The Enlightenment presents atheism as the logical consequence of science. After Copernicus, Newton, and Darwin, the existence of God became less credible and was let go. But for Tomer Persico, author of the Yuval Noah Harari-endorsed In God’s Image, this origin story is a delusion. Drawing on thinkers from Voltaire to Nietzsche, Persico argues that the modern dominance of atheism in the West isn’t the result of science. It is, as Nietzsche argued, the result of religious values that atheism has not escaped.

If the absence of God were simply a fact, like the absence of rain, noting it would take no more courage than looking at the sky. No one thinks it brave to disbelieve in unicorns. Yet atheism has always presented itself as a matter of character: of honesty, of backbone, of the willingness to look reality in the eye. Atheism, in other words, is not only a claim. It is an ethos.

This is all the more striking when we remember what the atheist used to be. For much of Western history, the atheist was not a hero but a monster, an abomination we might liken to what the pedophile is today: not only repellent, but frighteningly incomprehensible.

Case in point: in 1689 John Locke published A Letter Concerning Toleration, which promoted toleration, though not for atheists. “Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the Being of a God,” Locke writes. “Promises, Covenants, and Oaths, which are the Bonds of Humane Society, can have no hold upon an Atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.”

Coming from one of the most liberal minds of the era, we might imagine what others thought. Indeed, atheists, the very few that existed, kept silent about their disbelief, risking imprisonment or worse if letting it slip. The problem was not only theological; atheists were considered inherent dissidents, endangering social harmony and lawfulness. To deny God was to cut the cord on which morality, society and reason itself were strung.

How, then, did the West’s most frightening vice become not only mundane, but, for some, one of its most admired virtues?

The obvious answer is science. Copernicus de-centered the earth, Darwin de-centered humanity, and God, having less and less credible agency, was let go. This is, of course, the Enlightenment’s own genesis myth, with a conversion narrative along the pattern of “I once was blind, but now I see.” Like most myths and conversion narratives, we shouldn’t take it at face value.

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Knowledge alone rarely dislodges a faith. Persuade an ancient Athenian that lightning is an electrical discharge, and he will not conclude that there is no Zeus, but that Zeus is a fantastic electrician. God isn’t proven away by having his holy scriptures proven wrong. Literal text can always be made into an allegory and theological principles can be altered while keeping the core—God—preserved.