Atheism: A Brief History of Disbelief - Noughts and Crosses

In this second episode of the wonderful and erudite documentary series Atheism: A Brief History of Disbelief (click here to see the rest of the episodes), Jonathan Miller continues to explore the religious and political conditions of the dark ages and medieval times, which ensured illiteracy and ignorance on the part of the public, especially about the Greek skeptics and materialists like Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius (my personal favorite of the three), and the virtual impossibility of free inquiry and skepticism.

Starting with the Protestant Reformation, however, more so than with the traditional scientific discoveries of the time, all of that would change, and a new trend of free thought would ultimately result in thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and the Baron d'Holbach (also three of my favorite Enlightenment thinkers... maybe there's a trend here...).

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The fact that the dark ages lasted for over a thousand years should be a warning to all of us that unquestioned fundamentalist religious belief is quite dangerous indeed...