Oliver, the early Christians could NOT be atheists, regardless of what the Romans "thought" on the subject. Why? Because atheists don't worship or believe in a deity.

Master,

One should be careful in using the term “primitive” to describe the abstract and super-mundane, if that is your intent. The notion of other-worldliness is within the domain of higher cognitions. I quote Einstein:

“To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself to us as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in there most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of all religiousness and in this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks the ranks of devoutly religious men.”

Is Einstein claiming to be a theist? No. Yet, he posits the existence of the super-mundane vis-à-vis common experience. If anything, Einstein calls the common place "primitive" and supra-realms of a higher-order.

Or, to cite Shakespeare,

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”(Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, c. 1600)
Here, Hamlet engages a ghost … an abstract spirit being. Spirituality is an abstract concept, whether one believes or does not believe in deity. Hegel (1807), who did not believe in deities, recognised Spirit in the Phenomenology of the Mind. Today, atheist, Murray Gell-Mann critiques Henri Poincaré notion of the mechanical and predictable Laws of Nature;

“Even when classical approximation is justified and quantum mechanical indeterminancy is correspondently ignored, there remains the widespread phenomena of chaos, in which the outcome of a nonlinear dynamical process is so sensitive to initial conditions that a small change in the situation at the beginning of the process results in a large difference at the end.”

Whether an ancient animist or a modern physicist, notions of alternative realities even exist, to separate humanity from rest of extant life.

Master,

The Romans did regard the Christians as atheists. Read Robin Lane Fox or Burton Mack. Words change meanings in various contexts. Atheism would be barely understood to an early Muslims, because non-belief was enjoined to ingratitude rather than faith.

Oliver, Master, oug,
you might be interested in the following discussion of atheism:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2009-4.pdf.

The importance of God to our everyday lives has been suppressed and forgotten for nearly 140 years since lawyers were readmitted to the English Parliament after being banned for 498 years. In 1870, after admitting Roman Catholics to English Public Life, after they found they did not have enough Protestants to run the colonies, there started to be an erosion on the teaching and understanding of the English system of Government.

The English system started in ancient Egypt, right after Moses led the people out of Egypt, and got the Jewish Constitution carved in rock from Mt Sinaii. A Sydney Scholar is currently collating the history of written Constitutions, starting at Mt Sinai and finishing in Sydney in 2009, as a resource that he will make available on a DVD, to anyone who wants one. It will detail the way that a Constitution protects a community, and how when there is not one, the quality of life of everyone declines and in some cases as in Russia and Nazi Germany and probably Zimbabwe, is totally destroyed for the bulk of the population.

The English Constitution is derived entirely from the Holy Bible. Lawyers have been lying to themselves, and everyone else, that the English do not have a written Constitution, but Lord Chatham argued that they do, in 1770, the same year that the English were forced to find a new colony having just lost the American Colonies to stupidity. The New American Colonies adopted the principles of the English Constitution, and the United States is the only successful republic, with over 200 years of successful self government. The central pillar of a working Constitution, is jury trial. It is guaranteed in the United States, and a proper reading of the Australian Constitution discloses it is guaranteed here, despite lawyers telling you it is not.

God started his comeback on the 7th July 2009, when the case Pace v The Commonwealth was decided. It is just a pity that High Court is stacked with lawyers, and not freely available to interpret Our Constitution. Its time St Kevin fixed it

I just had a phone call from a man in the Murray Goulburn Valley, 100 miles north of Melbourne, and he tells me that there is only enough water in the Eildon Dam, to supply essential drinking water to the million residents of that catchment area. Victoria went bad and abolished God in 1986. Straight after the Australia Act 1986 was passed they put Judges in charge of Victoria, and since they no longer believe in the Holy Bible or Almighty God, have put control of their Supreme Court in the hands of a Registrar and a Judge. Is it possible that even today, Almighty God matters? As the Supreme Being, is it possible that he gets a little annoyed when men and women destroy His Supreme Court, and do what the Jews did to their temple in Jerusalem, and turn it into a den of thieves.

The only time Jesus Christ exhibited extreme anger, was when he plaited a whip and drove the merchants out of the Temple. The people who are selling God’s Justice, in His Supreme Court, may just be responsible for the drought in Victoria. There can be no denying the lack of water. There can be no denying the first sentence of the Book of Ruth, When judges ruled there was famine in the land. Judges rule in Victoria, since 1986, when the distinction between court and Chambers was abolished. Chambers was a place where private business was conducted but court was a place where public business was done, and in a court there had to be 12 ordinary people, mostly Christians, before any proper business could be conducted.

We had a drought in Sydney a couple of years ago, and the Big Pentecostal church here had a mega prayer night. I know some people will say that was a coincidence, but next morning there was so much rain that Sydney Airport was disrupted. It has not stopped raining since, and is continuing to rain two years afterwards. We have plenty of water in Sydney, and even our wallabies can stop carrying water bottles

A Supreme Court Writ used to start, Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, We command you: Now since abolishing the Royal Plural, on Writs, the rain has stopped falling in Victoria. The We on a Writ, meant the Queen and Almighty God. The Supreme Court was a place of worship, not a den of thieves.

We should call on St Kevin, to at least give his Victorian worshippers a chance to call upon Almighty God again by freeing up access to the Federal Court, and letting them issue Writs, as they are authorized to do by S 23 of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976. It has power under S 23, but instead of having Writs, like a proper Superior Court of Record, it starts proceedings with an application. You do of course have to be a member of the Union of Lawyers, to get an application filed without question. Not only do they not conduct the Federal Court as a court, with a Justice and a jury, they also are very selective about who they let into it.

As a Temple of Mammon, just like they had under Baal, in Elijah’s day, they control who comes to their Court. Elijah was the original vexatious litigant. He had direct access to Almighty God, and told them they would get no more rain until they started to worship Almighty God again. When Elijah started to tell them they were doing it wrong, they persecuted him, and he went to live with a widow. After three years he came back and challenged the Priests of Baal, to a competition.

They erected two altars. One to Baal and one to Almighty God. Four hundred Baal Priests did their thingy. Dancing and praying, but nothing happened. Then Elijah took his offering, dug a ditch around it and poured four barrels of water over his burnt offering. Water was probably the most valuable commodity in a drought. Then Zappo, he called down Almighty God. The offering was burned to a crisp. He then beheaded the 400 Baal priests and it rained