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Ecclesiastes ["the Preacher"]. Hebrew prophet (c. 350 B.C.]:
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity. [3.19]Note: The influence of Hellenistic philosophy is exemplified by these two passages as well as the repeated carpe diem exhortations to eat, drink, and live well ("seize the day"). |
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Carneades. Athenian Academic skeptic who was notorious for his atheism (213-129 B.C.):
In order to form a conception of God one must necessarily . . . suspend [judgment] as to his existence or non-existence. For the existence of God is not pre-evident [a priori]. . . . therefore it is not proved, either, by a pre-evident fact. . . . Nor yet by what is non-evident; for he who asserts this will be driven into circular reasoning when we keep demanding proof every time for the non-evident fact which he produces as proof of the last one propounded. Consequently, the existence of God cannot be proved from any other fact.Note: Carneades also proposed a theory of probability at three levels of sophistication: (1) ordinary truths, (2) ordinary truths confirmed by others like them, and (3) tested truths justified by close empirical study. This permitted the tentative acceptance of truths until they could be demonstrated to be false. Carneades transcribed none of his ideas, but his disciple Clitomachus composed more than 400 treatises, all of which were either lost or destroyed. |
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Polybius. Greek historian (203-120 B.C.):
Since the masses of people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequence, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death. |
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Varro. Roman scholar (115-27 B.C.):
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Cicero. Roman rhetorician, politician and scholar (106-43 B.C.):
But the question is not, are there any people who think that the gods exist,--the question is, do the gods exist or do they not? |
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Lucretius. Roman poet-philosopher (99-55 B.C.):
No thing is ever by divine power produced from nothing.Note: The stoic philosopher Seneca (4 B.C.-65 C.E.) used the same argument: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful," as did Edward Gibbon in the eighteenth century, "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful." |
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Ovid. Roman poet (43 B.C.-A.D. 17):
It is expedient that gods should exist; since it is expedient, let us believe they do. |
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Petronius Arbiter. Roman satirist (--A.D. 66):
It was fear that first brought gods into the world. |
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Pliny the elder. Roman scholar (A.D. 23-79):
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. 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. |
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Seneca. Roman tragedian and philosopher (4 B.C.-A.D. 65):
After death, nothing is. . . . Let the ambitious zealot lay aside his hope of heaven, whose faith is but his pride. . . . Naught's after death, and death itself is naught. |
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