Episode 245 - Right, Wrong, Or Incomplete?
Date: 09/19/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4052-episode-247-cicero-s-otnotg-22-cotta-continues-to-attack-the-epicurean-view-that/
Summary
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 245 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucious who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the epicurean texts and we discuss how epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of epicurus@epicureanfriends.com where we have a discussion thread for this and all of our podcast episodes. Today we’re continuing in Cicero’s on the nature of the gods. We’re going to be going back into the text today starting with section 27. The last several episodes we have devoted to some of the background issues of skepticism that kata is bringing in his attack on epicurean philosophy. We concluded with kata attacking the terminology of quasi blood and quasi bodies and saying basically, Vallejo, you guys don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re trying to conceal the fact that you don’t know what you’re talking about by using words like quasi body and quasi blood, but it’s amazing that you guys just don’t laugh at each other as you’re talking because what you’re saying makes no sense at all. The context of that, of course, being that the position that Epicurus had put together and that Valle had relayed is based on the epicure method of reasoning from observation of things that are similar or analogous. That is we see things here on earth that we get confident, that we know something about, and when we confront things that we don’t have information about, our reason is going to suggest possibilities such as the atoms and the void that relate to things that we can observe directly. Even though we can’t observe the atoms in the void directly, we analogize and use similarity to come up with reasonable explanations for those things that we cannot perceive directly stated another way. We use the observation of the senses as the starting point for our reasoning, and we keep our reasoning consistent with things that we have evidence for. We just don’t suggest some possibility made up out of whole cloth with no evidence whatsoever, like, well, maybe there is a supernatural God that caused this. We think about things that we have seen operate around us, and we use that as a starting point for thinking about the things that we cannot perceive directly, and this is going to be super important for us to remember as we go throughout the rest of the texts that we talk about in this episode. What we’re really focusing on in this discussion is the fact that the epicureans in talking about the gods are going to use similarity and analogy. They’re going to look to things that we have evidence for as the basis for talking about things that we don’t have any evidence about. They’re not going to let their speculations just go whole hog without any kind of limitations to reality whatsoever. So when they talk about the bodies of the gods or the blood of the gods, they’re going to be saying, well, I don’t know the details of how the blood or the body works, but there must be something that acts as similar to a body or as similar to blood. Given the way we know that nature operates, it’s not going to be supernatural and totally different. There’s going to be some means of analogy between the things that we know versus the things that we have not yet seen, but which are also natural. Okay, so with that as the background context, section 27, ADA says this, this I perceive is what you contend for, that the gods have a certain figure that has nothing concrete, nothing solid, nothing of express substance, nothing prominent in it, but that it is pure, smooth and transparent. Let us suppose the same with the Venus of Co, which is not a body but the representation of a body, nor is the red which is drawn there and mixed with the white real blood, but a certain resemblance of blood. So in Epicurus is deity. There is no real substance but the resemblance of substance. Let me take for granted that which is perfectly unintelligible. Then tell me what are the lineaments and figures of those sketched out deities? Here you have plenty of arguments by which you would show the gods to be in human form. The first is that our minds are so anticipated and prepo possessed that whenever we think of a deity, the human shape occurs to us. The next is that as the divine nature excels all things, so it ought to be of the most beautiful form and there’s no form more beautiful than the human, and the third is that reason cannot reside in any other shape. Now, kata is then going to go through and take each of those three items and attack them, but before we go into his attack, he’s identified three things he’s going to talk about. First is that we have a prolapses or anticipation that whenever we think of a deity, the human shape occurs to us. Point number two is a logical argument that if a divine nature excels all things, it ought to be the most beautiful and there’s no form that’s more beautiful than human. And the third is that reason cannot reside in any other shape. Now, of course, those go beyond what Epicurus had said himself in the letter to menaces saying that the most important things to think about a God is that they are living beings who are blessed and imperishable and Valle himself has said that the rest of a discussion about the gods is something that we are curious about and we have to use our reasoning as best we can, but the things that we’re talking about now do not reach the core level of things that you must believe about a God in order to live a happy life. These issues of the form of the God and whether it’s beautiful are things that we’re going to be putting our best efforts to come to something reasonable about, but something that’s not necessary to take a position on with the main thrust of where kata is going to go is he’s going to say, Valle, you don’t know. You are unable to tell me the specifics of whether a God has a body, whether God has blood, whether a God is beautiful, and because you can’t tell me specifically how these things work, I’m going to throw your argument out of court completely, and I’m going to go back and say that it makes more sense to be like Plato and say that the Gods are total spirit who’ve created the universe out of nothing and all these other things that an epicurean would say are absurd. So what’s being lined up here as lines of battle is whether it’s more reasonable to use analogy and similarity to make reason, speculation about how a God would live or whether it’s more rational to throw out all similarity, throw out all analogy, throw out all direct human observation and just use logic without any evidence whatsoever to construct something that may be internally consistent but which has no foundation in what we can observe here on the earth, such as a superhuman being that created the universe from nothing and that dictates and super intends every moment of the universe. Thereafter, those kind of things can be speculated about using our imagination, but they have no precedent, no similarity or analogy in what we can see. So an epicurean rejects that while kata a skeptic who says nothing can be known opens the door for anything to be possible.
