Richard Denton produced and directed the three-part series, Jonathan Miller's History of Disbelief. His previous documentary for BBC Four was Did Jesus Die?

BBC Four: What prompted you to make a history of disbelief?
Richard Denton: I'd wanted to make the series for a very long time. I was struck by the fact that nobody had ever done it and I thought it was odd that nobody seemed to know anything about the history of disbelief when there are so many people who don't believe in God.

BBC Four: Did your own thinking change or develop during the production of the series?
RD: Yes it did. I had come to it with the rather simplistic view that science had been the really big thing that had destroyed faith. Jonathan Miller wasn't convinced this was true so between us we spent a long time going over original sources to find out where people had touched on the subject. I discovered that it was simply philosophy on its own that had played the very much larger role in the gradual erosion of belief.

BBC Four: The programmes link the development of sceptical thought and scientific discovery to the growth of disbelief. Which do you think had the greater influence?
RD: Philosophy had the most significant influence at least until Darwin. When Darwin comes along I think he wrecks the case for religion because his theory undermines the most convincing reason for believing in God - God as the master-designer. Once you have realised that all living things can have the illusion of design without there being a designer then there's no reason for God. Philosophy had already reached this conclusion but as the scientist Steven Weinberg says "It's not that science made religion impossible, what it did was make irreligion possible".

BBC Four: Were you surprised to find the first American presidents were so sceptical about religion?
RD: I was incredibly struck by their quotations - these guys wouldn't even get considered as candidates if they said anything like that now. And I was depressed by that because it made me feel that we have not made a great deal of progress since the Age of Enlightenment. If anything, we're going backwards at the moment.

BBC Four: What were your main references?
RD: There's a very short pamphlet-type book called the Western Atheism: A Short History by James Thrower, a Scottish academic. There's also a History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell by David Berman. Otherwise we went back to the original sources - from David Hume's Treatise on Human Nature; Lucretius' The Nature of All Things. We read the Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics, books on Darwin. The System of Nature by the Baron D'Holbach. They were not so easy to find.

BBC Four: The people Jonathan Miller interviews in the programmes are very interesting. Did you want to include more excerpts from them?
RD: Yes, but in association with the series we've got six 30-minute interviews with some of the people who appear in the programme, like Arthur Miller, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg. These interviews are called The Atheism Tapes and will be going out while the series is broadcast. We've also included a Christian theologian called Denys Turner who doesn't appear in the series. Jonathan and he sat down and had a really good argument about whether there is the need to ask the question: "Why is there anything rather than nothing?"

BBC Four: What was it like working with Jonathan Miller?
RD: I love working with him. It drives you up the wall because he's an incredibly busy man and he's never got as much time as you'd want. You have to work incredibly hard but it's worth it. I spent 18 months doing things that are absolutely fascinating.

BBC Four: What else would you have liked to explore in the programme?
RD: I would have liked to explore the absence of the atheistic point of view in the modern political world. Obviously we have secular politics but there's a difference between not having religion in your politics and actually having atheism in your politics.

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