lpetrich

Classical Greek and Roman society had produced the first big contingent of religious skeptics in the Europe / Middle-East area; some of their views are still interesting, and even very supportable, at least judging from the literature that comes down to us.

About religion as an institution, the various popular and official cults, one common view of the literate set was that it is desirable as the opium of the people, as it were; that popular religion is a good way to make people virtuous even if it was essentially false. For example, Plato's Republic was to feature a politically convenient religion that Plato called a "royal lie".

And about their religion's mythology, the literate set had had a variety of theories, including various sorts of allegorical interpretation and varieties of skepticism. Thus:

Euhemerism, the theory that the Gods are exaggerated human heroes. Thus, Zeus could once had been a king with an eye for the ladies. I'm sure that Euhemerus, the inventor of that view, had had abundant experience with hero-worship and leader-worship.

Nature allegories. Zeus could be a personification of the sky, which fertilizes the ground with rain. Thus, the womanizing. A more fancy version of this view is expressed in one of Euripides's plays, where one character asks if Zeus is only another name for fate.

Neoplatonism. Myths tell us about some higher sphere; Earl Doherty depends on this view rather heavily in _The Jesus Puzzle_; he proposes that Paul had gotten that view from some Neoplatonists.

Skepticism, like Xenophanes's famous comments that people tend to imagine gods that look like them and are even clothed like them. And Lucian's classic account of religious huckster Alexander of Abonutichus.

Criticism of wickedness, such as Plato wanting Homer and Hesiod banned from his Republic because they feature such wicked things as heroes lamenting and gods laughing.

emotional

Don't forget that Epicurus was probably the first formulator of the atheistic Argument from Evil (if God doesn't want to prevent evil then he isn't good, and if he can't prevent evil then he isn't omnipotent). Epicurus was a really systematic critic of religion. So much so that he is the epitome of infidelity in Orthodox Judaism. Orthodox Jews call any Jewish infidel (like me) an "apikoros", after him.

lpetrich

Epicurus would be a good example of a skeptic; he is quite correct about the Argument from Evil. He thought that the Gods existed, but that they were far from being Universe-controlling superbeings. And he thought that life ends at death, and that we ought not to lose sleep over the prospect of being tormented in the next world.

On that subject, Plato's Socrates in the _Apology_ is an amusing case. He claimed that death is either an endless, dreamless sleep, which would not be too bad, or else that he'd meet a lot of wonderful, creative people in the Next World, like Homer and Hesiod and Orpheus and Musaeus. A possibility that he dwells on at length.

As Bertrand Russell notes, what kind of courage is that -- saying that if he gets executed, he will live happily ever after in Some Other Realm.

Compare Carl Sagan, who died expecting nonexistence, at least if we are to believe his third wife, Ann Druyan.

He certainly didn't have lots of fantasies about meeting his former colleagues and professional predecessors -- he could have imagined what it might be like to meet his predecessor Anaxagoras, who had distinguished himself as a cosmochemist by studying a meteorite and concluding that the celestial bodies are hot rocks.

lpetrich

Of course, Carl Sagan could have defended his position with:

Read the Bible. Ecclesiastes 3:19, 9:5, 9:10

jess

lpetrich:

Good quotes. Finaly had the chance to check them out.

jess

I can't help but feel, through reading and research, et al, that the concepts of religion were different to the ancients than they are to modern Christians.

The lack of severe monotheism (believeing in one god is different than believeing that only one god exists) and the flexibility of 'local gods' caused less friction between religions--- indeed, modern anthropologists have come to the conclusion that ancient and primitive peoples fought/fight wars over many things, but not over religion. I would hope this tolerance extrapolated to disbelivers as well, although I am aware that the Romans had a law against 'atheism'--- under which they prosecuted Christians... (gotta love that.) The law implied that denying of the official gods was a capital offence--- disbelief was ok.

As well, religion in those times played a much more vital role to the people--- unlike today--- and in addition to political control over the people. Feasts fed the hungry, certain celebrations clothed them, and others caused mass 'cleanups' of the cities.

One must wonder what the atmosphere that allowed those thinkers to write and teach must have been like...

Bede

Hi Jess (and others),

The short answer to your question is 'pretty unpleasant'. The first thing to grasp about thr Roman Empire and its Greek predessors is they were brutal military despotisms. The exceptions like Athens were still pretty awful for the vast majority of the population who were excluded from democracy by virtue of being slaves, foreigners or women. Athens history suggests its democracy was not something we should ever want to copy.

The image of all these freethinking pagans wondering around in white togas thinking great thoughts is actually pretty funny when compared to the grim reality. The Romans are often called pragmatic for their attitude that it doesn't matter what you think as long as you behave but remember what they did to anyone who caused trouble. Likewise, Plato's Republic is a deeply unpleasant vision. I remain amazed that he is considered enlightened but it's vision of total social control played well at the time.

Actually reading the stuff the so called good guys of the time produced (rather than modern paraphrases) can be shocking. We have Cicero (another sceptic about Gods) pleading that some slaves be tortured, Julian ordering torture be used so he can steel some books, Augustus burning thousands of manuscripts, no one is ever concerned about outside their tiny social class. Contempt shown for the faith of the masses (while having no desire to correct it) is another example of their insular attitude.

