Atheism From Antiquity to the Enlightenment

8/13/2019 Atheism From Antiquity to the Enlightenment

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Atheism from Antiquity to the

Enlightenmentis there any?

Dr. Simon Oliver,

Department of Theology and Religious Studies

David Hume (1711-1776)Epicurus (341BC-270BC)


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Antiquity

Antiquity (the ancient world) is often associated withthe classical civilizations of Athens and Rome.

It is roughly the period from 600BC to the fall of theRoman Empire in 476AD. This gives way to the MiddleAges or medieval period.

Antiquity includes:

The paganisms of Rome which feature manyanthropomorphic gods

The monotheism of Judaism

Greek philosophy featuring a transcendent Good (Plato)or First Cause (Aristotle) or the One (Neoplatonism)


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Medieval Period

The medieval period (or Middle Ages) lasts fromthe fifth to the fifteenth centuries. It issometimes divided in the early, high and latemedieval periods.

It is characterised by the growth of the Church,

the advent of Christian monasticism andeducation, the rise of Islamic scholarship andlearning (tenth and eleventh centuries) and thegrowing power of monarchy across Europe.

The re-introduction of Aristotle into the Latinspeaking West in the twelfth century had adramatic impact on learning.

The medieval period merges into the Renaissance

in the fifteenth century.


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The Modern Period

Modernity (not to be confused withmodernism) begins around 1500.

It is characterised by:

the rise of the nation state and associated warsof religion

growth in trade

struggles for freedom

the Reformation and an increasing distrust ofauthority and tradition.

The early modern period ends with the French

revolution in 1789.


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Plato (429347 BC) and

Aristotle (384 BC322 BC)

The most influential philosophersof the Western tradition.

They are struck by thecontingency of existence: the

universe does not explain its ownexistence.

They are also struck by theuniverses intelligibility.

As human reason explores theuniverse, the mind responds tocosmic patterns and orders.

To explain something meansidentifying its origins and purpose.


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Plato and the Good

For Plato, the origin of intelligibility and existenceis the Good.

As the light of the sun makes things visible andknowable, so the light of the good makes thingsexistent and intelligible.

What is rational? What can we make sense of?The Good.

The Good is one, transcendent, beyond time andchange. It is the source of being.

But this is not quite the personal God of Jewishand Christian tradition.


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Aristotle and Theos

For Aristotle, theos (God) is described as theobject of creations desire.

In other words, all things strive for their own

perfection. This strivinga movement of changeas a

yearning for the origin and purpose of all

things. This is theos, or God, the first unmoved mover.


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Materialism in Ancient Greece

Modern atheism is often (but not always)associated with some kind of materialismtheidea that there is only matter of various kinds

with no transcendent, divine or supernaturalcause or purpose.

The origins of this idea already found in ancientGreek philosophers such as Thales (624BC-

546BC), Anaxagoras (ca. 500428 BC),Democritus (ca.460-370BC) and Epicurus (341-270BC).


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Lucretius (ca.99-ca.55 BC),

De Rerum Natura

The Latin poem De Rerum Natura by Lucretius

(ca. 99 BCca. 55 BC) is written for a Roman

audience and explains the universe withreference to physical principles governed by

chance rather than deities.

He refers to the atomism of Democritus(ca.460-370BC) .

It implies a mechanistic cosmology.


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What is mechanistic cosmology?

At a most basic level, the idea that the universe is a largemachine whose operations can be predicted. The universeis like a huge clock.

On this view, all the following are mechanistic events:thinking, love, willing, raining, learning, the growth of atree and the movement of the planets.

Potentially, mechanistic cosmology threatens a notion offreedom because everything is, in principle, determinedand 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 donot seem reversible, e.g. burning a log on the fire.


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LucretiusDe Rerum Natura

Is Lucretius and early atheist?

Not really. The atheoiof the ancient world were theimpious.

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 ofIsrael, and strangers to the covenants of promise, havingno hope and without God in the world.

They were not devout attenders of temples orpractitioners of ritual. They were people who hadforgotten or neglected the God or the gods.

The early Christians were called atheoibecause theybelieved that God had become incarnate. This was animpious viewsomething not appropriate to divinity.


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Is there any atheism?

It is almost impossible to fine evidence of the denial oftranscendence in antiquity and the Middle Ages.

The ancient philosophers are agreed that the world ismore than it appears to be.

There is meaning and purpose to be discerned which isobjective and not merely the product of humanprojection.

