Atheism is the state of not believing in Theistic (personal) gods. It was never “founded”, it’s the natural state of affairs that has existed for as long as people have, even before there was a word for it. Religion only came later in human evolution – what do you think people did before that? (A newborn baby is implicitly an atheist, though obviously unaware of the term. 8)

Posted: July 27th 2010

See all questions answered by brian thomson

The first humans were probably the first atheists. They were implicit atheists, because they’d never heard of gods and hadn’t even considered the issue, but atheists nonetheless.

If you mean atheism to be a rejection of pre-existing faiths, that may be as old as faith itself. In terms of documented history, the earliest technically atheist writings were by certain Taoist and Hindu sects in the 6th century BC. They still had religion, but they didn’t bother with actual gods.

In India at roughly the same time, the Carvaka philosophy arose which was atheistic and materialistic, making it close to the wholesale rejection of supernatural concepts shared by most modern atheists.

In the 4th century BC you had people like the Greek philosopher Epicurus making formal arguments against theism (which are still valid today), and atheism as we know it was well underway.

Finally, the word “atheism” was coined in the 16th century (though it was based on the Greek word “atheos”, meaning the same thing, which was already 2000 years old) and people first started using it to refer to themselves in the 18th century.

Posted: July 26th 2010

See all questions answered by SmartLX