Iconoclasm:

Breaking the Sacred Images

Introduction
Etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way their meanings have changed
throughout history. The etymology of etymology is from the Greek etymos meaning "true, real,
actual," and the suffix logia meaning study of. Etymology is the study of the true sense of a
word.
Religion comes from religare, Latin for "to bind fast", via the notion of an obligation
being placed on us by the gods. The word science comes from the Latin scientia, meaning
"knowledge. And we get the word philosophy from the Greek philosophia meaning love of
knowledge. This makes philosophy and science sound a lot better. I mean, everybody likes
knowledge, right? And everybody hates being bound and having obligations, whether to the
gods or anyone else.
The plot thickens when we check the etymology of knowledge. Knowledge comes from
the 12
th
century, Old English word cnawlece meaning "acknowledgment of a superior, honor,
worship". Sounds an awful lot like a religion. This may be where we get the phrase,
Knowledge is power. Is it possible that these three fields are actually the same thing, in the
true sense?
The essential element in common between these spheres of human activity is mythology.
We know the Greek suffix logia, meaning study of, gives us the logy part. The
etymological derivation of myth should give us pause. We usually think of myths as stories or
rumours, which are widely believed, but generally misunderstood and incorrect. The term is
applied to either the fanciful religions of the ancient peoples, or to modern urban legends
which do not stand up to logical critique. But the word myth is derived from the Greek mythos
meaning speech, thought, story, myth, anything delivered by word of mouth, which indicates
this word may have much more significance for our lives than we currently understand.
Mythology is the study of anything delivered by word of mouth.
The nature of mythology is widely debated. In ancient times myths were religions, and
many of those religions are still widely practiced today. There are so many parallels between
ancient myths and ancient philosophy, that every serious text on the history of philosophy must
confront this issue. But science is usually held out as being an utterly different sphere, where
we can derive real knowledge. So myths and science are held to be opposites, where the former
is clearly false, and the latter is clearly true, but myth is widely acknowledged to feed into both
religion and philosophy. What is it about science that is so different?
The quick answer we often hear from scientists and even many modern philosophers is
reason or logic or something along those lines, but this is a nonsensical answer and an insult
to our intelligence. The subtle implication here is that science is in possession of rationality
and logic, while people who disagree with them are not. This stems from popular
misunderstandings of reason, logic, and science, which are largely propagated by the elite, who
use science as a set of claims that legitimates their authourity. Logic and reason are basic
functions of the human thought process that everyone uses. Religions use logic and reason, but
they simply start with different assumptions, namely that the gods have instructed us on what to
do through sacred texts and rituals. Philosophers gave us the first writings we have about logic
and reason, and systematizing them, so without philosophy we would not have science. Before
the so-called enlightenment, what we currently think of as science was basically magic, such
as alchemy, astrology, numerology, sacred geometry, etc, so science has similar origins to the
other two, despite its pretensions of hard facts.
An oracle is a divine announcement, or a person or place directly connected to the gods,
which is derived from the Latin orare meaning pray, plead. The oracles were among the first
myth-makers, and among the first philosophers. The conventional wisdom is the body of ideas
or explanations generally accepted as true by the public or by experts in a field. Such ideas or
explanations, though widely held, are unexamined. This is a definition I draw from the modern
oracle of the conventional wisdom: Wikipedia. This essay is an etymological study of the
conventional wisdom, a search for its root, its true meaning.
According to the conventional wisdom, the Western tradition emerged from Greek
philosophy and the Abrahamic faiths. The main features of this characterization of the West are
1) Rule of Law, 2) Deductive Reasoning, and 3) Monotheism (Wikipedia). Philosophy requires
the first two, but generally rejects the arguments of the third as being faith-based rather than
reason-based. Science depends on the first two pillars as well, and also argues for the
irrationality of the third. But of course, any religion is compatible with the Wests cultural
relativism, including polytheism, paganism, Satanism, etc. This is because the Western tradition
depends on the so-called separation of church and state, which means rule of law does not
contradict monotheism. This position is known by a number of different terms such as
multiculturalism, the melting pot, anti-racism, human/civil rights, etc. For our purposes, an
umbrella term which captures this position is secular humanism. Secular humanism is
represented as being about tolerance toward religious difference, but it is actually a complete
rejection of God in every sphere of human life.
By this view of the West, put forward most notably by Francis Fukuyama in The End of
History and the Last Man, Western liberal democracy represents the final realization of the
evolution of mankinds ideological learning. Fukuyama was a key architect of the Reagan
doctrine and of neoliberalism at the end of the millennium. Published in the heady atmosphere
around the collapse of the Soviet Union, Fukuyamas book became a rallying call for the rebirth
of the hegemonic stability thesis, which argues that without a powerful hegemon to maintain
peace, the world will degenerate into more and more conflict and war (Payne, 2003). This way
of thinking was used to justify the international communitys (read: United States, UK, Israel,
and their allies) hostility in numerous theatres throughout the world, as well as their aggressive
campaign of economic globalization (Harvey, 2007). It represents the conventional wisdom of
the military, economic, and political elites of the Western liberal democracies. Worldviews such
as Islamic thought or Eastern thought are usually seen as competing with Western thought
for global hegemonic status, but they also merely represent the conventional wisdom of the
intellectuals and apparatchiks in those regimes.
A critical thinker looks at this situation and sees a convenient narrative for the political,
military, and intellectual elite to justify expanding their power. Im not saying Fukuyama was
deliberately misleading us (although Im not saying he wasnt), just that anyone can write a book
about how great their particular worldview is and how it should be the one that controls
everything. Looking back through history we can see a volume or ideology such as this
produced time and again to justify and proselytize whatever regime is in power. But the greatest
such volume of all is Platos Republic.




Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I
perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this
inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you.
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of
heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing,
seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face
of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
bounds of their habitation;
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and
find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your
own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
- Acts 17:22-28


Mythology to Philosophy
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it
consists of a series of footnotes to Plato, said one influential philosopher of the 20
th
century
(Whitehead, 1979, p. 39). Truer words were never spoken. Any work on the history of
philosophy must confront this manifestly obvious point, while simultaneously pretending that
philosophers are making progress. In 2300 years of philosophizing, nobody has written anything
that Plato did not do better. There is no issue in political science, sociology, or any of the liberal
arts which he does not discuss thoroughly either, and all of the other disciplines are simply
specializations of fields which Plato and his student Aristotle had already systematized. The
Academy was the school Plato founded in Athens, and it has become a term often applied to the
entire modern community of professional scholars, the people who produce our conventional
wisdom. Platos The Republic, the work where he lays down his vision of a just society, is the
single most important work in the history of political philosophy. In the form of a dialogue,
starring his legendary teacher Socrates, he lays out his master plan to create the just city.
Economists often try to claim that they represent a new school of thought, whereas all the
other disciplines proceed from notions that the Greeks had already schematized (i.e. logic,
mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, and history) (von Mises, 1945, p. 1). While theres
truth to the claim about the other disciplines, the idea that Plato did not know economics is
utterly ridiculous, since economics is what the Republic is all about. Despite the libraries that
have been written about what it supposedly means, we can see the Republic is about economics,
because all its concerned with are the two most important areas of economics: the division of
labour and the allocation of scarce resources. Platos star Socrates humbly argues that
philosophers would and should be the kings, dispensing the justice of the wise. Through their
manifestly superior powers of reason, the philosophers would supersede the state, the family,
religion, morality, and the gods themselves in order to create the perfect Utopian society.
Although a city where all art and poetry is strictly controlled by elite philosophers, who are
themselves all bred and selected from the population by the community of elite philosophers, has
many defenders in the field of philosophy (Brown, 2011, p. Section 4.4), the laymen among my
readers may find this proposition a little harder to swallow. The Republic is about complete
totalitarianism, justified by a state religion, the religion of philosophy.
Many people fail to realize that in Platos time, philosophy was a kind of religion,
especially for the educated elite. The intellectual pagans found little to answer any serious
questions about daily life in either the old and eccentric myths about gods and heroes, or the
elaborate rituals of the various cults to which they belonged, and they had begun to criticize the
ideas of religion. Religion in ancient Greece was an elaborate and public affair, involving
sacrifices, ceremonies, festivals, etc., wherein many people had very demanding and intricate
responsibilities (Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2014). By the 5
th
century before our Lord,
around the time of the sophist Protagoras first visit to Athens, philosophers had completely
captured the political imagination (Martin, 2013, p. 159). Wherever the gods or poets had failed
to communicate complex ideas about morality, physics, law, etc., there were the philosophers to
save the day. Similar to our modern way of thinking about religion, there seemed to be roughly
two camps in Greek society and among Greek philosophers themselves, one of which was
primarily scientific and naturalistic (e.g. lightning is caused by weather, not by Zeus), another
mostly religious and mystical (Russell, p. 20).
Thales is widely acknowledged as the first pure philosopher, due to the fact that he did
not resort to mythological explanations for reality (a philosophical position known as naturalism)
(Russell, p. 23), but he certainly did not improve much on the magical thinking that is
supposedly the basis of myths and the bane of scientists. As with many of the ancients, we have
none of Thales actual writings, but the two quotations which are directly attributed to him are,
water is the first principle of everything and all things are full of gods (Kenny, 2004, p. 4),
which you may agree are clearly magical thinking. Thales is said to have introduced astronomy
to the Greeks, because he famously predicted an eclipse, which was the birth of what we now
know as science. He is also credited with the beginnings of geometry, because of his deductive
arguments about shapes (Russell, 1946, p. 24). He was later hailed as one of the Seven Sages of
Athens.
A person usually thought of as one of Platos biggest influences was the semi-mythical
Pythagoras (Aristotle, p. 987a), he of the eponymous theorem. Bertrand Russell even described
all Platonism as Pythagoreanism (Russell, p. 36). Like Socrates he wrote nothing, and all we
know of him comes from his followers (the Pythagorean school), and other commentators,
especially Plato and Aristotle themselves (Stanford Encyclopedia, 2014). The commentary from
these two is important in that it differs markedly from other examples, and also in that the two
accounts largely agree with each other, that Pythagoras was not really a philosopher. Aristotle
discusses his strict living regimen, his communal way of life, and his apparently magical powers,
but does not mention him as a philosopher and refers to his followers derisively as the so-called
Pythagoreans. Plato seems to regard Pythagoras as less of a philosopher in the tradition of
himself and Aristotle, and more of a founder of a way of life (Stanford Encyclopedia , 2014).
Pythagoras philosophy/mysticism was practiced by a cult which ended up ascribing
magic powers to him and worshiping him as a demigod after his death, the supposed son of
Apollo (Kenny, 2004, p. 34). Apollos myth has him slaying the dreaded she-dragon of Delphi
with his silver bow and founding the most famous oracle in the ancient world. He was the Greek
sun god, the golden charioteer of the heavens, but he was also the god of music, the master of the
lyre (Morford & Lenardon, pp. 238-269). The Pythagoreans harboured a mystical belief in the
connection between harmony and astronomy (Plato, p. 530d). According to Ovid, Pythagoras
practiced vegetarianism and harkened back to a mythical golden age when men did not defile
their lips with blood (Edgecombe, 2005), and it is said he would preach to animals (Russell, p.
28). Among the numerous, seemingly arbitrary commandments of Pythagoras community of
philosophers (he is credited with coining the term (Kenny, 2004, p. 32)) was a strict doctrine
of abstention from beans, putting the right shoe on before the left, and stirring the ashes in the
fire after removing the pot (Russell, p. 27). Pythagoras believed in the transmigration of the soul
from animal to man and back after death in a cycle (which was part of the reason for not eating
meat: potential cannibalism) (Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2011). Another important aspect
for our discussion is the communal life-style of the Pythagoreans. All property was held in
common, men and women were admitted on equal terms, and even scientific and mathematical
discoveries were considered to be communally produced and mystically attributed to Pythagoras
after his death and deification (Russell, 1946, p. 28) (Kenny, 2004, p. 32).
Similarly Platos teacher Socrates is also semi-mythical, but if Pythagoras was a
philosophers Buddha, then Socrates was their messiah. My dads late 50s edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannicas A General Introduction to the Great Books and to a Liberal
Education (which I always thought was a rip-off, but which is now coming in handy) says,
Platos report of the trial of Socrates and of his last days in prison vividly demonstrates for us
one of the most moving events in the history of the human race. 19
th
century British classical
liberal J.S. Mill, one of the formative thinkers of our current political system, used the
similarities between Jesus and the paragon of the philosopher-kings to justify his utilitarian
approach to free speech (Mill). Like Christ, Socrates never wrote anything down, so all we
know about him is from the writings of his contemporaries (mostly Xenophon and Plato), and all
of these writings are hotly debated. Socrates claims to receive instructions from a divinity,
which talks to him and gives him signs (Plato, Apology, p. 31d). Like the Lord, he was a
penniless vagrant, his teachings have reached far beyond his own field, and he used to walk
around and start trouble, mostly by talking to people about their way of looking at the world.
Also like the Kings of Kings, Socrates is said to have died for his beliefs and his trial and
subsequent execution is one of the founding myths of the Western tradition (Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014). Socrates is the saviour of the philosophers, the sacrifice, the
slain god of reason.
The differences between the popular image of Socrates and Christ are almost as
instructive as the similarities. While the texts describing these two historical figures both give
the impression that they are not particularly physically attractive (Book of Isaiah) (Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014), Christ is usually imagined as a good-looking, effeminate,
weakling (Shouse, 2010), while Socrates is pictured and described as an ugly, somewhat
obnoxious, arrogant drinker, who resembled a satyr more than a man (Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, 2014). A satyr is a mythical, human-animal hybrid, with the horns and hooves of a
goat, usually depicted as drunken and lascivious. Satyrs were often depicted with erect penises
and associated with Dionysus, who was also called Bacchus, the god of wine (Morford &
Lenardon, 2007, p. 311). The divinity or inward oracle which talks to Socrates is known as
a daemon or daemonion, which is the root of the English word demon (the-ion part makes it a
little demon). Most importantly, Christ died for our sins, to give us eternal life, while Socrates
died forwe know not what. Reason?
Aristotle is usually understood as the most influential philosopher of all-time, or as the
second after Plato (Kenny, 2004, p. xiv) (Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014). He also
remains one of the most copious and reliable sources on ancient Greek philosophy himself
(Kenny, 2004, p. 1). He definitely tries to draw a clear distinction between philosophy and
mythology (the poets and oracles in those days), but his own words betray him. In his first major
work on the subject of the historiography of philosophy, Metaphysica, he says, For it is owing
to their wonder that men both now begin and first began to philosophize; they wondered
originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the
greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and
about the genesis of the universe (Aristotle). What hes saying is that the earliest philosophers
(not real people, just the early people he imagines began philosophy in time immemorial), as he
and his predecessors do, simply wondered about what they sensed around them in nature, and
formulated ideas and theories about these things in their minds.
The only difference between this process and that of a poet like Hesiod or Homer, is that
the latter two are openly telling you that they were given inspiration by the gods or by spirits like
muses, while Aristotle claims that he thought it all up himself. I am willing to give Aristotle the
benefit of the doubt. Lets assume that he believed that he came up with all of that on his own.
As an agnostic to both religions and philosophy, what is the difference to me? These arguments
are both premised on the assertion that the speaker is correct, based on no relevant evidence (this
is known as dialectic reasoning, which I will return to later). The Great Philosopher rejects the
possibility of the supernatural, but instead he gives it the name metaphysics, and proceeds to
make up everything supernatural in his head and proving it all using his own circular logic and
tautologies. Aristotle is famous for assuming that heavy objects would fall faster than light
objects, an assumption we now know to be false because we have tested it, but which the greatest
thinker of all Western history never bothered to check out, because he was so enamoured with
his own faculties of reason. This abject failure of pure deductive logic became a founding myth
of the so-called Enlightenments push towards empiricism.