Joshua: So at the beginning of section 27, he starts out, as you have just said, by describing the gods according to the epicurean view as having nothing concrete, nothing solid and nothing of express substance, and then he goes on to compare it with the Venus of costs COS. And this turns out not to be a sculpture or statue, but a painting. A pelli of s fourth century BC painted the birth of Venus rising from the foam of the sea. This painting became legendary in the ancient world and it was moved to Rome by the Emperor Augustus. However, when the historian Pliny the elders saw it in the first century ad, it was already much deteriorated. And as Cassius has pointed out, if you look at a very similar painting in Pompeii in the so-called House of Venus, this painting does survive, I assume as a fresco, and it’s supposed to be based on the one that was done by apelli in the fourth century. And so we do see the figure of Venus reclined on a shell that is emerging from the sea and she has attendance that are riding dolphins and the inside of the shell is a sort of pinkish color. What Ada is saying here is if you look at a painting, it’s a representation of Venus, but it’s not Venus herself. It doesn’t have the substance. He says, let us suppose the same with the Venus of Cs, which is not a body but the representation of a body, nor is the red which is drawn there and mixed with the white real blood, but a certain resemblance of blood. So in Epicurus deity there is no real substance but the resemblance of substance and he goes on to say, let me take for granted this, even though it’s perfectly unintelligible. Ada goes on to say, tell me then what are the lineaments and figures of these sketched out deities here you have plenty of arguments by which you would show the gods to be in human form. The first is that our minds are so anticipated and prepo possessed that whenever we think of a deity, the human shape occurs to us. Ada continues. First, let us consider each argument separately. You seem to me to assume a principle. Despotically, I may say that has no manner of probability in it. Who was ever so blind in contemplating these subjects as not to see that the gods were represented in human form, either by the particular advice of wise men who thought by those means, the more easily to turn the minds of the ignorant from a depravity of manners to the worship of the gods or through superstition, which was the cause of their believing that when they were paying adoration to these images, they were approaching the gods themselves. These conceits were not a little improved by the poets, painters and artificers for it would not have been very easy to represent the God’s planning and executing any work in another form. And perhaps this opinion arose from the idea which mankind have of their own beauty, but do not you who are so great at adept in physics, see what a soothing flatterer, what a sort of procurious nature is to herself. Do you think there is any creature on the land or in the sea that is not highly delighted with its own form? If it were not, so why would not a bull become enamored of a marere or a horse of a cow? Do you believe an eagle, a lion, or a dolphin prefers any shape to its own if nature therefore has instructed us in the same manner that nothing is more beautiful than man? What wonder is it that we for that reason should imagine the gods are of the human form? Do you suppose if beasts were endowed with reason that everyone would not give the prize of beauty to his own species, and this relates to that quote that is variously attributed, if triangles had gods, they would have three sides.
