While I've heard of Percy Shelley, I never knew anything about him. After reading his pamphlet, "The Necessity of Atheism" last night, I looked him up (in my old World Book Encyclopedia!).

He's English, born in 1792. Wealthy parents. Educated in Eton and Oxford. It seems he was a lady's man and rascal.
His lyrical poems spoke of his love of women.
He also wrote poetry about his hopes for inpiration and humanity. He defended imaginative poetry with a famous essay, "A Defence of Poetry". His later works were grim and sorrowful, filled with hopelessness.

He could be very outspoken. His early rebellious nature got him expelled from college when he penned "The Necessity of Atheism", exactly 200 year ago (1811). In it, he refuted "creationists" (yes, he used that word) in his first sentence: "Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred."

Later: " The assumption that the Universe is a design, leads to a conclusion that there are infinity of creative and created Gods, which is absurd."

He goes on to say that while creationists declare that beauty and perfection (order) had to be designed, what about evil and destructive forces (disorder)? "The greatest, equally with the smallest motions of th Universe, are subjected to the rigid necessity of inevitable laws. These laws are the unknown causes of the known effects perceivable in the Universe." Preceeding Darwin and others, he had no knowledge of causes: "We admit that the generative power is incomprehensible". But to say some Omniscient Being is responsible is even more incomprehensible. (my paraphrase)

He further attacks human superstition and asks for reason.
In closing, Shelley states: "Intelligence is that attribute of the Deity, which you (Creationists) hold to be most apparent in the Universe. To assert that God is intelligent, is to assert that he has ideas." And only an organized body (a brain, made of matter) can have ideas. (my paraphrase)

Shelley's conclusive sentence: "I have proved that we can have no evidence of the existence of a God from the principles of reason". For this, he was booted from college. So much for free thought.

He died at age 30 (1822) from a sailing "accident". Some think despondancy caused a suicidal death. He loved and cared too much.