The Age of Skepticism and on Unlearning
God knows, I'm not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be Just for a screen. -Robert Burns ( Epistle to the Rev. John M'math, 1785 ) Greek Hellenism, from which early Christianity and Christian theology grew out of also spawned the anti-thesis to faith-based belief in God in the form of Cynic doctrines, Stoicism , and Skepticism . This Greek tradition of doubting and questioning would set us up for Epicurus in 341 BCE, who postulated that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space, and who would be the driving intellect behind the very birth of modern science. Out of this came the means to which scientific reason and secular ideologies could abound. Recently I stumbled upon a quote by the famous British poet Alexander Pope, the third most quoted writer after William Shakespeare and Lord Tennyson, who el...