By David Carlin, The Catholic Thing - I’ll be reminded, of course, that belief in divinities, though widespread, is not universal. There are such persons as atheists in the world. While atheists may be more common today than they used to be, they have been around for thousands of years at a minimum. But atheism is (we may say) a sophisticated attitude while belief in divine powers is a naïve attitude. Disbelief is possible only because belief comes first.