In their own words

Cosmology	Inventions and Discoveries	Christians
Environment	Philosophy and the Gods	Science and Reason
Age of the Earth	History and the Gods	Agnosticism / Atheism

The quotes below are samples only. I won't give multiple quotes where the same view is expressed on the same topic. Also, that an ancient author states their views on a topic should not be taken as representating a consensus on that topic at that time. In the "Early Writings" section, I give sources for extant works that may be more useful for those wanting to research ancient thinking in more detail.

Finally, note that these are English translations. Sometimes the views of the translator (in this case invariably someone from an English-speaking post 19th Century Western culture) can influence the translation. I don't have the ability to read the ancient languages, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the translations.

Cosmology

Name / Date	Pliny the Elder
Resource	http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137&query=head%3D%2324
Comment	Distance from earth to moon and earth to the sun

The stadium is equal to 125 of our Roman paces (185 meters). Posidonius supposes that there is a space of not less than 40 stadia (7.5 km) around the earth, whence mists , winds and clouds proceed; beyond this he supposes that the air is pure and liquid, consisting of uninterrupted light; from the clouded region to the moon there is a space of 2,000,000 of stadia (370,000 km), and thence to the sun of 500,000,000 (92.5 million km). It is in consequence of this space that the sun, notwithstanding his immense magnitude, does not burn the earth. Many persons have imagined that the clouds rise to the height of 900 stadia (167 km).

Name / Date	Pliny the Elder
Resource	http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137&query=head%3D%2362
Comment	Meteors

CHAP. 59. (58.)--OR STONES THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM THE CLOUDS1 . THE OPINION OF ANAXAGORAS RESPECTING THEM

The stone is now to be seen, a waggonload in size and of a burnt appearance; there was also a comet shining in the night at that time

Name / Date	Origen from DE PRINCIPIIS
Resource	http://www.island-of-freedom.com/OQUOTES.HTM
Comment	Other worlds after this current one

"...it seems to me impossible for a world to be restored for the second time, with the same order and with the same amount of births, and deaths, and actions; but that a diversity of worlds may exist with changes of no unimportant kind, so that the state of another world may be for some unmistakeable reasons better (than this), and for others worse, and for others again intermediate. But what may be the number or measure of this I confess myself ignorant, although, if any one can tell it, I would gladly learn."

Book 2, ch. 3

"...He made this visible world; but as, after its destruction, there will be another world, so also we believe that others existed before the present came into being. And both of these positions will be confirmed by the authority of holy Scripture. For that there will be another world after this, is taught by Isaiah, who says, 'There will be new heavens, and a new earth, which I shall make to abide in my sight, saith the Lord;' and that before this world others also existed is shown by Ecclesiastes, in the words: 'What is that which hath been? Even that which shall be. And what is that which has been created? Even this which is to be created: and there is nothing altogether new under the sun. Who shall speak and declare, Lo, this is new? It hath already been in the ages which have been before us.' By these testimonies it is estabished both that there were ages before our own, and that there will be others after it. It is not, however, to be supposed that several worlds existed at once, but that, after the end of this present world, others will take their beginning..."

Name / Date	Pliny the Elder
Resource	http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137&query=head%3D%2367
Comment	Form of the earth

Every one agrees that it has the most perfect figure . We always speak of the ball of the earth, and we admit it to be a globe bounded by the poles. It has not indeed the form of an absolute sphere, from the number of lofty mountains and flat plains; but if the termination of the lines be bounded by a curve , this would compose a perfect sphere. And this we learn from arguments drawn from the nature of things, although not from the same considerations which we made use of with respect to the heavens. For in these the hollow convexity everywhere bends on itself, and leans upon the earth as its centre. Whereas the earth rises up solid and dense, like something that swells up and is protruded outwards. The heavens bend towards the centre, while the earth goes from the centre, the continual rolling of the heavens about it forcing its immense globe into the form of a sphere.

Name / Date	Plutarch
Resource	http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Moon.html
Comment	Moon, Face in the Moon, Gravity

I. Then said Sylla, These things belong to my story, and form part of it: but if you come at all into collision with these popular notions, that are in everybodys mouth, about the Face in the Moon, I think I should be glad to learn it. Why should we not, I replied, driven back as we are by the difficulty in the first case, to the latter subject?just as people in lingering diseases, when they have lost all hope in the common remedies, and usual courses of diet, fly for refuge to purifications, spells, and dreams: in the same way it is a matter of compulsion in obscure and insoluble problems, when common, accredited, and customary arguments fail to convince, to make trial of others more out of the way, and not despise them; but to chant, as it were, over ourselves some old-fashioned charm, and hunt out the truth in all quarters.

