Is there any evidence that atheism was a commonly held belief before let’s say… the 1500’s? (Or if not common, then was it an openly held belief, or was it even discussed?)
I was speaking with someone and they claimed that atheism is a modern invention and in the old days it was “obvious” to everyone that there was a God.
I said that there’s no way he can know that. It’s not like anyone wrote sacred texts about God not existing. If you believed in a religion you’d write about its philosophy, but if you didn’t there wouldn’t be very much to write about. I figure that we just don’t know anything about atheists in the old days because they never recorded their beliefs, or if they did they would have eventually been destroyed as heresy by the church. (In Europe anyway.)
So does any record of this exist? Maybe some greek philosophers wrote about it?
From what I can recall of my European History class 3 years ago, I’m fairly certain that there weren’t many open Atheists in Europe at that time. They had a nasty habit of being caught, tortured, and killed by the Church.
I thought atheism was the lack of a belief that some others had. So when it was common, why would you necessarily have a term for it, and what’ the difference whether you call the person ‘atheist’, ‘infidel’, ‘nonbeliever’ or ‘rationalist’? The OP doesn’t start out limiting itself to Europe or the Middle Ages, either. There must’ve been plenty of folks out there just milkin’ their yaks, thowin’ lances and chasin’ women / bein’ chased by men. . .and seldom lookin’ at the stars. . .and never seeing order there and figuring on some Kingdom up there that was perfect and that somehow, if they offered up animal carcasses or whatever, the dust of their bones might stay on the steppes but “they” would float among the stars or whatever that sort of thing is all about.
The root definition of “atheism” is “against theism”. Until organized religion came along, there was no need for the word atheism.
Since beliefs are opinions based on faith, atheism isn’t really a belief. Or a philosophy, either. It’s mostly just the rejection of religion.
Organized atheism and atheist writings are fairly recent occurances. If you want to go back in history to ethical codes that were based on human interaction rather than some man-made deity, you might try some of the ancient Chinese philosophers.
More-or-less atheism has been around for a long time. Many Greek philosophers were more or less atheists, at least in the context of their day, and many Romans followed them.
It’s made more complicated by the fact that “atheism” has historically been levelled as an accusation against any noteworth heterodoxy.
Atheism-as-a-religion-in-itself is fairly modern, 19th-century or so; its various sects have rarely outlasted their founders for long, even in memory.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
Looked up ‘a-’: you’re right, it just says ‘not’, or ‘without’. That takes some edge off the word, and gives it a negative connotation, similar to ‘unbelief’.
Is there a better term, then? Rationalism, materialism, and realism might qualify: agnosticism, paganism, and deism don’t. Humanism comes with a philosophy that I don’t entirely accept. Some humanists are now calling themselves Eupraxophers (sp?). Freethought is an ‘all-of-the-above’ sort of term: while an atheist is a freethinker, a freethinker may not necessarily be an atheist. Any other suggestions?
Who equated atheism with religion? The terms are opposites, not synonyms.
As I’ve heard it used, the prefix a- refers to the absence, or inability to do whatever. Amoral nature, incapable or morality. Asexual reproduction, incapable of sexual reproduction, etc. I would speculate that the rise of Atheism-as-a-religion coincides with the rise of Science-as-a-religion. I know nobody calls it that, but that’s how a lot of people act,
Larry
I disagree with Ivick’s use of the the “a-” prefix to mean “incapable of”. “Without” seems closer, to my way of thinking.
An amoral person is not necessarily incapable of morality, they just aren’t using any. Some species are capable of sexual AND asexual reproduction.
I once knew a guy, BTW, who insisted that you were either a theist or an atheist, and there was no middle ground possible. (On the other hand, he also insisted that his wife looked like Bo Derek…)
IANAL, but I think that atheism-as-a-religion came about as a legal ploy so that atheists could claim the legal rights granted to religions.
As to the science-as-a-religion, I think this came about by the frustration felt by the (fundie) religious seeing things taught in science classes that were in conflict with their beliefs. In order to try to elevate their belief system to the level of accepted science, they had to argue that science was also taken on faith and therefore where one was used (as science in classrooms) the other should be given equal consideration (as creationism). Creationism is called scientific creationism (at least by its adherents), but evolutionists would never refer to evolution as the evolution-religion.
No, but for some people (virtually never scientists), evolution or just plain anti-religionism can become, socially and psychologically, a substitute for religion.
The same applies to certain schools of psychoanalysis, method-acting, and wacky theories about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. It also infects politics from time to time, as in the Balkans. Take a look at soc.culture.croatia.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
Atheism certainly did not begin in the Renaissance. Numerous well-known Greek and Roman thinkers (Lucretius, for one) fall into that category.
In ancient times, as now, it was expedient to profess belief in various gods, whether that belief was genuine or not. Certainly, Roman and Greek intellectuals were no more inclined to take Zeus and Aphrodite seriously than latter day atheists are to take Jesus seriously.
I’m paraphrasing, but in “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Gibbon summed up Roman religion by saying that “to the common people, the gods were all equally true; to the intellectuals, they were all equally false; and to the magistrates, they were all equally useful.”
Also, George Smith goes into this in detail in Atheism: The Case Against God.
There is much confusion over proper definition and usage of the terms, but the most common usage of “atheist” is “one without a god belief”, which is the most coherent, consistent, and basic definition. So one is or is not a theist. The question of agnosticism is, according to Smith (I believe), really answering a different question. There are theistic agnostics and atheistic agnostics. Agnosticism relates to what is knowable about a god. Theism/atheism is the belief or lack thereof in gods.
from John Rush:
One of the fun things about atheists/unbelievers is the lack of ability to come to agreement over the “best” word to use. That is because atheism is a statement of what they don’t share, not a statement of what they do share. There is no fundamental philosophy or core belief or structure or movement that unites atheists. The only thing they all have in common is a lack of belief in gods. This may be a conscious rejection of gods, or an unconscious stand because they have not been confronted with the concept (a.k.a. children).