Platos theology is the most important for this discussion. As I mentioned before, Platos
Republic is basically an economics argument, but like other economics books, it is also a sacred
religious text. Plato argued that the world we see around us is but a pale shadow of the ideal
world of forms which existed in some kind of extrasensory reality. These forms are eternal
and immutable and represent ideal qualities and values, including morality, justice, etc. Plato
also argued for a dualistic cosmology and theology wherein universal principles of good and evil
were in constant conflict (philosophyofreligion.info, 2014).
Plato is known to have originated the famous Euthyphro dilemma as well. Socrates asks
the hapless Euthyphro, Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it because it is
loved by the gods? (Euthyphro, p. 10a). This little paradox has managed to provide ammunition
for generations of atheists with chips on their shoulders. It suggests that if the gods are good,
they would not need to give man rules about what is good, since man would naturally be good,
being a product of good gods. In a pantheistic worldview such as the ancient Greeks held, this is
problematic, but in a monotheistic worldview it is not. Evil exists because of mans sin, not
because of God. God created evil because He created beings with free will, and given free will,
they had to have a chance to disobey Him. Disobeying God is evil.
Plato may have believed in the transmigration of souls and reincarnation after death,
similar to Pythagoras. People who lived unjustly would receive a weaker, poorer body, perhaps
an animal (Hellenic Gods, 2014). People who had been morally upright in life would receive a
better body, gradually working their way up, until finally ascending to the stars (Stenudd, 2014).
In the last book of The Republic, he relays a story known as the myth of Er, where the Greek
after-life is given a complete face-lift. Before Plato, peoples conception of the afterlife was
largely based on Homers Odyssey. There was no real notion of heaven or hell, or any idea of
retribution after death for our sins. Most people believed that on death our souls would be
transported to a drab and lifeless underworld kingdom ruled by Hades, the god of the dead.
Hades was not known as an evil deity and he did not torture people, he simply ruled his dark
kingdom, made sure no one got out, etc (Morford & Lenardon, pp. 345-55). The deities of the
underworld, known as chthonic, were seen as dark, but also life-giving (e.g. Hades wife was the
beautiful goddess of spring, Persephone (Murray, p. 56)). But Hades (the name of both the
underworld and its king) was seen as a boring place where all the life had been sucked out. Life
was for the living, not the dead.
As we saw above, the original meaning of myth was much different than what we think
of today. We look at myths as something untrue which needs to be exposed, but most Greeks
actually believed in myths and were deeply religious. People had personal shrines in their
homes, performed sacrifices and poured out libations to various gods regularly. They also
participated in public religious duties, which were sometimes quite arduous (Ancient History
Encyclopedia, 2014). The people of Greece were motivated by myths because they believed in
them, and human beings act on what they believe.
In the myth of Er, we are given a different accounting of the afterlife than the typical
Greek concept. A man named Er was killed in battle, but when they pulled his body ten days
later from the pile, they found he had not rotted at all. On the twelfth day they prepared to burn
the body, but he came back to life on the pyre! He tells a dramatic tale about the underworld,
where the dead are judged and meet different fates, depending on whether they have lived a
virtuous life or not. If they had been virtuous they would receive a thousand year journey
through the heavens, but a thousand years of misery is meted out to those who indulged in
vice. After their thousand years was up, people were given a chance to choose a new life on
earth, but they are warned to choose carefully, lest they choose a life of vice and damn
themselves to a thousand-year hell when they die. But the people who were rewarded previously
with a good life, are less prepared to choose and make mistakes, thus cursing themselves in their
following afterlife. They are constantly operating in a cycle, moving back and forth from heaven
to hell, except for the philosophers. The philosopher, because he uses reason, is able to avoid the
pitfalls of excessive virtue or vice (Bloom, 1991).
To understand why Platos Republic is really an economic treatise, we must see how he
deals with the two main concerns of economics: division of labour and the allocation of scarce
resources. The first is accomplished through the principle of specialization. In the just city
everyone has a job to do, depending on their talents, and that is what they will do, regardless of
what they, their family, or anyone else has to say about it. The social structure of the city is
divided into three classes or castes: 1) the ruling warrior caste or guardians, 2) a highly
trained but inferior auxiliary class, and 3) a worker caste. This structure is established using
public education and propaganda.
Socrates believes that, in order to maintain proper control over the just city, that the
mythology the people learn must be carefully controlled. In ancient Greece, early education
mostly consisted of memorizing the Homeric and other poetic writings. Poets, artists, etc in
Socrates city would be carefully limited on what they are allowed to produce, in order to
maintain the propaganda myth, the conventional wisdom. To immunize the young warriors
against the fear of death, death must not be presented as an unpleasant thing. Furthermore,
heroes should never be seen to fear death, or to mourn for the dead, and the land of the dead must
not be presented as an unpleasant place. Also the gods and the heroes must be depicted as
having perfect honesty, and never as laughing in excess, since excessive emotions in one
direction lead to excessive emotions in the other (Spark Notes, 2014). The Athenians had a
widespread motto of keep everything in moderation, usually attributed to another of the Seven
Sages, Solon the law-giver.
The myth of the metals explains to the people why there are classes and why the elites
may occasionally need to take their children away from them to be trained by other classes. We
are all brothers in the city you see, but when the god was fashioning those who were fit to rule,
he mixed in a bit of gold, and in the auxiliaries silver, and in the farmers bronze. This is why the
guardians are the most honored. If a child is ever born into a family that seems to have the
aptitude of a different class, those parents are to give up their child and allow it to be trained with
the other caste (Plato, p. 414b). It would not be right to keep your child if he was born with the
wrong magic metal in his blood, so give him to the state, they will handle it.
The myth of the metals also explains the most difficult problem of economics: the
allocation of scarce resources. Every political-economic system in the world, from dictatorial
fascism to Western liberal democracies, pretends to deal with this dilemma (i.e. the distribution
of goods, services, currency, and real estate) in a different way, but they all basically do what is
outlined here. Socrates plan is for an elite group of philosophers to be trained and
psychologically manipulated into complete, fanatical devotion to the state and to reason itself.
This class of guardians, because of their complete devotion to reason, will be able to
philosophize the best way to distribute all the money, goods, and real estate. This is the first
vision of a technocracy, the scientific dictatorship.
The rest of the people are given a similar program of psychological manipulation through
propaganda so that they will be willing to serve the just city. The unvirtuous who disagree
with this scheme will be dealt with by force. On the surface, the noble lie is the notion that its ok
to lie, as long as its for good reasons, which are reasons that benefit the city, or the polity. Its a
retelling of that old chestnut, THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS! which any thinking moral
person knows is a crock.
More importantly, what its saying is that its ok for the elite political class to lie. It is
clear that only the philosopher-kings, the elite guardians, should be allowed to lie and that for
anyone else it would be unvirtuous. The guardians are the ones who have the training and
technical know-how (the philosophical background naturally) to understand how to create a
noble lie. Lower classes would be unable to ascertain these things, because theyre not
philosophers, so for them to lie would be wrong and counter-productive. There is no moral
problem with lying, there is no morality at the level of the individual at all, as long as the state
benefits in the long run. Morality is reason and the philosopher-kings have got it covered.


The Mystery Religion
Some more etymology is, helpful at this point. Reason and rational come from the
same root as ratio, which is from the Latin ratio meaning reckoning, understanding, motive, or
cause. I will leave the idea of reason as motive or cause for whenever I get around to the
scam of economics, but notice how integral reason is to human action; reason is our very cause
and motive. Reckoning and reckon is speculated to come all the way down from the
hypothetical proto-Indo European language (PIE); the word reg means to to guide in a straight
line, to rule (think of the Latin rex for king, of which this is the supposed root). The word
logic is from the Greek logos, meaning word, speech, discourse (please compare to our earlier
etymology of myth). Skeptic comes to us from the Greek as well, the word skepsis meaning
doubt. The suffix ism comes directly from the Latin isma, which indicates an action, state,
condition, or doctrine. By this reckoning (pun intended), logical skepticism means the
doctrine of doubting word, speech, and discourse. Logical skepticism is the religion of the
state, and Platos Republic is its most sacred text.
Understanding and understand come directly from the Old English understandan,
meaning comprehend, grasp the idea of. There is some disagreement on the root derivation
from our other oracle, the Online Etymology Dictionary (hereafter referred to as the OED, my
source for etymological derivations found in this essay). Understandan comes from two roots.
Stand clearly comes to us directly from the Old English standan, which is from the Latin stare
meaning occupy a place, stand firm.
The under- prefix is from the Germanic unter or Old Norse undir, meaning under, but
what is the root derivation? The OED says it may be from the PIE root *ndher or stand in the
midst of. Some guy named Barnhart thinks this because the under- prefix seems to derive
from the PIE prefix *nter- meaning between, among. While this may be true, it is just his
suggestion. Is between, among the same as under? What does stand in the midst of have to
do with understanding something? Since the Proto-Indo European language is just a
hypothetical construct, made-up by people like Barnhart, I consider this a kind of circular
reasoning and reject this argument.
The OEDs other sources suggest understand might come from among, between,
before, in the presence of, as we see in other uses of the prefix under-, such as in underniman
meaning to receive, undersecan or examine, investigate, scrutinize (literally underseek),
underencan which is consider, change ones mind, underginnan or to begin, and in such
phrases as under such circumstances. I do not know who these sources are, but the word under
does not equate to among, between, in the presence of in my world. Following my line of
logic, the use of the prefix under- in words like undersecan "examine, investigate, scrutinize"
(literally "underseek"), does not indicate that they were thinking of that nonsensical
interpretation either, so that evidence does not bolster the argument of the OEDs mysterious
sources.
The last suggestion seems to be from the oracle itself, which argues that the root meaning
of under- is from be close to, as compared to the Greek epistemai meaning literally I stand
upon. Epistemai is the root of the English word epistemology, which means the study of
knowledge (this is from the Greek word episteme or I know how, I know, which hearkens
back to the Ionic Greek epistahstai or know how to, but which is literally interpreted as
overstand, from epi over and histasthai to stand.). The OED derives this etymology from
the similarity between this grammatical formation and others from Germanic languages such as
the relationship between the German verstehen, meaning understand, which is represented in
Old English as forstanden or stand before. The OEDs solution seems closer to the truth than
Barnhart, since the Old English word forstanden or stand before seems to lead directly from
the same root as the German verstehen or understand, but lets take a closer look at this.
The word in Old English for to stand under in a literal sense, is undergestandan, which
sounds very similar to our word understand. They also had a word in Old English for the literal
meaning over-stand, oferstandan which became overstanden in Middle English, so it makes
sense that they had a word for stand before (forstanden). If you want to understand the
meaning of a word, you study the etymology, which is the historical root of that word, but we
cannot see the root of things by standing among them or before them. If we just look at a
tree by standing before it, we will never understand the tree. We must go under, to the root of
the tree. Similarly, if you stand on something, lets say a bridge or a platform, you cannot know
whether it is safe. In order to know whether it is secure, you must stand under it, to see what lies
beneath. There was already a word for comprehend, grasp the meaning of in Old English:
understandan. I conclude that the word understand comes to us directly from stand under,
because you can never really know anything, but to comprehend something, to grasp its true
meaning, you must stand under it.
So reason comes from to rule, knowledge comes from worship, and epistemology
was literally to stand over, being interpreted as I know how. The problem with saying you
know how to do something, is that you never really do know the how of anything. How is a
question that always devolves into infinite regression; if you ask me how I did something, and I
give you an answer, the question How? is still perfectly valid and demands another answer.
For example, How did you get here?, By car., Yeah but how?, I got in the car, drove it
here, then got out and entered this place., Ok, but how?... ad infinitum. The other question
which works like this is, Why? Anyone who has kids knows how this goes. How and why are
the two major questions that science asks. We are never going to figure out how to do
everything, or why everything is the way it is, because thats not what science is for.
The most important thing to note here is that epistemology, the study of knowledge, can
be literally interpreted as the study of standing over. But to gain understanding we must
stand under, which I will return to later.
I am sorry to note that conflicts in meaning such as we see above are not as obvious to
current thinkers as they will have seemed to my readers. Modern radical rationalists like
evolutionist Richard Dawkins and philosopher Peter Boghossian dont understand the principle
of infinite regression. They think we can get all the answers in life by just thinking about it.
Dawkins remarkably has the nerve to try and turn the infinite regression argument around on
religions, as if it applied to them and not to pseudointellectuals like himself. Dawkins argument
for an infinite regression of designers is proof that he has no clue about logic and/or thinks you
are stupid. Dawkins assumes that his theory, so-called evolutionary biology, is a fact, along
with any other peer-reviewed argument that fits into his worldview. I will discuss evolution
more later, but for now, this quote from Professor James A. Shapiro, a bacteriologist from the
University of Chicago (these people perform real scientific experiments, unlike Dawkins ilk, but
remember he is still just a guy with a book), should help to demonstrate that people like Richard
Dawkins are just paid talkers and not interested in finding truth:
Forthosescientistswhotakeitseriously,Darwinianevolutionhasfunctionedmoreasaphilosophicalbelief
systemthanasatestablescientifichypothesis.Thisquasi-religiousfunctionofthetheoryis,Ithink,whatlies
behindmanyoftheextremestatementsthatyouhavedoubtlessencounteredfromsomescientistsopposingany
criticismofneo-Darwinismintheclassroom.Itisalsowhymanyscientistsmakepublicstatementsaboutthe
theorythattheywouldnotdefendprivatelytootherscientistslikeme.
Notice that he says Darwinism is a philosophical belief, not a scientific theory. You
cant test the notion of evolutionary biology, its a fairy tale for Team Reason. A bedtime
story, so you dont have to think about little kids getting bombed by our governments. Thats
just the way it is! Were all a bunch of apes, and coloured people in the third world who have
religious values are obviously a few rungs below into apedom than we are. Give them some
democracy and eventually theyll become rational and civilized. With the Darwinian
assumption in tow, along with the Big Bang epic fairy-tale, Dawkins can then claim that any
attempt to fix a designer to that narrative is an unnecessary set of assumptions, meaning the
theory is not parsimonious. By the magic of Occams razor, Dawkins has eliminated the logical
possibility of God. Now clap, you ignorant subhuman! The evolutionist has saved you from
God, and you can go and have meaningless sex, get drunk, and watch Hollywood movies and pro
sports while your government bombs babies.
If you assume all of evolution theory, geology, astrophysics, and cosmology is correct,
because of REASON!!, then you are either completely ignorant about what a scientific theory is,
or youre trying to sell a book. Guess which one Dawkins is. Your guess is as good as mine
given the way he handles himself in public discussions with other scientists (YouTube).
If you buy Dawkins books and subscribe to his worldview, then it makes perfect sense
that we simply go to university and write down whatever the prof says for four years and are then
considered to be educated. By adopting this way of seeing the world, all you have to do is get
a job, pay taxes, keep up to date with whatever opinions are popular for your political sub-cult,
and occasionally donate to charity. You are a good citizen, meaning you are a good person.
But none of us can figure anything out by ourselves according to the pseudointellectual,
elite sophists. We are just a bunch of intelligent apes after all. We need to think together. Some
of us will think about science, others about philosophy, and others about whatever they have a
talent for. As long as its a recognized discipline in a university, otherwise youre just an
ignorant worker-slave and are not qualified to think about anything. There are people who do
the thinking, and people who do the working, and guess which one you are. But its for your
own good. Well get you civilized, you silly little monkey. Read our books, obey our diets,
wear our fashions, and watch our movies. And start talking, acting, and thinking like us too.
