ABSTRACT
This question is debatable because words in current use have many meanings. Thus naturalism for a pagan is far from atheistic, since it finds room for many gods; and Democritus and Epicurus, though materialists, believed that such gods existed. Jews and Christians, on the other hand, were called atheists for not worshipping the gods recognized by the State; while for them naturalism implies atheism, because it denies the creation and government of the universe by a single God, revealed especially to the Hebrews. 18A modern naturalist would seem an atheist also to the pagans, because all reports of deities internal to the universe and interested in the political and moral welfare of any particular nation or particular soul seem to him myths; but they seem myths also to a modern pantheist; and who would dare to call Spinoza an atheist? The Hindus are polytheists, monotheists, and pantheists at once; and the Buddhists, though technically atheists, and denying the existence of souls, are ideally so religious and spiritual that it seems grotesque for a modern Christian to tax them with atheism.
