Daren M. Jaques, J.D., IS Member

The year is 1375. A couple of grimly pious men hustle another bound and hooded man atop a rough platform of freshly hewn timber and assorted wooden planks. They tie his arms to the stake at the center of the unlit pyre and offer him one last chance to recant his heresy. History knows this man only as “Loffler,” and his reputed final words haunt modern atheists who have not endured intolerance of this magnitude. He yells, “Burn me if you wish, but you have not enough wood to burn chance which rules the world!”

Atheism, as it would come to be known years later, did not yet exist when Loffler was murdered, but his group, “Brethren of the Free Spirit,” helped pave the way for free-thinking by asserting that the world behaved mechanistically rather than in divinely driven ways. As such, it was strikingly similar to the Ancient Greek school of thought that is generally considered the first atheistic philosophy - Epicureanism.

Etymological ancestors of the English word “atheist” go all the way back to ancient Greece, where a means “without” and theos, “a god.” Epicureanism is much credited with bringing the first cogently atheos philosophy to prominence, though the term was mainly used by Epicurus’ detractors rather than the Epicureans themselves.

Epicurus was a Greek philosopher contemporary with Aristotle (300 B.C.E.), and his philosophic school was fairly influential for many years. Students of history may remember that Socrates was executed primarily for blasphemy against the Greek gods. How then did Epicurus avoid such a fate? Epicurus and his followers denied being atheos, and argued instead that the gods had no concern for human affairs and did not intervene in them. If that sounds like Enlightenment Deism, it should. That was just one of several similarities. Epicureans also argued that the world operated on predictable mechanistic principles, and they believed in Democritus’ atomic theory of physicality. Further, Epicurean notions of justice and ethics appear to be based on secular notions much resembling the “social contract theory,” which came to prominence much later with thinkers like Thomas Hobbes. The Epicureans avoided the scorn of the orthodox much the same way Jeffersonian-style Deists did, by not directly challenging the existence of gods, and by pointing out that the world did not need gods to explain the world.

With the rise of the Roman Empire, Epicureanism faded out of prominence and a truly atheos philosophy would not redevelop until the Enlightenment.

Getting back to the development of the term “atheist,” it begins to appear in French writing in the 1500s, borrowing from the Greek atheos. Common derivations appeared as athéiste, “godless;” athéisme, “belief in godlessness;” and athée, “one who is godless.” The English form, atheist, comes directly from the French, but clearly, English’s atheist is closer to the meaning “one who is godless.” However, as will be explained below, there is no clear cut definition even of the English form.

Definitions in English dictionaries vary in some key respects with the term atheist. The American Heritage Dictionary defines atheist as “one who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.” This definition blends both a merely skeptical aspect, “one who disbelieves,” with a more absolutist position of “denies existence….”

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines atheist as “one who believes that there is no deity.” This is another definition which emphasizes an assertion of knowledge that there is no supreme being, but this one makes no mention of multiple deities.

The Oxford Online Dictionary defines atheist as, “the belief that God does not exist.” This is very interesting for several reasons. First, we have the absolutist position from a knowledge standpoint coupled with a capitalized form of “God” and no mention of “gods,” which seems to leave open the possibility that atheists might not hold the belief that “gods” do not exist. Second, this appears to be a somewhat propagandistic definition that implicitly pays homage to the one “God.” The inference is that atheists deny what we all know to be true – that God exists.

The Cambridge Dictionary’s online definition is somewhat more accommodating and philosophically complete. It reads, “Someone who believes that God or gods do not exist.” The only problem with this definition is the common assertion of positive knowledge. Following the tradition of Epicurus, atheos lines of thinking have asserted mechanistic explanations of causality; the modern child of this tradition is the scientific method. For the most part, both then and now, atheistic thinkers do not assert knowledge that God or gods do not exist, rather that there simply is no evidence to countenance such a claim.

Modern atheism is, to be sure, a pluralistic system of belief with no definitive core. However, as stated above, most thinkers who identify themselves as atheists tend to assert that they are skeptical of the existence of a supreme being or beings rather than assert knowledge of the fact of providential non-existence. Further, the term atheist comes to us from ancient Greece and 16th Century France where it stands today, with multiple definitions.

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In an attempt to accommodate more IS members, the monthly on-line meetings will be moved to the third Sunday of each month at 7:00 p.m. The next meeting will be Sunday, March 20, 2005. Hopefully this time will allow more people to participate than the Wednesday evening time.

Also, after having gone through several chat programs with varying degrees of success, I believe that we have a winner! The program I’ve selected should work on any browser from any location. It even has a text-based function for those working with limited browsers or from behind a secure network. You can try it out by clicking here. I will be available to answer questions starting at 6:00 p.m. on the 20th. Also, feel free to email me at bsabel@iowasecularist.org with questions about the chat. You can also leave comments on the blog or the Forum.

A discussion of the Susan Jacoby book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism will take place on the IS Forum beginning Friday, March 11, 2005. IS member clunney has set down a schedule and some ground rules which can be viewed here. We invite anyone who cares to participate to join us!

For a sneak preview, you can also read jsabel’s review of the book by clicking here!