In ancient Greece brave thinkers discarded the notion of divine intervention and invented Science.
Helios driving the Chariot of the Sun Or so some believe. In reality some of the most prominent ancient scientists thought the universe and the human mind were touched with the Divine. These thinkers discarded superstition and considered the universe God-designed. They rejected primitive explanations for lightning, epilepsy, the passage of the moon and the sun, rainbows, earthquakes, etc. and embraced science based on the idea of an ordered Creation.
Thales Father of Philosophy
624-548 BC. Miletus
According to Aristotle Thales thought:
“everything is full of gods.”
https://www.loebclassics.com/view/aristotle-soul/1957/pb_LCL288.61.xml
Another combat took place in the sixth year, in the course of which, just as the battle was growing warm, day was on a sudden changed into night. This event had been foretold by Thales, the Milesian, who forewarned the Ionians of it, fixing for it the very year in which it actually took place. The Medes and Lydians, when they observed the change, ceased fighting, and were alike anxious to have terms of peace agreed on.
The History of Herodotus
http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.mb.txt
Pythagoras
570-495 BC He journeyed from Ionia to Italy.
Virtue is harmony, and so are health and all good and God himself; this is why they say that all things are constructed according to the laws of harmony.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosophers/Book_VIII#Pythagoras
Music of the Spheres
Life of Pythagoras by Iamblichus: Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.
Honor first the immortal gods, in the manner prescribed, and respect the oath.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pythagoras
Xenophanes
570-478 BC
According to Aristotle “regarding the whole material universe he stated that the Unity is God.”
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Aristot.%20Met.%201.986b
Anaxagoras
500-428 BC He voyaged from Ionia to Athens.
Nous has power over all things, both greater and smaller, that have life. And Nous had power over the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve in the beginning. And it began to revolve first from a small beginning; but the revolution now extends over a larger space, and will extend over a larger still. And all the things that are mingled together and separated off and distinguished are all known by Nous. And Nous set in order all things that were to be, and all things that were and are not now and that are, and this revolution in which now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon, and the air and the aether that are separated off.
He is sometimes mistakenly thought to be an atheist.
Democritus He developed atomic theory. 460-370 BC According to Sextus Empericus Democritus said: 129. They think divine thoughts with their mind. https://sacred-texts.com/cla/app/app63.htm According to Cicero Democritus said: "the elements of mind are divine" https://www.kurumbiwone.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Religious-Thought-of-Democritus.pdf Plato 424-348 BC Athens Timaeus: The beautiful orderliness of the universe is not only the manifestation of Intellect; it is also the model for rational souls to understand and to emulate.
Aristotle
384-322 BC
If people were living underground and then "quit their dark abode to come to us, where they should immediately behold the earth, the seas, the heavens; should consider the vast extent of the clouds and force of the winds; should see the sun, and observe his grandeur and beauty, and also his generative power, inasmuch as day is occasioned by the diffusion of his light through the sky; and when night has obscured the earth, they should contemplate the heavens bespangled and adorned with stars, the surprising variety of the moon in her increase and wane, the rising and setting of all the stars, and the inviolable regularity of their courses; when they should see these things, they would undoubtedly conclude that there are Gods, and that these are their mighty works.”
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14988/14988-h/14988-h.htm https://archive.org/details/historiaanimaliu00aris_0/page/n29/mode/2up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN8ortM4M3o Epicurus He founded the Epicurean school. 341-270 BC Epicurus wrote: For indeed who, think you, is a better man than he who holds reverent opinions concerning the gods, https://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Online/texts/316/Epicurus,%20LetterMenoeceus.pdf Epicurus is sometimes thought erroneously to be an atheist. https://diogenesofmayberry.com/2020/12/04/then-why-call-him-god-epicurus-never-said-what-everyone-thinks-he-did/ Chrysippus Stoic 279-206 BC If we saw a handsome mansion, we should infer that it was built for its masters and not for mice https://archive.org/details/denaturadeorumac00ciceuoft/page/310/mode/2up Posidonius Stoic
135-51 BC Rhodes Posidonius, who digs into the question as deep as one can, thinks that nature gives certain signs of future events. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0043%3Abook%3D1%3Asection%3D130 According to I. G. Kidd Posidonius accepted the Stoic doctrine of a rationally designed universe. https://books.google.com/books/about/Posidonius_Volume_3_The_Translation_of_t.html?id=krC5b4VOftsC In De Natura Deorum Cicero, as a Stoic character, wrote: But if all the parts of the universe have been so ordered that they could not have been better adapted for use, or more beautiful as regards appearance, let us see whether they are the work of chance, or whether their arrangement is one in which they could not possibly have been combined except by the guidance of consciousness and the divine providence. If, then, the things achieved by nature are more excellent than those achieved by art, and if art produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence. If at the sight of a statue or painted picture you know that art has been employed, and from the distant view of the course of a ship feel sure that it is made to move by art and intelligence, and if you understand on looking at a horologe, whether one marked out with lines, or working by means of water, that the hours are indicated by art and not by chance, with what possible consistency can you suppose that the universe which contains these same products of art, and their constructors, and all things, is destitute of forethought and intelligence? Why, if any one were to carry into Scythia or Britain the globe which our friend Posidonius has lately constructed, each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the sun and moon and five wandering stars as is brought about each day and night in the heavens, no one in those barbarous countries would doubt that that globe was the work of intelligence. https://archive.org/details/denaturadeorumac00ciceuoft/page/206/mode/2up?q=Posidonius
The Clockwork Universe: Antikythera mechanism
Stoic philosophers, who thought the universe was Divinely ordered, include more scientists like Strabo, Geminus, and Cleomedes.
If you think highly of the human mind and you think the universe is orderly then science becomes possible.
Thinkers like Strato and Lucretius exist in a twilight between theism and atheism, between science and ascience.