Cassius: Yeah, let’s go ahead and deal with this first argument then before we go further into section 38. When I listened to you read that, Joshua, there’s a lot here that I think that Elias would actually agree with. It seems that Kata is attempting to deal with the issue of prolapses and Elias’s position. Epic’s position is that nature disposes you to think in particular ways and what Kata is saying here that nature is disposing each type of creature to think of a God in their own form. I don’t know that that’s something that Vallejo would necessarily disagree with. So the dispute between them is not so much that this disposition exists, the dispute would seem to be whether this disposition is a reasonable basis for making any kind of a conclusion about the nature of a God. Valis and Epicurus are saying that the fact that nature disposes us to think of a God in human form is sufficient basis for reaching a conclusion about what a God would be like. And Kata is suggesting that that is ridiculous. Keeping in mind that what Kata is suggesting himself about the gods, number one, he’s not willing to say because he’s a skeptic. Number two, he’s basically adopting the platonic viewpoint of a God being a totally supernatural being that created the universe from nothing. And then point number three being that what Kata is doing on a day-to-day basis is exactly what he’s criticizing, that there are men who more easily turn the minds of the ignorant to the worship of the gods. That’s exactly what Kata does day in and day out as a member of the Roman priesthood. So one thing I would ask as we consider what we’ve just read is which of the two is more reasonable? We would take the position most of us I think today, that it would be better to simply wait and not take a position on details that you don’t know enough to make a firm projection about. But when confronted with different options, one of which is similar to or analogous to reality that you can observe for yourself while the other option totally throws out everything that you do observe in your own reality, I would suggest that Epicurus was correct, that it’s more reasonable to take the option that is more closely related to the reality of nature that you can observe.
Joshua: I think you could almost contrast Lucian and Horace on this subject. On the one hand you have Lucian who is, as you read in his other works, a great admirer of Epicurus and when it comes to exposing the impostor of the false prophet Alexander, he says, this was an occasion for an Epicurus or a metro dous to step forward and point to this and say, I don’t know exactly how he’s committing this fraud, but I have confidence that he’s committing this fraud because what he’s claiming does not comport with everything else that I know about the nature of the cosmos that we live in and about the nature of the information that we can derive from our senses. You could make the point of analogy and similarity on that point. On the other extreme, we have Horace who when encountering this issue of the Gods Horace, who famously said, when you want to laugh, you shall find me fat and sleek, a hog out of Epicurus herd. Later in his career when Caesar Augustus was on the cusp of taking over power, Horace by allusion to Lucious says that it was the instance of lightning and thunder on a clear day that convinced him that maybe the gods of popular imagination were real. After all, he said he had been wandering in the paths of a senseless philosophy, the philosophy of epi kiis, and when I consider those two positions, Horace, and perhaps this is just political expedience on his part, the fear of reprisal for declining to take part in the Roman state religion when he says, okay, I’m going to let the epicureanism thing go because I’m trying to save my life here. But if he really was convinced by the flash of lightning on a clear day, we can contrast that to Lucien. Lucian described Epicurus Dai, his principle doctrines as the most admirable of his books with its tse presentment of his wise conclusions and went on to say that Alexander had no conception of the blessings conferred by that book. Upon its readers of the peace, tranquility, and independence of mind, it produces of the protection it gives against terrors, phantoms and marvels, vain hopes and inordinate desires of the judgment and candor that it fosters or of its true purging of the spirit, not with torches and quills and such rubbish, but with right reason, truth and frankness. So here we have a figure in the ancient world who is grappling with epicureanism. We have another of his works, the dialogues of the dead when he imagines conversations going on in the underworld, and the point of the story is to demonstrate how silly it is to imagine Alexander the Great having a discussion in the underworld and finding out only on arriving there that he was not a God after all and so forth. I think there’s a lot to be gained from contrasting these two approaches. Horace, if you accept the view that he was genuinely convinced and wasn’t just playing an act to save his own skin, then it was the problem of the gods being far removed and not intervening that put him on edge in relation to Epicurean philosophy. And on the other extreme, Lucian, who is saying that we can’t go so far as to say that we know any of what’s being said about this because we just don’t have the evidence, and yet Epicurus is principle doctrines, as he says, is just about his favorite book.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, there’s just so much uncertainty surrounding these subjects even when you compare Boris and Lucian, and of course what we’re talking about now is related to something that Kata himself has mentioned when he first started talking, that these are friends talking in close quarters among themselves, not necessarily to the public, even though of course C is presenting this as a writing for the public. But Kata is saying that in close quarter circumstances where you’re talking among friends, you can afford to be absolutely, if not brutally honest about what you think and what you know and what you don’t know, and that’s not exactly the situation that Kata himself was in as a priest of Rome. Why don’t we go on to 38 and talk about the issue of beauty, not just that we identify a God as a human form because we’re disposed to through paralysis or however you want to look at that, but that we’re also thinking that Gods are the most beautiful
