Euphoric atheists

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Historical ideological/religious beliefs aren't a fact because devil not real. The autism levels here are outstanding. Why did he think historians believe people literally made deals with the devil because they say its a fact that people believed in devil deals back then?
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Daughter of Cernunnos said:
Historical ideological/religious beliefs aren't a fact because devil not real. The autism levels here are outstanding. Why did he think historians believe people literally made deals with the devil because they say its a fact that people believed in devil deals back then?
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A lot of these hardcore atheist types have little to no historical sense and can't conceive of why anyone would ever believe in religion or certain religious beliefs besides being stupid.
 
Cool kitties club said:
A lot of these hardcore atheist types have little to no historical sense and can't conceive of why anyone would ever believe in religion or certain religious beliefs besides being stupid.
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The amusing thing, speaking of history, is that atheism, as a concept, would have been next to impossible for any society of antiquity to swallow. Due to the fact mankind knew sod all about scientific fact, language and writing were in their infancy, culture was being born at the same time, and given how survival was a full time job, the idea a higher power or spiritual beings governed things people otherwise couldn't explain was a far easier concept to swallow for ancient people; especially because they did not have the modern day luxury of scientific knowledge of today at hand to make sense of thunderbolts being natural phenomenon and why tidal waves happen.

From their perspective, no mortal being could conjure up a force of that magnitude, and given how they would see shapes in the clouds and shadows whenever these thing occurred and their far more simple outlook meant they grasped for any explanation for things they did not understand, it's no wonder they thought there was an angry god or demon behind such things.

Atheism is a modern day luxury by comparison, and while people of today would just write most euphoric off as assholes even if they agree with them, any ancient culture would kill them on the spot because atheism was just too much of a speculative concept to risk being wrong on based on what they understood at the time, so on the sacrificial pyre to appease the gods the euphorics would go to prevent said higher powers for punishing them for the dumbass who said god doesn't exist.
 
GethN7 said:
The amusing thing, speaking of history, is that atheism, as a concept, would have been next to impossible for any society of antiquity to swallow.
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Nonsense. It was fairly common even among the ancient Greeks, with Aristophanes among others fairly routinely making jokes about the belief in gods. Epicurus may have been an atheist, or at the very least had no use whatsoever for theology. Heraclitus was almost certainly an atheist although his remaining works are fragmentary. Lucretius also certainly had no use for theology.

There isn't any indication they were persecuted in the least for this, and most disparagement of them for their perceived atheism was subsequent to Christianity.
 
AnOminous said:
Nonsense. It was fairly common even among the ancient Greeks, with Aristophanes among others fairly routinely making jokes about the belief in gods. Epicurus may have been an atheist, or at the very least had no use whatsoever for theology. Heraclitus was almost certainly an atheist although his remaining works are fragmentary. Lucretius also certainly had no use for theology.

There isn't any indication they were persecuted in the least for this, and most disparagement of them for their perceived atheism was subsequent to Christianity.
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Granted, the Greeks were a bit of an outlier, I'll give you that, though it bears mentioning they were a bit of an outlier because they developed a culture specifically geared towards the cultivation of knowledge, and while they were religious, it wasn't half as much of a life and death level issue for them as it was for other cultures.

Given the lines their society developed on, it's not much of a surprise they thought religion just might be nonessential or at least hadn't as much substance as others would assume it to have.

The Romans were similar, though their religion played second fiddle to loyalty to the state, with devotion to the state cults considered a barometer of Roman loyalty to said state.

Practically every culture prior to them, and I stand by my point for the most part.

However, if you want to look towards China, Confucianism was a proto-atheist belief system, with Kong Fuzi even implying he was somewhat agnostic at least, as his school of thought was more about how IRL people should act, not about how they should concern themselves with the spiritual world, as he once commented he wasn't even sure how we could conduct ourselves in the world of spirits if people didn't know how to act towards another first.
 
GethN7 said:
Atheism is a modern day luxury by comparison, and while people of today would just write most euphoric off as assholes even if they agree with them, any ancient culture would kill them on the spot because atheism was just too much of a speculative concept to risk being wrong on based on what they understood at the time, so on the sacrificial pyre to appease the gods the euphorics would go to prevent said higher powers for punishing them for the dumbass who said god doesn't exist.
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That's not quite true. The notion that nonbelief constitutes a grave insult to the god is rather modern by itself and comes from monotheism. (Furthermore, the notion that insulting the gods, even your own patron gods, is at all bad is not universal - for example, the polytheistic tribes of what is now western Russia though it a normal thing to flog your own idols or stick them into a latrine if they weren't helping out with the harvest / war / childbirth. Destroying the idols and thereby murdering the gods, however, was genocide and warranted capital punishment.)

