Deist or Atheist Revolution in Europe After 380CE

With a PoD of 380CE (after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire), how plausible and how early could a Deist or Atheist Revolution take place in Europe?
 
With a PoD of 380CE (after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire), how plausible and how early could a Deist or Atheist Revolution take place in Europe?
Partially happened with the French Revolution but didn't get too popular outside some radical political circles.
 
Maybe an insane Emperor could declare that the end times and second coming of Christ was right around the corner (a la the rapture) and make a big deal out of it. Then when it doesn't there's a big fizzle in christian fervor and the idea that god's moved on from earth takes hold?
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
Europe was too divided and insecure in the Middle Ages to have an intellectual revival and spread of that extent. Maybe an economic revival could help this.
A Carolingian/Byzantine/Anglo-Saxon united Europe,Middle East and North Africa?
 
Outside of a 1st French republic wank, can't see this happening.

Not believing and believing in a vague notion of divinity are not really rallying points...
 
IOTL, the dominant Roman Catholic Church's power and holdings was broken up by the Protestant Reformation.

Instead of a movement to reform Christianity, perhaps some kind of Atheist Martin Luther comes about and says that Christianity is all made up bunk like Paganism before it? And then rulers in Europe rally behind Atheist Luther to break the hold of the Church and confiscate Church lands?
 
IOTL, the dominant Roman Catholic Church's power and holdings was broken up by the Protestant Reformation.

Instead of a movement to reform Christianity, perhaps some kind of Atheist Martin Luther comes about and says that Christianity is all made up bunk like Paganism before it? And then rulers in Europe rally behind Atheist Luther to break the hold of the Church and confiscate Church lands?

The issue is, the peasants will either remain religious and rebel, or realize they have no spiritual reason not to rebel. The benefit of some sort of religion to keep the peasants in line vastly lightweight the alternative, particularly when something like Protestantism provides all the benefits of the proposed revolution without the same risks.

IMO, to get the revolution proposed, there are two options. Firstly, a French Revolution POD might be possible, but much like OTL an alt-Thermidor makes religion likely to return. For a more lasting atheist revolution, something Communist is possible, but that gets it close to a post 1900 POD.
 
I mainly agree with the "ridiculously OP Revolutionary France" scenario but for the sake of argument could a more powerful strain of Gnostic thought accomplish the AHC in a roundabout way? If some form of Gnostic Christianity becomes the dominant faith in early the Roman Empire, then the antimaterialism of the faith could eventually produce a backlash. Rather than seeing all of the material world as a disgusting encumbrance, the newly arising Deists would celebrate it as a masterpiece of craftsmanship by a hands off landlord, which would no doubt appeal to the run of the mill peasant whose entire life revolves around the ins and outs of material existence and would have no time for the extreme asceticism and borderline antinatalism that the most extreme variants of Gnosticism could produce. An atheist revolution is a harder lift though.
 
I mainly agree with the "ridiculously OP Revolutionary France" scenario but for the sake of argument could a more powerful strain of Gnostic thought accomplish the AHC in a roundabout way? If some form of Gnostic Christianity becomes the dominant faith in early the Roman Empire, then the antimaterialism of the faith could eventually produce a backlash. Rather than seeing all of the material world as a disgusting encumbrance, the newly arising Deists would celebrate it as a masterpiece of craftsmanship by a hands off landlord, which would no doubt appeal to the run of the mill peasant whose entire life revolves around the ins and outs of material existence and would have no time for the extreme asceticism and borderline antinatalism that the most extreme variants of Gnosticism could produce. An atheist revolution is a harder lift though.

I don't know about that. Working sun up to sun down doing backbreaking labor under the hot Mediterranean sun or in the depths of winter, knowing you will do that until you drop dead (and odds are your kids will too) wouldn't make you think the world was a masterpiece made by a genius, but instead a literal torture chamber which might as well be made by Satan himself. A Gnostic culture having a backlash against more extreme forms of Gnostic ideology wouldn't just up and decide the world is actually a pretty nice place but would instead go for something else.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
Also after 1900 though. Communist revolutions do have potential though; if you both wank the Paris Commune and make it more antireligious.
I don't think so. Not related to this thread even then. Communism has never achieved an intellectual and a developmental progress as the OP wants. For such process to occur,only way is relative stability.
 
I don't think so. Not related to this thread even then. Communism has never achieved an intellectual and a developmental progress as the OP wants. For such process to occur,only way is relative stability.
Communist Europe and North Korea were/are very stable countries (China perhaps not so much at times) and some like Albania had huge drops in religious populations for a time. The USSR did too until the government scaled back some of it in an attempt to raise morale against the Nazis. Given the pseudoreligious tendencies of communism, an antireligious campaign can absolutely work assuming the state apparatus is strong and dedicated enough. Not necessarily atheism either since they could end up promoting a more deist philosophy instead assuming the party wants to keep "religion" around. Some elements in the CPSU wanted something like this, and of course the French Revolution went for that too.
 
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