Epicurus: The Polyatheist 

Just to be clear, it was not Peterson who proposed the theory of "multiple explanations," but Epicurus. Peterson only suggested that even atheists can be secretly "controlled" by the ideas that formed their thinking early in their lives. The connection between the two is ours. On another, and more important note, it is important to understand not just Science as a method, but its hidden presuppositions. What you said about the method is correct, and you exposed a very subtle point that, as you also said, is not understood by many. Yet, this point hides certain assumptions about reality that did not come through the scientific method themselves, and were only stated once, in the beginning of the whole scientific project back in the 17th century. These assumptions can be said to rest on the fact that, in order to have a theory that does what you say above, we must give ultimate primacy to mathematics. Only mathematical truths can be universal and refutable in absolute ways, as well as be shown how one is but a different articulation of another. Only mathematical truth are "commutative" so to speak. Epicurus (like Aristotle) was not a mathematician, and he was quite far from the possibility of formulating "laws of nature," as his chaotic "soup of atoms" could form different phenomena as easily and randomly as shapes form by way of froth on the surface of a coffee cup. This primacy of mathematics happened philosophically, and not experimentally (how could it?). It was Copernicus, Galileo and most importantly Descartes who made that switch, and their presuppositions are underlining the scientific thinking of our days. Having said all that, what we tried to show in this video is not a criticism to modern science, but how it might actually be a subset of philosophy rather than the other way. Peterson and Epicurus were but examples in this effort. Hope you enjoyed the trip ...

@@AncientGreeceRevisited > The connection between the two [, Jordan and Epicurus, ] is ours. Jordan made his choices for his arguments. Jordan picked something which supports his beliefs on an alternative reality. You've only pointed out his choices. > ... it is important to understand not just Science as a method, but its hidden presuppositions. The presuppositions we have in Maths are called axioms, which are claims accepted as truth without proof. Axioms are accept as truth without proof simply because they are demonstrated to work pretty well and they are demonstrated to be useful. An axiom can be and must be ditched immediately in case it delivers wrong results, becoming useless in this process. More or less the same happens in order fields of Science, in particular Physics: we accept assumptions (or presuppositions) which are demonstrated to work pretty well and deliver useful predictions, but we are more than happy to ditch assumptions in case any of these assumptions are demonstrated to deliver wrong results. Maybe the best example of that is the experiment by Michelson and Morley, said to be the most shocking failure in Science, but still, paved the way to Theory of Relativity and the understanding of Reality as we have today. So, Science in general assumes that Maths works. And both Science in general and Maths have their own assumptions (or presuppositions, or axioms, or whatever we call them!). However, we are always more than happy to ditch whatever assumptions we have that can be demonstrated to be wrong. And this is what Science does every day: Science works hard to prove things wrong, to ditch wrong assumptions and have a better understanding of Reality. > Hope you enjoyed the trip ... Thanks a lot for your great work! :-)

​@@richardgomes5420 To "weave" both of your points in one "tapestry" I would say this: If Peterson points to an "alternative reality" he seems to be doing it in much the same spirit was the ancient Greek philosophers - not Epicurus in particular, but Greek philosophers in general. Which brings us to your other point. The "presuppositions we have in Maths are called axioms" indeed! But when I said "hidden," I obviously didn't mean those. What I meant was the idea that reality itself is mathematical (not that maths are mathematical 😄). This idea did not exist in Aristotle. It was practically invented in the early Enlightenment *. It was an assumption which has been forgotten exactly because it has been taken for granted. You can always say: "but maths work!" - and that would be true, but that can only show that there is an aspect of reality that is mathematical. What the Greek philosophers understood is that "theoria" and "praxis", theory and action, are different, because different laws apply to each. Politics will always be in the realm of "praxis", and so, despite what modern universities may claim, there will never be a "political science" as such. The "alternative reality" that Peterson proposes is not counter to the "real reality" of mathematical predictions. It is a set of truths - disclosed in Petersonian fashion through myths - that pertains to human affairs specifically rather than physics. In fact, one reading of Plato's Republic (by Leo Strauss) suggests that what Plato was trying to show was exactly what happens when you have the philosopher - i.e. the man who thinks in abstractions - become king of an actual, concrete kingdom: a totally tyrannical, yet strangely harmonious regime that needs to lie to its own people who are unable to grasp the higher realities that philosophers/scientists grasp (i.e. the noble lie). A modern paraphrase perhaps would be the Soviet Union. In short, Maths work, yes, and that should go a long way in proving their validity. But that does not exclude that aspects or reality, like politics perhaps, will never be capture by them. Not because we are not sophisticated enough, but because by their very nature, these phenomena are not mathematical. What I tried to show was that this is indeed a very difficult thought for modern man, exactly because after the success of Descartes, he became convinced that all reality, not just a certain aspect, works mathematically. To conclude, I fear that we are witnessing something like Plato's Republic unfolding today ... ! * It might have existed in Pythagoras, but even then, there is a subtle difference between Algebra and Geometry, as the former is totally abstract. When Pythagoras (and later Plato) spoke of Maths, they did so by way of Geometry, not Algebra.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited Your comment visited so many different things that I'm confused. In order to keep my comment short (instead of 10x longer!), I argument only one aspect: Humans created Maths. Maths works because we made Maths fit observable Reality, so, it should not be a surprise that Maths fits Reality and Maths is an excellent predictor for Reality. Still, humans invented Maths and there's no reason to think that Reality is mathematical or Reality derives from mathematical laws or anything like that. Maths is "just" a very good tool we humans invented to try to explain and model Reality. There are dozens of mathematical solutions for Einstein's field equations. Still, only a small set of those solutions are physical reality. All other solutions are curious maths conjectures. The fact that there's a math equation which describes X does not immediately imply that X exists in Reality. The fact that a singularity in a black hole involves infinities does not necessarily mean that we are witnessing infinities in Reality. On the contrary: it means that either our Maths is broken or our understanding of physical reality is broken, or very probably the two together at the same time.