Joshua: And on the point of speaking, frankly, among friends, kata continues in section 28 of the text when he says this, yet by Hercules I speak as I think though I am fond enough of myself, I dare not say that I excel in beauty. That bull which carried Europa, the bull was Zeus in the myth. And then he goes on for the question here is not concerning our genius and elocution but our species and figure if we could make and assume to ourselves any form, would you be unwilling to resemble the sea Triton as he has painted supported swimming on sea monsters whose bodies are partly human Here I touch on a difficult point for so great is the force of nature that there is no man who would not choose to be like a man nor indeed any ant. That would not be like an ant, but like what man for how few can pretend to be beauty. When I was at Athens, the whole flock of youths afforded scarcity won. You laugh, I see, but what I tell you is the truth nay to us who after the examples of ancient philosophers delight in boys defects are often pleasing. Alca was charming with a wart on a boy’s knuckle, but a wart is a blemish on the boy, yet it seemed a beauty to him. S my friend and colleague’s father was enamored with your fellow citizen SIUs on whom he wrote these verses as Once I stood to hail the rising day, SIUs appearing on the left, I spied, forgive me gods, if I presume to say the mortals beauty with the immortal vibe, in other words, ROS is more beautiful than a God, yet he was then as he is now, squint tide. But what signifies that if his defects were beauty stick in 29, he continues, I return to the gods. Can we suppose any of them to be squinted or even to have a cast in the eye? Have they any warts? Are any of them hook nosed, fla, bearded beetle, browed or jolt headed as some of us are or are they? This reminds me of that whole long passage in lucious about imperfections in people you’re attracted to. He says, or are they free from imperfections? Let us grant you that. Are they all alike in the face for if they are many, then one must necessarily be more beautiful than another, and then there must be some deity not absolutely most beautiful, or if their faces are all alike, there would be an academy in heaven. For if one God does not differ from another, there is no possibility of knowing or distinguishing them. What if your assertions valis proves absolutely false that no form occurs to us in our contemplations on the deity, but the human will you not withstanding that persist in the defense of such an absurdity supposing that form occurs to us as you say it does. And we know Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo, and the other deities by the countenance, which painters and statuary have given them and not only by their countenance, but by their decorations, their age and attire. Yet the Egyptians, the Syrians, and almost all Barbaras nations are without such distinctions. You may see a greater regard paid by them to certain beasts than by us to the most sacred temples and images of the gods. For many shrines have been rifled and images of the deities have been carried from their most sacred places by us. In other words, by the Romans, we’ve ransacked these temples and brought this stuff back to Rome, but we never heard that an Egyptian offered any violence to a crocodile and IBUs or a cat. What do you think then? Do not the Egyptians esteem their sacred bull, their ies as a deity? Yes, by Hercules, as certainly as you do our protectors, Juno, whom you never behold even in your dreams without a goat skin, a spear, a shield, and broad sandals. But the Grecian Juno of Argos and the Roman Juno are not represented in this manner. So that the Grecians, the Ians and we ascribe different forms to Juno and our capal line. Jupiter is not the same with the Jupiter Amman of the Africans, therefore this is section 30 now therefore ought not a natural philosopher that is an inquirer into the secrets of nature to be ashamed of seeking a testimony to truth from minds. Prepo possessed by custom according to the rule you have laid down, it may be said that Jupiter is always bearded. Apollo always beardless that Minerva has gray and Neptune as your eyes. And indeed we must then honor that Vulcan at Athens made by Alese whose lameness through his thin robes appears to be no deformity shall we therefore receive a lame deity because we have such an account of him. Consider likewise that the gods go by what names we give them. Now in the first place, they have as many names as men have languages for Vulcan is not called Vulcan in Italy, Africa or Spain as you are called Valle. In all countries besides the gods are innumerable though the list of their names is of no great length. Even in the records of our priests, have they know names you must necessarily confess. Indeed they have none for what occasion is there for different names. If their persons are alike, how much more laudable would it be valis to acknowledge that you do not know what you do not know then to follow a man whom you must despise? Do you think the deity is like either me or you do not really think he is like either of us? What is to be done then? Shall I call the sun the moon or the sky a deity? If so, they are consequently happy, but what pleasures can they enjoy and they are wise too, but how can wisdom reside in such shapes? These are your own principles. Therefore, if they are not of human form as I have proved, and if you cannot persuade yourself that they are of any other, why are you cautious of denying absolutely the being of any gods? You dare not deny it, which is very prudent in you though here you are not afraid of the people but of the gods themselves. I have known epicureans who reverence even the least images of the gods, though I perceive it to be the opinion of some that epicurus through fear of offending against the Athenian laws has allowed a deity in words and destroyed him in fact. So in those his select and short sentences, which are called by you curri Dai, his principle doctrines, this I think is the first that being which is happy and immortal is not burdened with any labor and does not impose any on anyone else.
