Ancient Atheists

I was just wondering...back before Darwin and modern science, what did the atheists of the day base their belief on? I mean, today, it make sense if you are an atheist, you can at least say "well, we evolved naturally" but before anyone came up with evolution, how did people explain where we came from?

 

They were too busy being persecuted by christians to think about it!

 

Haha, true. But even before that. There must have been atheists all along (I seem to recall hearing of some Greek guy who rejected the gods, can't remember who), but how could they possibly justify their position given the general lack of knowledge back then (some of which is still lacking today)?

 

well back in the day there was much less evidence pointing to contast the church. due to today's global village, we're much more aware of other cultures and other faiths, plus we have continuing overwhelming theories coming out with each new publication of physics weekly, we're opening up enormously as far as intelligence goes. we no longer need religion to explain the world to us now that we have countless other more rational explanations to consider before having to consider gods or leprechauns or the like.

peace,
sophia

 

to my understanding, the koreans were originally atheists. that's the only ancient atheist region/culture i can remember..

i don't know what they thought, though. they just lived their lives, and there was no need to make up gods and drag them into things. like let's say there's a lightning storm. the ancient atheist might say, "lightning burns/kills what it strikes, i should take care that it does not strike me." perhaps the theist would say, "this lightning was sent by god as a symbol. see how it destroyed this tree? god must not be happy." it seems more logical to begin things from an atheist perspective, rather than a religious one. but once your society is swept up in a certain line of thinking, it's probably more difficult to justify different ideas. what was up with cavemen, did they have any form of religion?

 

i've never heard of that.... interesting, though. i have to say though, that i think it is important to not make it sound as though looking for a suitable answer for the world's mysteries is a silly thing. religion clearly started out as a way to explain nature, before we had any other information.
when we witnessed a lightening storm for the first time, surely as intelligent and curious beings we should be driven to find an explanation? i think that rather than an ancient bore rather than an atheist would simply figure, "i should stay away, lightening bad". an atheist would set about considering possible rational explanations, and science would be born.

peace,
sophia

 

i just did some quick research, and so far i've found that in ancient korea, any religion revolved around the myth of ta-gun, whom all koreans were supposedly descended from, and he was born of a bear woman who came down from the heavens. later of course, confucianism and buddhism became prevalent.

 

there was this guy anaxagorous who was the first (or at least one of the first) to get in trouble for being an athiest. he was sentenced to death, but then was saved end exiled instead.

and there was epicurus, too, who was an athiest with some some pretty fun notions.

i think there were quite a few ancient greek athiests, although being that you could get killed/exiled, a lot of these ideas were probably pretty inhibited.

 

i definitely didn't mean for my lightning analogy to offend you. it was not meant to sound like trying to figure out the world, through religion, is a silly thing. i meant that when you see lightning strike, it is necessary for your survival to have a basic understanding of it. this knowledge comes prior to the knowledge of a god. it is not necessary for your survival to think that god sent the lightning as punishment. that's all. i definitely wasn't trying to make it sound like ancient theists were silly for looking for answers.

 

no, of course i wasn't offended; i didn't even think of that! no worries. and i totally got what you were saying.. just elaborating a little and defending ancient man's leap to religion a little bit.
when you ain't got nothing to go on, and lightening generally seems to be supernatural badness, how would a curious Ancient explain it? certainly they didn't have the means to know about electrically charged stormclouds and whatnot, but i don't think humans are able to just settle for animallike survival; we are curious and want answers.

peace,
sophia

 

religous people saw lightning and tried to explain it as magic, and gods and shit

anyways, atheists came after religon, it is the opposition to religon
ancient atheists probaly thought, "this god stuff sounds kinda fake"

 

Leap? It would seem there was no leap, that humans always had some sort of religious/spiritual belief system, beginning with a simple animism-type system. I keep hearing that our brains are wired for it in some way.

Makes sense, but how did they justify their position? Like, ok, so they reject the gods...but what did they accept? What were their beliefs?

 

TrippinBTM

Interesting...
Maybe there were a lot of ancients who thought
religion was a bunch of stories. And no more.
On hindsight..it seems they were correct..no?
[where is Ahura Mazda now?]

The rejection of a fantasy does not require one to believe
in another.

Occam

 

Perhaps mathematics was the origin of atheism. Thought of by some to be 'the language of nature', mathematics serves as a way to rationalize reality. This is definitely a divergence from an animist type view- which understands natural forces and phenomena in terms of 'personalities'.

But really, I dont think animistic thinking is all that bad. I mean, it allows individuals and societies to develop an intimate relationship with the natural world. Because when you focus solely on math and science, reality can become a mindless, deterministic machine.

Personally, Im partial towards the views of Ferkiss: the New Naturalism, New Holism, and New Immanentism. These state, in order, that:

-Man is a part of nature, not apart from nature.

-The whole is never reducible to a sum of its parts. One can only see an aspect of nature clearly within the context of the whole.

-There is no 'outside' the whole. The whole itself provides the order and direction for its changes.

 

werent early athiests magicians? or did they think magic came from the gods.

 

Christians used to be refered to as athiests.

 

So were a lot of people who finally got to know God.

 

Atheist has been used traditionally just to mean someone who goes againstthe established patheon.

 

Lightning was one of God's first tools. With it, atheists could be stopped in their tracks, especially on the golf course. For those atheists that don't play golf, there is always the inquisition.

 

Nobody Exspects The Spanish Inquasition!