The quality or state of being without God, faith, or religious belief; a lack of morality or reverence.
From 'godless' + '-ness' suffix (Old English origin) creating an abstract noun. This construction became common in Middle English to describe philosophical and moral conditions.
Medieval and Renaissance thinkers used 'godlessness' not just to describe atheism but as a catch-all term for any behavior they thought was immoral—it conflated disbelief with immorality in a way that shaped centuries of bias.
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