In Ancient Greece and Rome, nonbelief by itself, from a purely magical point of view, was no different from not worshiping that particular god. (Even today, some believers refuse to acknowledge atheism even exists and interpret nonbelief as the person lashing out at God in revenge for misfortune.) The more educated and traveled people just didn't give a shit, the less educated wouldn't even understand how it's possible to deny the existence of rain. Greeks and Romans didn't generally go through life murdering worshipers or non-worshipers of their own or rival gods. Atheists weren't more likely to fall victim to mass hysteria than can be explained by a correlation with "no one will miss you when you're dead and maybe this thing'll have blown over in the meantime". Ugly? The gods clearly hate you, DEATH. Hot? Zeus would love a new wine boy / Hera must be jealous, DEATH. Had a stroke of bad luck? The gods clearly hate you, DEATH. Had a stroke of good luck? So you're the witch who pledged the village to Hecate, DEATH. Foreign? You strange rites must have offended the gods, DEATH. Pious pillar of the community? You're the best to plead our case personally, DEATH.

Nonbelief was punished when it got into the public, political sphere. Some officials were also priests, and, vice versa, temples performed public functions and were corporate economic powerhouses. Cities and monarchs traced their histories from gods and heroes. If you were walking around saying "Venus doesn't exist", you'd be basically calling the Roman emperor a lying mongrel bastard. If you refused to acknowledge Juno, you couldn't get married to a Roman citizen (but if you brought in a foreign woman and said you married her in Tyre, no one would object).

Could an atheist have prospered in antiquity? Yes, and many did, as long as they paid taxes and didn't go out of their way to insult local authorities and potential trading partners. The golden age of Carthage was a good time.

AnOminous said:
Nonsense. It was fairly common even among the ancient Greeks, with Aristophanes among others fairly routinely making jokes about the belief in gods. Epicurus may have been an atheist, or at the very least had no use whatsoever for theology. Heraclitus was almost certainly an atheist although his remaining works are fragmentary. Lucretius also certainly had no use for theology.

There isn't any indication they were persecuted in the least for this, and most disparagement of them for their perceived atheism was subsequent to Christianity.
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They actually were, there's a whole Wikipedia article.
 
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Safir said:
They actually were, there's a whole Wikipedia article.
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Much like homosexuality, people prosecuted for it were rarely being prosecuted for that but generally for something else, Socrates being the most obvious example. The vast majority of people who simply didn't believe in the gods or openly mocked them were not persecuted, or were even popular like Euripides and Aristophanes.
 
Safir said:
That's not quite true. The notion that nonbelief constitutes a grave insult to the god is rather modern by itself and comes from monotheism. (Furthermore, the notion that insulting the gods, even your own patron gods, is at all bad is not universal - for example, the polytheistic tribes of what is now western Russia though it a normal thing to flog your own idols or stick them into a latrine if they weren't helping out with the harvest / war / childbirth. Destroying the idols and thereby murdering the gods, however, was genocide and warranted capital punishment.)

Nonbelief was punished when it got into the public, political sphere. Some officials were also priests, and, vice versa, temples performed public functions and were corporate economic powerhouses. Cities and monarchs traced their histories from gods and heroes. If you were walking around saying "Venus doesn't exist", you'd be basically calling the Roman emperor a lying mongrel bastard. If you refused to acknowledge Juno, you couldn't get married to a Roman citizen (but if you brought in a foreign woman and said you married her in Tyre, no one would object).

Could an atheist have prospered in antiquity? Yes, and many did, as long as they paid taxes and didn't go out of their way to insult local authorities and potential trading partners. The golden age of Carthage was a good time.


They actually were, there's a whole Wikipedia article.
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Points duly noted.

However, as seen with this thread, euphorics would have been the nails that stick up in antiquity because, like then as now, they are such assholes that even if their atheism wasn't worth a death sentence, as you put it, their refusal to shut up in public would give people who hated them a wonderful excuse to have them executed under laws punishing those who disrespected the gods in a publicly unacceptable way.
 
Cosmos said:
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Saying “burn in Hell” is offensive now, guys.
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Until these spergs can come up with a better colloquialism, everyone else will be saying "go to Hell." And "God helps those who help themselves" is also a saying that's more of encouraging one to get off their asses and do something than just wait around for someone else to do it for you but because it has God in it, it may as well trigger the euphoric spergs to rant about the invisible magic sky daddy.
 
Daughter of Cernunnos said:
Historical ideological/religious beliefs aren't a fact because devil not real. The autism levels here are outstanding. Why did he think historians believe people literally made deals with the devil because they say its a fact that people believed in devil deals back then?
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It's amazing how people can't understand the concept of "it was real to them and affected them". Meanwhile there were and still are people that actually called themselves witches and worship satan.
 
Muh_Soggy_Knee said:
Why do these Euphoric youtubers have the most cringe-worthy avatars? like this guy and "Atheism-is-unstoppable.
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It seems a lot of them (and critical youtubers in general) are using cutesy animal or furry avatars more often now.
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Is this to make themselves look more appealing than they actually are or are more people becoming furries?
 
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