ATHEISTS Ch 2 Pt 2
ATHEISTS ARE IDIOTS Robert J. Firth Chapter Two Part Two Atheists have also cited data showing that there is a correlation between religious fundamentalism and extrinsic religion (where religion is used to serve ulterior interests) and authoritarianism, dogmatism, and prejudice. Again, these arguments best reflect Islam where, combined with historical events demonstrate the dangers of religion, such as terrorist attacks. Believers counter-argue that regimes espousing atheism, such as in China and Soviet Russia, have also been guilty of mass murder. The Greek word αθεοι (atheoi), as it appears in the Epistle to the Ephesians (2:12) on the early 3rd-century Papyrus 46. It is usually translated into English as “[those who are] without God”. In early ancient Greek, the adjective atheos (ἄθεος, from the privative ἀ- + θεός “god”) meant “godless”. It was first used as a term of censure roughly meaning “ungodly” or “impious”. In the 5th century BCE, the word began to indicate more deliberate and active godlessness in the sense of “severing relations with the gods” or “denying the gods”. The term ἀσεβής (asebēs) then came to be applied against those who impiously denied or disrespected the local gods, even if they believed in other gods. Modern translations of classical texts sometimes render atheos as “atheistic”. As an abstract noun, there was also ἀθεότης (atheotēs), “atheism”. Cicero transliterated the Greek word into the Latin atheos. The term found frequent use in the debate between ATHEISTS 28 early Christians and Hellenists, with each side attributing it, in the pejorative sense, to the other. The term atheist (from Fr. athée), in the sense of “one who denies or disbelieves the existence of God”, predates the word ‘atheism’ in English, being first found as early as 1566, and again in 1571. ‘Atheist,’ as a label of practical godlessness, we think, was…
