Atheism & Impiety

Greek 'atheism' (atheotēs) and 'impiety' (asebeia) covered both outright denial of the gods and disrespect toward civic religion, and the line between philosophical doubt and a prosecutable crime was thin. From the 5th century BCE, thinkers pushed the limits: Protagoras professed he could not say whether the gods exist, Diagoras of Melos became the proverbial atheist, and the Sisyphus fragment attributed to Critias argued that a clever man had invented the gods to frighten people into behaving. Socrates was tried and executed in 399 BCE partly on the charge of not believing in the city's gods. The theme matters as the West's origin point for religious doubt and for the clash between free inquiry and communal piety.