A question for knowledgeable atheists - and others interested in history

[doctorray]

So, I was asked an interesting question by a student the other day and I'm not entirely satisfied with my answer.  That being the case, I did what any self-respecting 21st-century person does when faced with a knowledge deficit - I have headed to the internet

Comments

[essentialsaltes]

It's definitely a tough question, particularly when one has to sort between what was said about X, and what X actually said (or believed). Many of the atheistical Greeks, like Xenophanes, Epicurus, and the Roman Epicurean Lucretius, might be better classed as deists. They recognized some sort of metaphysical god, but denied any divine interaction with the universe. Diagoras may stand out as a good paragon of atheism.

Spinoza was horrified at the thought of being considered an atheist, but his theistic contemporaries were horrified by his pantheistic conception of God... essentially that Nature was God. And thus he was branded an atheist by basically everybody (and his truly devoted enemies would call him an atheist Jew). Parenthetically, Einstein famously declared that he believed in the god of Spinoza.

Naturally, wikipedia covers the subject in some detail, with a bit more emphasis on non-Western possibilities than I can muster.

The OT Psalm that declares "The fool says in his heart 'There is no God.' " may demonstrate that the concept was not unknown at that time.