Posts by Cassius

Welcome @xronis! Thanks for joining us! When you get a chance, please tell us about yourself and your background in Epicurean philosophy.

It would be particularly helpful if you could tell us (1) how you found this forum, and (2) how much background reading you have done in Epicurus. As an aid in the latter, we have prepared the following list of core reading.

We look forward to talking with you!

----------------------- Epicurean Works I Have Read ---------------------------------

1 The Biography of Epicurus By Diogenes Laertius (Chapter 10). This includes all Epicurus' letters and the Authorized Doctrines. Supplement with the Vatican list of Sayings.

2 "Epicurus And His Philosophy" - Norman DeWitt

3 "On The Nature of Things"- Lucretius

4 Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section

5 Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section

6 The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation

7 "A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright

8 Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus (3) Others?

9 Plato's Philebus

10 Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)

11 "The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially on katastematic and kinetic pleasure.

Also Mike, this is why I so strongly urge people to read DeWitt very early on. His Chapter 13 on this topic should answer most all of your questions about this. You may not agree with the answers, and you may still think that such beings don't exist, etc., but you ought to at least hear an explanation of Epicurean gods written from a sympathetic source who makes an effort to explain the subject without ridiculing it, or presuming Epicurus was a liar, a coward, etc -- which is the implication of most of the theories you will read from other writers.

You (Mike) have been reading a lot about Epicurus and apparently you've not yet come across a sympathetic treatment of Epicurus' approach to gods. That is the kind of problem that really makes my blood boil (not at you, of course!). The world is full of commentaries on Epicurus but almost none of them are willing to write a sympathetic recreation of the Epicurean argument. And that's one reason we are talking about this in the context of a list of tenets of a "Society of Epicurus." It would certainly not be acceptable to me to be a member of a society that held that Epicurus was a liar or a coward and simply trying to avoid the fate of Socrates.

Only Norman DeWitt seems to have been willing to treat Epicurus fairly and respectfully, and for his trouble Norman DeWitt is effectively blacklisted by every other commentator. Everyone ought to think very very seriously about the meaning of this ostracism of DeWitt and what it means about what they are reading about Epicurus in other sources.

I was about to come back and post about this and I see Mike raises the issue:

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. And if he is a mortal god, he must have been at least a super human

That's the part that is not correct, if your implication by the word "super" means "supernatural" or "non-natural."

I get the impression that 98% of the issue is that people today insist that there can be only one definition of "god." They absolutely refuse to consider a "god" to be anything less than omnipotent, omniscience, omnipresent, and all those "magical" qualities that the eastern religions specialize in. It's amazing -- they can read the Epicurean material about a god being natural and not omnipotent, and when they get to the end of the sentence they just refuse to entertain it -- almost as if they had never read the words in the sentence! All the while it is patently obvious and well-known that Greek gods themselves were in no way omniscient or omnipresent or all-powerful, and yet we seem to have no problem accepting that Venus or Zeus were called "gods." It is today as if no kind of god can exist except a jesus or a mohammed or a yahweh -- how amazingly narrow minded we have become! There's no way in the world that I personally am going to let the christians and the jews and the muslims dictate to me what the word "god" MUST mean, and I feel sure that Epicurus felt the same way about the religious pushers of supernaturalism in his day.

I don't think Epicurus admitted any of those things about true gods -- and that is why I used the Michael Jackson analogy -- I think he was using the word in a relative sense, to indicate full success in living (which means never dying) and full success in pleasure (which means never experiencing any pain) all in an absolutely natural way.

I know that means that people today will say "Well then he should not have called them gods!"

But we don't get to decide the meaning of terms -- whoever is living at the time gets to define things the way he wants, and I think that Epicurus thought it was perfectly appropriate to use the term "gods" in a way that accepts some attributes and discards others.

If that's 98% of the issue, then the other 2% of the issue is "Well we've got great telescopes and we've never seen any." The limitation in that argument ought to be obvious to anyone who is willing to entertain that the size of the universe is infinite. We've never yet discovered life elsewhere in the universe either, but as for me I am 100% confident that it's just a matter of time.

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

Is it a form of sarcasm?

