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    Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
    Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
    Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
    Audiobook10 hours

    Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

    Written by Tim Whitmarsh

    Narrated by James Langton

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Long before the European Enlightenment and the Darwinian revolution, which we often take to mark the birth of the modern revolt against religious explanations of the world, brave people doubted the power of the gods. Religion provoked skepticism in ancient Greece, and heretics argued that history must be understood as a result of human action rather than divine intervention. They devised theories of the cosmos based on matter, and notions of matter based on atoms. They developed mathematical tools that could be applied to the world around them, and tried to understand that world in material terms. Their skepticism left a rich legacy of literature, philosophy and science, and was defended by great writers like Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero and Lucian. Tim Whitmarsh tells the story of the tension between orthodoxy and heresy with great panache, a story that ended--for the moment--with the imposition of Christianity on the Roman Empire in 313 CE.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateNov 10, 2015
    ISBN9781622319657
    Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
    Author

    Tim Whitmarsh

    Tim Whitmarsh is Professor of Ancient Literatures, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University.

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    Reviews for Battling the Gods

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    • 4/5
      What I found especially fascinating about this book was the fundamental point that he makes about peoples attitudes towards religion. The idea of a single unified faith community is a mirage ..both in the ancient world, in the medieval world and in the modern world: there has always been a spectrum of faith, belief and unbelief. As the author says: "This book represents a kind of archeology of religious skepticism". And he is open about the difficulty of relying on ancient texts (which may or may not represent accurately the common way of thinking). To my mind there is a over-reliance on the greek Dramatists and interpreting their works. However, even given some doubts about these sources, Whitmarsh manages to amass enough evidence to bolster his point that skepticism about the Gods and religion is not a new phenomenon. It has existed for thousands of years ...even in societies with no background in rational thought or debate. There is an interesting discussion about the introduction of Diopeithe's decree in the 430's BC...Whitmarsh calls him a religious crackpot but his decree has massive and long lasting impact. Up until this decree the Athenians were pretty tolerant of varying beliefs about the gods. But following the decree ...to be a good citizen you not only had to do right but to think right too. In a way, this intolerance about "right-thinking" has echoed down through the ages with religious bigotry and intolerance and justified all sorts of terrible pogroms and religious wars....especially after the 300's AD when Christianity gained the ascendancy. Atheists, after this decree, ran very real risks of being condemned for impiety and disbelief in the gods. and one hears the echoes of this intolerance with Galilio being shown the instruments of torture...to help change his beliefs; and Charles Darwin being reluctant to publish his findings for fear of offending his religious wife ....let alone the rest of the establishment of Victorian England. There seem to be many in the ancient Greek world who not only didn't believe in the riotous goings-on at Mt Olympus but who rejected the concept of gods altogether. And I take my hat off to them. Diogenes, the cynic, who, whilst one man was marvelling at a series of temple inscriptions put up by survivors of sea storms, retorted that there would have been many more if the the non-survivors had also left dedications. Whitmarsh also makes the point that, as a rule, polytheism...the belief in many gods....was infinitely more hospitable to unbelievers than monotheism. Under Christianity, by contrast, there was no good way of being an atheist. Atheism was the categorical rejection of the very premise on which Christianity defined itself. (I think Augustine of Hippo bears a fair bit or responsibility for this intolerance which has continued don through the centuries ...and probably held back western civilisation from intellectual development for about a thousand years).I would have liked to have seen more about atheism in other societies (for example, Egyptian, Persian, Chinese, Indian). But the author explains that although China for example had its atheists and other places also, the best historical writings and materials were available for Greece ....hence his concentration on this state. Rome is considered in the latter part of the book and, in general, was fairly tolerant of all sorts of religions and non-believers until the formal adoption of Christianity as the state religion...and with it....as mentioned above...came those wonderful attributes of intolerance, persecution, and execution for those who did not profess the "right-beliefs". Generally, I found the book quite fascinating ..though also mildly depressing ...especially the persecution of non-believers that is a recurring theme. I give it four stars.
    • 3/5
      This is a very good history of ancient Greek society and the role of mythology. It also extends in the peak of the Roman empire. Unfortunately, there is little about the existence or role of atheism during this period. The author does an admirable job of trying to tease out references to and insinuation of atheism from the existing texts, but its pretty slim pickings.

