Episode 245 - Right, Wrong, Or Incomplete?
Date: 10/17/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4052-episode-247-cicero-s-otnotg-22-cotta-continues-to-attack-the-epicurean-view-that/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 245 works through Sections 27–30 of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods and then steps back to assess the bigger picture using Isaac Asimov’s essay “The Relativity of Wrong.” Cotta opens Section 27 by describing the Epicurean gods as having nothing concrete or solid — comparing their quasi substance to the Venus of Cos, the legendary painting by Apelles that was moved to Rome by Augustus. Cotta then identifies three Epicurean arguments for the human form of the gods — prolepsis (natural anticipation of divinity in human shape), the argument from divine excellence (the most beautiful form must be human), and the argument that reason can only reside in human form — before attacking each in turn. In Section 28 he argues that the disposition to picture gods in one’s own form is universal across species (Xenophanes: if triangles had gods they would have three sides), and Section 29 mocks whether gods can be squint-eyed, wart-covered, or hook-nosed. Section 30 notes that Egyptians worship crocodiles and cats while Romans worship anthropomorphic gods — and closes by quoting the first of the Kyriai Doxai: “that being which is happy and immortal is not burdened with any labor and does not impose any on anyone else.” Cassius responds that Cotta’s argument — because Velleius cannot specify the details, the whole Epicurean position collapses — is an invalid inference: differences in detail within a class do not invalidate conclusions about the class. Joshua contrasts Lucian (who cites the Kyriai Doxai as his favorite book and praises Epicurus as the antidote to fraud) with Horace (who claimed a lightning flash converted him back to conventional religion). The episode closes with extended discussion of Asimov’s “The Relativity of Wrong” — the lesson being that Epicurus was far less wrong about the gods than his opponents, even where he lacked specificity — and a parallel to the Ben Stein–Richard Dawkins exchange in the 2008 film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 245 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, 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 at 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, going back into the text starting with Section 27. The last several episodes we have devoted to some of the background issues of skepticism that Cotta is bringing in his attack on Epicurean philosophy. We concluded with Cotta attacking the terminology of quasi blood and quasi bodies and saying basically: Velleius, 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 Epicurus had put together and that Velleius had relayed is based on the Epicurean method of reasoning from observation of things that are similar or analogous. That is: we see things here on earth that we become confident 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 we can observe directly. Even though we can’t observe the atoms and the void directly, we analogize and use similarity to come up with reasonable explanations for those things 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 we have evidence for. We 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 we have seen operate around us, and we use that as a starting point for thinking about the things we cannot perceive directly. And this is going to be super important for us to remember as we go throughout the rest of the text 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 we have evidence for as the basis for talking about things we don’t have any evidence about. They’re not going to let their speculations 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. Cotta 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 Cos, 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’s 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 prepossessed 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 is no form more beautiful than the human. And the third is that reason cannot reside in any other shape.
Now, Cotta 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 prolepsis — an 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 more beautiful than the 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 Menoikeus — that the most important things to think about a god are that they are living beings who are blessed and imperishable. And Velleius himself has said that the rest of the discussion about the gods is something we are curious about and have to use our reasoning as best we can, but the things 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 we’re going to be putting our best efforts toward coming to something reasonable about — but something not necessary to take a position on. With the main thrust of where Cotta is going to go is: Velleius, you don’t know. You are unable to tell me the specifics of whether a god has a body, whether a 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 go back and say that it makes more sense to be like Plato and say that the gods are total spirit who created the universe out of nothing.
So what’s being lined up here as lines of battle is whether it’s more reasonable to use analogy and similarity to make reasonable 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 earth, such as a superhuman being that created the universe from nothing and that dictates and superintends every moment of the universe.
Those kinds 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 Cotta — 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 Cos. And this turns out not to be a sculpture or statue, but a painting. Apelles, the fourth-century BC painter, painted the birth of Venus rising from the foam of the sea. This painting became legendary in the ancient world and was moved to Rome by the Emperor Augustus. However, when the historian Pliny the Elder 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 done by Apelles in the fourth century. We do see the figure of Venus reclined on a shell that is emerging from the sea, and she has attendants that are riding dolphins, and the inside of the shell is a sort of pinkish color.
