Atheism from Antiquity to the Enlightenment is there any?

Epicurus (341BC-270BC)

David Hume (1711-1776)

Dr. Simon Oliver, Department of Theology and Religious Studies

Antiquity
Antiquity (the ancient world) is often associated with the classical civilizations of Athens and Rome. It is roughly the period from 600BC to the fall of the Roman Empire in 476AD. This gives way to the Middle Ages or medieval period. Antiquity includes:
The paganisms of Rome which feature many anthropomorphic gods The monotheism of Judaism Greek philosophy featuring a transcendent Good (Plato) or First Cause (Aristotle) or the One (Neoplatonism)

Medieval Period
The medieval period (or Middle Ages) lasts from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries. It is sometimes divided in the early, high and late medieval periods. It is characterised by the growth of the Church, the advent of Christian monasticism and education, the rise of Islamic scholarship and learning (tenth and eleventh centuries) and the growing power of monarchy across Europe. The re-introduction of Aristotle into the Latin speaking West in the twelfth century had a dramatic impact on learning. The medieval period merges into the Renaissance in the fifteenth century.

The Modern Period

Modernity (not to be confused with modernism) begins around 1500. It is characterised by:
the rise of the nation state and associated wars of religion growth in trade struggles for freedom the Reformation and an increasing distrust of authority and tradition.

The early modern period ends with the French revolution in 1789.

Religion in the Ancient World

Ancient culture is saturated with temples, rituals and myths. Ancient stories account for the experiences of human beings the good and the bad things that happen to peoples and nations. Although the Roman Emperor Constantine converts to Christianity in 312AD, the Empire is not self-consciously Christian until the fifth century. Paganisms abound. Adhering to one religion does not preclude the practice of another.

Plato (429347 BC) and Aristotle (384 BC 322 BC)

The most influential philosophers of the Western tradition. They are struck by the contingency of existence: the universe does not explain its own existence. They are also struck by the universes intelligibility. As human reason explores the universe, the mind responds to cosmic patterns and orders. To explain something means identifying its origins and purpose.

Plato and the Good

For Plato, the origin of intelligibility and existence is the Good. As the light of the sun makes things visible and knowable, so the light of the good makes things existent and intelligible. What is rational? What can we make sense of? The Good. The Good is one, transcendent, beyond time and change. It is the source of being. But this is not quite the personal God of Jewish and Christian tradition.

Aristotle and Theos

For Aristotle, theos (God) is described as the object of creations desire. In other words, all things strive for their own perfection. This striving a movement of change as a yearning for the origin and purpose of all things. This is theos, or God, the first unmoved mover.

Materialism in Ancient Greece

Modern atheism is often (but not always) associated with some kind of materialism the idea that there is only matter of various kinds with no transcendent, divine or supernatural cause or purpose. The origins of this idea already found in ancient Greek philosophers such as Thales (624BC546BC), Anaxagoras (ca. 500428 BC), Democritus (ca.460-370BC) and Epicurus (341270BC).

Lucretius (ca.99-ca.55 BC), De Rerum Natura

The Latin poem De Rerum Natura by Lucretius (ca. 99 BC ca. 55 BC) is written for a Roman audience and explains the universe with reference to physical principles governed by chance rather than deities. He refers to the atomism of Democritus (ca.460-370BC) . It implies a mechanistic cosmology.

What is mechanistic cosmology?

At a most basic level, the idea that the universe is a large machine whose operations can be predicted. The universe is like a huge clock. On this view, all the following are mechanistic events: thinking, love, willing, raining, learning, the growth of a tree and the movement of the planets. Potentially, mechanistic cosmology threatens a notion of freedom because everything is, in principle, determined and predictable. Today, it is challenged by quantum indeterminism. In principle, every mechanistic process is reversible: it can run forward or backward. But lots of events in nature do not seem reversible, e.g. burning a log on the fire.

Mechanistic cosmology and God

In the early modern period, the notion that the universe is a giant machine implied a designer of that machine. At the same time, a mechanistic cosmology suggested that the operations of the universe could be explained with reference to nothing beyond the universe. The clock simply ticks, and ticks, and ticks The atomism or materialism or mechanistic cosmology of some ancient Greek philosophers is reflected in ideas which become important for the rise of atheism in modernity.

Lucretius De Rerum Natura

Is Lucretius and early atheist? Not really. The atheoi of the ancient world were the impious. The term appears only once in the New Testament (Ephesians 2.12): Remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. They were not devout attenders of temples or practitioners of ritual. They were people who had forgotten or neglected the God or the gods. The early Christians were called atheoi because they believed that God had become incarnate. This was an impious view something not appropriate to divinity.

Is there any atheism?

It is almost impossible to fine evidence of the denial of transcendence in antiquity and the Middle Ages. The ancient philosophers are agreed that the world is more than it appears to be. There is meaning and purpose to be discerned which is objective and not merely the product of human projection. The intelligibility of the universe is not something we generate. It is objectively present within the world and has a source which is not straightforwardly coterminous with the world. Even Lucretius and Epicurus acknowledge the existence of the gods, but they are very different from those of ancient Rome.

Does this mean that there is not doubt?

Not at all. Ancient and medieval thinkers agree that it is very difficult to say anything about the Good or God. Why? Because our words are finite and God is infinite. The all acknowledge that it is possible to doubt Gods existence. Psalm 14.1: The fool has said in his heart There is not God. How do they think about God?

Encountering God

The Danish philosopher Sren Kierkegaard (18131855) might give us a clue.