@@richardgomes5420 Well, I don't think that I touched so many subjects to be honest. What I said boils down to this: "since the Enlightenment we have given such primacy to mathematics, that we may have forgotten that not everything in nature is mathematical." I believe that you are wrong when you say "there's no reason to think that Reality is mathematical." We wouldn't be using mathematics if we were not convinced that reality itself obeys (the so called) "laws of nature." These laws must be presupposed for everything else to work. The exact same phenomena that are now explained through science were equally explainable during the Middle Ages, and through the ideas of "essences." A stone that always seems to be falling in the direction of the earth (rather than sky) was though to be drawn there because the "essence of stone is earth." That means that the Moon can never be drawn to the earth for the same reason, as the Moon is not a stone and has it's own unique (and semi-divine) essence. Universal Gravitation (that we shorten to "Gravity") breaks with that tradition as it suggest a universal force, a "law of the whole universe" that is applicable equally to stone, earth, moon and the rest of the universe. This came as a theory first, as a philosophy. It was not "proven" or derived by observation as it was the same observations that had led the scholastics to their own pre-scientific conclusions. When Copernicus placed the sun at the center of the universe for example, he did not do it through any new observations, he did it "in his head" so to speak, based on the same observations that Ptolemy had in his disposal. But he espoused the re-discovered Pythagorean philosophy which enabled him to give primacy in mathematics over direct observations. We made an episode about it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rCl5wPfsTEo.html. It's one of our biggest blind-spots in the modern age to think that our beliefs are unique because in a sense... they are not beliefs at all, they are provable theories that follow logical deduction instead. If you go back through the history of science you might see how this is wrong, as most of our beliefs originated in philosophy rather than science, and that includes science itself *. * This is a great book on the subject: g.co/kgs/F45Jzj.

Our minds are used to being in a comfort zone, they need some stimulus to open up new ... thoughts. Anything that sets you out of a comfort zone is therefore provoking :-) Just need to pursue them to see if they are also worth it!

Very well said and understood. We are honoured to have people such as yourself in our list of subscribers.

Look who I found.

Thank you so much! Very encouraging words...

Thank you. Yet, it's important to understand how in ancient Greece, the Epicurean position was the "minority report." It's only as Greece declined that Atomism became more and more popular. There is a passive acceptance of destiny embedded in Stoicism that 5th century Athens would not have accepted. It's this Athens however that gave us all Socratic and later Platonic philosophy, all the tragic plays of note, as well as the Histories by Thucydides. Today, I find that most people are fascinated by exactly the type of philosophy that was NOT typical of Greece, not during its height, but its decline. Perhaps we live in a modern "late Hellenism" where the hopes of the ancients: the perfection of Man through philosophy, immortality through ever-lasting works, and the hope to establish a near-perfect political order have disappeared.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited Again, you are challenging my thoughts and showing me perspectives that haven't been brought to my awareness. Bravo Meditating on your last paragraph it really leads me to believe are we at the final stages of our power cycle. Decentralised finance, artificial intelligence and innovation are moving at light-speed yet there is no longer a barometer measuring truth. Maybe many of us are drawn stoicism and Ancient Greece as a way to understand where we are at this point of history. If we are at the final stage of western civilisation what will come next? Will it be another powerful country or empire or will the power move to the machines: Robots and AI.

Yes, and what you just said goes for transhumanism even more. The irony is that we have acquired this incredible power to direct our own evolution in a moment when we have no idea where we truly want to go with it. If the ancient Greeks had this technology we know what they would create: Apollo. What are we going to create? Without clear standards of good vs evil, beauty vs ugliness etc. it's impossible to tell. Shoot me an email at michael@agr-series.com. I am trying to arrange an "Agora" style meeting with people from this channel.

Despite its pretensions, science is not even remotely close to rational. It should also be noted that most of the progenitors of modern science, whether they are Rene Descartes or Isaac Newton, or literal practicing a cultists who not only did it as a hobby but claim to get their direct inspiration for their ideas, which we use today, from non-material forces (look into the Demonic visions of Descartes, which are well recorded in his journal) - Math is incomplete (by nature): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TdeKw0jbTdc.html - Science isn't logical: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8ZwRTivp6e4.html - Progress is a myth: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XYju045Z1hU.html - Most published research is, LITERALLY, wrong: journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Thank you! Hope to keep up with your expectations! :-)

Thank you for your kind words! We have many more coming and much more to say. Stay tuned and thanks for sharing!

Epicurus didn't leave us with much, so it's very feasible to aim at reading his entire corpus. Epicurus' writings are very understandable and interesting, and you will get ideas like the ones that inspired this episode. Start by reading his "Letter to Menoeceus." You can find it online in various editions.

