For many of the most controversial issues affecting American citizens today — vaccination, climate change, evolution, abortion, marriage— the debate takes a predictable path. One side champions religion and faith while the other points to scientific evidence. We have reached a point in American society where the perceived conflict between god and science affects almost every issue of substance in our policy debates. This pattern is concerning, not least because it fosters the seemingly intractable partisanship that permeates our government.

I teach a course in Knox College’s first-year preceptorial (FP) program entitled “Athens, Rome, and America,” where students engage the major social and political problems confronting America today through the lens of Greco-Roman antiquity. The course is designed to explore issues including partisan intransigence, the public education system, humans’ relationship with the environment, imperialism, the growth of corporatism, the political influence of special interests, and, especially, the conflict between god and science — issues that most would agree are as relevant today as they were to the ancient societies of Greece and Rome.

Time and again, my students identify our society’s inability to reconcile religion with science as one of the most fundamental fissures in our system. My students often lament that the discursive impasse confronting a seeker of nuance in this matter is almost unbridgeable. Because most of our citizens — students included — encounter these issues in the media, not in the classroom, the contours of the debate are determined by the most extreme voices. The positions of those with whom we disagree are then relegated to these poles, banishing subtlety in favor of a tidy narrative. Once the complexity of a human being is boiled down to a label with which we disagree (“She’s a Christian”; “He’s a liberal”), we find it very easy to disregard his or her perspective.

As a humanist, as a classicist, my impulse when helping students think through these issues is to return to those who have come before us. I take very seriously the insight of Thucydides (1.22) that, so long as human nature remains the same, the testimony of earlier human experience is invaluable.

As it turns out, the conflict between religion and science that is so central to hot-button political issues today was a non-issue for the Greeks and Romans. Although I’ve had mixed results in my preceptorial at Knox when I try to convince my students that religion and science need not be incompatible in America either, we have certainly achieved a level of nuance difficult to find in public debates about controversial issues. It’s difficult to convince people to question their deeply held belief that science and faith are incompatible. But it can be very rewarding when, through reading ancient texts, I can see my students approaching contemporary issues in a more thoughtful way.

God and Science in Ancient Philosophy

Occasionally, I have encountered students of the hard sciences who also are quite devout in their faith. In my classroom they often express their dismay that their peers do not take them seriously as scientists. “How can you believe that stuff, if you value science and scientific inquiry?” one student reported having been asked by a peer during a lab.

Compared to the modern dissonance that gives rise to questions like this one, Greco-Roman thinkers display a harmony between theism and science. Perhaps the two most influential minds from antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, concluded their investigations into natural science by positing a theistic cosmos.

Plato argues for a kind of proto-intelligent design theory when, in the Timaeus, he argues that there must be a demiurge (“creator”) who produced the universe (28b-c). He goes on to appeal to physics and geometry in minute detail to account for the creation of all matter, including humans. For Plato, though the demiurge forged the cosmos, the diversity of its constituent parts can be apprehended by what we call natural science. Plato finds no ideological conflict in scientific inquiry founded on the idea of intelligent design. Plato’s works, cranked through the seven centuries that bring us to Augustine, were then deeply influential for Christian theology in the West. His influence remains fundamental to most Christian dogma today.

Aristotle also puts forward a theistic cosmos. His “Unmoved Mover,” consumed with self-contemplative thought (noeseos noesis, “thought of thought”, Metaphysics 1074b), does not intervene in human affairs through creative activity. The Metaphysics, which Aristotle called “first philosophy” and “theology,” is the culmination of the Aristotelian system — a system that includes biological treatises like Parts of Animals and Generation of Animals, proto-climatological treatises like Meteorology, and natural scientific works like Physics. It is not an overstatement to say that, for Aristotle, theology is predicated on scientific inquiry and logically depends on the arguments in his scientific treatises.

