APOLLO, TRUE GOD?

[Mortalsfool]

If one wanted to consider a God whose past existence has proven itself by endowing our present day society with great accomplishment, they would consider Apollo, the head god of the Greeks. The words spoken by the oracle at his temple in Delphi were completely responsible in a very direct way, for almost all [if not all], of our western philosophy.

It seems a better choice to worship a God whose followers propagated no Dogma, instead of the capricious Gods we presently use to justify our religious eccentricities. We use our gods to justify with blatant prejudice, Greed, Pride, Avarice, and Jealousy. We could replace the teachings of our dim faced gods whose worshipers hate each other, and replace them with this simplest of Gods, whose simple words defined the truth, without doctrine [two phrases below]. It was thru a simple revealing to one humble man, calling him, with his self admitted ignorance, ‘the wisest man in Athens’ , that set this devout seeker of truth on a path of discovery that eventually led to his death; and because of his principled death. reason by questioning was passed down to us.

Not before, nor after, has there been any more simple defining of the truths necessary for ‘enlightenment’ than was inscribed on his temple walls; ‘KNOW THYSELF’ and ‘NOTHING IN EXCESS’. Millions of books written since, have not added one mote of clarity to this simplicity of truth attributed to this stone god.

The story goes: It was reported to Socrates, that the Oracle had told one of the citizens ‘There is none wiser in Athens than Socrates’. This stirred in him, a questioning whose results echo down thru history, and today has its influence in most of us; we call it Western philosophy.

Socrates saw, as he thought of it, this ‘Holy Proclamation,’ as an instrument that could be used to prove or disprove the existence of the Gods. If he could prove the God's proclamation wrong by finding someone wiser than himself, he would have the evidence which would prove the Gods fallibility. It would be an easy quest, he thought, to prove a God wrong that said he was the wisest man in Athens. All he had to do was prove to himself, that the inadequacy he felt concerning his own lack of understanding, was well founded, and ‘the God’ would be proven wrong; hence, a wrong God, means no god! His death was a direct result of his subsequent questioning. He willingly drank the poison as demanded by those that chose not to question their own beliefs. While it is true that we no longer tell those that dissent to 'drink poison', we kill them in the name of our Gods losing the horrors of war on innocent people, and we justify it by calling them ‘infidels’; a name that boasts our God as better than theirs.

In spite of the profound effect of his words on our society [thru the Oracle], Apollo, this forgotten stone god from the distant past, holds no laureates with the modern Holies. Today he remains only as a god of stone relegated to the fading memories of history as it records our stumbling and dismal paths towards Enlightenment; a state of existence in which we have failed miserably as a race. After these thousands of years of knowing better, we still cling to the shallow satisfactions we derive from our ignorance: Money and War in the name of 'our' God!

Apollo is not the name of my God, I really don’t know his name, but what I did learn is, enlightenment requires only the guidance of these two ancient directives; Nothing in Excess; and Know Thyself.

[Dalek Prime]

Zeiss was head God of the Greeks, not Apollo. And choosing one myth to have priority over any other random story is just cherrypicking, and naive anyway. Fuck, why not Sauron out of LOTR. Just as real as Apollo

Look. Believing anything out of any book is just silly. And that includes any scripture. It's just a story, okay?

That's not to say there isn't some God, whatever it is. That's just to say it's probably not what we've written about. And we dont know its mind, if it has one. So, let's make up some shit and have fun with it while we can.

[Mortalsfool]

Zeiss was head God of the Greeks, not Apollo. And choosing one myth to have priority over any other random story is just cherrypicking, and naive anyway. Fuck, why not Sauron out of LOTR. Just as real as Apollo

Look. Believing anything out of any book is just silly. And that includes any scripture. It's just a story, okay?

That's not to say there isn't some God, whatever it is. That's just to say it's probably not what we've written about. And we dont know its mind, if it has one. So, let's make up some shit and have fun with it while we can.

Surely you must be joking! The point of that article was not a lesson in Greek history, but a comment on how stupid we are, concerning ourselves with how our chosen God's have actually accomplished very little tangible influence on our society; other than wars, hate, bigotry, prejudice, fear, and all the other delightful attributes people dream up.

I think you missed the last sentence and the point of the article!
"Apollo is not the name of my God, I really don’t know his name, but what I did learn is, enlightenment requires only the guidance of these two ancient directives; Nothing in Excess; and Know Thyself."

[Dalek Prime]

Fair enough, though I do joke alot.

Knowing thyself is good. But what does nothing in excess have to do with enlightenment? I smoke excessively, and still feel fairly enlightened on my chances of dying, which are 100%.

