Godless Honour for Human Nature

Comparing ancient and modern enlightenment

Image by Nghia Le, from Unsplash

Many Western atheists are secular humanists, meaning that they think we don’t need religion to be moral, since we have the inherent potential to progress. In reality, says this secularist, our life choices have always reflected only our propensity for enlightening or for deluding ourselves, since the invisible friends posited by religions functioned as mere excuses, projections of our fear, or as tricks to exploit the gullible.

The secular humanist eliminates the appeal to these confusions and restores our pride in being solely responsible for our civilized accomplishments.

Ataraxia and Foolishness: the Ancient Dichotomy

There’s a difference, however, between what we may call ancient and modern secular humanists. To the extent they’re known at all today by the average person, the Epicureans of ancient Greece, for example, are considered hedonists, and if you presume the Epicureans were therefore libertines who were greedy even for lowly pleasures, you’ve imported the modern conception of human nature to the ancient context.

Epicureans, too, were atomists whose metaphysical materialism compelled them to reject theistic religions, but their ethics were comparable to the aims of Buddhism…