quote:

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Lucian of Samosata, otherwise known as Lucian the Blasphemer, or the Slanderer, or more accurately, the Atheist, because in his dialogues he even makes fun of religion. He was born somewhere about the time of Trajan. He practiced for a while as a barrister at Antioch in Syria, but did so badly at it that he turned over to literature, and wrote no end of stuff. He is said to have been torn to pieces by mad dogs, because he had been so rabid against the truth – for in his Death of Peregirinus the filthy brute attacks Christianity and blasphemes Christ Himself. So he was adequately punished in his world, and in the next he will inherit eternal fire with Satan.

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Even back in the day some Christians were a bit anal. His stuff on Christianity is actually pretty insightful although he doesn’t spare Christians from being the butt of the joke. Anyway I found a bit he wrote that seems quite open theistic if you ask me.

SOME AWKWARD QUESTIONS FOR ZEUS

Scene: The Terrestrial Communications room in heaven. It is prayer-time, so Zeus is sitting on a golden chair beside the hole in the floor marked PRAYERS. He removes the lid, and applies his ear to the aperture. A cool, cynical voice is heard speaking at the other end.

Voice: Well, Zeus, I won’t trouble you with the usual type of prayer. I won’t ask you to make me a millionaire or a king. Such things can’t be very easy for you to arrange - at any rate, you never seem to take much notice when people pray for them. But there’s just on favour I’d like to ask – an extremely small one.

Zeus [graciously]: And what is that? Your prayer shall be granted, especially if it’s as moderate as you say.

Voice: I’d just like you to answer a simple question.

Zeus: Well,that sounds easy enough. Ask as many questions as you please.

Voice: Look here then, Zeus – no doubt you’ve read Homer and Hesiod – well, is it true what they say about Destiny and the Fates [Iliad XXIV, 209-10; Theogony 217-19, 904-6] – that they determine the course off each man’s life in advance, and there’s no way out of it?

Zeus: Perfectly true. Nothing is exempt from the Fates’ control. Everything that happens is spun on their spindle, and turns out according to their original design. No alterations are allowed.

Voice: Then when Homer himself says elsewhere,
‘Lest you should die before your fated hour, [Iliad XX, 336.]
and that sort of thing, he’s merely talking nonsense?

Zeus: Certainly he is. There are no exceptions to the rule of the Fates, no kinks or flaws in their threads. You see, poets tell the truth when they’re inspired by the Muses, but when they lose their inspiration and try to compose on their own, they’re liable to make mistakes and contradict themselves. You can’t really blame them for not getting their facts right when the divine afflatus has left them – after all, they’re only human.

Voice [sounding unconvinced]: Well, let’s take it that that’s the explanation. But tell me another thing – how many Fates are there? It’s three, isn’t it – Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos?

Zeus: Of course.

Voice: And then there’s a lot of talk about Destiny and Fortune. Who exactly are they, and how much power have they each got? The same as the Fates, or more? For people are always saying that Fortune and Destiny are the most powerful things in the world.

Zeus [indulgently]: Little cynics mustn’t expect to be told everything. But why do you ask?

Voice: I’ll explain that, Zeus, when you’ve answered another question – do the Fates control you too? Are you also suspended on one of their threads?

Zeus: Obviously I must be.

[A little giggle is heard at the other end.]

What’s so funny about that?

Voice: I was just thinking of that passage in Homer [Iliad VIII, 19-27], where you’re making a speech in the House of Gods, and threatening to pull everything up on a golden chain. You say you’ll let down this chain from heaven and all the other gods can grab hold of it, if they like, and try to drag you down, but they won’t be able to – whereas if you care to try, you can pull up the whole lot of them
‘With sea and land and all that is therein.’
That line always used to give me a tremendous impression of you strength, and I got the shivers every time I read it. But now you tell me that you yourself, chain, threats, and all, are hanging on a tiny thread! It seems to me that Clotho is really the one to boast, for she’s got you dangling from her spindle like a fish on the end of a line.

Zeus [coldly]: I don’t quite see the point of all these questions.

Voice: It’s just this, Zeus – and for God’s sake – I mean, for Fate’s sake, don’t take offence or be annoyed with me for speaking frankly. If that’s how things are, if everything’s controlled by the Fates and their decisions are quite unalterable, why do we make so many sacrifices to you? Why do we pray to you? I can’t see what we hope to gain by it, if our prayers are incapable of influencing things one way or the other.

Zeus: I know who’s been putting all these clever ideas into your head. It’s those blasted intellectuals [Lucian is referencing the Epicureans here but could we change it to Pinnockeans? Those darn Evangelicals who dare to THINK! HOW DARE THEY!] who say that we never do anything for human beings. They’re always asking blasphemous questions like that, and trying to stop people saying their prayers or making sacrifices, by telling them it’s all a waste of time, because we never pay any attention to what goes on and haven’t the slightest influence on human affairs. But they needn’t think they’ll get away with it!

Voice: No, really, Zeus, cross my thread and hope to die, it’s nothing to do with them. It just seemed to follow naturally from what we were saying that sacrifices must be quite superfluous. But if you like, I’ll go briefly through the argument again. Don’t be afraid to answer my questions, and mind you answer them carefully.

Zeus: Very well – if you’ve really got time to waste on such nonsense.

Voice: You say the Fates are responsible for everything that happens?

Zeus: I do.

Voice: And can you alter their arrangements or unspin their threads?

Zeus: No, I can’t.

Voice: Well, do you want me to draw the logical conclusion, or is it clear enough without being stated?

Zeus [with dignity]: It’s perfectly clear, thank you. However, sacrifices aren’t made for a utilitarian purpose, to buy favors from us, but as a mark of respect for a higher form of life.