Cassius: As you were getting near the end of the part that you were last quoting there, the end of section 30, it becomes interesting how the arguments that kata is advancing. He is beginning to put himself in the place of Valle and say, these are your own arguments questioning the assertions that other people have made about the gods, and he is right about that. What Valle and Epicurus are doing is, as they’ve said in Val letter of men, as they say throughout, they are questioning the opinions that people have about the gods because they have stated that these opinions are incorrect. So as usual with kata, it’s going to be important to look behind what he’s arguing and separate out what part is valid and makes sense and what part goes too far in criticizing what Epicurus and Val are doing because Epicurus and Valle again are not suggesting that we just accept every notion about the gods that might exist. So if they’re not suggesting that we accept every notion of all of the people about the gods, where’s the dividing line and what are they willing to accept and what are they not willing to accept? And that’s where you go back into the issues of prolapses and the basic fixtures that unli the discussion of the gods conceptually, but which don’t lead to the kind of specifics that Kata is attempting to get Valle to pledge himself here too. And that’s the important thing. What is Kata doing with his argument other than pointing out that because Valle, you don’t have the details down specifically nothing that you have said can be justified. And I don’t think that is a fair way of approaching what Valez and Epicurus are saying because they’re not taking a doctrinal position that the Gods speak Greek or that the Gods have blood or bodies of a particular type. There’s a difference in the level of proof and the level of argument that Epicurus is making about the gods being blessed, imperishable and living beings versus all of these other details. And where Kat’s argument begins to come apart is the presumption that kata is making. The fact that items in a class vary as to detail does not mean that the class itself does not exist. The basic assertions that you’re making about a class do not depend on uniformity of appearance or uniformity of beauty or uniformity of things that are not key properties of the things that you’re talking about. Some men have beards and some men shave, some men have blue eyes and some have gray eyes, some have long hair, some are bald. There’s a boundless number of differences of the details between a class that we consider such as human beings, and yet those differences in details do not mean that we can make no conclusions about the class whatsoever. I think that that’s really the key way to deal with what Ada is saying here. The assertions that the epic hearings were making about the class of gods are of two types, one of which is necessary because it is the only thing that’s logically consistent, which is that there living beings who are blessed and imperishable as opposed to a whole separate set of issues such as what language they speak or how they may dress or how their bodies may actually be constituted. Those arguments are not of the same level of certainty and not of the same level of necessity to the very identification of the class. And I would say that the epicureans understood that we don’t have the text that we would like to have to see Epicurus discussing these things himself and to see the caveats that he himself would’ve placed on these issues. We know from some of the Herculean texts that a lot of the discussions was debating among themselves back and forth about what could be possible. And here when we’re reading these assertions of Valle being listed out to be so specific, a fair reading of the text is going to take into account the way that Cicero is as a lawyer would attempting to make someone look ridiculous by carrying their positions to extremes. And so we just have to simply take those things into account as we evaluate the direction these arguments are going. Rather than go further into 31, we’ll spend the rest of the time we have for today talking about what we’ve discussed so far. But here’s something that I would like to relate this to. It’s an essay by Isaac Asimov entitled The Relativity of Wrong Dealing with a letter from a student who was writing to be critical of him because Isaac Asimov had written something to the effect that we now have a basic understanding of the universe. And he talked about several scientific discoveries of the 20th century in response to which the person who was writing to Isaac Asimov, who Asimov described sarcastically as a quote, young specialist in English literature, quoted him to that effect and then went on to lecture him severely on the fact that in every century people have thought that they understood the universe at last and in every century they were proven to be wrong. And the specialist in English literature said it follows therefore that the one thing we can say about our modern knowledge is that it is wrong. And the writer then quoted with the approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphi Oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. Socrates had said, if I’m the wisest man, it’s because I alone know that I know nothing. And the implication of the writer who had written this letter to Isaac Asimov was that Isaac Asimov was very foolish because he thought he knew a great deal. Now if you’ll follow along with what Asimov said in response to this writer, I think you can pretty easily see how this applies to what we’re discussing today. My answer to the writer was John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. And here Asimov goes on to explain that of course the earth is not a perfect sphere but is indeed broader around the equator than it is at the poles. And so therefore it’s not a perfect sphere as people tend to think of it. