REFLECTION ON ATHEISM THROUGH ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

The Ancient World
 

Most histories of atheism choose the Greek and Roman philosophers Epicurus, Democritus, and Lucretius as the first atheist writers. While these writers certainly changed the idea of God, they didn't entirely deny that gods could exist.

Epicurus: Epicurus put forward the theory of "materialism": The only things that exist are bodies and the space between them. Epicurus taught that the soul is also made of material objects, and so when the body dies the soul dies with it. There is no afterlife. Epicurus thought that gods might exist, but if they did, they did not have anything to do with human beings.  Religion was the human activity of trying to live in the way such noble (but unknowable) gods might live. "The soul cannot survive separation from the body, since it is necessary to understand that it too is a part. By itself the soul cannot ever either exist (even though Plato and the Stoics talk a great deal of nonsense on the subject) or experience movement, just as the body does not possess sensation when the soul is released from it."
Lucretius: Lucretius did not deny the existence of gods either, but he felt that human ideas about gods combined with the fear of death  to make human beings unhappy. He followed the same materialist lines as Epicurus, and by denying that the gods had any way of influencing our world he said that humankind had no need to fear the supernatural.

Quotations On The Nature Of Things

"This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,
Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,
But only Nature's aspect and her law,
Which, teaching us, hath this exordium:
Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

Fear holds dominion over mortality
Only because, seeing in land and sky
So much the cause whereof no wise they know,
Men think Divinities are working there.

Meantime, when once we know from nothing still
Nothing can be create, we shall divine
More clearly what we seek: those elements
From which alone all things created are,
And how accomplished by no tool of Gods."

"Whilst human kind
Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed
Before all eyes beneath Religion- who
Would show her head along the region skies,
Glowering on mortals with her hideous face-
A Greek it was who first opposing dared
Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,
Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke
Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky
Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest
His dauntless heart to be the first to rend
The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.

And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;
And forward thus he fared afar, beyond
The flaming ramparts of the world, until
He wandered the immeasurable All.

Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports
What things can rise to being, what cannot,
And by what law to each its scope prescribed,
Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.

Wherefore Religion now is under foot,
And us his victory now exalts to heaven. "

Christianity came under multiple attack in the second half of the 19th century.

Science
The theory of evolution put forward by Charles Darwin, and other scientific discoveries, undermined the value of religion as a way of explaining the nature and existence of the world. Read more about this in atheism and science.

Theology and Bible Scholarship
During the 18th and 19th centuries academic research began to undermine the literal truths of religion, and throw doubt on the existence of God as a separate supernatural being. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes had noted even earlier, in 1651, that Moses could not actually have written all the books of the Bible that were attributed to him. In 1779 J G Eichhorn suggested that the stories in the Book of Genesis, were not actual history, but were myths, like the stories of Greek and Roman mythology. Furthermore, he said, these stories should no longer be read as if they were the actual word of God. Other theologians began to work with the ideas of Hegel to portray religion, and religious stories and beliefs in general, as symbolic ways of demonstrating truths about the spiritual life of humankind. Literary analysis of the bible  text began to cast great doubt on the Bible itself as a reliable historical document. The German, D F Strauss, said in 1835 that the New Testament stories about Christ should not be interpreted as literally true, but as a dress of religious symbolism clothing the life of of a Jewish teacher.

God is a Human Invention: In 1841 Ludwig Feuerbach argued that God was a human invention, a spiritual device to help us deal with our fears and aspirations. This was bad news, because human beings projected all their good qualities onto God and saw him as compassionate, wise, loving and so on, while they saw themselves as greatly inferior. Thus humanity alienated itself from its true self.

Anthropology: Anthropologists, too, were casting doubt on previous certainties. Research into comparative religion revealed that there was a great deal of similarity between the rituals and stories of many religions - even tribal religions seemed to have elements in common with Christianity. This posed the big problem of how could Christianity (or any other religion) claim that it was the only true faith, and how could any religion claim to be the unique result of God's revelation, since all religions seemed to share so much in common.

Nietzsche: At the end of the 19th century the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) announced that God was dead, and that humanity had killed him. Nietzsche said that it was no longer possible to believe in the Christian God. Modern people, he thought, did not really believe in God any more and it was this unbelief that had killed off God. This had serious ethical consequences. Western society's entire moral code was based on Judaeo-Christian ethics, and sooner or later people would realise that if they no longer believed in God, they could not live by a moral code that was based on God. Nietzsche wasn't just proclaiming the death of God, but something even more radical - for Nietzsche there was nothing left to believe in, certainly not God, but not even any external world that might provide a source of meaning and purpose for humanity. Nietzsche was particularly critical of Christianity. He thought that it was not only false but depraved and corrupt, a "contradiction of life".

