I think a big part of the problem here is the base assumption on the part of Archaeologists that any big public building in ye olden lost culture HAD to be for the express purpose of Religion. It’s long been a joke that if our modern culture was suddenly buried, these same idiots would come along in a few thousand years and insist that the stadium they found in the ruins of ancient Chik - Ah -Goh (for one example) was for the worship of Bears and that the priests of this cult were as powerful and important as the city’s kings.
When the truth is really that we have no idea who or what, if anything, all these ancient civilizations that left no written record bothered to worship.
As for more modern examples, I believe there have been a fair number of primitive tribes, in the Amazon for one place, but in others as well, that had no concept of Life After Death, and while they may have believed in spirits, did not worship them or have any form of Gods.
Or at least an Abrahamic phenomenon, in that the emphasis on belief is quite specific to Abrahamic religions. I think in many other religions belief plays a very marginal role in way that can be difficult for us to fully understand. If belief is approached differently, then so is non-belief, or atheism. The question becomes quite different.
In that sense I think atheism is a contemporary phenomenon of Judeo-Christian culture, because it is so clearly defined in opposition to a specific emphasis on belief. It is very different from a Roman not performing the correct rituals, but it is also very different from a Roman not very seriously believing that the gods live on Olympus while still performing the rituals. It’s a form of atheism in the lack of god, but also culturally quite different.
Quite separate from the question of whether there were ever cultures that had no gods at all. For that question, I’m not sure that there are good defining lines between god-spirit-incorrect explanation for how things work.
While I’m not overly fond of the sort of unsubstantiated claims made by kaltkalt above, he did say “Nonbeliever” which insofar as Christianity is concerned encompasses Jews and heretics. And there were plenty of both of those groups tortured and executed by the Inquisition.
Also note Christian oppression of those who took baby steps in the direction of science and reason. Giordano Bruno maintained that the Earth traveled around the sun and that furthermore the sun traveled through space like other stars. In 1600 he was burnt at the stake for heresy. Cayetono Ripoll believed in God, a Deist God. Unacceptable. He was executed for his beliefs in 1826. Menacchio believed in God, angels, Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. So far so good. But he also thought that the only sin was to harm one’s neighbor. So in 1599 he was burnt at the stake.
Modern atheists reasonably maintain that if such stances resulted in execution that more extreme ones would have as well.
As I have studied ancient History ,it seems to me the word God meant someone or thing of power, that is why ancients believed in Thunder God, Sun Gods, and people of power, in that sense it seems to me why the Psalmist called the men he was writing about and talking to, were called gods and sons of god. Not meaning the creator of all things as it is called today by some people.
Re: While I’m not overly fond of the sort of unsubstantiated claims made by kaltkalt above, he did say “Nonbeliever” which insofar as Christianity is concerned encompasses Jews and heretics.
No, heretics are (Christian) believers, they’re just the wrong kind (c.f. Runciman’s book on the Albigensians, “The Medieval Manichee”.). Historical Christianity was much more frightened of heresy than of simple nonbelief, because the idea was that heretics change and corrupt the substance of the faith, rather than simply ‘not belonging’. That’s why Albigensians (and any other sort of heretics, right up until the Peace of Westphalia) were generally not extended even the limited tolerance allowed to Jews.
There is evidence of the existence of atheists in the Old Testament. The line “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no god,’” appears in both Psalms 14:1 and Psalms 53:1. However, this clearly implies individuals who thought it prudent to keep their disbelief to themselves, not the group of atheists requested in the OP.
The original text apparently translates as “No God.” I’m not sure what word is used in the original for “God,” but it does not seem to be YHWH. The sense of the Psalm as a whole is that the fool thinks that there is no god judging or governing the world.