PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

Malachi151 made some interesting points in a post in the thread "Why didn't the Romans argue that Jesus did not exist in order to stamp out Christians." I think they should be explored within a separate thread.

Malachi151 said, "Show one instance where anyone in the ancient world, Roman or otherwise, went about proving that any god didn't exist.
The idea that such a thing could even be done didn't exist at that time"

This seems to be true. Certain concepts which we take for granted were actually unknown in ancient times. For example the number zero did not exist in ancient Greco-Roman culture. There was no way to express it.


Bertrand Russell in his famous 1905 essay, "On Denoting" caught the difficultly in Aristotelian logic with his discussion of the sentence "The present King of France is bald"

In Aristotelian logic, which reflected Greco-Roman thinking, the statement must be either true or false. If it is false, then the statement, "The present King of France is not bald" must be true. The problem is that if there is no present King of France both statements (he is bald or he is not bald) are false.

It seems that the ancients did think in terms of falsifying predicates, but did not think in terms of falsifying subjects/nouns.

Although proving someone did not exist may have been impossible, Lucian, in his satires (circa 170's) certainly comes close to the concept. He basically suggests that people will believe anything, no matter how false or outrageous.

Are there any counter-examples to this picture of ancient thought? Are there cases where individual people or Gods were shown not to exist in ancient times?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Jeffrey Gibson

I wonder then how you account for the fact, noted in Plato's Apology, that Anaxagorus was prosecuted for atheism?

Curious that you should appeal to Russell in support of your claim, especially since he believes (see pp. 79ff in his History of Western Philosophy)that Anaxagorus argued not only that what Athenians believed to be gods were not, but that there were no gods.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Hoo boy.

Try this:

“Sysiphos” by Critias (late 5th century BCE)

Sisyphos: There was a time when human life was without order
and bestial and subject to brute force,
when there was neither any reward for the noble
nor any punishment for the base.
And then, I think, men established
punitive laws, so that Justice would be sovereign
<...> and have Hybris as her subject.
Whoever did wrong was punished.
Next, now that the laws kept people from
openly committing violent deeds
but they still did them secretly, at that time I think
<...> some man of shrewd and clever intelligence
hit upon the idea of inventing gods for mortals, so
the base would have something to fear even when
they acted or spoke or thought secretly.
So, building on this he taught that the Divine
was a supernatural being thriving with unending life,
with the power of intellect listening, watching, contemplating,
and attending to these acts and possessing a divine nature,
one who would hear everything said among mortals
and be able to see everything that was done.
If you plan something base, even without breathing a word of it,
it will not escape the notice of the gods; for understanding
<...> is theirs. Giving these explanations,
he taught a most agreeable lesson,
confounding the truth with a false story.
He said that the gods dwelled in the place
that would most astonish men when talked about,
the place he realized mortals derive their fears from,
and their life of suffering draws its delights—
from the circling firmament above, where he discerned
there were the flashes of lightning and terrible crashes
of thunder and the starry brightness of heaven,
a beautiful tapestry of the wise creator Time.
From there the gleaming falling star blazes,
and the wet rainstorm pours out onto the earth.
He hedged men in with such terrible
fears, and with his story he neatly gave
the divinity a home in a fitting location
and doused lawlessness with these fears of his.
<...>
In this way, I think, someone first convinced
mortals to believe that a race of gods existed.

Seems to me like a flasification of nouns.

Jeffrey

GakuseiDon

There are many suggestions in the literature where they went about proving that gods didn't exist as gods, e.g. the stories were myths, either about humans, or daimons, or allegorical stories of nature. There are also suggestions where one or more gods didn't exist (as per my quote below). The "allegorical stories of nature" approach is probably closest to what is sometimes proposed about the origin of Jesus in modern times as part of the Jesus Myth.

This is from Tatian's "Address to the Greeks":
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...n-address.html

"Prometheus, fastened to Caucasus, suffered punishment for his good deeds to men. According to you, Zeus is envious, and hides the dream from men, wishing their destruction. Wherefore, looking at your own memorials, vouchsafe us your approval, though it were only as dealing in legends similar to your own. We, however, do not deal in folly, but your legends are only idle tales.

If you speak of the origin of the gods, you also declare them to be mortal.

