World's first atheists, 600 BCE

C

Cypress

Well-known member
Charvaka was a philosophical school of thought, developed in India c. 600 BCE, stressing materialism as the means by which one understands and lives in the world.

Materialism holds that perceivable matter is all that exists; concepts such as the soul and any other supernatural entities or planes of existence are simply inventions of imaginative people.

The Charvaka vision rejected all supernatural claims, all religious authority and scripture, the acceptance of inference and testimony in establishing truth, and any religious ritual or tradition. The essential tenets of the philosophy were:

-Direct perception as the only means of establishing and accepting any truth
-What cannot be perceived and understood by the senses does not exist
-All that exists are the observable elements of air, earth, fire, and water
-The ultimate good in life is pleasure; the only evil is pain
-Pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain is the sole purpose of human existence
-Religion is an invention of the strong and clever who prey on the weak.



https://www.worldhistory.org/Charvaka/
 
Charvaka sounds remarkably similar to Epicureanism, even though separated by 5,000 km and hundreds of years.
 
Jack said:
I approve this Message. :)
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In the historical context, the Indian subcontinent strikes me as the most advanced place, spiritually and intellectually, on the planet.

The Vedas and Upanishads were being developed, and the tenets of Brahminism, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Charvaka were being worked out half a millennium before Jesus decided to preach around Galilee
 
I like people that live in the Real world. Charvaka, who I never heard of, sounds like a Realist. :thumbsup:
 
Jack said:
I like people that live in the Real world. Charvaka, who I never heard of, sounds like a Realist. :thumbsup:
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I am reading about Asian intellectual history and I had never heard of Charvaka either. The fact that atheist thought was this well developed as far back as 2,600 years ago was pretty striking to me.
 
Cypress said:
I am reading about Asian intellectual history and I had never heard of Charvaka either. The fact that atheist thought was this well developed as far back as 2,600 years ago was pretty striking to me.
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I'm glad you compared him to Epicurus. He's a little more familiar to most of us. :)
 
Jack said:
I'm glad you compared him to Epicurus. He's a little more familiar to most of us. :)
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Epicureans believed in the Gods, they just thought the gods played no role in human affairs. Which is not precisely atheist, but pretty close to it
 
He’s a war veteran.

He’s a victim of his environment.

He was drafted and served in the war.
If you see an environmental event that may lead to an immediate threat to human health
or the environment, call 911, then report it to the National Response Center at:



He’s a victim of circumstance.
There isn’t a draft anymore.
I’m a correction officer.
That’s the grand kid.
He got hurt on the job.

victim of circumstance is someone who had been heavily affected (used in a bad context) by
something out of his control, to the extent that the result is different from what should have
been. “Victim of circumstance” in this case is a metaphor, where “circumstance” is seemingly
portrayed as the assailant.

Who’s the victim of environment and who’s the victim of circumstance?



Dough boy went out with his friends and got himself in trouble.
They shipped him to California. I’d rather have dough boy here.
 
-Direct perception as the only means of establishing and accepting any truth
-What cannot be perceived and understood by the senses does not exist
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^ This is an obvious and significant weakness of Charvaka.

We have learned there is an unobservable reality hidden from direct sensory perception. This unobservable reality actually makes up the overwhelming, vast majority of the universe.

Naturally, the proponents of the Charvaka school did not know about the Higgs boson, particle physics, dark matter, or dark energy.
 
Cypress said:
Epicureans believed in the Gods, they just thought the gods played no role in human affairs. Which is not precisely atheist, but pretty close to it
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I'm not sure Epicurus believed in Gods. He may have framed it that way to avoid the wrath of the Local Officials.
 
Jack said:
I'm not sure Epicurus believed in Gods. He may have framed it that way to avoid the wrath of the Local Officials.
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Possibly, we'll never know. But the fact is the Greek gods were never seen as truly active agents in the way Hindi or Abrahamic gods were seen.
 
Cypress said:
Charvaka was a philosophical school of thought, developed in India c. 600 BCE, stressing materialism as the means by which one understands and lives in the world.

Materialism holds that perceivable matter is all that exists; concepts such as the soul and any other supernatural entities or planes of existence are simply inventions of imaginative people.

The Charvaka vision rejected all supernatural claims, all religious authority and scripture, the acceptance of inference and testimony in establishing truth, and any religious ritual or tradition. The essential tenets of the philosophy were:

-Direct perception as the only means of establishing and accepting any truth
-What cannot be perceived and understood by the senses does not exist
-All that exists are the observable elements of air, earth, fire, and water
-The ultimate good in life is pleasure; the only evil is pain
-Pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain is the sole purpose of human existence
-Religion is an invention of the strong and clever who prey on the weak.

https://www.worldhistory.org/Charvaka/
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So this is where the prosperity Gospel got its start!
 
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