What Cotta 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 Cos, 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’s 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. 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 prepossessed that whenever we think of a deity, the human shape occurs to us.
Cotta 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 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 gods 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 you not — you who are so great an adept in physics — see what a soothing flatterer, what a sort of procuress, 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 mare, 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 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 28. When I listened to you read that, Joshua, there’s a lot here that I think Velleius would actually agree with. It seems that Cotta is attempting to deal with the issue of prolepsis — and Velleius’s position — that Epicurus’s position is that nature disposes you to think in particular ways. What Cotta is saying here is that nature is disposing each type of creature to think of a god in its own form. I don’t know that that’s something Velleius 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 conclusion about the nature of a god. Velleius 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 Cotta is suggesting that that is ridiculous.
Keeping in mind that what Cotta 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 point number three is that what Cotta 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 Cotta 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? Most of us today, I think, would say that it would be better to simply wait and not take a position on details 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 you can observe for yourself, while the other option totally throws out everything you do observe in your own reality — I would suggest Epicurus was correct: it’s more reasonable to take the option 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. When it comes to exposing the imposture of the false prophet Alexander, he says this was an occasion for an Epicurus or a Metrodorus 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 we live in and about the nature of the information 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 famously said — when you want to laugh, you shall find me fat and sleek, a hog out of Epicurus’s herd. Later in his career, when Caesar Augustus was on the cusp of taking power, Horace — by allusion to Lucretius — 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 Epicurus — 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 — 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 Lucian.
Lucian described Epicurus’s Kyriai Doxai — his Principal Doctrines — as the most admirable of his books with its terse presentment of his wise conclusions, and went on to say that Alexander the false prophet 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 squills 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, where 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. 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 — 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 we know any of what’s being said about this, because we just don’t have the evidence — and yet Epicurus’s Principal 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 Horace and Lucian. And of course what we’re talking about now is related to something that Cotta 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 Cicero is presenting this as a writing for the public. But Cotta 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 Cotta himself was in as a priest of Rome.
Why don’t we go on to Section 28 and talk about the issue of beauty — not just that we identify a god as a human form because we’re disposed to through prolepsis 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, Cotta 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 is 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 beautiful.
When I was at Athens, the whole flock of youths afforded scarcely one. 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. Alcaeus 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.
In Section 29, he continues: I return to the gods. Can we suppose any of them to be squint-eyed, or even to have a cast in the eye? Have they any warts? Are any of them hook-nosed, flat-nosed, beetle-browed, or jolt-headed as some of us are? 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, Velleius, prove absolutely false — that no form occurs to us in our contemplations on the deity but the human? Will you, notwithstanding 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 sculptors 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 barbarous 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 — that is, by the Romans — but we never heard that an Egyptian offered any violence to a crocodile, an ibis, or a cat.
What do you think then? Do not the Egyptians esteem their sacred bull, their ibis, as a deity? Yes, by Hercules, as certainly as you do our protectress 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 Greeks, the Romans, and we ourselves ascribe different forms to Juno. And our Capitoline Jupiter is not the same as the Jupiter Ammon of the Africans.
Therefore — this is Section 30 now — 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 prepossessed 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 grey eyes and Neptune blue eyes. And indeed we must then honor that Vulcan at Athens made by Alcamenes, 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 Velleius 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 they have no names — you must necessarily confess they have none, for what occasion is there for different names if their persons are alike?
How much more laudable would it be, Velleius, to acknowledge that you do not know what you do not know, than to follow a man whom you must despise? Do you think the deity is like either me or you? Do you 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 Kyriai Doxai — his Principal 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 you were last quoting there — the end of Section 30 — it becomes interesting how the arguments Cotta is advancing are beginning to put himself in the place of Velleius 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 Velleius and Epicurus are doing is, as they’ve said in the Letter to Menoikeus and 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 Cotta, 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 Velleius are doing — because Epicurus and Velleius 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, where’s the dividing line? 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 prolepsis and the basic fixtures that underlie the discussion of the gods conceptually, but which don’t lead to the kind of specifics that Cotta is attempting to get Velleius to pledge himself to here.
