Episode 006 - Step One - Nothing Comes From Nothing!
Date: 02/20/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1438-episode-six-step-one-nothing-comes-from-nothing/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 006 covers Book One beginning at approximately Latin Line 137, opening with Lucretius’s acknowledgment that translating Epicurean philosophy from Greek into Latin verse is difficult because both the language and the subject matter are new — a problem made far worse for modern readers by additional centuries of translation, commentary, and philosophical conditioning. The panel reads the passage from the 1743 Daniel Brown edition and discusses how readers habitually impose their own categories onto Epicurean terms like “virtue,” “gods,” and “pleasure,” distorting what Epicurus actually said. Multiple translations are compared (Bailey, Munro, Stallings, Martin Ferguson Smith) on the key line about how the terrors of the mind are dispelled not by sunlight but by active study of nature — with the panel noting that Daniel Brown’s use of “reason” here diverges from all other translations and risks importing a misleading concept into an observation-based philosophy.
The heart of the episode is Lucretius’s first major physical principle: “Nothing comes from nothing” (nihil ex nihilo). Cassius connects this to Epicurus’s Letter to Herodotus and notes that Lucretius adds a theological emphasis — “Nothing was by the gods of nothing made” — making explicit that this is a challenge to supernatural religion. Charles reads the full Daniel Brown passage and suggests that the line “Men from the sea might first arise” may have inspired Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. The panel discusses how Lucretius uses these vivid absurdities (fish hatching from the earth, flocks dropping from the sky, trees bearing random fruit) to make the argument from observation rather than abstract logic.
Discussion ranges over how modern monotheism’s omnipotent God differs from the capricious Greco-Roman gods (who would have found managing the universe troublesome); how Epicurean empiricism differs from pure rationalism, with Norman DeWitt recognizing the “if-then” structure here as grounded in observation; and the Epicurean burden of proof when confronted with miraculous claims that contradict personal experience. Martin offers a diplomatic approach; Cassius frames confidence in one’s senses as essential for one’s own sanity. Charles adds a discussion of the “problem of evil” riddle attributed to Epicurus — which he argues was formulated by Lactantius, Constantine’s advisor — as an example of the same pattern of falling back to omnipotence as a catch-all defense. Elaine departs mid-episode to go to work; the full panel was Cassius, Elaine, Charles, and Martin.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 6 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar and wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we’ll walk you line by line through the six books of the poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. Be aware that none of us are professional philosophers, and everyone here is a self-taught Epicurean. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt.
Before we start with today’s episode, let me remind you of our three ground rules. First, our aim is to bring you an accurate presentation of classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it — not to put our own positions into Lucretius’s or Epicurus’s words. Second, in this podcast we won’t be talking about modern political issues. Over at the EpicureanFriends.com web forum we call this approach, not Neo-Epicurean, but Epicurean. Epicurean philosophy is not a religion. It’s not Stoicism, Humanism, Libertarianism, Atheism, or Marxism. It’s a unique philosophy of its own, to be understood on its own terms — not in terms of conventional, modern morality. Third, Lucretius will show that Epicurus was not focused on over-the-top luxury, like some people say, but neither did Epicurus teach a minimalist lifestyle, as other people say. Epicurus taught that feeling, pleasure, and pain are the guides that nature gave us to live by — not gods, idealism, or virtue ethics. More than anything else, Epicurus taught that the universe is not supernatural in any way, and that means there’s no life after death, and any happiness we’ll ever have comes in this life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion.
Remember that our home page is LucretiusToday.com, and there you can find a free copy of the version of the poem from which we’re reading, and links to where you can discuss the poem with us between episodes at EpicureanFriends.com.