This must be one of the best compliments that we have received so far! But before we reach a "bigger" platform, let's try to maximize this one by reaching as many people as possible.

Well... you will have to wait for our episode on "Logos" in comparison with the experiences of Helen Keller (look her up if the name is unfamiliar). Also, we are planning an episode comparing Alice in Wonderland, a heroine trapped in language itself, and Anaximander, who figured a way out of it through his άπειρον = boundless (rather than infinite). Lots of things coming up, so... subscribe, and keep in touch! Thank you for your comment.

Thank you!

Cheers!

That is not what Epicurus was saying ;-) What he was saying (or rather writing) was that "things come about in many ways," and that we (his school) must guard against those who say they come about in only ONE way.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited I thought that’s what I said.

Thank you. A rather sane comment in a strangely polarizing topic ;-)

Modern technology not only expands our perception but "crystallizes" it within a certain explanatory framework. When we look at our brain through "neuroimaging" for instance, we not only extend our senses beyond what would otherwise be impossible (not only do we get "bionic eyes," so to speak) but we also confine ourselves to what the machines can give us. As we observe the brain in such a way we become more and more convinced that all our throughs are electrical signals sent from one part of the brain to another. We get trapped in a vicious circle of limited success. That is the danger of technology that someone like Heidegger saw. It extends and then traps!

@@AncientGreeceRevisited soon as some new age woo doctor achieves a significant result I will be impressed

Well, considering we are going to be talking about a very wide array of topics, we are trying to limit it to Greece (rather than Rome). But we will take your hint and explore the possibilities... Thank you!

@@AncientGreeceRevisited awesome

❤️❤️❤️

Ευχαριστούμε για τα σχόλια σου. Όσον αφορά το 1ο, η θεωρία των ενοποιημένων πεδίων είναι ακριβώς αυτή που χρησιμοποιώ σαν παράδειγμα. Είναι δείγμα δηλαδή της "μονομανίας" της σύγχρονης επιστήμης - με την ένια του "ένα και μόνο." Ο Επίκουρος φαίνεται να υποστηρίζει το αντίθετο, ότι το κάθε φαινόμενο έρχεται με πολλούς διαφορετικούς τρόπους στην ύπαρξη. Όσον αφορά το 2ο, το πρόβλημα με τη σύμπτυξη θρησκείας και επιστήμης είναι ότι αυτό το "γιατί" απλά δεν χρειάζεται για να ερμηνευτεί ο κόσμος. Είναι κάτι που έρχεται - θα υποστηρίξει ο επιστήμονας - σαν "προβολή" της ανθρώπινης σκέψης, όπου το κάθε τι που δημιουργείται στον κόσμο του ανθρώπου. δημιουργείται για κάποιο λόγο και με κάποιο σκοπό. Η επιστήμη αποκάλυψε ένα κόσμο χωρίς πραγματικά νόημα, όχι γατί απέδειξε πως δεν έχει νόημα, αλλά γιατί απέδειξε πως δεν είναι απαραίτητο να υπάρχει.

When you think about it, if you accept that any explanation that is not contradicted by fact is equally true, than any observable event can by explained by infinite explanations and you can think of pretty ridiculous non contradicting explanations, like whole universe as is was created in this second with all your memories but gravity math is little off and we will suffocate in 10 minutes. Now I'm curious if Epicurus ever had to defend his theory against such argument.

His method is "pre-scientific" for sure, you are correct. And yes, Epicurus was not so much "into math" as you say. But hey... neither was Pythagoras!! How can this be, you may ask?! Well, there is a tremendous difference between math as we understand it, which is algebra, and geometry. The two have huge philosophical consequences. You can have a look at this great (if a little obscure) booK: g.co/kgs/zko1Qj

@@martincernak3800 That is actually a great point. For all I know, Epicurus only tried to explain phenomena "one by one" so to speak; or "as they arise" would be another way of putting it. No grand theory of everything as far as I know. These ideas came much,... much later, in early modernity, and through such people as Descartes. But notice how, in order to have those theories, certain basic assumptions had to be made: that space is uniform, for instance. It sounds almost self-evident, and perhaps it is, but it was not so for ancient civilizations. There is an excellent treatise on all this, with a telling title: g.co/kgs/jvnhdz

Exactly!

