Posts by Cassius

I am sure others can do better and I hope they will. In the meantime, I have set up a first version of an article on this topic at the link below. This is a particularly good example of where collaboration can make for a better product. I will have to retain editorial control over the article to prevent it from turning into a camel designed by committee, as the article is long already, but i am sure that there are points not raised in the article that could be fruitfully added. Please submit commentary on it in the designated discussion thread. I'll eventually publish it over on substack for wider circulation.

Blog Article

Epicurean Responses To The Intelligent Design Argument

Introduction: A Very Old Argument

The intelligent design argument is one of the oldest and most persistent claims in the history of human thought. In its simplest form it says: the world we observe is too complex, too orderly, and too well-fitted to human life to have arisen without purpose. Something designed it. Something ordered it. Something or someone stands behind the apparent organization of nature and is responsible for that organization existing. Whether that something is called God,…

Cassius

April 28, 2026 at 4:41 PM

This thread is for discussion of the Blog Article:

Blog Article

Epicurean Responses To The Intelligent Design Argument

Introduction: A Very Old Argument

The intelligent design argument is one of the oldest and most persistent claims in the history of human thought. In its simplest form it says: the world we observe is too complex, too orderly, and too well-fitted to human life to have arisen without purpose. Something designed it. Something ordered it. Something or someone stands behind the apparent organization of nature and is responsible for that organization existing. Whether that something is called God,…

Cassius

April 28, 2026 at 4:41 PM

Well duh sometimes I wonder if Cassius can walk and chew gum at the same time. While we wait for the Epicurean combination of Richard Dawkins and Victor Stenger to arrive, I can at least use the method we've been discussing to provide something to those who would be interested in an Epicurus-themed response. I'm reminded of the cliche about lots of things being possible when you don't care who gets the credit. I'll get something started and then I can incorporate suggestions from others over time, as with the other articles.

Please stand by.

Thanks Martin!

Great points Dave. I am struggling with some of the same questions.

I think it could EASILY trim the length and tune the grade level to the intended audience.

Already I have run into the question in regard to what to link from the Epicurustoday.com home page. for example the buttons on the very front page point to Canonics, Ethics, and Physics sections, but I don't really want to dump people straight to the full versions, so currently they point to a condensed version of the longer article, which exists in the "analysis" section of the site.

Now that's not ideal either, because I don't really want people who go to the full analysis thinking that they are rereading what they've already read, but then again I don't want to offer only the condensed version. Same thing would apply in similar fashion to crafting particular articles for particular reading levels.

This is a particularly good line:

Though in this respect Aristotle is more culpable than Plato, as banishing God, the fountain of final causes, and substituting nature in his stead; and, at the same time, receiving final causes through his affection to logic, not theology.

It seems like pretty well accepted that Plato and his cave and ideal forms was the wrong path, but Aristotle seems to get a pass that he does not deserve.

Don here is an example - something to which you can personally relate given that you are the star of the result. I will probably polish this further and come up with a graphic for the heading and move this to substack eventually, but while we work through what all this means, take a look at this when you have time and let me know what you think.

Yes I completely agree about Prager U, and it definitely looks like they are associated with production of the film as well.

1 - Do you input those texts and papers and "query" that as it's training model? Yes that's exactly how I am starting. I am telling it specific papers to review (mainly Sedley but also others) and I am also building a list of "instructions" on things to avoid and things to prefer, and I have also fed it many of the papers/pages/blog articles which we've prepared in the past and told it to use these as the base for its writing (rather than just letting it make its own way as to what positions to favor.

2 - Do you ask it specific queries section by section? Pretty much yes here too, but I am more providing it an outline of the structure of the document and what I expect it to say. Now of course it would be useless if it just told me what i wanted to hear, so I often give it particular citations and directions for each section.

3 - Do you simply use it for grammar and syntax or to come up with "turns of phrase"? Many of the "turns of phrase" are come up with by it. It seems like it has a style of writing (which I also tell it to be firm or not-so-firm) that does seem like an advanced form of grammar-checking. It doesn't provide "grammar" so much as it provides "manners of arguing"

4 - In a way it's just going for and compiling citations, but it's far beyond that. It's very hard for me to distinguish between what it is doing and having a "real person" compose the argument.

Of course one of the keys here is that at least in most cases I know the material, know what to expect, and can recognize if it botches a quotation, so I have pretty firm quality control over it for that reason. Of course if i were asking it about brain surgery I would have no clue how to watch it for errors.

