Mailbag: Founders of Atheism
Subject: Who Founded Atheism?
Isn't it funny that no matter how much you look through history you will find many of the leaders of atheism (Stalin, Lenin, Marx, Trotsky, etc.) but you can never find the founder of atheism. Why do you suppose that is?
It is true that no matter how hard you look and how much time you spending reading on the subject, you won't find anything about a "found" of atheism like you will about the "founders" of various religions, philosophies, political movements, and so forth. Why? Well, one obvious reason is the fact that atheism isn't a religion, isn't a philosophy, and isn't a political movement. It isn't like any of those things, so why would we expect to find anything about a "founder" in the first place unless we were burdened by mistaken notions about the nature of atheism in the first place?
Should we take the time to revisit what atheism really is, a more complete answer becomes evident to us. Atheism is simply the absence of belief in gods - nothing more, nothing less. Atheists have all sorts of beliefs when it comes to politics, ethics, religion, epistemology, metaphysics, and so forth, but none of those beliefs follow necessarily from the absence of theism. Now, who could possibly "found" the absence of theism? It's not a movement, it's not a system, and it's not a trend. It's the absence of a single belief.
Actually, this is a trick question. You actually can find the founder of the "abandon God and live away from him" religion. Also known as Anti-christianism, or shortened to a-theism.
We can start to see here that Willy really, really doesn't understand atheism. It requires a tremendous amount of ignorance to assert that atheism is the same as a religion based upon "abandoning God and living away from him." More than that, however, it also requires a serious desire to remain ignorant because it would take only a minimal amount of contact and discussion with actual atheists to discover just how far the above statement really is from reality.
It's also interesting to note a slight hint of feelings of persecution here, specifically in the idea that atheism is some sort of religion or doctrine that is anti-Christian. There are many Christians in America who insist that they are the ones under attack - apparently due to the fact that the superior social status traditionally accorded them has been wearing away. It's a shame, really, that a person can only feel secure only when they are "more equal" than others.
You see people who share many of his views and enjoy misguiding children and taking God's Word away from them and enforcing a brainwash called atheism upon our children. She would have everyone go to hell than let one child listen to the love of their creator. What is it that motivated Maryln Murray O'Hair? Who was the founder of her religion?
Well, this is a fine example of the pot calling the kettle black. And how many Christian parents - or parents of any religion, for that matter - ensure that their children have complete access to all religious points of view? How many religious parents insist that their children choose a religion (or no religion) independently and then respect that choice, no matter what it turns out to be? Not many, that's for sure.
Who was the first atheist? Who was the first to declare war against God and begin gathering souls to keep away from his light? Who motivates the people who do these actions today? I believe we all know who was the founder of the Anti-God movement that eventually led to the doctrine of atheism. Do you?
By this point, I think that it's clear who Willy is referring to: Satan. Yes, Willy thinks that Satan is the founder of atheism and that atheism is, therefore, a type of satanism because atheists are doing Satan's work. There's just a couple of flaws in that theory of this, though.
For one thing, God created Satan - which means that God is ultimately responsible for atheism. Now, either atheism isn't all that bad, or God can't be all that great for creating something as bad as atheism. I don't think that Willy would be happy with either option, but he doesn't have a lot of room to avoid them.
Second, if we remember that atheism is simply the absence of belief in gods, then it is clear that Satan could never have been an atheist. The character of Satan, as portrayed not only in the Bible but also throughout Christian literature, always kept believing that God exists. This makes Satan a theist - perhaps a very unhappy theist, but a theist nonetheless.
Note: This message originally appeared in the Agnosticism / Atheism forum. Read the whole thread. More selections from the Agnosticism / Atheism Mailbag...
Comments
Who was the first atheist?
There have been atheists since there were people.
On the Satan topic. As far as I know, only Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe that Satan exists. Therefore they are the only ones that can possibly be Satan worshipers.
Willy, as Austin said, atheism is simply one thing - an absence of a belief in god. We athesits lead lives just like everyone else in every other way. We have friends, family, work, do volunteer work, and pay taxes just like everyone who believes in god. Don’t make atheism out to be anything more than it is.
Some atheists were never christians to begin with. I was born jewish but stopped believing in god before I was supposed to be bar mitzvahed (at age 13). So how could my switch to atheism be anti-christian if I were never christian to begin with?
i can’t be antichristian because i’ve always been an atheist
Willy himself was an atheist until his parents brainwashed him or until he adopted his current belief system.
Also, and this is not original, Willy is almost as much an atheist as any of us. He just believes in the existence of one more god than we do.
And the old bit about Hitler, Stalin, etc. being “leaders of atheism” pops up again. I think it more accurate to say they were using the similar tools in a religion-like brainwashing to make themselves the object of “worship”. Just listen to the cadence, pacing, vocal rise and fall of a Hitler speech and one by, say, Jimmy Swaggart. The similarities are eerie.
Stalin, Lenin, Marx, Trotsky, etc.
Willy is employing the fallacy of guilt by association. True, some of those names are associated with atheism, but that doesn’t mean that their religious views were necessarily incorrect. Moreover, many of the names Willy drops are known for ill in the West for their political intrigues or viewpoints and nothing else. They may have had different political outlooks (wich are not necessarilly “wrong” per se), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that their religious views were equally misguided.
I wonder why it is that many (American) Xians want to associate anti-capitalism with evil. (How’s that for guilt by association, Willy?)
I’ve found Jonathan Miller’s three-part documentary on the history of Atheism in the Western world to be extremely helpful. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
Among the Greek philosophers, the big three are Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. In the age of enlightenment, David Hume was on the precipice of Atheism, while Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, was one of the first self-described and outspoken “Atheists” in Europe. They were not the first unbelievers, for sure, but among the first to have described their philosophies in writing. All have Wikipedia articles for your reading pleasure.
This is interesting.I’ve long thought that violent critics of atheism-Bush included-equate it with Devil worship.They’re so deluded they can’t understand that someone would renounce a belief in God purely through lack of evidence.So they bring in the devil-this keeps it all nicely within their belief system.
A simple point followed by the overly complicated objections raised by the deluded–one of the reasons I read this blog.