The Noughties has been a controversial decade for religion. With secularism on the rise, churches closing down and religion finding itself increasingly at odds with artistic expression, atheists have seized the chance to promote their message of a godless universe.

Watch Robert Pigott's film in full on Newsnight on Monday 10 August 2009 at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

Featured works from Endless Forms at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge:

Orang-outan, chimpanzee, human and gorilla skulls, The Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies

Robert Farren, Duria Antiquior (An Earlier Dorset), ca. 1850, oil on canvas, The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge

Hugo Rheinhold, An ape contemplating a skull, bronze, 1892-93, The Royal College of Surgeons of England

John Collier, Portrait of Charles Robert Darwin, 1883, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London