The rose tinted glasses we use to examine the ancient world goes back a long way but surely now we can accept what it was really like.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

jess

Bede: I am sorry that I gave the impression I was looking at the Greek and Roman worlds with 'rose colored' glasses--- I was not.

I am aware of the disadvantages to living in that time period--- however, these writings do exist and the authors were allowed to teach and write. One must wonder what the atmosphere that allowed both the religious subjugation of masses and the teachings mentioned above was like. I am not dreaming about 'good ol' days', I am wondering about the tension and the hypocrisy and the conflict of the time.

Sorry for the confusion.

lpetrich

In response to jess and bede's exchange, I'd like to point out that one common view I had mentioned was that religion is desirable as the opium of the people. A good selection of quotes representing that view can be found in URL http://what-the-hell-is-hell.com/AncientHell.htm

Note that Timaeus Locris expresses something like the Hindu view of Karma, in which wicked people get reincarnated into some unpleasant state. Also, Cicero was a complete skeptic on the Roman official religion, though he stated that one has to be careful of what one says in public. And Plato's Republic was to feature an official religion that is a politically convenient "royal lie".

And I wish to warn the female readers of these comments that some of them are grossly sexist.

1. Polybius, the ancient historian, says: "Since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions and violence, there is no other way to keep them in order but by the fear and terror of the invisible world; on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods, and of the infernal regions." B. vi 56.

2. Dionysius Halicarnassus treats the whole matter as useful, but not as true. Antiq. Rom., B. ii

3. Livy, the celebrated historian, speaks of it in the same spirit; and he praises the wisdom of Numa, because he invented the fear of the gods, as "a most efficacious means of governing an ignorant and barbarous populace." Hist., I 19.

4. Strabo, the geographer, says: "The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, and by those terrors and threatenings which certain dreadful words and monstrous forms imprint upon their minds...For it is impossible to govern the crowd of women, and all the common rabble, by philosophical reasoning, and lead them to piety, holiness and virtue - but this must be done by superstition, or the fear of the gods, by means of fables and wonders; for the thunder, the aegis, the trident, the torches (of the Furies), the dragons, &c., are all fables, as is also all the ancient theology. These things the legislators used as scarecrows to terrify the childish multitude." Geog., B. I

5. Timaeus Locrus, the Pythagorean, after stating that the doctrine of rewards and punishments after death is necessary to society, proceeds as follows: "For as we sometimes cure the body with unwholesome remedies, when such as are most wholesome produce no effect, so we restrain those minds with false relations, which will not be persuaded by the truth. There is a necessity, therefore, of instilling the dread of those foreign torments: as that the soul changes its habitation; that the coward is ignominiously thrust into the body of a woman; the murderer imprisoned within the form of a savage beast; the vain and inconstant changed into birds, and the slothful and ignorant into fishes."

6. Plato, in his commentary on Timaeus, fully endorses what he says respecting the fabulous invention of these foreign torments. And Strabo says that "Plato and the Brahmins of India invented fables concerning the future judgments of hell" (Hades). And Chrysippus blames Plato for attempting to deter men from wrong by frightful stories of future punishments.

Plato himself is exceedingly inconsistent, sometimes adopting, even in his serious discourses, the fables of the poets, and at other times rejecting them as utterly false, and giving too frightful views of the invisible world. Sometimes, he argues, on social grounds, that they are necessary to restrain bad men from wickedness and crime, and then again he protests against them on political grounds, as intimidating the citizens, and making cowards of the soldiers, who, believing these things, are afraid of death, and do not therefore fight well. But all this shows in what light he regarded them; not as truths, certainly, but as fictions, convenient in some cases, but difficult to manage in others.

7. Plutarch treats the subject in the same way; sometimes arguing for them with great solemnity and earnestness, and on other occasions calling them "fabulous stories, the tales of mothers and nurses."

8. Seneca says: "Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, &c., are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors." Sextus Empiricus calls them "poetic fables of hell;" and Cicero speaks of them as "silly absurdities and fables" (ineptiis ac fabulis).

9. Aristotle. "It has been handed down in mythical form from earliest times to posterity, that there are gods, and that the divine (Deity) compasses all nature. All beside this has been added, after the mythical style, for the purpose of persuading the multitude, and for the interests of the laws, and the advantage of the state." Neander's Church Hist., I, p. 7. 11

(The above quotes were taken from "The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment" by Thomas Thayer.)

Bede

Ipetrich,

A brilliant post. Thank you.

I was musing with the beloved about the way pagans and Christians looked at religion. It is a common place among Infidels that religion is a form of social control and I expect that pagan writers quoted could say so because their readership was 'above' the need for such measures. It's another example of what was wrong with their society.

But when we turn to Christianity we find that, although still used as a control, the leaders and educated classes really did believe it. Exceptions abound but at the waxing of the Catholic Church's power in the late middle ages and also in Byzantium there seems to be a very high level of piety among the ruling and educated classes.

Perhaps this is a reason for Christianity's success in late antiquity. The common people had little trouble substituting household gods for local saints. But for the educated, Christianity that was believed to be true by its adherants could easily defeat paganism which was widely accepted as a shame.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason