Greeks: Ethics and Cosmological Arguments Essay

Submitted By ignat2222
Words: 1082
Pages: 5

1.) The "Ages of Man" describe the Greeks as being polytheistic. They believe that man was created by god."Cura, they say, fashioned a man out of mud and asked Zeus to give him life. The god granted his request, but forbade her to call man after herself, as she wished, since the god desired to call him after himself." They say that Cura made a form of a man from mud and Zeus granted it with life and it was called Homo because he was created from hummus. The Greeks believed in a term called Autochthonous. They believed that people were born from either a man and a woman or from a term called Autochthonous. This means "sons of the soil" and it is the dead coming back to life and getting younger as they live. In the "Creation of The Titans and Gods" the three first immortal beings emerged out of the chaos. Gaea was the mother of earth, who without any partner gave birth to Uranus, the father of the sky. She later married Uranus who ruled over everything that came into existence. Uranus and Gaea had three hundred-handed children which were their first immortal children. After giving life to three more immortal children, Uranus began fearing their power so he grabbed them and threw them down into the Tartarus, a region named after Tartarus the ruler of the underworld, far away from the surface of the earth. Gaea was angered by the actions of her husband, but she buried the hate deep down in her heart and waited for when she could take revenge on Uranus. Gaea then had her thirteen Titan children who she used to seek revenge on her husband. Only one of the titans was brave enough to go against Uranus. The young titan Coronus hid with a sharp sickle while Uranus and Gaea were at the sea shore when he jumped out with the sharp sickle and emasculated his father. Uranus could no longer rule because Coronus' "power" was greater than his fathers. The point of this story is that the Greeks thought their parts were a very important part in their life. Whoever had the biggest parts was the dominant being. A cosmological example from the Greek mythology is that the universe began out of chaos and out of that chaos were formed the first three immortal beings: Gaea (Mother of Earth), Tartarus (Ruler of Underworld), and Eros (Love) (Creation of Titans and Gods). Peoples ethics were to believe in their gods because they thought that was the right thing to do. The Greeks feared that if they did not worship their gods that they would be punished. 2.) There is several cosmological arguments in Greek philosophy about how the universe came into existence. The first argument is that god couldn't have created the universe because in Greek mythology it states that the universe existed and god caused himself into existence (Cosmological arguments). " It is impossible to cause one’s own being, for a cause is prior to its effect, and one can’t be prior to oneself, therefore god cannot exist (Cosmological Arguments)." This means that god cannot exist because nothing can cause itself to come into existence. However the counter argument states that " There is a universe rather than none at all, which must have been caused by something beyond itself (Cosmological Arguments)." this means that something must have caused the universe because the universe couldn't have caused itself which means that it was created by something beyond existence. The three arguments for that are: " The universe had a beginning, anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else, therefore the universe was caused by something else (a Creator)." This means that the universe must have come into existence somehow and since the universe cant cause itself there is a creator (god) who created the universe. Here we see two completely different arguments both with a very good point so we can conclude that the Greek mythology is not a sufficient source for the cosmology of the universe. The metaphysics, meaning what is ultimate, is the universe and space. Space is