[Mortalsfool]

Fair enough, though I do joke alot.

Knowing thyself is good. But what does nothing in excess have to do with enlightenment? I smoke excessively, and still feel fairly enlightened on my chances of dying, which are 100%.

Ahhh yes Dalek, you may well know yourself, but it doesn't take enlightenment to know that you will die. Excess is probably the cause of most of the worlds problems.

[Dalek Prime]

Fair enough, though I do joke alot.

Knowing thyself is good. But what does nothing in excess have to do with enlightenment? I smoke excessively, and still feel fairly enlightened on my chances of dying, which are 100%.

Ahhh yes Dalek, you may well know yourself, but it doesn't take enlightenment to know that you will die. Excess is probably the cause of most of the worlds problems.

Existence is the cause of 100% of the world's problems. Not born, no problem. Never try to exceed nothing. That's my motto.

So yeah, in a sense, you're right. Excess of nothing is the problem.

[Veritas Aequitas]

If one wanted to consider a God whose past existence has proven itself by endowing our present day society with great accomplishment, they would consider Apollo, the head god of the Greeks. The words spoken by the oracle at his temple in Delphi were completely responsible in a very direct way, for almost all [if not all], of our western philosophy.

...

Apollo is not the name of my God, I really don’t know his name, but what I did learn is, enlightenment requires only the guidance of these two ancient directives; Nothing in Excess; and Know Thyself.

God [aka Absolute] is an Impossibility to be Real.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=24704

However I have no issues if one believe in a God in the relative sense, i.e. no claim of absoluteness and real.

Like the Greeks the Hindus assigned a specific God for specific things, e.g.

Saraswati (Sanskrit: सरस्वती, Sarasvatī) is the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, art, wisdom, and learning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saraswati

Thus who are inclined and prayed to Saraswati will normally get great inspiration & drives to study, be educated and acquire wisdom. I read many are still doing that in India at present.

I can understand those who believed and prayed to Apollo then or now [?*] would have imputed the qualities of Apollo in their life.
* I think it would be very rare for any one to belief in Apollo-the-God in our modern era. The most they do is to use it as an analogy, e.g. Nietzsche's Apollonian_and_Dionysian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian

[Mortalsfool]

I can understand those who believed and prayed to Apollo then or now [?*] would have imputed the qualities of Apollo in their life.
* I think it would be very rare for any one to belief in Apollo-the-God in our modern era.

Veritas, I'm sometimes led to believe that, people in a philosophy forum, feel it necessary to dissect any article line by line in a search for argumentative points. Unfortunately, I believe, it detracts from all considerations about the point of the article itself. So it seems most discussion gets sidetracked into minutia. Point being, more times than not, replies to a post concern the pieces removed from the context, like pieces of a picture cut out from the point being made.

Veritas, I use your quote for example; not in a critical way, in fact, I agree with your statement. It is probably the only comment that addressed the point of my article. Mainly, that our society is stupid in its arguing over names of God, or, more to the point, the name of their God! I only used the god Apollo to make the point; it's the only God I know of where concrete, all positive and greatly influential changes can be directly observed in our society today, thousands of years later. The wisdom of the temple's five words inscribed in two short phrases, 'Know thyself' and 'Nothing in excess' , has not been improved by the innumerable books written about the gods who are not named Apollo.

By the way, I do not worship Apollo
I'm an agnostic with a great deal of faith

[Veritas Aequitas]

I can understand those who believed and prayed to Apollo then or now [?*] would have imputed the qualities of Apollo in their life.
* I think it would be very rare for any one to belief in Apollo-the-God in our modern era.

Veritas, I'm sometimes led to believe that, people in a philosophy forum, feel it necessary to dissect any article line by line in a search for argumentative points. Unfortunately, I believe, it detracts from all considerations about the point of the article itself. So it seems most discussion gets sidetracked into minutia. Point being, more times than not, replies to a post concern the pieces removed from the context, like pieces of a picture cut out from the point being made.

Veritas, I use your quote for example; not in a critical way, in fact, I agree with your statement. It is probably the only comment that addressed the point of my article. Mainly, that our society is stupid in its arguing over names of God, or, more to the point, the name of their God! I only used the god Apollo to make the point; it's the only God I know of where concrete, all positive and greatly influential changes can be directly observed in our society today, thousands of years later. The wisdom of the temple's five words inscribed in two short phrases, 'Know thyself' and 'Nothing in excess' , has not been improved by the innumerable books written about the gods who are not named Apollo.