Absolutely not! Epicurus was not saying anything disparaging about his form of "gods" at all. He might have said something disparaging about the so-called supernatural gods, but there is nothing that I am aware of that documents that. The "Epicurus' riddle" is not really traceable back to Epicurus himself, but to the early church fathers' characterization of Epicurus' position, which I don't consider reliable in that degree of detail (the contradictions pointed out in the riddle sound Epicurean, but the "why call him god?" is probably not Epicurean, in my opinion since that conflicts with the rest of what we know about the Epicurean position).

Quote from Mike Anyayahan

I find it odd that Epicurus tells us not to harm others (so that they won't harm us, too, and inflict pain on us) while telling us not to fear the God (because he is harmless). It seems to me that this god is so useless he is close to non-existing entity.

I am not aware of any location where Epicurus tells us not to harm others. He tells us that if we do harm others we can expect retaliation, so we better be prepared and consider whether we want to harm that person or not, but he does not tell us absolutely not to harm others, and in fact it is implicit that we certainly will "harm" others if necessary and appropriate to protect our safety and happiness.

As far as this kind of god being useless, the first response of course is that it is not necessary for something to be useful to us in order for it to exist. Secondly, there is a "use" for Epicurean gods, as discussed above and by DeWitt. The argument seems to be that it enhances our happiness to have a correct conception of the highest form of life possible, and to realize that such a being is of no threat to us, and to serve as a sort of example of what we ourselves should strive for to the extent of our ability. I think it's a reasonable analogy to suggest that lots of young people improved their basketball skills by comparing themselves in their minds to Michael Jordan and other basketball "gods," just for one example, even though Michael Jordan never saw them, never instructed them, and never cared whether they existed or not.

I suppose it's really two questions, on which I'll give my personal opinion while admitting that this is just the result of my thinking/speculation applied to DeWitt's version:

1 - What do I think Epicurus taught? In summary I believe that Norman DeWitt is correct about what Epicurus taught, as described in his chapter 13 "The True Piety." I especially think that Dewitt is correct in pointing to the description of the gods by the Epicurean Velleius in Cicero's "On the Nature of the Gods," and holding that Epicurus held that information about the gods comes from "anticipations" and through "images" and that these are not the same thing, and that this is reinforced and/or supported to the observational issues of "isonomia" and the eternal / boundless universe theory. In sum I think it boils down to Epicurus holding that in an infinite and eternal universe with nature never only a creating a single thing of a kind, and with there being an "distribution" from from "high" to "low," that Epicurus believed that there existed in the universe real beings who had achieved deathlessness and were self-sufficiently "happy" with their own existence.

If you think as Epicurus did that life exists throughout the universe, and you observe here on Earth that life exists on a spectrum from worms to humans, then it makes sense to project those observations to the universe at large and expect that there are unlimited numbers of life beings that are lower and higher than ourselves, all of which are natural, but some of which have attained things that humans have not, including deathlessness and total self-sufficiency. And to the extent that some life forms have achieved that kind of unlimited life with total happiness, that seems like an admirable result and something that we humans can consider to hold in admiration as a kind of goal that we intuitively all would like to emulate to the extent that we can. It's clear that Epicurus did not think that these beings have any involvement or concern with human life, but it seems that he may have thought it possible that "images" of them might be sensed in some where as a result of their images floating through the universe, just like all sorts of other images seemed to him to be floating through the air all the time.

I think all this is sort of a nexus / sum of real observations here on earth (the isonomia, no single thing of a kind, spectrum observations) combined with a logical extension of these ideas out onto the theory of the eternal / infinite universe with life throughout it. So these gods are totally NOT supernatural, totally unconcerned with us, totally NOT omnipotent or omnipresent or any of the other attributes of "gods" assigned by the general monotheistic cults. He was calling them 'gods' in the sense that we might call Michael Jordan a "god of basketball" - supremely successful at "life" but still totally natural. (And this is probably similar to how he used the phrase "gods among men" that something that sounds like a goal he considered attainable, or the way Lucretius described Epicurus himself as a god.)