Morality: A powerful, but rather unexpected attack on Christianity came from a group of people, including the writer George Eliot (left), who thought that Christianity was immoral. They said that there was something totally unethical in the behavior of a God who behaved like a "revengeful tyrant". According to the doctrine of "original sin" God was prepared to punish people for a wrong that was not their fault, just because they were human beings. What sort of God was it, they wondered, who then decided to let us off this unfair punishment because he had punished his son instead of us! One of the first to argue this was James Froude who wrote in 1849: "I would sooner perish for ever than stoop down before a Being who may have power to crush me, but whom my heart forbids me to reverence."

The philosopher John Stuart Mill (left) said in 1872, "I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures, and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go." Campaigning atheists used a less subtle attack on the Bible's morality, complaining that it contained far too much violence and improper behavior to be a suitable read for young people.

Secularism: The 19th century saw a serious campaign against the Churches by the secularist movement. Their particular target was the state church, the Church of England, which was highly privileged.

• Until 1828 no-one could hold a public office without signing up to the beliefs of the Church.

• Until 1836 only Church of England ministers could conduct marriages.

• Until 1871 only members of the Church of England could teach at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Blasphemy: The law against blasphemy was strict in Victorian Britain.  George Holyoake (1817-1906) was the last person in England to be imprisoned (in 1842) for being an atheist. He was jailed for 6 months for a speech which included the line: "For myself, I flee the Bible as a viper, and revolt at the touch of a Christian."

Charles Bradlaugh: Bradlaugh (1833-1891) was one of the most prominent of the Victorian atheists. He edited the National Reformer, which itself was prosecuted for blasphemy, and in 1866 was one of the founders of the National Secular Society. Bradlaugh was elected to Parliament in 1880, but was not allowed to take his seat because he would not swear a religious oath but wanted to affirm. He was re-elected several times over five years, but did not take his seat until 1886. When he eventually took his seat he became Britain's first openly atheist member of Parliament.

Atheism: It's not about ethics
By Hann Koppila

The most popular criticism of atheism these days seems to be that it is 'unethical' and dangerous. Opponents argue that without some sort of fixed standard of good and evil, an atheist standpoint necessarily devalues morality. This gross misconception admittedly has a tiny seed of truth to it. Certainly there is no such thing as 'atheist ethics'. This is not to say that atheists aren't moral persons, or that atheists somehow lack a sense of right and wrong. This simply means that atheists are unlikely to lay down moral rules based on the idea that God doesn't exist. Consequently, many atheists tend toward relativism. From that standpoint the universe is impassive and there is no compelling moral element to it. Good and evil do not lurk somewhere in the folds of the atomic structure of the world, waiting for us to do the right (or wrong) thing. Fiery battles over the pros and cons of relativism have little to do with the actual issue, however. One's ethics or politics are frankly speaking irrelevant to whether deities exist or not. No amount of lobbying is going to make leprechauns -- or fictional gods, for that matter -- manifest out of thin air. Likewise, no amount of atheist chanting is going to magic a deity away should one exist. It's very easy for social critics on either side to forget that the conflict isn't about what the social ramifications of the two positions are, but whether these positions accurately describe nature. A criticism of either standpoint based on its assumed political consequences is a meaningless one because it doesn't address the problem. Some atheists withhold belief saying that the chance of god or gods existing is simply negligible. Others go further and assert that, for various reasons, it is impossible for a god to exist. Whatever the case, atheism is first and foremost an assertion about physical reality, not morality. Morality is only tangentially related to it. Similarly, belief in a deity's existence isn't about following an abstract set of guidelines just because they are convenient or appealing. When a religious thinker describes and defines the world according to his particular faith, he is making an absolute ontological claim: that this particular deity is real, and that this particular view of the world is accurate. Fundamentally this, what might be called the 'science of God', is the important thing. God's possible commandments are a secondary consideration at best. The meat of the debate between atheists and theists isn't about what's right or wrong, but what actually exists out there in the universe. Maybe we should consider letting morality wait its turn.