This was the idea that the Christians had as they were overturning the Greco-Roman world. Christians were the first people to be called atheists as they didnt care at all about Justice, Reason, Democracy, all the traces of the ancient world that still bless us today. Those virtues only gained any kind of foothold back into Western culture during times like the Renaissance when scholars were studying the remaining works of antiquity, heck the Founding Fathers who created the American Republic many of us live in all studied ancient Greek and were aware of this.