Linford DJ. Secularism and Nonreligion. Secularism and Nonreligion , 4 1 , Art. Linford, Daniel J. Secularism and Nonreligion 4 1 : Art. Secularism and Nonreligion 4, no. Linford, D J. Secularism and Nonreligion , vol. Start Submission Become a Reviewer. Before attending Tech, I received a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Rochester. X close. His materialist convictions were not, as his 17th-century admirers liked to imagine, bred of a scientific cast of mind, but of the precise opposite: a conviction that they would help him to attain inner peace.
The only value of research into the natural world, so Epicurus believed, was to enable the philosopher, by properly appreciating the pointlessness of superstition, to attain the state of tranquillity that was, so he taught his disciples, the ultimate goal of life. That there are Catholic and Protestant atheists is an old joke. The lesson that Whitmarsh teaches in Battling the Gods — though it is one he seems reluctant to draw for himself — is that there are monotheist and non-monotheist atheists, too, and that they are often very different beasts.
When he claims that belief in the supernatural has been shadowed throughout history and across the world by disbelief, he may well be right; and yet, if so, the implication is that atheism, in its origins and manifestations, is just as likely to be multiform as is religion. Epicurean atomism may have intrigued Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, but it did not inspire their scientific breakthroughs, which derived from very different causes, and in the context of a world-view that was decidedly Christian.
To draw on a fittingly Darwinian analogy, ancient atheists and their modern successors resemble one another in the way pterosaurs resemble bats: an example of similar features developing in unrelated species. Whitmarsh may not have intended it to do so, but Battling the Gods — learned, sweeping and stimulating as it is — stands as a monument above all to that recurrent phenomenon in history, convergent evolution. Coming to you daily during COP Where did atheism come from?
Did cavemen have religion? Did Romans really believe in gods? What did Romans believe before Jesus? Who found Italy? Where did Italians come from? S2 ep 3: What is the future of wellbeing? S2 ep4: What would a more just future look like?
S2 ep 5: What is the future of artificial intelligence? S2 ep 6: The future of reproduction Business and enterprise Research impact Animal research. Disbelieve it or not, ancient history suggests that atheism is as natural to humans as religion. Read this next. Search research. Keyword search Go. Sign up to receive our weekly research email Our selection of the week's biggest Cambridge research news and features sent directly to your inbox. Ancient Greece. Tim Whitmarsh. St John's College.
Faculty of Classics.
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