Isaac comments on Rationality Quotes: March 2011 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Alexandros 02 March 2011 11:14AM

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Comment author: Isaac 03 March 2011 03:28:19PM 6 points [-]

I wasn't sure who this was referring to (I thought it was about Socrates), so I looked it up. It's about Epicurus.

Comment author: michaelcurzi 04 March 2011 10:22:03AM 4 points [-]

Whoa, great call! Didn't know that.

This guy was really not a fan of superstition. In the next paragraph he mentions the case of a girl that the people forced to be sacrificed by her father:

"It was her fate in the very hour of marriage to fall a sinless victim to a sinful rite, slaughtered to her greater grief by a father’s hand, so that a fleet might sail under happy auspices. Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition."

Comment author: NihilCredo 05 March 2011 03:10:45AM 6 points [-]

It is hardly a coincidence that Epicureans (with Lucretius as their most prestigious Latin representative) became the subjects of a massive smear campaign by the early Christian Church.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 05 March 2011 05:42:33PM 3 points [-]

Religious Jews are apparently not too fond of the Epicureans too. At least, if the origin of the term Apikorus = Epicurus.

Comment author: Costanza 04 March 2011 02:36:17PM 1 point [-]

That's either Iphigenia or just possibly some poor nameless girl who was killed so that a local fishing fleet would have a good catch.