Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (22 page)

Noting that atheism was present in the Axial Age doesn’t mean that no one doubted the existence of gods
before
that time. As I mention in the previous section, religious doubt has surely been hanging around as long as religious faith. But this period was the first time atheist thought pulled itself together into a coherent recorded philosophy. And the fact that it happened at just about the same historical moment in far-flung cultures is yet another reason the Axial Age is well worth exploring.

So why does all this thinking, questioning, and moral concern kick into gear at the same time in several cultures? Some sociologists note that many of these cultures were in a period of intense and bloody conflict during that time. In each case, a more unified nation eventually emerged from a collection of smaller states. Even as life headed toward greater stability, the memory of chaos and vulnerability was fresh. The new ethical systems were naturally concerned with how human beings should live together to prevent the madness from happening again. They immediately pushed back against the aggression that nearly consumed them.

So it really isn’t a coincidence that so many Axial Age cultures turned most hungrily to religions or philosophies that emphasized peace and nonviolence (Jainism and Buddhism) or ethics and social order (Confucianism). And though theistic religions like Judaism usually get the biggest shout-out in the Axial Age, each of the three peaceful, ethical systems I just named is completely atheistic.

Inferring Unbelief in Ancient Judea

Few documents have had as easy and secure a ride through history as the Judeo-Christian Bible. And wedged in among the praising and smiting in the Book of Psalms is some ironclad evidence that atheism existed in ancient Judea. It’s Psalm 14:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” The psalmist doesn’t sugar-coat his opinion of these unbelievers: “They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good . . . They devour my people as though eating bread . . . [and] frustrate the plans of the poor.” Maybe just a passing thought? Hardly. The whole thing is repeated, almost word for word, in Psalm 53.

Far from being a tiny presence on the fringes, evidence suggests that religious doubt had something of a heyday in Judea in the centuries after the Psalms were written. In her seminal book
Doubt: A History,
historian Jennifer Michael Hecht notes that a good number of Jews in the region came to identify with Greek culture and to doubt Jehovah’s existence so strongly that in the second century BCE, they supported the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem to
Zeus.
That’s not because they suddenly believed in the gods of Olympus, but because they appreciated their own cultural identity as part of the sprawling Greek Seleucid Empire. (The ancient Judean equivalent of Fox News must have had a collective stroke.)

Secular Jewish identity runs alongside religious Judaism right through the centuries, finally becoming official in the 20th century when Humanistic Judaism was named one of the five recognized branches of the faith. (Refer to
Chapter 8
for a complete discussion of Humanistic Judaism.)

Finding Unbelief in Ancient China

China has always been one of the most receptive cultures on Earth for atheism. In fact, nontheistic ideas have been front and center in Chinese philosophy and national government for at least as long as records have been kept.

Even religion in China often does just fine without gods, including some forms of Buddhism and Taoism, while Confucianism — a secular philosophy focused on reason and natural ethics rather than gods — has easily been the greatest influence on Chinese thought for more than 2,500 years.

Because godlessness has been an accepted part of the Chinese cultural conversation for so long, a clearer picture of atheist ideas emerges from Chinese history than it does from most other cultures. Best of all, instead of bringing nontheistic ideas down to modern readers solely through the critics, the Chinese culture preserved them in their original written form.

In the following sections, I introduce a few of the concepts and thinkers that have made China one of the richest sources of nontheistic thought.

Understanding the concept of t’ien (heaven . . . but not quite)

Chinese philosophers spent a great deal of time and thought on the concept of
t’ien,
which translates loosely as “heaven.” But
t’ien
has no connection to the traditional Western idea of a place for human souls to commune with a deity after death. Instead,
t’ien
means, “that which causes the world to be as it is.”

Philosophers in China who considered a deity to be the cause of everything used
t’ien
to denote that deity, whereas philosophers who saw only natural causes at work, whether or not they fully understood those causes, used the same word to mean comprehensible natural laws. Whatever it is that makes the world as it is, that’s
t’ien.

Two of the most famous nontheistic philosophers in ancient China were Xun Zi (312–230 BCE) and Mencius (372–289 BCE). They disagreed on human nature:

Xun Zi felt that humans are basically bad, but improvable by education and discipline

Mencius felt humans are basically good, but are led astray by the influence of society

They did agree that
t’ien
had nothing to do with a conscious god, seeing it instead as predictable, natural laws at work.

Xun Zi returned to the idea of
t’ien
over and over in his work, making arguments that sound like something an atheist blogger could have written today:

Pray all you want — heaven can’t hear you. It’s not going to stop the winter because you are cold, and it’s not going to make the Earth smaller because you don’t want to walk so far. You pray for rain and it rains, but your prayer has nothing to do with it. Sometimes you don’t pray for rain and it rains anyway. What do you say then? If you act wisely, good things tend to happen. Act like a fool and bad things tend to happen. Don’t thank or curse heaven — it’s just the natural result of your own actions. If you want to have a better life, educate yourself and think carefully about the consequences of your actions.

That’s a very humanistic approach to life.

Getting to the roots of Confucianism

If the chaotic collision of ideas was their idea of a good time, Mencius and Xun Zi picked an especially good era in which to be born, right in the middle of a period called the
Hundred Schools of Thought
. It was a kind of Golden Age for Chinese philosophy, with countless new and different ideas contending for the hearts and minds of the Chinese.

As with several cultures during this time (see “
Leaping Forward: The Axial Age
” earlier in this chapter), this battlefield of ideas coincided with a lot of literal violence — in this case, the military clashes that would eventually turn China from countless tiny states into seven big warring states and finally into a unified nation.

People enduring a period of incredible chaos and uncertainty are thirsty for order and compassion and a system of ethics that describes a reasonable path back to civilized behavior. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Confucianism, a system of thought that stresses exactly those qualities, emerged as the clear winner in the war of ideas, forming the backbone of Chinese culture and thinking for more than two millennia.

Confucianism is a secular system of philosophy and ethics, an approach to life that encourages self-improvement and the cultivation of virtue, including altruism and compassionate action to help others achieve a better life. And it does it all without appealing to gods for help.