Atheist culture

[lerk]

Could a culture emerge in any part of the world which is distinctly atheist? By "emerge" I'm not really thinking of something modern but something pre-modern (before 1500 at the latest). How would the members of this ethnicity engage with their theistic neighbors? Furthermore where is it most likely that such a culture/ethnicity would emerge? And assuming it gets to the modern era how will it interact with the ideas of the Enlightenment?

 

[Artaxerxes]

How we defining atheist? Something like Buddhism, Zoroastrianism or animist cultures (or the myriad philosophical schools of Greece and China) are probably about as close as you can get without scientific theory - religion is a way to process and understand the world around us along with everything else it does. How does an atheist culture explain life and engage with the world around it without religion?

 

[Charles EP M.]

If you could get an atheist nation centuries early, that culture would have been the successor to a religious one and so the culture it has will still have some similarities to the OTL of wherever it emerged. They'd get less and less as time went on, but note that atheists in Christian cultures don't give up (secularised) Christmas in December, we want our pressies; or how Halloween has mutated and has no religious significance to most, but remains at the same date with a very similar name to All Hallow's Eve and keeps the idea of sticking candles in hollowed out vegetables.

I could see that being a barrier to atheism developing ITTL outside of Atheismland, as now atheism would be linked to a foreign culture (and possibly a nation there's been wars with)

 

[Nyvis]

How we defining atheist? Something like Buddhism, Zoroastrianism or animist cultures (or the myriad philosophical schools of Greece and China) are probably about as close as you can get without scientific theory - religion is a way to process and understand the world around us along with everything else it does. How does an atheist culture explain life and engage with the world around it without religion?

Philosophy as a semi replacement for religion works well here. Even if the science isn't there to explain all natural phenomenon, a more philosophical than theological approach to the unknown could be an answer. That would be a very different atheist culture than one where the answer to "is this god" is "well no, here's the science". More of a belief system in the natural origin of the world than a rejection of belief as an answer.

 

[Hendryk]

Philosophy as a semi replacement for religion works well here. Even if the science isn't there to explain all natural phenomenon, a more philosophical than theological approach to the unknown could be an answer. That would be a very different atheist culture than one where the answer to "is this god" is "well no, here's the science". More of a belief system in the natural origin of the world than a rejection of belief as an answer.

I sometimes wonder if a Roman empire that wasn't taken over by Christianity might have developed a state-sponsored philosophy based on Stoicism, with the old religious festivals only retained for tradition's sake and/or as displays of civic allegiance. Classical polytheism and local paganism might have survived among the common people as a folk religion, and the odd esoterical cult would stick around for the spiritually minded, but the ruling class would pride itself on having left such obscurantism behind.

 

[Max Sinister]

This seems pretty much like a description of Rome as long as Xianity was still weak. Only thing I'm not sure about is state-sponsored Stoicism. (In the meantime I've read a bit of that myself, so feel free to PM me.)

 

[Nyvis]

I sometimes wonder if a Roman empire that wasn't taken over by Christianity might have developed a state-sponsored philosophy based on Stoicism, with the old religious festivals only retained for tradition's sake and/or as displays of civic allegiance. Classical polytheism and local paganism might have survived among the common people as a folk religion, and the odd esoterical cult would stick around for the spiritually minded, but the ruling class would pride itself on having left such obscurantism behind.

I think appeal to the divine for legitimacy was a bit too deeply rooted, especially with all the work the Romans put to assimilate conquered people's religions into their framework.

 

[Charles EP M.]

IIRC there's some claims the reason Christianity ripped through the Roman Empire was because the older faiths & festivals were increasingly just for civic allegiance and that left it an opening? Or have I heard that one wrong?

 

[Ricardolindo]

IIRC there's some claims the reason Christianity ripped through the Roman Empire was because the older faiths & festivals were increasingly just for civic allegiance and that left it an opening? Or have I heard that one wrong?

Paganism wasn't definitely not as weak as some say. At the time of the Edict of Milan, at least 90% of the population of the West was still pagan.

 

[heraclius]

There's a definite chance for a degree of surviving paganism in the Western Empire if the 392 rebellion after the apparent suicide of Valentinian II (r 375-87, 388 - 92) , a politically weak Catholic Christian (aged 21) under the control of his Eastern Empire-appointed commander in chief, succeeds. The main factor in long-term Christianization of an aristocratic social elite that was still largely pagan in the West, and thus 'trickle down' of the new religion to their tenants and workers, was the defeat of this revolt by the militantly Catholic Christian eastern emperor Theodosius I (r 379 to 395), the man who then legally banned pagan sacrifices and closed all the remaining pagan temples in both East and West after he put the western rebellion down in 394. (He also confiscated temple treasures and property and banned pagans from holding any offices under the state, which was the decisive 'nudge' in converting politically ambitious or job-seeking people, and after he died suddenly in 395 the policy was kept up by his sons' regimes long term in both East and West. His ban on pagan ceremonies extended to their pagan Games, which apparently included the Olympics in Greece as these were at a temple sanctuary venue and had sacrifices.) T had indeed sponsored official expeditions of state commissioners touring the East, especially Syria and Anatolia, in the 380s smashing up and closing down temples in the cause of 'destroying blasphemous idolatry' and his Christian allies in Egypt had sacked some leading temples there, smashed up their statues, and driven out their supporters by armed violence - ironic considering the similarity of C4th Christian to C21st Taliban and ISIS priorities and iconoclastic ideology.

