Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (8 page)

Another radically innovative Ionian was Anaxagoras, from Clazomenae (near the modern Turkish town of Izmir); he arrived in Athens in the 430s. Anaxagoras’s achievement was to reconcile Ionian materialism with Parmenides’s distinction between the physical world of the senses and the rational world of the intellect. Reality, he held, is composed of physical ingredients blended in different ways to produce different substances. All life is physical in origin and generated from primordial seeds. Like his Milesian predecessors, he paid great attention to natural wonders: he explained thunder, earthquakes, comets, floods, and hail in physical terms. But he also proposed something called “mind” (
nous
), which is entirely different in kind from the material world: pure, unchanging, infinite. Mind is behind the revolutions of the stars. Every animate being has some share in this cosmic mind. In this way, Anaxagoras managed to accommodate Parmenides’s idea of an abstract rationality in the universe without denying the reality of the material world.
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Was Anaxagoras an atheist? There is nothing anachronistic about this question. In the late 430s, he was put on trial for “impiety,” on the grounds that he denied the divinity of the heavenly bodies (which he undoubtedly did). This may have been the first time in history that an individual was prosecuted for heretical religious beliefs. Although he escaped, he retained a reputation for impious thought. Socrates, at his own trial, had to remind his jurors not to confuse him with Anaxagoras. On the one hand, his views were clearly reconcilable with a form of theism. The cosmic “mind” at one level resembles closely Xenophanes’s “one god”: it is remote, self-sufficient, all-powerful, different in kind to the stuff of matter. Elsewhere we learn that it is mind that is behind the orderly rotation of the stars and all of the celestial elements and mind that gives life to organic beings. It looks, to all purposes, like the designing will of a creator god. Yet Anaxagoras never, to our knowledge, identified it with divinity. This is a significant silence: surely if he had wanted to equate “mind” with “god” he would have done so explicitly. Indeed, he seems evasive—deliberately so?—on the question of what “mind” actually is. Plato criticized him on precisely that point: for all his talk of cosmic intelligence, he protested, he always offers materialist explanations for the way the universe is. Ultimately, as with Xenophanes, the central question is how literally or metaphorically we are to take these metaphysical perambulations. Are we to think that mind is a real cosmic property, which has godlike powers of design and creation? Certainly Anaxagoras sometimes speaks of it as acting in time, for example at the origins of existence when it separated out the elements by setting things in motion. Here, mind seems to act like the Yahweh of Genesis or the Allah of the Qur’an. But maybe in its original context (which is now lost) that reference to creation was just a figurative way of saying that the universe
as it is now
is structured and ordered. Perhaps what he meant was nothing more than that there is a coherent, unified explanation for the way that the material universe is and that this explanation can be disclosed by the inquiring human mind.
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For the pre-Socratics (apart from the Eleatics) “god” typically meant not a deity of popular religion but the nexus of invisible forces that holds the material world together, the sum of all that cannot be explained by observation and perception alone. Modern theologians refer to the principle of “the god of the gaps,” according to which belief in the divine is thought to be confirmed by the failure of science to explain everything. Although there are some superficial resemblances, the pre-Socratic deity is in fact something completely different. It does not pick up where science leaves off; rather—this is the important point—it is an
intrinsically scientific concept.
It joins together all of our isolated experiences of the physical world into a coherent, rational, predictable structure. This is why the pre-Socratic god seems so often, from a modern perspective, to slope into the metaphorical: it is not really a god at all. This, perhaps, explains Anaxagoras’s choice of “mind” instead of “god”: it is a better way of expressing the idea of the intellectual coherence, and, indeed, intelligibility, of the world.

One group of pre-Socratic materialists, however, chose to go down a different path altogether. Democritus was born in around 460 BC in Abdera, a town in Thrace that had, by a nice coincidence, been founded by colonists from Anaxagoras’s hometown, Clazomenae. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he spent little time in Athens (“I went to Athens and no one knew me,” he reportedly said). He and his teacher Leucippus were credited with the development of the doctrine of atomism, the theory that the smallest elements of reality are tiny, indestructible, indivisible (the Greek adjective is
atomos
) particles of matter. According to Democritus, the universe is composed, essentially, of nothing more than atoms and void. Everything that we sense in the world around us is formed of clusters of atoms; all substantial changes in nature (such as the decay of a corpse or the transformation of water into steam) are simply rearrangements in the atomic structure of such clusters.
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Atoms have certain properties: they vibrate, impacting on other atoms, causing motion. They come in different sizes and shapes, and these qualities determine the ways in which they move through the void. This atomic habit of moving in predictable ways is a partial explanation for the orderliness of the universe: the celestial bodies, for example, will move in the predictable way that they do because it is the property of a body with their atomic structure to do so. But how, without appealing to an intelligent design behind the cosmos, do we account for the fact that everything seems so well set up for organic life? Democritus met this challenge by positing an infinite number of worlds. Some of these will not sustain life; others will, with varying degrees of success. In other words, the fact that our world is as it is is the result not of an integrated design in the universe but of luck. Democritus is the first philosopher to have given a central role to
tykh
ē
,
“chance.”

