ATHARIM (5.th'a-rim), (Heb. ath-aw reenz', regions), a place in southern Palestine, near which the Israelites passed on their way thither (Num. xxi:l), the Hebrew of which is incorrectly rendered in the English version "the way of the sties." Properly, by the way of Atharim.
ATHEISM (Gr. d OE° so, without God), the denial of the existence of God.
(1) General Use of the Term. The Greeks termed a man aOcos, atheist, when he denied the existence of the gods recognized by• the state. The Pagans called Christians atheists because they would not acknowledge the heathen gods and worship them. In the theological contro versies of the early Church the opposite parties quite frequently called each other atheists.
Atheists have been also known by the name infidels; but the word infidel is now commonly used to distinguish a more numerous party, and is become almost synonymous with deist. He who disbelieves the existence of a God, as an infinite, intelligent, and a moral agent, is a direct or speculative atheist ; he who confesses a Deity and providence in words, but denies them in his life and actions, is a practical atheist. That atheism existed in some sense before the flood, may be suspected from what we read in Scrip ture, as well as from heathen tradition ; and it is not very unreasonable to suppose that the deluge was partly intended to evince to the world a heavenly power, as Lord of the universe, and superior, to the visible system of nature. This was at least a happy consequence of that fatal catastrophe; for, as is observed by Dean Sherlock, "The universal deluge, and the con fusion of languages, had so abundantly convinced mankind of a divine power and providence, that there eras no such creature as an atheist, till their idolatries had tempted men rather to own no God than such as the heathens worshiped." (2) Atheism in Greece. Atheistical principles were long nourished and cherished in Greece, and especially among the atomical, peripatetic, and sceptical philosophers; and hence some have as cribed the origin of atheism to the philosophy of Greece. This is true, if they mean that species of refined atheism which contrives any impious scheme of principles to account for the origin of the world, without a Divine Being.
(3) Martyrs. and Professors. Absurd and irrational as atheism is, it has had its votaries and martyrs. In the seventeenth century, Spi noza, a pantheist, was its noted defender. Lucilio
Vanini, a native of Naples, also publicly taught atheism in France; and, being convicted of it at Toulouse. was condemned and executed in tfitc). It has been questioned however, whether any man ever seriously adopted such a principle. The pretensions to it have been generally founded on j ride or affectation. The open avowal of atheism by several of the leading members of the French convention seems to have been an extraordinary moral phenomenon. This, however, as we have seen, was too vague and uncomfortable a princi ple to last long.
(4) Speculative Atheism. Archbishop Til lotson justly observes that speculative atheism is unreasonable upon five accounts: 1. Because it gives no tolerable account of the existence of the world. 2. It does not give any reasonable ac count of the universal consent of mankind in this apprehension that there is a God. 3. It requires more evidence for things than they are capable of giving. 4. The atheist pretends to know that which no man can know. 5. Atheism contradicts itself.
Under the first of these he thus argues: "I ap E.cal to any man of reason whether anything can be more unreasonable than obstinately to impute an effect to chance, which carries in the very face of it all the arguments and characters of a wise de sign and contrivance. Was ever any considerable work, in which there was required a great variety of parts, and a regular and orderly disposition of those parts, done by chance? Will chance fit means to ends, and that in ten thousand in stances, and not fail in any one? How often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of let ters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground, be fore they would fall into an exact poem; yea, or so mob as to make a good discourse in prose? And may not a little book be as easily made by chance as the great volume of the world? How long might a man be in sprinkling colors upon can vas with a careless hand before they would happen to make the exact picture of a man? And is a man easier made by chance than his picture? flow long might twenty thousand blind men, who should be sent out from several remote parts of England, wander up and down before they would all meet upon Salisbury plain, and fall into rank and file in the exact order of an army? And yet, this is much more easy to be imagined than how the innumerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous themselves into a world."