Atheism, as a concept and intellectual movement, has been in the circle of discussions and thoughts since ancient times. This concept, which is very aggressive in philosophical and moral terms, has been an important topic for a wide range of intellectuals and scholars.
There is no doubt that atheism has spread in the Muslim community and the whole world in a general way; in such a way that its effects have been different from one region to another. For this reason, this important issue needs discussion and research, far from exaggeration.
Today, atheism includes thoughts of irreligion, disinterest in religion, rejection of religion, opposition to religion and finally, disbelief in any god in a more general and limited sense.
Atheism is not a new thought and has existed for a long time. The philosophical thought of atheism has emerged in Europe and Asia since the fifth century BC. Atheism is a thought that denies the existence of God (Allah) or a super intelligent being who created the universe.
Since atheism deals with the laws of thought and intellect and affects high human values, it cannot be ignored in such a way that its destructive effects appear in the individual and society. Undoubtedly, comparing ancient and modern history is the best evidence and reason to show several examples of the destructive effects of “atheism” on society and even the world. Racial conflicts, devastating wars, and creating tribal divisions and differences based on racism, language, and culture, etc., are another clear example of the phenomenon of “atheism.”
Atheism is a historical phenomenon, but in the present era we are faced with the most explicit and clear meaning of atheism. In a general sense, atheism is used to mean not having any kind of belief in God, as well as having the belief that there is no God.
The root of the word “atheism”
The root of the word atheism goes back to ancient Greek. In Greek, the word “atheos,” meaning without God, was actually used to denigrate people who rejected the gods accepted by society. In the Middle Ages, atheism was considered a dangerous and blasphemous belief. Those accused of atheism were often persecuted and punished.
Atheism also became more widespread during the Renaissance, with the rise of skepticism and rationalism. Philosophers such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes criticized popular religious beliefs and defended atheism.
Atheism was seen as a more logical and rational belief in the 19th century, with the rise of science and technology.
Philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Charles Darwin defended atheism by presenting scientific and philosophical arguments.
However, the word atheism, as we know it today, was first used in the 16th century; of course, before that, this word had been used in limited meaning with the spread of freethinking, scientific skepticism, and criticism of religions. However, it was during the Age of intellectualism that people officially called themselves atheists for the first time. [1]
History of Atheism
Antiquity
Although the word atheist appears only in books written in the late 16th century; but atheism is much older than the idea of the monotheism of God in the Abrahamic religions. Although, due to the lack of available sources, identifying the first person and in fact its founder has caused disagreement among historians and researchers, most researchers agree that its roots go back to about six centuries BC (before the birth of Christ) from the ancient period to the pre-Socratic period of Greece.
Ancient Greece, Egypt, China and India were among the first countries to incorporate naturalism, its connection with various types of religion to philosophical materialism in the past of their schools of thought and benefit from it. [2]
Hinduism is usually considered a theistic religion, but the Karavaka school, which originated around the 6th century BCE, is probably the most explicitly atheistic and materialistic school of Indian philosophy. Although our understanding of Karavaka philosophy comes only from fragments and is not classified as one of the six orthodox schools of Hinduism, it explicitly rejected the concept of a personal God and an afterlife. Other Indian philosophies often considered atheistic include the “orthodox” Samkhya and Purvamimasai schools of Hinduism; Jainism and Buddhism also rejected the idea of a personal creator God, although they may not be considered explicitly atheistic.
Western atheism traces its roots to the pre-Socratic period of Greek philosophy, particularly the Melos school of philosophy of the 6th century BC.