For you see at once how absurd is the explanation that the apparent figure in the moon is merely an affection of the sight, which is dazzled by the brightness, by reason of its own weakness; a thing we call. . . it takes no notice that this effect should rather take place in regard to the Sun

and yet, a safeguard to the moon against falling down is her motion, and the rapidity of her gyration, just as objects placed in slings have a hindrance from falling out in the circular whirling. For the natural tendency acts upon each object, unless it be diverted by some extraneous force. Consequently, her own weight does not act upon the moon, because by means of her rapid rotation its downward tendency is neutralized; there were rather cause to wonder at her not remaining stationary, like the earth, and not rolling out of her place.

it occupies its proper and natural place, as being itself the center, for this is the place around which all weights gravitate and rest, and are carried and tend together from all parts; whereas the whole upper region, even though it should receive some earthy substance forcibly thrown up, immediately excludes it? better say, discharges it, to be carried downwards in the way its own natural tendency directs.

just as these men bring in the egravitation to the center a notion, what amount of extravagance does it not involve? Do not they make out earth to be a sphere, though it contains such depths and heights and inequalities of surface? Do not they make the Antipodes live like caterpillars or lizards, turned upside down, clinging to the earth? And they represent ourselves as not walking erect to stand firm upon it, but wavering away all on one side, like so many drunken men! Don't they pretend that masses of a thousand talents weight falling through the depths of earth, when they arrive at the center are arrested, though there be nothing to encounter or support them? and that if, carried along by their velocity, they shoot past the center, they are turned back again and retrace their course spontaneously?

For the universe is infinite; now that which is infinite hath neither beginning nor limit, so it does not belong to it to possess a middle: for infinity is the deprivation of limits. But he who makes out Earth to be the middle not of the universe, but of the world, is ridiculous for his simplicity if he does not reflect that the world itself is liable to the very same objections: for the universe hath not left a middle place for it also, but it is borne along without house or home in the boundless vacuum

For whilst the Egyptians and Troglodytes, over whose heads the sun stands vertically for a single day at the solstice, and then departing, hardly escape being burnt up through the dryness of the atmosphere, pray is it likely people in the moon can stand twelve summer days in each year, when month by month the sun stands plumb-line over them, and remains stationary, when it is full-moon?

Name / Date	Cicero's "Dream of Scipio"
Resource	http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Christianity/DreamScipio.html
Comment	Beneath the Moon, source of the Nile, inhabitable zones of the earth

In the lowest Sphere the Moon revolves illumined by the rays of the Sun.

Below this in truth nothing exists which is not subject to death and decay, save indeed the Souls, which by the gift of the Gods are bestowed upon the human race.

Above the Moon all things are eternal, but the sphere of the Earth, which occupies a middle place and comes ninth19 does not move: it is the lowest and to it all ponderable bodies are born by their own gravity."...

Now to this melody the stopped ears of men have become deaf; nor is there any duller sense in you. Just as at that place which is called Catadupa, where the Nile falls from the highest Mountains, the people living there lose the sense of hearing on account of the magnitude of the sound

Two zones are habitable, one of which lies to the South, those who dwell therein planting footsteps opposite to your own, and having nothing to do with your race. As to the other zone which you inhabit, and which is subject to the North wind, see how very slender a part has to do with you: for the whole surface inhabited by your race, restricted towards the poles and wider laterally, is indeed but a small island surrounded by the sea, which you call on earth the Atlantic, the Great Sea, or Ocean. Yet, notwithstanding its name, it is but small as thou seest. How then is it possible that from these known and cultivated countries either thy name or that of any of us can cross those Caucasian Mountains, which thou seest, or pass beyond the Ganges ? Who, in the remaining parts of the East, in the uttermost regions of the wandering Sun, either in Northern or Southern Climes, will hear thy name ?

Name / Date	Plutarch
Resource	http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_defectu_oraculorum*.html
Comment	Many worlds

"On this topic it is not necessary to use more words at present. The truth is that whatever cause one may postulate as the author of these occurrences and changes, that cause will keep each of the worlds together within itself; 425for each world has earth and sea, and each has its own centre and occurrences that p431affect its component bodies; it has its own transmutations and a nature and power which preserves each one and keeps it in place. In what lies beyond, whether it be nothing or an infinite void, no centre exists, as has been said; and if there are several worlds, in each one is a centre which belongs to it alone, with the result that the movements of its bodies are its own, some towards it, some away from it, and some around it, quite in keeping with the distinctions which these men themselves make...