Κατ' αρχάς κι εμείς ευχαριστούμε για την εκτενέστατη απάντηση. Το σημαντικότερο απ' όλα όσον αφορά στην τοποθέτηση σου είναι ότι κατάλαβες απόλυτα αυτό που είχαμε να πούμε σε αυτό το βίντεο. Πίστεψε το πως δεν είναι πάντα εύκολο και σε καμία περίπτωση δεν το παίρνουμε σαν δεδομένο. Τόσο σημαντικό είναι που θα μπορούσαμε να το αφήσουμε κι εδώ. Στο ψητό όμως, όπως είπες κι εσύ. Σε αυτή μας τη σειρά, ένας από τους βασικούς μας σκοπούς είναι να κατεδαφίσουμε τα "κλισέ" που περιτριγυρίζουν την αρχαία Ελλάδα. Ένα από αυτά λέει πως οι Έλληνες ανακάλυψαν την επιστήμη. Όπως και τα περισσότερα κλισέ, έτσι κι αυτό είναι κυρίως αλήθεια, αλλά μισή, που είναι συχνά χειρότερο του ψεύδους. Η σύγχρονη επιστήμη βασίζεται πάνω σε μια μεταφυσική (ναι, μεταφυσική) που ήταν άγνωστη στους αρχαίους. Πάρε για παράδειγμα την έννοια του χρόνου. Εμείς γνωρίζουμε το χρόνο σαν μια γραμμική συνέχεια, όπου το παρόν αποτελεί απλά ένα σημείο ανάμεσα σε δύο αιωνιότητες (παρελθόν και μέλλον). Σαν σημείο φυσικά, το παρόν δεν έχει καμία έκταση, που γεννάει την ερώτηση του πως γίνεται να υπάρχουν υλικά σώματα μέσα σε αυτό, αλλά αυτό είναι για κάποιο άλλο επεισόδιο ;-) Για τους αρχαίους όμως, το παρόν είναι ένα αμετάβλητο πεδίο ύπαρξης όπου (κατά Αριστοτέλη) τα "εν δύναμη" όντα γίνονται "εντελεχή" (εμφανίζονται). Αν κοιτάξεις γύρω σου αυτή τη στιγμή που διαβάζεις, θα δεις πως ό,τι υπάρχει ήταν κάποτε μια δυνατότητα που, κατά την αρχαία πάντα σκέψη, κάτι τράβηξε στην ύπαρξη (ο καφές στο ποτήρι σου υπήρχε σαν δυνατότητα στη σύσταση του νερού και των κόκκων - καθώς και στη σκέψη σου - πριν γίνει πραγματικότητα). Δεν είναι ακριβώς της στιγμής αλλά αν επίσης δεχτείς πως η εντελέχεια (η υλοποιημένη ύπαρξη) βρίσκεται πάντα σε μια ιεραρχία, ο καφές υποστηρίζεται από το ποτήρι, το ποτήρι απ' το τραπέζι, το τραπέζι απ' το πάτωμα...) και έχοντας ξεχάσει προς στιγμή έννοιες όπως βαρύτητα, μόρια, δυνάμεις, κρατώντας μόνο τις έννοια της δυνατότητας και της εντελέχειας, μπορεί να οδηγηθείς στο συμπέρασμα ότι όλη η ύπαρξη πρέπει να υποστηρίζεται από κάτι που δεν είναι καθόλου "εν δυνάμει" αλλά "αεί εντελεχές"... ο Θεός δηλαδή. Δεν υποστηρίζω την ορθότητα μιας τέτοια σκέψης, και σίγουρα δεν προσπαθώ να αποδείξω την ύπαρξη του Θεού σε μια σύντομη απάντηση, απλά ανέφερα εν τάχει κάποιες έννοιες για να σου δείξω πόσο διαφορετική ήταν η "επιστημονική" σκέψη τότε. Κάτι τέτοιο προσπαθήσαμε να μεταδώσουμε στο βίντεο.

That is indeed what we are trying to do, to approach polytheism from within its own logic. Have a look at our episodes on Dionysus.

Please expand on your question "are you neutral?"

@@AncientGreeceRevisited Neutral like moderate agnosticim.

@@rocketequation The thing is (and that is what we tried to present) that there is always a hidden metaphysics, even in science. The difference between Harris and Epicurus shows that one can be a materialist with very different metaphysical assumptions. That different lies in the rise of the mathematical sciences during the 16th century, which combined different elements from ancient Greece. Today's physicist (or proponents of physics like Harris) are a combination of Epicurus and Pythagoras. They believe in matter AND that matter can be captured mathematically. Epicurus was not a mathematician, so the idea of determinism did not feature in his version of materialism. Essentially Newton = Aristotle + Epicurus + Pythagoras (by way of Plato).

No its not its bullshit. There is no critical thinking here.

Or perhaps it's the opposite. Perhaps OUR theory of Quantum Mechanics is a re-interpretation of what they expressed differently. I would not give absolute primacy to the modern view just because it builds impressive machines ;-)

@@AncientGreeceRevisited Yes of cause because they came first! The modern view Quantum Mechanics is only a mathematical interpretation. It is not an objective or geometrical understanding of reality. Your videos are great! A video on the Ancient Greek idea of something bubbling up continuously from the atoms forming our reality would be nice.

@@theoreticalphysicsnickharv7683 You said that right! It's the mathematical interpretation that is leading in our understanding. Everything needs to be reduced to quantities first, in order to be operated upon with mathematical logic. Actually, one of the greatest short introductions to this online is one of Allan Watts' videos: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p0W149RXWSw.html. He is mostly talking about the Eastern way of seeing nature, but to a certain degree it applies to the Greeks as well.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited Yes Allan Watt’s has a truth that is true for both East and West. What I like about the Ancient Greeks is that their math was based on geometry. This idea could “reduced to quantities first” giving us a deeper understanding! On the international space station a candle flame naturally forms a sphere that is interacting with the environment relative to its two dimensional surface. The radiant energy always interacts at right-angles to the surface, an Ancient Greek discovery. We can have chaos or randomness forming out of organization, the spherical symmetry. It is possible to have the potential for all the Platonic Solids within a sphere. As a geometrical process this could form the potential for ever more abstract mathematics or even Socrates’ Sea of Beauty’.