Among its philosophers are Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenses. They were the first to replace mythological explanations with rational reason and naturalism, and subsequently introduced the revolutionary idea that nature could be understood in an automated system (by resorting to natural explanations), which of course became the basis of empirical science. Diagoras of Melos, or Diagoras the Godless, was a 5th-century BC sophist and poet who strongly criticized mythological, mystical, and religious definitions. (Critias of Athens, who was related to Plato, considered religion to be a man-made device and a means of terrorizing and controlling the people for the government’s moral and political orders.) Of course, he did not write about atheism, but the sources that describe his lack of belief present him as a very active, self-confident, atheistic, and, of course, blasphemous person. He publicly exposed the secret traditions of the “Eleusinian” religion, which was sacred to them, and, as he put it, “made them ordinary.” He did this apparently to test the minds of his contemporary thinkers, who, of course, as expected, were accused of blasphemy some time later; but he escaped (a group searched the entire Athenian empire for him but failed to find him), which alone shows the severity of his sentence. The Christian Athenagoras wrote of him in the 2nd century BC: “The Athenians were justified in condemning Diagoras as an atheist, for he not only questioned Orphism, exposed the secret traditions of the Eleusinian, and generally declared that he was not a god, but also cut down the sacred wooden statue of Hercules and set fire to it, boiling a pot of water containing his own turnips.” [3]
The atomist philosophers of the 5th century BC, such as Lucretius and Democritus, sought to explain the world in the purest materialist terms, without resorting to mysticism or the supernatural; Democritus in particular insisted that everything in existence had always existed and was made of atoms, so there was no need for a god to have created it. A century later, Epicurus was the first to advance the question of evil and to argue explicitly against the afterlife. (He eliminated only personal gods from his philosophy, believing that they were not interested in human fate.) Atheism in ancient history was by no means a smooth path, as Anaxagoras was expelled from Athens for atheism and for inciting public opinion to question the Greek gods and was hanged in the late fifth century BC, although this sentence did not prevent similar philosophies from emerging.
The Influential school of skepticism, founded by the Greek philosopher Porphyrius (Pyrrhо̄n) of Elis in the Peloponnese in the 4th century BC, claimed that it was impossible to determine from available information which of these supernatural explanations was correct. [4]
Other philosophers who probably held atheistic views include the sophists Prodicus and Protagoras in the 5th century BC, who continued under the names of the atheist Eodorus and Strato in the 3rd and 4th centuries BC. Lucretius, a Roman poet and philosopher (influenced by Epicurus), argued in the 1st century BC that if gods existed, they would be indifferent to human fate and incapable of influencing the natural world, and on this basis he called for the abandonment of fear in the face of supernatural issues (he considered fear to be one of the main reasons why people distance themselves from atheism and criticism of religion). This historical process, of course, ends with a name familiar to Hume, Kant, and Descartes (who also has the largest remaining sources from the ancient period), Sextus Empiricus.
The meaning and connotation of the word atheism changed frequently in the ancient periods of classical philosophy, to the point where even the Greeks called Christians atheists because of their lack of belief in the Greek gods, and this trend was only weakened by the declaration of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and even opposition to and questioning of Christianity faced severe punishments. [5]
Ghasemi-Bojd, Yasin, The Atheist is Dead, p. 34, Publisher: Yasin Book Publishing, Year of Publication: 1403 AH – Tehran.
Lap, Ineas, The Psychoanalysis of Atheism, p. 43, Translator: Rafei Mehrabadi, Mohammad, Publisher: Ashian, Tehran, 1377 AH.
Hawking, Steven, Short Answers to Big Questions, p. 241, Translator: Movahed, Mazda, Publisher: Farhang Nashr Noor, 1389 AH.
Lap, Ineas, The Psychoanalysis of Atheism, p. 78, Translator: Rafei Mehrabadi, Mohammad, Publisher: Ashian, Tehran, 1377 AH. And Pourhasan, Ghasem, Theism and Atheism, p. 56, Sirat Publishing, Year of Publication: 1401 AH, Iran.
Lap, Ineas, Psychoanalysis of Atheism, p. 78, translated by Rafei Mehrabadi, Mohammad, published by Ashian, Tehran, 1377 AH. And Mitterling, Morse, God and Existence, p. 132, translated by Mansouri, Zabihollah, Einstein Publications, 1389 AH. Iran.
