Atheism Before Christianity – How Ancient Greek Philosophy Shaped Modern Humanism

Long before the Enlightenment, ancient thinkers were already questioning the gods. In the Greek world of the seventh to fifth centuries BCE, medicine, weather and the natural world began to be explained without divine intervention. Philosophers asked whether the gods existed at all, whether ethics could rest on human reason alone, and whether a meaningful life required belief in an afterlife. The answers they gave — Epicurus on the consolations of mortality, Protagoras on the limits of knowledge, Lucretius on a universe of atoms — would echo through European thought for the next two thousand years, surface again in the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and shape the British humanist movement in ways that are often forgotten. This episode goes back to the ancient world to recover the first humanists, and traces how their ideas reached the radicals, ethical societies, and classical scholars who built modern British humanism.Guests:Professor Edith Hall, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, Fellow of the British Academy, and author of A People's History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland, 1689–1939 and Aristotle's Way. /edithhall.co.ukProfessor Tim Whitmarsh, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, and author of Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World. classics.cam.ac.ukFor all references to people, places, and events in this episode and the full series, visit heritage.humanists.uk/podcastJoin Humanists UK: humanists.uk/joinDiscover more Humanist Heritage: heritage.humanists.ukSend us your questions or feedback: [email protected] Histories is produced by Humanise Live a production agency creating values-led podcast content. Start podcasting today at humanise.liveMusic: Small Things by Simon FolwarPodcast transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided to make our content more accessible, but should not be considered a fully accurate record of the conversation.