On the Harm and Benefit of the Gods | Society of Friends of Epicurus

The subject of the harm and benefit of the gods is covered in the (incomplete) Philodeman Scroll Peri Eusebeias (On Piety). The scroll discusses the physical and mental benefits of piety, which are documented to some extent in modern research on meditation and chanting. The study of the benefits of religious techniques from a purely naturalist perspective will continue to enlighten us in our investigation of this subject, but here I’m interested in going to the Epicurean sources where the discussion of the harms and benefits of the gods begins. The Letter to Menoeceus contains an interesting declaration:

For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in people like to themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.

These are strange statements, considering that we know that the first Epicureans did not believe that the gods intervened in human affairs. Here, it seems that the gods are being studied as a cultural phenomenon, based on the signs or effects that they have as cultural creations. The Monadnock translation says it differently:

The things that most people say about the gods are based on false assumptions, not a firm grasp of the facts, because they say that the greatest goods and the greatest harms come from the gods. For since they are at home with what is best about themselves, they accept that which is similar and consider alien that which is different.

… which seems to indicate an art of attuning to the gods according to our own qualities (a subject which Sri Krishna, curiously, also discusses in the Bhagavad Gita, saying that everyone worships according to their own tendencies). Peter St Andre adds notes / commentaries that clarify that here, Epicurus is referring to the “prolepsis” (or preconception) of the gods, and another note that says:

This is a puzzling sentence. Some translators understand it as applying to “the gods” from the previous sentence, with the sense that the gods would not interfere in human affairs because they don’t care about (“consider as alien”) mortal creatures who are so different from themselves. Other translators understand it as applying to “most people” from the previous sentence, with the sense that most people assume that immortal beings so different from themselves must want to interfere in human affairs.

The essay Epicure, dieu et image de dieu: une autarcie extatique presents some interesting points (it was shared with me by my friend Marcus, who compares the author with Norman DeWitt and laments that she has not been translated into English). It compares participation in the studies of Epicurean philosophy with the ancient mysteries (because only initiates had insight into the knowledge being taught in the Garden and were able to participate in the blissful practices).

In the past I’ve used the word “osmosis” (the process of gradual or unconscious assimilation of ideas, knowledge, etc.) to refer to the religious techniques that were used in the Garden to help students imitate the Kathegemones (Epicurean Guides)–and especially Epicurus and Metrodorus–in order to experience the pleasures they enjoyed. In “Dieu et image de Dieu“, the author uses the word scissiparité, which translates into the English word “fission” (the action of dividing or splitting something into two or more parts). It’s the process by which one cell divides into two clone cells.

This metaphor drawn from biology is used to describe how, by contemplating on the sages and gods, on their ataraxia and bliss, we may become like them. In the case of osmosis, it would be through a slow assimilation of our psyche into the larger, blissful psyche of the deity or the sage; in the case of “scissiparité” it seems like we would merge into a union with divinity through some religious technique (like “chanting the names”, a popular practice in Bhakti-yoga) and then separation, where we would take with us the bliss and pleasant impressions acquired via the divine union. It’s interesting that in both English and French we are today using verbiage and metaphors from science, from nature, from organisms–rather than supernatural language–to describe these religious techniques.

Lucretius has more to say on this. In Liber Sextvs, he says:

For even those men who have learned full well
That godheads lead a long life free of care,
If yet meanwhile they wonder by what plan
Things can go on (and chiefly yon high things
Observed o’erhead on the ethereal coasts),
Again are hurried back unto the fears
Of old religion and adopt again
Harsh masters, deemed almighty,- wretched men,
Unwitting what can be and what cannot,
And by what law to each its scope prescribed,
Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.

This passage reminds me of “the Almighty”, a false-god character from the film 10,000 BC who (in the movie) seems to have been a survivor of Atlantis. Whenever he appears, everyone in the city must bow and kiss the ground, and his attendants approach him covering their faces with their hands and long nails in fear. This type of primitive religious fear is one of the main “diseases of the soul” that Epicurean philosophy saves us from. Lucretius elsewhere continues:

Wherefore the more are they borne wandering on
By blindfold reason. And, Memmius, unless
From out thy mind thou spuest all of this
And casteth far from thee all thoughts which be
Unworthy of gods and alien to their peace,
Then often will the holy majesties
Of the high gods be harmful unto thee,
As by thy thought degraded,- not, indeed,
That essence supreme of gods could be by this
So outraged as in wrath to thirst to seek
Revenges keen; but even because thyself
Thou plaguest with the notion that the gods,
Even they, the Calm Ones in serene repose,
Do roll the mighty waves of wrath on wrath;
Nor wilt thou enter with a serene breast
Shrines of the gods; nor wilt thou able be
In tranquil peace of mind to take and know
Those images which from their holy bodies
Are carried into intellects of men,
As the announcers of their form divine.
What sort of life will follow after this
‘Tis thine to see.

Here, Lucretius is accentuating that the error of fear-based religion and superstition is not only degrading, but also keeps us from having the proper disposition to be able to derive benefit from religious techniques. He says that unless we purge these thoughts that are unworthy of the gods, they will be harmful to us “as if they had been degraded by our own thought”.

