The Case for God Read Online Free Page A

The idea of change, for example, was pure convention. The Milesians had been wrong to imagine that the world had developed gradually. Reality consisted of a unified, single, complete, and eternal being. It might
appear
that creatures came into being and passed away, but true reality was unaffected by time. A rational person should not speak of things that did not exist, so we should never say that something had been born, because that implied that there had been a time when it did not exist; for the same reason, we must not say that something had died or moved or changed. But how could one function in such a world? What were we to make of the physical changes we noted in our bodies? How could you say anything without mentioning past or future? One of Parmenides’ disciples was a commander in the navy: How could he guide a ship that was not supposed to move?
    Parmenides’ contemporaries complained that he had left them nothing to think about. Leucippus (fl. c. 400) and his pupil Democritus (466–370) tried to soften this austere rationalism. 6 They agreed that the world consisted of a unitary, changeless substance but argued that it was not a single being, as Parmenides thought. Instead it took the form of an infinite number of tiny, invisible, and “indivisible”
(atomos
) particles that were ceaselessly in motion in the boundless void of empty space. There was no overseeing creator God: each atom moved at random, propelled mechanically, its direction dictated by pure chance. Periodically, atoms collided, stuck together, and formed the physical phenomena—men, women, plants, animals, rocks, and trees—that we see around us. But these were only temporary conglomerations; eventually these objects would disintegrate, and the atoms of which they were made would mill around in the void until they formed another object.
    Even though the naturalists could not prove their theories, some of their insights were remarkable. In attempting to find a simple, first principle as an explanation for the cosmos, Thales and Anaximeneshad already started to think like scientists. Parmenides realized that the moon reflects the light of the sun; Democritus’s atomism would be revived to great effect during the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. But some of their contemporaries were doubtful about the new philosophy, fearing that in seeking to know the mysteries of the cosmos, the
phusikoi
were dangerously guilty of hubris. They were like the Titan Prometheus, who had stolen fire from the gods and given it to men so that they could develop technology. But Zeus had retaliated by having the divine craftsman Hephaestus fashion the first woman, Pandora, who was beautiful but evil, the source of the world’s sorrow.
    The mathematician Pythagoras (570–500), however, took science in a different direction. 7 He had been born and educated on the island of Samos, off the Ionian coast, where he became famous for his asceticism and mystical insight, and had studied in Mesopotamia and Egypt before settling in southern Italy. There he established a religious community, dedicated to the cult of Apollo and the Muses, where the study of mathematics, astronomy, geometry, and music were not merely tools for the exploration of the physical world but also spiritual exercises. Apart from his famous theorem of the right-angled triangle, we know very little about Pythagoras himself—later Pythagoreans tended to attribute their own discoveries to the Master—but it may have been he who coined the term
philosophia
, the “love of wisdom.” Philosophy was not a coldly rational discipline but an ardent spiritual quest that would transform the seeker. This was the kind of philosophy that would develop in Athens during the fourth century; the rationalism of classical Greece would not consist of abstract speculation for its own sake. It was rather rooted in a search for transcendence and a dedicated practical lifestyle.
    Pythagoras’s vision was in part