We are a great big team: Team Reason. Team Reason is the political community - the
nation-state and international community, The Republic. Led by the reason of the philosophers,
through the miracle of Western liberal democracy, we will achieve Utopia, the Promised Land,
salvation. Just have faith in Team Reason. We are a collective, societal hive-mind, with the fat,
bloated queen being the academy, spitting out intellectual-drones.
The goal of Boghossians book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, is to create a
generation of street epistemologists to help people in overcoming their faith. According to
him, a street epistemologist is an articulate, clear, helpful voice with an unremitting desire to
help people overcome their faith and to create a better world a world that uses intelligence,
reason, rationality, thoughtfulness, ingenuity, sincerity, science, and kindness to build the
future. By getting people to let go of their faith, he believes a new movement of street
epistemologists will guide us into a new Enlightenment, the Age of Reason (Boghossian, 2013,
pp. 16-18). While I am a bit awe-struck by the number of pleasant words Boghossian can string
together, when describing how great it would be if everyone shared his narrow-minded
worldview, I am more dubious of his almost religious description of the street epistemology-
Utopia he seeks to usher in. This impression of a religious doctrine becomes stronger by his
reference to other leading intellectuals who promote atheism. He describes Richard Dawkins,
Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris as The Four Horsemen who are the
immediate forerunners of the street epistemologists, an obvious allusion to the angels of the
Apocalypse from the Bible, which is fitting since he seeks to bring about a new age.
The glowing reviews of Boghossians fellow militant-atheists are equally instructive.
Stefan Molyneux uses the same double-talk we saw earlier, saying the book is a wakeup call
that has the best chance of bringing your rational mind back to life, implying anyone with faith
is irrational. Darrel Ray, Doctor of Education and author of The God Virus says, This is a
manual that we can use in our everyday interaction with those infected with the faith virus,
implying that reason is the cure for faith. Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion
Foundation says, Since atheism is truly Good News, it should not be hidden under a bushel,
which is an allusion to the New Testament (Boghossian, 2013, p. inside cover). The word gospel
means good news and during the Sermon on the Mount, Christ tells His disciples they are the
light of the world, A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and
put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house
(Matthew). Former editor of Skeptic magazine Michael Shermer, says Boghossian is helping
to lead the fastest growing religious movement in America, those who have no religion, but
who have reason and science (Shermer, 2013).
Shermer makes me laugh. He actually wrote the forward for Boghossians book, like any
good zealot should do for his brother in the faith. There is not a single conspiracy theory or
creationist he is not ready to attack. I used to watch him on TV when he was with Popular
Mechanics, talking about how the September 11 attacks were obviously exactly as it says in the
official story and anyone who thinks otherwise is a crazy tinfoil-hat. The argument against
conspiracy theorists is similar to the one that is often used against the faithful, which is an
interesting correlation in more ways than one, but more on that later
The basic outline of Shermers argument is this: extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence, the credo of the modern skeptic (Shermer, 2013). What he really
means is that he will be a skeptic about your evidence, while his worldview is unquestionable
because he uses reason, unlike the unevolved, subhuman monkey-people who worship The
Christ. He asks and answers, Is there extraordinary evidence for the claim that accepting Jesus
of Nazareth bestows upon the believer eternity? No. While this is true, we might ask why there
needs to be extraordinary evidence in order for something to be true. There may be many
things which are true for which we have no evidence whatsoever. We also dont know that we
can trust our evidence. Philosopher Nick Bostrom has shown that we have no real way to prove
logically that we do not exist in a digital simulation created by a future race of highly evolved
super-humans (Bostrom, 2014). In ancient Greece, Parmenides showed that all sensory
information is suspect and possibly illusory (Russell, p. 36). What evidence does Shermer have
that can overcome that logic? This is what happens when you take skepticism and reason to their
ultimate logical conclusions. You end up swimming around in circles in your own mind, the
fishbowl. But thats how logic works. Youre supposed to take things to their logical conclusion,
thats what logic is for. So the problem lies not with logic, but with skepticism.
Shermer follows up, Is there even any ordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim?
No, but here I will have to differ. This is the bald claim we often hear from skeptics such as
Shermer, Dawkins, and Sam Harris. They are happy to accept the meagre evidence of
extraordinary claims like evolution, the Big Bang theory, etc, but will not accept anything as
evidence of Christ and the gospel. But Shermer is paid to be a skeptic, Richard Dawkins is paid
to be an evolutionary biologist, and Sam Harris is paid to be an atheism-shill. Of course they
will accept evidence that says their theories are correct, because that proves we should buy
their books, but their willingness to reject the evidence of Christ is a complete failure of logic.
The ordinary evidence of the good news about Christ is the Bible itself. The Bible is
the most well attested ancient document we have. When I wrote above about the histories of
Socrates, Plato, and the other ancient Greeks, I was writing about the historical speculations of
scholars about what people probably thought back then. A lot of those guys never wrote
anything down and for most of them, all we have are copies of copies or scraps of their actual
work. On the other hand we have tens of thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament from
ancient times and they line up almost perfectly with more direct ancient translations such as the
Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls so theres really no issue with authenticity. People will try
and say that we have no contemporary evidence of Christ from non-Christian sources, but thats
not true as we have Josephus, Tacitus, the Jewish Talmud mentions him, and numerous other
sources (Historicity of Jesus, 2014).
The New Testament is sometimes criticized on the ground that it is eye-witness
testimony, but it should be remembered that we routinely jail and execute people on much less
reliable testimony than we have of Christs miracles and resurrection. Look at how much
evidence it required for us to attack Iraq, or Afghanistan for that matter. People will usually
say things like, Oh I hate George Bush!, but our whole society is based on this reasoning.
Truth is whatever the power-elite says it is, and Shermer and Dawkins are just typical attack
dogs.
Of course, the idea that we do not believe things without evidence is utter nonsense, but
that doesnt stop the reason brigade. Sure they believe that life began from rocks and primordial
goo based on no evidence, but if they dont have evidence, theyll make evidence! Dawkins is
an evolutionary biologist, which is a made-up, pseudoscientific discipline that has no basis in
logic. His job is to look for evidence of the theory of evolution and then argue for it like a
rabid dog, while simultaneously denigrating anyone who disagrees with the theory that pays his
bills as irrational. Dawkins describes a religious education for children as child abuse, which
is one thing I can agree with him on, but what he fails to realize is that his theory is also a
religion the religion of reason. And all education is child abuse.
Something tells me these people would not appreciate my etymological treatment of their
favourite buzzwords. If it is not clear by now that atheism is a religion, perhaps a bit more
etymology will make it so. Theism comes from the Greek theos meaning god, gods, or God
and the ist suffix is from the Latin ista meaning doctrine, so theism is the doctrine of god,
gods, or God. This indicates a theist may believe in polytheism or monotheism, but his
worldview definitely involves a supreme deity or deities. The a- prefix may be from the Greek
apo meaning away from, or from the prefix a-, also in Greek, meaning not. So atheism is
either away from the doctrine of god, gods, or God or not the doctrine of god, gods, or God.
If you want to get away from the god, gods, or God, then you believe in one or all of them, but
you reject them. If you believe in a doctrine of not god, gods, or God then you believe these
beings do not exist. Either way, its a positive claim about reality, based on no real proof, which
is how most of us define religion and faith.
Theres no evidence that God does not exist, nor ever could there be, so what exactly are
these guys talking about? Boghossian gives two definitions for faith, 1) belief without evidence,
and 2) pretending to know things you do not know. Although Biblical literalism commits neither
of these fallacies, Boghossian does. He believes in atheism without evidence, therefore he is
making a knowledge claim (his redundant terminology, not mine; describing something as
knowledge is a claim) about reality, without sufficient logical basis. His real mistake is when
he describes the religious person as, pretending to know (Boghossian, pp. 23-4). Religious
people have faith, but they do not know their religion is true anymore than fake intellectuals
like Dawkins and Boghossian do. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope:
for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we
with patience wait for it (Paul). The difference is, the religious person knows that he knows
nothing, like Socrates. It is the members of the modern academy that claim to know everything
and have the answers to all lifes mysteries. Just buy their books and you too can pretend to
know everything based on your own reason and the collective hive-brain of the scholars.
So atheism is a religion. It has faith in 1) reason (to rule), 2) logic (word, speech,
thought, or myth), and 3) skepticism (doubt); the holy trinity of secular humanism. Agnosticism
is the exact same thing, except they admit they dont know if theres a God, because they dont
make the mistake of denying logic while they worship it. The form of prayer of this religion of
reason is logical skepticism, the doctrine of doubting words, thought, speech, and myth, which
means you doubt the existence of God, so you simply pray to your own reason for whatever
answers you need. You worship your own mind.
Through the knowledge (i.e. acknowledgement of a superiour, honour, worship) you
acquire by going to school, you become qualified to occupy a job. The more qualified you are,
the higher job prospects you have, the higher up the pyramid you climb, so you can be honoured
and worshipped too, guys! Just keep studying those books! The ultimate is to become one of the
great geniuses of history like Einstein or Nietzsche because then everyone will study your
book in school and you will have your own cult and live forever in human memory!
The reason I wanted to expound on this is that this notion of knowledge and
understanding is what guides secular humanism. Radical atheists like Boghossian and Dawkins,
the government, and the legions of experts and other authourities on every subject which the
ruling class employs against us, all operate according to this worldview. The whole university
system and our whole political-economic framework is based on the teachings of Plato, Aristotle,
and the ancient Greeks, but in 2300 years of thinking about stuff and writing books, philosophers
are still asking What is truth? and people like Dawkins are still trying to deny God based on
nothing but their own reason. What is the difference between Boghossian poo-pooing faith, and
Aristotle denigrating Homer and Hesiod? Boghossian will say that it is science, but we know
science means knowledge, and knowledge means to worship. If you believe in knowledge
then you worship science, so you worship the people who control science, which is the academy:
the high priests of secular humanism.
Skepticism is a way of thinking that is popularly associated with logic and this
combination is commonly understood as emerging from ancient Greece and giving birth to the
rise of civilization and progress. The elevator-version of logical skepticism is that we suspend
belief in any given proposition, then use our logic and reason to evaluate the evidence for that
proposition. According to the old wives tale, recounted as The Apology by both Plato and
Xenophon, Socrates was engaged in a death trial for corrupting the youth of Athens and leading
them to worship strange gods (apologia is Greek for defense as in a legal dispute). Socrates
says that a prophecy from the famous oracle at Delphi changed his life, by claiming that he was
the wisest of all men. Recognizing that he was an ignorant man, he reasoned that he must be
wiser than everyone else because he knows that he knows nothing. He considers it his duty to
question the wisdom of the powerful and expose their ignorance, famously comparing himself to
a gadfly. Socrates is given the choice between exile and death by poisonous hemlock; he
chooses death (Sparknotes). While common sense indicates that if you know nothing, you
cannot be very wise, this statement has rang down through history and has launched Socrates
legacy as the epitome of philosophy, the sacrificed god of reason. If he was so wise, he would
have just taken the exile deal and made a go of it. If he doesnt know anything, how did he know
he ought to die? Why did he die? For Athens? For reason? For his principles?
The Apology is continued in The Republic, wherein Plato fully develops the relationship
between the philosopher and the political community, which he only managed to touch on in the
dialogue about the trial. From the point of view of Athens, the philosophic worldview
represented a threat, largely because they doubted the myths (i.e. logical skepticism) and
therefore seemed immoral. In The Apology, Plato mentions a dramatist Aristophanes, who had
ridiculed Socrates in his satire The Clouds, one of the principal factors leading to the trial.
Aristophanes says Socrates is a man who investigated all the things in the air and under the
earth and who makes the weaker argument stronger. This is usually interpreted to mean that he
looks for naturalistic rather than mythological explanations for phenomena, which leads us to
question the gods, thereby questioning morality, law, etc (Bloom, pp. 307-8). This presents the
conflict as similar to our current impasse between religion and science, but Aristophanes does
not really get into all of that. He just said that Socrates investigated all the things and he makes
the weaker arguments stronger. Aristophanes comedy portrays Socrates and his imaginary
school the Thoughtery as a bunch of useless nerds and layabouts who talk better than they
know how to do work (kind of like Boghossian, Shermer, and Dawkins). This is an opinion
shared by many about the modern academy, so no surprise there, but the charge that he makes
the weaker arguments stronger is an interesting one to bring against the supposed messiah of
reason, Socrates.
Before we discuss the origins of logical skepticism in the next section, we need a little
more understanding of Greek religion and the historical context. Greek religion originally
consisted of simple, shamanistic rituals performed for local deities, usually satyrs, muses, shades,
furies, etc. It later developed into worship of the Olympian gods, who were in charge of the
whole universe, and the various cults of heroes who had been exceptionally brave and strong
(Greenwood, pp. 20-1). This was all a very public affair, but many educated people and others
had a hard time swallowing the fantastical tales told in the mainstream, cult-of-the-state or in the
old fanciful poems (Ancient History Encyclopedia). But along with these more popular
conceptions of religion, there was another group of practices, known as the Mysteries.
The Mysteries were super-secret cults, connected to ancient shamanic practices, which
usually worshiped either a mother-goddess figure (e.g. Demeter, Cybele, Isis), or a
sacrifice/fertility rite (e.g. Mithras, Dionysus, Adonis ) that was often associated with the bull, a
horned beast, or horned god (Morford & Lenardon, p. 386) (Sharkey, p. 110). They were usually
concerned with fertility and featured ritual slaying and blood-letting, including human sacrifice
(Head & MacLea, p. 26), but because everyone was sworn to secrecy on pain of death, we know
little about their inner workings. There seems to have been rituals of purification and some of
the initiations involved arduous, even torturous trials (Morford & Lenardon, p. 386). These
ancient mysteries are of an uncertain origin, were not exclusive to Greece, and were practiced
from as far west as the Celts, to as far east as India, wherever we find the Indo-European
languages (Sharkey, p. 11) (Eckethorn, 1897) (Murray, 1988). The names and stories of the gods
themselves changed from place to place, but the essential character of the mysteries seems to
have been the same, teaching monotheism and metempsychosis (Morford & Lenardon, p. 387)
(Eckethorn, p. 57). Metempsychosis is the transmigration of the soul after death, as in
reincarnation (Wikipedia, 2014).
Greek religion can be understood as being divided into two separate but overlapping
spheres, the civic (or public) and the personal (hub pages, 2014 ). Most leading figures in
society had some role or another to play in the civic religion, such as augur or hierophant.
Regular people had to perform sacrifices and such, and there were various games and festivals,
some every year, some every few years, in which people participated for religious reasons as
well as fun and profit. Most of these practices were later carried on in Rome with some changes
related to local customs (Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2014) (Religion Facts, 2014). There
wasnt really a creed of any kind and your personal beliefs were your own, as long as you
obeyed the dictates of the public cults in the public sphere.
Now as much as people today might like to think that the ancient Greeks were
superstitious, stupid, or ignorant, and that we are intellectual because we have the interwebs and
our magic phones with movies on them, this is nonsense. Ancient Greek schoolboys were
actually much more knowledgeable in terms of grammar, logic, and rhetoric than the average
graduate from university in Canada (StatsCan, 2014). With that aside, we should never assume
that people are stupid or irrational. As I mentioned before, logic and rationality are essential
aspects of our brains function. Every thinking person uses reason and every action or statement
requires logic. Even inaction can be considered an action, since you chose not to act for a
reason, and this may have consequences (e.g. opportunity cost). Reason and human action are
practically synonymous (von Mises, 1945). The Greek people had always been taught these
stories as if they were true. They seemed to explain a lot of the natural phenomena and most of
their leaders and intellectuals at least acted as if they believed in them. It was hard just getting
through their difficult lives without wondering whether the stories about the sky gods were true.