The stigma associated with the word atheism comes from the religionists. They take it as a direct assault (well, it sort of is), and are hostile to the notion. They use it as an attack label against anyone that disagrees with them. Many a philosopher has born the label “atheist” even when holding a strong belief in a deity. Deists often were labeled as such. I think Martin Luther may have been called that by Catholics. The battle is not to replace the word atheist, but to remove the stigma attached to the word. (No stigmata here )
All of those other labels you mention have their own meanings that are a step beyond Atheism. Each has other meanings. An atheist may be materialist, or not. An atheist may be a rationalist, or not. Some atheists are humanists, and most secular humanists are atheists, but they are not necessarily the same thing, because humanism, as you mentioned, proposes certain concepts that are not inherent to atheism. Eupraxophy is an invention of Paul Kurtz, a major secular humanist, to address the issue of whether humanism is a religion or not, a somewhat contested notion even among humanists.
from DrMatrix:
I highly doubt it. That is a highly contested notion (atheism as religion), even within the atheist circle. Most I know feel the “atheism is a religion” argument comes from the fundy crowd who wish to call atheism a religion and thus sully the atheists’ claim of rejecting religion. If you call atheism a religion, you are calling atheists hypocrites, liars, or both.
Admittedly, atheists use the arguments for freedom of religion to apply to them. Freedom of religion implies freedom from religion. Also, there is a growing movement of atheist churches - 2 so far with a 3rd under way. These are banking on the legal protections of religions - tax exempt status being a key one. Also on the social standing the word “church” carries. There are also Unitarian Universalist churches that are often frequented by atheists and agnostics (depending on the particular congregation), as well as Ethical Culture societies that are non-deity based, but can function similarly to a church.
One more comment regarding atheist churches and tax-exempt status:
There is a contingent of people who feel the government has no business granting a special status to churches. The laws make a separate category of non-profit organizations specifically for churches, which is regulated by the IRS. This requires a judgment on the part of the IRS on whether an organization that requests the status as to whether the group qualifies as a “church” or not, and thus puts the IRS squarely in the role of defining religion. This is not appropriate for a country that has a Constitutional limitation to prevent the government from establishing religion. Here is an arm of the gov. doing just that.
There was an incident in Texas just this past year where the Ethical Culture Society of Austin applied for tax-exempt status and was denied by the state. They sued. I am not sure the status of the suit - I believe it was dismissed. The case in question had a Texas Government official (Attorney General?) denying them the application on the grounds that they do not proclaim a belief in a deity. I’m sorry, I don’t have the link handy.
Perhaps we forgot one atheist here - the Buddha. He refused to entertain discussion on the existence or non-exixtence of God. (and still developed the most comprehensive moral and spiritual system in his time - some would say ever).
We might call him an agnostic, but that connotes someone who is a skeptic about God’s existence - or the nature of that existence.
He did not in any way assert the existence of Deity - nor would he deny it. He leaves us with an interesting foil to the idea that one is either an atheist or not-an-atheist (that would include all of the -isms). I can’t say he was a deist (although we might assume that he really was and wouldn’t talk about it), and yet he didn’t assert that God definately does not exist either, qualifying him in the modern sense of an atheist. Do we invoke a default clause that anyone who doesn’t deny Deity is a believer (works in medieval Europe until they put you on the stand, then you have to “sing”)? Or, do we assume that those who believe will let us know that they do, especially when asked 1000 times, and also when they live in a in a theistic society (if that doesn’t describe India in the 3rd Cent. BCE, I don’t know what does).
As far as a relative dearth of atheists after Classical times and before the modern, ask your local inquisitor… Voltaire got busted for a “strong agnosticism” at the end of the 18th C.
Irishman, I agree with most of what you wrote. Rather than “a conscious rejection of gods”, I’d say something like, rejection of the presumption that there are any gods. While Unitarians are essentially deists, they’ll let anyone attend their services. An atheist correspondent said that he once went to a Unitarian church because, when he was in the real estate business, 90% of his customers asked what church he belonged to. And while there are now a few self-proclaimed atheist churches, they’re such embarassments that I published a brochure called Real Atheists Don’t Attend Church.
Austin’s Ethical Culturalist group is now called The Ethical Society of Austin, and they describe themselves as “a religious humanist organization”. (Sigh) They filed suit in November, 1998 against John Sharp, then the State Comptroller, for a tax exemption. The timing was a bit puzzling: Sharp had just lost his bid to become lieutenant governor, and was replaced by a different Comptroller about 6 weeks later. One would think that the next officeholder would inherit the suit, but it was filed specifically against Sharp. No word on where the suit currently stands. The ESoA is being represented by the ACLU. For more details, their web site is http://www.esoa.org/
Also, the American Humanist Association received a religious tax exemption back in the 1960s, which prompted the fundamentalist charge that schools were teaching the religion of humanism. Why such groups don’t instead apply for a 501c3 educational exemption is beyond me.
The assumed “psychological or social need for religion” is probably a result of conditioning, not something that occurs naturally.
There is a verse in the old testament of the Bible that says: The fool has said in his heart “there is no god”. The concept has been around much longer then that I’m sure. Otherwise why the reference?
The ever insensitive, politically incorrect PitBullDawg.
Political correctness is a disease. Cure it with the truth.
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