There was actually a sect of Christianity that effectively argued for that kind of God.
They were quite influenced by Epicurean philosophy and naturalism though they disagreed with the Epicurean surety of death, arguing instead that while there was an original world of matter with original humans that developed spontaneously, that these original humans brought forth the creator of a copy of that original cosmos - not of matter, but of light. And that for the copies of humanity in that light-copy the finality of death was not inescapable.
But effectively, the world being a copy of one developed by naturalism for the explicit purpose of providing an afterlife largely skirts the moral quandaries. If the copy didn’t have children with bone cancer then it means whitewashing the copy such that only the naturally privileged are entitled to salvation, while those originally getting dealt a bad hand are erased from representation.
And actually their explanations literally did relate to the quantized aspects of matter (embracing Epicureanism meant embracing not just natural selection but also atomism, such that they were discussing indivisible points making up all things and being the originating cause of existence).
You even got statements like this:
Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.
Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty."
You don’t typically expect to see Jesus weighing in on naturalism as the greater wonder in contrast to the possibility of intelligent design.
Though if you really dig into it and notice that Lucretius 50 years before Jesus was even born was not only describing survival of the fittest and the emergence of modern life as the end result of indivisible seeds scattered randomly, but even described failed biological reproduction as “seed falling by the wayside of a path,” the guy killed in Judea for talking about how only the seeds which survived to reproduce multiplied and the ones that fell by the wayside of a path did not begins to take on a different context, as does the oddity of that being one of the few public sayings in the Synoptics that the church felt was necessary to claim had a “secret explanation” given to only their leadership.
(In this sect’s surviving text that parable comes immediately after a saying about how no matter if man ate lion or lion ate man that the lion becoming man was an inevitable result and how the human being is like a large fish selected from a bunch of small fish.)
Epicurus had great instincts. He was pretty damn close to things modern science has discovered. As you mentioned, he was an atomist. He also said you can generally trust your senses, but they can be wrong and deceive you at times. His ethics of moderation and valuing relationships is spot on when it comes to life satisfaction.
It’s interesting you mentioned naturalism in the evolutionary sense. Have you read Darwin’s book? Darwin’s ideas aren’t entirely original, he himself pretty much says that, but his data collection and observations were something that hadn’t been done on that level yet.
Epicurus was great. It’s a shame he’s not more widely taught. People come up learning Aristotle and thinking the Greeks had their heads up their asses, but don’t end up learning about the guy discussing light as quantized particles moving very quickly two millennia before Einstein wins a Nobel for experimentally proving that behavior, or writes about natural selection nearly two millennia before Darwin.
And yes, Darwin was actually familiar with the same book through his peers (though he claimed to have never read it). But you see rather remarkable level of detail for a lot of the core concepts:
In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn’t do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus.
For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy.
Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now."
De Rerum Natura book 5 lines 837-859
Sometimes children take after their grandparents instead, Or great-grandparents, bringing back the features of the dead. This is since parents carry elemental seeds inside – Many and various, mingled many ways – their bodies hide Seeds that are handed, parent to child, all down the family tree. Venus draws features from these out of her shifting lottery – Bringing back an ancestor’s look or voice or hair. Indeed These characteristics are just as much the result of certain seed As are our faces, limbs and bodies. Females can arise From the paternal seed, just as the male offspring, likewise, Can be created from the mother’s flesh. For to comprise A child requires a doubled seed – from father and from mother. And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see Whichever gender – male or female – that the child may be.
book 4 lines 1217-1232
You can sometimes see a criticism of the first passage claiming that Leucretius saw those intermediate mutations as all existing all at once at the start, but that interpretation really seems to be putting too much weight on “in the beginning” and ignoring things like:
They take us by the hand and show that animals arise From things with no sensation at all.
book 2 lines 870-871
Especially since this world is the product of Nature, the happenstance Of the seeds of things colliding into each other by pure chance In every possible way, no aim in view, at random, blind, Till sooner or later certain atoms suddenly combined So that they lay the warp to weave the cloth of mighty things: Of earth, of sea, of sky, of all the species of living beings.
book 2 lines 1058-1063
And it’s been pretty wild seeing a Christian sect quoting from a book that contains such an on point description of naturalism as we see it today.
