Heracles' Hope in the Midst of Suffering

I don’t know the extent to which the culture of ancient Greece doubted its gods, but Euripides' tragedy Heracles certainly appears to question both their worthiness and existence. And when, in the course of human history, thinkers have entertained the idea that no gods exist, they always find something to replace them.

Heracles opens with the hero away performing his labours (mostly killing stuff) while an upstart ruler has evicted Heracles’ family from their home. Destitute and homeless, they supplicate Zeus for aid even as the ruler plans to execute them. At the last minute, Heracles returns, but the situation only gets worse. Hera sends Iris and Madness to drive Heracles into a frenzy during which he slays his own wife and children. When he returns to himself, he finds he has lost all by his own hands.

This story presents the gods in the worst possible light. The backstory is that Zeus cheated on Hera, sneaking into Megara’s bed and fathering Heracles. Hera exacts her revenge on Heracles and his family, using Iris and Madness as her pawns. We hear not a peep from Zeus despite all the supplication to him. Thus it’s no wonder that the characters repeatedly question the justice of the gods. After the bloodbath, Heracles openly holds the gods in disdain:

Let the glorious wife of Zeus now dance for joy and make Olympus shake with her footsteps! She has achieved her will; she has cast down from on high the foremost man of Greece, toppling him from his very foundations! What man would utter prayers to such a goddess? 

In the face of suffering, Christians claim that everything happens according to God’s will, which is unfathomable to mere mortals, but ever since antiquity, philosophers and common folk alike have seen the existence of evil and suffering as a significant challenge to the existence of any god worth the name. Would a good and all powerful god will the suffering of innocents? (previous post)

That is a riddle all believers face--as Heracles does. My copy of the play has introductory notes by Richard Rutherford, who states the play is merciless in its complete lack of hope for the hero. Instead of the deus ex machina coming at the end of the play to solve all problems, it happens halfway through and only stirs things up. And while some traditions hold that Heracles was later worshipped as payment for his suffering, Euripides has Theseus mention this briefly only to have Heracles shut him down. Nonetheless, I can’t help but disagree with Rutherford, for Euripides does indeed hold out hope.

Only it isn’t divine.

A recurring theme throughout Heracles is friendship. As the new Theban ruler Lycus subjects Heracles’ family to humiliation and worse, no one comes to their aid. The drama isn’t very long, but repeatedly the characters mention how friends tend to disappear in hard times. Amphitryon, Megara’s husband and the man who raised Heracles, states it as follows:

As for friends, some I see are not to be relied upon, while those deserving of the name are powerless to assist. So it is when men encounter misfortune. I pray that no friend of mine, even a mere acquaintance, may have this experience; there is no surer test of friends.

If Epictetus (or what I remember of his writings anyway) is anything to judge by, the vagaries of fate and the evanescent loyalty of friends are commonplace themes in ancient Greek literature, which is exactly why they stood out to me among all the more exciting elements. When you experience hard times, many friends would prefer to keep you and your affliction at an arm’s length, but a few will be there through thick and thin. This is the hope Euripides offers in a world where the gods are dubious entities at best.

This is hard to miss in the text, for not only does it show up repeatedly, but it is the note on which Euripides ends the play. Heracles is a defeated and broken demigod when his old friend Theseus shows up and offers some manly encouragement along the lines of “Quit crying and man up.” To this, Heracles is like, “Come on, everybody hurts sometimes,” and then Theseus, proving himself an understanding friend, is like, “Very well then. You’re welcome to crash at my place.”

They exit.

The caprices of fate strike us all, and when they do, maybe you turn your eyes to the heavens, maybe you don’t, maybe you feel a supernatural power answers, maybe you don’t, but undeniably the existence and qualities of any supposed divinity are uncertain. Friendship, on the other hand, while not always firm, is one hundred percent natural and experienced by all. In the absence of constant gods, we may find solace in inconstant humanity.

 

Surely We Can Disprove Certain Gods

Many atheists like Bill Nye the Science Guy also identify as agnostics (video)--as atheists because they see no reason or evidence for belief in God, and as agnostics because it cannot be proven that God does not exist. This last point provides a favorite comeback for Christian apologists--“Sure, we can’t prove God exists, but you can’t prove He doesn’t!”--and atheists usually grant this, but I’m not sure they should.

Many of a scientific bent allow the apologists this point for empirical reasons: We haven’t observed everything in the universe, so God could be out there somewhere, in a distant galaxy, in the space between the smallest of subatomic particles, perhaps racing along the strings that bind us. If God is a thing to be discovered, then we really won’t be sure until every last nook and cranny of the great unknown has been known.

On rational grounds, however, the arguments against the existence of God are much tighter. One of the most well-known examples is David Hume’s formulation of theodicy based on the supposed attributes of God:

"Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)

In other words, because evil exists, we know that God, if such a being exists, cannot be what people say God is: omnipotent and good. To build upon that, if there is a being out there who is extremely powerful but falls shy of omnipotent and isn't benevolent, then we would not call that being God. Therefore, God as we think of such a being, does not exist.

God is fraught with other paradoxes as well. If God is out there in the universe somewhere and involved with the world--walking his dog behind the Ring Nebula, curing a loved one’s sickness, or opening up a slot at the local daycare when you really need it--then God would be subject to the limitations of space-time. Even to break the rules of nature--like by stopping the sun as in Joshua 10:13--God would have to do something to break the rules, have to exert a certain kind and degree of effort to get the job done, have to put him/herself out. And none of this is coherent with the idea of God as limitless and subject to nothing but divine will.

It solves nothing to posit a God outside the universe, because then God would have absolutely nothing to do with us--and that doesn’t fit our idea of God either. But what about a God outside the universe, but one who reaches in to fiddle around? No, then you are back to a God subject to the laws of reality, at least to some degree.

Ontological arguments for the existence of God, abandoned by serious theologians centuries ago but still popular among charlatans on the speaking circuit, attempted to prove the existence of God by his very definition. They said the definition of God, the idea of God, includes his actual existence, so the very fact that we have an idea of God must mean he exists.

The case I’m making is sometimes called the Reverse Ontological Argument, because it seeks to disprove God’s existence by the very definition of the word. In defining God as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, benevolent, limitless, absolute, absolute other, and so forth, we give rise to logical contradictions.

Such a being cannot exist if we take reason seriously.

I suspect that the reason Nye and other prominent atheists don’t often bring up such ontological objections is they aren’t primarily philosophers. Their books mostly stick to their respective areas of expertise. Also, public debate isn’t encouraging of dense, abstract arguments.

Not being the world’s greatest philosopher, I have probably missed weaknesses in such rational arguments. A formula like Descartes’ cogito ergo sum seems about as watertight as a first principle could be, but great minds have found holes in it. At the very least, rational arguments make a strong case for ruling out the existence of certain kinds of gods--any gods worth the name anyway--and it's a point I wish atheists were more willing to press.