For what reason is Hera now never pregnant? Has she grown old? or is there no one to give you information? Believe me now, O Greeks, and do not resolve your myths and gods into allegory. If you attempt to do this, the divine nature as held by you is overthrown by your own selves; for, if the demons with you are such as they are said to be, they are worthless as to character; or, if regarded as symbols of the powers of nature, they are not what they are called. But I cannot be persuaded to pay religious homage to the natural elements, nor can I undertake to persuade my neighbour. And Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his treatise concerning Homer, has argued very foolishly, turning everything into allegory. For he says that neither Hera, nor Athene, nor Zeus are what those persons suppose who consecrate to them sacred enclosures and groves, but parts of nature and certain arrangements of the elements. Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course say are introduced merely for the sake of the machinery of the poem, not one of these personages having really existed. But these things we have put forth only for argument's sake; for it is not allowable even to compare our notion of God with those who are wallowing in matter and mud."

Early Christians attacked the Roman gods as not existing as gods, since they had an origin and/or a death. True divine beings were eternal, therefore (they argued) the gods could not have been divine. Here are some quotes from Tertullian's "Ad nationes" and Aristides' "Apology" (from one of my reviews of Doherty on my website):
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus...view_Part2.htm

"* Therefore neither are gods made from dead people, since a god cannot die; nor of people that are born, since everything which is born dies

* ... you form a virgin from Diana ... What excuse can be found for that insolence which classes the dead of whatever sort as equal with the gods?

* And they say that he [Tammuz] was killed by a wound from a wild boar, without being able to help himself. And if he could not help himself, how can he take thought for the human race? But that a god should be an adulterer or a hunter or should die by violence is impossible

* And he [Osiris] was killed by Typhon and was unable to help himself. But it is well known that this cannot be asserted of divinity... And how, pray, is he a god who does not save himself?"

I don't think that is entirely accurate. That early myths may not have occurred was a well-known concept in those days, but I think they lacked the ability to confirm and date events (via archaeological digs, carbon-dating). Thus the suspicion that Hercules was a real person who founded Thebes and lived just before the Trojan war, but he wasn't a god. Similarly Jupiter, Dionysus, etc. As you say, I don't think they felt that they could prove that the gods didn't exist, but as the quote from Tatian shows, some people regarded some of the gods as literary inventions only, introduced "for the sake of the machinery of the poem".

As far as I know, no-one argued that Jesus was allegory -- based on nature, for example, or as a literary invention -- until modern times. However, the option was available from earliest times.

mountainman

Allegory of fiction?

* the words of Arius of Alexandria (325 CE)
* the conviction of Emperor Julian (362 CE)
* the report of Nestorius (c.450 CE).

See "docetic".

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Julian

Not entirely fair. He was hardly the only sophist around at the time and it is unlikely that he would have been prosecuted at all if not for the fact that he was an associate of Pericles, probably a close friend. Notice that he gets attacked by the political opponents of Pericles and that he is not the only target. Both Phidias and Aspasia come under attack in a concerted effort to unsettle Pericles. Attacks on the impiety of people was a fairly common way of leveling an attack against someone you didn't like. Precisely because they didn't have the mechanisms that we do to deal well with abstract matters such as these. In the case of Phidias they first tried a conventional attack, namely that he had embezzled gold from a building project and they manage to conjure up a witness. Unfortunately, for them, Phidias had kept excellent records and the lawsuit failed. What did they do then? Attack him on grounds of impiety, and that attack succeeded. He died in prison and Anaxagoras was exiled. We see a similar tactic used later against Alcibiades, who decides to not even try to fight it and instead flees to Sparta.

All in all, the attack on people using an impiety/sacrilege/atheism angle is quite common and frequently employed because it is easy and successful. For a good example of the feeble defense logic applied to the equally vague accusation, check out Socrates defense to Meletus in the apology. Here is one version: http://socrates.clarke.edu/aplg0104.htm

Julian

Jeffrey Gibson

Was Anaxagoras a Sophist?

And was his prosecution really only part of an attack on Pericles?

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anaxagoras/

Jeffrey

Julian

This kind of backs up my position in the previous post. This snippet, which is more likely by Euripides, by the way, but my point remains the same, does promote a vaguely atheistic view. If people were prosecuted for atheism then one must wonder how anyone would dare write something like the above. My contention, again, is that people weren't attacked for impiety until it became politically expedient for their opponents to do so. Of course, if Critias wrote this, he may have had very little to fear after the Peloponnesian War considering his position.

Julian

Toto

Let's not wander too far off topic.

We see that the ancients sometimes disputed the existence or divinity of gods, but so far we have no example of a challenge to the existence of alleged persons.

Ben C Smith

Did you miss something?

Ben.