And I don't think that Epicurus thought this was all just idle speculation. I think he thought that his observations about life on earth combined with the deductive logic of atomism compels this conclusion when it is all applied to the eternal / infinite universe, with life not limited to earth and having no beginning. He seems to have thought that we should be rigorous in applying our observations to their logical conclusions, and that this is part of what you arrive at when you think about life in the rest of the universe outside earth.

Hiram / others sometime refer to this as a "space alien" theory, but I find terms like that to be unnecessarily demeaning and dismissive to the theory. Now I wouldn't be surprised if some of the ancient Epicureans were tongue-in-cheek, such as the apparent position that they thought the gods spoke Greek, and so I am sure that some of them had fun with the theorizing and so you have to be careful interpreting the surviving fragments. But in general I think Epicurus thought the theory was very serious and logical and helpful, and it was in no way a means of protecting himself from accusations of blasphemy, a means of manipulating weaker minds, or even a type of honey to help sick minds. I think he thought that the idea that humans are the only life in the universe was very damaging, just like it would be damaging to think that the Earth was at the center of the universe (which would imply that it is somehow special / special to a supernatual god). It was therefore important to him to have a reasonable theory about how a spectrum of life exists throughout the universe, and that the top of that spectrum would be in no way supernatural. I think he fully believed it himself with the caveat that he knew that he didn't have all the evidence we'd like to have so that theories of how the gods lived in detail was just pure speculation.

2 - What is my personal opinion of what I think Epicurus taught? I think it makes very good sense to me, and in those times when I want to think about the subject of life existing outside of earth I think this theory is very helpful for keeping perspective on where humanity stands in the nature of things. I agree with Epicurus that I think the universe as a whole has always existed, and that life is not limited to earth, and that similar natural mechanisms will proceed an unlimited number of places when under similar conditions, so when I put all that together I think humans are just one example of life and that there are huge numbers of lower forms of life in the universe elsewhere, huge numbers of "higher" forms of life, but every one of then natural. I think among the benefits of having a theory of a spectrum of beings like this is that it helps us keep perspective that we are neither at the top of the heap (and therefore we're not the special favorite of some god) but then neither are we something to be dismissive of and commit suicide because we're not something that we're not.

Along the lines of other comments in this same thread, I don't think it's necessary for everyone today to subscribe to a theory like this. But I do think Epicurus was looking at providing for a system of thought for "the millions," and he thought that many people feel compelled to think about life in the rest of the universe and where we stand in it, and that this theory provides an answer that is both beneficial and reasonably expectable to be true. And I'm one of the people who thinks about issues like this, so I applaud him for developing the theory, and I find it helpful myself.

1 - I think you are correct Oscar. Epicurus held but one position; the discussion of "acceptable" means to Hiram (as I understand it) positions that he considers it acceptable for modern Epicureans to take and still be part of the Society of Epicurus. You are right to observe that those are very different things.

2 - As to whether it is correct to say that Epicurus was an atheist, I also agree that it is wrong to label him an atheist without explaining the nature of Epicurean gods. If the definition of atheist requires that gods being rejeted are supernatural, then Epicurus was an atheist. If the definition of atheist means that the gods being atheist could be nonsupernatural, then Epicurus was clearly NOT an atheist. But it all turns on the definitions.

3 - As to the ultimate question I think you are aware of my personal position, so I won't repeat it here unless someone asks.

Exactly Elli, it appears to me that they considered "nothing comes from nothing and nothings goes to nothing" to be the rock on which everything else was based, and in fact at the end of book 1 they say that what is contained there in the atomic discussion is all you need to know to figure all the rest out for yourself -- like a hunting dog!

I need to get around to reading Stenger, which I have not done. Over time I really hope that this is an area that we can grow and have people who are "into" specialties like this and divide up the labor to do the review and analysis of the material. If we talking about this here now get too carried away with it ourselves we won't do the more important things that need doing. In that respect a lot of these problems do seem to be exactly what Epicurus faced and talked about, which is presumably why there was this flurry of allegations that he was anti-science, which I would bet my life was not at all true.

I think it's important to to emphasize his view of how alternative theories that are consistent with the evidence are all acceptable, as that does appears to have been a large part of his reasoning.

Quote from Godfrey

What this means to us laymen is that when we read a news story on the most current theory, we lack most of the building blocks leading up to it.

