Uncovering Unreliable Religion

Uncovering Unreliable Religion

“The truth hurts.” I'm sure you've heard it before, the age-old adage that people say to express their sentiments when something they don't want to acknowledge is pointed out to them. Often in life, we are confronted with truths that we may not have known before. In these situations, we may discover something that we had never thought of before, or perhaps we find that something we have believed for a long time is shown to be untrue. No matter what the specific instance is, there are many different scenarios in which this might happen and there are just as many ways in which to respond to it. There are occasions when the new idea is simply considered, found to be true, and accepted, but more frequently there are other responses that take precedence over this logical one. Amidst the various possible reactions that usually occur, some of the more popular ones are to: become defensive, get angry, and openly reject the evidence and deny the new idea, become upset and fret about whether or not to accept it, or try to fit the new evidence into the framework of the already-existing beliefs that one holds. This last option is particularly interesting because with it, the person doesn't totally shy away from a change in his mindset, but rather, only sort of half-accepts the truth, in a way. This attempt to try to manipulate what we discover into a form that fits with what we already know in an effort to help us understand it is very interesting and it is exactly the response that Socrates appears to display in Plato's Republic. In this book’s dialogues, Socrates appears, through critical thinking, to be discovering the flaws in the man-made religion he follows; but in order to make sense of the conclusions he comes to, rather than consider that his already-existing belief system might be wrong, he attempts to reconcile the two in a sort of half-acceptance.

Socrates believes in the deities of Greek mythology such as Zeus, Hera, Hades, and Hephaestus that are talked about by Greco-Roman poets of old such as Homer and Hesiod (377d). These gods were believed in by many people for a long time and the way that people heard about them were through poets such as the ones just mentioned. There were many stories about the gods that were circulating around in this time, and the masses accepted these stories as the truth about the gods and used them as their standard for believing what they believed. However, many of these stories told less than flattering tales about the gods. Quite a few of the stories spoke of the gods committing vile acts and constantly having disputes and battles with each other. For instance, the king of the gods himself was said to have risen up against his father and overthrown him after his father had attempted to eat him. The nature of the gods was depicted almost to be just as if they were normal humans with supernatural powers over nature, and not very good humans at that. These stories and the gods that were contained in them were believed by thousands of people for decades, however, Socrates himself has a few problems with this belief system.

Socrates makes it clear that he believes in these gods and heroes, yet he disagrees with a lot of the theology that is involved. If this belief system is correct, then the gods are basically ultra-powerful humans who can do whatever they want and they are susceptible to immoral acts such as violence, hatred, and deception too. Socrates considers this and, after thoroughly thinking it through and examining everything, decides that this view of divine beings doesn’t make sense. When questioned by Adeimantus about his statement that many of the stories that are told now must be thrown out, Socrates declares, “The ones Homer, Hesiod, and other poets tell us. After all, they surely composed false stories, which they told and are still telling to people.” (377d). So, even though Socrates believes in the same gods that the poets tell about, he doesn’t believe what the poets say about them. He goes on to state that the big fault with the stories is that he believes the poets are, “Using a story to create a bad image of what the gods and heroes are like, just as a painter might paint a picture that is not at all like the things he is trying to paint.” (377e). He believes that the stories misrepresent the gods in the negative light they shine on them because if the gods are gods, then they must be better than simply humans with superpowers.

Socrates believes that the gods must be represented as they are (379a) and that they are really good, and should be described as such (379a-379b). He goes through several logical arguments where he demonstrates that if they are gods, then certain things about them must be true. For instance, if they are gods then they are good and that means that, “... since gods are good, they are not - as the masses claim - the cause of everything. ...Of the good things, they alone are the cause, but we must find some other cause for the bad ones, not the gods.” (379c). This means that if the gods are really gods, then they can’t do all the bad, violent things to each other and to people that the stories say they do. Socrates also makes a few other observations about gods that clash with the established system. He makes the statement that, “...gods, of course, as well as the things belonging to them, are best in every way.” (381b). He then says that, because of this fact, they would be least likely to have many forms (381b), it is impossible for a god to want to alter himself because he is already as beautiful and as good as possible and thus must retain his own form (381c), and that they do not try to deceive people or lie to them in word or deed because what is divine is free from lies (382e-383a).

These views contrast so greatly with the majority of beliefs commonly held about the gods, it almost appears as if the gods that Socrates is describing are completely different divinities than the ones worshipped in the Greek mythological system. Socrates clearly notices the contradictions and points them out in his dialogue. He knows that something is wrong in the representation of the gods, but the question is, how does he handle this knowledge when he comes to it? How does he choose to react to the conclusions that he himself comes to? Interestingly, out of all the possible responses, he appears to attempt to reconcile the two views. He does not consider that the beliefs at their core might be incorrect or that there might be another system out there that is fundamentally more consistent with the deductions that he himself came to, instead he decides that the stories themselves are untrue, but the beliefs themselves are not. Rather than finding the flaws in the gods, he finds the flaws in the poets and makes the declaration, “Then we won’t accept from Homer - or from anyone else - the foolish mistake he makes about the gods…” (379c-379d). He does not acknowledge that the faults might be in the gods of that system themselves, that would result in the necessary conclusion that the truth lies in another set of beliefs. Instead, he attempts to find a way around this conclusion by claiming that the gods themselves are real, it’s simply the information that they have about them that is incorrect. As a result, Socrates managed to scratch the surface of the truth, but fell short of uncovering the unreliability of his religion.