Many people believe that human beings are somehow ‘wired’ to believe in God – or that religious belief is a ‘default setting’ for humans.

Not so, a new book by a University of Cambridge academic argues – and this distortion is largely a product of the modern age.

Dr Tim Whitmarsh claims that atheism flourished in societies like ancient Greece and pre-Christian Rome – societies with many Gods.


Not only that, it wasn’t seen as immoral, he says, basing his book, Battling the Gods, on 1,000 years of anti-religious statements.

Whitmarsh says, ‘We tend to see atheism as an idea that has only recently emerged in secular Western societies,” Whitmarsh said.



‘In fact, early societies were far more capable than many since of containing atheism within the spectrum of what they considered normal.’

MORE: What HAS God been up to? ‘Virgin’ shark is about to give birth to two babies

‘The fact that this was happening thousands of years ago suggests that forms of disbelief can exist in all cultures, and probably always have.’

‘Believers talk about atheism as if it’s a pathology of a particularly odd phase of modern Western culture that will pass, but if you ask someone to think hard, clearly people also thought this way in antiquity.’