Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? —Epicurus 356 Remember that what you have now...
32. “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”― Epicurus 33. “The time when most...
Epicurus pointed out: "First believe that God is a living being immortal and happy, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of humankind; and so of him anything that is at agrees not with about him whatever may uphold both his happiness and his immortality. For tru...
holding them to be the elements of right life. First believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind; and so believing, you shall not affirm of him anything that is foreign to his immortality...
I would like to thank Marcus for posting these essays. I’m currently reading a book that was recommended by him on this subject, titledComment peut-on être dieu(How one can be a god). It’s in French and a slow read for me, since that’s my fourth language, but I’m thoroughly...
him and his closest friend Metrodorus as a pair. Other friends such as Polyaenus and Pythocles were also honored after their deaths. By associating the honoring of his friends with religious rituals normally meant to celebrate gods and important individuals that are elevated to a status of god...
The following is based on Polystratus, who was the third Scholarch of the Athenian Garden. Two extant scrolls by him were found at Herculaneum. Here, he expounds a doctrine of hedonist moral realism, and argues that the cultivation of virtue without the study of nature–which we frequently ...
who presumed to spread the most scandalous reports concerning him. He exhorted Pontus, as it valued the God’s favor, to stone these men. Touching Epicurus, he gave the following response. An inquirer had asked how Epicurus fared in Hades, and was told: Of slime is his bed, And his fet...
The divine power is born from the powerlessness to which the economy condemns man from the moment that it snatches him from life to reduce him to labor. The idea of God as creator …. master of man or arbiter of his fate is the sham of a system where the true specifically human power...
, and proceeded to offer him a litany of contraband and illicit sexual opportunities. This triggered in his mind the question of why it is that we are such ‘dopamine fiends’, or why we go looking for pleasures of all varieties. “We humans have a complicated and ambivalent relationship ...