Or were they the first to have grasped the real meaning of the “god”? Many theist interlocutors in this site consider themselves as the only “True Believers” while all the others are “idolaters”, forgetting that what they today profess, originates from the latter. Here are some extracts of their wisdom.
After having read what those Greek philosophers held on the concept of god, tell me if you still consider them as idolaters. Never forget what Socrates (470 BC) said: “There is one evil, ignorance and one good, knowledge”. This ignorance led the Christians to commit unspeakable atrocities and destruction in the ancient world.
Antisthenes (446 BC): By the law, there are many gods, by nature, only one.
Aristotle (384 BC): God is knowledge. This world isn’t made by gods or by humans, it existed, exists and will exist forever, an eternal living fire that lights up with measure and extinguishes with measure. Humans created gods after to their image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their way of life.
Democritus (460 BC): gods are the product of imagination and popular worship for exceptional natural phenomena.
Protagoras (490 BC): “As far as the gods are concerned, I do not know how they look like or do not look like. The intervention of the gods in humans’ life is excluded, since their very existence is problematic and questioned. Gods have never been revealed to anyone, and our short life does not allow us to determine whether their so-called justice is real. Many things prevent knowledge including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life”.
Heraclitus (600 BC): “Everything in the world is run by the (Hermetic) “Logos”, the natural Law. While the reason is common, people live as if they had their own wisdom. Not because I say so, but once you hear the word, it is wise to confess that everything is one. To speak with simple logic, we say that we must rely on reason, who directs everything, as the city is based on laws. Because all human laws rely on a supreme law, the divine, because it dominates as much as it wants, and it reaches everywhere and prevails all. Creation exists every moment in the universe. Each of us has been created by his parents. Millions of galaxies are created every second. The gods for the philosophers are powerful non-transparent forces, encoded and attributed to them by anthropomorphic features from mythology. But everything exists and becomes intransigent alone. From everything comes the ONE and from the ONE everything. Laws of the nature are veiled. The veiled harmony is far superior from the unveiled one”. You will never find the deep boundaries of the soul, no matter how hard you strive to do so. Good is evil at the same time. In the beginning is the Logos. This world, which is the same for all beings, was not created by any god or man, but there was always, and there is, and always will be, an eternal living fire that only revives itself according to some laws and goes out again according to some other laws. This order of the world with its internal and inherent laws is the eternal “Logos” of the world”.
Parmenides (600 BC): The On (Being, God) is moveless and Static. Every form of movement lies only within it. True knowledge is only the knowledge of the Being. Any other form of knowledge is false and deceptive. Every moment nature teaches us that the Being is unborn and immortal. Because it is Whole, it is Uninterrupted and endless. It has never been and will never be in the future, because now, in the present, it is all together, it is One and it has the continuity within it.
Plutarch (46 CE): “The man who, while he does not know the CONCEPT of God, is religious, he will end up to prejudice and superstition. The superstitious one blames gods for everything that happens to him.
Pythagoras (570 BC): He who seeks always finds: He who doesn’t dig, finds nothing. God and the world is a unity, and the universe and its creatures is a whole. To understand the part, you have to understand the whole. He who is well aware of the total, also, has a clear understanding of the nature of the partial. Only god is wise. People in their best, are simply lovers of wisdom. World is a living being full of intelligence.
Thales of Miletus (600 BC): The elder of the beings is God, because he is unborn and has neither beginning nor end.
Empedocles (494 BC): “The On (“Oν” = Being), when viewed as a whole, is Unmovable, Unchangeable, Complete and Eternal. He was never born and will never die. But when we look at Him in his parts, he is moving according to the terms of the cosmology. The basic elements that make up the world, are water, soil, air and fire. Nothing is done by “no being” and nothing ends in “no being”. According to this position, what people call birth and decay are nothing more than the union and separation of elemental bodies. The elements that make up the matter of the world are eternally unchangeable, while the world’s matter is eternally variable. There is no beginning and end in the nature and the Universe. Both are eternal. The soul in this world is exalted. The only way to be united with God is only the love. Those are infants or nearsighted with very contracted understanding who imagine that anything is born which did not exist before; or that anything can totally be annihilated.
Zeno of Elea (490 BC): There is only one god, an eternal and un-generated being
Euclid philosopher (300 BC): God has no opposite, and therefore, evil doesn’t exist
Epicharmus of Cos (550 BC): “It is not the eye that sees, but the mind: it is not the ear that hears, but the mind: all things except mind are blind and deaf. “But though God is one,” it was said, “He has many names, deriving a name from each of the spheres of His government He is called the Son of Kronos, that is of Time, because He continues from eternity to eternity; and Lightning-God, and Thunder-God, and Rain-God, from the lightnings and thunders and rains ; and Fruit-God, from the fruits (which he sends) ; and City-God, from the cities (which he protects); and the God of births, and homesteads, and kinsmen, and families, of companions, and friends, and armies God, in short, of heaven and earth, named after all forms of nature and events as being Himself the cause of all.
Epicurus (341 BC): If gods are evil, they are not gods. The blessed and indestructible being (the god), never faces any disturbances; neither causes to others any kind of disturbances, hence gods are not influenced either by anger or by thanksgivings, because all these are traits of a weak beings. There are no punishing gods, as many religions oppressively preach, so, no one needs to live with this fear, because faith is, to accept without proof somebody’s preaching, who speaks without knowledge, about things unprecedented. Gods do not accept gifts, prayers, supplications, sacrifices or vows; because in this case the human race will quickly perish, as half of the humans pray for many evils to befall on the other half.
Xenophanes (570 BC): “If oxen and horses had hands and if they could draw like humans, then the horses would give the form of a horse to their gods and the oxen the form of an ox”.
Plato (428 BC): God is a being that lives immortally by means of himself alone, sufficing for his own blessedness, the eternal Essence, causes of his own Goodness. The One is the term most suitable for defining the Absolute, since the whole precedes the parts and diversity is dependent on unity but unity, not on diversity. The One, moreover, is before being, for to be is an attribute or condition of the One. His name he does not tell us, for he knew it not: nor does he tell us His color, for he saw Him not; nor His size, for lie touched Him not. Color and size are felt by the touch and seen by the sight: but the Deity Himself is unseen by the sight, unspoken by the voice, untouched by fleshly touch, unheard by the hearing, seen only—through its likeness to Him, and heard only—through its kinship with Him, by the noblest and purest and clearest-sighted and swiftest and oldest element of the soul.”
As long as there are children who are hungry, God does not exist! I do not fear God, he understands and forgives. I fear people. They do not understand neither they forgive. Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957)
Well, what do you say?
Δεσμώτης
Article URL : https://kidadl.com/facts/quotes/best-greek-quotes-from-famous-philosophers