@@theoreticalphysicsnickharv7683 Once again, you have hit the nail on the head. It's the difference between algebra and geometry where the real watershed moment between the ancient and the modern is to be found! Bravo! You actually touched things that are always on my mind. Modern science has been (mis)named "materialist", but if one looks objectively at exactly what this science is doing, they will find that it's far from being occupied with matter. Just like your candle-flame analogy, modern science is actually a move AWAY from matter, and into higher and higher abstractions that only exist in logical (i.e. mathematical) space. When this space was opened up through the works of Descartes, who placed geometry and everything it used to express inside of the aptly named "Cartesian space", this language was expanded to include all areas of existence! It's the digitisation of the world, and with it, of us. I can only mention a few great, yet strangely unknown books on the subject that you might enjoy: * Edwin Arthur Burtt, "The metaphysical foundations of modern physical science" - g.co/kgs/WK9SLt * David Rapport Lachterman, "The Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity" A great article to get you started is : americanmind.org/salvo/how-modern-math-spawned-woke-ethics/

Thank you for your comment. It is a common mistake to assume that (modern) science is free from metaphysics. Occam's razor is only a suggestion, and does not provide an adequate explanation as to why it is true. It is (very) useful to be sure, but the question is... is it true? Modern science is based on the premise that phenomena can be better explained by understanding their smallest parts. This is not scientifically provable, it is a basic assumption, and part of the metaphysics of modern science. Aristotelean science for example interpreted phenomena the opposite way, by their "telos," their natural end. That is why he could say that man is a "political animal," because whatever he does, man has a tendency to move towards self governing communities and institute laws. Think of how different that is from our modern understanding, inherited as much by Darwin as by Freud, who explain man not by his higher tendencies but by his lower. This change, which happened around the 16th century, was a conscious philosophical change that preceded any evidence. In this video, Epicurus is a better example than Aristotle because he was very much a "materialist," just one with different assumptions about reality.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited metaphysics is absurd.... More like an easy way out of laziness to boast Against science... Alright give me top 10 metaphysical inventions and discoveries.. Then we'll talk

​@@superbuddy2493 Metaphysics is NOT a "belief in the supernatural," as the term is commonly misused. Rather, Metaphysics is the branch of knowledge that tries to answer the question "what does it mean for something to BE." What DOES it mean for something to be?? Well, depending on how you answer this question you get different techniques altogether. The modern scientific way answers the question following Descartes: in order to "be," a thing (or "res," in Latin) must "extend", i.e. occupy some space, which is always considered uniform and homogeneous, thus can be measured in units (meters, cm, mm etc). Once you make this assumption, then the whole of reality can be put under the yoke of mathematics, as reality becomes "pixelated" into discrete units. So, to answer your question... ALL inventions are a product of metaphysics, a very particular type, of course, that we understand as the modern scientific type, and then quickly forget because we cannot think of anything else as an alternative. But if we answer this question differently, then we can get a different type of science, which can be worse, or perhaps better than the one we have. It ultimately boils down to how radically we can answer the "question of Being."

@@AncientGreeceRevisited no sir.... Knowledge doesn't require presuppositions to be asserted as potential truths just because it's unfalsifiable.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited sorry but it's technobabble for those who don't want to do experiments and work thier butt off like the actual scientific community with scientific methods.also life has no meaning.

That's right! And that is almost what we tried to convey in this video: that even atheists adhere to a type of metaphysics that is reminiscent of their times and culture.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited Αtheism no doubt is a faith. If you want to point out something in difference form the past and now is that in the past the very few atheists since they were thinkers they did knew what they believed in. In modern days most of the atheists, as most of the religious people, do not know actually what they believe. I make a short example. The well known atheist Burnard Russel states : "A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, [...] has brought forth at last a child [...] with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking Mother, A free Man's Worship, Bertrand Russel" Now in these few words you see that nature is a "mystery" and even if nature is "blind" & "unthinking" she did finally managed to give birth to a logical being (man) which is not stupid. In other words atheists BELIEVE that they are products of STUPIDITY (their god). It "clearly" makes sense.... doesn't it? (*) ----------------------------------------------------------------- (*) So you got stupid "mother" earth which produces life, that man himself, which is really clever, cannot produce for scratch in laboratory right now in any way (even a single cell). And if he 'll manage to accomplish that in the future, he will need to do a lot of logical reasoning. That's what atheism believes -> What a clever being struggles to accomplish a stupid not being can accomplish it far more better.

@@NOK2014_Corfu_Activities That is exactly what the video was trying to convey, and all I can say is that perhaps it was not made super-clear in the short amount of time that we had to make the point across. The point of view however that you presented in brief in your reply above, is one that we plan to follow up. For the moment, suffice to say that something similar can be said about quantum physicists, who are confronted with questions about which Heidegger might have more to say than for example Neil Degrasse Tyson. Yet, to my knowledge at least, modern physicists are not that interested in philosophy as anything more than a hobby. Only that a "scientist/philosopher" is not like a "scientist/musician." It's not like "adding two squares together" in the same 2-dimensional surface. It's rather like placing the squares at a right angle... so that you see in 3D. So, what can I say, I agree and we would be honoured to have you in our list of subscribers.