But peoples beliefs are their own and as you might imagine, many began to question the
myths and legends and looked for something more meaningful, especially among the educated
classes. These are the people who challenged the conventional wisdom. Why would a god of the
sun need a bow and arrows? Or a chariot? They wondered why these sky gods would require so
many animals to be slain and burnt for them. What, every time we come to this crossroads we
have to sacrifice a puppy? Seriously? Why would the gods commit craven or cowardly acts, as
we learn in the stories? They wondered why gods who supposedly ruled the whole universe,
were coming down and trying to have sex with human women or even raping them. Why would
a god engage in pederasty?
So the Greeks had a choice between a bunch of sterile and repetitive rituals and customs
which had lost meaning for many of them, a bunch of stories about gods who were as immoral
and depraved as the most savage criminal, or atheism. But if they were invited, they could study
the ancient mysteries, frequented by many of the most educated and popular elites, whether
openly or in secret. The mysteries offered the initiate a chance at immortality and even divinity,
as long as they studied diligently and rose through the ranks to become an adept. They
introduced a system of morality to religion, which was not seen before. They also gave a sense of
belonging to an exclusive group and initiation involved a deeply moving, spiritual experience, a
sense of release and joy, with hope for a better future in this life and the life after death
(Morford & Lenardon, p. 386) (Murray, p. 64). Mystery religions told a more plausible narrative
too: monotheism.
Monotheism makes religion believable, especially if you have never been exposed to any
of the findings of modern science. Sky gods with magic thunder bolts are hard to believe, but
a universal God which created everything and has a plan for us is plausible, every bit as much as
present theories of science. It actually explains things a lot better than modern science if you
believe in the idea of good, evil, and universal truth (philosophers call this objective morality).
If you accept the notion of a universal god, then you can dispense with things like subjective
truth, subjective morality, cultural relativism, etc (Ill explain more about these terms later, but
suffice it to say that these are major planks of the Greek worldview which make no sense when
you think about them for a minute). Monotheism explains the beauty of nature. It explains love,
universal truth, and the miracles of life, creation, and consciousness. The fact that even
postmodern intellectuals like Fukuyama mention monotheism as one of the three pillars of
Western thought, along with rule of law, and deductive reasoning, shows how important this
religious sentiment is for our way of life. Monotheism makes sense because if there is an
ultimate plan to it all, with a chance at life after death, then life is worth living. And if theres an
ultimate plan, then there must be an ultimate planner.
The Orphic tradition is the mystery school that had the greatest influence on the
philosophers. Orpheus was another semi-mythical philosopher who was said to be a
oracle/prophet, a slain god, and a master of music. He was known for having shamanic powers
over animals and even the stones would roll towards him to hear him play his lyre and sing
(Murray, p. 234). He is sometimes described as a mortal son of a Thracian, perhaps the river-god
Oeagrus, or even the great god Apollo. His mother was the muse, Kalliope, meaning
instrument, the muse of epic poetry (Theoi, 2014)(Kirk, pp. 169-70), (Morford & Lenardon, p.
381). Orpheus was known as a follower of Apollo at any rate, and he played the lyre of the sun-
god. His religion was a blending of religious ideals, because he was also strongly associated
with Dionysus, who was sometimes called Bacchus, the god of wine. But where the revelers
who worshiped Dionysus would use alcohol and drugs to become intoxicated, the worshipers of
Orpheus were more erudite, like the legendary philosopher/sage, who only became associated
with music later as his mythos developed (Russell, p. 20). The legend of Dionysus claims he is a
Thracian (which lines up with some of the Orpheus myths), they are both late additions to Greek
mythology, and they shared the common theme of the slain god, torn to pieces by ravening
hordes (Kirk, 1974).
Orpheus love for his beautiful wife Eurydike leads him to journey to the underworld
when she is stung by an asp and killed. On his journey he serenades the terrible beasts and
spirits that guard that kingdom, then finally softens the hearts of the queen of the underworld
Persephone and her husband Hades. They grant him a boon: he may have his wife again, but on
his journey back to the surface he must not look back on her. In the end, whether through fear or
love, he turns and looks, and loses her forever. Orpheus is inconsolable and in his depression,
wanders by the women revelers who worship Dionysus - the Bacchanalians. Perhaps because he
refuses to join their Bacchic religious practices, because he refused their sexual advances, or
because he introduced the practice of homosexuality (Kirk, p. 170), they tear him to pieces while
still alive, as was their habit with animals and the occasional human (Morford & Lenardon, p.
313) (Russell, p. 20). Their other habit was to eat these whom they so captured, but it doesnt
seem that they consumed Orpheus, because several of his body parts were rumored to be buried
or entombed around the ancient world. Some of his parts were said to have been buried in
Thrace, others by Mt. Olympus, where the birds were said to sing more sweetly than anywhere
else in Greece (Murray, p. 234). Ovid explains that his head and lyre were chucked in the river
by the wild Bakkhantes, from which his mother retrieved it to take to Lesbos (home of the
legendary lyrical poet and homo-eroticist Sappho, wherefrom we derive the words lesbian and
sapphic). There they erected a temple to Dionysus, and his head would become a singing oracle,
until Apollo put an end to it (Morford & Lenardon, p. 385) (Theoi, 2014).
The important aspects of the Orphic tradition for our understanding of philosophy are
these: 1) the equality of women; 2) rituals of purification, especially abstention from certain
foods, like meat, and 3) monotheism and a new conception of the afterlife involving the
transmigration of souls, and eternal torment or bliss, depending on ones conduct in life. These
are the aspects which were found among the Pythagoreans and later in Plato (Russell, p. 20).
These features seem to come from different sources and represent a kind of melding or synthesis.
The equality of women and the belief in monotheism seem to be common to all the older Greek
mystery religions, to later ones such as the Dionysian, and to other foreign mystery cults which
were later found in Greece such as those of Adonis or Isis. But the idea of ritual purification and
catharsis seems to come from some other source, likely related to Apollo (Morford & Lenardon,
p. 385). The Dionysian and the Apollonian gives us the tragedy, according to Nietzsche, the
great genius. The tragedy of reason.


The Myth of Reason
When I was 12 or so my mother bought me a copy of Stephen Hawkings A Brief
History of Time, the famous scientists attempt to explain astrophysics to the layman. I was a
promising student, and she had done well with previous books about the solar system, dinosaurs,
and the so-called Book of Knowledge, so she thought it would be a hit. But this was a bit
different. This was a popular science book, but written for adults. I was really excited (and
intimidated) at first, but he makes an interesting admission early on that changed my perception
of science for good:
Anyphysicaltheoryisalwaysprovisional,inthesensethatitisonlyahypothesis:youcanneverproveit.No
matterhowmanytimestheresultsofexperimentsagreewithsometheory,youcanneverbesurethatthenext
timetheresultwillnotcontradictthetheory.Ontheotherhand,youcandisproveatheorybyfindingevena
singleobservationthatdisagreeswiththepredictionsofthetheory.(Hawking,p.8)

Wait.what? This floored me mentally. I mean I was processing this one statement for months,
even years (Im thinking about it right now), but it blew my mind on the spot. My understanding
of science until that point had been a world of incontrovertible facts. Planets, dinosaurs, black
holes, and astronauts were a part of my fantasy life and worldview, and Hawking was a hero of
mine. But the worlds most famous scientist had just said there is no such thing as scientific
facts, only theories.
Scientists make theories, then using experiments they try to disprove those theories. If
they fail to disprove the hypothesis, then their theory has acquired some more evidence. The
more experiments they run which fail to disprove the theory, the stronger that theory is
considered to be. But they can never really be sure about any of their theories, because someone
might come out with an experiment that disproves it next week. Science is a method, not a group
of people, and not a group of facts. The fact is, there is no such thing as a scientific fact. All
science is capable of doing is producing and disproving theories.
Hawking goes on to dump the cat out of the bag just a few lines later. After citing Karl
Popper (another pseudointellectual whom I will return to later) on falsifiability he says:
Eachtimenewexperimentsareobservedtoagreewiththepredictionsthetheorysurvives,andour
confidenceinitisincreased;butifeveranewobservationisfoundtodisagree,wehavetoabandonormodify
thetheory.
Atleastthatiswhatissupposedtohappen,butyoucanalwaysquestionthecompetenceoftheperson
whocarriedouttheobservation.
It is those last two lines that should draw your attention if you know anything about the
scientific method. Stephen Hawking obviously does not. I got halfway through Hawkings
stupid book and lost interest. I lost interest in science too. I thank my mom for giving me that
book and thinking enough of me to handle it, even though it had the opposite effect that she
supposed. But everything is in the hands of The Father.
The scientific method is actually an interesting subject when it has not been confined to a
laboratory or classroom. Did you know that the earliest description of an experiment following
this method appears in the Holy Bible? The Book of Daniel is a dramatic and tragic story of
persecution, faith, and salvation, but it begins with a fascinating tale about science.
The young Jewish nobleman Daniel had just been captured by the Babylonians, along
with some of his friends. They were given to the master of eunuchs, which is as bad as it
sounds. The king called for, Children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful
in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in
them to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the
Chaldeans. (Daniel). The king also commanded the master of eunuchs to give them a specific
diet.
Despite the extremely trying circumstances, Daniel keeps his faith and refuses to eat the
food because it goes against Gods decree. And God was with him and gave him favour with the
head eunuch. Daniel asks that he and his friends be given pulse for ten days, and afterward their
health should be compared with those who ate the kings meat. After the ten days Daniel and
company were clearly healthier. The results of the control group were compared to the sample,
and the null hypothesis was disproven. Daniel had shown scientifically that his diet regimen was
superior to the Babylonians.
But what does this mean, to show some proposition, scientifically? Did Daniel really
prove that his diet was better? No, as Hawking just pointed out, he did not. Daniels experiment
offers evidence in favour of the hypothesis that the Jewish diet was superior to the Babylonian,
but the next such experiment could disprove the theory. Maybe the master eunuch tries the diet
on the Babylonians, but finds they are getting an allergic reaction. Maybe the Jews were just
used to their prescribed diet of pulse, but the Babylonians werent used to the kings meat; or
maybe God had just favoured the Jews; or maybe it was just a bad few weeks in the world of
Babylonian eunuch-kids. We do not know and we cannot know.
But it is this repetition that separates scientists like the prophet Daniel from fake
intellectuals like Stephen Hawking. Hawking says we can always question the competence of
the person who carried out the observation, as if he does not understand that in any normal
scientific experiment we would simply repeat the experiment to confirm the results. Nobody
knows whether the Jew food is better than the Babylonian food, just because of that one time. I
mean, it might bolster the argument, but it proves nothing. The more we repeat an experiment
and get similar results, the stronger we consider that theory to be. Any experiment that disproves
the hypothesis means we reject the hypothesis, as long as that experiment can be verified by
repetition. Hawking made this comment because in pseudosciences like astrophysics,
astronomy, and evolutionary biology this is impossible.
Astrophysicists do not perform anything even remotely like the scientific method. They
take data from astronomers, then plug it into math equations, and propose theories (better
termed as models) about the entire universe. As long as all their math adds up then they go with
it. If something comes up that their magical super-math did not predict, then they simply adjust
their math or make up some new thing like black holes. Nobody can test a single proposition
they put forward empirically, from black holes to dark matter, to any of the rest of it.
We can check if the astronomers observations are correct, but we cant test their models
through experimentation, so it is merely interpreting data. There may be other explanations for
those phenomena and there is no way to test it one way or the other. The astrophysicists
theories are actually two steps away from any kind of empirical testing. They are theories based
on the assumption that the astronomers are correct about their assumptions, but which
assumptions cannot be tested. Even the astronomers claims about heliocentrism are debatable
(more on this later), let alone the wild imaginings of math nerds like Hawking. Astrophysics is
just a bunch of people spinning theories. Very few people who are not professional
mathematicians or astrophysicists even understand the math that goes into their theories, but we
are all supposed to just accept this worldview as scientific fact. Does this sound familiar? Think
back to Thales and Aristotle. You can assume naturalism and reason your way into all kinds of
theories, but there is no direct evidence whatsoever of the Big Bang, anymore than there is direct
evidence that all things are full of gods.
This is the conventional wisdom we discussed in the introduction. The body of ideas or
explanations generally accepted as true by the public or by experts in a field. Such ideas or
explanations, though widely held, are unexamined. Other intellectuals just stick to their
specialties and if the average person questions these theories, they are not taken seriously.
Whats that you say? The Big Bang theory, relativity, and black holes are illogical and stupid?
How would you know? Youre not a super-smart math genius with an advanced degree from
MIT. How many astrophysics papers have you published? Go work your menial job and pay
your taxes, slave.
The main problem here is one of perception. People fail to understand that science is a
method, not a group of people, and not a set of propositions agreed on by those people. It is
something you do, not something you know. If someone tells me theyre a scientist, thats nice,
but it doesnt say much. It tells me they were qualified in a school, and I might make some
inductive suppositions about what those credentials are worth, but that is all. It does not mean
they are right about any given thing that they are saying. The same goes for lawyers, doctors,
and economists. You have to evaluate each individual argument on its own merits. You cant
assume that something is the way somebody says it is, just because theyre supposedly experts.
Ive included a pretty extensive bibliography here, not because I think it looks cool, but because I
want you to check out my argument for yourself. Even a dictionary is only for reference at the
end of the day.
The tendency to accept peoples arguments because of their perceived expertise in a field
is known as appeal to authourity. It is a logical fallacy and any argument that is premised on
such a proposition is unsound. In case you havent noticed though, in modern society, most of
our daily activities are ruled by following expert opinions on one thing or another. We obey
experts in medicine, law, economics, psychology, politics, etc. Most people just kind of absorb
their opinions about these topics from talking heads, magazines, and newspapers, etc. These are
usually people who they basically agree with politically. The odd layperson may peruse the
peer-reviewed literature, but what of it? Do they challenge it? If they do, does anybody care?
The system is completely self-contained. You need to be qualified by the experts in order to
have anything to say about their opinions, otherwise youre simply locked out of the discourse.
But they are just opinions. The reason we think they are more than mere opinions is because the
guy saying them is at the front of the room, possibly behind a podium.
If you count the classroom, you can kind of look at the construction of our whole
worldview as being one long appeal to authourity fallacy, from kindergarten all the way up to
university. Whoever is standing at the front of the room, especially if theres a podium or stage,
is the high priest for the day and gets to explain reality. This effect is then magnified in the
media, political speeches, concerts, art exhibits and museums, etc, but rather than teach a class
topic, they tell you what you should know about infotainment, your best interests, and
subjective categories like art and music. People construct their opinions based on the reactions
of the people around them, especially their superiors at work, their peers, family, etc. Everyone
is clapping, they must have said something good. Look normal!! People then imitate what
they have seen generate positive reactions in art such as pop culture. The main engine of it all
is consumption.
At the university level they have institutionalized the appeal to authourity fallacy in the
hallowed peer-review. This is a system where academics who are all specialists in the same
field, and who are among the only people that are qualified or care to read their papers, basically
read each others stuff and rubber stamp it for publication. Any ideas which are a threat to the
status quo are simply not published (Frankowski, 2008) (Ioannidis, 2005). Wait, you think
maybe there might have been an intelligent designer? Say goodbye to your microbiology career,
religitard!
