Reviewed by Theo Hobson Atheism is complicated. There are different ways of rejecting religion – that’s taken for granted. The real complication is that, paradoxically, the Western tradition of God-rejection is shaped by religion itself. Most major atheists have an idea of moral truth, and progress, that was nurtured by religion. This is reflected in the slow birth of full-scale atheism; many key thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries look very like atheists, but espoused a minimal rational theism, or “deism”.Writing an accessible history of atheism is therefore no small challenge. The writer must convey a lot of complex material, which needs framing in some sort of argument, but strong arguments about religion tend to produce more heat than light. I