In studying Epicureanism, it becomes clear from Epicurus’ own writings that he constructed his philosophy specifically in order to keep people from the fear of the gods. Now, this is a wonderful gift of empiricism–for he certainly was an empiricist, if labels clarify anything–that the trembling of a superstitious people before mysterious gods subject to the same whims and faults as man should be quelled in light of a philosophy that is much more down-to-earth, as it were. And his philosophy itself is, in places, compelling precisely because it rests on such things as a more nuanced Democritean atomism (and we love to see in the old thinkers how nearly spot-on they were!). It seems, however, that his premise is lacking.
What’s this, a philosophy constructed just so that people won’t fear judgment after death? The only reason it sounds so ridiculous is that it’s very honest. That was clearly Epicurus’ purpose from the beginning, other than the fact that he really did believe in it himself; he was attempting to put people’s minds at ease.
Isn’t that honest, though? When we stretch beyond the humor of the situation, we see this kind of absolute, materialistic empiricism in scientists and thinkers today. The notion of a man claiming an entire epistemology founded on the premise that it will make you feel good because it’s sufficiently convincing that it will allow you to omit the gods from your psyche is preposterous–isn’t it? Yet we hear it all the time, it seems. Scientists come up with new and different ways to dazzle us and to reassure us that, insofar as there is an order to the universe, it means nothing; and insofar as we are conscious, consciousness is an appendage of prior evolutionary processes as surely as our appendices and cocciges. The underlying message is not less preposterous, only more subtle: now it is simply understood that if there is no God then there is no judgment, and besides, even if there is a God or gods, surely He is not a He after all, but an androgynous Force, and all the world is a fatal process inside of which our petty actions cannot be–shall not be–accounted for.
If Epicurus had some startlingly clear empirical truths along with his outrageous ontology, he was also much more honest in his “it feels better for there not to be judgment, therefore gods don’t exist” than most scientists today, who claim to work from empirical data outward toward the “lack” of God.
