THERSANDER: The gods are dead. Their withered bodies lie immolated on the altars of science and reason. The pious are exposed for credulous fools.
DIOTIMUS: Nonsense! Belief in the gods is stronger than ever. It is true, of course, that the peacocks of the academy deceive themselves that their worldly knowledge is all. But you should get out into the streets. Leave behind your chattering dinner parties and take a walk through the city: the shrines are packed, the temples blackened with the smoke of sacrifice.
THERSANDER: Their belief is skin-deep. They act this way because they have always done so, not out of deep conviction. They do not have the time or inclination to question; they are too busy trying to survive, while their foolish leaders pitch them from one disaster to another.
DIOTIMUS: The people need their gods, in this perilous world of ours. It is their comfort and stay.
THERSANDER: Yes, of course religion offers comfort and hope. But it also makes for anxiety and fear! It plays on the emotions of the credulous. It has nothing to do with truth. Only observation, testing, and rational enquiry can lead us to proper understanding.
DIOTIMUS: You blind yourself to the truth that is not of this world. It is obvious that humans are born capable of glimpsing the divine. All people have that capacity, even if some choose not to use it. That is why there has never been, and never will be, a society without gods.
THERSANDER: Humans created gods. Primitive humans saw divinity in the sun, moon, and stars, in the cycles of the seasons. They lacked scientific understanding of matter, the cosmos, and nature. In time, politicians and rulers realized the power of religious belief and cynically twisted it to their own ends. There are no gods overseeing social order, punishing wrongdoing; that is simply what our leaders teach us, to keep us in check.
DIOTIMUS: Atheism is a fad. Future generations will look back on it as a passing folly.
THERSANDER: Quite the opposite: it is religion that is dying. It has no answers to the questions of the modern world, only adherence to outdated dogma and ritual. I know that belief in the gods is deeply rooted, and those who profit from it will fight tooth and claw to preserve it. But as true understanding of the world grows and spreads, it will be exposed for the vanity that it is.
This dialogue, between a religious devotee and an atheist intellectual in Athens at the end of the fifth century BC, did not take place. But it could have done. All of the ideas in it are to be found in ancient Greek sources. If the terms of the debate seem arrestingly modern, that is no coincidence. We are still, in the twenty-first century, grappling with issues that are at least two and a half millennia old.