Our own thoughts cannot harm the natural gods (who, if they exist, would live in outer space): we can only hurt ourselves with our beliefs about the gods. Lucretius says that we “plague ourselves” with the belief that the gods are wrathful, and nor will we be able to enter their shrine in peace or to visualize them ecstatically (a practice that ancient Epicureans seem to have found both blissful and ethically useful) if we really hold evil beliefs about the gods.

Lucretius also warns that we will see what sort of life arises from our view of the gods, that this will be self-evident to us. Immediately, I think about the obscene orgies of violence and terrorism that we see today in Islam, and about the misery that is accepted blindly and passively as a yolk by the Christians who believe that God wants them to “bear their cross” and who believe that suffering is good, that it dignifies us and makes us good people. I also think of the Jehova’s Witnesses and others who reject blood transfusions for their own children and themselves even if this is the only life-saving method because of blind obedience to a Bronze-Age Biblical taboo against having contact with blood, etc. Fear of gods is just as harmful today as it was in antiquity.

These Lucretian verses are in line with the “cognitive purity code” that Epicurus established for the gods when he said we could believe anything about them so long as it didn’t contradict their incorruptibility and beatitude (ever-blissful nature) in his Epistle to Menoeceus–an epitome, or summary of his ethics. Epicurus must have looked at many case-studies and elaborated on this teaching in many ways with his disciples prior to summarizing it in this way. Lucretius continues, making an appeal to reason–which helps to save us from superstition and its dangers–and warning against the tendency to degrade ourselves with fear-based auguries or oracles:

But that afar from us
Veriest reason may drive such life away,
Much yet remains to be embellished yet
In polished verses, albeit hath issued forth
So much from me already; lo, there is
The law and aspect of the sky to be
By reason grasped; there are the tempest times
And the bright lightnings to be hymned now-
Even what they do and from what cause soe’er
They’re borne along- that thou mayst tremble not,
Marking off regions of prophetic skies
For auguries, O foolishly distraught
Even as to whence the flying flame hath come,
Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how
Through walled places it hath wound its way,
Or, after proving its dominion there,
How it hath speeded forth from thence amain-
Whereof nowise the causes do men know,
And think divinities are working there.

Here we see that 2,000 years ago, Lucretius warned against a still-popular mistake among the men of religion of our day: the “God of the gaps” argument, which tries to impose or project the image of God unto whatever field of knowledge has not yet been deciphered and pierced by science. As science has advanced, the “gap” that God needs to fill has narrowed and, today, there is very little that can be justified by an appeal to a creator, vindictive or intervening God. For instance, creationism is little more than a joke, and the theory of evolution by natural selection eloquently explains the nature of things.

It is unfair to speak of the harms that come from incorrect religiosity without also addressing the benefits of correct piety, according to Epicurean philosophy. If we claim that there is nothing whatsoever worthy of honor or praise, this would seem to endorse a cynical nihilism that can only awkwardly attach itself to a pleasant lifestyle and philosophy. Piety was an important area of interest for the ancient Epicurean Guides.

Honoring a sage is itself a great good to the one who honors. – Epicurean Saying 32

Epicurean Guides like Hermarchus and Philodemus seemed convinced that those who practice philosophy correctly feel as if they were protected by a lucky star or a guardian angel, but it’s not a spirit or supernatural force that is protecting us. They addressed philosophy in salvific terms, and Epicurus said that to be truly free we must be slaves to philosophy. It’s philosophy that liberates us and protects us, our heads, and our characters, if we honor her and practice correctly: the canon protects us from false views that are harmful for our happiness, the parrhesia (frank criticism) of our friends protects us from error and helps keep our character healthy, some of the healing Doctrines diagnose some disease of the soul and carry medicine for it, etc. If we engage the process of philosophy, it’s as if we have created guardian angels for ourselves. This reminds me of this ecstatic, poetic, and quasi-shamanic statement in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra:

I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins- it wanteth to laugh.

… which reminds me of religious techniques used in many cultures, which involve music, loud noises, and other playful behavior believed to shoo away bad spirits (sadness, depression, etc.) and attract good spirits (happy dispositions). The book De l’inhumanité de la religion discusses interesting aspects of the intersection between play-behavior and primitive (pre-agricultural) forms of shamanic religion. In nature, we see that play behavior has didactic utility: puppies and cubs learn social skills, hierarchical structure, hunting techniques, and other useful skills for survival and socializing. I believe the intersection between primitive religiosity and play behavior deserves more focused study from a specifically Epicurean perspective.

Form our meleta on the Philodeman Scroll On Piety, I get the sense that Epicurus was specifically interested in the bodily and mental repercussions of pious practices, and their effect on our bodies, minds, habits, and dispositions. If some form of pious practice is playful, blissful, ethically useful and correct as per our Doctrines, and treats fear-based beliefs and superstitions as taboo, it may qualify as a specifically-Epicurean experiment in piety, and might in the future furnish a useful case-study that would allow us to speak with more authority on the subject of the harms and benefits of the gods.