I have another one close to ready to go which will go specifically through the opposition to geometry. It's even more specialized than this one, but the argument is very logical and understandable and even if some detail of a person gets botched, it's still very possible to understand the logical force of the general argument and know that it's solid even if a detail is botched.

I've come near a line today however. I decided I would take advantage of it to go back and study this issue of what Aristotle said against Democritus, and how Epicurus adjusted his views of atomism to account for that. Years ago I had read some articles on that by Farley but it didn't make impression on me at the time and I've never had time to dig into Aristotle far enough to even find the references, much less understand them.

So the third article that will come will address Epicurus' advocary for "minlmal parts" of the atom. After reading what Claude has compiled I think I finally see the issue and how indeed Epicurus did make significant advances beyond Democritus on that part of atomism. The key seems to be that Aristotle strung together four or five highly logic-based objections to Democritus that - if not dealt with - were held to be persuasive against atomism. After all, Aristotle was a pretty smart guy and he rejected atomism.

Claude was able to find the citations for each of those Aristiotle objections, explain their meaning in pretty plain language, and then explain how Epicurus answered them. The key to the answer is that they all require reference to "parts" of an atom and not consider atoms to be a monolithic blob, as Democritus "apparently" had done.

So this excursion has proven to be very helpful to me in addition to producing a useful article. (And that's the point of the output right now - to get some reasonable articles out there where we've never been able to get anything for ten years.) But on the "minimal parts of the atom" in particular, i think we're going to find that this will prove to be an illustration of Epicurus really getting head-to-head on the logic games, which is making me more confident that when Sedley says (inferential basis of epicurean ethics article) that the division of feeling into pleasure and pain is much influenced by dividing nature into matter and void.

Anyway now I am rambling but the basic point is that if you feed in the authorities you want it to summarize, and you also issue specific instructions as to the outline of the article, and you have enough command of the subject to know that the article is what you want it to say, it can produce very good output. Not ideal - the ideal in my case would be to find a time machine, go back to college and spend a career specializing in classical philosophy and physics, and write every word myself. That's not going to happen, so we have another back and forth about "the perfect" fighting with "the good" and how to reconcile them.

Closing on this point Don: As you yourself have said, there would be very little benefit in flooding the world with AI generated pamphlets. But here we are using it to pull together research on matters that we largely understand, and we can take that and use it on the podcast and in discussions to advance real live conversations.

That is the key Matteng. And this is why it is so important to dismiss the idea that "the tranquillity" is the Epicurean goal. The wise man feels his emotions MORE deeply than others , and there are only two feelings, pleasure and pain. Life is about deeply feeling pleasure. Tranquility is one pleasure, but there are many many others that make like worthwhile. There may be some people whose goal in life is to say "I am calm" but that is a natural Stoic who drains life of the majority of its pleasures and thereby misses the whole point of living.

It certainly illustrates something but i am not sure exactly what!

This thread is for discussion of the blog article:

Blog Article

The Continuing Vitality Of Epicurean Physics

Introduction: A Story About the Sun That Is Really About Everything

In a recent scholarly essay, T.H.M. Gellar-Goad takes up one of the most ridiculed positions in the history of ancient philosophy: the Epicurean claim that the sun is the size it appears to be. Cicero mocked it. Stoic philosophers used it as evidence that Epicureans were intellectually unserious. Modern critics have repeated the mockery with updated vocabulary. And on the surface, the laughter seems justified — after all, we…

Cassius

April 27, 2026 at 9:52 AM

Very dramatic!

"Forceful engagement" does not mean forcing anything on anybody. It means engaging in the public debate clearly and strongly and making one's views open to those who are willing to listen and are interested, just as the ancient Epicureans did.

I don't think many people here are likely to misinterpret my terminology, but I do observe that some are apt to push back against the idea of "outreach." Therefore I am adding the following to the FAQ:

Thread

New FAQ Entry - Is Epicurean Philosophy Purely a Matter of Personal Self-Improvement, or Does It Have a Missionary / Outreach Aspect?

Is Epicurean Philosophy Purely a Matter of Personal Self-Improvement, or Does It Have a Missionary / Outreach Aspect?

The short answer is emphatically the latter: Epicurean philosophy has a strong and explicit outreach mission built into it from the very beginning. The common modern image of the Epicurean as a quietly self-satisfied person who has retired from the world to cultivate private pleasures is a serious distortion -- one rooted largely in centuries of hostile characterization by Stoic…

Cassius

April 27, 2026 at 4:19 AM

Is Epicurean Philosophy Purely a Matter of Personal Self-Improvement, or Does It Have a Missionary / Outreach Aspect?