Which reminds me of this below, as I was flipping through and find this quote from Stephen Hawking.

The part in red I do not believe for a second. Just like for the last 2500 hundred years, I think it is a dead-correct bet that for the next 2500 years we'll be doing the same thing: observing, finding new evidence, constructing new theories, and then revising them over and over in a cycle. And in the meantime each generation lives only about 80 years at most, and has to decide how to live in the interim:

This quote is from this lecture by Hawking entitled "The Origin of the Universe": http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-origin-of-the-universe.html

So call me presumptuous and arrogant to suggest that I know better than Stephen Hawking, but I don't believe for a second that we are getting close to "ultimate" answers. On this I am comfortable with Frances Wright and 2500 year old reasoning. There will always be new discoveries and new horizons and unanswered questions for science to attack.

Quote from Elayne

That is why I think it's more helpful to tell people no matter what, there's no supernatural-- if they are on that simple of a thought process, maybe we can take Vic Stenger's stuff and simplify it. I don't know. I feel sure Epicurus could have done it but Idk if I can, lol.

I completely agree with that!

As to this:

Quote from Elayne

However, then the problem remains that we have data Epicurus didn't have-- and now his model no longer fits ALL the observed data. It's not just that we are missing data, in case you thought that was the problem -- it's also that we now have data that doesn't fit.

As to that I would say that we ought to be very rigorous in requiring confirmation and explanation of any data that allegedly does not fit. For example, if someone is alleging that all that has been observed is moving away from some center or in some other way expanding, then I would rigorously demand of him whether he is maintaining that he has now observed ALL matter, or exactly what he is claiming about that which he has not observed, for obvious reasons.

So I would apply to those who assert that the universe may not be eternal a requirement that they may fully accessible in complete detail the evidence that they say supports that conclusion, along with any reservations and limitations that they themselves admit exist (in the way that when Lawrence Krauss writes a book entitled "A Universe from Nothing" he admits that he really doesn't mean "nothing") And I would not give someone who was willing to do less than that the respect that I would give to Epicurus and the nothing from nothing / nothing to nothing argument unless and until the evidence and argument could be lined up in that kind of way.

Of course I am not suggesting any kind of bright line exists today or tomorrow on what to do or what not to do. I'm really just discussing in a general way the different approaches that make sense to talk about. Unless and until someone wants to suggest a "catechism" or some set of rules for a particular organization, it's not necessary for us to come up with that kind of rigor.

Of course the reason we are typing this, or course, is that coming up with that sort of list is exactly what the "Society of Epicurus" is doing, and so it's appropriate for the Society of Epicurus to deal with those issues (and to decide whether to take a position or not) since it is in the middle of that process. Hiram can do that, and then people can decide whether they want to be part of his organization or not based on the decisions he makes. As to us, we're just discussing!

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That is why I think it's more helpful to tell people no matter what, there's no supernatural-

.... Which is kind of like the approach we probably should be taking on anticipations, Epicurean gods, and maybe other subjects where there are ambiguities that are difficult or impossible to resolve due to lack of texts and other issues.

No way we can do it now or over the short term, but over time we need to explore these issues in detail, group-sourcing the effort, and try to help each other here: Nothing From Nothing / Nothing To Nothing / Eternality and Infinity of the Universe

Quote from Elayne

This is one of those places where either I'm different from Epicurus or he would have taken physics data he didn't have access to back then into account and said that we have at least gotten enough info to be very certain there's no supernatural and no absolute. Both of us would feel equally secure in that knowledge even if we arrived at our conclusions differently.

I think what's going on here in our different perspectives probably explains why Epicurus ended up on the "incorrect" side of the size of the sun issue. I suspect that Epicurus was well aware of what the calculations indicated, and that he did not reject the calculations out of hand, but he had to make what he saw as a practical decision to deal with the supernatural claims of the mathematicians who were using their calculations to bolster the argument that the sun and the stars were gods due to their huge size. My suspicion is that he defaulted to his general rule -- a theory must explain ALL the observed facts in order to be held to be correct, and he decided that his observations as to (1) things far away aren't sharp, and (2) bright things don't lose their size so quickly, and (3) maybe other "sensory" arguments, and that those could not be discounted. Since those appeared to be true, and he did not know that the huge distances and/or issues of viewing through the atmosphere would cause distortions, he refused to credit the CONCLUSION that the sun was huge. And he probably calculated that any embarrassment caused by later discovery that he was factually wrong would pale in comparison with the happiness of those who used his argument to discount the supernatural arguments of the Platonists.

