Mouthy atheist run out of town... in the 5th century BCE

[charlie]

Who knew New Atheism had a 2400 year pedigree? That it has an intrinsic freshness that makes it appear NEW to this day? :crazy:

I like this guy. He had to take it on the lam because he boiled his turnips with a religious icon :D

Cicero, writing in the 1st century BC, tells of how a friend of Diagoras tried to convince him of the existence of the gods, by pointing out how many votive pictures tell about people being saved from storms at sea by "dint of vows to the gods", to which Diagoras replied that "there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked and drowned at sea." And Cicero goes on to give another example, where Diagoras was on a ship in hard weather, and the crew thought that they had brought it on themselves by taking this ungodly man onboard. He then wondered if the other boats out in the same storm also had a Diagoras onboard.

...

The Christian writer Athenagoras of Athens (2nd century AD) writes about Diagoras:

With reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there was no God at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagoras_of_Melos

So I've got to wonder about those who shit green because they've noticed NEW atheists in their midst -- would they have behaved much differently than Diagoras back then? They are, after all, as ardently atheistic about the Greek pantheon as he was. Was he treated fairly?

</leading rhetoric>

[onager]

1. More antique atheists!

One of my faves is Anaxagoras, the ancient Greek scientist who grouched that the sun was "only a hot rock," the moon "a cold rock," and gods had nothing to do with either one.

He was also "run out of town" (exiled from Athens). Only his close personal/political friendship with Pericles saved him from execution, a la Socrates.

If you like this subject, here's a great book for you. I never realized that non-belief had such an ancient and honorable legacy till I read it:

Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson
by Jennifer Hecht

http://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Doubters-Innovation-Jefferson-Dickinson/dp/0060097728

There's a Bible verse that always get thrown in our faces from Proverbs: "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." Hecht notes that this really just proves one thing - atheists were already quite well known and annoying believers, even back in the Bronze Age.

We've discussed the book on here before. There was a general consensus that the latter part of the book is not quite as interesting as the earlier stuff. But it's still a great read, helped immensely by Hecht's entertaining writing style.

Sorry for the delay in responding. I've been busy this week.

[charlie]

2. Cool!

Thanks, onager. Anaxagoras is a new one to me. I can only marvel at any guy who wouldn't shut up in an age when it could get you seriously killed. Especially if some of the quotes were as flip as they sound! Acting like a Mencken in a god-soaked society could only ensure your death would be longer and more painful.

I've been trying for months to get my library to buy Hecht's book, so far without success (budget cuts keep shunting requests for "niche interest" books to the back of the line, grr). I'd read Susan Jacoby's splendid Freethinkers and it left me keen for more history, less polemic. Hitchens, Dawkins, et al are fun, but for any atheist, they're just belaboring the obvious.

This is OT, but since we're talking about pop history books, this is one I've been itching (so to speak) to read for a long time (c'mo-o-o-o-n library!):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/mar/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview7
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/05/27/the_essence_of_olde_england
http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/hart_03_07.html

[onager]

3. That sounds fascinating. Thanks for the tip!

A couple things jumped out at me...

(...and I guess we can hijack the thread, since it's only the two of us. Ha!)

The walls of domestic dwellings in the 17th century were routinely bulked out by shit shipped from "the necessary house" and quite likely to dissolve into a nasty goo when the rains came down.

Shit as INSULATION? I think that's the meaning, but ??? WTF? Shit packed between the walls?

I never knew that ‘Mount Pleasant’, near Gray’s Inn, was actually a bitterly ironic name for a huge man-made heap of the most nauseous offal and ordure. It is now, of course, home to the Guardian newspaper.

Ha! I knew that Fleet Street, shorthand for British journalism, was named for the Fleet River which at one time flowed right down the middle of the street. As London's population grew, the river was used as a sewer. Which became so noxious that it was finally paved, to cover it up.

Reading your links, it must have been hellaciously bad. The locals probably complained that they could no longer simply heave their chamberpots out of the upper floor of the house and right into that convenient sewer...

...you could indeed go to some hell-on-earth megalopolis in India or China today and see how it feels.

Or Egypt. Butchers still slaughter animals right on the sidewalk. In both Cairo and Alexandria during the big Muslim feasts, I often literally walked in blood flowing down the street, and dodged piles of hacked-off animal limbs.

And the noise! Argh! Tinkers in donkey-carts yelling for customers, accompanied by banging on a tin pot to advertise their expertise. Rag-and-bone men yelling for people to bring down their household grease and offal. Plus all the modern annoyances of traffic noise. And about 4:30 AM, the first HIGHLY AMPLIFIED prayer call blaring out the the 1,277 storefront mosques in the neighborhood.

There are some things about Egypt that I do not miss...

[LeftishBrit]

4. London was known as an unhealthy city for centuries

Partly overcrowding; partly appalling sanitation. In 1858, the problem was brought to the attention of Parliament in a very forcible way: overflowing of sewers (even more than usually!) into the Thames caused the 'Great Stink' which attacked everyone's noses, including those sitting in Parliament. They considered relocating Parliamentary sessions elsewhere. At any rate, it brought home some of the reasons why there were so many epidemics of cholera and other diseases in London.

Here's a link to some 19th century cartoons and writings about 'filthy London'.

http://www.victorianlondon.org/health/thamescondition.htm


In the later 19th century, more attention was given by London officials and by Parliament to improving drainage and the awful sanitary conditions. River pollution continued into the 20th century, and air pollution, always bad, increased. Smogs were common. In 1953, a particularly awful smog led to about 2000 excess deaths in London within about a week - and this shocked the government into passing the Clean Air Act, which restricted both industrial and domestic use of pollutants. By the time I was born in the 1960s, it was forbidden to use coal fires for domestic heating in most parts of London. As a child, I spent a year in Edmonton in Canada and was startled by the smogs and obvious air pollution *there* (including very colourful smoke coming from the local power station) - rather to the amusement of people who didn't expect a child from London to be commenting on the smogs of a Canadian prairie town!

A lot has been done, through regulation, to clean up the Thames. I still wouldn't recommend going for a swim in it; but it's not what it was in the Good Old Days.

[onager]

5. Thanks for stopping by.

:hi:

And thanks for the link.

Always great to hear from you. If you ever feel nostalgic for smog, I live in Los Angeles. So just pop in for a visit...

[LeftishBrit]

6. Thanks! If I'm ever in those parts I'll let you know.

There was a Horizon programme in (I think) 1978 about the Thames and regulations that eventually reduced the pollution, called 'The River that Came Clean'. Don't know if it's still readily obtainable.

There was a 19th century folk song about a young man whose girlfriend had been transported to Australia 'with a government band around her hand and another one around each leg'. One verse goes:

'Oh the sun may shine through the London fog, or the river run quite clear,
Or the ocean brine turn into wine or I forget my beer,
Or I forget my beer, my boys, or the landlord's quarter-day;
But I'll never forget my own true love, ten thousand miles away.'