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The Birth of Freethought
(Daylight Atheism 12/2/19)
By James A. Haught
The war between science and religion began in Ancient Greece. More than two millennia ago, the Greek peninsula was the first known place where a few intelligent thinkers sought natural explanations for phenomena instead of swallowing supernatural ones.
At that time, magical faith abounded. Greeks sacrificed thousands of animals to a zoo of absurd gods who supposedly lived atop Mount Olympus. Greeks also flocked to oracles, priestesses who supposedly relayed messages from the gods.
In fact, oracle temples reaped so much wealth from gullible listeners that a series of "sacred wars" erupted over oracle riches and the wars enabled neighboring Macedonia to seize Greece, wiping out city-states and launching the reign of Alexander the Great.
Amid this supernatural chaos, pioneer thinkers took early steps toward scientific knowledge often at the risk of death, because those who disagreed with religion were prosecuted for "impiety."
An excellent account of this birth of freethought is An Archeology of Disbelief: The Origin of Secular Philosophy by retired professor Edward "Mike" Jayne (Hamilton Books, 2018).
His 200-page volume gives detailed information about a multitude of classic Greeks and their schools of thought along with their successors, Cicero and Lucretius in Rome. The book begins:
"The practice of religion may be traced back as many as 300,000 years, and identifiable religious groups existed during the Neolithic Age perhaps 30,000 years ago. On the other hand, there is no evidence of outspoken religious disbelief until the sixth century BCE, roughly twenty-five hundred years ago. This repudiation first occurred in Ancient Greece when so-called natural philosophers began to engage in speculative inquiry". Why was Greek civilization unique as the source of this remarkable secular revolution?"
Dr. Jayne acknowledges that some other early civilizations, in China, India and Iran, had traces of freethought but not with the scientific spirit of Greek nonconformists. For example, in India, the now-extinct Carvaka school of Hinduism had no gods or afterlife. And the Jain branch of Hinduism has no creator god. (I wonder if Dr. Jayne feels kinship with the Jains?)
Regardless, those brave first Greek skeptics planted the roots of freethinking in the West.
Prodicus (c. 400 BCE) reportedly said: "The gods of popular belief do not exist."
Epicurus (341-270 BCE) saw "the problem of evil" that terrible diseases, natural disasters and predator cruelties prove that no all-loving, all-merciful, father-creator-god can exist.
Socrates (470-399 BCE) was sentenced to death for "refusing to recognize the gods" of Athens.
Stilpo of Megara (360-280 BCE), charged with saying that Athena was "not a god," joked at his trial that she was a goddess instead. He was exiled.
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