And if that was his reasoning (I know I am doing a lot of speculating) I would say that he was right to take the position he did, and I would do the same thing in his place. That's pretty much what I am doing, I admit, even though I have a good degree of confidence that in this situation, there really can''t be a limit to the size of the universe, and that there is an explanation for why everything observed so far may seem to imply a big bang (if in fact it does).

But the real contextual issue is probably not the question of relative amounts of information -- I personally think the most important consideration is that you (and maybe even a majority of our self-selected group) really are different from the run-of-the-mill person who does not have nearly the scientific disposition or background that we have. And I think that this is where DeWitt is right that Epicurus was pursuing a "Philosophy for the Millions." He calculated that his philosophy was needed by everyone, and ESPECIALLY for the non-scientists, who he could not expect to handle the mental challenge of all the uncertainty that constantly engaging in speculation and uncertainty causes. I do think that he was willing to say that as to these people, it was good for them to trust "authority" that they could tell had their best interests for happy living in mind, and that for these type of people "trust" in their "teachers" was the best course for them to follow -- because they could in no way duplicate or follow the speculative sciences themselves.

I think many of us are comfortable with all the uncertainty of the speculations, and we consider that it's just fun and or even cause for wonder and amazement, as you say. But I think it is true (and was true then) the the "majority" of the people in the world are just not capable or disposed or willing to engage in that kind of constant mental challenge. They want something understandable, effective, and accessible to them that will help them live happily, which after all I think we all agree is established to be the ultimate goal.

For many of us the mental challenge of keeping everything open and juggling in our minds is enjoyable, but for people like that it is terrifying. So while we would never affirmatively lie to them, if we really care about giving them a helpful philosophy of life then we present them with one that is manageable for them, just as we simplify things when we explain difficult issues to children.

Now you may think I am taking it all back but I will say this too: I do think that this approach of requiring a theory to fit ALL observable data before it is entertained as something to give credence to is the correct approach. And that is from each person's perspective, not from an absolute standard of what one or two of the greatest minds might say. If indeed we put that kind of trust in them for good reason, then maybe so, but we are not talking about Epicurus when we talk about Lawrence Krauss or any number of nameless (to the outside world) string physicists. It's just not logical to allow any individual or group of scientists, no matter how brilliant they may be, to say "you need to believe C because my theory says A and B and that adds up to C without any ability of the rest to follow the evidence and the argument. To place that kind of blind faith in a "scientist" seems to me to be no different than a tribesman placing it in a witch doctor.

So this is where I think it comes down, and where you are exactly right speaking for yourself:

Quote

Both of us would feel equally secure in that knowledge even if we arrived at our conclusions differently.

I am thinking that that applies to you, and to many of us here, but it doesn't apply to the "millions." Given the numerous texts about Epicurus' sincere desire to show the way to happiness, I don't think that anyone should see Epicurus' scepticism to the claims of theoretical science, or his reasoning on the size of the sun, to undermine their confidence in him.

And that relates back to the complaint from Cicero about the Epicureans in his view being uneducated:

This article says that "atheists" tend to prefer cats. We should take a poll of Epicureans to see how we stack up.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7…KZGahsaC1QtS4Uk

So that this allegation by Cicero from "On the Nature of the Gods" is not a "bug" in Epicurean philosophy - it's a "feature." It's because of what Epicurus would call an incorrect philosophical position that Cicero thinks he needs to attack in this way. Cicero was ultimately in bed with the skeptics such as Plato (which as Dewitt says Epicurus considered Plato to be) and denying the possibility of confidence in knowledge based on the senses:

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Hereupon Velleius began, in the confident manner (I need not say) that is customary with Epicureans, afraid of nothing so much as lest he should appear to have doubts about anything. One would have supposed he had just come down from the assembly of the gods in the intermundane spaces of Epicurus! “I am not going to expound to you doctrines that are mere baseless figments of the imagination, such as the artisan deity and world-builder of Plato's Timaeus, or that old hag of a fortuneteller the Pronoia (which, we may render ‘Providence’) of the Stoics; nor yet a world endowed with a mind and senses of its own, a spherical, rotatory god of burning fire; these are the marvels and monstrosities of philosophers who do not reason but dream.

