Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 63 (9162 total)
3 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 916,385 Year: 3,642/9,624 Month: 513/974 Week: 126/276 Day: 0/23 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Does an atheist have to believe in evolution?
JavaMan
Member (Idle past 2339 days)
Posts: 475
From: York, England
Joined: 08-05-2005


Message 58 of 64 (311351)
05-12-2006 8:02 AM
Reply to: Message 46 by robinrohan
05-10-2006 8:27 PM


Re: Before Darwin
And what about this for pre-Darwinian atheism (from the Wikipedia article on the Epicurean writer, Lucretius):
Lucretius identifies superstition with the notion that the gods created our world or interfere with its operations in any way. Fear of such gods is banished by showing that the operations of the world can be accounted for entirely in terms of the purposeless motions of atoms through empty space, instead of in terms of the will of the gods. The fear of death is banished by showing that death is annihilation, and so, as a simple state of nothingness, death can be neither good nor bad. Lucretius also puts forward the 'symmetry argument' against the fear of death. In it, he says that people who fear the prospect of eternal non-existence after death should think back to the eternity of non-existence before their birth, which really wasn't so bad after all.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

This message is a reply to:
 Message 46 by robinrohan, posted 05-10-2006 8:27 PM robinrohan has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024