Everyone in their individual fields simply refers to the peer-reviewed literature of any
field they are not familiar with when constructing their opinions about that field. This means
they simply believe whatever they are told with regard to their whole worldview, outside of their
particular specialty. Everyone can pick whatever opinion suits their fancy because there is a
wide variety of opinions on everything, but none of it matters. What would you do anyway?
Nobody cares what you think. Youre a [fill in the blank], not a [fill in the blank], what would
you know about [fill in the blank]? This effect is magnified for people who are not part of the
academy, because they all have real jobs. Everyone is so busy in their own little worlds, that no
one really knows what is going on, except perhaps the people at the top of the pyramid: the
people who print the money.
This entire societal edifice, call it what you will, pretends to use reason, logic, and
science, but we now know what those words really mean. Knowledge comes from
acknowledgement of an authourity, honour, worship if you do these things to your
teacher/professor, you will rise in the world of education. This means you simply do what you
are expected to do as a student, dont ask too many questions, basically read whatever they put in
front of you and regurgitate it on exams. If you do not, you will not advance, and will be
labelled as a trouble-maker, disruptive, paranoid, etc. The same goes for the work world. This is
the post-modern religion: secular humanism. It works for any political-economic system, any
religion, any moral code you decide to pick for yourself, because all you have to do is shut up
and pay your taxes.
But Im getting ahead of myself. I was just about to tell you where we got logical
skepticism from. Logical skepticism is the basis of the whole academy. The story goes like this:
we do not believe anything without evidence. So if you have a theory, get ready, because the
skeptics are going to logic all over your evidence. What it really adds up to is, ideas which are
not accepted into the peer-review fishbowl, or which threaten the status quo, are ridiculed as
either irrational or politically incorrect. This means they simply never see the light of day.
But how do they get away with this stuff? I mean, its just one fallacy after another. Well, one
way they do it is to keep people from understanding things; confuse them and get them to doubt
themselves. Enter logical skepticism, the doctrine of doubting words, speech, thoughts, and
myths.
Socrates is not usually mentioned in histories of skepticism, partly because he is semi-
mythical and we do not have any writings of his, but mostly because he strikes many as more of
a moralist/ethicist than an epistemologist (Aristotle). But two things are key which tie Socrates
to the logical skeptic mystique: 1) his famous statement that he knows that he knows nothing,
and 2) the drama of The Apology and his execution remain one of the founding myths of our
societys technocracy. Socrates represents the selfless sacrifice for the god of reason. The
symbolism is powerful, but theres no real indication that philosophers are more in possession of
reason than anyone else. The Greeks had discussed skepticism before Socrates, but the most
famous Greek to talk about skepticism was a few generations later, another semi-mythic mystic:
Pyrrho of Ellis.
Theres some debate as to whether Pyrrho was more of a moralist concerned with virtue,
or a metaphysicist whose main problem was epistemology. There are always debates in the
history of ancient philosophy, because almost everything we have is scraps of these guys actual
writings, or sometimes just discussions of their views by other commentators. These are mostly
other philosophers, who were hopefully their contemporaries; or otherwise historians, but they
are often discussing almost mythical figures, the great sages of old. In the case of Pyrrho, we
have some much later Roman historical treatments, passages in Diogenes Laertius detailed
biography which discuss his asceticism, and Cicero invariably refers to him as a moralist rather
than a pure skeptic. On the other side we have Eusebius quoting Aristocles of Massene, who
ascribes certain philosophical views to Pyrrho that can be interpreted as more rationalist than
moralist (Machuca, 2011). But the story we actually have is Diogenes, as opposed to the
interpretation of other peoples interpretation we get from Eusebius. Most significantly, whether
people consider him a rationalist or a religious leader, no one disputes the basic details of
Diogenes historical account, that Pyrrho travelled widely and that these journeys significantly
affected his philosophy (Flintoff, 1980).
Pyrrho accompanied Alexander the Great on his conquests and adventures. He is said to
have encountered the Magi of Persia (ancient wisemen, the likely source for our word magic)
and the gymnosophists of India, the naked philosophers. These may have been Jainist, or
possibly Buddhist ascetics (Flintoff, 1980), but it seems more likely they were Hindu Naga
Sadhus because of their warlike character. These sects still exist today and are worshipers of
Siva who carry trishulas or tridents and serpentine horns called nagphani meaning cobra horn
(The South Asian, 2014). The warrior monks wore no clothes and sought to remove all pain and
pleasure from the soul through arduous and even torturous regimens and meditation. According
to Plutarch, Alexander arrested a number of the sages for staging an insurrection against him,
giving them a famous test of kings and philosophers: aporiai, which are basically questions with
difficult or ambiguous answers. Alexander declares that he will kill the first gymnosophist who
gives him a wrong answer, then the rest, in an order determined in like manner, commanding
the oldest to be the judge (Szalc, 2011). I will just let Plutarch tell the rest, but bear in mind that
this fascinating tale is much more instructive about modern political economics than you may
realize at this time.
Thefirstbeingaskedwhichhethoughtthemostnumerous,thedeadortheliving,answered,Theliving,
becausethosewhoaredeadarenotatall.Ofthesecond,hedesiredtoknowwhethertheearthorthesea
producedthelargerbeasts;whotoldhim,Theearth,fortheseaisbutapartofit.Hisquestiontothethird
was,Whichisthecunningestofbeasts?That,saidhe,whichmenhavenotyetfoundout.Hebadethe
fourthtellhimwhatargumentheusedtoSabbastopersuadehimtorevolt.Noother,saidhe,thanthathe
shouldeitherliveordienobly.Ofthefifthheasked,whichwastheeldest,nightorday.Thephilosopher
replied,Daywastheeldest,byonedayatleast.ButperceivingAlexandernotwellsatisfiedwiththat
account,headdedthatheoughtnottowonder,ifstrangequestionshadasstrangeanswersmadetothem.
Thenhewentonandinquiredofthenext,whatamanshoulddotobeexceedinglybeloved.Hemustbevery
powerful,saidhe,withoutmakinghimselftoomuchfeared.Theansweroftheseventhtohisquestion,how
amanmightbecomeagod,was,Bydoingthatwhichwasimpossibleformentodo.Theeighthtoldhim,
Lifeisstrongerthandeath,becauseitsupportssomanymiseries.Andthelastbeingaskedhowlonghe
thoughtitdecentforamantolive,said,Tilldeathappearedmoredesirablethanlife
ThenAlexanderturnedtohimwhomhehadmadejudge,andcommandedhimtogivesentence.All
thatIcandetermine,saidhe,is,thattheyhaveeveryoneansweredworsethananother.Nay,saidthe
king,thenyoushalldiefirst,forgivingsuchasentence.Notso,Oking,repliedthegymnosophist,unless
yousaidfalselythatheshoulddiefirstwhomadetheworstanswer.Inconclusionhegavethempresentsand
dismissedthem.(Plutarch,p.571)
Alexander was a student of philosophy himself, being a pupil of Aristotle in his youth, so he
may have taken a liking to the gymnosophists. He asked that some of them go along with him,
but all refused except one: Calanus. His story is very interesting and had a profound effect on
Pyrrho.
Calanus was teased by the other monks, for lacking self-control (Arian, p. 7.2), but this
man was about to show the Greeks what self-control was all about. As they travelled, Calanus
became ill with a stomach ailment, but rather than be an invalid, he decided to kill himself. The
Greeks were dismayed, but he would not be dissuaded, so they built him a funeral pyre, amid
great fanfare in the camp. He embraced and took leave of the Macedonians, then he ascended
the pyre and so sacrificed himself, as it was the ancient custom of philosophers in those
countries to do. The interesting thing was that Calanus did not move a muscle while burning.
He was completely unfazed by being burned alive, in complete peace as he met death,
imperturbable (Plutarch, 1952, p. 573). Imperturbable means unable to be upset or excited;
calm (according to another modern oracle: Google), an important virtue of most Eastern
philosophies such as Buddhism. The Greeks were obviously astonished at this display of self-
control (Arian, p. 7.3), but for Pyrrho, it was a major epiphany. Pyrrho was a philosopher/sage
himself, so he had an affinity with the gymnosophists. Watching Calanus burn with complete
imperturbability, he came to believe that through the use of his mind he could overcome any
suffering and pain. (Waligore, 2014).
The usual debate at this point is whether Pyrrho got skepticism or any of his ideas from
the Indians or from Eastern philosophy generally, but that is really not the important thing to be
looking at. Obviously the Greeks knew about skepticism already. Protagoras had already
pointed out that there were always two sides to any argument, and I noted Socrates role in the
rise of skepticism above. Skepticism is not some new way of thinking invented by particular
philosophers. Like reason and logic themselves, skepticism is a natural part of our way of
thinking that people use when dealing with a lot of different investigations and problems. The
same goes with imperturbability, which had its own reflections in the Epicureans and the Stoics.
Everybody knows that sometimes you just have to suck it up and tough out the hard times.
To me, the interesting thing is that this story was even included in the histories of
Plutarch and Arrian. Most historians of philosophy will simply agree that Pyrrho learned
skepticism from the gymnosophists or not based on either completely accepting or completely
rejecting these histories. If we reject these histories, then they are considered to be myths. It all
sounds pretty myth-like, although aspects of it do sound realistic. But isnt that what myths are?
They sound realistic at first, until you dig deeper. The ancient Greeks certainly had a lot of
affinity with myths, even if many did not really believe them. The mystery cults would always
incorporate local deities into their mythologies (Eckethorn, 1897) (Morford & Lenardon, 2007,
p. 385), which shows that although they believed in monotheism, they also had respect for
various belief systems. Modern urban legends are attractive because they sound plausible, not
because they are completely ridiculous.
We could assume these tales are all historical, or reject it all as meaningless mythology,
or try to synthesize these two poles in some way, like the historians of philosophy do. But thats
assuming an extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence, and then what kind of
skeptics would we be? What if theres more to mythology than meets the eye?
Eastern philosopher-monks immolating themselves is an ancient and iconic tradition.
Calanus has actually made it into many dictionaries as a Brahmin sage (Merriam-
Webster.com, 2014). Another Indian philosopher was said to have much later done a similar
ritual, after accompanying Caesar to Athens, and a shrine was built there in his honour, The
Indians Monument (Plutarch, p. 573). One of the most celebrated photographs of the 20th
century was of the illustrious, revered sage Thch Qung c torching himself in Viet Nam in
1963, also famous for his complete imperturbability as the horrific scene unfolded. Today
immolation has become quite the rage in Tibet, perhaps merely out of the people of Tibets
fervent desire for freedom from Chinese territorial occupation, but perhaps for some cause more
subtle.
We also see the ritual of the fire sacrifice in the mystery religions. Returning to the
example of the Orphic tradition we can see how the sacrifice tale is built into the other parts of
the religion. Although these narratives would diverge depending on locality and time period, the
basic doctrines of 1) immortality of the soul; 2) purity of the soul despite degradation of the
body; 3) original sin; 4) metempsychosis with a system of rewards and punishments; and finally,
5) apotheosis, or union with the divine spirit, were all built into the narrative. The universal
creation story (cosmogony) of Orphism begins with Chronus (Time), who was known as the
father of Zeus in earlier myths and in the Homeric and other poems, but who becomes more of a
principle in the Orphic theogony (creation of the gods). He was described as a horrific serpent,
with the heads of a bull and a lion, but a gods face in-between. Chronus companion was
Adrasteia (Necessity), but it is from him that sprang Aether, Chaos, and Erebus (darkness). In
Aether, Chronus fashions an egg, which splits and hatches Phanes, sometimes known as Eros,
the principle of creation. Phanes is the creator of everything, called by many names, and
described as bisexual, having various animal forms, with shining golden wings, and four eyes.
He and his daughter Night (Nyx) then produced the offspring that make up our known universe:
Gaea (Earth), Uranus (Heaven), and the Titans, such as the infamous Cyclops of the one-eye, and
Prometheus who was said to have brought fire to mankind, and the legendary Atlas who held the
earth on his shoulders (Morford & Lenardon, 2007, p. 384) (Murray, 1988). This era was known
as the Golden Age.
As in the older versions of the myths, Zeus is the son of Chronus and wrests control from
him. In the new version, he then swallows Phanes, meaning he swallowed all creation, including
the humans of the previous golden age. Zeus then creates everything again, but as the second
creator, he is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. He later fathers Zagreus,
another name for Dionysus, with his own daughter Persephone (known as Kore in the mysteries).
Zeuss wife Hera (his sister no less) becomes jealous and gets some of the Titans to attack the
child, who they tear to pieces and devour. But the pure heart of the young god is saved by
Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Zeus then eats the heart, and fathers Dionysus again with
Semele, an earlier earth-goddess who became Hellenized. Zeus is angered and destroys the
Titans with his thunderbolt, from whose ashes arise humankind.
By this narrative, human beings are given a dual nature: a vile body which sprung from
the Titans, but with a divine soul coming from the god whom the Titans had devoured. The
basic religious concepts which are common to all mystery religions are symbolized here, such as
sin, immortality, resurrection, life after death, and reward and punishment (Morford & Lenardon,
p. 313). The ultimate goal is union with the divine through ritual purification, after three good
lives on earth, an adept could expect to ascend into heaven. The fire sacrifice is seen in the
dismemberment and consumption of the god and in the story of Zeus thunderbolt incinerating
the Titans, which was ritually re-enacted.
Pyrrhos name comes from the same Greek word where we get fire, pyr (also the word
from which we get pyre, as in the fire sacrifice of Calanus). Pyrrhos philosophy is usually
considered to be a pure form of skepticism which suspends judgment, rather than ever presuming
to know some argument is right or wrong. If you believe something is wrong, then you are not
skeptical about the belief that it is wrong, so you are not a true skeptic. Skeptic means doubt, so
you doubt every assertion. You never believe anything. Any argument has the possibility to be
wrong, so the Pyrrhonist suspends belief. The argument that any argument has the possibility
of being wrong, also has the possibility to be wrong, so we can never really be sure of anything.
The oracle saith a Pyrrhonist tries to make the arguments of both sides as strong as possible.
Then he asks himself if there is any reason to prefer one side to the other. And if not, he suspends
belief in either side (Wikipedia, 2014). Think back to Aristophanes comment about Socrates,
that he makes the weaker argument stronger.


History as Myth
So to re-cap: philosophy means love of knowledge, science means knowledge, and
knowledge means acknowledgement of a superior, honour, worship. Epistemology, which is
the study of knowledge in English, has its true, etymological meaning as the study of knowing,
which can be literally interpreted as the study of standing on. But to comprehend something,
to grasp its meaning, to understand it, we must stand under it.
I hope that I have shown by now some of the ways that myths build into philosophy and
that science is just philosophy. I will look at the cult of science more closely later, but before we
move on, we need to dispense with philosophy. And before we do that, we must come to a
clearer understanding of myth. We need to go down to the root of myths, stand under them, to
grasp their true meaning.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the nature of myths is widely debated. If we return to
our etymological analysis, please recall that myth comes to us from the Greek mythos
(sometimes spelled muthos), which translates to speech, thought, story, myth, anything
delivered by word of mouth. Even the etymology of myth is a mystery, since the OED has no
answers as to the root of the Greek word. The oracle continues, quoting J. Simpson and S.
