The Greeks had many gods which they did not take very seriously. Their men of wisdom certainly did not. They recognized the presence of a Creator God and the laws of nature in the world around them, but they relied on man’s reasoning capacities to figure out the right and the wrong, the good and the bad. They did not use the "holy cudgel" to beat men into good behavior.

The prophets who in actual fact have largely set our moral and ethical guidelines had little, if any, use for human reasoning. They did not see the need for human reasoning to justify their teaching, because they were passing on the orders from the Almighty. They relied exclusively on the "holy cudgel" to persuade the multitudes to obey and, curiously enough, to love.

As it turned out, Western man chose for his path to a good life not the teachings of the wise Greeks but rather the admonishments and certitudes passed down by the Lord through the mouths of self-appointed zealous prophets. Morality and ethics were thus relegated to a subsidiary role within the over-all dogma of a religion practiced, initially, only by a relatively small and insignificant tribe. To say this is not to deprecate religion or faith in God. It is said only in regret that Western man, starting in the 4^th century, committed a tremendous blunder by relegating the teaching and promotion of morality and ethics – the most important concepts which instruct our behavior as individuals as well as a society – to the apparatus of organized religion.

It is a fact that in the 4^th century Emperor Constantine gave the Christian Church a foot in the door of secular political power and with it a new lease on life. For centuries since then the Church has greedily grasped for more of that secular power at every chance it has had. It is also a fact that the apparatus of the Christian establishment has – like any other totalitarian establishment worth its salt – maintained strict control on the moral and political "truth" that was fed to the multitudes. According to the Church, there was no history before Christ worth knowing by the common man (aside from the Old Testament). Of the rich and promising corpus of Greek philosophy, Christianity plagiarized and assimilated those parts that it found compatible with its own dogma , and assiduously hunted down and eradicated the written record of all the parts that did not.

As a consequence, the idea of Democracy disappeared from Western thought for more than a millennium. Instead, the Church-backed doctrine of the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ and the ‘Donation of Constantine’ sustained the stultifying feudal system in the Western world. Ecclesiastical and secular power went hand-in-hand, often residing in the same tyrannical institution. Until well into the 17^th century slaughter followed upon slaughter, all for the sake of "faith".  What was worse still was the impoverishment of the minds of men as individuals. In fact, men were robbed of the intellectual tools that would allow them to think and reason freely about their own nature and morality. Men were instructed by Christianity -- and cautioned not to question the instruction -- about what was right and wrong for them according to the Lord, not according to men.

An even worse consequence of the subsumption and adulteration of morality and ethics by religious dogma was that certain values became completely distorted. All organized religions, no matter how hotly they deny it, are by their very nature intolerant and exclusionary of the non-believers. Even as they teach their adherents to love, in the real world -- outside the church, synagogue or mosque -- human nature being what it is, the adherents carry within them mistrust and hate for the non-believers. The ethic having been adulterated by religious dogma, the killing of non-believers in a "holy war" is not only permitted but even extolled. And because such licence to kill violates the very foundation of rational morality, it is easier for the believer to disrespect the other virtues also. After all, it is not one’s own uninformed conscience but rather the Almighty who is the judge of what is right and wrong.

To support my argument I call upon Karl Popper, an eminent philosopher with very thorough knowledge of the history and philosophical achievements of the Greeks. In the following passage from "Conjectures and Refutations" (1963), Ch. 5 -- Back to the presocratics, Sec. XI, Karl R. Popper refers to ‘religious and cosmological teaching’ that stifles new ideas and free inquiry. But he might just as well be describing how the three largest organized religions have dealt also with the heretics in the area of moral philosophy.

The early history of Greek philosophy, especially the history from Thales to Plato, is a splendid story. It is almost too good to be true. In every generation we find at least one new philosophy, one new cosmology of staggering originality and depth. How was this possible? Of course one cannot explain originality and genius. But one can try to throw some light on them. What was the secret of the ancients? I suggest that it was a tradition -- the tradition of critical discussion.

I will try to put the problem more sharply. In all or almost all civilizations we find something like a religious and cosmological teaching, and in many societies we find schools. Now schools, especially primitive schools, all have, it appears, a characteristic structure and function. Far from being places of critical discussion they make it their task to impart a definite doctrine, and to preserve it, pure and unchanged. It is the task of a school to hand on the tradition, the doctrine of its founder, its first master, to the next generation, and to this end the most important thing is to keep the doctrine inviolate. A school of this kind never admits a new idea. New ideas are heresies, and lead to schisms; should a member of the school try to change the doctrine, he is expelled as a heretic. But the heretic claims, as a rule, that his is the true doctrine of the founder. Thus not even the inventor admits that he has introduced an invention; he believes, rather, that he is returning to the true orthodoxy which has somehow been perverted.

