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| | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Atheism |
 | | In this sense too, the early Christians were known to the pagans as atheists, because they denied the heathen gods; while, from time to time, various religious and philisophical systems have, for similar reasons, been deemed atheistic. |
 | | By the Atheist I understand the man who not only holds off, like the sceptic, from the affirmative, but who drives himself, or is driven, to the negative assertion in regard to the whole unseen, or to the existence of God. |
 | | Consequently, while it would be unjust to class agnostics, materialists, or pantheists as necessarily also atheists, it cannot be denied that atheism is clearly perceived to be implied in certain phases of all these systems. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/02040a.htm (1944 words) |
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