The Original Epicurean

The Riddle of Evil

            Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

            Then he is not omnipotent.

            Is he able, but not willing?

            Then he is malevolent.

            Is he both able and willing?

            Then why is there evil in the world?

            Is he neither able nor willing?

            Then why call him God?[1]

            Other Greek nontheists came after Anaxagoras. The most famous of them -- the one credited with the riddle above -- was Epicurus (341-270 BCE).

            It’s not clear how Epicurus got credit for talking about one god when the Greeks believed in many. But his riddle is crucial to atheism. It’s a chief example of what’s called “the argument from evil.”

            That’s the claim that a god who allows evil can’t be both loving and all-powerful; therefore, the loving, all-powerful god that millions worship can’t be real. An offshoot of the riddle is an atheist viewpoint along the lines of “I can’t worship or even believe in a god who has the power to help everyone but won’t lift a cosmic pinky to do it.”

            Epicurus was also one of the first people to write publicly that there’s no heaven, hell or any other kind of life after death, a central idea for many atheists. Death, he said, is nothingness: a complete lack of consciousness, awareness, or feeling. For that reason (among others), he encouraged people to enjoy life while they have it and stop worrying that a god might frown at their pleasures.

            Unlike Anaxagoras, Epicurus was actually popular, with a following of admirers who spread his philosophy for centuries. Even now, you can find websites and books by people who admire him and try to live the Epicurean way. And religious people still say that the Epicurean way isn’t enough for a fulfilling life.

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[1] David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm; and other sources.

The father of atheism

Now, instead of going from chapter to chapter in order, we're going to skip around a bit. The next chapter is one that I especially enjoyed writing.

Chapter 5

Atheists Throughout History

The history of reasoned atheism is as old as the history of thought.

Benjamin Warfield, theologian[1]

            Strap in and hang on. You’re about to find out where unbelief comes from and how it got where it is. It’s been making trouble for longer than most people know.

The First Atheist

            Do you believe in Apollo?

            Anaxagoras didn’t, so the Greeks threw him in jail.

            Anaxagoras was born around 500 BCE in what’s now Turkey. He headed to Athens, probably the most advanced Greek city-state, and set up as a philosopher -- well before Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others got famous doing the same thing.

            The Greek religion said that the sun was actually the golden deity Apollo, but Anaxagoras said that it was just a hot rock. What’s more, he said, everything in the earth and sky came from natural forces and materials, not godly ones.

            Athenian lawmakers knew a troublemaker when they heard one. Somewhere in the 430s, they arrested Anaxagoras on the charge of impiety. He left the city-state soon thereafter, because the Athenians kicked him out -- or possibly because they condemned him to death (or some other harsh punishment), and he picked up his toga and ran.

            Anaxagoras probably wasn’t the first in Western civilization to speak and write about the world in a nontheistic way. He wasn’t even a complete atheist. He seems to have believed that a mind permeates the universe.

            But he may have been the first to become widely famous (and infamous) for saying that the gods that everyone else worships just don’t exist. He was so notorious that years later, when Socrates was called an atheist, the old man ridiculed the charge by asking, “Do you imagine that you are accusing Anaxagoras?”[2]

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[1] Benjamin Warfield, “Atheism,” The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Volume 1 (Funk & Wagnalls, 1908), http://www.googlebooks.com

[2] Plato, The Apology of Socrates, translated by D.F. Nevill (F.E. Robinson and Company, 1901), Google Books website

Me, me, me, meeeeeeeeee!

And now, a slight detour from our regularly scheduled chapters:

The Somewhat Frequently Asked Questions

Are you an atheist?

No. I’m Jewish, although very irreverent. I don’t follow most of the rituals, but I do share my people’s hereditary and even tribal leanings toward guilt and deli food.

What kind of book is And What If I’m an Atheist?

A really, really good one. Okay, seriously, And What If I’m an Atheist? is service journalism, which is sometimes defined as “news you can use.” Service journalism includes the how-to articles of Popular Mechanics and Better Homes and Gardens, newspaper stories about where to find a good neighborhood to raise kids or a good nightclub to raise hell, or books about investing in today’s volatile stock market or finding tomorrow’s fastest-growing careers. And about living as a teenage atheist.

Are you trying to encourage teenagers to become atheists?

No. If a teenager has a religion and likes it, that’s fine with me. And What If I’m an Atheist? is information for the teenager (or anyone else) who’s interested in unbelief and wants to know more about it, as well as for the teenager (or anyone else) who wants some guidance for living the godless life in a society where unbelievers are a minority.