In this way all changes of doctrine -- if any -- are surreptitious changes. They are all presented as re-statements of the true sayings of the master, of his own words, his own meaning, his own intentions.

It is clear that in a school of this kind we cannot expect to find a history of ideas, or even the material for such a history. For new ideas are not admitted to be new. Everything is ascribed to the master. All we might reconstruct is a history of schisms, and perhaps a history of the defence of certain doctrines against the heretics.

There cannot, of course, be any rational discussion in a school of this kind. There may be arguments against dissenters and heretics, or against some competing schools. But in the main it is with assertion and dogma and condemnation rather than argument that the doctrine is defended.

In "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (1966), Vol. 1 - The Spell of Plato, Ch. 10 -- The Open Society, Sec. II, Karl R. Popper identifies " ... the political and spiritual revolution which had begun with the breakdown of Greek tribalism [and] reached its climax in the fifth century, with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war."

... and in Sec. III Popper remarks on how extraordinary was this moment in the history of mankind, because in this generation of the Greek civilization " ... there rose a new faith in reason, freedom, and, as I believe, the only possible faith, of the open society."

In Sec. IV, to show exactly what ideas were arrested for centuries and could have conceivably been lost forever, Popper cites passages from the speeches of Democritus and Pericles, two notable public men of the state of Athens at the dawn of democracy. We will find testimonials to the same highly-valued principles of the ancient Greeks coursing through the oratory and writing of the men who conceived of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.

This generation, which marks a turning point in the history of mankind, I should like to call the Great Generation; it is the generation which lived in Athens just before, and during, the Peloponnesian war. There were great conservatives among them, like Sophocles, or Thucydides. There were men among them who represented the period of transition; who were wavering, like Euripides, or skeptical, like Aristophanes. But there was also the great leader of democracy, Pericles, who formulated the principle of equality before the law and of political individualism, and Herodotus, who was welcomed and hailed in Pericles' city as the author of a work that glorified these principles. ... Protagoras ... and ... Democritus must also be counted among the Great Generation. ... There was the school of Gorgias - Alcidamas, Lycophron and Antisthenes, who developed the fundamental tenets of anti-slavery, of a rational protectionism, and of anti-nationalism, ... And there was, perhaps the greatest of all, Socrates, who taught the lesson that we must have faith in human reason, but ... beware of dogmatism ...

From Democritus:

- Not out of fear but out of a feeling of what is right should we abstain from doing wrong.

- Virtue is based, most of all, upon respecting the other man.

- Every man is a little world of his own.

- We ought to do our utmost to help those who have suffered injustice.

- To be good means to do no wrong; and also, not to want to do wrong.

- It is good deeds, not words, that count.

- The poverty of a democracy is better than slavery.

- The wise man belongs to all countries, for the home of a great soul is the whole world.

...and from Pericles:

- Our political system does not compete with institutions that are elsewhere in force. We do not copy our neighbors, but try to be an example.

- Our administration favours the many instead of the few: this is why it is called a democracy.

- The laws afford equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, but we do not ignore the claims of excellence.

- When a citizen distinguishes himself, then he will be called to serve the state, in preference to others, not as a matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit; and poverty is no bar.

- The freedom we enjoy extends also to ordinary life; we are not suspicious of one another, and do not nag our neighbor if he chooses to go his own way.

- But this freedom does not make us lawless. We are taught to respect the magistrates and the laws, and never to forget that we must protect the injured. And we are also taught to observe those unwritten laws whose sanction lies only in the universal feeling of what is right.

- Our city is thrown open to the world; we never expel a foreigner.

- We are free to live exactly as we please, and yet we are always ready to face danger.

- We love beauty without indulging in fancies, and although we try to improve our intellect, this does not weaken our will.

- To admit one's poverty is no disgrace with us; but we consider it disgraceful not to make an effort to avoid it.

- An Athenian citizen does not neglect public affairs when attending to his private business.

- We consider a man who takes no interest in the state not as harmless, but as useless; and although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.

- We do not look upon discussion as a stumbling block in the way of political action, but as an indispensable preliminary to acting wisely.

- We believe that happiness is the fruit of freedom and freedom that of valor, and we do not shrink from the dangers of war.

- To sum up, I claim that Athens is the School of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian grows up to develop a happy versatility, a readiness for emergencies, and self-reliance.

Popper says: "These words ... express the true spirit of the Great Generation." One can only dream of what might have been and what would be now, if Western civilization had continued to cherish that same spirit through the centuries, rather than extinguishing it. But there is cause for cautious optimism for mankind in the next millennium. Those very same ideas, expressed by Democritus and Pericles can be triumphant after all, if Western man finds the courage to free them from religious bondage and have them, once again, stand on their own.