In the episodes so far, here are the main topics we’ve covered: that pleasure — using the allegory of Venus — is the driving force of all life; that the way to rid ourselves of pain is to replace pain with pleasure, using the allegory of Venus entertaining Mars, the god of war; that Epicurus was the great philosophic leader who stood up to supernatural religion, opened the gates to a proper understanding of nature, and thereby showed us how we too can emulate the life of the gods; that it is not Epicurean philosophy but supernatural religion which is truly unholy and prompts men to commit evil deeds; that false priests and philosophers will try to scare you away from Epicurean philosophy with threats of punishment after death, which is why you must understand that those threats cannot be true; that the key to freeing yourself from false religion and false philosophy is found in the study of nature; and that the first observation which underlies all the rest of Epicurean philosophy is that we observe that nothing ever comes from nothing.
Now that we’re up to date, let’s start today’s discussion, which begins at approximately Line 137 of the poem. Elaine, do you want to read it from the Daniel Brown?
Elaine:
Yeah, let me read from Daniel Brown. Since we’ve been doing that, okay.
I know it is hard to explain in Latin verse the dark and mystic notions of the Greeks, for I have things to say that require new words, because the tongue is poor, the subject is new. But your virtue and the pleasures I expect from tender friendship make me bear the toil and spend the silent night with wakeful eyes, studious of words and numbers I shall use to open your mind such scenes of light which show the hidden qualities of things unknown.
These terrors of the mind, this darkness then, not the sun’s beams, nor the bright rays of day can ever dispel, but nature’s light and reason. His first of principles shall be my guide. Nothing was by the gods of nothing made. For hence it is that fear disturbs the mind, that strange events in earth and heaven are seen whose causes cannot appear by reason’s eye. And then we say they were from powers divine. But when we rest convinced that nothing can arise from nothing, then the way is clear to our pursuit. We distinctly see whence everything comes into being and how things are formed without the help and trouble of the gods.
If things proceed from nothing, everything might spring from anything and want no seed. Men from the sea might first arise, and fish and birds break from the earth, and herds and tender flocks drop from the sky, and every kind of beast, fixed to no certain place, might find a being in deserts or in cultivated fields. Nor the same fruit on the same trees would grow, but would be changed, and all things all things bear. For had not everything its genial seed, how is it that everything derives its birth from causes still the same? But now, since things are formed from certain seeds and first rise into light, where every being has its principles and matter fitly framed, from hence we say that all things cannot spring from everything, since each has certain secret properties peculiar to itself.
Charles:
I’ve read this section before — it’s hard to, I guess, come up with analysis of it.
Cassius:
Well, I think the first thing to address is pretty clear — it’s relevant to today’s issues with reading Epicurus and the other Epicureans, which is that translations from one language into another, and from an older version of one language into the modern version, are difficult. And so Lucretius is telling us right up front that his Latin is not adequate to the information in the Greek.
Charles:
That’s the point that apparently Cicero didn’t care for — he would try to defend the Latin language as being equally communicative as Greek.
Cassius:
Yes — and to expand that context, Elaine: Lucretius had access to all the texts, all the professors, all the whole series of people around him who could explain things and discuss things with him, and even in that context he found it difficult to translate precisely what Epicurus had said into the Latin language. So we have so many fewer resources than he did, and so many extra years and so many extra layers of commentators and copyists to go through, that we’re relying on them almost as much as we’re relying on the original writer to know what was actually said.
Elaine:
I think that’s important to keep in mind constantly when we’re making modern interpretations — if a specific translation doesn’t fit with the whole, it should ring alarm bells.
Cassius:
Yes, it should. And listen, also — the last part of that sentence we’re talking about: “the tongue is poor” — okay, we understand that going from language to language can create problems. But then it says “the subject is new,” and that’s what I would emphasize right now too. Because when you don’t even know what the people are talking about — when your context of virtue and your context of religion and your context of right and wrong have been conditioned by modern culture — people today have been indoctrinated, educated, peer-pressured into believing a whole set of ideas about the way the world works. And Epicurean philosophy is so different from that. There is no absolute virtue, no absolute divine revelation from God. And so the perspective is so different that people who have not been made familiar with that perspective are going to immediately try to put things in their own categories. They’re going to look at their own existing boxes and say, “well, Epicurus must have been saying this because everybody else says that — it can’t possibly be that he could be saying something different.” And that’s a huge problem.