It may seem at first sight implausible to claim that our complex, symbiotic, life-supporting ecosystem is the result of mere chance. Modern theists who appeal to design-based arguments about the nature of the universe, for example, are fond of pointing out that the odds of the big bang occurring in just the right way to produce a life-sustaining universe are infinitesimal: “If the initiation explosion of the big bang had differed in strength as little as 1 part in 10
⁶⁰
, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back in on itself, or expanded too quickly for stars to have formed.” Yet such arguments can be answered using Democritus’s theories as a basis. Firstly, Democritus’s infinite numbers of “worlds” could be taken to refer to planets, and on present evidence no other one supports life. Why would a god who created existence with the primary purpose of allowing life have designed such a vast expanse of space that could not do so? Alternatively, we might imagine multiple alternative versions of the universe as we know it. In that case, the question is whether ours is the
best possible
one for sustaining life. Could not an omnipotent designer god have created one that offered, for example, a larger Earth to avoid overcrowding, or a neighboring planet that could be colonized? Indeed, if there are, as Democritus proposed, an infinite number of universes, it follows that there are ones that are necessarily better adapted to sustaining life (and perhaps other forms of life that might be superior to our carbon-based version). Both of these Democritean objections expose a serious flaw in design-based theism, which invariably assumes that the cosmos designed by a perfect god must itself be perfect. We simply cannot test whether our world is the best possible one: we cannot rerun the formation of the universe using different variables to see whether alternative, and possibly better life-generating scenarios might have arisen.
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Democritus’s materialist universe has no obvious room for any supernatural forces, but he does nevertheless speak of both souls and gods. The soul, he thought, was the same as the mind and composed of atoms. Soul, in other words, is what we would call consciousness, and presumably he thought it was dispersed after death (as his followers, the Epicureans, did). His views on deities are more complicated. On the one hand, he thought that the gods of conventional religion arose in former times when people naïvely mistook natural phenomena like thunder and eclipses for manifestations of divine power. Yet he also believed that it was possible for us to see gods in our sleep, because there are demonic images (
eid
ō
la,
“idols”) that exist in the air and penetrate our bodies. He clearly felt a need to explain, in physical-materialist terms, why some people claim to encounter gods in their dreams. They are, however, entirely incidental to his system: atoms and void are sufficient to explain the functioning of the world. In Democritus’s material world, gods have become parasites rather than hosts.
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T
he period of Greek history between the fifth and the fourth centuries BC is known as the “classical” period, thanks to the mesmerizing image of democratic Athens. During this time Athens became the largest city in the Mediterranean, adorned itself with the finest architecture anywhere in the world, and achieved unrivaled cultural preeminence thanks to its drama, oratory, history, and philosophy.

Although all Greek city-states depended on the idea of inclusive citizenship, democracy itself was a relatively late innovation. In the late sixth century, the city of Athens disposed of its last tyrant, Hippias. Unsurprisingly, the vacuum created a power struggle among the Athenian elite. One of these contentious aristocrats, Cleisthenes, won out by mobilizing popular support. In the aftermath, he radically reorganized Athenian society, dividing the citizen body (that is, the free male Athenian adults) into ten tribes and 139 “demes” or regional units, each self-governing at the local level. The democratic system, designed to prevent the domination of one group or another, represented each unit proportionally. He drew up a new council of five hundred men, fifty from each tribe, to set the agenda for policy and law for the city as a whole. By 501 BC, the signature feature of Athenian democracy was also in place: a popular assembly with sovereign power, open to all citizens, each of whom had an equal right to speak. Judicial decisions too would be made by the people, with huge juries of up to 1,500 members.
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The fifth century was the Athenian century. Under the guidance of Pericles (495–429 BC), inspirational and controversial in equal measures, the iconic temple of Athena Parthenos—the Parthenon—was completed in 438 BC. What we now call the Parthenon marbles (the relief sculptures that ran along the outside of the building) were added by 432. Pheidias, the most famous sculptor of the day, added a colossal sculpture of the goddess, wrought in gold and ivory. Intellectual life was flourishing too. Athens was coming to attract the finest talents of the day: philosophers and sophists such as Anaxagoras, Protagoras, and Gorgias, as well as other kinds of writers like the historian Herodotus. Dramatic festivals had taken place in Athens since the time of the sixth-century tyrants, but it was under the democracy that they peaked, with the famous tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedians Cratinus, Eupolis, and Aristophanes.

