Changes

The fourteenth psalm of the Bible read: ‘The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,’"<ref>Psalm 14:1-7 (KJV).</ref> and before modernist theo-philosophical developments in the late-eighteenth century, this phrase was taken quite literally. Essentially, being an atheist for the sake of reason or just a simple lack of belief was entirely incomprehensible in Britain before the Industrial Revolution. Atheism was seen as the result of animalistic tendencies; it was considered a conclusion reached only by the mentally unstable, as it was the ultimate form of irrationality. But, as we shall see, this would change towards the end of the eighteenth century. As many historical studies of atheism demonstrate, ‘intellectual’ "intellectual" atheism changed from something unfathomable and unreasonable to something quite comprehensible.