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The Legacy of the Enlightenment Developments
With the end of the Enlightenment the basic arguments and positions of atheistic ethics are set. On the one hand the progressivist faith of the 'virtuous atheists' in the project of an autonomous ethics fed into the secular humanist traditions both in continental Europe and in Britain and America. In the latter countries this took place through deists such as Thomas Paine and Robert Owen, whose more radical atheist followers would set up the great nineteenth century secular institutions such as the British National Secular Society. On the other hand the more disturbing atheistic affirmation of non- altruistic 'values' first exemplified by De Sade found renewed expression in Germany and France in the writings of Max Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Turning to today, debates concerning atheism and morality are now empirically better informed but fundamentally many of the issues remain the same. The defenders of an autonomous naturalistic morality can claim on the basis of richer empirical evidence than ever before that humans are naturally altruistic and cooperative. On the other hand, the atheist amoralists can point out that the commitment of 'virtuous atheists' such as Richard Dawkins to biological reductionism makes it difficult for them to say why humans should not follow their aggressive and xenophobic instincts rather than their cooperative and altruistic ones. They appear to be able to offer only an evolutionary explanation of the altruistic moral instincts, not a reason why they should be followed.
Moreover, amoralists can argue that 'virtuous atheists' fail to provide any real justification for their moral stance. What can they say against De Sade's, Max Stirner's, or Nietzsche's decision to follow their darker instincts? It is striking that the trio of New Atheists - Dawkins, Dennett and Harris - have not so far addressed in any systematic way this 'other' tradition of atheism.
The moral issues which took shape with the first appearance of avowed atheism in seventeenth century Europe and crystallised with the opposing positions of virtuous atheists such as d'Holbach on the one side and De Sade on the other still very much determine contemporary debates.