This cultural revolution was bankrolled by what was in effect an Athenian empire, which exacted tribute from other Greek states, particularly the islands we now call the Cyclades. This “Delian League” was named after the island of Delos, around which the other Cyclades wheel (hence their name). The league was formed in the aftermath of the Persian invasions of Greece, firstly by Great King Darius I in 492–490 BC and secondly by his son and successor Xerxes I in 480–479 BC. Athens’s role in the resistance was decisive, particularly in the famous victories at Marathon in 490 BC, Salamis at 480 BC, and Plataea in 479 BC. The united Greek opposition to Persia—although in reality far from all the Greek states resisted—became part of Greece’s collective mythology, particularly filtered through Athens’s self-serving lens. The defeat of the Persians passed immediately into propagandistic folklore, like Agincourt, Yorktown, or Stalingrad. The names of Marathon and Thermopylae still resonate and still carry ideological heft: they conjure images of brave, hardy, resistant freedom fighters beating back innumerable hordes of despotically governed Persians. The historical reality of events is now barely perceptible behind this mythical veneer. We have no idea, for example, what the Persians’ perspective was on these events. Even Herodotus’s
Histories,
our fullest source and probably accurate in outline, glazes his account with triumphalism.
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In the aftermath of the invasions, hostilities with Persia rumbled on inconsequentially until around 450 BC, during which time Athens began to style itself as Greece’s primary protector against the barbarian threat and consolidated its naval supremacy in the eastern Aegean. The Delian League was established in principle as a bulwark against further invasion, but in reality it was an extortion operation. Vast amounts of tribute were exacted from the member states. Already in 454 BC the league’s treasury had been moved to Athens, a clear sign of where the real priorities lay. The Parthenon itself was the treasury’s ultimate destination; it had, in fact, been constructed for this purpose, not (or not solely) as a regular cult temple.
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War defined much of Greek history, and that between the Greeks and the Persians was not the last major conflict of the fifth century. In 431 BC, the Spartans, seemingly aggrieved at Athenian expansionism, declared war on Athens and began ravaging Attica, the wider territory incorporating the city. Pericles’s strategy in response was to avoid direct engagement with the fearsome hoplite warriors of Sparta and rely on their fleet instead. Walling up the citizenry within the city, however, encouraged a terrible plague that decimated the population. After Pericles himself died, more aggressive Athenian generals took the war to Sparta and won decisive victories. A short-lived truce was declared in 421 BC. In 415 BC, the Athenians attacked the city of Syracuse on Sicily, which had ethnic links to Sparta; the entire Sicilian expedition was, however, a disaster and cost Athens a sizeable proportion of its army. Sparta renewed war and built fortifications in Attica, thus turning the screw on a populace dependent on its ability to import grain. Athens finally capitulated in 404 BC. At Spartan insistence, the democratic system was abandoned, and a short-lived junta was instituted, the reign of the “Thirty Tyrants,” which saw mass executions. The thirty were toppled and democracy was restored. The victory of Philip II of Macedon over a combined Theban and Athenian force at the battle of Chaeronea in 336 BC, however, marked the end of the city’s classical period.
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Athens was a city of paradox. It is easy to admire its political idealism, its promotion of freedom of speech and equality before the law, and its cultural vibrancy. Yet it could also be repressive and brutal. Women had no role in political life and little public recognition, outside of religion. Slave owning was widespread among the populace; absolute numbers are hard to estimate, but the unfree were certainly more numerous than the free. Life was harsh for them, most notoriously for the workers in the silver mines at Laurion: “Neither weak nor maimed nor elderly nor a feeble woman meets with sympathy or relief; all are forced by blows to endure their labour until they die horribly in the midst of this compulsion.” It must have been nigh intolerable for prostitutes, rowers in the navy, and field workers. As an imperial power, too, Athens was harsh and unforgiving toward her allies. Noncompliance was treated with the utmost severity; secession from the “alliance” could be punished by mass execution and collective enslavement.
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These moral contradictions permeated every aspect of Athenian life, including its handling of religion. On the one hand, building on the findings of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals explored atheism with new levels of philosophical sophistication. For the first time it became possible to explain the travails of human existence—war and disease—without reference to the gods. On the other hand, Athens went through repressive phases in which atheists were persecuted. These phases were without parallel in the history of Greece, a civilization that was generally unconcerned with enforcing religious orthodoxy.