[Athena]

To understand anything about democracy, it is essential to understand the religious conflict between protestants and catholics and jews and muslims, and pursecution of those who had new religious thought and of men of science. Our education for technology is not teaching the history essential to understanding our democracy, and Christianity may very well be part of the problem.

Jeffereson wrote of nature's laws and of nature's God, and we must know of Cicero and ancient philosophers to know what he is talking about. Time and again, I have said, science is to democracy, what the bible is to autocracy. In a theocracy you only need to teach from the holy book. In a democracy you must educate the people. This has everything to do with discovering God through the sciences. It has everything to do with learning good moral judgement based on reason.

Cicero: Philosophy, Metaphysics of Cicero's 'Nature of the Gods'. Quotes Pictures Biography Cicero There are many questions in philosophy to which no satisfactory answer has yet to be given. But the question of the nature of the gods is the darkest and most difficult of all. Yet an answer to this question could shed the clearest light upon the nature of our own minds and also give us the essential guidance which we need in our religion. So various and so contradictory are the opinions of the most learned men on this matter as to persuade one of the truth of the saying that philosophy is the child of ignorance: and that the philosophers of the Academy have been wise in withholding their consent from any proposition that has not been proved. There is nothing worse than a hasty judgement, and nothing could be more unworthy of the dignity and integrity of a philosopher than uncritically to adopt a false opinion or to maintain as certain some theory which has not been fully explored and understood. (Cicero) Are you not ashamed as a scientist, as an observer and investigator of nature, to seek your criterion of truth from minds steeped in conventional beliefs? (Cicero) .. as a philosopher, I have a right to ask for a rational explanation of religious faith. (Cicero) Cicero realised the unity and interconnection of the universe, as he writes; God and the world of Nature must be one, and all the life of the world must be contained within the being of God. (Cicero) The idea that 'All is One' is the foundation of philosophy and comes from the ancient Eastern and Greek Philosophers (~ 5th Century B.C.). Along with these ancient philosophers, Cicero also believed the universe was eternal. .. it is improbable that the material substance which is the origin of all things was created by divine Providence. It has and has always had a force and nature of its own. (Cicero) Western Physics (with its particles and forces in 'Space Time' ) has never correctly understood the wisdom of ancient philosophy (All is One and Interconnected / Dynamic Unity of Reality). It is also important to understand that the ancient philosophers did not actually know how the universe was a dynamic unity, what matter was, how the One Thing caused and connected the many things. Recent discoveries on the properties of Space and the Wave Structure of Matter (Wolff, Haselhurst) confirm that we can understand Reality, 'the true nature of the gods' and the interconnection of all things from a logical / scientific foundation. (As Cicero, Leo Tolstoy and Albert Einstein ask for, a rational explanation of religious faith.) We hope you enjoy the following biography and quotations of Cicero.