Origins of atheism: how and when was this philosophical current born?

In the same way that Christians believe in God, Muslims in Allah or Jews in Yahweh, there are people who do not believe in any of that. Atheism is the non-belief in deities or that determine our destiny, fortunes and misfortunes.

This is nothing new, of course, but it is surprising that, delving into the origins of atheism, we see that it is a fairly old religious position.

Next we are going to take a trip through time, discovering who were the first atheists philosophically speaking and how non-belief has been treated throughout history.

• Related article: "The origins of religion: how did it appear and why?"

What are the origins of atheism?

Although the word "atheism" is relatively modern, having its origin in the 16th century and being, at the time, a neologism Coming from the ancient Greek "átheos" (without god, denial of god), the truth is that the philosophical position behind the term is very ancient. Today we understand the word atheism as the ideological and religious position in which the existence of god, deities or entities that determine the fate of people, a definition not prior to the 18th century, when the word went from an insult to a concept "positive".

Surprising as it may seem, the idea that gods or deities do not exist seems to be as old as religions themselves. Anthropologically, the origins of atheism have been investigated trying to discover if in the most "primitive" cultures there were divergent positions regarding the deity of the tribe, or that they were critical of whether what the other members of the group they believed. Despite extensive research, it is difficult to know to what extent non-belief appeared in these cultures.

What is certain is that, of course, the belief that atheism, as a philosophical position, has its origins in the Age of Enlightenment is false. Although the Enlightenment implied, without a doubt, greater freedom of expression, which also included religion, The truth is that we can find atheistic positions since the Ancient Age, with civilizations such as Greece, Rome, China and the India. Next we will see how non-belief has been established in the philosophical thought of various cultures.

1. Old age

As a philosophical current, atheism begins to manifest itself at the end of the 6th century BC. c. in Europe and Asia. At this time, in Classical Greece, the word "átheos" already existed, although with a different definition from the one we give it today, which appeared between the 5th and 6th centuries BC. c. This made reference to that person who had ceased his relations with the gods and, in many Sometimes, it was used as an insult, meaning an evil person, who denied or disrespected others. gods.

We have an interesting atheistic background in Classical Greece, with the case of Socrates. Although his atheism could not properly be considered non-belief in God, it does questioned the existence of the ancestral gods. It is for this reason that Socrates was executed by making him drink hemlock. Likewise, it can be said that the execution of Socrates, more than for heresy, was due to political reasons, since, Relatively, in Classical Greece atheism was more or less tolerated, depending on the polis and the moment historical.

There are many other classical philosophers who resist the belief in divinities. another thinker, Carnéades de Cyrene, who directed Plato's Academy in the 2nd century BC. c. he considered that believing in gods was illogical. Later, Xenophanes of Colophon criticized the idea of ​​anthropomorphic gods, considering them a corrupt human invention. Likewise, it can be said that Xenophanes was a supporter of pantheism, that is, the position that everything is found in all things and is, technically, a religion, in his way.

Diagoras de Melos got quite a bad name for being considered the first atheist in Classical Greece. The atomists Leucippus and Democritus later defended a materialistic vision of the world, in which there was no room for the intervention of the gods. We also have other figures considered atheists, or at least supporters of the position that deities could not exist, such as Anaximenes, Heraclitus and Prodicus of Ceos, also supporters of a completely materialistic point of view and without thinking about what spiritual.

Leaving the Western world aside, we move on to Ancient India, a place that was the cradle of numerous philosophical schools in which an atheistic vision of life was promulgated. Chárvaka also arose, an antitheistic philosophical current, one of the most explicit of the time, and Jainism, which conceives the idea that the world is an eternal element without beginning.

In China we have Taoism, which defends the non-existence of a god. Taoists consider that a superior deity is unnecessary, since the human being harmonizes perfectly with nature.

In this same country we have Buddhism, in which the existence of a single founding God is not conceived, being the teachings of Gautama Buddha the ones that serve as training psychological and spiritual to meet internally, although they do believe in deities and other supernatural entities, which we cannot speak of atheism in the sense strict.