The sudden death, suicide or not, of Valentinian, brother of T's much younger second wife, led to his commander in chief Argobast (a German mercenary protege of Theodosius) being suspected of killing him and so setting up a new emperor, his secretary Eugenius, and defying the East to save his own career . He also called in the still pagan majority of the Rome city nobility for help (the Western capital by this point was Milan, nearer the northern military frontier) and allowed them to stage pagan festivals and public sacrifices which T had encouraged V to ban - leading to the final flourish of public pagan festivities in Rome and the fury of the Papacy and Christian officials. The revolt was defeated in battle by Theodosius as he invaded the West late in 394 and its leaders killed - with the Goths, led by future sacker of Rome Alaric, in T's army. But if it had succeeded and T been killed, leaving his weak sons in charge of the East and unable to conquer the West, a pagan regime might just have survived - even if only temporarily - in the West with the pagan nobles of Rome its main support. Even if the much stronger East conquered it eventually, the new emperor there - if less violently Christian than T - could have been canny enough to conciliate the nobles by not banning paganism, just only employing Christians in senior offices like previous emperors had done since Julian the pagan died in 364. That way the nature and extent of Christianization in the West would have been different - and without militant Catholics running the East through the mid and late C5th too, the still numerous pagan local nobility in outer provinces and the pagan professors teaching at Athens university (shut down by Justinian in 529) could have kept going.

Not quite a 'state paganism' - the emperors found Christianity much more politically and ideologically useful and most rulers were hostile to any form of political or religious 'defiance' - but a far greater amount of religious diversity.

 

[Ricardolindo]

There's a definite chance for a degree of surviving paganism in the Western Empire if the 392 rebellion after the apparent suicide of Valentinian II (r 375-87, 388 - 92) , a politically weak Catholic Christian (aged 21) under the control of his Eastern Empire-appointed commander in chief, succeeds. The main factor in long-term Christianization of an aristocratic social elite that was still largely pagan in the West, and thus 'trickle down' of the new religion to their tenants and workers, was the defeat of this revolt by the militantly Catholic Christian eastern emperor Theodosius I (r 379 to 395), the man who then legally banned pagan sacrifices and closed all the remaining pagan temples in both East and West after he put the western rebellion down in 394. (He also confiscated temple treasures and property and banned pagans from holding any offices under the state, which was the decisive 'nudge' in converting politically ambitious or job-seeking people, and after he died suddenly in 395 the policy was kept up by his sons' regimes long term in both East and West. His ban on pagan ceremonies extended to their pagan Games, which apparently included the Olympics in Greece as these were at a temple sanctuary venue and had sacrifices.) T had indeed sponsored official expeditions of state commissioners touring the East, especially Syria and Anatolia, in the 380s smashing up and closing down temples in the cause of 'destroying blasphemous idolatry' and his Christian allies in Egypt had sacked some leading temples there, smashed up their statues, and driven out their supporters by armed violence - ironic considering the similarity of C4th Christian to C21st Taliban and ISIS priorities and iconoclastic ideology.

The sudden death, suicide or not, of Valentinian, brother of T's much younger second wife, led to his commander in chief Argobast (a German mercenary protege of Theodosius) being suspected of killing him and so setting up a new emperor, his secretary Eugenius, and defying the East to save his own career . He also called in the still pagan majority of the Rome city nobility for help (the Western capital by this point was Milan, nearer the northern military frontier) and allowed them to stage pagan festivals and public sacrifices which T had encouraged V to ban - leading to the final flourish of public pagan festivities in Rome and the fury of the Papacy and Christian officials. The revolt was defeated in battle by Theodosius as he invaded the West late in 394 and its leaders killed - with the Goths, led by future sacker of Rome Alaric, in T's army. But if it had succeeded and T been killed, leaving his weak sons in charge of the East and unable to conquer the West, a pagan regime might just have survived - even if only temporarily - in the West with the pagan nobles of Rome its main support. Even if the much stronger East conquered it eventually, the new emperor there - if less violently Christian than T - could have been canny enough to conciliate the nobles by not banning paganism, just only employing Christians in senior offices like previous emperors had done since Julian the pagan died in 364. That way the nature and extent of Christianization in the West would have been different - and without militant Catholics running the East through the mid and late C5th too, the still numerous pagan local nobility in outer provinces and the pagan professors teaching at Athens university (shut down by Justinian in 529) could have kept going.

Not quite a 'state paganism' - the emperors found Christianity much more politically and ideologically useful and most rulers were hostile to any form of political or religious 'defiance' - but a far greater amount of religious diversity.

I think it was too late to save paganism in the West by then.
I do think that if Constantine had never converted, the Empire would still have split between East and East and that the East may still have converted but that the West wouldn't have.