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. Isaac OV went on to explain. The basic trouble you see is that people think that right and wrong are absolute, that everything that isn’t perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong. However, I don’t think that’s so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so, okay, I’m not going to go through the entire essay by any means, but what Isaac Asimov then goes on to explain is that it is significant how wrong a theory is that right and wrong are not so absolute that the analysis has to stop with the implication that there are no degrees of correctness with the implication that you either are absolutely right or absolutely wrong. And Asimov is saying that that is a totally ridiculous way of looking at things as we’ve done in the past. In comparing the epicurean position as to the size of the sun and the location of the earth and the universe, there are degrees of right and wrong which are important to observe. Epicurus thought that everything falls straight down, which we would not say today is correct. And so he didn’t think that everything fell towards the center of the earth. He was wrong about that. However, Epicurus also didn’t think that the earth was the center of the universe and he was right about that. So when you compare the significance of the epicurean view of the location and status of the earth as the center of the universe or as simply a part of the universe, Epicurus wasn’t absolutely right about where the earth fits in that picture, but he was a lot closer to being right than the people who were arguing that the earth is the center of the universe. Now, in that picture, the issue is right and wrong as relevant to us in relation to what that means to human beings and how we live our lives. Happily, it is much more correct to think that we are not the center of the universe than it is to think that we are. And the two positions are not at all of equal or close significance to your basic understanding of man’s place in the universe and your ability therefore to live a happy life. If you think you’re the center of the universe, then you’re going to make all sorts of conclusions about a special place that you hold in the universe, a special God that has created it that you’re not going to conclude. If you realize that you’re not the center of the universe, that you’re part of a natural scheme that has evolved naturally and operates naturally, you’re not completely right to take the epicure position on the way things fall through space, but you’re a lot less wrong than those who think the earth is the center of the universe. Now, someone attempting to apply those same principles to our discussions so far today could take the same approach and say that even though Vallejo is characterized as arguing about the specific nature of a God’s blood or the specific nature of a God’s body, the specific way they speak or look whether they’re beautiful or not, those positions are not essential to the nature of the class we’re discussing. And those positions hail into insignificance when you start at the foundational position that the were taking that Gods are not supernatural. Gods do not reward their friends and punish their enemies. Gods do not fade us to certain outcomes on those core issues. Epicurus view was a lot closer to being right than the views of Kada or the views of Cicero or the views of the stoics who took the positions that their gods had created the universe and directed each and everything that goes on within it. And to boot. At the end of the day, they sentence men to rewards in heaven or eternal punishment in hell. Those are far more significant and we would say incorrect positions about the nature of the gods than the epicureans we’re taking. So I would highly recommend this entire article by Isaac Asimov because he’s obviously a scientist of much greater ability than I’ll ever dream of being in terms of explaining how these positions should be viewed in terms of less wrong or more wrong and not in terms of absolute wrong or right. And Isaac ov concludes his essay this way in the 19th century before Quantum theory was dreamed of the laws of thermodynamics were established including the conservation of energy as first law and the inevitable increase of entropy as the second law. Certain other conservation laws such as those of momentum, angular momentum and electric charge were also established. So were Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism all remain firmly entrenched even after quantum theory came in naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English lit correspondent, but in a much truer and subtler sense, they need only be considered incomplete. For instance, quantum