Nor are Plato and Aristotle alone. Throughout the texts of antiquity one finds a deeply integrated relationship between science and theology, beginning with one of the oldest extant Greek texts, Hesiod’s Theogony. Hesiod describes (115–22) the creation of the universe: first, he says, there was Chaos. Next came Earth, Tartaros, and Eros. Chaos (which must be rendered etymologically as “gap,” without the modern sense of “confusion” that that word now implies) indicates a dark, gaping emptiness, while Eros (“sexual feeling”) signifies the elemental energy requisite for the creation of the cosmos and all the gods. I often suggest to my students that Hesiod delivers an account of the beginning of the universe that resonates with our own current understanding of the Big Bang event.

The philosopher-poet Empedocles, an early proponent of a proto-Darwinian evolution, seems to have also connected his physical theories with divinity. Empedocles believed that everything is composed of four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water. One of his fragments (DK 115) suggests that these four elements also give rise to the human soul that communes with, possibly ultimately assimilates to, the divine. Similarly, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the Stoics argued that the universe or Nature itself was a material substance coterminous with God, conceptualized as a kind of immanent Reason. Stoic physics is therefore inseparable from Stoic theology.

My students who identify as religious, many of whom major in physics or biology, have often pointed out that many prominent intellectuals — Einstein, Heisenberg, Eccles, Schrödinger, Francis Collins — felt that theism and science are actually compatible. That these scientists have such a robust ancestry in Greco-Roman thought has validated my students as they engage with this issue. The conversations in my classroom always benefit from these students’ perspectives.

Ancient Atheism

I’ve had many agnostic students in my class, like one creative writing major who argued that it isn’t anti-intellectual to refuse to conflate the absence of evidence for God’s existence with evidence of God’s absence. At the same time, she was uncomfortable with this real absence of evidence and therefore unprepared to embrace religion without qualification. When helping students like her and the many others who share her concerns to think through their conflicted perspectives, I find it useful to explore the persistent strand of Greco-Roman philosophy that interrogated the nature of divinity.

Socrates was famously accused of atheism (Plato, Apology 26b-28b), but it turns out that his beliefs were more akin to apostasy: he was accused of worshipping gods unsanctioned by the state, and, even worse, of teaching the youth to worship these gods as well. On closer examination of what we think Socrates actually thought­ — a vexed question in the history of philosophy (see Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher and Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues) — it seems that Socrates not only believed in the gods, but that he was quite pious in his belief.

The Presocratic philosopher Xenophanes, on the other hand, called into question traditional, anthropomorphic conceptions of the divine. Fragmentary though his work is, we have lines that reproach Homer and Hesiod for ascribing to the gods the things that humans find most shameful (DK 11), and one that suggests that if animals could make art they would depict the gods in their own image, too: cows would have boviform gods, lions would have leonine gods, et cetera (DK 14–15).

The philosophical movement that most closely approximates to modern atheism was Epicureanism, for which the Roman poet Lucretius is our most articulate witness. Lucretius and the Epicureans present the world as fundamentally dualist: the only two things that exist are matter and space. Matter is composed of invisible, immortal atoms whose constant motion gives rise to everything that exists in the perceptible universe; space, on the other hand, is the nothingness that is not matter.

According to Epicurean atomism, the universe has no creator: creation is the chance, unplanned result of atoms colliding in a “void” (inane, “the empty,” as Lucretius calls it, which is evocative of Hesiod’s Chaos, “the gap,” a connection that incidentally Ovid made quite explicit in his own account of creation in the Metamorphoses (1.5–20) by using Lucretian language (e.g. semina rerum, Met. 1.9; cf. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1.59, 1.501, 2.677, 2.755, 2.833, 2.1059, 2.1072, 4.309, 5.916, 6.662, 6.789, 6.1093) to describe the state of “chaos,” Met. 1.7). As a result, Nature is constantly experimenting and species are constantly evolving. For the Epicureans, then, this universe (one of many) is emphatically not anthropocentric.