And that’s the important thing: what is Cotta doing with his argument other than pointing out that because Velleius, you don’t have the details down specifically, nothing you have said can be justified? And I don’t think that is a fair way of approaching what Velleius 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 Cotta’s argument begins to come apart is the presumption that the fact that items in a class vary as to detail means that the class itself does not exist. The basic assertions 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 you’re talking about. Some men have beards and some men shave; some men have blue eyes and some have grey eyes; some have long hair, some are bald. There are boundless differences in the details between members of a class 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’s really the key way to deal with what Cotta is saying here. The assertions the Epicureans were making about the class of gods are of two types — one of which is necessary because it is the only thing logically consistent, which is that they are 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 the Epicureans understood that — we don’t have the text we would like to have to see Epicurus discussing these things himself and to see the caveats he himself would have placed on these issues. We know from some of the Herculaneum texts that a lot of the discussion was debating back and forth about what could be possible. And here, when we’re reading these assertions of Velleius being listed out to be so specific, a fair reading of the text is going to take into account the way that Cicero as a lawyer is attempting to make someone look ridiculous by carrying their positions to extremes. And so we just have to take those things into account as we evaluate the direction these arguments are going.
Rather than go further into Section 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 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. He talked about several scientific discoveries of the 20th century, in response to which the person writing to Asimov — who Asimov described sarcastically as a “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 they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proven to be wrong. And this 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 approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic Oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece: if I’m the wisest man, it’s because I alone know that I know nothing. And the implication of the writer was that 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 at the poles. 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.
Asimov 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.
I’m not going to go through the entire essay by any means, but what 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 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 in 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 — he didn’t think that everything fell toward 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, you’re going to make all sorts of conclusions about a special place you hold in it and a special god that has created it — conclusions you’re not going to draw if you realize 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 Epicurean 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 today could take the same approach and say that even though Velleius 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 pale into insignificance when you start at the foundational position that the Epicureans were taking: that gods are not supernatural. Gods do not reward their friends and punish their enemies. Gods do not fetter us to certain outcomes. On those core issues, Epicurus’s view was a lot closer to being right than the views of Cotta, 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 were 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 Asimov 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 the 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 philosophical 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 relativity 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 field 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 Velleius or the Epicurean saying something very similar to that last sentence — that even though they don’t know how quasi body and quasi blood is implemented, and if they did they’d become gods themselves, and we don’t know how a being can establish deathlessness over time, they would admit 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 who 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 Velleius 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 Cotta’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 this 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 Principal Doctrine — 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 beauty of the gods. One of these issues is a point of speculation; one of them is a point where we can have real confidence. And 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. 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 gods speak Greek, for example.
So I think that was very good. And the other point you made that I wanted to strengthen was: you’re absolutely right to say that what Cotta is doing is trying to use points of, let’s say, lower confidence to invalidate those areas where we do have more confidence.
In 2008 a film was released 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 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.
The exchange goes like this: Dawkins says, 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 used 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 jumps on this quote from the film and says: Richard Dawkins is a Raelian — that’s Raël, I think that guy was French who came up with this religion — Richard Dawkins is essentially part of this movement that thinks 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, if 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 it is on our particular planet in the cosmos. But there’s nothing supernatural about what Richard Dawkins was saying. And to say that Richard Dawkins is essentially a Raelian 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 under 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 an asteroid, for example, that was split off from 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’d told me you had that article, Joshua, because I’ve never read it and I’m looking forward to reading it. But I think it’s exactly the analogy I’m trying to draw here. Richard Dawkins is suggesting that possibly here on earth we could have been seeded by some alien civilization. That’s the kind of thoughtfulness I think 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 — that nature has evolved a creature with intelligence. We have intelligence ourselves today, and we are moving forward ever further, it seems, 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 you’re just talking about.
But if we 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 we do have. I would predict that if we do get more material, we’re going to find that the same kind of conversation you’re attributing to Richard Dawkins is probably what the Epicureans were doing — attempting to use their knowledge and rationality to the extent 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 Epicurus saying that gods are living beings who are blessed and immortal — when they were never meant to have that same level of assertiveness.
So that sounds like a great article, and we’ll definitely place links to that one and to the Isaac Asimov article in 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 sun, 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 Cotta’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 forum and 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.