theory has produced something called quantum weirdness, which brings into serious question the very nature of reality and which produces philosophic conundrums that physicists simply can’t seem to agree upon. It may be that we have reached a point where the human brain can no longer grasp matters, or it may be that quantum theory is incomplete and that once it is properly extended, all the weirdness will disappear again. Quantum theory and relatively seem to be independent of each other so that while quantum theory makes it seem possible that three of four known interactions can be combined into one mathematical system gravitation the realm of relativity as yet seems intransigent. If quantum theory and relativity can be combined, a true unified feel theory may become possible if all this is done. However, it would be a still finer refinement that would affect the edges of the known, the nature of the Big Bang and the creation of the universe, the properties at the center of black holes, some subtle points about the evolution of galaxies and supernovas and so on. Virtually all that we know today, however, would remain untouched. And when I say I’m glad that I live in a century when the universe is essentially understood, I think I am justified. I could see Valle or the epicurean saying something very similar to that last sentence, that even though they don’t know how a quasi body and quasi blood is implemented, and if they did, they’d become Gods themselves. But we don’t know how a being can establish deathlessness over time. They would admit that they don’t know the specifics of that, but they would say that regardless of whether they ever learned those specifics or not, they are glad that they live at a time when the nature of Gods is essentially understood. And the nature of Gods that is important to understand and to be confident about is that if they’re living beings at all, they are blessed and imperishable and they’re not the type of gods these other people are suggesting rule the world. So all of that doesn’t do anything to give us any more specificity about quasi blood and quasi bodies and so forth. But as you begin to look behind the arguments that Valis is making and you think about where radical skepticism leads, the epicurean position becomes much more reasonable as you focus on what the core epicurean position really was. Now, we haven’t begun to finish ADA’s attack on the Epicurean position, and we will come back and pick up with section 31 next week, but in the meantime, we’ve discussed an awful lot today. So Joshua, this has definitely been a difficult section and we’re headed through some difficult material. What can we gain by going through the process?
Joshua: Well, you’ve said a number of things that I want to wholeheartedly agree with. Cassius, I think your ending was very good there. First on the point that there are different levels of confidence when we’re approaching this stuff. And Cicero cited the first principle doctrine, and I think you’re absolutely right to say that that would be a point of confidence of a kind that we don’t necessarily have when it comes to the form or blood or whatever, or the beauty of the gods that one of these issues is a point of speculation. But one of them is a point where we can have real confidence and that the confidence that we have that the gods don’t intervene or cause trouble for human beings is not an academic question. It’s a question of real importance to how people actually live. Whether you are going to spend the rest of your life supplicating the gods because you fear retribution is an important question. And so it’s important to have confidence on that question. It’s less important to have confidence on some of these other questions like do the God speak Greek, for example. So I think that was very good. And the other point you made that I wanted to strengthen was the point that you’re absolutely right to say that what Kata is doing is trying to use points of, let’s say, lower confidence to invalidate those areas where we do have more confidence. And in 2008, this article was written in 2008 anyway, there was a film called Expelled No Intelligence allowed about the dispute between teaching intelligent design as opposed to the theory of evolution in schools. And Ben Stein in this film who was taking the intelligent design side of the argument was talking with Richard Dawkins and they were talking about the origin of life on Earth. And in an article that was published in the National Review from a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human exceptionalism, Wesley j Smith wrote an article in which he picked up on something Richard Dawkins had said in this film. And the exchange goes like this, Dawkins, nobody knows how it got started. We know the kind of event that it must have been. We know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life. And Ben Stein asks, and what was that event? And Dawkins says it was the origin of the first self-replicating molecule. And Ben Stein says, right, and how did that happen? And Dawkins says, I told you, we don’t know how that happened. And then Ben Stein tries to lead him in the direction of, do you think that intelligent design might turn out to be the best possible explanation for this first self-replicating molecule? And Dawkins is willing to