Epicureans and the Ancient Greek Gods (Imagery of "Gods" / "Gods Among Men")

Quote from Matthaeus

But I’m an oddball of the group.

LOL

Quote from Oscar

I'm interested to hear more.

I bet you will get your wish, Oscar!

Matthaeus,

Re;- "If you read further up the thread you’ll see that there are three positions modern Epicureans take on the gods issue. Two of which posit that the gods do not actually exist and one (the Traditional view) that they fundamentally do exist".

Yes, I see that now. As I am new to the site I'm still trying to find my way around it.

I don't know exactly how Epicurus thought of the gods,or how modern Epicureans think of them. I suppose I haven't read enough about it. I know that I prefer the 'allegorical and artistic interpretations of the human psyche and nature' version. But I don't know whether Epicurus would have agreed.

Is it possible that Epicurus didn't really know either, but had to say "the gods exist" to avoid accusations of atheism? Then he would have had to fit the gods in with his axiomatic "everything consists of atoms and void", so proposed material gods who existed somewhere else?

I think also Lucretius started De rerum natura with a hymn to Venus as a personification of fertility. My Latin isn't good enough to read it other than in translation.

It's only a suggestion - probably completely wrong. My interest in Epicurus has more to with his advice on how to live a pleasant life than how he thought of the gods, but I have wondered about this, myself, without coming to any firm conclusions.

It's a never ending topic that for sure. All of these points are questions for debate;

Quote: "The issue is that Epicurus himself posits that the gods are in fact real."

I have definitely seen the points where Epicurus says that gods exist, but never have I seen a specific statement that Zeus or Apollo or any other SPECIFIC god existed in the way that the other greeks held them to exist .

Quote from Matthaeus

Yet without giving any evidence of their existence as specifically described.

Of course in addition to the observation that most of the works are lost, we do have in "On The Nature of the Gods" a brief description of some of the major aspects.

Quote from Matthaeus

that assured his followers that they do in fact exist only to avoid accusations of atheism. I

That is also not something I believe to be true. Most of his contemporaries apparently felt him to be a true-blue atheist despite his denials, so it intended as a ruse it was not very effective.

Quote from Matthaeus

a person needs to be able to look past or justify a complete theological fabrication (an outright lie) by Epicurus himself,

And of course I fully disagree with that

My views are probably clear in other places, Clive, but to summarize here I take the position that Epicurus was absolutely serious that in an infinite and eternal universe full of life there are going to be beings which are perfectly happy and don't die. That really is a highly likely and reasonable conclusion of the fundamental premises about life in the universe. But that also really has nothing necessarily to do omipotence, or omniscience, or with Zeus and Athena running around creating havoc, all of which specifically or implicitly Epicurus denounced.

One thing that is ABSOLUTELY clear is that Epicurus said that there are no "supernatural" gods In control of the universe.

And my personal position is that much of the conflict comes from the fact that Epicurus was willing to use the word "gods" to describe his blissful beings (apparently, it would be necessary to check the Greek) while most people INSIST that the word "god" must mean supernatural or omniscient or omnipotent or some combination of the three.

Quote from Matthaeus

Though the subject is endlessly discussed with no reconciliation, It represents an important critical analysis of a very important aspect of the philosophy.

I fully agree with that. Everyone who studies Epicurus needs to study this aspect of his thought, just as much as his thought on the size of the sun, which shows his approach.

Quote from Matthaeus

The problem is that he asserts their reality without evidence of any kind.

I think this is the heart of the dispute - the meaning and implications of the word "evidence." Maybe because of my legal occupation, I am fully comfortable with the idea that circumstantial evidence is fully as admissible in considering difficult issues as is "direct" evidence. While it would certainly be preferable to have "eyeball" /photograph evidence of a "god" in its native environment, we don't have that level of science available to us, just as we can't eyeball atoms but have firm confidence that they exist.

So in my world the issue is not that Epicurus did not have any evidence, but that some people don't accept his evidence as sufficient, and that in itself leads off into very important issues of debate over the nature of "evidence." Here we are at a terrible loss of texts, although I do think that Philodemus' "On Methods of Inference" is helpful, and other clear implications can be drawn in other texts that Epicurus was well aware of the issues involved in "circumstantial evidence."

At the risk of getting too basic, I think one of the many issues that Epicurus was concerned about was the evidence implications of "Life exists only on earth."

Much like "The earth is the center of the universe," if either or both of those are true, then there is clearly something special about the earth, and that something special would imply a supernatural explanation.

I therefore think that it was important to Epicurus to make the obvious point that there is never only one thing of a kind here on earth, and therefore (if the universe is boundless and eternal, as he had elsewhere given his argument) then life will exist throughout the universe, and not just here.

Once the existence of life throughout the universe is established through "never one of a kind" then you apply the "isonomia" that things also exist in a progression from "lower" to higher" in terms of complexity, and you arrive fairly easily at the conclusion that there are beings in the universe who do not die, and don't work all day to pay taxes.

I personally am satisfied that even if Epicurus' argument is ultimately no more complex than this, that it is compelling.

Mattheus not to try to pin you down for the sake of pinning you down, but it might help the flow of the conversation if we all understood what you personally think is the most compelling argument on the ultimate issues. Can you give that in condensed form?

Quote from Matthaeus

My only issue, and it was the issue that caused me to no longer refer to myself as an Epicurean was the theology issue. It was a dealbreaker. I think that aspect aside, which we discuss quite regularly, we agree on more ideas than not.

Just to be sure I understand, so you reject Epicurus' view as being insufficient/illogical/whatever, but not because you are certain of your own competitive view, but because you just think his was insufficient - full stop? Or do you believe there was a particular alternative he should have embraced?