I wonder who Seneca thought was carefully arranging the universe so that everyone would had enough time if only they had used it properly. They didn't have monotheism back then, did they? Or maybe Seneca was just naturally the sort of person who rationalized things easily, and imagined a fairer universe without anyone in particular making it fair. Anyway, props to the people Seneca was disagreeing with, who managed t…
"They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?" AD 50?
On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)
41–46 of 46 posts
Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
"They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?" AD 50?
> "They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?" I presume he meant Rome, in which case, no, polytheism was the way and Jesus was worshipped alongside Mars, Jupiter, Julius Cesar, Augustus Cesar, etc. Even people who explicitly believed in only one god casually acknowledged the other gods, it wasn't a big deal to go to a local temple in another province to say a prayer, get a blessing, or make an offering. Modern…
So the Jews weren't monotheistic and the Torah never had "you will have no gods before me" in it? You might say, "that's not modern monotheism" but how can that be as Christians worship that same God.
Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?" I presume he meant Rome, in which case, no, polytheism was the way and Jesus was worshipped alongside Mars, Jupiter, Julius Cesar, Augustus Cesar, etc. Even people who explicitly believed in only one god casually acknowledged the other gods, it wasn't a big deal to go to a local temple in another province to say a prayer, get a blessing, or make an offering. Modern…
> Modern monotheism started around 325 So the Jews weren't monotheistic and the Torah never had "you will have no gods before me" in it? You might say, "that's not modern monotheism" but how can that be as Christians worship that same God.
That's henotheistic not monotheistic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism#Judaism
Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
- There is nothing evil in nature. The only evil is moral evil in humans. Realising this makes a person serene and free, the only thing that counts is the purity of your own conscience. What about natural disasters and diseases? I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil. They've killed more people than people have. If you want to play games with definition and only count things as evil if they intend to do harm, wel…
- "I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil." Ah, that you see is the challenge of Stoicism. A Stoic does not believe that there is anything evil in nature, impersonal perhaps, but not bad. There is nothing evil about death, earthquakes, viruses or asteroids. They just do their thing and sometimes happen to go against human interests. This does not make them evil. This is a difficult way to think at first, but it m…
Think about an ant in a busy railway station. If she gets trod on, does that make the commuter evil, or just indifferent to the ant's interests?
I'm going to say both, but that's a disagreement on definitions. To move this debate along, I'll use your definitions of evil and bad. OK, natural disasters aren't evil. Disease isn't evil. Aging isn't evil. They're all indifferent to us.
With that out of the way:
Would you prefer a world with more or fewer natural disasters? Would you prefer a world with more or less disease? Would you prefer a world where people lived shorter lives or longer lives?
I guess I'll end with a quote as well:
The Patrician took a sip of his beer. "I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to its day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."
-- Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant combined, earthquakes and smallpox have killed more than humans have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil Evil is defined as something that is immoral, causes pain or harm, is offensive, or threatening. The group of people I hang out with skew toward the definition I accept, but really it's just a definition. My real objection is that stoics (and many others) rationalize the current state of things as good. The…
"His new strains of crops saved about a billion lives" Yes, but with the extra 1 billion humans on earth, how many more animal species will be pushed into extinction each decade? How many more acres of rain forest will be destroyed every week? How many more barrels of oil will be pulled from the earth and burned into the air? I'm personally against mass-scale chopping, burning, and killing, which I know that more peo…
I agree that pollution is bad, but I care about human lives more than I care about the environment. Plants can't feel pain or suffer.
Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Modern monotheism started around 325 So the Jews weren't monotheistic and the Torah never had "you will have no gods before me" in it? You might say, "that's not modern monotheism" but how can that be as Christians worship that same God.
You will have no gods before me That's henotheistic not monotheistic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism#Judaism
Example, in Exodus 3:6 (NIV)
'Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.'
So Abraham, Jacob and Isaac were monotheists. Moses was a afraid to look at God, not to look at "a god". Monotheism.
The reference to the triune creator God as plural is not unsurprising.