Elaine:
Especially when it comes to people referring to their own little boxes and then superimposing those projections onto the philosophy. A good example in regard to Epicurus is: “Oh, he believed in a different kind of pleasure — he believed in mental pleasure” — because they can’t conceive of any sort of hedonist philosophy. So they build this justification.
Cassius:
Yes, thank you for bringing that up. You can carry that over to examples that maybe have more merit to them — for example, talking about the gods. Epicurus uses the word “gods” in a way that is fundamentally different from how we use it today. That’s one of the most regular problems we have. People will read Epicurus for the first time, see him talking about gods, and say, “well, I thought Epicurus was an atheist” — and they’ll walk away, or just decide to put it aside because it doesn’t conform with their understanding. They think, “well, Epicurus taught that the universe is based on atoms and was natural, so why is he talking about gods?” And they get confused, or just think it’s not worth pursuing any further.
And another example that we see all the time is the issue of virtue, because the world has been conditioned by the Platonists, the Stoics, and the Aristotelians to believe that virtue has an absolute meaning — that it’s possible to identify virtue for the sake of virtue, and that virtue is always going to be the same. But that doesn’t appear to have been Epicurus’s perspective at all. When Epicurus talks about virtue, you have to remember the contextual nature of virtue as a tool for pleasure — which Epicurus makes very, very clear in the text we still have, but which people don’t expect and don’t recognize. And therefore they insist — I’m not saying they’re malicious in doing so — it’s just natural for people who have been conditioned all their lives to think that virtue has been handed down by God to analyze it in that way.
In fact, that’s the next sentence of this paragraph: “but your virtue and the pleasures I expect from tender friendship make me bear the toil.” This is another example — Lucretius is saying it’s going to be toilsome to write the poem, but the pleasures he’s going to get from it make it worthwhile. The pleasures that come from the friendship are what will motivate him to spend the night working through the poem. Not friendship for the sake of friendship — the pleasures that come from it.
I notice they use the word “numbers” here. Sometimes translators will use the word “lays” — L-A-Y-S — and I understand what they’re talking about there: it’s just the lines of the poem. That’s an archaic way of talking about the poetic lines themselves.
If we move to the next sentence — which I think is also tremendously important, and which gets repeated several times in the poem because of its importance — it says that these terrors of the mind are not dispelled by the sun’s beams, but by study of nature.
Elaine:
There’s a lot going on there — that it’s not necessarily the light of day that can dispel anything, but an understanding has to take place. Not because you observe the sun that you can understand what’s going on with the sun — you have to study what’s going on.
Cassius:
Yes. And again, this is an example to me of the structure of these lines: he repeats the same thing. “The terrors of the mind, this darkness then” — those appear to be two statements of the same thing. And then “not the sun’s beams, nor the bright rays of day” — those also appear to be two statements of the same thing.
Martin:
Right. So it’s like the method involved is pointing to multiple examples as a way of being clear.
Elaine:
Yes. Yeah, I think that’s a poetic device — so that makes sense for him to do that. Definitely fits the meter.
Martin:
Yeah. And emphasis. When you repeat something, you’re making sure that your readers know that you really mean it. That kind of fits that ancient Greek method of storytelling — back to the hexameter.
So, he’s contrasting: the sun’s beams and the bright rays of day, that’s certainly natural. The way I see this is he’s contrasting just passively being alive. The sun is not going to fix your terror. But “nature’s light and reason” — that’s your process of observing, not just passively receiving. Do you think that fits?
Cassius:
I do. You’re right — it’s not a passive process of simply observing. That’s not enough on its own. It’s critical, it’s important, and it’s the place to start, but it is not the full description of the process.