Round, from Oxfords Dictionary of English Foklore, Myths are "stories about divine beings,
generally arranged in a coherent system; they are revered as true and sacred; they are endorsed
by rulers and priests; and closely linked to religion. Once this link is broken, and the actors in the
story are not regarded as gods but as human heroes, giants or fairies, it is no longer a myth but a
folktale. Where the central actor is divine but the story is trivial ... the result is religious legend,
not myth.". The oracle closes by reminding us that the notion of a myth as an untrue story,
rumour only came into use around the middle of the 19
th
century. That is a lot to digest, but for
now we should focus on three phrases. Myths are: 1) revered as true and sacred, 2) endorsed by
rulers and priests, and 3) closely linked to religion.
What is a religion? According to the oracle of Google, a religion is the belief in and
worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. What is belief?
The oracle saith, an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. Religion is
belief, it is revered as sacred and true, and it is endorsed by rulers and priests. Religion is
myth and myths are the conventional wisdom.
Recall our etymology of religion (the boring one): to bind fast. To bind fast means to
tie something up so that it cannot move. If you bind something fast, it is not going anywhere. It
is your captive, and it is under your control. But religion is about belief, so what is getting tied
up and bound?
Mind control is a funny thing. I usually think about hypnosis and mesmerism when I
think about mind control; people being turned into mechanical automatons and walking around
like robots with blank gazes, maybe with their hands sticking out in front, perhaps repeating a
single phrase in a monotone. Modern psychology and psychiatry experiment with various kinds
of pharmaceutical mind control through antidepressants, stimulants, etc, and the results are often
not far from the cartoonish representation of mind control that first popped to my mind. The US
and Canadian governments have been implicated in the CIAs declassified MK-Ultra mind
control project, which kidnapped and experimented on American and Canadian citizens using
drugs, electro-shock therapy, and psychological and sexual manipulation. Many of the subjects
became emotionally dependent on their kidnappers, often referring to them as their own parents.
All of these are legitimate forms of mind control, and they seem like the most direct kind, but
they are actually merely fumbling attempts at the real mind control that we experience from
religion.
Real mind control is with regard to your beliefs, because what you believe is what you
act on. If you can control what someone believes, then you do not have to turn them into
zombies and control everything they do. You can let them go and do their own thing, because
their beliefs will cause them to act in a way that you want them to, out of their own sense of right
and wrong. Religion binds you fast mentally, by giving you a bunch of beliefs that constrain
you, by your own volition. You do things and avoid things because of your beliefs, which is
mind control.
If you believe, as the Pythagoreans did, that eating beans is somehow bad, then you will
not eat beans. If you believe that all things are full of gods, as Thales apparently did, then you
are a pantheist who calls himself a philosopher. At that point you simply make up your own
religion in your head, e.g. water is the first principle of everything. If other people follow you,
they become your disciples, whether they admit it like the Pythagoreans, or call themselves your
pupils like Thales Milesian school. If you believe, as Aristotle did, that your reason can
determine all reality, then you may come to believe that heavier objects fall faster than light
objects, without even checking it out. You might even make up a whole formula and that
formula might be considered to be realistic by scholars for almost a thousand years, because no
one ever checks, everyone just believes. If you believe as Plato did, that reason is the path to
justice, then you will do anything for the city of reason, The Republic. This is how mind control
works when you do it to yourself.
But if myths are religions and religions are mind control, who is pulling the strings? I
mean, mind control seems to imply a controller. If we want to understand who controls the
minds of the religious, we have to stand under religion, and take a look at its roots. But of
course, the root of religion brings us back to mythology, the study of words, thoughts, speech,
myths, anything delivered by word of mouth.
As we discussed, many of the ancients believed in what we now call their myths. They
had faith in them, as their religions. Faith is the basis of religion. Faith is from the Latin root
fides meaning "trust, faith, confidence, reliance, credence, belief," Belief replaces the Old
English geleafa, which comes down from the West Germanic *ga-laubon or to hold dear,
esteem, trust. If you have faith in your religion, you believe in it, and if you believe in it, you
hold it dear, esteem it, and trust it. But we just talked about how plenty of the Greeks did not
really believe in the myths, and many were atheist, and that many were initiated into mystery
cults which proposed monotheism and involved rigorous life-style restrictions. How do all of
these different views of religion co-exist in one society? Through the separation of church and
state! The unspoken pillar of the Western tradition: secular humanism. They make it sound like
it is something new, but it was actually invented by Plato.
Philosophy begins with the idea that we can explain things without resorting to the
notion of divine providence. The philosopher is looking for the ultimate answers to everything,
without consulting God, using his own reason. Religion is normally what we rely on to provide
the ultimate answers to everything, so philosophy is moving to replace religion with reason.
This can be seen in the greatest of Platos myths, The Apology.
The Apology is not normally considered to be one of Platos famous myths, the allegories
and metaphors he spreads throughout his work, such as the Myth of the Metals or the
Allegory of the Cave, which have rung down through history (Zalta, 2014). I call it a myth
because that is obviously what it is. The historicity of the trial of Socrates has always been
controversial. How much of the story is Socrates himself, and how much is Plato? Despite the
fact that there is no evidence to confirm the historicity of the speech as Plato relates it, and his
contemporary Xenophon relates a significantly different tale (Kato, 1991), nothing has stopped
people from debating the subject back and forth for 2500 years. This shows how important this
myth is to the Western tradition, a tradition founded on Greco-Roman culture (Bowman, 1946).
But the thing which most shows that Platos version of the apologia of Socrates is a myth, is the
dramatic element. The Apology is a Greek tragedy.
Before we get into the role of tragedy, we need to understand ancient Greek politics a bit
better. The Greeks had of course a wide a variety of differing political systems, depending on
which city we are talking about. The city was the polis, which may be better understood as
city-state, the main political entity that Greek citizens belonged too. Mostly these were urban
centres which governed a surrounding agricultural area, controlled by tyrants, oligarchies, or
democracy. They were politically and militarily independent and governed by force, sometimes
prospering through conquest and slavery like Athens, or trade and manufacture, like Corinth
(Russell, p. 18). Although each polis had its own identity and independence, they also espoused
a Pan-Hellenic loyalty expressed in language and culture, conflicts with non-Greek nations (e.g.
Persian wars), and in Pan-Hellenic games and festivals such as the Olympics. The idea of the
city-state was also to be found among other ancient cultures of the Mediterranean such as the
Babylonians, Etruscans, and the enigmatic Phoenicians, who are sometimes credited with
founding the idea (Cartwright, 2013). We will return to the mysterious Phoenicians, but note
that many other aspects of ancient and modern culture are also attributed to them, such as the
alphabet. We get our word phonetic from them, as well as the legend of the phoenix, the
flaming bird which is reborn from its own ashes, the ultimate symbol of fire-sacrifice.
Although Athens is famous as the birth-place of democracy, several other cities were
known to have similar systems such as Argos, Syracuse, and Rhodes. Democracy means rule
by the people, from the Greek dmos, referring to the entire body of the citizens (Cartwright,
2013). Rule by the entire populace is a drastic overstatement of the practical equalization of
power under the democratic polis. Whatever means of domination the rulers chose, whether by
tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy, the reality was that a small group of aristocratic families
controlled all the important positions on elite councils, magistracies, and in the military of any
given polis. Although the idea of equality was kept up in the discourse and in the political arena,
the opposite was in fact true. Over time the wealthy class was able to accumulate more and more
capital through this system, moving from mostly land ownership, to investments and loans,
especially after the introduction of coinage. The population of equal citizens was restricted to
male land-owners, which excluded up to 90% of the population, such as women, children, slaves,
freed slaves, labourers, and foreigners. A social identity of the polis was used to bring people
together. There was a space for free association and trade, known as the agora, there were
festivals and celebrations specific to the polis, and there were local deities and creation myths
about the citys divine founders (Cartwright, 2013). All of this was bought and paid for by the
elite, for the good of the people.
So what we have is a tiny, super-rich elite (we might even call them the 1%), that is
controlling a political class through the governing bureaucracy, which political class is nominally
in control of the population. The social cohesion of the population is maintained through a
concept of community and civic pride. The super-rich payed for wars, dramas like tragedies and
comedies, games, festivals, etc. through a tax on the wealthy. The super-rich and elite politicos
would also donate at temples, had major roles in the public religion, and also in the mystery
religions.
Now what should be understood is that Greek history, like all history, is itself a myth.
The idea is put forward that Greek society was something special, which represented some kind
of epitome of civilization in the ancient world. But as you just read, the city-state or polis had a
much older history, originating with the Phoenicians, along with the alphabet the Greeks would
later adopt. Many of the philosophers travelled widely and the ancient world was more
interconnected through trade and travel than most people realize. Thales became famous for
predicting an eclipse in 585 BC, but he probably learned this information from the connections
between his home Miletus and the Babylonians, who had already determined a great deal of
astronomical knowledge (Russell, p. 24). Thales is also known to have travelled to Egypt
(Flintoff, 1980), which is where he probably picked up his geometry awareness, although we are
told all the Egyptians could figure out were simple rules of thumb (Russell, p. 24), even though
they managed to build pyramids we cannot duplicate today. If you want to understand how our
history is a lie, your journey could begin in worse places than Egypt. The myth that the
pyramids were tombs is the easiest to debunk (Gadalla, 2000).
Pythagoras is also said to have travelled in Egypt and learned the language, as well as
journeying among the Chaldeans and Magi (Flintoff, 1980), but somehow people were still
trying to pretend that he came up with his eponymous theorem up until the mid-20
th
century.
The story was that the Egyptians, Indians, Mesopotamians, and Chinese knew that if they had a
right angle triangle with 3 on one side and 4 on another, that the third side would be 5, but they
never managed to put it all together and figure out the theorem itself (Russell, p. 29). It took the
legendary Pythagoras of the golden thigh to do this.
According to Diogenes, Solon travelled to Libya, Cyprus, Egypt, and Lydia before being
honoured as one of the Seven Sages of Athens. Cleobulus is said to have studied philosophy in
Egypt. Sotion says that Euxodus studied there as well, becoming Egyptianized and translating
several books. Demetrius and Antisthenes both report than Democritus travelled to Egypt,
Persia, and the Red Sea, perhaps even going as far as India and also encountering the
gymnosophists (Flintoff, 1980).
And then of course we have skepticism. As we discussed earlier, skepticism is not some
crazy philosophical coup that changed the way people think forever. It is just a way people think
sometimes in order to figure out stuff. Part of the goal of the philosopher is to convince you that
they are thinking in a new way and teaching you how to do this as well, but this is just more
mythology. Anybody in any profession or job is going to try and convince people that their
services are useful, they might even believe it themselves. Whether they believe it or not, they
are not going to get paid unless they can convince others of this notion. Cops talk about the
crime problem, lawyers tell you theyre protecting your rights, psychiatrists tell you theyre
getting into your inner psyche, and pharmaceutical companies never research natural or non-
patentable remedies. Philosophers mostly just think about stuff, so they have to get you to think
that their way of thinking about stuff is useful and important. So no matter how many times
some ancient philosopher brings up skepticism, there will be scholars to debate every finer detail
of that mans philosophy until its undeniable that Pyrrhonian skepticism is different than
Academic skepticism, which is different than what we see with the Stoics and Epicureans, which
is different than Michael Shermer. Every philosophy student has to study the basic history and
progression of all the philosophies and philosophers, the various reincarnations and evolutions of
skepticism, imperturbability, and the quest for truth. We have to study all the great
thinkers. And after 2500 years, all philosophy is a series of foot notes to Plato. The point is
that they are great thinkers, because they are civilized. They are so civilized they wrote books
that millions of people read in groups, memorize, and stand at podiums talking about. If you
read and memorize their books for ten years, then make up your own book about your own
solipsistic fantasy world created in your head, then maybe you too can have your own league of
cult followers. Now shut up and read, subhuman.
Philosophy is not a source of knowledge or reasoning or anything of the kind. Its a
source of rambling. The Apostle Paul warned against this in his epistle to the Colossians,
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men,
after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. Philosophy justifies and protects the state.
Its not a conspiracy, its Platos Republic. Everybody has a job to do, and thinking is not yours.
The religion of The Republic lets you stop thinking, so they can do the thinking. Dont think
about God! We already eliminated the possibility of God using REASON!!! Buy my book.
Boghossian, Dawkins, and Sam Harris are just reading from the same playbook as Aristotle and
Thales. They simply assume there is no supernatural element to reality, then proceed to
explain every phenomena through naturalism. If their explanation does not work, its because
they havent had the time to figure out the naturalistic explanation yet. They just need more
time. Its not because there is no naturalistic explanation and its definitely not because of God or
anything supernatural, stupid monkey. Shut up.
The debate over whether the Eastern philosophers came up with skepticism first or the
Westerners is a moot point. Skepticism is simply a way of looking at the world, like most
philosophical positions, and not something anybody came up with on their own. You dont need
to be a philosopher to use skepticism, and you dont need to go to university to use reason. But
what happens when we turn the skepticism around on the philosopher kings?
What is interesting is the mythology that has built up around these ideas. Why do both
Plutarch and Arrian cover the story about Calanus fire sacrifice (Waligore, 2014)? Why are
there seven different versions of the story of Alexander questioning the gymnosophists (Szalc,
2011)? Why do Eastern philosopher-monks who immolate themselves keep becoming iconic? I
mean, theres a big difference between: 1) a so-called myth that began as a rumour but the people
keep talking about, and which the state denies vehemently as an urban legend, like the JFK
human sacrifice, or the September 11 occult ritual; and 2) a myth that gets recorded by the
professional state historians of the Roman Empire or in the modern mainstream media.
Remember, myths are revered as sacred and true, endorsed by priests and politicians, and closely
tied to religion. Some might say to me that this is history not myth, but I beg to differ.
History is mostly made up of myths. It is a myth that America was founded as a
Christian nation, since most of the founders were confirmed deists. Its a myth that America was
aggressed against during World War 2. Roosevelt provoked the Japanese through economic
warfare (Higgs, 2012) and he had received prior warning about the Pearl Harbor attack but did
nothing (Goddard, 2011). It is also a myth that the Americans dropped the two atomic bombs on
Japan in order to save American lives that would have been lost in an invasion. The Japanese
Emperor had offered to surrender if he was promised certain allowances (Alperovitz, 1996), but
Truman would not accept anything short of unconditional surrender, because he wanted to drop
those bombs. He later bragged that he never lost any sleep over that decision. Its a myth that
a lone gunman killed JFK. Its a myth that OBL and 19 Saudi highjackers orchestrated the
September 11 attacks (Corbett, 2011). If it wasnt a myth (it was, but just saying), then the myth
was the multi-trillion dollar defense apparatus of America at that time, and the notion that this
illegal war was different, and that America had a right to launch a war against a group of
criminals (Vidal, 2002). The new myth-complex is the war on terror and homeland security, and
it has resulted in the complete evaporation of all constitutional rights of any worth. But of
course, constitutions are just pieces of paper, icons, myths.
Gore Vidals book Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace is interesting on this subject. He
was one of the more independent minded essayists/atheist-shills at the turn of the millennium,
one of those people who just write books and talk smart, like Hitchens, Dawkins, and
Boghossian. The thing is, these guys really are very smart. I mean they read and write very
well, which indicates a lot about their level of intelligence in certain areas of human life. The
reason they get so much wrong is that they start with incorrect assumptions. As I mentioned
before, the purpose of logic is to be taken to its conclusion; what is begun, must be finished. If
you dont follow logic to its conclusion, it doesnt work. If you start from the assumption that
we can learn everything we need to know from books, then you end up reading and listening to a
lot of bullshit, and you might even start talking it yourself.
