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The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

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A philosopher as well as a poet, Shelley argues that the divine attributes of God are merely projections of human powers; life everlasting cannot be empirically demonstrated, for it runs counter to all the evidence for mortality given by the natural world, which is the only world we know. During his brief life, Shelley affronted the armies of Christendom with a single-minded purpose. As Shelley observes in his dialogue "A Refutation of Deism", there can be no middle ground between accepting revealed religion and disbelieving in the existence of a deity - another way of stating the necessity of atheism. In all, these essays provide an important statement of the poet and freethinker's enlightened views on skepticism, faith, and the corruption of organized Christianity.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) was a renowned literary figure, whose reputation was established at a young age by the publication of Queen Mab (1813); Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude; Mont Blanc (both written in 1816); and The Revolt of Islam (1817). He was a friend of the poet Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, the essayist and bold defender of the Romantics, including Shelley, Byron, and John Keats. After his second marriage to Mary Godwin (who would win her own fame as the author of Frankenstein), Shelley moved permanently from England to Italy in 1818, and there wrote his greatest works, among them "Ode to the West Wind" (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820). His life was tragically cut short when he drowned in a boating accident off the northwest coast of Italy, near Viareggio, on July 8, 1822.
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