Elaine:
Oh, I don’t think of observing as passive. I’m actually contrasting nature-as-the-sun — but the sun is not going to reach down into your brain and get rid of your terror. But your observations, which are nature’s gift — observations aren’t passive at all. You have to be aware of what you’re observing. So it’s the passive-versus-the-active that I see being contrasted.
Cassius:
Yes — the answers that would remove the fears are still found within nature, but the means to find them are through reason and observations, which are active processes, is what you’re saying. That’s a better way of looking at it than I said. Because using “the sun and the bright rays of day” — yes, it is very passive. The sun comes out every day, it’s automatic, and you’re not going to extrapolate anything new by just accepting that as is.
Charles:
Yeah, by sunbathing.
Cassius:
Sunbathing is not going to fix your problem, but it might be nice. Just not going to clear up your terror.
This is probably a place where we ought to look at the different translations on that particular passage, because it’s done in several different ways. Bailey says: “not by the rays of the sun and the gleaming shafts of day, but by the outer view and the inner law of nature.” Now, I’m not sure about that. And then Munro says: “not by the rays of the sun and the glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and the law of nature.” Now, do you have Martin Ferguson Smith, Elaine?
Elaine:
I do. I do. Let’s see. Okay — “This terrifying darkness that enshrouds the mind must be dispelled not by the sun’s rays and the dazzling darts of day —”
Cassius:
I like that. Nice alliteration.
Elaine:
”— but by study of the superficial aspect and underlying principle of nature.”
Cassius:
So I like this. But I saw that word “reason” in Daniel Brown’s version, and I thought — well, that’s not right, because reason is not part of the canon as a primary source of knowledge. And I’m kind of surprised — well, it’s Lucretius, you mean.
Elaine:
Lucretius, yes.
Cassius:
I don’t think Lucretius said it that way, because none of the other translations are using the word “reason.” It’s all about different levels of observation. We know reason is a critical skill, but it is not primary information.
Martin:
What line are we on?
Cassius:
It’s after the section around line 130 — about Line 147 or so, depending on which translation you have. Charles?
Charles:
I have the Stallings. It certainly sounds to me like the word “study” in Martin Ferguson Smith’s version is a good word to use. And that’s more of an observing — not an abstract reasoning, but a direct observation kind of process.
The Stallings translation is a bit closer to what we were saying: “This dread, these shadows of the mind must thus be swept away, not by rays of the sun nor by the brilliant beams of day, but by observing nature and her laws, and this will lay the groundwork for us — her first principle: that nothing is brought forth by any supernatural power out of nothing.”
Cassius:
Before we get to the last part, let’s see if there’s anything else we want to say about “nature’s light and reason” or — the way Martin Ferguson Smith says it — “the superficial aspect and the underlying principle of nature.” Now, is that an example of using two things that are meant to be the same? Or are they different?
Elaine:
No — I mean, that would be like observing macro behaviors, like what happens when you throw a baseball, versus the atoms. So it’s all part of the same phenomena, but you can look at what you can divide the baseball into. If you don’t really understand the inner workings of these processes, you may misunderstand what you’re looking at from the macro level.
Cassius:
Especially since when we’re discussing atomism, we’re never going to be able to see or touch the atoms. We’re going to be able to observe certain things, but then we’re going to have to deduce other things from what we see. Yes. Should we move on to the next paragraph?
Maybe not the next paragraph — because the last part of that sentence, depending on which translation, may be the next paragraph, since I see Martin Ferguson Smith does have it there. But the last part of the sentence, as stated in the 1743 edition, might be one of the most important in the whole poem: Lucretius is saying, and echoing Epicurus from the Letter to Herodotus, that the fundamental principle that shall be our guide is “Nothing was by the gods of nothing made.” That is ultimately the principle of observation that everything else is based on. Because if we were observing the gods making things from nothing, we would have a totally separate set of facts to go on and would have to structure our philosophy differently. But we do not see the gods making anything from nothing.
