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Infidels,
Freethinkers, Humanists, and Unbelievers |
Diagoras
"the Atheist" (5th cent. BCE) |
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much more is known about Diagoras of Melos, than that he was called
atheist – probably not only in the meaning ‘ungodly'
of that word. Athenagoras said about him, that he "made the
downright assertion that god does not exist at all." Cicero
states the same about him. |
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Cicero
also 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.
According
to Sextus Empiricus he became an atheist when an enemy of his
perjured himself in court and got away with it. There are some
variations in other sources to this anecdote, though not changing
its moral content – immorality seems to go unpunished, so
how can there be any gods in the sense of watchers over human
virtue?
He
is said to have been a student of Democritus, who may have initiated
his disbelief in the existence of the gods, and was expelled from
Athens in 411 BC for his attacks on religion. Other sources claim
that he was bought from slavery by Democritus in 411 BC, when
Melos was captured by Alcibiades, and then became his student.
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The information on which this page
is based has been drawn from research on the Internet. For example, much use has been made of Wikipedia.org,
to whom we are greatly indebted. Since the information recording process at Wikipedia
is prone to changes in the data, please check at Wikipedia for current information. If you find
something on this page to be in error, please contact
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