Before I speak of Lucretius, I must accentuate that he was a disciple of Epicurean philosophy. The Hegemon (First Scholarch and founder) of Lucretius’ philosophical lineage was Epicurus of Samos, whose first teacher was the Platonist Pamphilus of Samos. One of the first scenes in Epicurus’ biography was his resistance against and confrontation of his grammar school teacher Pamphilus, when his instructor was challenged—and unable—to give a full empirical account of his doctrine of creation from chaos based on the evidence of nature.
It’s interesting that future generations register not only the argumentative challenge, but also the initial pang of indignation that this inspired in Epicurus, which was mentioned in DRN by Lucretius, Liber Primvs, as an “angry zest”.
It would be thought-provoking to imagine the conversations that the child Epicurus had with his father Neocles after the confrontation with Pamphilus, and to consider whether his father conspired with him to rebel against the Platonists, or whether Neocles may have been as shocked by Epicurus’ precociousness as others were. His mother was a faith healer, so she may not have been the one to encourage empirical thinking skills. His father, on the other hand, was a schoolteacher, traded in knowledge, must have had access to the atomist writings of Democritus, and probably raised questions about the nature of knowledge and evidence in his conversations with his son. The decision to send Epicurus to Taos to study under the atomists to continue his formation was probably a shared decision by both Epicurus and his father Neocles.
The Twentiers is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The story of Epicurus’ confrontation of his teacher was narrated for many generations to celebrate Epicurus as an ethical role model, as well to encourage critical and empirical thinking skills among the youth. It’s also used to contextualize and explain how Epicurus after this confrontation went on to spend the rest of his life developing a non-supernatural, fully naturalistic account of the nature of things, from the atom all the way to the doctrine of innumerable worlds, complete with a naturalist ethics.
I celebrate the anecdote of little Epicurus confronting his teacher who was propagating creationist ideology, and consider it a paradigm shift of near-mythical stature—in part because Epicurus’ Promethean struggle against obscurantism is an eternal one. We are today still living in a society where many churches and religious institutions are making great efforts to take over the education of youth in order to propagate their religious worldview through the public and private education systems, and the child Epicurus, as precocious as he was in developing empirical thinking skills, serves as a much-needed role model for kids still today.
Much of what Epicurus was reacting against originates in Platonism, which later evolved into Neo-Platonism, and later slowly transmuted into Christianity. This is, in part, why some of these arguments against creationism continue to be relevant.
In De rerum natura (first Century BCE), Lucretius argued that, although the Earth was our mother, it was not a sentient being and any personification of her was merely poetry. Throughout the work, Lucretius gives various additional arguments against divine creation and supernaturalism—most likely drawn from Epicurus’ 37 books On Nature, and from the writings of the other Kathegemones or Epicurean Guides. This essay is a short summary of some of these more-than-2,000 year-old arguments.
First Argument: Imperfections in Nature
Lucretius says that there are too many faults with nature to have been made by perfect beings, and later in the fifth book he gives numerous examples of the ways in which nature does not seem to have been made for us: things like bad weather, weeds, catastrophes, wild beasts, etc. Overall, the idea that ALL things must be made for and by someone intuitively sounds needlessly complicated.
When they feign that gods have stablished all things but for man, they seem in all ways mightily to lapse from reason’s truth … in no wise the nature of the world for us was built by a power divine—So great the faults it stands encumbered with.
In an attempt to make creationism sound less infantile—and reacting against pushback from the generations that benefited from the Enlightenment and Darwinism—many Christian apologists “evolved” their Biblical creation “hypothesis” into Neo-Aristotelian intelligent design arguments, according to which things were “made” for a purpose and, therefore, were evidence of a maker. These arguments were strongly influenced by Aristotle, and help us to understand why Aristotle was—together with Plato—highly favored by the Christian Church throughout the Middle Ages. Aristotle’s (wrong) view that nature makes things with a purpose was useful to theists. In addition to the issue of projecting causation where it’s unwarranted, there are other problems with Aristotelian teleology (the view that nature has a design or an intention):
it imposes a civilized logic on nature: humans will take clay and make bricks for construction, and take wood and make beams for their homes. Nature does not employ the strategic methods civilized humans use, instead, wood and rock are what they are for reason of their particles and bodily properties without the intervention of a race of craftsmen
this way of thinking projects intention from a human perspective, anthropocentrism, and a backwards-causation dynamic
if rocks have an intention in staying put or rain has an intention in falling (or even if a god or spirit moves them), this invites accusations of animism; instead, atomists argue that movement is an innate property of the particles of bodies, and there is no need to imagine the intentions of a sentient being or super-being
In the following passage, Lucretius appeals to common-sense when he argues that our eyes, ears, limbs, etc. “were created before they found their use”, since we can conceive of no seeing before eyes existed, etc.