Martin:
A lot of times the phrase is just stated as “nothing comes from nothing.”
Cassius:
Right. Yeah, the addition of “by the gods” here is something we probably ought to comment on. I think Lucretius added that. I don’t remember if that phrasing is in the Letter to Herodotus or not, but it fits with the emphasis on what we’re doing — which is getting to the bottom of whether there’s truth to supernatural religion. And so by putting “by the gods” in there, he emphasizes that supernatural religion is the issue.
The word “gods” isn’t mentioned in Cyril Bailey’s translation of the Letter to Herodotus. That phrase there — at least in this translation — says: “first of all, that nothing is created out of that which does not exist.”
Martin:
That’s Herodotus. But I believe in the Latin version the word divinitus is used — divinitus.
Cassius:
So Martin Ferguson Smith says, “nothing ever springs miraculously out of nothing.” Yeah, it seems pretty clear. And as we continue on to the next paragraph, it’s clear that Lucretius is emphasizing that the gods are not making anything from nothing.
Elaine:
In the Latin, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but the Latin meaning of divinitus is “miraculously,” or “from God,” or “through divine power” — “by divine agency,” “in a superhuman manner.” And I wouldn’t be surprised if it appears again a sentence down, because as we go forward he makes the same point basically again.
Cassius:
Okay. So this passage we’re talking about now is the principle — there are several sentences involved in it. Then we’ll go on to another paragraph that’s also in what we read today, about how we establish that fact by looking at things. But for now, we’re still in the middle of him making the point that nothing comes from nothing at the will of the gods.
Martin, anything from you on this section?
Martin:
I was listening to the conversation — it looks good.
Cassius:
Good. And then he says: “for hence it is that fear disturbs the mind, that strange events in earth and heaven are seen whose causes cannot appear by reason’s eye. And then we say they were from powers divine. But when we rest convinced that nothing can arise from nothing, then the way is clear to our pursuit.”
Now, there — “when we rest convinced that nothing can arise from nothing” — it does not limit it to the gods, if that is a correct translation. And it would probably be wrong to limit Lucretius to saying, “oh, well, things do come from nothing — just not by the gods.” He’s not saying that at all. He’s following Epicurus’s lead that nothing comes from nothing, but he’s emphasizing in this context that the gods aren’t doing it, and that’s why we challenge religion as the motivating force and organizing principle of the universe.
And he says: “we distinctly see whence everything comes into being and how things are formed without the help and trouble of the gods.” Maybe that’s another example of the contextual differences from today — because today we’re so used to an omnipotent God who has no trouble just controlling everything in the universe instantaneously, effortlessly. But that was not the way the ancient Greeks looked at things. They had a more common-sense view that if somebody was going to be managing every minute thing in the universe, it was not going to be pleasant or easy to do — it would be troublesome even to a god.
Charles:
There is also the view that the Greek gods — which were then incorporated by the Romans into their pantheon — were cruel. The Greek gods were fearsome. They could be cruel or arbitrary; they’d fall in love with each other in unfortunate ways and all sorts of things we associate with very human characteristics. We can look at the story of Midas, of Tantalus, Prometheus.
Cassius:
Very human, yes — I was going to say very human characteristics. It’s a very different view compared to today.
Elaine:
I think this section emphasizes again the importance of understanding the underlying workings “whose causes cannot appear by reason’s eye” — because if you’re just looking at a meteor or something like that, you don’t understand what’s happening. And so then it’s easy to say “they were from powers divine.” That’s the God of the gaps — the modern terminology for doing that. But if you actually understand the underlying physics, you won’t be tempted to stick a god in there. And that understanding that nothing can arise from nothing is what clears the way to our pursuit — distinctly seeing how things are formed without the involvement of the gods.
Cassius:
Right. Well, the next paragraph is going to turn to the process of understanding that point and our argument in support of it. Is there anything else we want to say about the point itself before we move forward?
