Theistic Background

Contents
Enlightenment Context
Early Arguments
Virtuous Atheism
Atheist Amoralism

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The first avowed atheists, writing anonymously in the final quarter of the seventeenth century, propounded their views in an intellectual context completely dominated by religious morality. Traditional Christian morality taught that the highest good in life was the future enjoyment of the company of God for eternity, and leading a virtuous life by following God's revealed moral commands was the way of achieving this highest good. It was furthermore generally assumed that human beings were fallen and not in a position to act morally without God's help (grace) and without divine sanctions (afterlife rewards and punishments).

It was generally recognised that there were fundamentally two ways of discovering what God's will for humanity was: through God's self-revelation in scripture, and through natural reason (inspecting one's moral intuitions as they are set down or 'written' in the conscience by God).

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