Xenophanes

Gold and Ivory Artemis(?)

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Xenophanes (c. 570 BCE)

Greek thinker born in Colophon, an Ionian Greek coastal city.

Xenophanes critiqued the cosmology of Homer, Hesiod and the popular pre-Socratic take on religion and mythology.

From his surviving fragments – and from others commenting on his work – it’s clear that Xenophanes satirized the anthropomorphic nature of the Greek pagan gods, arguing that God must be unmoving and changeless.

5. But mortals suppose that the gods are born (as they themselves are), and that they wear man’s clothing and have human voice and body. [Zeller, 524, n. 2. Cf Arist. Rhet. ii. 23; 1399 b 6.]

6. But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own-horses like horses, cattle like cattle. [Zeller, 525, n. 2. Diog Laer. iii. 16; Cic. de nat. Deor. i. 27.]

Arthur Fairbanks, ed. and trans. “Xenophanes: Fragments and Commentary,” The First Philosophers of Greece (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1898), p. 67.

Likewise, the early Christian writer Clement of Alexandria (2^nd – 3^rd CE) wrote in his Miscellanies 5. 109:

Xenophanes of Colophon puts it well indeed in teaching that god is one and without a body (asomatos): “There is one god, greatest among gods and men, who is not like human beings either in form (demas) or in thought (noema).”

Source » “XENOPHANES of Colophon” http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/xenophanes.html

Offering piercing criticisms of the pre-Soctratic mindset, Xenophanes nevertheless believed that we cannot be certain about anything. As such, he said that his observations were necessarily conjecture.

E. L. Hussey says that Xenophanes made the “first known attempt at philosophical theology”–i.e. thinking about faith instead of glossing over and mindlessly reproducing its cultural and historical aspects (Ted Honderich, ed., Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995, p. 920).

» Comparative Religion

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X-Men

X-Men

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X-Men

A fictional team of mutant superheroes with special abilities created by Marvel Comics writers Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

The original comic series has been successfully translated into a film trilogy and an animated TV series.

There is also an American and Canadian science fiction television show called Mutant X that is based on the original Marvel comic strip.

The idea of X-Men compels us to remember that genetic mutation and recombination need not always be bad.

Society’s condemnation of the X-Men and their genetically enhanced abilities is unfounded, even paranoid, and might parallel present misunderstandings and tensions between those lying in the middle and at the extremes of the so-called normal bell curve.

Quite possibly some of today’s “freaks and geeks” represent a kind of precursor to the next stage of human evolution.

It has also been argued that X-Men is a symbolic protest against current forms of racism and discrimination that different religious, ethnic and status groups may hold toward one another. » Science Fiction

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