Maybe I should say this to introduce the next paragraph: it’s the major contention of so many people that Epicurus is a pure empiricist — that everything comes directly from sensation and he does not rely at all on deductive logic or reason of any kind, that all sensations are true and that’s where it stops. This next passage would be something that Norman DeWitt and others would point to as an example of how obviously that is not true — because he immediately begins his proof by means of if-then analysis, deducing from what we do not see a conclusion that is important to explain what we do see. But it’s still different from pure rationalism, because it’s always grounded in observation. It’s starting with an observation, not starting with a speculation.
Charles:
Yes, it’s a really critical difference. It’s amazing how many modern intellectuals don’t understand the difference between what your premises are and what you do with them — abstract reasoning versus keeping it grounded in reality with Epicurus. Even then, it does start out with “if” — but he uses the word “might.” He’s postulating based on observations.
Elaine:
When I read this, I started thinking about if you gave this passage to a modern Christian — because they’re imagining only one supreme being, and their version has moved away from the capricious idea to the point they disavow all the stuff in the Old Testament as “the humans just didn’t understand what was going on.” So what they would say is that God has set it up to mostly be this way — but every so often, because God can break any of those laws, God will make little exceptions: the miracle. So it’s mostly going to work like that, but not always.
So I think this argument wouldn’t work today the same as it would have worked if you thought you were in a universe with these multiple capricious, arguing gods who could just go around producing stuff magically everywhere — instead of one that they imagine has this well-worked-out plan. It’s not going to freak us out by making a plum grow on an apple tree, but it’s just going to facilitate these little miracles or big miracles or whatever.
Cassius:
The context of who you’re talking to is going to affect what you focus on in your arguments. People you’re talking about, Elaine, have just totally dropped the connection — limiting reality to reason because they say that God is omnipotent. He can do whatever he wants to, and contradictions and inconsistencies with observation never bother them. Whatever happens, they reconcile it back to being God’s will and he can do whatever he wants to — so there’s just no connection whatsoever.
It probably would make more impression on somebody who has already realized the fallacy and the problems with that kind of reasoning and really wants to say: “Okay, well, I don’t accept that omnipotent, ridiculous view of God doing anything he wants anytime he wants to, because I don’t see that — but what do I do in place of that? Does that mean that everything is just totally random?” That’s where this is going — it’s reminding us that things are not totally random in the sense of chaotic from moment to moment. There is a method and a pattern: the seasons, the cause-and-effect relationships we observe — where does that come from? How could that be going on without the gods to shepherd it? And this passage, and the rest of the poem, are an explanation of how the universe works in a regular manner without the gods being there to shepherd it.
Charles, you were making the point — did you want us to read the paragraph again?
Charles:
No, I think —
Cassius:
Martin, are you able to read the paragraph?
Martin:
Yes. I think we read it all initially but haven’t repeated it.
Cassius:
Somebody want to take it? Charles, does that sound like you’re going to do it?
Charles:
Yeah.
If things proceed from nothing, everything might spring from anything and want no seed. Men from the sea might first arise, and fish and birds break from the earth, and herds and tender flocks drop from the sky, and every kind of beast, fixed to no certain place, might find a being in deserts or in cultivated fields. Nor the same fruit on the same trees would grow, but would be changed, and all things all things bear. For had not everything its genial seed, how is it that everything derives its birth from causes still the same? But now, since things are formed from certain seeds and first rise into light, where every being has its principles and matter fitly framed, from hence we see that all things cannot spring from everything, since each has certain secret properties peculiar to itself.
I just want to say real quick — I think that’s the line that inspired Botticelli to paint the Birth of Venus.
Cassius:
The one that has her standing on the seashell? The seashell from the ocean with all the flowers?
Charles:
Yes. It’s probably out there somewhere as an observation, but that’s what I think.
Cassius:
I love that painting. Wow, interesting idea. Because Botticelli was heavily inspired by Lucretius.
Elaine:
Oh my goodness, how interesting.
