Despite popular misconception, Epicurus wasn’t trying to claim that God wasn’t real or that he was some malicious or incompetent being, rather his actual argument was that God was a non-interventionist being (basically deism), this is the official “solution” to his paradox. Epicurus wasn’t even addressing the Abrahamic monotheistic conception of God to begin with since he lived in Ancient Greece and grew up in a society that worshipped gods like Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo. His famous paradox was addressing these gods, he still believed in their existence but argued that they were non-interventionist beings that did not demand worship.To summarize Epicurus’ actual views on the gods, he believed that the gods lived in the spaces between worlds (metakosmia), enjoying lives of perfect, undisturbed tranquility. To him, a god who cared about human affairs, listened to prayers, or felt any sort of anger would not be perfectly happy. His actual argument wasn't “therefore, the gods aren’t real,” but rather “therefore, the gods clearly don't care about us, so stop fearing them.” All of this is functionally deism, not atheism. Epicurus’ goal here was to minimize fear of the gods since most people were superstitious and believed the gods would annihilate them for the most mundane of offenses.
>>18450812Honestly most people have a shallow understanding of Epicureanism and their understanding of it doesn’t go beyond the strawman of “atheistic hedonism.” Epicurean thought is about minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure which isn’t actually hedonistic if you do any real research of what Epicurus believed. Epicurus literally argued against excessive gluttony because in his worldview, expensive luxuries create more anxiety (pain) than they are worth as they are difficult to maintain and cause distress when lost. His logic was simple: if you train your body to only be happy with caviar, you will be miserable 99% of the time and if you train yourself to be happy with bread, you will almost always be satisfied. This is closer to asceticism than it is to libertinism, especially since Epicurus believed that the greatest pleasures in life were food, water, friendship, and safety.As for why the misconception of the Epicureans being hedonists exists, well I blame the Stoics. Epicurus ran a private academy known as the Garden of Epicurus and here, marginalized groups like women, slaves, and poor people were apparently treated as equals. To your average Athenian, the idea that women should be treated like human beings was horrifying and as a result, they often tried to discredit Epicurus as being hedonistic and frame his private school as a den of immorality. Epicurus also taught his followers that they should stay out of politics because it causes stress and the Stoics, who valued civic duty, tried to frame this as lazy and unpatriotic.
>>18450812Deism usually means God created the world and hasn't interfered with it since, but that notion of God is still vulnerable to the problem of evil. And meanwhile Epicurus is supposed to have believed the world was eternal, atoms and void. I haven't come across anything indicating his gods creators, and being creators would seem to be contrary to "undisturbed tranquility," so I don't think his view can be accurately described as Deism. I'm not sure if there's a convenient name for his level of theistic minimalism.
>>18451003*anything indicating his gods were creators
>>18450812>>18450821He's a retard who doesn't understand a God is both eternal while operating within time as well, therefore there's no contradiction for a God to be overtaken by his passions and subject to less-than-wholesome states of mind.He's a crypto-atheist, get over it.
>>18450812Epicurus believed Gods and men alike were created spontaneously in an atomist world, so basically Platos Timaeus creation story without the demiurge/ an atomist creation. Aside, Epicurus believed the human body proved atomism. The kidneys as Asclepiades of Bithynis (an Epicurean disciple) claimed have no use (it was believed pee was a vapor in the body ad the kidneys were useless) and this proves that the Gods couldn't have created men because the gods would have made all of the human body parts with a necessary function. Galen's famous work the Natural Faculties is mostly tasked with disproving this idea.
>>18451003No, you are correct. He believed gods, men and everything were all formed together by a single instantaneous event ala the demiurge creation of Timaeus
>>18450812The Epicurean paradox doesn't even come from him. He had his name slapped on it after his death by christians who saw him as the most atheist Greek philosopher who they also didn't like because the stoics had spent centuries lying about and shitting on him.
>>18451165How do you know this?
>>18451165>because the stoics had spent centuries lying about and shitting on himCope.
>>18451003>but that notion of God is still vulnerable to the problem of evilsays who? I know atheists want to live a pain free existence, you're just trying to justify being a gross degenerate.
>>18450812Also I feel like the ideas of nature and of cause might be important, for epicurious nature is a mechanism for cause as much as cause could get claimed as a mechanism of nature or something like that