The short answer is emphatically the latter: Epicurean philosophy has a strong and explicit outreach mission built into it from the very beginning. The common modern image of the Epicurean as a quietly self-satisfied person who has retired from the world to cultivate private pleasures is a serious distortion -- one rooted largely in centuries of hostile characterization by Stoic and Christian opponents who preferred to paint Epicureans as self-indulgent recluses rather than acknowledge what they actually were: tireless evangelists for a philosophy they believed could heal the suffering of all mankind.

The Misconception: "Live Unknown"

Some cite the Epicurean saying lathe biosas -- "live unknown" -- as evidence that Epicurean philosophy counsels withdrawal from public life and indifference to others. But this saying refers specifically to the avoidance of political ambition and the pursuit of fame and power -- not to any withdrawal from human contact or any indifference to sharing the philosophy. As the record of Epicurus's own life and the lives of his successors makes abundantly clear, no leading Epicurean ever came close to living unknown as a philosopher. They were among the most prolific writers and active recruiters in the ancient world.

Epicurus Himself: Three Hundred Books and a Self-Propagating School

Epicurus was one of the most productive writers in all of antiquity. Diogenes Laertius records that he authored approximately three hundred books -- all in his own words, without citing other authors -- surpassing even Aristotle in sheer volume. Epictetus, a Stoic opponent, gives involuntary testimony to Epicurus's outreach mission when he writes with evident sarcasm: "Why do you even light a lamp and labor for our sake, and write so many books?" The very question acknowledges that Epicurus labored for the sake of others -- it was his opponents who found this embarrassing, not the Epicureans themselves.

Norman DeWitt, in his article "Epicurus: Philosophy for the Millions" (The Classical Journal, 1947), describes in detail how Epicurus deliberately organized his school as what DeWitt calls a "self-propagating sect." After being expelled from Mytilene by hostile Platonists and eventually settling in Athens, Epicurus developed a systematic program of outreach. As DeWitt explains in his own words from that article:

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Outside of the school he instituted a method of disseminating his new doctrine by personal contacts. Each convert was urged to win over the members of his own household, his friends and neighbors, "never slackening in spreading by every means the doctrines of the true philosophy." Prospective converts were plied with books and tracts. Epicurus himself, like John Wesley, became a busy compiler of textbooks, and specific instructions were written for the proper use of them. He made outlines of doctrine for those who were unable to live in residence. The allegiance of disciples living in other cities was retained by epistles painstakingly composed.

DeWitt captures the spirit of this mission by describing Epicurean philosophy as having the color of a gospel. He contrasts this explicitly with the elitism of Platonism and Stoicism, which catered to aristocratic courts and the socially ambitious. The Epicurean philosophy, by contrast, was designed to be accessible to anyone: men, women, slaves, and free citizens alike, "never slackening in spreading by every means the doctrines of the true philosophy."

Within two centuries, as DeWitt notes, this program had spread throughout the Graeco-Roman world. Even Cicero, who despised Epicureanism, was forced to acknowledge that it had "taken Italy by storm."

The Ancient Sources: "Never Cease Proclaiming"

The outreach character of Epicurean philosophy is not just a feature of Epicurus's personal practice -- it is directly affirmed in the preserved sayings of the school. Vatican Saying 41 is among the most explicit:

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"We must laugh and philosophize at the same time and do our household duties and employ our other faculties, and never cease proclaiming the sayings of the true philosophy."

This is not a counsel of private self-improvement. The command to "never cease proclaiming" is as direct a missionary instruction as one finds in any philosophical or religious tradition. And Vatican Saying 52 gives this outreach mission a cosmic scope:

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"Friendship dances around the world bidding us all to awaken to the recognition of happiness."

DeWitt identifies this saying with the Hippocratic tradition of philanthropia -- the love of humanity -- and observes that it describes a personified Love going "dancing round and round the inhabited earth, crying to all men to awake to the blessedness of the happy life." The whole world, in Epicurus's view, was a single parish in need of the same healing.