Cassius:
What I’m seeing basically being discussed here is that the first part of this passage is saying: if in fact things came from nothing, then we would see all sorts of essentially chaotic phenomena — fish and birds coming up from the ground, birds just dropping out of the sky from nothing, animals living in all sorts of places where they’re not suited to live. Apple trees would grow pears and pear trees would grow apples. And then he moves to the observations — which we know do not happen in the norm.
We know that there is a norm, and that pear trees do give off pears, and that there’s a pattern to things. And so we have to understand where that pattern comes from, and that’s going to lead us into the discussion of the atoms. But the image of people sprouting from the ocean — that took off in the Renaissance, like I said with Botticelli. And it kind of gave them what La Mettrie said as well. It really stuck with people even in the Enlightenment.
So I think this paragraph is certainly bringing up the topic — but you know, Charles, the paragraph is really saying those things don’t happen. Whether La Mettrie is speculating that they could happen might be very different from what Lucretius is saying, which is that they don’t happen, and that men don’t just rise from the sea.
Charles:
I know — because I mentioned earlier that Lucretius uses the word “might”: “if things…”
Cassius:
But he’s using it to show that they don’t. You know, occasionally you get a mutant — so unless you understand the underlying principles, you might say “see, that one came from nothing.” But that’s not what Lucretius means.
Elaine:
Every time I hear this “nothing comes from nothing” line, I don’t know if I’m the only one whose mind does this — I grew up, my parents were big musical fans, so I grew up with all those old record albums of the popular Broadway musicals, and every time I hear that line, it has a tune: the line in The Sound of Music — “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could, but somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.” So that is another direction people can take off with “nothing comes from nothing” — even if they start there, they can still go in weird directions, like karmic kinds of things.
What I wanted to say though is that I understand Lucretius’s point, and it’s something I’ve noticed — the imagery it brings up has stuck around and the source is just pointing back to Lucretius.
Cassius:
And I think that’s a good observation. I think something may have been lost in translation, or maybe every author of the Enlightenment took it a different way. Maybe this is a 1743 edition which is prior to the author of Telliamed and prior to La Mettrie — the context the book was read in was different.
Charles, what you’ve just said brings up another point: somebody listening or reading this for the first time might ask themselves, “what about evolution?” And where I’m going with that — I think Lucretius is really focused on what we can observe for ourselves just by looking at the world. We see that pears don’t come from apple trees, birds just don’t appear out of the sky, men just don’t walk out of the ocean. And from those observations we can see that there are no supernatural gods who are displaying miracles to us every moment of our lives so that we need to be living in awe and fear. I think that’s probably the first and obvious point he’s making.
Now, as far as whether somebody can see an echo of evolution — Darwinian type of evolutionary theory — here, there are other parts of the poem that definitely go even further in that direction. But I think what’s important to emphasize right here is that it’s very easy to go off into much more detailed analysis, whether you want to call that a rabbit hole or not, and miss what’s probably the important point — which is that if there were supernatural gods controlling the world, we would see miraculous events going on all the time, and we don’t. And Martin Ferguson Smith’s translation — well, actually Stallings — emphasizes the craziness of the idea: people could pop out of the sea “born willy-nilly.” That’s the spirit of this passage — it’s just: no, people are not popping out of the sea.
And the key thing is the beginning: “everything might spring from anything.” There’s nothing about mutations or evolution that would lead us to say everything might spring from anything. And that’s what he’s talking about — that doesn’t happen. Probably another way to say the same point would be that in order for us not to be plagued with fear and doubt, we have to be confident in a method of thinking that inoculates us against that. He’s saying, from a very practical point of view: we don’t go with just fear or speculation. We trust our senses. We trust the things we see around us. And if we don’t see supernatural gods creating miracles every moment, then that’s going to be the basis for having confidence that we haven’t seen them at any other point in our lives. That gives us some degree of confidence that we’re not going to see that happen in the future either.
