Empedocles: A weirdo with a few thought provoking ideas

On one hand Empodocles was a cooky character. He thought immortal healer who likes to wear fancy Greek swag. On the other hand, he was a pretty good scientist and physician, able to correctly observe nature.

He thought that the cosmos was created from the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), and the forces of Love and Strife. I interoperate the force of Love merely as being a binding force, and Strife as being a force that separates. All things are created of a mixture of elements, with varying degrees of love and strife to give things shape.

Side note: I really liked Empedocles concept of the sphere. It is the epitome of love because there is no foreign strife within it; all of its faces are equidistant.

Its easy to see how Empedocletic thought parallel chemical concepts such as bonds and disincorporation.

I find Empedocles view of ethics interesting because it is different from my own. He tends to think as evil being foreign to man. That is why I presume he writes rules such as "Fast from evil" (in the dietary sense) "Keep completely away from laurel leaves!" and "keep your hands off beans!". He thinks that these are things that are evil and could corrupt man. However, I believe that evil is rooted within humanity. Nature, without Man, is in harmony unable to create evil.  Humans have corrupted desires for our advantage that distort things things from the way they ought to be.

How can Man redeem himself? By living how humans are intended to live, righteously.


(A departure from the way things ought to be is my definition for evil)

Zip it up and zip it out y'all

Brain power

Challenge of the week: imagine an animal unlike any other. You cannot use any other animal resources to create this new one.

Can't do it.

Human beings are not very good at creating things. We cannot even come up with a completely original idea of a new animal. How is this even possible?  Are we not the most intelligent of all of the animals?

Our lack of creativity is a result of being a created creature (alliteration intended). We didn't design what animals look like someone or something else did. How then can we create something new, when we lack the capacity to do so?

Paramenides applied this reasoning not just to animals but to truth. Humans cannot manufacture truth, our capacity only allows us to seek it, and build off of what others have found. The only way to discover truth is to use our brains and our logical reasoning to recognize it where it exists.

I think that this can equally apply to love and righteousness, but we must use different organs for that*



Zip it up and zip it out y'all


*(heart and soul) I fear my implication wasn't strong enough. But whateva.

Heraclitus and the mind of God

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light- Genesis 1:3

The central tenant to Heraclitus' philosophy is the idea of "λόγος".  This is a common word in the Greek vocabulary with a variety of meanings. For example it could possibly translated into word, reason, reasoning, argument, or account. Heraclitus' ambiguity in his usage I found confusing at first. The book calls it "the single divine law that controls the universe".  Even though λόγος  has a variety of meanings, it never means law (νάμος). Why would the book call λόγος a law? After some thought, I came to the conclusion that Divine reasoning becomes the law of the universe. Whatever God wishes results in action. His very thoughts dictate nature and the organization of the universe. His mind creates and manifests all things, holding the universe together by sheer will power. Surely, his thoughts and his words are deeper than our own. 

I really like the aphorisms in this section, though small, they were deep, similar to many sayings of people like Twain and Tagore. Nevertheless, one particular aphorism stuck out, one that I already reasoned myself. "What we see when awake is death, what we see asleep is sleep." 

When I was suffering from clinical depression, I slept more than 12 hours a day. It was a way for me to escape from my problems because I did not have to deal with their reality. I could be peacefully asleep, and not be anxious about the consequences of my actions. However,  I was sleeping my life away. I forgot that time is God's second most precious gift to us, and I wasted it. When awake one is conscious of the fact that time is always passing, and one day our time will run out. Therefore, we should make the most of our time, sleeping when necessary, but realizing that life is best lived outside of ourselves.  If we chose to live purposefully, it is more valuable that we manifest our dreams rather than just merely creating them.

In a nutshell, get busy livin or get busy dyin folks.

Zip it up and Zip it out Y'all

Pythagorus

A gem cutter and mathematician most known for his theorem, Pythagorus was a man who saw dichotomies in the world. He laid the foundation for people like Socrates, who thought that man's aim should be in the balance of certain dichotomies. At any rate, my particular interest was in Pythagorus' religious beliefs, and its striking similarities to Hinduism. I'm not saying that Hindu thought was influenced by Pythagorean thought (or vice versa), just that there are some shared characteristics. For example both beliefs have an idea of the transmigration of the soul. Both believe that the soul is an eternal entity and the body is a temporary vessel, and when the body dies, the soul continues to live on in a different form. In Hinduism, this life cycle is called samsara, however I'm not sure what Pythagorus called it. Both believe that souls can both be placed in animal vessels, which I find interesting because it makes me wonder the value of human life. I see some correlation of ideas between Pythagorus and Anaxamenes, for the latter said, "Just as the soul, holds us together and controls us, so do breath and air surround the whole cosmos." Are humans different that other beings? Why do we have to follow ethical standards? If I can't urinate facing in the sun, then there better be a good reason.

In Hinduism, men follow ethical standards in order to eventually break free from the life cycle. In this pythagorean system, is there a reward for following these ethical standards?


There is so much more that I want to talk about Pythagorus, numbers, chemistry, and human purpose. But I'll save that for class.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOgLFFmTFw

Xenophanes, gods, and sports.

I like Xenophanes, and I am always impressed by early thinker's and their theology. Often times I am astounded by the truth they discover with their limited resources. Xenophanes claimed that Deity, or at least supreme divinity, was singular and that it has a non-anthropomorphic form. He also believes that the olympic gods are immoral beings.  ". . . as they sang of many illicit acts of the gods thieving, adultery, and deceiving one another. (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians) I wonder how fellow Greeks would have responded to his claim, seeing that belief in the Olympic gods was highly prevalent at this point in time. On one hand Greeks were very open to risky ideas. However, on the other hand, Xenophanes was blatantly disrespecting their gods, and generally people do not take to kindly to that.

I wonder how Xenophanes affected future the Greeks' perception of the Gospel (assuming that they still cared about pre-Socratic thought. To be honest, I'm not sure).  On one hand he paints a very accurate picture of the Father, on the other hand, it is conceivable that he would reject the Deity of Christ. In a hypothetical situation that includes Xenophanes present in the proliferation of the gospel in the Hellenic world, I wonder how he would react to what Paul says in Romans 8:3 "For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh,".

On another note, I agree with Xenophanes about the over glorification of athletes. I feel that athletes in American culture are looked to as role models. Yes, I understand that what they do is impressive; however, I do not think that behavior should be modeled from them just because they can do impressive things. The notion that sports build character is one thing I find particularly odd. If this is true, then the people who play sports more often than anyone else (professional athletes) will have a most righteous character. However, a quick observation of the wild living of many professional athletes dispels this notion. Nevertheless, they are still looked up to.

( I'm not saying that ALL professional athletes are horrible people, and none of them are good role models.)

Zip it up and zip it out y'all.