Religion, Science and God

It was the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Protagoras ( c. 490- c. 420 BCE), numbered among the 'Sophists' by Plato, who coined the phrase 'Man is the measure of all things', taken up enthusiastically by the Renaissance humanists. Plato believed him to be denying the existence of objective truth, and this is borne out when one examines the Protagoras quotation in full: 'Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not.' The Greek version of this reads: ' pant ōn chr ēmat ōn metron estin anthrōpos, tōn men ontōn hōs estin, tōn de ouk ontōn hōs ouk estin. '   A rather less sexist English translation would read: 'Humans are the measure of all things: of the things that exist, and of the things that don't.' This is the idea that reality is purely subjective, and that whatever appears to be the case for any given individual is true for that person. So, if the weather is cold fo...

I only mentioned this fact in passing in my last blog post, about Satan (the Adversary, in Hebrew), aka Lucifer in Latin, or Phōsphoros in Greek, both names meaning 'Light-Bringer', also being Venus, or Aphroditē, the Roman and Greek goddesses of love, and Astartē, their Phoenician equivalent, which I didn't mention. Lucifer, the Morning Star, as male, is the brother of Vesper, the Evening Star, and the son of Aurora, the Dawn, and Cephalus, meaning 'Head'. That's the Roman version of the story. The Greek version is that E ōsphoros, the 'Dawn-Bringer', Ph ōsphoros' other name, is the son of  Ē ōs, 'Dawn', and Kephalos, 'Head', an Aeolian prince she had kidnapped because she'd taken a fancy to him, forcing him to be her lover. Hesperos (Latinised as Hesperus), the Evening Star, is his brother. Astronomically, of course, the Morning and Evening Stars are identical, and neither of them are 'stars' at all, but the planet Venus...