What is Atheism? Where did it come from? Who was the first to mention it in the public? All these and other questions arouse in my head only after the greater and more meaningful question: is there a GOD? Or if we paraphrase it and cite the famous rock group Pink Floyd “Is there anybody out there?” (1)
This issue has dominated among my other thoughts in my head for my whole lifetime and maybe that was the reason why I chose to write about atheism. Yes, precisely about atheism, the idea of which is the product of thoughts of all thinkers worldwide that began to ask questions about religion, truth and beliefs.
Classification of atheism in the Western and Soviet literature vary. In many ways, they are subjective, though in some way they take into account the real-world differences between the types of free thought and atheism. “So different practical and theoretical atheism (Brugger), a rationalist, an existential (Sartre, Lepp), agnostic, natural, postulatny (Schmidt), three species of atheism associated with the names of Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach and Marx and F. Nietzsche (A. de Lubac), Freud and Bertrand Russell, and sometimes in the concept of atheism wrongfully include Buddhism and Taoism.” (2)
First of all I would like to give the definition of the atheism. Atheism (Greek “a” - denial and “theos” - god, literally - ungodliness) - philosophical materialist doctrine. A. is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. Basically it was introduced by the ancient Greek philosophers and than used as an offensive word towards the people who rejected the church, the common christian beliefs and “in XV-XVII centuries nobody could proudly call him self an “atheist”. (3) Only in XVIII this word began to be used not only in polemic but also to define a man who’s belief is that God does not exist.
Atheism, on the one hand, postulates a failure of any religion as fiction, a distorted reflection of reality, rejects the belief in the
References: (1) Pink Floyd, The Wall, 1979 - CD 2 - 2 - Is there anybody out there? (2) Nielsen Kai, 2011, “Atheism” Encyclopedia Britannica (3) Armstrong Caren, 1999, A History of God, London: Vintage.