Atheists and atheism have a negligible place in the historiography of secularisation. This is because, it is argued here, secularisation is something that is too often measured from religion and, in one influential narrative, has a strongly Christian character to its progress and its outcome. Taking Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (2007) as a foil, this article explores longstanding suppositions about the nature of the religious past. It explores on the one hand the persistence of the notion of the “enchanted world” of medieval Europe despite the accumulating evidence to the contrary, and on the other hand the conception of late-modern secularity as veined through with concealed religiosity. Instead, the author posits that secularisation requires an appreciation of the possibility of atheism in all human periods, and quickly assesses some of the evidence, and then argues from oral history evidence that much can be learned from examining contemporary atheist life narratives about the diversity of forms this takes. The article proposes five foundational principles about atheism across the last 1,500 years.

中文翻译：

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无神论的必要性：理解世俗化

无神论者和无神论者在世俗化的历史编纂中的地位可以忽略不计。这是因为，这里有人认为，世俗化往往是从宗教角度衡量的，在一个有影响力的叙述中，它的进步和结果具有强烈的基督教特征。以查尔斯·泰勒的《世俗时代》（2007 年）为衬托，本文探讨了关于宗教历史本质的长期假设。一方面，它探索了中世纪欧洲“魔法世界”概念的持续存在，尽管有越来越多的相反证据，另一方面，它探索了隐含的宗教信仰所贯穿的晚期现代世俗观念。相反，作者认为世俗化需要对所有人类时期无神论的可能性进行评估，并快速评估一些证据，然后从口述历史证据中论证说，从检查当代无神论者关于这种形式多样性的生活叙事中可以学到很多东西。这篇文章提出了过去 1500 年来关于无神论的五个基本原则。