As unbelievable as it may seem, history implies that atheism is as natural to human beings as religion. A new study has found, during ancient times, people did not necessarily believe in gods, thus casting doubt over the idea that religiosity is the default setting for human beings.

Despite being erased out of large portions of history, atheists strived to survive in polytheistic societies of the ancient world, urging several questions about whether people truly are wired for religion. This concept is the central idea of a new book, authored by Tim Whitmarsh, Professor of Greek culture as well as a Fellow of St. John’s College, University of Cambridge.

In his book, Whitmarsh claims that atheism, which is stereotypically considered to be a modern trend, was not only popular in ancient Greece and pre-Christian Rome but also flourished more during those times than it has in any civilization since. Progressively, the study puts to test two assumptions that tend to spark contemporary debates between believers and atheists – first, the notion that atheism is a modern trend and second, the concept of “religious universalism” that suggests humans are wired to inherently believe in gods.

The book, titled “Battling the Gods”, was launched in Cambridge on February 16.

“We tend to see atheism as an idea that has only recently emerged in secular Western societies,” Whitmarsh said. “The rhetoric used to describe it is hyper-modern. In fact, early societies were far more capable than many since of containing atheism within the spectrum of what they considered normal. ... Rather than making judgments based on scientific reason, these early atheists were making what seem to be universal objections about the paradoxical nature of religion – the fact that it asks you to accept things that aren’t intuitively there in your world. The fact that this was happening thousands of years ago suggests that forms of disbelief can exist in all cultures, and probably always have.”

The book suggests that disbelief is “as old as the hills”. Early instances, such as the atheistic texts of Xenophanes of Colophon were contemporary with Judaism in the Second Temple era, noticeably predating Christianity as well as Islam. Writing in the 4th century, even Plato noted that contemporary non-believers were not the first people to hold such a notion about gods.

Since the historical roots of atheism have largely been ignored, Whitmarsh believes that it is also mostly absent from both sides of a long-prevailing monotheist/atheist debate. As atheists continue to portray religion as something from a primitive stage of human development, the concept of religious universalism has also been built partly on the idea that early societies were largely religious because humans, by default, were inherently wired to believe in god.

But Whitmarsh says that neither perspective is accurate.

“Believers talk about atheism as if it’s a pathology of a particularly odd phase of modern Western culture that will pass, but if you ask someone to think hard, clearly people also thought this way in antiquity,” he noted.

His latest book surveys 1,000 years of ancient history to prove this very point, combing out different forms of disbelief that were demonstrated by various philosophical movements, public figures and writers. This was achieved in one way by the basic diversity of polytheistic Greek societies. From 650 BCE to 323 BCE, Greece had approximately 1,200 separate city states, each with its own traditions, customs and governance. Religion too featured in this variety, in the form of private cults, city festivals and village rituals dedicated to several divine entities. This meant that there was no such thing as religious orthodoxy, with the nearest that Greeks got to one unifying sacred text being Homer’s epics, which provided no comprehensible moral vision of the gods and instead often depicted them as immoral.

“Similarly, there was no specialised clergy telling people how to live. The idea of a priest telling you what to do was alien to the Greek world,” Whitmarsh said.

Consequently, as some individuals perceived atheism as mistaken, it was barely seen as morally wrong. As a matter of fact, it was often tolerated as one of the many viewpoints that individuals could hold on the subject of gods. Rarely was it actively legislated against, like in Athens during 5th century BCE, when Socrates was put to death for refusing to “recognize the gods of the city”.

Even though atheism existed in varying shapes and sizes, Whitmarsh states that there have been convincing continuities across generations. For instance, ancient atheists struggled with fundamentals that many people continue to question even today, like how to combat the ills of evil and how to answers questions pertaining to religion that seem implausible. These themes stem from the works of early thinkers, such as Anaximenes and Anaximander, who attempted to explain why phenomena like earthquakes and thunders have absolutely nothing to do with the gods, through to legendary writers, such as Euripides, whose plays openly condemned divine causality. Possibly the most famous group of atheists in the world, the Epicureans, believed there is no such thing as predestination, also rejecting the notion that the gods exercise any control over mortal life.

Whitmarsh suggests that the age of ancient atheism eventually came to an end because polytheistic societies, which typically tolerated the concept, were gradually replaced by monotheistic imperial forces that demanded the acceptance of “a one true God.”

“Rome’s adoption of Christianity in 4th century CE was seismic because it used religious absolutism to hold the Empire together,” he said.

After that, most of the Roman Empire’s ideological energy was exhausted in battling supposed heretical beliefs, namely other forms of Christianity. In a decree of 380, Emperor Theodosius I distinguished Christians from followers of other religions, whom he labeled “dementes vesanosque” (demented lunatics), leaving little to no room for nonbelievers.

As a concluding note, Whitmarsh said that his book had not been authored to prove or disprove the truth of atheism.

On the book’s first page, he writes, “I do, however, have a strong conviction – that has hardened in the course of researching and writing this book – that cultural and religious pluralism, and free debate, are indispensable to the good life.”

Photo Credits: The Odyssey Online