Abstract: This chapter examines the main reasons that scholars of the ancient Greek world have neglected ancient atheism. It breaks down the consensus built on Lucien Febvre’s work: that atheism did not exist in ancient Greece. It argues for the importance of belief as an object of study in Greek religion, explores the errors and insights of the ritual school, and advocates for a move away from approaches that individualise belief and unbelief. Instead, informed by approaches in other fields, the chapter lays out the grounds for a fresh approach, conceiving of atheism in sociological, cultural, terms, and focused on the way that the Greeks themselves understood atheism. This chapter traces the contours and content captured in a new understanding of atheism more appropriate to ancient polytheism.

Abstract: This chapter argues that Greek education and socialisation taught children about religion as part of the development of a package of civic values. This chapter explores the ways that Greeks learned to believe and the dynamics of socialisation and learning in an environment in which religion was embedded. It considers how these processes might have inculcated atheistic ideas, mainly through the concept of sunousia, or association, and the teaching of new intellectuals; as well as the role of traditional works like Homer and Hesiod that provide a wealth of raw material for doubt. The chapter also shows the importance of accusations of teaching made against accused atheists, who posed a perceived problem in undermining and subverting traditional educational structures and the civic values they trained.

Abstract: This chapter examines the complicated and tangential connection between the divine and moral spheres in the Greek world and argues against the notion of a straightforward evolution towards a link between piety and morality. There were multiple consecutive and competing moral theories available in Greece, with fashions for each waxing and waning depending on current events, and the gods were rarely perceived as consistent moral agents until later periods. This chapter explores humanistic moral codes built on harmony in collective living, in which the gods were mechanically disposable, and argues that these lay beneath civic justice, which meant that atheism was not inevitably or inextricably perceived as connected with immorality.

Abstract: This chapter argues that atheism was crucial to the development and continued relevance of Greek theology. The chapter reconstructs evolving and vibrant theological discourses around the justice of the gods that show an exchange of ideas about the gods throughout the archaic and classical periods. In these agonistic discourses, doubting, critical, atheistic perspectives were not only welcome but crucial to the evolution of the discourse and religious and theological beliefs. They allowed for the development of complex, strong theologies, through continued agonism and criticism, and the fruits of these theological and philosophical labours embedded and informed a range of conceptions of the gods and atheistic philosophies or views.

Abstract: This chapter argues that uncertainty of the gods is foundational for Greek religion and theology: a crucial let-out clause that propped up the flexibility of Greek religion. Uncertainty about the gods in the right contexts represented appropriate moderacy in belief and not some kind of third category or a signal of impiety and unbelief for the Greeks. Uncertainty could be developed to doubt the form, nature, or existence of the gods, or even to suggest that they did not exist. This chapter demonstrates that the piety of uncertainty depended on the context and the types of claims made: claiming certainty of knowledge, either in the impossibility of knowledge or too much, was more of a problem.

Abstract: This chapter argues that atheism was seen as an ‘extreme’ in ancient Greece, as part of a category of othering. It sketches the development of a tradition in which atheism was viewed alongside ‘superstition’ or ‘illegitimate’ religion, as largely understandable and normal ideas, positions, or principles taken to the extreme; this tradition informs modern definitions that position atheism as ‘radical’, ‘hard’, disbelief. ‘Illegitimate’ forms of religion in ancient Greece could be seen as atheism, and vice versa, because connections between different forms like magic were used as cues to imply the others. The creation of a category of extreme religious attitudes and behaviours, that contained magicians, frauds, women, foreigners, and atheists allowed for the oppositional generation and reinforcement of religious identity, belief, and practice in Greece without dogma.

Abstract: This chapter argues that atheism provided a useful scapegoat for a city under threat. Through dissection of a range of trials in the fifth and fourth centuries, especially that of Socrates, and the backdrop to these trials, it is argued that the core justification for these trials was religious. This chapter argues that while atheism was, in general, accepted and relatively normal, at times of crisis accusations of atheism that led to hostile action could be made against people who had relevant suspect views and were seen as outcasts. This process was of civic purification through the pharmakos. These accusations were a release valve for theological and divine pressure, driven the need to expel pollution, and they created an atmosphere of fear and concern among potential victims.

Abstract: This chapter reviews the conclusions and insights made in each of the thematic studies of the book, and the main contributions of the literature to this study. The chapter explores possible future avenues of research, particularly in the potential for a cognitive science of atheism and in studies of the effectiveness in other fields of the definition of atheism applied in this work. The chapter revisits this definition and anchors the study of ancient atheism in polytheism as a study in the history of marginalisation, demonstrating how core attitudes in history and philosophy, through Thucydides, Herodotus, and Plato, helped to marginalise atheism, and argues for the importance of a reclamation project. It argues that the consensus that atheism in ancient Greece was ‘unthinkable’ is now entirely unsustainable, and that instead the study of Greek religion will be incomplete without the study of ancient atheism.