Epicurus

Epicurus was born 341 BC on the Greek island of Samos and was one of the ancient Greek philosophers who founded his Garden schools of Epicureanism founded around 307 BC.

His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate were very influential with their own school of philosophy at the time of his youth. He was also influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and the Cynics but seemed to reject Platonism.

He taught a simple life with open minds to a wide range of philosophical subjects.

Of over three hundred known works only three letters written by him survived and two collections of quotes including the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings.

Alfred Tennyson, Friedrich Nietzsche once noted "the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity." Of course that was the Christianity of their time that was already descending and devolving from the way of Christ.

Thomas Jefferson declared in 1819, "I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us."

Yet, concerning Epicurean-ism, Augustine of Hippo declared, "its ashes are so cold that not a single spark can be struck from them."

Yet, others like Karl Marx was also influenced by the teachings of Epicurus, writing his doctoral thesis on the differences between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus whose worldview is consistent and practical in its application.

His advocates were in conflict.

What was the conflict of Epicurus with Christianity?

Epicurus was brilliant and thought all matter is entirely made of extremely tiny particles called "atoms".

While he was devoted to his followers, they were also devoted to him. All virtues are equally important because even though they are often itemized and numbered, there is an essential singularity in them that makes all virtues monotheistic. If you neglect one, you neglect them all.

The communities he founded were literally hero cults in which he was designated their "savior"(soter) as Octavius who was called Augustus Caesar would be called. These communities operated as if they were civil religions.

Civil religion is in form a civic religion, where documents of the formation of the state have an implicit religious values in a nation. This is observed and expressed through somber public rituals, a reverence to symbols such as the national flag, and special ceremonies on sacred holidays and the creation of historically sacred places such as monuments, battlefields, or national cemeteries.

While the idea dates back to Nimrod and Virgil, the Pharaoh and Caesar the English term was used by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in chapter 8, book 4 of The Social Contract written in 1762. Other terms, like public religion, have always attempted to describe what has been regarded as the moral and spiritual foundation essential for any modern society.

As a social movement at first it lead to a Philosophical Allegiance and “a virtually religious commitment to the authority of a founder figure” within a Greek society or nation and eventually Roman society rather than faith in the noble virtue, precepts, and character of a God or gods. Instead of seeking the righteousness associated with these spiritual superior beings, it was often shifted to men counted as heroes.

When these philosophies are mixed with the exercising authority of government, wisdom may shift to foolishness under the apathy and sloth of the people coupled with the greed for power and wantonness of comfort.

They may find it easier to acquiesce to systems of legal charity as if they were moral. The masses will soon degenerate under the normalization of covetous practices.

Epicurean Paradox:

If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to

Then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing

Then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing

Then whence cometh evil.

If He is neither able nor willing

Then why call Him God?

There are all kinds of attempts to argue this paradox, but the truth is God is not a helicopter god. Even Jordan Peterson knows that your children learn when they do "dangerous things carefully".

Evil is the absence of good, like darkness is the absence of light. If there is evil in the world, that gives man something to do if we are willing.

For a human to possess free will, God cannot micromanage the world in which man lives. Remember, God gave us dominion.

While he had a materialist world view, he believed that nothing truly left existence but merely changed.

He thought the gods or God still played an essential function in theology as the paragon of moral virtue to be emulated and admired.

Yes, bad things happen, but we are the trustees left to manage it.

"The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool." Epicurus

Weightlifters can tell you "no pain no gain".

Epicurus said that “a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality.”