At the same time, one of the book’s underlying principles is that there’s nothing terribly wrong with being an atheist or agnostic, just as there’s nothing terribly wrong with being religious.

Where’d you get the idea for the book?

I was getting to a point where I was finishing some writing assignments, so I did what I usually do when I’m looking for my next job: I studied the marketplace. Since I like writing nonfiction for teenagers -- known as YA or young adults in the book-publishing cosmos -- I looked up YA nonfiction bestseller lists on Amazon.com and elsewhere.

I noticed a lot of popular books for teenagers interested in religion and other spiritual matters. And I thought, “What about the teenage atheists?” At the time, books like Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great were burning up the adult bestseller lists, so I assumed that there must be books for teenage unbelievers.

But when I looked around, I couldn’t find any. It was quite a surprise, frankly.

As a Jew, I can empathize with anyone who’s in a religious minority. As a very secular person, I can empathize with unbelievers. And as a guy who feels like he’s going through an insecure, awkward stage (a period that I’ve endured for a few decades so far), I can definitely empathize with teenagers.

And so, after months of research and writing, here I am.

And now, we return you to our book in progress.

Why do people think atheism is a religion?

And so . . . ?

            If atheism isn’t a religion, then why do some people think it is?

            “Maybe it is because these people are so caught up in their own religious beliefs that they cannot imagine any person living without religion of some sort,” says Austin Cline, About.com’s atheism and agnosticism expert. “Maybe it is due to some persistent misunderstanding of what atheism is. And maybe they just don't care that what they are saying really doesn't make any sense.”[1]

            By the way, people who claim that atheism is a religion don’t usually say it about agnosticism. If a hardcore atheist announces solid certainty that God doesn’t exist, his declaration can carry a tinge of preachiness and even religiosity. But saying that you don’t know has a tinge of nothing in particular.

            If atheists and agnostics don’t believe in God, do they have any spirituality at all? Some do. Some even create their own rituals and “churches” -- but that’s a set of stories for the next chapter.

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[1] Austin Cline, “Atheism and Religion: What is the Relationship?”, undated, http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/ath/blathq_rel_religion.htm

Worshiping the Devil?

Time for Satan!
           Yet another misconception is that atheists worship Satan. But if atheists don’t believe in God, why would they believe in the devil? They don’t.
           A more subtle version of “atheists worship Satan” says that if you refuse to believe in God, then you’re serving God’s enemy -- and serving Satan is a way of worshiping him. All of which can make sense if you believe that God and Satan exist. If you don’t, the idea of helping one entity that doesn’t exist as he battles another non-existent being is as silly and pointless as asking who’d win a fistfight between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. (My money’s on Santa.)

Holy science?

The scientific approach

            Another popular viewpoint is that atheists worship science. And frankly, it’s not hard to find atheists, agnostics and others who revere science as the main tool that humanity's used in crawling up from primitive superstition to trustworthy truths.

            But you’ll never see even the most starry-eyed non-theists pray and do knee-bends to astronomy or botany. If they enter laboratories or other cathedrals of science, they go there for hard-headed work, not to perform holy rituals in an awestruck hush.

            The difference between trusting in science and practicing a religion is that religion is usually based on faithfully accepting revelations, commandments and other teachings as God’s holy men delivered them. But science is based on examining facts and squeezing them through the toughest tests possible to find new truths about them. Religious leaders say that anyone who doesn’t believe in their ideas is supposed to believe in them. Scientists say that anyone who doesn’t believe in scientific ideas is welcome to try disproving them. (Well, most scientists say it. Some scientists are too conceited or insecure to handle arguments.)

            Or, to use another distinction, science tries to discover how the universe works; religion tells why the universe exists.

The God in the Mirror

Do atheists worship themselves?

            Some believers think that atheists worship themselves. The idea is, roughly, that if a person follows his own will instead of God’s will, then he’s putting faith in himself just as believers put faith in God. In living according to his mind and heart rather than by the rules of God, an atheist is putting himself in God’s place.

            That path of logic makes sense if you believe that God exists and that he reigns over people. But if you don’t, those ideas are nonsense. If a person doesn’t believe that God exists, then he doesn’t believe that he’s putting himself in God’s place.

            What’s more, worship usually involves revering, adoring, and surrendering to whatever you worship. Using your own thoughts and feelings instead of God to guide your actions may be a lot of things, but it’s not nearly as intense as worship.

            Of course, some atheists do adore and revered themselves, while other atheists doubt or hate themselves, and still others fall in between. When it comes to trusting their own judgment, atheists are pretty much like other people.