At the end of the 19th century, the prospect of the death of God filled people with terror.

It would — we were told — lead to anarchy and despair.

Worried intellectuals assembled new religions — Marxism, Spiritualism, psychical research, Social Darwinism, western Buddhism — and scrambled onto them like life rafts as they awaited the deluge.

But 150 years on, it is extraordinary how absent ‘God’ is from people’s lives, and how little people notice.

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