Atheism, Materialism, Naturalism, and Skepticism Have been Around for over 1500 Years.

This is a response to an article ppublished recently regarding the decline of interest in the so-called ‘New Atheists’ school of thought.

The New Atheism Has Faded from View

From 1500 to 500 BCE, atheist schools were in the Vedic tradition. Around 600 BC, arose a materialistic anti-theist school of thought in India. Jainism and Buddhism in India also reject a personal God. In 500 BC, Diagoras was put to death for being Godless in Greece. Epicurus in 300 BC favored naturalism, building on Democritus and the atomists’ thought. He did not deny the Gods but doubted they played any role in human affairs. Early Christians were called atheists because they did not believe in Graeco-Roman Gods. Between 827 and 1058, a number of Arab thinkers considered religion as manmade fables and an excuse to stop thinking. During the Renaissance, many thinkers expressed doubts about the existence of Gods or a God. In the 1500s you have Spinoza. On the 16th,17. and 18th century you got the deists, Hobbes, and many others. From the 18th century on, there were too many thinkers with serious doubts about God to really list here. The point is, that the “new atheists” are just part of a long line of skeptics dating back over a thousand years before Christ. I don’t know what the future holds, but I wouldn’t gauge the prevalence and significance of atheism solely on the lowered popularity of a few intellectuals in the last decade or something.

–Timothy Swatterfit