The intelligibility of the universe is not something wegenerate. It is objectively present within the world and

has a source which is not straightforwardlycoterminous with the world.

Even Lucretius and Epicurus acknowledge the existenceof the gods, but they are very different from those ofancient Rome.


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Does this mean that there is not

doubt?

Not at all. Ancient and medieval thinkers agreethat it is very difficult to say anything about theGood or God.

Why? Because our words are finite and God isinfinite.

The all acknowledge that it is possible to doubtGods existence.

Psalm 14.1: The fool has said in his heart Thereis not God.

How do they think about God?


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Encountering God

The Danish philosopherSren Kierkegaard (1813-

1855) might give us a clue.


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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 itsexistence. We do it the other way around. Weencounter something, and then try to saysomething about what weve encountered.

In other words, I start from an encounter withsomething, and then I try to make thatencounter intelligible. I try to describe it.


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Encounter

Ancient and medieval thought about the gods orGod begins with an encounter with the world,with existence, with being, and then tries tomake sense of it.

That attempt to make sense of it is driven by theconviction that we cannot know the essence of agnat, never mind the essence of God.

Certain traditionsJudaism, Christianity, Islam -regard this philosophical theology not simply asour reading of nature up to God, but as ourreceipt of, and response to, an address, arevelation.


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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 thesubject and the brevity of

human life.


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Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033-1109)

His famous text the Proslogionincludes the ontological argumentfor Gods existence.

Is this simply a failed attempt toprove that God exists?

Curiously, the Proslogionis

written as a prayer. Anselm is haunted by his inability

to see or discern God


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*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 itseye 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, bothrestricted by its own limitedness and overcome

by Your fullness.


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Olafur Eliasson (1967- ), The

Weather Project, Tate Modern 2003


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God and Mystery

Speech about God is not straightforwardlyliteral or univocal. God does not exist in theway 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) aresometimes labelled agnostic.


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Modernity: What Changes?

1.

Philosophical and Theological Method:

How we go about doing philosophy and

theology


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Ren Descartes (1596-1650)

In his Meditations on First Philosophy(1641),

Descartes sets out to find a rational and solidfoundation for all knowledge.

He doubts everything, even his ownexistence.

Is there something absolutely certain whichhe cannot doubt?

He cannot doubt that he is doubting orthinking. As long as there is thought, there issomething doing the thinking.

Hence cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore Iam.

This is sometimes known asfoundationalism. Modern thinkers try tofind indubitable rational foundations for

knowledge.


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Reason and God

Anselm was engaged in faith seeking understandingwhere reason accompanied his enquiry into an encounterwith God.

He starts in the middle.Anselm applies reason throughfaith to the reality of the world.

For Descartes, reason does a different job. He starts bydoubting 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 ofDescartess reasoning process. Its a God who looks like avery big person.


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What is reason?

The Greeks had various accounts of reason(practical reason, theoretical reason orcontemplation)

Reason was understood as part of a tradition

(philosophical, Jewish, Christian) One did not reason in a vacuum, but thought

witha tradition. There was no such thing as thelone thinker.

Philosophy was a discursive and communalenterprise.

It was the handmaid of theology.


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Reason in the Enlightenment

From the seventeenth century, reason isunderstood in more abstract terms.

It is not the product of tradition or practice.

It is available to anyone by the free use of theirintellectual powers.

It is, as it were, natural and neutral, notbeholden to any other authority.

As such, it is regarded as democratic. Why?Because everyone has the power of reason.


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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804),Answering the Question:What is Enlightenment? in1784:

For enlightenment of this kind,all that is needed is freedom.And the freedom in question isthe most innocuous form of all

freedom to make public use ofones reason in all matters.


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Rationality and God

This gives rise to a deep suspicion of mysticalapproaches to God.

People should not be held captive to mysteryand 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 aconcept which a rationalist philosophy couldmake sense of and handle using its stock ofconcepts.


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The Modern God

God becomes a thing in the world whose existence is thesame as, but infinitely greater than, other things.

Rather than being the basis of all causation, God becomes acause amongst a whole range of other causes. Did I pushthe 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 hiscountry, making the laws of nature and enforcing them on apassive material universe.

God designs the universe in much the same way as I designa car.

Is this the God that modern atheism rejects? Does it alsoreject the ancient and medieval understanding of Godbecause its too mysterious and vague?


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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

Atheism From Antiquity to the Enlightenment

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