Also good to point out that his view of “gods” rendered them completely removed from human affairs: “Epicurus maintained that the gods are so utterly perfect and removed from the world that they are incapable of listening to prayers or supplications or doing virtually anything aside from contemplating their own perfections. In his Letter to Herodotus, he specifically denies that the gods have any control over natural phenomena, arguing that this would contradict their fundamental nature, which is perfect, because any kind of worldly involvement would tarnish their perfection. He further warned that believing that the gods control natural phenomena would only mislead people into believing the superstitious view that the gods punish humans for wrongdoing, which only instills fear and prevents people from attaining ataraxia.”

"Gods certainly exist, for we have knowledge about them", this is, paraphrasing a Fragment of his Letter to Meneceus. I see no Atheism at all there. Perhaps didn't follow the rytes to Olympian Gods as "vulgo" did, nor believed in Providence as Christians understand it, but Gods exist and its wisdom, for both Stoics snd Epicureans consist in being a model for Areté or Virtue.

Interesting, please explain ...

@@AncientGreeceRevisited The world and this - whatever other name men have chosen to designate the sky whose vaulted roof encircles the universe, is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal, immeasurable, a being that never began to exist and never will perish. What is outside it does not concern men to explore and is not within the grasp of the human mind to guess. [2] It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the whole, nay rather itself the whole, finite and resembling the infinite certain of all things and resembling the uncertain, holding in its embrace all things that are without and within, at once the work of nature and nature herself.

@@farfandelosgodos1681 Very beautifully said. Yet, I fail to understand the connection with the episode ...

@@AncientGreeceRevisited This is the world vision of a pagan but a Cristen will have a other point of view. The pagan makes the world holy, but the Cristen makes it a world without relevance or a Devil or God punisment.

There is only one cause... for us! That is what we tried to convey in the video. Modern culture is, as Chantal Delsol acutely observes, "has a unitary and *monocausal* spirit" (she actually wrote this as a comment on Tocqueville's work - repozytorium.ka.edu.pl/server/api/core/bitstreams/b0be3d68-318b-4cab-b4df-9cb5773d95b5/content). What is also interning, and very much related to religion, is that Tocqueville's - whom Delsol comments upon - believed that the religion of modernity is what he called "Pantheism." This is very much what happened! The "watered-down" Buddhism that many people in the West now believe in, the LSD inspired mysticism, are all examples of Pantheism. Our belief in modern science and the cult of "all-is-One" modern mysticism, are related: they are an orientation of the mind towards the belief that there is a single principle that creates everything. But that is simply how the modern mind was shaped by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. There is really no reason to believe that the deeper you look into something, the simpler it becomes. Martin Heidegger who - amongst many things - tried to find ways out of modern science said this almost explicetly in his "Being and Time." Now, how this could actually look? Well, you can imagine there being two gravities, for instance, which would be impossible to test empirically, but our conviction that this would also be "irrational" is - in some ways - a modern prejudice.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited Hm. I still find it hard to put myself in the mindset of believing multiple causes for something can exist simultaniously, though I do wish to. Although perhaps this could again be the mono(a)theist inside me. Do you perhaps have more examples of ancient thinkers displaying their poly-atheism?

@@wonderpeter5231It's hard for me as well. Which is why I struggled to give you an example. Our point here, however, is mainly about taking these ancient thinkers seriously, ie,. to their word. In the case of Epicurus, he explicitly says that we (his school) should shy away from those who insist there is only one cause for each phenomenon.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited Thanks man. That is very true. I'll take this moment btw to say that I absolutely love your content. It has really put me on a path of study to really get myself into the mind of people from ancient cultures. I want to gain wisdom from the mind states of the past. I'm looking forward to your next video.

@@wonderpeter5231It's comments like these that keep us going! Thank you and please help to spread the news ...

I have a better hypothesis: Jordan Peterson is really an atheist, because he hasn't give all his money away and does not spend 100% of his time doing charity work.

Epicurus was a materialist, but not a determinist. It is truly interesting to see how many ideas that we consider as part of the same package were actually upheld independently by different people in the past. When we think of the word "logic" for instance, images of computer technologies come to mind. But that is not Aristotle, as he never gave much importance on mathematics. Pythagoras gave the ultimate importance, but he was not a reductionist. Epicurus was a reductionist but he opposed the ειμαρμένη, the determinism, of natural philosophers (ie. scientists).

That is the entire point however. How do we know there is only a single set of laws? Modern science does not prove this, it assumes it and carries on. Because it has carried on so successfully, it's reasonable to assume that this assumption is right. But it's not proven in any meaningful way, and the question must be "revisited" every so often.

Yes, that is a point that Harris makes: either all religions are false or all but one (considering they disagree strongly among themselves). It's an interesting point, and perhaps the main reason for which I personally cannot believe in any. But still, what is fascinating is to uncover the underlining metaphysics of systems who claim to have none... modern science being the prime suspect of course. You are correct when you discern between things working and things "being" in a certain way. Modern science perhaps oversteps its limits when it enters questions of being...

@@AncientGreeceRevisited Well, I will admit I have no formal education or background in these topics whatsoever, but I find it fascinating that physics seems to be approaching or overlapping philosophy at this point. It is hard to even try to scale one's existence against the idea that there may be infinite numbers of infinite universes, coexisting at any given location or time! It gets to the point where the folks who know what they're talking about have trouble putting it to words, so what chance do I have! I'm sure someone will read my comment and cringe at my attempt! I liked Sam Harris's point that every believer should expect to have chosen the wrong religion or sect just on the sheer number of options available. People get offended if you tell them "lucky you for being in the right one!". Last thing, thank you for putting out thought provoking content! I was happy to randomly your videos!