Cicero's Testimony: Epicureans as Pamphleteers

Among the charges Cicero leveled at Epicureans -- and Cicero was one of the most hostile witnesses available -- was that they were too eager to make their philosophy accessible to the masses. He complained that Epicureans had begun writing in Latin for general audiences, deliberately bypassing the educated elites to reach ordinary people. This was, in Cicero's view, beneath the dignity of true philosophy. From the Epicurean perspective, it was the whole point. The record of Cicero's own era confirms that Epicurean books, summaries, and epitomes circulated so widely that they constituted what we would today recognize as a publishing campaign targeting the broadest possible readership.

Diogenes of Oinoanda: The Inscription as Missionary Monument

Perhaps the most dramatic single example of Epicurean outreach in all of antiquity is the great inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda. In the second century AD, an elderly Epicurean named Diogenes caused a philosophical treatise to be carved in stone on a public stoa in the city of Oinoanda in what is now Turkey -- a monument running to hundreds of fragments, intended to bring Epicurean teachings to all who passed by, including future generations and foreign visitors.

Diogenes states his rationale explicitly in Fragment 3 of the inscription:

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"Now, since the remedies of the inscription reach a larger number of people, I wished to use this stoa to advertise publicly the medicines that bring salvation... Having already reached the sunset of my life (being almost on the verge of departure from the world on account of old age), I wanted, before being overtaken by death, to compose a fine anthem to celebrate the fullness of pleasure... as I have said before, the majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing (for in mutual emulation they catch the disease from one another, like sheep); moreover, it is right to help also generations to come (for they too belong to us, though they are still unborn) and, besides, love of humanity prompts us to aid also the foreigners who come here."

This is one of the most explicit statements of a philosophical outreach mission in all of classical antiquity. Diogenes uses the language of medicine -- the philosophy as healing remedy, the world as suffering from a plague of false beliefs -- and extends his concern not merely to his fellow citizens but to foreigners, future generations, and indeed all of humanity. The inscription was not a private monument but a public one, deliberately placed where it could reach the widest possible audience. Nothing about it resembles the behavior of a person counseled to "live unknown."

Lucretius: Bringing Light to Hearts in Darkness

The Roman poet Lucretius, writing in the first century BC, gives perhaps the most vivid literary expression to the Epicurean sense of philosophical mission. The opening of On the Nature of Things frames the entire poem as an act of rescue: Lucretius writes to carry the light of Epicurean understanding into the darkness where human beings wander in fear. The famous lines from Book 1 announce that the "terror and darkness of mind" tormenting humanity must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun but by the rational account of nature:

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"This terror then and darkness of the mind must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun and the gleaming shafts of day, but by the aspect and the law of nature."

And in Book 2, Lucretius describes himself as following in the footsteps of Epicurus across untrodden fields, gathering flowers to weave a garland that no one has yet placed on any head -- imagery of discovery combined with the desire to share what has been found. Throughout the poem, the driving energy is not the contentment of a philosopher who has found his own peace, but the urgency of someone who wants to bring that peace to others.

Lucretius describes Epicurus himself in terms of heroic mission: a man who "first dared to raise mortal eyes against" the oppressive weight of superstition and "burst out beyond the flaming walls of the world" to bring back the knowledge that frees humanity. This is the language of a founder whose achievement was understood by his followers as a gift to all mankind -- not a private discovery to be quietly enjoyed.

The Conclusion: Outreach Is Not Optional, It Is Intrinsic

The evidence, from Epicurus's own practices down through Lucretius and Diogenes of Oinoanda, points in a single direction: outreach and the desire to share the philosophy with others is not a peripheral feature of Epicureanism. It is built into the philosophical core. The philosophy is rooted in a conviction that the happiness it describes is genuinely available to all people -- not just the educated, not just the wealthy, not just men, not just citizens -- and that conviction generates a natural and powerful impulse to communicate it as widely as possible. Epicurus himself described the good as something which, once found, cries out to be shared. His followers took that seriously across five centuries of the ancient world, and the same impulse is alive in the Epicurean community today.

Quote from TauPhi

Why do you think we should forcefully engage with the intelligent design argument? We may as well start discussing the shape of our planet with flat earthers. What's the point? You can change intelligent design worldview in people as much as they can change your worldview to intelligent design. You can't. They can't. Forceful engagement on both sides seems to me to be a complete waste of time.

I think that because the point of this forum is to study and promote Epicurean philosophy, just as Epicurus and Lucretius and Diogenes of Oinoanda and every other well known Epicurean did in the ancient world. Large portions of Lucretius' poem and other Epicurean writings were devoted explicitly to this topic, because back then - a now - the intelligent design argument is a pivotal aspect of Stoicism and most religions. Education of those who don't already know about the faults of religious reasoning starts with Principal Doctrine 1 and runs throughout the philosophy.