By the way, I do not worship Apollo
I'm an agnostic with a great deal of faith

Btw, I did not state YOU worship nor believed in Apollo.
I understood you introduced the OP for discussion only and I am just expressing my views.

[Mortalsfool]

I can understand those who believed and prayed to Apollo then or now [?*] would have imputed the qualities of Apollo in their life.
* I think it would be very rare for any one to belief in Apollo-the-God in our modern era.

Veritas, I'm sometimes led to believe that, people in a philosophy forum, feel it necessary to dissect any article line by line in a search for argumentative points. Unfortunately, I believe, it detracts from all considerations about the point of the article itself. So it seems most discussion gets sidetracked into minutia. Point being, more times than not, replies to a post concern the pieces removed from the context, like pieces of a picture cut out from the point being made.

Veritas, I use your quote for example; not in a critical way, in fact, I agree with your statement. It is probably the only comment that addressed the point of my article. Mainly, that our society is stupid in its arguing over names of God, or, more to the point, the name of their God! I only used the god Apollo to make the point; it's the only God I know of where concrete, all positive and greatly influential changes can be directly observed in our society today, thousands of years later. The wisdom of the temple's five words inscribed in two short phrases, 'Know thyself' and 'Nothing in excess' , has not been improved by the innumerable books written about the gods who are not named Apollo.

By the way, I do not worship Apollo
I'm an agnostic with a great deal of faith

Btw, I did not state YOU worship nor believed in Apollo.
I understood you introduced the OP for discussion only and I am just expressing my views.

Veritas, I did say above, I'm am in agreement with your statement, and it's a fact that I do appreciate you expressing your views in response.

Boy, you do have to be careful about what you say here. My comment about not worshiping Apollo, was mentioned as an aside lest someone reading the article overthink my praise. I guess I shouldn't have said, 'By the way,' since the comment was directed toward your reply. Opps! It is hard to be perfect.

[fooloso4]

Mortalsfool:

It was thru a simple revealing to one humble man, calling him, with his self admitted ignorance, ‘the wisest man in Athens’ …

Actually, this was neither simple nor humble. The oracle said that no one was wiser than Socrates, that is quite different than saying he was the wisest of men. According to the former there could be many who were just as wise as Socrates, but Socrates changes this to mean that he was wiser than all others. Socrates, in attempting to prove the oracle wrong, also regards himself wiser than the oracle. A nice example of Socrates’ famous irony.

I like Nietzsche’s version of Dionysus, a “god who philosophizes”. One who loves wisdom, that is, pursues rather than possesses it.

[Mortalsfool]

Mortalsfool:

It was thru a simple revealing to one humble man, calling him, with his self admitted ignorance, ‘the wisest man in Athens’ …

Actually, this was neither simple nor humble. The oracle said that no one was wiser than Socrates, that is quite different than saying he was the wisest of men. According to the former there could be many who were just as wise as Socrates, but Socrates changes this to mean that he was wiser than all others. Socrates, in attempting to prove the oracle wrong, also regards himself wiser than the oracle. A nice example of Socrates’ famous irony.

I like Nietzsche’s version of Dionysus, a “god who philosophizes”. One who loves wisdom, that is, pursues rather than possesses it.

Ahh, fooloso4, you are so correct! Well, I guess he didn't believe that he belonged in that class of learned men. I guess those who were considered the wisest, are those he questioned.

[fooloso4]

Mortalsfool:

I guess he didn't believe that he belonged in that class of learned men. I guess those who were considered the wisest, are those he questioned.

I do not recall at the moment in which of the dialogues he discusses this, but Plato does have him and his friends discussing what they have read, accepting what seems true and rejecting what seems false. The “learned men” might include those who learned from the sophists and those who repeat what the poets say, but when he questioned them directly they cannot give an account of they say. The only ones he seems to have regarded as having any knowledge are the craftsmen. Even the mathematicians could not give an account of the "things themselves" that they worked with images of.

Behind the audacious irony (he was after all defending himself before the jury about among other things atheism) there is the claim that he is wiser because he knows that he is not wise. This goes much further than the commonplace claim of not knowing something. If is a form of skepticism that informed all of what he said and did - zetetic skepticism - a life of inquiry mindful of the fact that such inquiry does not guarantee knowledge. The examined life, determining how best to live knowing that you do not know what is best, is never resolved or completed.

[Iddeonocturno]

I'm agree with all that you said. Also, it's not surprising since he is the most Greek god of all the Greeks. I think another part of the beauty of this God is his closeness to art and light. He practically brings the knowledge, if I adore one God, would be him.

I know this post is old but I found it and felt that I should answer.