It’s a fake quote. Epicurus lived in a polytheistic society. He didn’t say these things about one god, he said it about all the gods. This quote here is a localisation by Hume which erases Epicurus’ paganism for a Christian audience.
Your atheist meme is still pushing Christian biases.
Which is funny because as far as I know none of the pagan gods are presented as omnipotent or omnibenevolent. Works good applied on the Christian god though
Yeah, Epicurus wasn’t making any kind of huge atheistic point. He was just exploring the Greeks’ relationship to their religion. Hume is the one who co-opted and misquoted him to serve an anti-christianity agenda that didn’t even exist when Epicurus lived.
There are older texts that explore the same questions, even before Greek polytheism. The “dialogue between a man and his god” and the “poem of the righteous sufferer” are Mesopotamian texts from the second millennium BCE that basically say the same thing (why does my god permits my suffering when I pray so hard?), and yes, it was already a polytheistic world view, but the question still remained why a god could allow their devout followers to suffer. Even when only accounting for a God’s specific domain, like sickness or nightmares, rather than total omnipotence.
There’s no problem with Humes reframing the question for absolute omnipotence when that’s the zealotry the people in his time or in our time are confronted with. You can’t shift the blame of the Christian bias when this question is a response to those who claim that their god is superior and infallible.
Hume could have quoted Epicurus as saying “the gods” instead of “God”. It would have been more honest. Hume misquoted Epicurus as though he was a Christian.
It’s a fake quote. Epicurus lived in a polytheistic society. He didn’t say these things about one god, he said it about all the gods. This quote here is a localisation by Hume which erases Epicurus’ paganism for a Christian audience.
Your atheist meme is still pushing Christian biases.
Oh no better stop using this meme then!
Which is funny because as far as I know none of the pagan gods are presented as omnipotent or omnibenevolent. Works good applied on the Christian god though
Yeah, Epicurus wasn’t making any kind of huge atheistic point. He was just exploring the Greeks’ relationship to their religion. Hume is the one who co-opted and misquoted him to serve an anti-christianity agenda that didn’t even exist when Epicurus lived.
Monotheistic religions did exist and were well known to them though
There are older texts that explore the same questions, even before Greek polytheism. The “dialogue between a man and his god” and the “poem of the righteous sufferer” are Mesopotamian texts from the second millennium BCE that basically say the same thing (why does my god permits my suffering when I pray so hard?), and yes, it was already a polytheistic world view, but the question still remained why a god could allow their devout followers to suffer. Even when only accounting for a God’s specific domain, like sickness or nightmares, rather than total omnipotence.
There’s no problem with Humes reframing the question for absolute omnipotence when that’s the zealotry the people in his time or in our time are confronted with. You can’t shift the blame of the Christian bias when this question is a response to those who claim that their god is superior and infallible.
Hume could have quoted Epicurus as saying “the gods” instead of “God”. It would have been more honest. Hume misquoted Epicurus as though he was a Christian.