EDIT: Stated another way, Cicero and Hitchens are implying that you can never "know" anything beyond your own lifetime based on the information provided by the senses. He is saying that you MUST either (1) intellectually disarm yourself to become a jellyfish and waffle through life, or (2) look to some other source of authority beyond the senses. So the real battlefield here is over the meaning of "to know."

And we all know (or should know) that there are LOTS of people who are happy to make these arguments against confidence in knowledge based on the senses -- because they will usher you directly into the waiting arms of religion, idealism, etc. Some people make these arguments innocently, but I don't think the people who are out there promoting them are innocent or mistaken. Someone who was innocently a skeptical jellyfish would be content to waffle around in its own corner of the ocean being a jellyfish rather than being a crusader against people who think that it is rational to have confidence in conclusions that are strongly consistent with the available evidence.

Militant jellyfishism is what we see everywhere, and it's like Diogenes of Oinoanda lamented that he saw people around him being captured by error is if like sheep.

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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] and so to help now those who are well-constituted. Now, if only one person or two or three or four or five or six or any larger number you choose, sir, provided that it is not very large, were in a bad predicament, I should address them individually and do all in my power to give them the best advice. But, 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)

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And I am content to think that some contradictions will remain contradictory, some problems will never be resolved by the mammalian equipment of the human cerebral cortex, and some things are indefinitely unknowable. If the universe was found to be finite or infinite, either discovery would be equally stupefying and impenetrable to me

That is an interesting quote from Hitchens and I do think it illustrates a way in which though he admired Epicurus, he was not fully Epicurean.

I think that Epicurus would go further and differently than this, because Epicurus would process the information and attempt to come to a conclusion in which he could be confident that the discovery (especially that the universe is "finite") assisted him in concluding whether to entertain the possibility of supernatural control.

Because if we DO have to entertain supernatural creation and control, then all bets are off on everything. And I do mean "bets" because it is not a matter of considering all this to be "stupefying" or "impenetrable." We have finite lives and we have no choice but to take practical positions on what to do with our time - whether to go to church and worship Allah or Yahweh or whoever, or base our decisions on Epicurean or some other philosophy.

So OF COURSE this next point is true......

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And I am content to think that some contradictions will remain contradictory, some problems will never be resolved by the mammalian equipment of the human cerebral cortex, and some things are indefinitely unknowable.

The question is really what is meant by "knowable." If Hitchens is suggesting that anything less than "I am eternal myself and I have observed everything myself and therefore I KNOW the universe is infinite or finite" is required in order to say that you "know" something, then that is a false standard and never going to be satisfying to someone who thinks about ultimate issues like Epicurus did.

It's a FACT that in our lifetimes we have and will have limited evidence, just as Hitchens did in his lifetime. We have to make our decision on how to live based on what we think of the evidence before us. Everyone has to do that. Epicurus is saying that it is foolish to walk around being stupefied and thinking everything that is really important to you is impenetrable. he is saying look around, observe all the facts you can, and then live by a method that incorporates all of the observed facts and doesn't contradict any of them.

Quote from Elayne

I advise caution in saying that there would be any scientific discovery we would reject on the grounds that someone would use it to insert their god of the gaps. We are wisest to base knowledge on evidence, not worry about trying to get evidence to exclude religionists.

Yes I agree but as I see it I am making a somewhat different point.

I would never suggest that we reject a "discovery" or "evidence" -- I am talking "theory."

In other words, if there is indeed evidence that everything observed so far is expanding in one or more directions, then we definitely "accept" that evidence -- but not necessarily every conclusion that someone suggests should be drawn from it.