entertain the possibility that there could have been an intelligence behind the first self-replicating molecule on earth. He says it could come about in the following way. It could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved probably by some kind of Darwinian means probably to a very high level of technology and use their technology to seed life on this planet. And he says it’s an intriguing possibility. And this Wesley j Smith at the Discovery Institute, this Creationist Institute, jumps on this quote from the film and says, Richard Dawkins is a rail. Richard Dawkins is part of this new age religious movement. Who thinks that space aliens created life on earth? Well, no, first of all, that’s not what he’s saying. This isn’t a moment of creation. This would be of anything, a moment of mere transmission. It still doesn’t answer the question as to the origin of life in the cosmos. It’s one possible explanation for how life got to be the way that it is on our particular planet in the cosmos. But there’s nothing supernatural about what Richard Dawkins was saying and saying that Richard Dawkins is essentially a Ian, that’s RA el, I think that guy was French who came up with this religion. But to say that Richard Dawkins is a Ian is to take what he actually said to a level of absurdity and try to disprove it that way, when actually what Richard Dawkins was saying was, I don’t know how life originated on Earth. It’s possible that the first self-replicating molecule originated because of proteins acting in a certain way under radiation or whatever under certain very specific conditions. It’s possible that life on earth was seeded from another world. One possibility that’s still entertained is that very early self-replicating molecules were brought to this planet by say, an asteroid, for example, that was split off of another planet that already had life. The point is, we’re entertaining possibilities here. This is not the same as saying that we’re taking a religious position that life was seeded by space aliens.
Cassius: I wish you told me you had that article, Joshua, because I’ve never read that and I’m looking forward to reading it. But I think it’s exactly the analogy that I’m trying to draw here, that Richard Dawkins is suggesting that possibly here on earth we could have been seated by some alien civilization. That’s the kind of thoughtfulness I think that you have to follow here. You can maintain that at the universe level. It all makes sense that everything is natural without any kind of intelligent design, but we know from the fact that we are alive and we think we’re intelligent. I believe this is in Dewitt and unintentional nature has evolved a creature with intelligence. We have intelligence ourselves today, and we are moving forward ever further. It seems like in colonizing other planets and understanding the way that biology works and being able to create new types of biological units ourselves, it’s possible that we can eventually get to the point of creating that kind of self-replicating biological unit that you’re just talking about. But if we do as humans eventually get to that point that says nothing about where the universe itself came from, it just shows that in a particular location at a particular time, a species of life can alter its environment in a way that is totally natural and does not involve any kind of supernatural faculties or abilities at all. Hopefully one day we will have more herculaneum texts and more ability to decipher and understand the ones that we do have. I would predict that if we do get more material, we’re going to find that the same kind of conversation that you’re attributing to Richard Dawkins, there is probably what the Epicureans were doing. They were attempting to use their knowledge and rationality to the extent that they possibly could to understand the universe and talk about how things can come into being. And in the same way that Ben Stein was attempting to make Richard Dawkins look ridiculous, Cicero and others attempt to make the epicurean look ridiculous by seizing on isolated statements that in their original context could easily have been nothing more than speculation and attempting to raise those statements to the same level as Epicure is saying that Gods are living beings who are blessed and immortal when it was never meant to have that same level of assertiveness about it. So that sounds like a great article and we’ll definitely place links to that one and to the Isaac Asimov article into the show notes for today.
Joshua: There’s another discussion somewhere on the forum from a few years ago about the question of the size of the song and it relates to what you were just describing, Cassius, I’ll find some stuff and post it into the thread.
Cassius: Okay, well, we’re going to come back next week and pick up in section 31 we’ll go through the specifics of ADA’s criticisms and mine, what information we can, but we’ll keep in mind what’s really going on in the background and the basis of his arguments. These are fascinating subjects to talk about. We’ll continue with them next week. In the meantime, be sure to drop by the form. Let us know if you have any comments or questions about the things we’ve said today or anything about Epicurus you’d like to discuss. Thanks for your time this week. We’ll be back soon.