4227
A place for Aryan (European) Folkish Pagans
No doubt his doctrine of ideas led up to a kind of divinity, the idea of the good, as the crown of the system, but the direct inference from this conception would be pure monotheism and so exclude polytheism. This inference Plato did not draw, though his treatment of the gods in the Laws and Timaeus certainly shows that he was quite clear that the gods of the popular faith were an irrational element in his conception of the universe.
A.B.Drachmann
Platonism is eerily similar to christianity in many ways. Chief among them is the denial of reality and an attempt to escape to the world beyond. In christian theology the latter is heaven, in plato’s it’s a world of pure ideas of which our own is but a distorted reflection. This afterlife fixation couples with the disregard of the real world and life in it is very unhealthy to say the least.
Needless to say it’s in direct opposition to Paganism and is very characteristic of all New Age.
Philosophy as a whole is an elaborate form of atheism to those using the word’s original definition.
Finally, in his Republic he no doubt gives a detailed criticism of popular mythology as an element of education, and in the course of this also some positive definitions of the idea of God, but throughout the construction of his ideal community he entirely disregards religion and worship, even if he occasionally takes it for granted that a cult of some sort exists, and in one
place quite casually refers to the Oracle at Delphi as authority for its organisation in details.
A.B.Drachmann
With Socrates and his successors the whole question of the relation of Greek thought to popular belief enters upon a new phase. The Socratic philosophy is in many ways a continuation of sophistic.
Under these circumstances it is a peculiar irony of fate that the very originator of the new trend in Greek thought was charged with and sentenced for impiety.
A.B.Drachmann
The decisive point is that we possess two quite independent and unambiguous depositions by two fully competent witnesses of the beginning of the fourth century which both treat of the charge of atheism as something which is neither strange nor surprising at their time.
It is therefore permissible to conclude that in Athens at this time there really existed circles or at any rate not a few individuals who had given up the belief in the popular gods.
A.B.Drachmann
In the beginning of the play Socrates expressly declares that no gods exist. Similar statements are repeated in several places. Zeus is sometimes substituted for the gods, but it comes to the same thing. And at the end of the play, where the honest Athenian, who has ventured on the ticklish ground of sophistic, admits his delusion, it is expressly said:
“Oh, what a fool I am! Nay, I must have been mad indeed when I thought of throwing the gods away for Socrates's sake!”
A.B.Drachmann
By the way I already wrote on Xenophanes and his influence on Socrates/Plato. Essentially they are two different strains of the same virus. Check out previous posts for details.
Читать полностью…
Judging from the material in hand one can hardly arrive at any other conclusion than that the standpoint of Xenophanes comes under our definition of atheism.
A.B.Drachmann
On another main point, too, he was in direct opposition to the religious ideas of his time: he rejected Divination, the belief that the gods imparted the secrets of the future to men—which was deemed a mainstay of the belief in the existence of the gods.
A.B.Drachmann
In the literature of antiquity we meet with sporadic statements to the effect that certain philosophers bore the epithet atheos as a sort of surname; and in a few of the later authors of antiquity we even find lists of men—almost all of them philosophers—who denied the existence of the gods. Furthermore, we possess information about certain persons—these also, if Jews and Christians are excluded, are nearly all of them philosophers—having been accused of, and eventually convicted of, denial of the gods.
A.B.Drachmann
It would have to keep in view, not the philosophical notion of God, but the conceptions of the gods as they appear in the religion of antiquity. Hence I came to define atheism in Pagan antiquity as the point of view which denies the existence of the ancient gods.
Our “atheism” in regard to ancient paganism is of recent date, and in antiquity itself downright denial of the existence of the gods was a comparatively rare phenomenon.
"Atheism in Pagan Antiquity" A.B. Drachmann
A new case of christian anti-pagan vandalism from russia. This time the temple was situated in Podolsk.
Читать полностью…
This is a Brocken Specture, which is what happens when you cast a shadow onto the clouds below you
To see magic in the world, you have to go outside
Will soon write on the topic of religious laws and atheism in Ancient Greece. I think it's a very important, but often neglected topic, especially for modern Pagans (even non-Greeks).
