Epicurus saw how much anxiety there was about the afterlife and pleasing the gods during his time, so he sought to comfort people by proving to them that no afterlife exists and gods are uninvolved in human affairs.
>>18766476Yes. It's ironic because now most people are disturbed by the idea of no afterlife since they assume they'd be going to eternal paradise. It's all a matter of perspective I guess.
>>18766476They're essentially just devas
>>18766489In the other huge religion of today (Islam), you will get sent to hell for the smallest reasons. You missed one of your 5 daily prayers and never made up for it? Enjoy hell. Its almost guaranteed hell so it balances out the Christians guaranteed Heaven
Also despite popular misconception, Epicurus was not a hedonist. He literally argued against excessive gluttony because according to him, expensive luxuries create more anxiety (pain) than they are worth as they are difficult to maintain and cause distress when lost. His logic was simple: if you train your body to only be happy with caviar, you will be miserable 99% of the time and if you train yourself to be happy with bread, you will almost always be satisfied.This is closer to asceticism than it is to libertinism. His definition of “pleasure” essentially amounted to having basis necessities and experiencing happiness as he believed that the greatest pleasures in life were food, water, friendship, and safety
>>18766476I wanted to read a book about him but the introduction was 70 pages long and i only got 55 before i had to return it to the library. I thought his ideas about physics were interesting and i dont know how they compare to modern physics and honestly im very ignorant about it but that and string theory (which is not really based on any observable phenomenon) and the fact that einstein himself said that theoretical physics wasnt primarily based on empirical data made me think the field has a lot of bs or is mostly bs.But idk. In regards to Epicurus i was expecting some normie life advice and i didnt know what to do when i had to confront his ideas about atoms and the universe.
>>18766476The first redditor
To be fair there isn't much of a difference between no afterlife and Hades in Greek Theology.
>>18766476Who the fuck is that
>>18766740You can just read the actual textual evidence since there's not that much of him surviving. Iirc the Epicurus reader is like 130ish pages but it ommits Lucretius.Without going into specifics, the way I would describe his physics is that they are shockingly right in spirit even if wrong in details. His world was a hybrid of modern, enlightenment era and ancient views.
>>18766740On the Natural Faculties by Galen includes an overview of Epicurean physics/ atomism and why it is in his opinion wrong (Being a Platonist he was extremely adverse to the idea that organs and life exist merely by a combination of random atoms rather than a supreme intelligence guiding life’s creation). https://classics.mit.edu/Galen/natfac.1.one.htmlI am hesitant to recommend this text as if a pop history book is too difficult for you, something like this may appear unreadable. If you have any questions though please ask in this thread about Epicurus/ Atomism vs Galen. It’s a topic I rarely get to talk about.
>>18767841One fun example of Epicurean medicine is the Kidneys. Epicurus’ protege Asclepiades of Bithynia believed that since the human body and its organs were created by random combinations of atoms and not by God that some organs served no purpose at all and were only made by chance. Example, he believed that pee was a vapor/ gas inside the body, it went through the kidneys unchanged (which did nothing) and then only became urine when passing into the urethra. Galen’s attempt at proving the use of the kidneys in the passage of urine was actually part of a grander attempt at proving Platonist notions that everything goes back to the Forms/ everything has a purpose.
>>18766499>You missed one of your 5 daily prayers and never made up for it? Enjoy hell.Catholicism is the same. You didn't go to mass and you didn't confess such a despicable sin? Enjoy hell.