All such interpretation is aft-for-fore with inverse reasoning, since naught is born in body so that we may use the same, but birth engenders use: no seeing ere the lights of eyes were born, no speaking ere the tongue created was; but origin of tongue came long before discourse of words, and ears created were much earlier than any sound was heard; and all the members, so meseems, were there before they got their use: and therefore, they could not be gendered for the sake of use.
But contrariwise, contending in the fight with hand to hand, and rending of the joints, and fouling of the limbs with gore, was there, o long before the gleaming spears ere flew; and nature prompted man to shun a wound, before the left arm by the aid of art opposed the shielding targe. And, verily, yielding the weary body to repose, far ancienter than cushions of soft beds, and quenching thirst is earlier than cups.
These objects, therefore, which for use and life have been devised, can be conceived as found for sake of using. But apart from such are all which first were born and afterwards Gave knowledge of their own utility—chief in which sort we note the senses, limbs: Wherefore, again, ’tis quite beyond thy power to hold that these could thus have been created for office of utility.
In Liber Qvintvs (Book V), Lucretius gives a primitive version of the hypothesis of natural selection: when nature produces oddities, those creatures which are unable to eat, struggle, and reproduce, are naturally removed from the gene pool–a process which naturally leads only the best adapted to be able to pass on their genes.
And other prodigies and monsters earth was then begetting of this sort—in vain, since Nature banned with horror their increase, and powerless were they to reach unto the coveted flower of fair maturity, or to find aliment, or to intertwine in works of Venus.
On the Denaturalization of Morality
There are many more problems with the intelligent design hypothesis. Nietzsche argued that religion creates false alternative narratives which are posited to be just as valid, or to replace, the current scientific paradigm, and that this constitutes a process of “denaturalization of morality” that keeps us from addressing real problems and entices us to care about false problems.
Everywhere God is inserted, and utility is withdrawn. - Friedrich Nietzsche
For one, let us consider the dishonest agenda of those who push this ideology. The Discovery Institute (a non-profit organization that spreads intelligent-design propaganda) says in its mission statement things like “mind, not matter, is the source and crown of creation” (this is stated as a doctrine without further explanation or justification) … but minds are the emergent properties of bodies, which must exist first, and we do not observe a mind without a body anywhere, much less one with the power to create planets, bodies, etc. It also makes claims like:
the Judeo-Christian culture has established the rule of law, codified respect for human rights and conceived constitutional democracy. It has engendered development of science and technology, as well as economic creativity and innovation.
There was no rule of law in the days of the Pharaoh? Epicurus didn’t mention the social contract in his Kyriai Doxai 2,300 years ago? This, while Christianity has become a bastion of anti-democratic ideologies and a war machine against the civil rights of millions of Americans … and no mention of the execution of scientists like Bruno by the Christian Church, or the fact that democracy was invented in ancient, polytheistic Greece. This type of self-attribution of the best about our culture, and denial of the history of everyone else, is part of the dynamic that we are seeing today in places like the State of Florida. Furthermore, this is how highly proponents of “intelligent design” (who claim that they are practicing science) think of materialism:
In contrast, the contemporary materialistic worldview denies the intrinsic dignity and freedom of human beings and enfeebles scientific creativity and technological innovation.
Never mind that “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” was penned by an Epicurean, and that it is right-wing Christians who are denying the dignity and civil rights of LGBT people, of women, of people from all other religious viewpoints, etc.
On the Need for Philosophy
One final note must be added here against scientism—which is described generally as the belief that science can and will solve all of our problems, and a sometimes fanatical faith in science. We consider science as providing best methodology to gain knowledge about the nature of things (see Principal Doctrines 10-13, and 22-25). However, what has happened in our society is that religion (and, most recently, science) has sought to usurp the role of philosophy, ethics, and morality. Philosophy serves a purpose that neither religion nor science are equipped to serve. It deserves its own distinct place.
Without philosophy, we are unable to know how to use or practice both science and religion. Only the practice of ethics can assign utility to both religion (Epicurus teaches the use of pious techniques to easily abide in constant pleasures and to train ourselves to live like gods) and science (how can we set empirical standards for truth without philosophy?), and we must defend the role of philosophy as a separate activity from both science and religion.
