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To its adherents it is the antidote to centuries of ignorance and superstition, while to its detractors it is the product of latter-day decadence and materialism.

But a new Cambridge University study argues that atheism is in fact one of the world’s oldest beliefs — long predating Christianity and Islam.

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The belief that there were no gods was common in the ancient world, research by Prof. Tim Whitmarsh, professor of Greek culture at Cambridge, concludes.

But “ancient atheism” was effectively written out of history when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire after the reign of Constantine in the early fourth century, heralding a new era of state-imposed belief, says Whitmarsh in a new book, Battling the Gods, which collates evidence of atheism in the Greek city states.

The study breaks the widely assumed link between atheism and progress or modernity but also rejects the idea that faith is a natural, instinctive impulse.