Heraclitus and the Eternal Universe

Heraclitus was one of the good ol' boys of ancient southern Greece. He drove a car with a Confederate battle flag painted on the roof and yelled "whee-OOH!" a lot. Yeah, I know, it's usually pronounced CLY-tus, not CLEE-tus, but that's less conducive to word play. Anyway, why were (and are) Western people enamored with ancient Greek philosophers?

Although nobody knows what Heraclitus looked like,
here is a painting of him attributed to Johannes Moreelse from ca. 1625 

I'll allow that some of the ancient philosophies are interesting. For that matter, Socrates had a fascinating method. The Ptolemaic system of geocentrism (Earth does not move, everything orbits us) was favored by the scientific community and the Roman Catholic Church. Greek philosophy influenced some of the Church Fathers, and can be see in the writings of Augustine. (When Augustine's work had a revival of sorts, things he had right were used but other things had to be corrected.) As we have seen, evolutionism is an ancient Greek religion that has influenced many people throughout history, and the Bearded Buddha made it sciency. Getting back to 'Clitus the misanthrope, some mighty odd things were attributed to him.

It seems that although the Greeks valued philosophy and thinking, they were not very skilled at showing why they believed some things — a trait found in many modern Darwinists. Some incomplete observations were unduly extrapolated and arbitrary assertions were often made. Democritus believed that everything was composed of much smaller things, which seemed to be a lucky guess that was on the right track. 

Heraclitus taught that the basic material of the universe was fire. He also taught an eternal universe (a concept that should have been refuted by Bible-believing creationists throughout history). This is actually a legend, since there are no substantial works dating anywhere near the time he lived — unlike the abundance of reliable biblical manuscripts. The eternal universe is similar to the steady-state model that was dropped on the trail in favor of the Big Bang.

Greek philosopher Heraclitus was one of the first promoters of an eternal universe, which, sadly, found its way into Christian theology. The Bible tells a different story.

“If there were no sun, on account of the other stars it would be night.”

When I recently read this quote, I thought it sounded like something Yogi Berra might have said. However, the great New York Yankees catcher and manager didn’t say this. Rather, this nugget is from Heraclitus, an early 5th century BC Greek philosopher.

While Heraclitus is notable for many things, he is best known for his teaching that the world is in flux, or continually changing. To illustrate this, Heraclitus famously said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” Unfortunately, none of Heraclitus’ writings survive intact. We rely upon what others said about him, and in some cases, fragments of his writings, such as the quote above. Some scholars doubt that the phrase, “on account of the other stars,” was original to Heraclitus, being added by someone else later. If this is true, then the possible original quote (“If there were no sun it would be night”) sounds even more like a Yogi-ism.

To quote Yogi Berra, "You can observe a lot by just watching." In this case, you can learn a lot by observing the rest of the article at "Heraclitus: Original Proponent of the Eternal Universe". Also, the following video has some rough spots, but others  I found can possibly cure insomnia in just a few minutes, I'll go with this one:




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