Also, when you write “as with most things eternal and infinitely complex” are you talking about the universe? Whether you go with scientific understand or with a scriptural understanding, I don’ think an “eternal” universe is “in the cards.”

But, you’re criticizing Lucretius here, right? Blah, I should probably just reread Lucretius, the whole Bible, and get back to you…

How does it feel to live in the most democratic state in America?

Lucretius denies any existence whatsoever after death, denies God, denies good & evil, and most of all denies any judgement and therefore his most repeated frame is “do NOT fear anything, especially death or judgement or gods.” Ecc closes: “Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole man. For God will bring every work into judgement, with everything that has been overlooked, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”

And for the last bit about the void and atoms… you’re saying that sensible arrangements (words) are built because every possible arrangement is built. Where are the non-sensible arrangements then? I should clarify non-sensible as non-sensible-as-a-word; we see letters make words, and we see letters in jibberish. So where’s the other infinite jibberish? What makes one “stick” and another “not stick”? Lucretius got around this problem by saying, well, it’ll be there someday, we may unstick at any moment, in fact, we’re probably in the process of unsticking right now.

There also seems to be a problem with “all possible books” and “infinite books” together. As soon as you say “all possible,” I’ll say, aha but, infinity is more than that. Aristotle would probably call that an impasse and look for something comprehensible.

As with most things eternal and infinitely complex, if we don’t admit some mystery, “things fall apart.”

You should go ahead and try every combination of roadways in the U.S. until you land in Annapolis, then we’ll do lunch.

This will most likely not be any help in “understanding” De Rerum Natura, but I’m struck, at the moment, by the similarities between Lucretius’s advice about how to live your life (and die) and the Teacher in Ecclesiastes.

The Teacher claims that the dead in sheol know nothing. Any discussion of an afterlife is conspicuously absent from the book. And, the Teacher’s conclusion is to work hard and eat well and enjoy your “lot” in life. (I’m not sure about the original, but I seem to remember it in the form of “lot” which is a form of chance associated with spinning Fortune’s wheel. This chance seems to resonant with the senseless bumping together of atoms. After all, all is vanity a chasing after the wind.)

Could it have been an influence (direct or indirect)? Ecclesiastes predates Lucretius by at least a couple centuries.

Oh, and in defense of Lucretius, if all is void and atom and there is an infinity of of each, then “words” exist simply because they necessarily must. Even in Borges’s “Library of Babel” there were tomes that made sense without any intentionality– simply because all possible variations of the “book” existed in the library. In an infinite universe God would not have anything to create or to bring into being because it would (always) already exist.

I’ll stop because I’ve begun rambling. (I must be having withdrawals from not having anymore classes.)

Actually, Lucretius has the fixation upon the fear of death. The entire work is an argument of positive Epicurean philosophy, freeing those who heed Epicurus’ “divine” words from the fear of death. Those “unenlightened” captives believe their souls are immortal, NOT because it’s the natural default but because of religion. Although there is no such thing as “nature” the way we think of it, all is chance and nothing has a persisting nature. So, those religious folk believe their souls must be going *somewhere* after they die, and that they should fear punishment for evils committed. But if only they knew beyond all doubt that really they just dissipate into billions of atoms, they need not fear! They should sit back, and enjoy the simple things in life. No need to worry about morality, ethics, justice. The universe will inevitably fall back apart in the way it came together, by chance. So just relax. Lucretius does believe that this “reasoned story” (i.e. logos) can cause/compel one to be unafraid of death, so much so that he closes his poem with a gruesome and painful depiction of a terrible death, for which he apparently is not afraid.

Lucretius also leaves out will, redefining our actions’ sources as purely mechanical; just as wind atoms may hit your eyes and make you blink, pizza atoms enter your eyes and by chain reaction knock your mouth into eating it. So, there’s your instantaneous state change, for Lucretius anyway: simple physics. The bounds are definite, and they are the “laws” of atoms as material. For Lucretius, atoms are like letters, you toss a bunch together, and if they form a word, they might stick for awhile, if not, they’ll just keep on moving alone until they bump into and fit into a real word. Why words exist, he does not explain.

Not to be too psychoanalytical, but you seem to have a philosophical (theological?) fixation on fear (and its ultimate incarnation in mortal anxiety).

Take, for instance, your final statements: you discuss being “compelled” to be unafraid of death and being able to “tell ourselves not to be afraid.” You appear to accept the fact that fear of death is the “natural” (perhaps, more neutrally, “instinctual”) state of the individual. You seem to suggest that the only way for an individual to intervene in his/her “instinctual” (for lack of a better term) state of fear is through some sort of deliberative process (i.e. being compelled by stories, telling ourselves not be be afraid)–what you leave out is a person’s will (whether free or not), which is capable of generating instantaneous state change. Perhaps an individual can be “free” from the “natural” state of mortal anxiety by sheer force of will. When the object of will is internal rather than external the human mind may very well be without any bounds.