For example, another parallel is the Epicurean attitudes about avoiding false negatives. They were adamant not to prematurely discard explanations for why something occurred, but rather to keep them around concurrently (it’s a large part of why they got so much right). Which is a bit similar to the discussion of leaving seeds alone when you don’t know which is wheat and which is weeds as eventually it will become clear and you can harvest the one and discard the other. An even more interesting saying in the context of a sect’s claiming the mustard seed was about an indivisible point as if from nothing or that the sower parable was about seeds scattered upon the world “through which the whole cosmical system is completed.”
There was actually a sect of Christianity that effectively argued for that kind of God.
They were quite influenced by Epicurean philosophy and naturalism though they disagreed with the Epicurean surety of death, arguing instead that while there was an original world of matter with original humans that developed spontaneously, that these original humans brought forth the creator of a copy of that original cosmos - not of matter, but of light. And that for the copies of humanity in that light-copy the finality of death was not inescapable.
But effectively, the world being a copy of one developed by naturalism for the explicit purpose of providing an afterlife largely skirts the moral quandaries. If the copy didn’t have children with bone cancer then it means whitewashing the copy such that only the naturally privileged are entitled to salvation, while those originally getting dealt a bad hand are erased from representation.
And actually their explanations literally did relate to the quantized aspects of matter (embracing Epicureanism meant embracing not just natural selection but also atomism, such that they were discussing indivisible points making up all things and being the originating cause of existence).
You even got statements like this:
You don’t typically expect to see Jesus weighing in on naturalism as the greater wonder in contrast to the possibility of intelligent design.
Though if you really dig into it and notice that Lucretius 50 years before Jesus was even born was not only describing survival of the fittest and the emergence of modern life as the end result of indivisible seeds scattered randomly, but even described failed biological reproduction as “seed falling by the wayside of a path,” the guy killed in Judea for talking about how only the seeds which survived to reproduce multiplied and the ones that fell by the wayside of a path did not begins to take on a different context, as does the oddity of that being one of the few public sayings in the Synoptics that the church felt was necessary to claim had a “secret explanation” given to only their leadership.
(In this sect’s surviving text that parable comes immediately after a saying about how no matter if man ate lion or lion ate man that the lion becoming man was an inevitable result and how the human being is like a large fish selected from a bunch of small fish.)
Epicurus had great instincts. He was pretty damn close to things modern science has discovered. As you mentioned, he was an atomist. He also said you can generally trust your senses, but they can be wrong and deceive you at times. His ethics of moderation and valuing relationships is spot on when it comes to life satisfaction.
It’s interesting you mentioned naturalism in the evolutionary sense. Have you read Darwin’s book? Darwin’s ideas aren’t entirely original, he himself pretty much says that, but his data collection and observations were something that hadn’t been done on that level yet.
Epicurus was great. It’s a shame he’s not more widely taught. People come up learning Aristotle and thinking the Greeks had their heads up their asses, but don’t end up learning about the guy discussing light as quantized particles moving very quickly two millennia before Einstein wins a Nobel for experimentally proving that behavior, or writes about natural selection nearly two millennia before Darwin.
And yes, Darwin was actually familiar with the same book through his peers (though he claimed to have never read it). But you see rather remarkable level of detail for a lot of the core concepts:
You can sometimes see a criticism of the first passage claiming that Leucretius saw those intermediate mutations as all existing all at once at the start, but that interpretation really seems to be putting too much weight on “in the beginning” and ignoring things like:
And it’s been pretty wild seeing a Christian sect quoting from a book that contains such an on point description of naturalism as we see it today.
For example, another parallel is the Epicurean attitudes about avoiding false negatives. They were adamant not to prematurely discard explanations for why something occurred, but rather to keep them around concurrently (it’s a large part of why they got so much right). Which is a bit similar to the discussion of leaving seeds alone when you don’t know which is wheat and which is weeds as eventually it will become clear and you can harvest the one and discard the other. An even more interesting saying in the context of a sect’s claiming the mustard seed was about an indivisible point as if from nothing or that the sower parable was about seeds scattered upon the world “through which the whole cosmical system is completed.”