Now Vidal, Hitchen, Chomsky, Foucault etc are all very intelligent people. Their ability
to conceptualize complex ideas and synthesize them is extremely useful, in certain areas of
human life. These abilities cant actually do anything that puts food on the table, but we can
learn things using these skills so they are somewhat important. Im sure those who are the best
at these types of activities do have a role to play in Gods plan, whether they are called
philosophers or brothers, but kingship is not it.
But seriously, some of these guys are incredibly smart and they do spit out a lot of good
ideas. The thing we have to remember is that being smart or qualified doesnt make anybody
right about any particular argument they are making (i.e. appeal to authourity). Every argument
has to be evaluated on its own merits. Vidal, Hitchens, Chomsky, plus name whatever rebel
you want from Che to Malcolm X, from Ghandi to Trotsky, are all stooges of the elite. They are
not intellectuals and they are definitely not geniuses as we would understand that term - they
are pampered dilettantes; and they are icons. But the thing about Vidals book was that he was
getting old and I think he might have been a little bit different than the Dawkins and Hitchens
of the world: he had a heart. So when he saw the whole September 11 thing, after his curiosity
had already been aroused by the Oklahoma City bombing, he started asking tougher questions,
while guys like Hitchens put the neoliberal bandwagon in maximum superdrive and became
George Bush zealots. Its the function of pseudointellectual, elite poseurs like Hitchens,
Chomsky, and Vidal to deflect our attention from serious issues, but Vidal seems to have been
human. Ill say a prayer for his lost soul and for us all: may the Spirit of All Truth guide us in
His wisdom.
I recommend the book, but keep your critical thinking cap on. One of the more
interesting aspects of the modern myth/propaganda complex he explores is the Enemy of the
Month Club. Using a list compiled by the Federation of American Scientists, Vidal explains
that America had a new enemy every month from the Berlin Airlift (48-49) to Kosovo (99)
(Vidal, pp. 22-41). Modern history, news, and opinions are created by elite intellectuals at the
behest of the state and the super-rich. The critics like Hitchens and Vidal are just the controlled
opposition, including the 9/11 truth movement and 99.9% of conspiracy theorists.
The histories of the Romans and Greeks were also written by elite historian intellectuals
like Plutarch and Arrian, at the behest of the state and the super-rich. The more things change,
the more they stay the same. History is propaganda, so we have to read between the lines a
little. We have to question the source.












The Evolution of Myth
Theres a myth supposedly native to Athens of a runner named Philippides who is said to
have run from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to tell of the victory and died on the spot. The
Roman poet Lucian tells us the brave runner breathed his last words, Joy, we win! then
collapsed (Lucian, p. 36). This is one of the founding myths of the modern marathon race, where
everybody raises money for cancer research and we recently experienced a terrorist attack,
which are new myths that attach themselves to these kind of myth-complexes. Like cancer
research and the Boston Marathon bombing, the tragic death of Philippides was a myth (Magill
& Moose, 2011). But of course, that has not stopped it from being retold again and again at
marathons, in poetry, on running shows, etc. Its just a great story and it gives you a warm fuzzy,
even if you know its not true. You just have to believe!!
The story we get from the Greek Herodotus is quite different, but he too was less a
historian than a consummate myth-maker (Morford & Lenardon, p. 149). He says the guys
name was Pheidippides, by profession and practice a trained runner and he was sent to Sparta
to request help when the Persians had landed at Marathon. The Spartans wanted to help but they
couldnt do it because of some obscure law they had about not marching on the ninth day of the
first decade so they had to wait for the full moon (Herodotus, p. 106). That may seem like a
lame excuse but there is actually some historical basis for this as the local deity of the Spartans
was Artemis, the moon goddess (EOS, 2014).
But the rest of the story that we dont hear anymore is actually much more interesting in
my opinion. According to Herodotus, Pheidippides runs into an unusual roadside passerby on
his way to Sparta: the goat-god Pan. Pan was well known to the people of the country-side
around Athens, as a god to look over pastures, herdsmen, and hunters. He was also known as the
god of sailors who sent favourable winds and protected from storms (Murray, p. 136). He was a
god of the people, and apparently he wanted to become the god of the polis of Athens, of the
demos. He called the young Athenian by name and asked him why the Athenians, neglected
him so entirely, when he was kindly disposed towards them, and had often helped them in times
past, and would do again in times to come? (Herodotus, p. 105). Legend has it Pan struck terror
into the ranks of the Persians (it is from his name that we get the word panic), driving them into
disarray (pandemonium), saving the day for the Athenians at Marathon (Theoi, 2014). In return
we are told the Athenians set up a temple to Pan under the Acropolis and performed yearly
sacrifices there and a torch-race (Herodotus, p. 105).
Pan was said to be the son of a wide-variety of gods, often Hermes or Zeus. His cult had
deep roots in poor, rustic areas where he was held to be responsible for flocks and herds. He was
another satyr-type creature, half human, with the feet, legs, beard, ears, and horns of a goat,
sometimes being depicted more goat-like, but as time passed he often appeared more human. He
used to prance around the hills and forests with a troop of nymphs, playing on his pan-pipes.
He had a habit of trying to rape the odd nymph, and apparently male goat herders such as
Daphnis, the son of Hermes. Like many other satyrs, he was often depicted with an erect penis,
chasing people he was trying to molest. Also like other satyrs, Pan was strongly associated with
the god of wine, Dionysus (Morford & Lenardon, pp. 318-20) (Murray, pp. 136-8) (Grant &
Hazel, 1993).
Hermes and Pan were worshiped especially in Arcadia, said to be Pans home, a rural
area which is usually thought of as some idyllic countryside but which was rife with fertility
cults and occasionally other barbarities such as human sacrifice and cannibalism. Arcadia was
said to be Pans home and most worshiped him at an altar which was a simple square pillar.
Goats were sacrificed, supposedly because the poor people could not afford bulls, but I will
return to this. When food was scarce the statue of Pan was beaten with sticks. It is usually
argued that Pan came to be associated with the other meaning of his name, All-god, after his
association with Athens (Russell, p. 19), but I believe this is also part of the myth.
Now the fertility cults are what eventually developed into the mystery religions, and Pan
was strongly linked with the Dionysians. The fertility cults were popular with the agricultural
societies that preceded city-states, usually associated with a bull-god or horned god. Dionysus
was not even an Olympian god originally, but was a later addition from nearby Thrace, a land
that the Greeks considered to be barbaric. There he was called Bacchus, and according to the
conventional wisdom, when they learned how to brew beer, the fertility god became a god of
beer as well. He later supposedly evolved into the god of wine when they learned the art of the
vine. His cult was strongly associated with spiritual release through drunkenness and revelry.
He either had the shape of a man or a bull and sacrifice was an integral part of his religious
services. The other weird aspect of his cult was tearing wild animals to pieces with their bare
hands and eating the flesh raw (omophagy) as a sacrifice. The weird part is that the followers
were mostly respectable women of Greece, whose husbands found the practice frustrating, but
couldnt say anything to religion. The whole thing was actually quite scandalous to many of the
conservative Greeks. The Baccae or maenads were grouped in thiassus, often with a male leader
who acted as the god (Morford & Lenardon, pp. 310-3) (Russell, p. 19).
There are many different theories about the link between the Dionysian cults and the
Greek tragedies. Tragedies and comedies were performed during Dionysiac festivals in Athens
and a connection is usually drawn between the emotional catharsis of the tragedy and that of the
orgy (Morford & Lenardon, p. 313). It was likely just because the temple of Dionysus was the
most convenient place on the Acropolis to have a stage show, so Dionysus became the patron of
the dramas in Athens and in cities that imitated Athens. The idea of dramas was certainly not
limited to the cult of Dionysus, and was really more closely linked to the idea of competition and
social cohesion in the polis that we see with all activities associated with festivals and games
(Scullion, 2002). Rather than try and force some explanation for the tragedies, Ill just point out
the common thread between the explanations we find. Whether people claim that the dramas
came from the cult of Bacchus, or some other development from ritual, they all basically argue
that tragedies evolved.
When people think of the theory of evolution, they usually think of Charles Darwin. He
supposedly came up with evolution, natural selection, or survival of the fittest, but this is just
another one of the modern myths. Darwin actually spends the first six pages of his book
discussing a wide array of thinkers that have discussed these ideas in the past, all the way back to
Aristotle (Darwin, p. 1). Darwins supposed addition to these centuries of great thinkers who
had already thought up evolution was natural selection.
Like the philosopher, Darwin is looking for a naturalistic explanation for phenomena, in
this case, the origin of species and life itself. Like Aristotle and Thales, he is just using his own
reasoning, with no means to test this explanation. But if we assume there is no God or that we
can find out His purpose using our own reason, independently of Him, then we can reason our
way into any story we want. Aristotle believed that heavy objects would fall faster than light
objects, because he applied the principle of weight we see in the difference between moving
heavy and light objects. Darwinists believe that all life evolved from few simple, single-celled
life-forms, by applying the principle of adaptation and change we see in terms of breeding dogs
or so-called racial groups.
When we tested Aristotles theory we gave it up, but Darwins theory is not testable,
similar to Stephen Hawkings. With Hawking, they are not testing their ideas about dark matter
or black holes, they are simply proposing ideas that explain the data they get from astronomers.
The astronomers cannot test whether their theories are true either, they just know that their model
explains the data they get from telescopes. With evolution, we have a historical hypothesis
which cannot be tested, that life evolves over millions of years. An evolutionary biologist like
Dawkins doesnt actually perform any kind of experiment that can test his ideas about the origin
of life or species. He simply looks at the data he has, such as archaeology, geology, genetics,
etc, and proposes an explanation. He cant observe a process that takes millions of years, and
they cant test the proposition that the earth is millions of years old. None of those disciplines
can test any aspect related to evolution, they simply test things happening in the here and now,
and then come up with an explanation that fits their preconceived evolutionary model.
Evolutionary biology is history, not science, and history is a myth.
Evolution is the immediate default theory as soon as you reject the idea of divine
providence. If God or the gods didnt make everything and us, then it must have happened
naturally. There are not any people who can make a person or a universe, and if we are
pretending we can deny God using our own super-power of reason, then it must have happened
naturally. We see a cycle of life, we see survival of the fittest, we see the hereditary
resemblances in animals and people, and it all just makes sense. Somehow we naturally got this
super-powered reason, that can naturally figure out how everything happened, because of nature,
even though nothing else in nature has the power of reason. Thanks mother-earth!
This applies to every scientific discipline, since as we now know science is not a
discipline, its a method. Scientists are actually just philosophers, which is why they have PhDs
(Doctor of Philosophy). Like all the disciplines they came into being out of a need for people
to carve out a space for themselves in the academy in order to increase their authourity and
economic opportunities. All knowledge produced by the academy can be divided into three
fields of philosophy: logic, physics, and ethics (Kant, p. 13). Logic includes math, grammar, and
rhetoric and refers to those branches of philosophy which are purely formal. These kinds of
philosophy occur entirely in the realm of thought, and do not involve the use of the senses to
produce knowledge. Ethics involves our social relations and covers modern liberal arts including
economics, the law, and psychology. Physics is the fundamental basis of all science as we know
it today; it is all just physics, no matter how much they tell you theyre different. I actually dont
think its bad system for acquiring some kinds of understanding about reality, but the over-
reliance on specialization and peer-review means no one else can get a word in edge-wise. And
of course, the abject denial of the metaphysical that we see is completely illogical. Meta means
beyond. There may very well be a realm beyond what physicists are able to apprehend, and no
math degrees from MIT will ever allow Stephen Hawking to disprove that basic truth about
reality (edit: some people have noted that Hawking was trained at CalTech or something. Yea I
kind of remembered that, but I really dont care if he was trained by the Wizard of Oz, which is
basically what he is).
The growth of sub-disciplines is completely unnecessary. All these disciplines simply
grow out of themselves through the organizational psychology of it all. Everybody has to
convince everyone else that their work is worthwhile, or they dont make a living. They might
believe it, they might have doubts, but unless they quit their job they are going with that
particular ideology. If you extend this logic to its ultimate conclusion, then it makes sense for
everyone to continually try and expand the power and influence of themselves and their field. So
ethics gets divided into history and economics, history gets subdivided into social sciences,
like sociology, political science, etc. But then sociology gets subdivided into criminology,
sociology of history, victimology, and blah-bah-blah. Political science becomes international
relations, international development, etc. Economics breeds 100 different schools of
macroeconomics, another pseudoscientific, made-up field. Books upon books and lecture after
lecture, blah blah blah. Its all ethics at the end of the day, just looked at with different lenses.
The same thing happens with physics, as it gets divided into sub-categories like biology, then
biology gets divided into pseudo-scientific clap trap like evolutionary biology and feminist
biology (Diep, 2014).
Nobody has a monopoly on any way of thinking, whether its philosophy or science or
any other academic discipline. We dont have reason and logic because of philosophers or
scientists, we dont have evolution theory because of Darwin, and we dont have skepticism
because of Pyrrho. We dont know things because of schools. These institutions and people
have simply become the symbols related to our current myths. They are the icons, the holy
images, the idols. These ideas have become myths because the academy is the new myth-maker,
the greatest oracle of all.
But what this oracle is telling us about evolution, is that it applies not only to nature, but
to ourselves. Our society, our way of thinking, and our very souls are evolving! We are
evolving from the animal to man, from the savage to the civilized. What could be next?
Godhood? Only time will tell. Arent you excited? As we study and gain more knowledge, we
evolve into a better society and we will eventually fly into space and throughout the universe like
on Star Trek! We will also develop technology that will make us into immortal, superhuman
cyborgs la Kurzweill (Waller, Hoo, & Kurzweill, 2010). Just pay your taxes and keep studying
those books! And shut up about it.
Now as I mentioned, the greatest oracle in ancient times was Delphi. People travelled
from throughout the ancient world to consult the oracle, from politicians and bureaucrats, to
foreign delegations, to the common people (ancientgreece.org, 2014). But it did not begin as an
oracle, it evolved into one! The site of a natural hot springs, Delphi was originally used as a
temple of the Chthonic earth-mother Ge-Themis, during the Minoan-Mycenaean era (Morford &
Lenardon, p. 243). The Minoan-Mycenaeans are famous for their sacrifices of bulls and their
acrobatic bullfights the cult of the Taurus, of the labrynth. As the Greeks brought the Indo-
European cult of the sky-god Zeus, the mother-goddess was merged with the new Pantheon as
Hera, the Lady, the sister and wife of Zeus (Cotterell, p. 133). At Delphi, the slaying of the she-
dragon (a traditional manifestation of the chthonic and of earth deities), by Apollo the god of
light and order, represented the rise of Hellenic civilization.
Most theories about the origins of myth make this kind of argument. Primitive man
sought explanations of and protection from a scary world, as well as help acquiring the things
needed to survive and thrive, so he made up stories, or they emerged spontaneously from his
psychology, social construction (another form of evolution), etiology, etc. Mythology is almost
a living thing or force which proceeds naturally from the evolution of civilization. These beliefs
form what we now call superstition, but which the ancient people thought of as practical magic
and communication with deity. Modern religion is seen as the remnant of these customs.
Anthropologists (who are just philosophers with a fancy name as we noted above) tell us that all
over the world society begins this development as tribal groups which practice shamanistic
magic. Like our modern religions, they used rituals and rites to communicate with the spirit
world, but rather than merely pray and plead, they sought to control those forces (Greenwood, p.
16). They sought to divine the future, cast curses, evoke and control spirits, etc.
The main concern of these rituals was fertility, whether for plant, animal, or human life,
and they all involved sacrifice. The consumption of human sacrifices is supposed to be one of
the earliest practices to be eliminated, then human sacrifice itself, and so on (Russell, p. 16).