And even though we haven’t been around for eternity, we haven’t been around for ten thousand years and we haven’t seen it ourselves — so where would you get the idea that your great-great-grandfather could have seen it? You have to decide what level of evidence you’re going to take.
Go ahead, Elaine.
Elaine:
Yeah, no — I’m agreeing with you. And I’m also saying I’ve got to run — I’ve got to go to work. So catch up with y’all next week.
Cassius:
Thank you, Elaine — we’ll wrap up shortly. I want to add one last thing to that paragraph though — it’s going to be real quick.
Charles:
Sure — we want to get Martin in here too, so we’ve got time. Go ahead.
Cassius:
The premise of his argument is that we can take our own observations and reach a conclusion based on them — because somebody could come up to you or to Lucretius and say, “well, you haven’t seen those things, but my Bible says that they happened all the time just two thousand years ago.” So how do you deal with that? How do you deal with somebody who comes up to you and says, “well, you, Martin, may not have seen fish fall out of the sky and men walk out of the ocean as adults, but that used to happen all the time.” Take your time, Martin — I’ll cut out the silence while you compose the ultimate answer to that question.
Martin:
There are basically two different approaches here. One would be to say “I don’t believe in those fairy tales” upfront — or just leave it and say, “You have your viewpoint. I come from a different direction and disagree with that.” Those are clearly the diplomatic ways of dealing with things.
Cassius:
And I guess where I’m going further beyond that is that for our own sanity and our own confidence, we have to in our own minds have an explanation for why we don’t believe, why we consider those to be fantasy, and why we have a different experience. And where I’m going with it comes back down to the position of having confidence in your senses — having confidence in the logical position that your observations are as valid as anybody else’s, and there’s no reason why your observations should be different from theirs. And the burden of proof on somebody who’s asserting something that is not readily observable should be high. If somebody’s asserting something to you that just simply makes no sense and is inconsistent with your own observation, they better have a strong chain of evidence to support what they’re saying — more than just hearsay. That’s why hearsay is generally looked down upon in courts of law as inadmissible — because people can assert anything, and at some point you have to have a rule of confidence in your thought process, a rule of evidence about what you’re going to allow and what you’re not.
Charles:
I have a friend of mine — I’m not going to say his name — but he believes in fallen angels and all these crazy religious things. And this point for modern day is exactly what you were saying: “All of this happened two thousand years ago. My book says this. You just haven’t seen it.” And yeah, it really establishes that we often have to come up with our own conclusions based on these principles.
It has to be a common issue in virtually every science, but it certainly is common in the field of law and in legal analysis, because so much of it is built on the question of what evidence is going to be accepted and what evidence is not. And then there’s going to be wide variation in how much emphasis and confidence you put into the evidence you do accept. But there are also rules of evidence that flatly prevent certain types of assertions from coming into court — assertions made without corroborating evidence are considered inadmissible and don’t even come into consideration. And so a lot of the religious assertions we’re talking about just really fit that category — they ought to be ruled out from even the deliberative process without more evidence behind them.
There’s another point I wanted to bring up real quick — about how somebody who’s very religious can automatically fall back to omnipotence, and they’ll have any excuse that goes back to faith, that will kind of defeat any argument they come across. And it reminded me of the already Christian-fabricated problem — the riddle attributed to Epicurus — the one of free will. I believe it was written up by Lactantius, Constantine’s advisor. I’m sure you’re familiar with it because we see it all the time — the riddle, the trilemma, the problem of evil, whatever you want to call it, which was, as I had said, something that was formulated by Christian apologists. The supposed refutations to it always go back to this sense of omnipotence: “He gave you free will to test you.” Well, that’s kind of a self-contradictory statement right there. But we could get into that forever.
Cassius:
So I suppose we should wrap up. Okay, well then — I guess let’s adjourn. Thanks a lot.
Martin:
Thanks and bye.
Cassius:
All right, okay — bye, guys.