Читать полностью…
A different version of the same work
Читать полностью…
Even in Plato's later works there is, in spite of their conservative attitude, a very peculiar reservation in regard to the anthropomorphic gods of popular belief. It shows itself in the Laws in the fact that where he sets out to prove the existence of the gods he contents himself with proving the divinity of the heavenly bodies and quite disregards the other gods. It appears still more plainly in the Timaeus, where he gives a philosophical explanation of how the divine heavenly bodies came into existence, but says expressly of the other gods that such an explanation is impossible…
A.B.Drachmann
plato was fundamentally un-Greek, anti-life and health therefore very anti-Pagan
The except is from The Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy by Eduard Zeller
In the mythical portions of his dialogues Plato uses the gods as a given poetic motive and treats them with poetic licence. Otherwise they play a very inferior part in the greater portion of his works. In the Euthyphron he gives a sharp criticism of the popular conception of piety, and in reality at the same time very seriously questions the importance and value of the existing form of worship. In his chief ethical work, the Gorgias, he subjects the fundamental problems of individual ethics to a close discussion without saying one word of their relation to religion; if we except the mythic part at the end the gods scarcely appear in the dialogue.
A.B.Drachmann
The inference to be drawn from all this is simply that the popular Athenian opinion—for we may rest assured that this and the view of Aristophanes are identical—was that the sophists were atheists.
A.B.Drachmann
Ancient Greek naturalism is essentially calculated to collide with the popular belief. It seeks a natural explanation of the world, first and foremost of its origin, but in the next place of individual natural phenomena.
A.B.Drachmann
It is well known that Aristophanes chose Socrates as a representative of the modern movement. In him he embodies all the faults with which he wished to pick a quarrel in the fashionable philosophy of the day.
Here we find all the features of the school, grotesquely mixed up and distorted by the farce, it is true, but nevertheless easily recognisable: rhetoric as an end in itself, of course, with emphasis on its immoral aspect; empty and hair-splitting dialectics; linguistic researches; Ionic naturalism; and first and last, as the focus of all, denial of the gods. That Aristophanes was well informed on certain points, at any rate, is clear from the fact that the majority of the scientific explanations which he puts into the mouth of Socrates actually represent the latest results of science at that time—which in all probability did not prevent his Athenians from considering them as exceedingly absurd and ridiculous.
A.B.Drachmann
Next on the atheist chopping block is an infamous duo of socrates and plato
Читать полностью…
As a positive counterpart to the anthropomorphic gods, Xenophanes set up a philosophical conception of God: God must be One, Eternal, Unchangeable and identical with himself in every way (all sight, all hearing and all mind).
When a thinker arrives at pantheism, starting from a criticism of polytheism which is expressly based on the antithesis between the unity and plurality of the deity—then very valid proofs, indeed, are needed in order to justify the assumption that he after all believed in a plurality of gods; and such proofs are wanting in the case of Xenophanes.
A.B.Drachmann
Xenophanes lived in the latter part of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth centuries B.C.
In his own poems he severely attacked the manner in which Homer and Hesiod, the most famous poets of Greece, had represented the gods.
Their accounts of the fights of the gods against Titans and Giants he denounced as “inventions of the ancients.” But he did not stop at that: “Men believe that the gods are born, are clothed and shaped and speak like themselves”; “if oxen and horses and lions could draw and paint, they would delineate their gods in their own image”; “the Negroes believe that their gods are flat-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.” Thus he attacked directly the popular belief that the gods are anthropomorphic…
A.B.Drachmann
The persons of whom it is related that they denied the existence of the ancient gods are in themselves few, and they all belong to the highest level of culture; by far the greater part of them are simply professional philosophers. Hence the inquiry will almost exclusively have to deal with philosophers and philosophical schools and their doctrines.
From about the beginning of the Peloponnesian War to the close of the fourth century B.C., there are on record a number of prosecutions of philosophers who were tried and condemned for denial of the gods.
A.B.Drachmann
Roman relief of Minerva c. 100 AD
Читать полностью…
Putting some finishing touches on the posts about atheism in Ancient Greece and the significant difference between the definition of an atheist today and then. Will obviously mention first sophists and philosophers.
Читать полностью…
Maxim Tesak Martsinkevich rests with the Gods
On this day, 4 years ago, a great man was tortured to death by putin's communist regime in a gulag which was officially declared to be a suicide
This crime will not be forgotten
To those saying that Paganism is "Whatever works" and "There’s no dogma!"
Читать полностью…
Following the example of the Gods
Henryk Siemiradzki