Prologue: everything must be examined How can that be? why disbelief The clear truth of what happened: disbelief and learning arrive together in greece They forbid rational speculation: disbelief and learning decline together in christian europe Nothing but this visible world: Europe's return to reason How heaven goes: disbelief and science in the seventeenth century Open your eyes: the beginnings of the enlightenment Bombs on the house of the lord: the enlightenment argument for atheism The beast let loose: revolution in america and france This glorious land of freedom: abolition, suffrage and freethinking Free rovers on the broad, bright, breezy common of the universe: working class atheism in nineteenth-century britain To wipe away the entire horizon: creating the twentieth century The passions of the earth: living without gods This breach of naiveté: secularism in Europe and America