Atheism in ancient Greece
Was atheism in the ancient world really ‘scarcely imaginable’, as Professor Tom Harrison recently put it? Was religion simply embedded in the environment and mentality of the ancient Greeks to the extent that atheism became cognitively impossible? This presentation will cover the hard evidence for atheism in the ancient world, and argue that atheism in ancient Greece was a highly contextual, varied, and flourishing set of phenomena. Understanding the form and evolution of atheistic ideas and atheism in Greek society is invaluable in helping us more fully understand Greek religion, not least because it was in response to and through opposition to atheism that Greek religious beliefs evolved and Greeks developed their own sense of collective and individual religious identity.