I don’t understand how this, otherwise good argument, relates to our video.

Which poets are you referring to?

Hesiod and Homer were most certainly regarded as authorities on religion. Herodotus himself claims so in the Histories.

Well, not to go full Peterson on you but... do YOU get what being "you" means? ;-)

@@AncientGreeceRevisited I do. Do you?

@@mikeq5807 Well, let's take things in context. We are talking about Dionysus. Who was he? One of his many names was "Λύσιος" (Lysios) which means "dissolver." You might remember the equivalent in Shiva, as the "destroyer of worlds" (famously quoted by Oppenheimer during the explosion of the first nuclear bomb), and Shiva was considered by the Greeks themselves as the Indian Dionysus. So, there is an aspect of "you" that is a continuous field of existence with the larger world. And there is an aspect which is an individuated unit, an "ego" as it's referred in modern pop-psychology. That first, field-like self, is the domain of Dionysus, the dissolver of ego-consciousness. So when you say "Religion can only offer 4 finite resources," that is not true. Religion means to "re-link", to link back to some primordial source of Being. From which the ego arises. When religions work they offer an experiential, bodily way, to understand concepts that if expressed in writing can be very difficult to comprehend even by trained philosophers.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited I am using the word "religion" in the everyday, ordinary sense. I am aware of the etymology of the word. The one who understands transcends the finite of everyday, ordinary religion, and experiences religion, the relinking to Source. The one who understands transcends the finite of everyday, ordinary yoga, and experiences yoga, the yoking with Source. The one who understands transcends the finite of the everyday, ordinary ego, and experiences I am, oneness with Source. You are the way. Experience is the breadcrumb trail to infinite Consciousness, and is understood only through meditation, introspection.

@@mikeq5807 Right, but from there, you need to get back down if you are to have any effect on the people who make up your community. That is where the work of Leo Strauss is invaluable. Because there you find a scholar who was willing to put Plato, Islam and Liberalism on the same table of Political Philosophy. Because ultimately, after you make contact with Being, you reconfigure the space under you, and a culture is born as a consequence. So it's interesting to ask the question: what are the political implications of what you just said?!

Epicurus was not an atheist in the way modern atheists are. He did not reject the existence of God (or the gods) as absurd, although, there is always a closer reading to ancient texts that often reveals the author's opinions to be more extreme that he allows to be shown in the text. Epicurus, however, was an atheist in that he explicitly denied the existence of God (or the gods) as causes for natural phenomena. He explicitly stated that all explanations are to be considered apart from the mythical, or divine. Epicurus cast away the gods from nature, even is he kept them in some unnamed etherial realm of eternal rest.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited That is NOT what an atheist is. And I can pretend I know what any historical figure may have "actually" been thinking as they said on thing on a give topic, but that's almost akin to claiming to be able to read minds.

@@furtivedolus2504 It's not about reading minds. It's about understanding there are things that can and cannot be said in every society. In the ancient world, any form of atheism was taboo, so it's reasonable to assume that those who did profess such beliefs would hide their intentions. It's not about guesswork either. It's about textual analysis in the tradition of some notable scholars such as Leo Strauss. It's the art of "reading between the lines" as they say. This essay might serve as an introduction: www.jstor.org/stable/40238017 Now, as to whether Epicurus was an atheist or not. By modern standards, no. By ancient ones, he was as close as anyone had gotten. But that is not what I am stressing here. What I am stressing is the fact that as far as the area of human activity - i.e. the natural world - was concerned, Epicurus cleaned it up entirely from the gods. So he was like saying: yeah sure, the gods exist, of course, but for everything immediate affecting our lives, it's a if they don't!

@@AncientGreeceRevisited He did what the Buddha did: Set the 'gods' to the side were men and their 'salvation' were concerned because they have little if anything to do with it. But nowhere can I see this was even a major focus of his or successive epicureans.

@@furtivedolus2504 Then read his letters again. He explicitly rejects the "diving interpretation" times and again. Besides that, this "setting aside" as you called it is monumental. It's unprecedented in human history. The Buddha focused on the deliverance of the soul (to say it in Christian terms). He did NOT interpret physical phenomena. Epicurus opens the path to modernity in ways that no one could have predicted.

"The real world is unspeakable." (Alfred Korzybski)

gibberish

@@scambammer6102 "Your mind appears to be ungibbered -- proceed to gabber or completely reject gibbery?"

@@danielharris9403 I'll take the reject gibbery, thanks.

Sam Harris has spoken extensively about his early travels to India and Nepal in order to study with Hindu and Buddhist teachers. During that same period, he spent a total of two years in a silent retreat. Now, if that doesn't count as a spiritual journey for you... I don't know what will!

@@AncientGreeceRevisited You didn't say anything about spiritual you said religious that's not religion. When he speaks of spiritual hes talking about Introspective psychology. He never said anything about believing in any religion or God. There's a big difference there. His entire work is about having a spirituality without superstition. I'll myself am a Zen Buddhist but also an atheist. Atheist Atheist does not mean that someone claims there is no God atheist means that I see no evidence of a God therefore I have no belief one way or another.

