Atheist
Posted on: April 10, 2009 - 9:02pm
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Atheist
I recently was asked "You know so much about atheist,so who do you think was the first Atheist in recorded history " Well I really had to think about that one,and then I said Socrates I guess",and then he said to me " ain't Buddhism a god less religion ? so wouldn't Buddha have been the first atheist. And they were both around 2,500 years ago. I ,m perplexed,can anyone help me with this question ? 
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Answer: everyone on earth, until the advent of theism.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
until theism. Good answer ,but I think that the question was about a "culture civilization " since the advent of writing.
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The first tribal leader to harness fire that didn't want his tribe to know how to do it also.
If you don't want to explain something then you have to make a mysterious story about how it was 'given' to you.
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We don't really know very much about the origins of religion. We do know that the idea of a single deity is a very recent development, and we have strong reasons to suspect that the idea of eternal reward and punishment is also quite new. It is likely that religion, like culture, developed quite gradually. Were the first religions based around deities? Hard to say. I think it's likely that the concept of a deity evolved from a simpler concept of spirits or essences in the natural world.
Like Todangst said, the question of the "first atheist" is kind of a junk question with no real answer. The really intriguing question is this: Who was the first theist?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Religion and other myths were long used as placeholders for eventual knowlegde.
And indeed some (maybe the brightest and/or greediest) didn't want to share their knowledge, so they invoked and controlled fantastic or foggy stories to hide that fact.
Who invented the first Invisible Being?
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"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."
John Buchan, 1875 - 1940
First religions - or veneration of powerful incomprehensible natural forces - probably started with things like volcanoes, the moon, the stars but most probably, our local star, the sun.
M.
My Blog: One Life
___________________________________________
"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."
John Buchan, 1875 - 1940
I just got done a book called "DOUBT-a History of the great Doubters from Socrates to Thomas Jefferson,and Emily Dickinson" and while reading this really good book ,I came upon a group called the Carvaka ,they rejected everything about Hinduism (reincarnation,karma and gods etc,) and this goes back to 600 BCE at least,and I thought that maybe they were the first Atheist so to speak ? an they were also called Lokayata first,the first school of philosophy about skepticism.
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