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TIL that the Big Bang Theory was first proposed by a Catholic priest (www.britannica.com)
submitted 8 months ago by i_have_no_enemies@lemmy.world to c/atheism@lemmy.world
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[-] kromem@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

True, though I did once need to do a double take when researching a document from antiquity:

Next after them, Epicurus introduced the world to the doctrine that there is no providence. He said that all things arise from atoms and revert back to atoms. All things, even the world, exist by chance, since nature is constantly generating, being used up again, and once more renewed out of itself—but it never ceases to be, since it arises out of itself and is worn down into itself.

Originally the entire universe was like an egg and the spirit was then coiled snakewise round the egg, and bound nature tightly like a wreath or girdle.

At one time it wanted to squeeze the entire matter, or nature, of all things more forcibly, and so divided all that existed into the two hemispheres and then, as the result of this, the atoms were separated.

  • Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion book 1 chapter 8

This was pretty early into researching the Epicureans, and the level of detail here about all matter being squeezed down actually made me wonder if this had been a hoax document or something that was actually from modernity.

I'm not sure how the heck the Orphic egg and serpent ended up mixed up with Epicureanism (only here AFAIK), but when I found this I'd also been really into Neil Turok's CPT symmetric universe theory as an explanation for the baryon asymmetry problem, so its discussion of matter being squeezed and then splitting into two which divided the particles was particularly eyebrow raising.

Not a hoax - just a group that were pretty clever in their approach to knowledge with a smart methodology that brought them rather close in a number of ways to the later determined correct answers on several big questions (probably most impressively on evolution). Still have no idea how or why they settled on matter being squeezed in the beginning of things as the mechanism here though.

They were the OG atheist philosophers in an age not long after Socrates had been put to death in the epicenter of open discussion for the charge of impiety. So they didn't completely deny the existence of gods (likely for their own safety) but did so in all practical ways.

this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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