The Epicurean cosmos is not just indifferent to human beings: it also doesn’t contain an afterworld. In order for there to be a constant supply of atoms at hand for creation, Epicureans argued, there must also be a constant release of atoms from created (and thus dying) compounds, both animate and inanimate. A necessary corollary to this Epicurean principle (which they called isonomia) is that all compounds are mortal and subject to the dissolution of their constituent atoms. All compounds are mortal, including the soul. Since the soul dies along with the body, there is no afterlife. Confronted with this reality, Lucretius powerfully affirms that “death is nothing to us” (nil igitur mors est ad nos; De Rerum Natura 3.830).

The ancient Epicureans parallel those today who privilege science and scientific inquiry over theism. In fact, in what is today a familiar move, Lucretius laments the evil that has been wrought in the name of the gods. He singles out Agamemnon’s slaughter of his own daughter, as the consummate act of religious delusion (tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, “so great was the evil religion could encourage”, De Rerum Natura 1.101).

But it is important to underscore that the Epicureans were not, in the end, atheists (as Dirk Obbink has argued). Although they certainly minimized the activity of the gods in the world — the gods emphatically do not intervene in human affairs — the Epicureans were adamant that the gods existed. In fact, the gods appear to enjoy the perfect instantiation of human happiness, which is gained only through passionless contemplation of the nature of things (ataraxia). It turns out that the Epicurean gods sit around in the interstices between the universes (intermundia) exclusively contemplating atomic physics. My colleagues in the hard sciences always chuckle when I insinuate that, according to the Epicureans, they must be gods (although the Epicurean gods would not have time for committee work!). Although one could argue that the Epicurean gods are marginalized to the point of erasure, the Epicureans nevertheless posit a theistic universe that is predicated on scientific inquiry and atomic physics.

Unfortunately, my atheist students often become frustrated by this last suggestion, though I encourage them to interrogate their frustration. Such interrogation usually yields more nuance. They do not usually disavow their atheism in the process (which would never be my objective anyway), but they often abandon lazy, unreflective atheism in favor of a more intellectually rigorous rejection of the divine. All I can ask of my students is that they question their assumptions in the process of refining their positions.

Fundamentalism in Greek Tragedy

Although ancient philosophy offers many models for the harmony between science and theism in antiquity, it can be difficult to find a straightforward instance of atheism. More helpful in this search are the poets, although it turns out that they, especially the Greek tragedians, offer us less of a model for atheism proper than a representation of fundamentalist thinking. This investigation has proven important when I have encountered similarly fundamentalist thinking in my students. I have watched, through discussions especially of Greek tragedy, how such students can come to soften their obduracy, opening themselves up to reasonable dialogue.

In the Odyssey, Polyphemus the Cyclops asserts that “the Cyclopes do not care about Zeus who holds the aegis nor the blessed gods, since (the Cyclopes) are much better” (Odyssey 9.275–6). Polyphemus does not deny the gods’ existence so much as assert his own superiority over them. Similarly, in Vergil’s Aeneid, the Etruscan king Mezentius — a character partially modeled on Homer’s Polyphemus — associates his own martial capacities with divinity. Frequently labeled “a despiser of the gods” (contemptor divum, e.g. Aeneid 7.648), Mezentius “prays” to his own right hand and his spear (dextra mihi deus et telum, quod missile libro, / nunc adsint!, Aeneid 10.773–4). Once again, though, Mezentius does not outright reject the existence of the gods: he despises them. In fact, he even allows for the fact that Jupiter oversees his fate in battle (Aeneid 10.743–4).

Perhaps the most famous “atheist” in antiquity was Euripides (although Mary Lefkowitz has repeatedly problematized that depiction). This claim, leveled at him already in his lifetime, has proven difficult to triangulate with what we find in his oeuvre, aside from a famous fragment of his Bellerophontes (286 N) in which the speaker emphatically rejects that there are gods in heaven. Anyone arguing for Euripides’ atheism must contend with the fact that his plays are filled with divine characters in full possession of their powers and prerogatives. On the other hand, Euripides’ gods can be excessive in their harboring of grudges, and their destructive, self-indulgent irrationality often comes off as worse than human. For example, Cadmus, at the end of the Bacchae, upbraids Dionysus for his anger. “It is not appropriate for gods to be like mortals in their anger,” he says (Bacchae 1348). Heracles, confronted with all the evil that has befallen him as a result of Hera’s fickle wrath, famously asserts that he does not accept the awful behavior of the gods as presented in poetry, “for god, if he truly is god, lacks nothing” (Heracles 1345–6).