According to proponents of the natural myth theories, myths are seen as intimately tied to ritual,
which was intimately tied to religion, so myths must have simply proceeded out of the historical
context (Kirk, pp. 39-68). When you are in a hunter/gatherer or an agricultural/pastoral
community, you have myths involving fertility cults; when you are a conquering civilization, you
have myths about Olympian gods who launch a rebellion, crush their enemies, and rule the
universe from a mountaintop. As the people become more civilized these irrational practices
are eliminated and they begin using reason! This story takes many forms, from the etiological, to
the allegorical, to the psychological explanations and beyond (Morford & Lenardon, pp. 5-9), but
the general sense given is that civilized man does not engage in myths. Myths are primitive
superstition that simply evolved.
Nietzsche, an older generation atheist-shill, used this model to explain the evolution of
the Greek tragedy. The Apollonian represents the law and order, moralistic, civilized Greek man
who establishes art and architecture. But the savage heart of the forest still beats beneath, which
is why the cult of Dionysus became popular, even though the Olympian religion had civilized
everything. The melding of these ideals leads to the tragedy, the dramatic element being the
Apollonian, while the musical element is the Dionysian, which allows us to experience spiritual
unity (Sparknotes, 2014). This is known as the dialectic, the melding of two opposites (thesis
and antithesis) into a new thing (synthesis).
The problem with this view of myths is that it implies that the uncivilized man uses logic
in some different way than the so-called civilized man. Like Boghossians street
epistemologist trying to save people from their faith, this view assumes that one group is in
possession of reason, while the other is irrational. Philosophers like Nietzsche have reason, but
primitive Greeks did not. But if ancient people who believed in myths were so irrational, why
are we still studying their philosophy? Why doesnt philosophy evolve?
If the savage man cannot use logic, but the civilized man can, then the people who are
more civilized obviously use logic the best. Who is the most civilized? The philosophers of
course! Just ask them. Also considered to be civilized, according to secular humanism, is
Western liberal democracy, academic achievement, high art, literature, haute couture fashion,
sexual attractiveness, good health, etc. In order to rise above the animalistic savage within us,
we must become civilized, like Nietzsche, Richard Dawkins, politicians, celebrities, and super-
rich people. We need to look, dress, talk, act, and think like them. As it stands, we are barely
above the apes ourselves and the only thing keeping us from sacrificing and eating each other
like tribal cannibals is all the civilization we have nowadays (i.e. police and military, statutory
laws, secret services, propaganda, etc). You see evil is part of human nature and the only thing
standing between us and evil is civilization. The ends justify the means, guys. Shut up.
Evolution as a concept is a key aspect of Hinduism and is found in their ancient
philosophical text, the Upanishads. Creation did not happen, it is happening; as the universe
evolves it is being created (Nevatia, 2014). Like many Eastern religions, Hinduism is both a
religion and a philosophy. The Upanishads teaches a pantheistic worldview, where God is the
universe. If the universe is God, then nature is God, so they worship nature. So the Hindu
philosopher worships nature and explains reality by evolution. And the Western philosopher
assumes naturalism and comes up with evolution too, from Aristotle to Dawkins. Darwin
helpfully notes in his autobiography, that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the
sacred books of the Hindoos (Darwin)
Now remember Calanus the fire-sacrifice gymnosophist was known as a Brahmin sage,
which is a Hindu term. Brahminism is a religious doctrine that enforces a strict caste system
whereby everyone in society has a role to play based on the accident of their birth. Whatever
caste they are born into is a result of their good or evil works in their past life, but if they
maintain their karma they can rise through the evolution of lives to be a higher caste, and
eventually to union with the godhead. Brahminism was less focused on the individual deities
that you see in modern Hinduism, but was more focused on karma and Brahman, the universal
godhead (britannica, 2014).
Im not saying that Pyrrho learned skepticism and imperturbability from the Hindus, or
that Pythagoras was a secret Buddhist, or that Plato got the myth of the metals from Brahminism.
Im just saying that these parallels are extremely interesting. In Eastern religion, these
philosophies had managed to reify a rigid system of social stratification and division of labour
(nirmukta.com, 2014), similar to The Republic. Confucianism seems to support similar
sentiments in terms of the division of labour and social hierarchy, Good government consists in
the ruler being a ruler, the minister being a minister, the father being a father, and the son being a
son (Confucius, p. 12.11). Taoism preaches imperturbability, Do nothing, and nothing will be
left undone (Silent Dao, 2014), and also Pyrrhonian skepticism Those who know are still
(Campbell, p. 3).
In Buddhism we see comparable views, since they still immolate themselves to this day,
in iconic tribute. But to who? The Buddha? Hes dead, and if you meet him on the road youre
supposed to kill him, not yourself. Why do so many Tibetan people burn themselves alive to this
day? For the Dalai Lama? The mythical Buddha tells us this:
Donotbelieveinanythingsimplybecauseyouhaveheardit.Donotbelieveinanythingsimplybecauseitis
spokenandrumoredbymany.Donotbelieveinanythingsimplybecauseitisfoundwritteninyourreligious
books.Donotbelieveinanythingmerelyontheauthorityofyourteachersandelders.Donotbelieveintraditions
becausetheyhavebeenhandeddownformanygenerations.Butafterobservationandanalysis,whenyoufind
thatanythingagreeswithreasonandisconducivetothegoodandbenefitofoneandall,thenacceptitandliveup
toit.
.
What is the difference between this philosophy and secular humanism? There is
absolutely no difference between this worldview and secular humanism, or Pyrrhonian
skepticism, or street epistemology.
The Dalai Lama writes bad books, wears Rolexes, and poses in innumerable photo-ops
with celebrities, the rich and powerful. He is an icon and he poses with other icons. Photo-ops
are icons. One of the most famous photo-ops of all time was the Buddhist sage Thic Quang Duc
immolating himself . The Dalai Lamas people immolate themselves in the streets for Tibet, also
iconic fire sacrifices. Calanus immolated himself and there was the Indians monument in
Athens an icon. Now I ask you, if someone explodes a bomb on their chest for Islam, is that so
different than burning yourself alive for Tibet? Is burning yourself alive with perfect
imperturbability the act of a secular humanist? Of a rationalist? Or of a religious fanatic?
Nobody even tries to deny that Pythagoras and Pyrrho were very mystical and religious
with their philosophies. Aristotle and Thales have demonstrated that there is no difference
between their naturalistic philosophy and a mystical, religious explanation, except that they
assume that theres no such thing as the supernatural, then proceed to make up anything
supernatural in their head and claiming they use reason. Modern philosophic historians will
usually categorically deny the idea that Plato got his philosophies from the mysteries, or
grudgingly admit that he may have been a secret admirer. What they cannot deny is that he
obviously lifted at least some of his ideas from the Eleusinian school and the Pythagorean
brotherhood (Merkelbach, 2014).
Plato represents a kind of fusion of the two poles of philosophy, with the naturalistic
rationalists like Thales Milesian school and Aristotle on one side, and the mystical, moralist
types on the other, represented here by Pythagoras, Pyrrho, and Socrates. These are the
Apollonian and Dionysian principles of philosophy, to use Nietzsches terminology. And as the
synthesis of these elements in Greek society gave rise to the tragedy, in philosophy it gave birth
to secular humanism. As I mentioned above, Platos The Apology is a Greek tragedy, but it is
much more than that. As Nietzsches Birth of Tragedy offered the dialectical reasoning to
validate Nazism, The Apology represents the ultimate dialectical premise for secular humanism.
The dialectic is the foundational myth-complex of secular humanism. The thesis vs. the
antithesis, producing the synthesis, is an allusion to the sexual reproductive act. Although I
could literally run a small book store with just the various works of philosophy that use or heap
praise on dialectical reasoning, and there are additionally entire fields of study and disciplines
created spontaneously out of dialectical reasoning (e.g. feminist biology, evolutionary
psychology, etc), the dialectic has no basis in logic whatsoever. Aristotle knew this, and
explained that dialectics do not produce real knowledge more than 2300 years ago, but still it
lives and breathes in every aspect of the postmodern worldview. Postmodernism is itself
dialectical reasoning, the idea that giving something a new name changes what that very thing is.
Dialectical reasoning is when somebody is standing at the front of the room, maybe hes
famous, maybe hes got some degrees or something, whatever it takes, but everybody just kind
of goes along with whatever that guy said, because it sure sounded smart, and its easier than
actually thinking about it. If you went to university, you read some of this stuff. Think back to
Nietzsche or Marx. Think back to arguments that sound really good on paper, but somehow
dont add up in your mind or leave you more confused than edified. If you never went to
university, well done! But youre still surrounded by dialectical reasoning, perhaps without you
realizing it.
Aristotle explained how logic works. Its not because he was some genius, its because its
just not that complicated. Yes, he was probably extremely smart, but it does not mean that we
need to worship him and read his stupid lies about politics and everything else for 2300 years.
The first thing we have to understand about logic is that it is not proof of anything. Logic is part
of our mind and our way of thinking, not part of reality. The fact that you used logic to prove
something does not actually prove anything beyond your own ability to use logic. So when
Aristotle tells you that A = A, or true is the opposite of false, it makes sense not because its a
real thing, but because thats how our human mind works.
And this is an important thing to remember. Logic works the same for everyone, because
our minds all use logic and reason. Logic is objective, like math. 2 + 2 = 4 for everyone, no
matter where or when, but its not real and it cant be proven, because its not reality. Logic and
math are not real things in the world; they are formal processes of our brain. Now philosophers
will try to debate the basic things Aristotle outlined and yeah, he might have got a few things off,
but its not like these guys are figuring anything new out. Even Aristotle just pointed out certain
things that are naturally a part of the way our mind works and he schematized them nicely. After
that the field of logic is mostly nitpicking and fantasy weirdness like symbolic logic.
The basic argument that Aristotle called sullogismos (syllogism) is the same for normal
reasoning as for otiose babbling like the dialectic. You have a premise, then another premise,
and they show that the conclusion is true. So lets say that 1) X is true and 2) if X is true, then Y
is false. We may then conclude that Y is false. If the two premises are true, then the conclusion
is true. The difference between dialectic and regular logic is in the basis for truth that we have in
those premises. In regular logical reasoning, the two premises are considered true because we
have achieved some level of certainty about them, such as the notion that A=A. We cant
prove it outside of our own logical reasoning, but were pretty sure its true, so we are going with
it. With the dialectic, the two premises have no certainty whatsoever, but emerge spontaneously
from the conventional wisdom.
Aristotle uses the Greek word endoxa to refer to the accepted opinions. According to
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, this may be interpreted as the common beliefs or the
opinions of the reputable. It can also be seen as referring to the kind of question and answer
back-and-forth we see in the Socratic dialogues: the interlocutor asks questions and takes the
answers as givens through a process of discussion (Smith, p. Sec. 8). Through the magic of the
Socratic method, two people talking about stuff can find truth using their reason! My 2001 copy
of Strongs Strongest Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (I picked this up a few months ago
when I converted and I highly recommend it to anyone who is serious about reading the Bible,
but keep that critical thinking cap on) gives this definition of endoxos: honoured, having high
status so thought to be wonderful. Now please think back to our original etymology of
knowledge: acknowledgement of a superior, honour, worship. When someone is honoured, or
has high status, or is thought to be wonderful, then they can get away with dialectic reasoning.
Nobody wants to question the high, honoured types. They have more knowledge so they must be
right about whatever they are saying, even though it makes no sense and has no proof.
These arguments are then applied to every area of human life, so as to justify the fact that
everything we do is controlled by the conventional wisdom. In politics : left vs. right = debate,
checks and balances vs. power = accountability , politicians vs. electorate = representative
democracy, etc. What do you mean you dont agree with either the left or the right position?
Why dont you run for office then, silly commoner-savage? In the law it takes this shape:
prosecution vs. defense = justice, police vs. criminals = public safety, and constitutions vs.
legislatures vs. courts = good governance. See how they got a third one in there on the good
governance myth? You can throw in all kinds of stuff if youre slick, because in dialectical
reasoning, youre the boss. What you dont think the laws are very representative? Why dont
you just write your MP, stupid monkey? Do a petition or something or just shut up about it.
An example of how this works in the academy is Dawkins argument about an infinite
regression of designers. We talked about infinite regression earlier, which is another thing we
have known about since Aristotle (Smith, 2014), but which Dawkins cant seem to wrap his
Oxford-trained mind around. Scientists are looking for the causes of things, the whys and hows
of the world. So the evolutionary biologist is asking, How did life evolve?, and Why did life
evolve? I mean they ask questions like What is life? and What is a species? too, but these
are definitional questions which take place within their own discussions on the main questions of
how and why. Normal people know roughly what a living thing is and that dogs are not the same
kind of animal as cats. The biologist needs to ask these questions again, to give a definition of
these things, in order to form arguments about them using Aristotelian logic, but these terms do
not really apply to daily life. I am not a species, I am a person.
In the mind of Dawkins, human beings are primates because he and his evolutionary
zealots have defined us as primates. Humans are just smart apes and he read his buddy Stephen
Hawkings book, another employee of Oxford, so he has all the conventional wisdom he needs to
eliminate the possibility of God and relegate all Christians to the realm of subhuman savagery.
Hes a big-time Oxford dude and hes standing behind a podium, so when he says that all the
complexity and wonder of creation emerged from a tiny point of infinite density some 13.7
billion years ago that exploded and evolved into everything, he must know what hes talking
about. If we assume that to be true because its the conventional wisdom (endoxos), then we can
construct an argument based on that premise.
Premise1)Alllifeandtheuniverseevolvedrandomly.
Premise2)Ifweassumethatsomethingsocomplexastheuniversemusthaveadesigner,thenbythe
principleofinfiniteregression,weknowthatsomethingmusthavebeencomplexenoughtodesignthe
designer.
Conclusion:Goddoesnotexist.
If that feels like it went too fast to make any sense, thats how dialectical reasoning
works. Theres hundreds of logical problems with this argument, but nobody has a chance to tell
him how stupid it is because hes making the whole speech. Questions are all posed within the
frame that has been set up, namely that scientists have already explained all creation and the
miracle of life, stupid monkeys.
We might ask, why does it matter whether something designed God? Or we might point
out that Occams razor does not really prove anything. Or there are the obvious problems with
evolution theory that are constantly ignored by Team Atheism. This argument is just stupid
really and the fact that this man is an Oxford scientist and sells books is proof of what a cult
the academy is. This mans job is to insult your intelligence (Youtube, 2014). If youre reading
some Bible, youre just a stupid savage. You should read, The God Delusion, stupid monkey-
person, published by Oxford University Press.
So dialectical reasoning is a way of making myths, but whats good about it is, that the
myths then continue to evolve by themselves. Assert something based on conventional
wisdom, provide a few premises and a conclusion based on no evidence, then wait for all the
believers to interpret everything using the new paradigm. Assert that there is no such thing as
the supernatural, then wait for all the people who grew up on public education about evolution,
astronauts, and dinosaurs to fill in the blanks of your naturalistic explanation. Assert that
everything produced by capitalism is bourgeois, or racist, or patriarchal, or whatever, then wait
for everyone who feels like society screwed them over to think up ways the man is getting them
down and protest for rights. Assert that there is a subconscious, then assume that evil emerges
from human psychology, and wait for the psychiatrists (i.e. mental voyeurs) to simply analyze
everyone problematic into a straight-jacket at $50/hr.
Assert that we have the ability to discern everything in creation using our own reason,
then wait for people to privately assume that they are basically God. Then they invent or
subscribe to whatever ideology they feel justifies themselves.















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