in the modern world.
Stephens’ book is first and foremost a history of disbelief, from the Greeks and Romans, though the low points of the Dark Ages where it was institutionally repressed, then into the Renaissance where it fought to maintain a foothold and finally into the Enlightenment where atheism (and its more prevalent, slightly religious cousin, deism) finally became a valid viewpoint, at least among intellectual circles. He then follows disbelief through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and into our own, before suggesting where atheism might be heading based on his historical analysis up to now.
The history of disbelief is much more prevalent and rich than traditional history has portrayed, as atheism’s role has usually been downplayed or outright denied by conventional histories. Stephens brings out the role of many often overlooked personages, such as Denis Diderot, Jean Meslier and Charles Bradlaugh – the first open atheist elected to Parliament (in 1880) but who was denied his seat until he was re-elected several times.

While primarily a history, as the subtitle of his book suggests Stephens’ also argues that disbelief and the progress of knowledge have gone hand in hand throughout history. Whenever knowledge was taking great leaps forward, religious doubters were right there, stoking the intellectual fires. Stephens argument is not that it was only doubters that pushed knowledge, but rather that the questions raised by doubt were what drove people to seek answers, and those answers often drove further doubt.
No matter who is reading this book, whether atheist or devout, the thoughtful analysis of the various kinds of disbelief and the history of atheistic thought is well laid out, well researched, and told exceedingly well. He is a graceful writer, and other than one or two chapters that get a little heavy on the philosophy, the book is a smooth but enlightening journey.
As to his argument that disbelief is what made the modern world possible, I found it convincing as well, although I expect those of a more religious bent might not find it as compelling. Nevertheless it is well told and well supported, and at least puts forward an argument that must be addressed by any who wish to step beyond their own rigid belief system.


From Greeks to Dawkins, this is a book by, for, and about atheists!
By Timothy R. Campbell on June 19th 2014
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
IMAGINE THERE’S NO HEAVEN
How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World
By Mitchell Stephens
Published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 320 pp including notes plus index
Review by Tim Campbell Taken from John Lennon’s famous song, IMAGINE THERE’S NO HEAVEN is unashamedly a feel-good book for atheists, agnostics, and anyone who has listened to a religious sermon and asked to themselves: “How can that be?” Of course, most of us are fully aware that believers have always been a majority in most cultures and most of history’s great movers and shakers have been believers, at least publicly. And we acknowledge their contributions gratefully.
But religionists do not seem willing to return the courtesy. That doubters and infidels and questioners have also contributed to the creation of our modern society is a fact that religionists would rather ignore. This book attempts to begin to balance that ledger! Author Mitchell Stephens takes back to the Greeks and forward through the Dark Ages and more, to Today in a nicely organized and very well-written manner. This is a book for the doubters, but believers would benefit also from seeing a bit of the “other side”. Of course, if the believer is afraid that reading an atheist book will cause him or her to be plunged into the depths of hell, then better to bury their heads into sand or perhaps wet concrete. Safer that way!

Stephens offers the premise that without doubt, without disbelief, without questioning, modern science, modern medicine, modern life would have been impossible to create. After all, he argues, if every question can be answered with a “God did it” or some variation on that theme, then there is no reason to put a drop of water or blood under a microscope or glance upward at those mysterious wandering bright lights (called planets by the Greeks!). In fact, there really is no reason to even bother inventing such tools as the microscope or telescope, at least not for exploration of the natural world. While extolling the virtues of doubt, Stephens does not ignore the failed experiments in atheistic politics. The French Revolution’s devolvement into a guillotine orgy, Stalin’s usurping of Marx’s Worker’s Paradise, and others come in for their share of criticism. But, as Stephens points out, these murderous regimes did not murder in the name of atheism. Nor did they murder in order to preserve atheism. These regimes murdered mostly for the expedience of ridding the regime’s leaders of opponents (imagined as well as real).
Regardless, we have to acknowledge that these regimes were both godless AND psychopathically deadly! However, as Stephens also points out, religion-dominated regimes also murdered in quantity. It is the secularization of the Western World that has led to reduction of religion-based persecutions and the rapid advance of science.

Most of humanity’s advances in social equality and rights have come in secular nations and directly because those nations are secular in nature. Even though the majority of Americans are religious, at least nominally, the separation of religion from the state has actually enabled the diversity of religions that flourish here. Without a state religion and the usually resulting marriage of church leaders and state leaders, we can see the progress in human rights. Women voting, Blacks freed from slavery, workers’ rights, safety net programs, and freedoms of speech and worship have come from liberal secular ideals!

In my own humble secular atheist opinion, this is an important book that should be on every doubter’s bookshelf. It should also be read by those doubters!
“Imagine there’s no Heaven,
Above us only sky”
To me, THAT is true freedom!
TRC
6/18/2014

Product Details

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Trade (February 25th 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1137002603
ISBN-13: 978-1137002600








Mitchell Stephens was born on August 16th 1949 in New York City, and was raised in Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island. His father was Bernard Stephens (1917–1990), a labor newspaper editor. His mother, Lillian Stephens, was a retired professor of education, and lived on Long Island. He has one sibling, a sister, Beth Stephens, who is an international human rights lawyer and law professor at Rutgers in Camden, New Jersey.

He attended The Wheatley School, a public school in Old Westbury, New York, and graduated in 1967. He graduated from Haverford College in 1971, with honors in English. In 1973 he graduated from UCLA with a masters in Journalism, and received the Edward R. Murrow Award for best student in broadcast journalism.

His wife is Esther Davidowitz, magazine writer and editor, and currently editor-in-chief of Westchester Magazine. They have three children: Noah, Lauren, and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.

Published work

Stephens has published many books and textbooks on journalism, including:

Without Gods: Toward a History of Disbelief - blog chronicling the writing of his next book, a history of atheism (to be published by Carroll & Graf)

The rise of the image the fall of the word (Oxford University Press, 1998)

A History of News (Viking, 1988)

Writing and Reporting the News (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1986)

Broadcast News (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981)

Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11 with co-editors Allison Gilbert, Phil Hirschkorn, Melinda Murphy and Robyn Walensky. Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11 with co-editors Allison Gilbert, Phil Hirschkorn, Melinda Murphy and Robyn Walensky.