• You may be interested in: "The 10 types of beliefs, and how they speak about who we are"

2. Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation

In the Middle Ages, atheism was frowned upon in the West. so bad that There are not many figures who dared to make their atheistic positions known; there was fear of having to defend himself in front of a court of the Inquisition and end up confessing under the most creative torture. Freedom of thought was conspicuous by its absence, and if it was already a scandal to believe in another god other than the Christian, doubting the existence of a creative entity was already the last straw.

Fortunately, the situation changes at the start of the Renaissance, followed by the Protestant Reformation. A greater criticism of religious institutions and beliefs arises, progressively causing the idea of ​​modern atheism to take shape. In fact, the term “athéisme” was first coined in France in the 16th century, used as a form of accusation for those who rejected God or divinity in their debates intellectuals.

Although there was much more freedom of thought than during the Middle Ages, it would not be with the irruption of the Protestant Reformation and, later, the Enlightenment. Being a non-believer was still frowned upon, and there is evidence that during the 16th and 17th centuries the word "atheist" was used exclusively as an insult that nobody wanted receive, since there were not a few who ended up being executed on suspicion of atheism, among whom we can find the following cases:

• Étienne Dolet: strangled and burned in 1546 as an atheist.
• Giulio Cesare Vanini: strangled and burned in 1619 as an atheist.
• Kazimierz Łyszczyński: beheaded after ripping out his tongue with red-hot iron and burning his hands slowly in 1689, for writing a philosophical treatise questioning the existence of God.
• Jean-François de la Barre: tortured, beheaded and his body burned, accused of destroying a crucifix.

As for those accused of atheism who were saved, we can find great figures of thought such as the English materialist Thomas Hobbes, who managed to save himself by denying the charges of atheism. The reason for the suspicion was that his theism was unusual, since he considered that God had to be material. In 1675 the philosopher Baruch Spinoza had to give up publishing his work Ethics since it was considered blasphemous and atheistic by theologians, along with other also prohibited works that were only known posthumously.

3. Age of Enlightenment

The Enlightenment is one of the most culturally important periods in the West., since it brought with it great scientific and philosophical advances, along with greater freedom of thought. This era is traditionally associated with the phrase "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it", supposedly said by the French philosopher Voltaire.

Denis Diderot, one of the most important philosophers of the Enlightenment and editor of the best-known popularization work of the time, The encyclopedia, he was accused of being an atheist for challenging the prevailing religious dogmas, especially the Catholic one. In his work he writes that reason is the virtue of the philosopher, while grace is of the Christian. Grace determines the actions of the Christian and reason those of the philosopher. For opinions like this, Diderot was imprisoned for a brief period.

As time passed, the word atheism was no longer a dangerous accusation.. In the 1770s, the act of questioning the existence of God was already better seen, although, of course, with its limitations. The first philosopher of the time to deny the existence of God and advocate his atheism was Baron d'Holbach, with his work published in 1770. System of Nature. Along with philosophers such as Denis Diderot, Jean Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Benjamin Franklin, he criticized religion.

But despite the greater freedom of expression, censorship and repression continued to be in force. D'Holbach published his works under the pseudonym Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud to avoid religious persecution. In addition, his works and those of several of the earlier philosophers appeared in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a compilation made by the Holy See in which those books that should not be read under any circumstances if one wanted to be a good Christian were included. This book had editions until 1948, being suppressed in 1966.

conclusions

The origins of atheism are very deep and extensive if you take a historical perspective. Surely, the ancestral cultures expressed, in one way or another, some critical opinion with the belief of the group deity, although it is difficult to be sure of this since, on many occasions, the cultural remains that come to us from our oldest ancestors are offerings to the gods or other ritual objects.

What one can be sure of is that atheism, as a religious and philosophical position, does not have its origin in the Enlightenment, but was already well present in the Ancient Age. In both Europe and Asia, critical positions against the ancestral gods had their own schools, more or less accepted depending on the city-state or the historical moment that was being living.

With the arrival of the Middle Ages comes the darkest and most gloomy repression against any idea contrary to the idea of ​​the Christian God, and only a little more freedom would be gained with the irruption of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and, finally, the Century of the Lights.

Bibliographic references:

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