Hippolytus provides the most prominent instance of atheism in Euripides when he refuses to worship the divinity of Aphrodite, the divine avatar for human sexuality and procreation. “No god who works marvels by night is acceptable for me,” he says (Hippolytus 106). Yet even this atheism is partial (and hence, not truly atheism), because Hippolytus is unilaterally pious and devoted to Artemis. As an acolyte of Artemis, Hippolytus values chastity above all else. Aphrodite in the Hippolytus is a menacing figure, who, affronted by Hippolytus’ rejection of sex, brings about his disgrace and death.

As Hippolytus lies on his deathbed, the goddess Artemis appears ex machina to reveal the nature of the calamity that has taken place, situating the blame squarely with Aphrodite herself. Artemis offers no salvation for her most faithful follower and responds harshly to his suffering by saying, “The law of heaven prevents me from shedding a tear from my eyes,” (Hippolytus 1396). But when the reality of the injustice that has befallen him and his father Theseus sinks in, when he sees his father absorbed in the pain of being the architect of the grief that consumes him, Hippolytus absolves Theseus in the name of Artemis (Hippolytus 1451), the only thing that he has ever cared about, the only thing he has ever acknowledged as holy. In the face of definitive proof that his goddess has abandoned him to his unjust fate, Hippolytus reaffirms everything that has given his life meaning.

The Hippolytus serves as a cautionary tale against the dangers of fundamentalist thinking. In my classroom, the Hippolytus (and Sophocles’ Antigone, which similarly warns us against insisting on our own perspective without accommodating that of our fellow, dissenting humans) frequently elicits the most penetrating conversations we have about the conflict between god and science in American society. What I always find surprising is how open my students are to the possibility that too-rigid adherence to scientific principles — perhaps even more than religious fundamentalism — can work against any resolution to the impasse we have reached.

The intransigence of religious fundamentalism is widely acknowledged in our media; rarely do we confront the possibility that science may also exhibit its own intransigence. Since science has, generally speaking, shown itself to be a reliable means of explaining the unknown, most of us are tempted to trust it blindly. We are comforted in this regard by the fact that the scientific method is supposed to rely on data, not prejudice. The history of science and medicine, however, is littered with a series of realizations that our working assumptions are wrong, quite fundamentally so in some cases (e.g. geocentrism or the history of gynecology and obstetrics). Fortunately, because of these mistakes, we have ultimately come to a much fuller understanding of the universe and ourselves. But these mistakes should also caution us against trusting uncritically in the scientific worldview and its explanations. In the end, these are the kinds of conclusions we reach in my classroom, when we engage with the texts I have canvassed in this essay.

My experience has shown me how, through the lens of Classical antiquity, we can better focus on the fundamental problems that beset our society. One particular strength of our field is that it inherently resists a presentist perspective on these problems, encouraging all of us to put aside our presuppositions when working through important issues.

When it comes to the schism between faith and science, however, it often proves too difficult to separate ourselves sufficiently from our perspective. To judge from the conversations I have had in the classroom, our inability to do so turns out to be the primary cause of the increasing polarization we encounter in public discourse. I have found that the distance the field of Classics affords my students allows them to cultivate an ability to engage emotionally-charged issues without allowing their emotions to dictate the terms of their engagement. Confronted with the discursive impasse that characterizes so many of our public debates in America, we all have a ready-made bridge in Classical antiquity — one that, as I have already seen, students are quite willing to walk across.

Jason Nethercut is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Knox College. His research interests lie in the construction of literary history in Greek and Latin poetry. He is currently working on a monograph that explores the use of Ennius’ Annales in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. Jason teaches many courses that foreground how Classical antiquity informs the modern world, especially contemporary popular culture.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Paideia Institute.