I recognize that not everyone here is interested in the "educational" aspect of communicating Epicurus to others. Just as with everything here, everyone does not have to participate in every aspect of the forum activities.

The new film referenced below has just come to my attention, and as part of my ongoing campaign to make sure that we engage forcefully with the intelligent design argument, I'll work on addressing it in several ways. First, this thread can be used to discuss this new film to be released on April 30. No doubt it will get some amount of social media play and it would be good to develop a set of links that could be used to post in response.

Not in direct response, but I've also been working on two articles I will be posting separately over the coming days which relate to intelligent design and similar issues.

Apparently a lot of money has been poured into this particular film project. These guys never let up and we need to keep our game sharp too.

This was added today prompted by a discussion in a Sunday Zoom.

Does Epicurean Philosophy Remove the Magic and Mystery of Life?

No -- and the accusation rests on a confusion between two very different sources of wonder. Epicurean philosophy removes superstition and fear-based awe -- the kind that sees lightning as divine punishment, or that requires belief in an intervening deity to feel reverence for existence. What it does not remove, and actively encourages, is the genuine astonishment and delight that come from seeing the natural world clearly.

Lucretius addresses this directly in Book Two of De Rerum Natura, in a passage that illustrates why understanding nature deepens rather than diminishes wonder. In the Humphries translation:

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"Direct your mind To a true system. Here is something new For ear and eye. Nothing is ever so easy But what, at first, it is difficult to trust. Nothing is great and marvelous, but what All men, a little at a time, begin To mitigate their sense of awe. Look up, Look up at the pure bright color of the sky, The wheeling stars, the moon, the shining sun! If all these, all of a sudden, should arise For the first time before our mortal sight, What could be called more wonderful, more beyond The heights to which aspiring mind might dare? Nothing, I think. And yet, a sight like this, Marvelous as it is, now draws no man To lift his gaze to heaven's bright areas. We are a jaded lot. But even so Don't be too shocked by something new, too scared To use your reasoning sense, to weigh and balance, So that if in the end a thing seems true, You welcome it with open arms; if false, You do your very best to strike it down." -- Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book II (Humphries translation)

Lucretius's point is that familiarity, not Epicurean philosophy, is the thief of wonder. The heavens are astonishing -- the problem is that most people have grown too accustomed to them to feel it. Epicurean philosophy does not suppress this awe; it recovers and deepens it by teaching us to see what we have stopped noticing. The prescription is not less engagement with the world but more attentive and honest engagement with it.

This connects directly to one of the less well-known teachings about the Epicurean wise man. Diogenes Laertius records (DL 10.117–118) that the Epicurean sage, far from being emotionally flattened by philosophical understanding, is capable of feeling pleasure and gratitude more intensely than those who have not examined their lives. The wise man, freed from the anxieties of superstition and the constant background fear of death that dull others' experience, is more fully present to the actual goods life offers -- and thus more genuinely and deeply moved by them.

A related point concerns the Epicurean attitude toward poetry. Epicurus's caution about certain poets -- Homer in particular -- is sometimes misread as hostility to the pleasures of literature, or as a general suspicion of imagination, beauty, and emotional engagement with art. This is wrong. The specific Epicurean objection to Homeric poetry was not that it gave pleasure, but that it gave false representations of the gods: portraying them as quarreling, vengeful, lustful, and arbitrary -- exactly the kind of divine beings whose existence would justify the fear and servitude that Epicurus spent his career working to dissolve. It was the theological content, not the aesthetic experience, that Epicurus found damaging. Poetry that does not distort the nature of the divine, or that makes no theological claims at all, falls entirely outside that objection.

In short: Epicurean philosophy does not drain the color from life. It removes the particular fears and confusions that prevent people from seeing and feeling what is actually there. The wonder available to someone who grasps that the cosmos is vast, natural, eternal, and without supernatural masters -- and who meets that cosmos with gratitude for the pleasures of friendship, beauty, conversation, and the sheer fact of being alive -- is, if anything, richer and more firmly grounded than the wonder of someone whose sense of awe is mediated by fear of invisible powers.

Sunday April 26, 2026 - Zoom Discussion 12:30 PM EST - Lucretius Book Review - Lucretius Book 1 - 418 - Putting Matter and Void Together - And Concluding There Is Nothing Else