Right back to the start

This is the story of a book which argues that everything in the world is made of matter; that human flourishing should be the goal of any rational society; and that not only is divine intervention in nature or history a myth, but that all religion is a masochistic self-deception the powerful use to control the credulous. Its author was not Richard Dawkins, Karl Marx, or Voltaire; but a Roman poet called Lucretius who lived in the first century BC.

Lucretius was a follower of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. His epic poem De rerum natura is a manifesto of Epicurean philosophy. This was not, as its ancient and Christian enemies said, a philosophy of hedonism. True human happiness for Epicurus was a serene state free from physical appetites and the fear of divine punishment. Escaping the torments of the flesh was easy: everything in moderation. As for the gods, Epicurus argued that everything is made of atoms and that human beings are physical objects like everything else in the universe.