We first and also have the firmly established observation that nothing comes from or goes to nothing. We don't throw that out the door just because we have evidence of expansion. We now have two separate sets of evidence, and the "truth" must incorporate BOTH to be valid, since we cannot throw out either.

So the point I think is valid is that we can never throw out any evidence, but we can and must throw out theories that are not consistent with ALL the observed facts. In those cases where we can't pin down a likely answer we accept all possible alternatives that ARE consistent with the facts, even when incomplete or ambiguous, and/or we follow the "wait" method.

Aside : we should try to stake a public domain claim in the name of Epicureans everywhere for graphics designed with this combination of letters:

NFN

NTN

Or

NFN/NTN

Or

NFN>NTN>EU>IU>

Nothing from nothing> nothing to nothing>eternal universe >infinite universe> pleasure as the guide of life.

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knowledge of how things began is probably beyond our grasp

That phrasing from such an article would be an example of the problem. The implication that everything in the universe "began" at a single point in time conflicts with the observed nothing comes from nothing or goes to nothing, and therefore should not even be entertained as a valid theory since it does not incorporate all reliable evidence. And the implication that there was some mysterious "we'll never know" inflection point in time (which again conflicts with nfn/ntn) plays right into the hands of the " gnostics" who claim to possess some special revelation of the "truth").

At most, an expanding area within a total universe would appear to imply that that locality, and not the whole, had an explosive event that might then be followed by a collapse of that section - but never of the whole universe.

I believe an Epicurean plan of early education would start with premises such as "eternal universe" based on nfn / ntn to the point where the "normal" person would consider phrases such as "universe began" with the same disdain as we hear someone speaking of human sacrifices to appease the gods.

As things are, the default position is "in the beginning, god created the heaven and the earth" and that has brought a cascade of disastrous thinking.

And I don't think there is any coincidence, accident, or mistake in the rise of such terminology in religion, or in its incorporation and embrace by large parts of humanist-friendly modern society. It plays right into the hands of monotheism / absolutist thinking. See, the universe DOES have a central point from which one perspective is correct! We may be separate atoms today, but one day the universe will all come back together into one uniform homogeneous whole where we all get along with no conflicts at all.

Obviously I am saying this just for myself and not as a red line of "you're not an Epicurean if you don't believe it," but that is why I think the chain reasoning of nfn/ntn >> eternal universe >> boundless universe >> life throughout the universe was so important to Epicurus and should be so important to us.

It's acceptable as Epicurus said to maintain multiple theories that are consistent with the evidence, but anything less (a flat "we dont know") reduces our response to religion and platonism to "maybe you're right, we can't prove it because we weren't there and we'll never know because the origin of things is 'beyond our grasp.'" And this leads directly to "Your Yahweh is entitled to as much respectful consideration as my eternal universe, because we ourselves personally weren't there and therefore we can never know for sure."

It seems to me that Epicurus stands for the proposition that we can and should do better than that.

Excellent points Elayne and JJ. So long as the model does not create the inference of "everything" starting at a single moment from nothing / supernaturally," I suppose that would be an example of alternate acceptable theories of the type Epicurus said was AOK. Now of course it's beyond the scope of my ability to deal with, but I think if we were talking about a well-developed Epicurean community there would be effort directed toward making sure that there was an understandable theory available to "everyone" which didn't imply "spookiness" / implicit supernatural factors, which I gather is the aura that certain people like to create exactly for the purpose of spreading religious views, or simply for the fun of keeping simpler people disconcerted.

Such a theory would probably need to address the point about whether "everything that we observe so far seems to be expanding" applies to our expectation for everything not yet observed, and if so why or why not.

Quote from Elayne

Experienced drivers can get distracted and drive home, avoiding obstacles, without having paid any attention.

Great example. Some of my most helpful sessions listening and thinking about Epicurus have been driving while listening to podcasts, and when I get where I am going I hardly remember the drive.

Oscar:

Quote from Godfrey

In terms of the feelings of pleasure or pain, I experienced pleasure from the sun's heat, but only the sensation of the sore throat.

Intuitively that makes sense to me, that you experience both. I am not sure that there is a workable distinction between sensations and feelings (or "experiences) but maybe that needs to be considered.