The Greeks
on
gods, goddesses & God

Some Interesting Web Sites:

The Ancient City of Athens: This is a *beautiful* site with color pictures.
Philosophers Portrait Gallery: Greece
The Olympian Gods: Good info, but not much in Color.
Hellenic Neo-paganism: Fun, but no pictures; lots of analysis of "pagan" gods and other kinds of non-standard religions.

Some Dates:

Socrates 467-399 B.C.E.

Plato 427-347 B.C.E.

Aristotle 384-322 B.C.E.

1. Plato's Theory of Creation (The Timaeus)

"God" = The Demi-Urge creates from:

Blueprints = The Forms

Matter = The Receptacle

a. God creates the universe because He is good and wants to make everything as orderly and beautiful as possible.

b. God is limited by the materials he has (the "receptacle").

c. God patterns the world after the Ideal Platonic Forms.

2. Aristotle's Theory of God (Physics VIII and Metaphysics XII)

a. What God Does: God = Unchanged Changer

Prime Mover

(Love Makes the World Go Round)

b. What God Is: God is Thought Thinking Itself

(noesis noeseos noesis)

Plato and Aristotle Agree:

No Creator God

No beginning of the Universe

God exists, but not as a Person

Challenges to Medieval Faiths (Judaism, Islam, Christianity)

Logic, rationality

Materialist Science (or proto-science)

Humanism in ethics

Cynthia A. Freeland

Associate Professor of Philosophy
&
Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research
College of Humanities, Fine Arts, and Communication