brief philosophizing on evil and gods

[marycatelli]

being for once not my own philosophizing. . . .

An expansion on the Viable Paradise Quotes.  One of which was

If you want people worshipping an evil god, there has to be something in it for them.

which inspired some musing about evil gods by the lights of the religion and my own comment was that Greek philosophers got kinda queasy about the gods.

Plato, for instance, takes it for granted that myths can be censored, and the very first censorship he calls for is eliminate all tales that attribute evil and disgusting behavior to the gods.  Indeed, he has Socrates state it as of course that would be first, they are lies-- it's the later forms of censorship that need discussion.  If such horrible tales needed to be told at all, they needed to be some form of mystery, and the rite difficult to get into.

Euripides lays it out much more quickly:  "Say not there be adulterers in heaven."

The Romans followed.  One reason why allegory was popular was to explain away the myths.  Saturn eating his children was merely an allegory of Time destroying all things.

Comments

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you should bring up this topic today. I just finished the first draft of a story of a society that worships gods who are in fact monsters. In that case, the ordinary people are being conned, and the point of the story is what happens when someone finally sees through that snow job.

[marycatelli]

Humm. . . are they imposters?