    • 4/5
      While this was a bit more of a polemic than I'd anticipated – Whitmarsh claims in his Preface that “it is not my aim to prove the truth (or indeed falsehood) of atheism as a philosophical position,” but he then practically ties himself in knots trying to work out ways in which the most unlikely of the ancients (Sophocles?) might be construed to be atheists – it is, nevertheless, interesting and entertaining. Whitmarsh writes nicely, only occasionally slipping into flippancy or inserting too many popular references (for purposes of illustration) into his history. His quest to “out” the atheists of ancient Greece and Rome, if often unconvincing (and he is honest enough to conclude his discussions, in most cases, with the recognition that the figures he discusses, while unconventional, would generally not qualify as atheists by most modern standards) offers an interesting angle from which to examine a variety of Greek and Roman philosophical and religious positions.ETA To clarify, what I mean by “polemic” is that Whitmarsh is working very hard to establish the ancient Greek (and Roman) world as one in which, “atheism was not treated as a heretical position, the “other” of true belief; it was seen rather as one of the many possible stances one could take on the question of the gods (albeit an extreme one). It was only in Christian late antiquity that atheism began to be constructed in systematically antithetical terms, as the inverse of proper religion, a threat to the very foundations of human civilization. Until that moment – borrowing from Assman, we might speak of “the Christian distinction” – atheism was an integral part of the cultural life of Greece.” Of course, as Socrates, Aristotle, Theodorus of Cyrene, etc.….. discovered, even the ancient Greeks were not consistently open-minded about religious disbelief. Atheism seems to have been “integral” in the ancient world in the sense that questioning the nature and/or interest of the gods was sometimes done. And a few writers openly doubted. But … “integral”?
    • 5/5
      The author looks at the history of atheism in the ancient world, in an effort to demonstrate that it isn't just a "fad" that arose with the Enlightenment. He traces atheism back to the early period of Judaism, and evaluates the role of atheists and other non-conformists in the classical world, with the greatest focus on Greece. For someone like myself, who realizes the first atheist was probably created simultaneously with the first god, this book rings a lot of bells. The author writes accessibly, avoiding most of the jargon that paralyzes so many books in this area. He has less need to "look smart" than to write a book that can be read. The details are well laid out, and when he is disagreeing with conventional wisdom, he doesn't hesitate to let us know that this is not what is presented in most sources. Highly recommended for anyone who thinks atheism is just today's black.
    • 4/5
      In Battling the Gods Tim Whitmarsh counters the idea that atheism is a new phenomenon, a result of the 18th century European Enlightenment, by using reason, history, and a careful examination of written works from the classical ages of Greece and Rome. Whitmarsh, a professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge, states in the Preface that his book is a work of history and that his goal isn’t to prosthelytize for or against atheism as a philosophical position, and I found that to be true, though he does believe that dismissing atheism as a recent fad can make the persecution of atheists seem like a less serious problem than the persecution of religious minorities. In the opening chapter Whitmarsh argues convincingly that adopting a skeptical attitude toward miracles or supernatural beings would not be a strange, unheard of position at any time in history, and that there would have always been a spectrum of belief and unbelief. After this initial chapter the book is divided into four sections--Archaic Greece, Classical Athens, The Hellenistic Era, and Rome--and it’s in these that the author delves deeply into the written works of ancient poets, philosophers, historians, and playwrights, looking for evidence of atheism from the time of the pre-Socratic philosophers in early Greece to the rise of Christianity during Constantine’s rule of the Roman Empire. As a history I found the book fascinating, but because I’m less invested than the author in dissecting texts to discover which particular people from the ancient past may have held atheist views, my interest flagged at times. Obviously the author needed to do these close and considered readings to support his contention that atheism has been around since at least the dawn of history, and considering the scholarly slant and serious subject matter, it’s a highly readable book and far from dry. Like any well written history, more than a few parts are deeply moving--the chapters on the death sentence imposed on Socrates and the long ranging repercussions of that act, for instance.