H. P. Lovecraft

American author (1890-1937).

Lovecraft was an atheist by the age of 7, as reported in a biography by De Camp. His writings also indicate that he probably had a non-Christian, if not atheistic philosophy.

Lovecraft A Biography

Abridged By The Author

by L. Sprague De Camp

Copyright 1975, 1976

ISBN 0-345-25115-6-195

First Ballantine Books Edition, August 1976

Chapter 2

pages 19 - 24

"H. P. Lovecraft was strongly influenced, not only by his mother but also by the books he read. ... At five, he ... (read) ... a junior edition of The Arabian Nights. He at once fell in love with the glories of medieval Islam and spent hours playing Arab. ... One effect of dabbling in non-Christian traditions was to make Lovecraft skeptical of the faith of his fathers. Before he reached his fifth birthday anniversary, young Lovecraft announced that he no longer believed in Santa Claus. Further private thought convinced him that arguments for the existence of God suffered the same weaknesses as those for Santa.

At five, Lovecraft was placed in the infant class of the Sunday school of the venerable First Baptist Meeting House on College Hill. The results were not what the elders expected. When the feeding of Christian martyrs to the lions came up, Lovecraft shocked the class by gleefully taking the side of the lions. He wrote:

The absurdity of the myths I was called upon to accept and the sombre greyness of the whole faith compared with the Eastern magnificence of Mahometanism, made me definitely an agnostic; and caused me to become so pestiferous a questioner that I was permitted to discontinue attendance.

...... My grandfather had travelled observingly through Italy, and delighted me with long, first-hand accounts of its beauties and memorials of ancient grandeur. I mention this aesthetic tendency in detail only to lead up to its philosophical result - my last flickering of religious belief.

....... His skeptical view of the supernatural - his nontheism - and his love of the Classical world were not the only lasting passions formed in his childhood. .....

...... he embraced eighteenth-century rationalism, which confirmed him in his atheistic materialism."

From our friends at Famous Dead Non-Theists