Can Atheists Be Stoics?

I think yes, but there will be conditions!

Today, religion is a bit of a red flag for many people. It’s not that the central ideas of many religions are necessarily untenable — for instance, being a kind and good person — it’s that, when looked at holistically, religions tend to feel outmoded and are too frequently leveraged in ways that seem very out-of-sync with their stated values (by ill-meaning and disingenuous people for the most part).

While it is not a religion, Stoicism can, when we really dive into and explore it, send up a few of these red flags. There is a Stoic God, but it’s not anything like the God of Abraham. Our God, and I still feel awkward referring to it with that word because I have my own hangups with religion, doesn’t ask for prayers, isn’t personal, doesn’t ask for money, and you are very unlikely to ever see a Stoic evangelist speaking in tongues to the yet-unconverted on the television early in the morning.

The Stoic God is more like an organism or, if you prefer, an animal. An animal unlike any other animal in that this animal is the universe. Zebras are zebras, bats are bats, sharks are sharks, and universes are universes; it is its own species of animal.

From the physics/cosmology of Stoicism is derived the rest of Stoicism which, in a not insignificant way, suggests that to be a Stoic one must buy into the Stoic conception of God or the whole framework breaks down.

From an academic and factual standpoint, that is true.

But does that mean an atheist can’t be a Stoic?

Before I give my opinion, and perhaps this request will beat me to it, I ask you to consider the following:

Does a Christian need to believe every word of the canonical texts of Christianity in order to be a Christian? Or can a Christian synthesize Christianity into something not totally “original” and still call themselves a Christian?

The answer to that is clear: Christianity has been reformed multiple times and each sect or branch resulting from those reformations refer to themselves as Christian — though with different labels.

Having spoken with Chris Fisher (Scholarch at the College of Stoic Philosophers) a few times about this, I think the concern of “Traditional Stoics” is one of specificity and language, so that if you are going to call yourself a Stoic (full stop) you must be the most academically sound version of a Stoic; you must be like Zeno, Chrysippus, or Cleanthes in your understanding of Stoicism.

I tend to agree with that. Which is why I don’t particularly mind the “Modern Stoic” movement — these Stoics run with the logic and ethics of traditional Stoicism, but do so without the physics/cosmology and actively try to adapt Stoicism for the contemporary world.

Moderns Stoics don’t have a claim on adapting Stoicism, and by that I mean “updating it”, Kai Whiting, a traditional Stoic, along with Leonidas Konstantakos expanded on the pre-existing idea of the Circle of Concern by adding animals and the environment.

So Traditional and Modern Stoics both seek to improve Stoicism, but have wildly different ideas about what exactly that means and what justifies doing so.

Many Modern Stoics are atheists.

If we agree that a Modern Stoic is a Stoic of a kind then an atheist can be a Stoic in that an atheist can be a Modern Stoic; but the clarifier of “Modern” is important because it conveys what a Modern Stoic isn’t. A Modern Stoic isn’t a Traditional Stoic; in my opinion, the only Stoics who can refer to themselves as Stoics without a qualifier are Traditional Stoics.

I imagine there is as much space in Stoicism for synthesis as there is in Christianity.

Southern Baptists, United Methodists, Lutherans, et cetera, all these are Christians, but their qualifiers define what sort.

Modern, Traditional, Secular, et cetera, each of these are Stoics, but their qualifiers define what sort.

Christians believe Jesus was the son of God. Stoics believe Virtue is the only good. As discussed elsewhere, those are the baselines for membership.

So long as we’re clear about what sort of Stoic we are, I think there’s plenty of room for various syntheses of Stoicism within the growing “-Stoic” community.

So, yes, atheists, you can be Stoics as well.