ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on primary themes to the recovery, development, and flourishing of philosophical atheology in Europe. Theology can develop rapidly in the intellectual context of available atheology, as the example of ancient Greek thinkers shows, followed by the example of Early Church Fathers. The revival of atheology during the Renaissance was an era when the Greeks and Romans were read with fresh eyes less beholden to orthodox theology. Thomas Hobbes's natural atheology coincides with his natural theology. His philosophy skeptically rejected the dualistic metaphysics and providential ethos of Christianity, leaving no rational justification for an immaterial soul, immortality, divine intervention, miracles, angels, or demons. Materialism is a strict form of natural atheology, by repudiating teleology and vitalism explanations and limiting rational explanation to the theories of mechanistic science. Empiricism treated science instrumentally, not realistically, while a realistic appreciation for lawful nature led through deism on the way to materialism, so empiricism and naturalism remained mostly separated.
