In Lucretius’s The Nature of the Universe – which is the greatest classical statement of a system of atheism – it is argued that it is impossible that matter was created and that it must, therefore, be eternal and uncreated. The basis of this argument is the general causal principle: “Nothing can come from nothing” [Ex nihilo, nihil fit.] In the late 17th and early 18th centuries this principle was turned against the Epicurean atheism of thinkers such as Lucretius and his modern counterparts. Mo