@@mcgee227 What I said in the video was that Sam Harris made a "religious journey" that eventually landed him in his opinions. He was not born with them, he developed them. And he developed them by studying religions in the broader sense. On a final note, we must never forget that everything has a metaphysics, and that includes modern science. Metaphysics does not mean "belief in the supernatural" but an answer to the question of "what is being," or "what does it mean for something to exist." Modern science has a metaphysics that ultimately derives from Descartes and his dualism. Modern science did not come as the result of an experiment but as philosophy first, and what I claimed in this video is that this philosophy can be different.

I understood the line about him being raised in a monotheistic religion not necessarily as a literally understood fact from his life (like coming from a Christian family and obeying the Christian rules and celebraiting the Christian festivals from his childhood) but rather as the fact that he was born in a certain culture that has its own religious layer that goes beneath and infiltrates the cuture itself and therefore in a way defining lives of every member of the society, even a self-proclaimed or born and raised atheist. It is then about the culture having great influence over individuals and about religion nurtiring in every, even secular and seemingly independent spheres of human existence like science. How our minds are filled with patterns coming out from the sources that are so obvious that we do not see them anymore. Polish philosopher Bogusław Wolniewicz understood this basic bond between religion and individual very well when he said he viewed himself as: "a Roman Catholic Non-Believer". He didn't meant exactly the same thing as it is mentioned in the video, yet he showed on a more conscious level that there is this basic connection between your culture with the religion that lies beneath your story. (His view was basically that even though he didn't believe in God, or in Christian God, he still embraced many values and the cultural background that flowed out of this religion, he acknowledged that the religion shaped his views in a way).

No, but there is no real reason to suppose that the same phenomenon MUST come from the same cause. There might be multiple causes leading to one observable event.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited examples?

@@AncientGreeceRevisited There ARE multiple causes leading to every event. This message was caused my fingers, and also by the big bang.

The argument, at least the one we tried to convey, was not necessarily about religion vs divinity, but about metaphysics It's about wether there are "hidden metaphysics" in modern science. I believe there are, and the video is but an example, perhaps a crude one at that. See, there is a trick in what you say. You said that Harris "took the best" from the philosophies he studied. But in a way, to "take the best" you must already have an evaluative criterion. You must already have decided what is good and what is bad, what is noble and what is base. It's almost like saying that I took the best materials to build my house, and therefore my house should look like the best houses in the world. No! The design is not in the material but in the blueprint on which those materials fit. When you travel the world to take a bit of Hinduism here and ancient Greek philosophy there, you take bricks which have to be laid on an existing foundation. It's that existing foundation that is occluded, hidden if you will, in Harris' theories. That is the metaphysical foundations on modern science, at least in the view of this episode.

@@AncientGreeceRevisited yes, but people can't think of the repercussions of their actions? Self reflection doesn't require a religion. Would I want someone to do something to me? No, then I don't do that to someone else. Doesn't require a religion. Besides most people are religious because they want to virtue signal. Why do people wear crosses? To show other people they're christian. Harris learned much of his philosophy through Buddhism, which I have read enough of to consider it not a religion. 1. There isn't a plan or a god. 2. No one is controlling your actions or watching you. 3. There isn't an afterlife. Harris doesn't assume religion was the first source of morals. Religions stole the morality in the region that religion was invented and used those stolen morals for the basis of their book. People believe religion is special, but religion just uses fear to manipulate people. How are you moral if the only reason you do something is for your own benefit? Like going to heaven. That's pavlovian not morality.

@@anothermike4825 Morality is a different issue altogether. In fact, the ancient Greeks were both religious AND had a (mostly) secular morality. In ancient Greece, the role of a "prohpet" - as found in the Old Testament for example - was mostly ignored. There were "seers", oracles and stuff, but they were kept outside the legislative process. So yes, we agree, you can be very moral without a religion. Now, let me use what you said above to give you an example of where I'm going with this episode. You suggest (much like Harris does) a moral "rule of thumb:" do not inflict to others that which you don't want to be inflected upon you. What I have been insisting from the very start is that even something as simple as that requires a certain metaphysics. Be careful now, I do not mean a religion, but a metaphysics. In the case of your "rule of thumb," and as obvious as it sounds to us today, it would be absurd for the ancient world as a whole simply because men were NOT considered to be equal. When a Greek master flogged his slave, there would be not point asking "would you like that for you and your children" exactly because he was NOT a slave. He was - to use a fancy term - ontologically different. Different, in other words, not in the way a doctor and a janitor are different, but in the way gold and iron are different. They were from different "stuff" so to speak. So, in this world, saying that you should not flog your slaves because you would not like that would be like saying to a chemist that because iron oxidise so should gold as they are both metals. Today, of course, we believe no such thing, which opens the way for rules like the one you suggest to become not just current, but "self-evident." But how did this equation of all men come about? It happened exactly by focusing on what is common. You can equate gold and iron for example by their weight. A gram of gold is indeed equal to a gram of iron, but in weight and weight only. It's only if you create an assumption whereby weight is the defining characteristic of all things that you can say something like "gold and iron are equal." To create an assumption that "all men are equal," the fathers of the modern world had to give primacy to what is common: bodily functions, basic instincts, mortality. So "all men are equal" needed a redefinition of Man not as the creatures who strives to become god-like, but as the monkey that happened to acquire speech. That is the "hidden metaphysics" that I'm talking about. And it came about the 16th century in Europe.