We do not demonstrate to existence, but from existence

I do not try to demonstrate that a stone exists, but that something that exists is a stone. We do not imagine a creature (say a Jabberwock) and then try to prove its existence. We do it the other way around. We encounter something, and then try to say something about what weve encountered. In other words, I start from an encounter with something, and then I try to make that encounter intelligible. I try to describe it.

Encounter
Ancient and medieval thought about the gods or God begins with an encounter with the world, with existence, with being, and then tries to make sense of it. That attempt to make sense of it is driven by the conviction that we cannot know the essence of a gnat, never mind the essence of God. Certain traditions Judaism, Christianity, Islam regard this philosophical theology not simply as our reading of nature up to God, but as our receipt of, and response to, an address, a revelation.

Protagoras (ca.490-420BC) the Agnostic?

Concerning the gods I am unable to discover whether they exist or not, or what they are like in form; for there are many hindrances to knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.

Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033-1109)

His famous text the Proslogion includes the ontological argument for Gods existence. Is this simply a failed attempt to prove that God exists? Curiously, the Proslogion is written as a prayer. Anselm is haunted by his inability to see or discern God

*My desiring soul] strives so that it may see more, and it sees nothing beyond what it has seen save darkness. Or rather it does not see darkness, which is not in You in any way; but it sees that it cannot see more because of its own darkness. Why is this, Lord, what is this? Is its eye darkened by its weakness, or is it dazzled by Your splendour? In truth it is both darkened in itself and dazzled by YouIt is, in fact, both restricted by its own limitedness and overcome by Your fullness.

Olafur Eliasson (1967- ), The Weather Project, Tate Modern 2003

God as Light: A Metaphor from Plato and the Bible

Philosophy and theology are attempts to draw our attention to that which we dont notice: the light that makes all things to exist. Light is not just another object in the room. We cannot point to it. We do not see it, but we see by means of it. It makes other things visible and knowable. Yet its nature is ambiguous (wave or particle?). It is hard to say anything about it. Indeed many have denied lights existence, arguing that object are self illuminating or vision belongs entirely to the eye.

Speech about God in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Belief in God or the gods, or speech about God, does not rest principally on the rational demonstration of Gods existence. Philosophically, it is a response to being: the fact that there is something rather than nothing. Theologically, it is a response to an address or revelation. There is no sense in which abstract reason is expected to the be the bedrock of belief in God, but reason accompanies faith.

God and Mystery

Speech about God is not straightforwardly literal or univocal. God does not exist in the way that creatures exist. For some theologians and philosophers, God is beyond existence. Speech about God is analogical. God is therefore mystery. Very little can be said about God. Certain medieval theologians (e.g. Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274) are sometimes labelled agnostic.

Modernity: What Changes?

1. Philosophical and Theological Method: How we go about doing philosophy and theology

 One of the most significant shifts in the modern period concerns philosophical method. Where do we start doing philosophy and theology? We saw earlier that in antiquity and the medieval period, philosophy and theology are a response to existence and transcendence. They argued from existence, not to existence.

Ren Descartes (1596-1650)

In his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Descartes sets out to find a rational and solid foundation for all knowledge. He doubts everything, even his own existence. Is there something absolutely certain which he cannot doubt? He cannot doubt that he is doubting or thinking. As long as there is thought, there is something doing the thinking. Hence cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. This is sometimes known as foundationalism. Modern thinkers try to find indubitable rational foundations for knowledge.

Reason and God

Anselm was engaged in faith seeking understanding where reason accompanied his enquiry into an encounter with God. He starts in the middle. Anselm applies reason through faith to the reality of the world. For Descartes, reason does a different job. He starts by doubting everything. Reason must establish everything, even his own existence. So reason must get us from nothing to something. He argues to existence, not from existence. This means that the idea of God becomes a product of Descartess reasoning process. Its a God who looks like a very big person.

What is reason?
The Greeks had various accounts of reason (practical reason, theoretical reason or contemplation) Reason was understood as part of a tradition (philosophical, Jewish, Christian) One did not reason in a vacuum, but thought with a tradition. There was no such thing as the lone thinker. Philosophy was a discursive and communal enterprise. It was the handmaid of theology.

Reason in the Enlightenment

From the seventeenth century, reason is understood in more abstract terms. It is not the product of tradition or practice. It is available to anyone by the free use of their intellectual powers. It is, as it were, natural and neutral, not beholden to any other authority. As such, it is regarded as democratic. Why? Because everyone has the power of reason.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment? in 1784: For enlightenment of this kind, all that is needed is freedom. And the freedom in question is the most innocuous form of all freedom to make public use of ones reason in all matters.

Rationality and God

This gives rise to a deep suspicion of mystical approaches to God. People should not be held captive to mystery and concepts which cannot be clear and simple and open to rational scrutiny. The appeal to mystery and superstition was seen as very problematic. The concept of God therefore changed into a concept which a rationalist philosophy could make sense of and handle using its stock of concepts.

The Modern God

God becomes a thing in the world whose existence is the same as, but infinitely greater than, other things. Rather than being the basis of all causation, God becomes a cause amongst a whole range of other causes. Did I push the pen across the table or did God do it? God is an agent in history amongst countless others. God governs the universe in the way that a King governs his country, making the laws of nature and enforcing them on a passive material universe. God designs the universe in much the same way as I design a car. Is this the God that modern atheism rejects? Does it also reject the ancient and medieval understanding of God because its too mysterious and vague?

Where can I find out more?

Gavin Hyman, A Short History of Atheism (London: I.B. Taurus, 2010), chs. 1-4 (available as an e-book) Michael Martin (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), ch.1