Voice: Right, that will do. You admit that sacrifices serve no useful purpose, and are merely offered out of the kindness of our hearts, to show respect for our superiors. But if one of those ‘intellectuals’ were here, he’d ask what’s so superior about you anyway? On the face off it you’re only our fellow-slaves, for you’re just as much ordered about by the Fates as we are. And it isn’t enough to say that you’re immortal, as if that made your situation any better, for it actually makes it much worse. We, at least, get our freedom when we die, but your conditions will be the same throughout all eternity, and you’ll be slaves for ever, thread without end, Amen.

Zeus: But it’s great fun, this eternal life of ours. We have an extremely good time.

Voice: Speak for yourself, Zeus. There are class distinctions in heaven just as there are down here, and plenty of social unrest. It’s all very well for you – you’re a king. You can always let down a rope if you want to, and pull up the whole earth and sea like a bucket out of a well. But what about Hephaestus? He’s just a poor crippled blacksmith, a member of the working-classes. And Prometheus was once actually crucified. I need hardly mention your father, who’s still doing time in Tartarus. I’m also told the at you gods are liable to fall in love or get wounded, and occasionally have to work like slaves for human beings, as your brother did for Laomedon, and Apollo did for Admetus. That’s not at all my idea of having a good time. The truth of the matter is, it seems to me, that some of you have all the luck and are very well off, while the rest are just the opposite – quite apart form the fact that you’re always getting burgled by temple-thieves, and thus transformed at a moment’s notice from plutocrats into paupers. In fact, several gold and silver divinities have actually had their precious persons melted down! No doubt it was fated to happen to them.

Zeus [reaching for a thunderbolt and poising it threateningly]: Now look here, that’s downright insulting. You’re going to wish you hadn’t said that.

Voice: It’s no use trying to scare me, Zeus. You know perfectly well you can’t do anything to me without previous permission from Fate. Why you don’t even punish all the people who rob your temples. As far as I can see, they generally get away with it. I suppose they’re just fated not to be caught.

Zeus: There, what did I say? You are one of those intellectuals who try to prove that there’s no such thing as Providence! [I bet Sanders has heard this from Zeus a thousand times]

Voice: You’ve got quite a phobia about them, haven’t you, Zeus? I wonder why. Everything I say you attributes to their influence. However, there is one thing I’d like to ask you – for what more reliable authority could I possibly consult? Just what, exactly, is this Providence of yours? Is it a sort of Fate, or something even higher up which gives the Fates their orders?

Zeus: I’ve already told you, there are some things you’re not meant to know. Anyway, you said at first that you’d only one question to ask me, so why do you keep pestering me with all these minor details? But I see what you’re getting at. You’re trying to prove that we don’t have any effect on human life.

Voice: I’m not trying to prove anything. It was you yourself who said a moment ago that the Fates were in complete control of everything. Or have you changed your mind now? Do you want to take it back and stand for the Government yourself - throw Destiny out of office?

Zeus [irritably]: Of course not. But the point is, we are Fate’s executives.

Voice: Oh, now I understand. You’re a sort of permanent Civil Service. But in that case it’s the Fates that do the actual governing. You’re merely tools of theirs.

Zeus: What on earth do you mean?

Voice: Well, take a carpenter’s plane and drill. No doubt they’re quite a help to him in his work, but you’d hardly call them carpenters themselves. Similarly, planes and drills can’t actually make a boat - it takes a boat-builder to do that. In your case, Destiny seems to be the one that really does the job. You’re just the planes and drills in Destiny’s toolbox. So apparently what people ought to do is to sacrifice and pray to Destiny – instead of which they keep on presenting you with sacrifices and solemn processions. Come to that, though, there wouldn’t be much point in worshiping Destiny either. For I don’t suppose even the Fates can alter anything once it’s been settled. I’m sure Atropos would never let anyone put her spindle into reverse and undo all Clotho’s good work.

Zeus: So now you don’t want anyone to be treated with respect – not even the Fates! But surely we gods deserve some recognition, if only for supplying, through our oracles, advance information about the Fates’ arrangements.

Voice: The whole point is, Zeus, it’s no use knowing something in advance if you can’t do anything about it – unless you mean to suggest that if someone knows he’s going to be killed by a steel spearhead, for instance, he can stay alive by locking himself up in his bedroom. But as a matter of fact he can’t fate will lure him out on to the hunting-field, and station him well in range of that spearhead. Adrastus will throw his spear, miss the boar he’s aiming at, and kill Croesus’s young son instead, for the Fates will impel the weapon irresistibly towards him. Then there’s that ridiculous oracle that was given to Laius:

‘Sow not seed in female furrow:
Do not flout the will of heaven.
For a son of thee begotten
Soon or late will surely kill thee.’

To my mind the advice was quite superfluous, as things were bound to turn out like that anyway. Sure enough, the moment he heard the oracle he promptly started sowing, and his son duly killed him. So I don’t se why you should expect to be paid for your advance information – quite apart form the fact that most of your oracles are deliberately obscure and ambiguous, failing, for instance, to specify whether by crossing the Halys Croesus will destroy Cyrus’s kingdom or his own. For the oracle in question would bear either interpretation.

Zeus: You must remember that Apollo was feeling very cross with Croesus for trying to catch him out by cooking that tortoise-and-lamb stew.

Voice [self-righteously]: Gods oughtn’t to lose their tempers. Though I dare say Croesus was fated to be taken in by the oracle. In other words, Destiny had already arranged that he shouldn’t have accurate information about the future. So even you oracles are really produced by Destiny.

It goes on for a couple of more pages but I’m tired and I can’t type anymore. Bye.


-Wislawa

for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].

Canticles 8:6