But to make more worlds than one, each separate from the other, and to delimit and distinguish the parts belonging to each to go with the whole is not preposterous. cFor the land and the sea and the heavens in each will be placed to accord with nature, as is fitting; and each of the worlds has its above and below and its round p433about and centre, not with reference to another world or the outside, but in itself and with reference to itself...

"Then again, who could feel alarm at the other notions of the Stoics, who ask how there shall continue to be one Destiny and one Providence, and how there shall not be many supreme gods bearing the name of Zeus or Zen, if there are more worlds than one? fFor, in the first place, if it is preposterous that there should be many supreme gods bearing this name, then surely these persons' ideas will be far more preposterous; for they make an infinite number of suns and moons and Apollos and Artemises and Poseidons in the infinite cycle of worlds. But the second point is this: what is the need that there be many gods bearing the name of Zeus, if there be more worlds than one, and that there should not be in each world, 426a god possessing sense and reason, such as the one who among us bears the name of Lord and Father of all? Or again, what shall prevent all worlds from being subject to the Destiny and Providence of Zeus, and what shall prevent his overseeing and directing them all in turn and supplying them all with first principles, material sources, and schemes of all that is being carried out?

Name / Date	Plutarch
Resource	http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/The_Face_in_the_Moon*/A.html
Comment	The moon is an Earth / The Earth revolves around the Sun

Even while I was still speaking Pharnaces spoke: "Here we are faced again with that stock manoeuvre of the Academy:35 on each occasion that they engage in discourse with others they will not offer any accounting of their own assertions but must keep p55their interlocutors on the defensive lest they become the prosecutors. Well, me you will not to‑day entice into defending the Stoics against your charges until I have called you people to account for turning the universe upside down." Thereupon Lucius laughed and said: 923"Oh sir, just don't bring suit against us for impiety as Cleanthes thought that the Greeks ought to lay an action for impiety against Aristarchus the Samian on the ground that he was disturbing the hearth of the universe because he sought to save the phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis.36 We37 express no opinion of our own now; but those who suppose that the moon is earth, why do they, my dear sir, turn things upside down any more than you38 do who station the earth here suspended in the air? Yet the earth is a great deal larger than the moon39 baccording to the mathematicians who during the occurrence of eclipses and the transits of the moon through the shadow calculate her magnitude by the length of time that she is obscured.40 For the p57shadow of the earth grows smaller the further it extends, because the body that cast the light is larger than the earth;41 and that the upper part of the shadow itself is taper and narrow was recognized, as they say, even by Homer, who called night 'nimble' because of the 'sharpness' of the shadow.42 Yet captured by this part in eclipses43 the moon barely escapes from it in a space thrice her own magnitude. Consider then how many times as large as the moon the earth is, if the earth casts a shadow which at its narrowest is thrice as broad as the moon

Name / Date	Plutarch
Resource	http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/The_Face_in_the_Moon*/A.html
Comment	The moon is an Earth

Environment / Age of the Earth

Name / Date	Pliny the Elder
Resource	http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137&query=head%3D%2348
Comment	Avarice & exploitation of the earth

Not that there were greater rewards held out, from the advantages being distributed to a greater number of persons, but that there were more individuals who diligently scrutinized these matters, with no other prospect but that of benefiting posterity. It is that the manners of men are degenerated, not that the advantages are diminished. All the seas, as many as there are, being laid open, and a hospitable reception being given us at every shore, an immense number of people undertake voyages; but it is for the sake of gain, not of science. Nor does their understanding, which is blinded and bent only on avarice, perceive that this very thing might be more safely done by means of science...

She is continually tortured for her iron, her timber, stone, fire, corn, and is even much more subservient to our luxuries than to our mere support. What indeed she endures on her surface might be tolerated, but we penetrate also into her bowels, digging out the veins of gold and silver, and the ores of copper and lead; we also search for gems and certain small pebbles, driving our trenches to a great depth. We tear out her entrails in order to extract the gems with which we may load our fingers. How many hands are worn down that one little joint may be ornamented! If the infernal regions really existed, certainly these burrows of avarice and luxury would have penetrated into them.

Name / Date	Theophilus
Resource	http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/theophilus-book3.html
Comment	Old Earth

For my purpose is not to furnish mere matter of much talk, but to throw light upon the number of years from the foundation of the world, and to condemn the empty labour and trifling of these authors, because there have neither been twenty thousand times ten thousand years from the flood to the present time, as Plato said, affirming that there had been so many years; nor yet 15 times 10,375 years, as we have already mentioned Apollonius the Egyptian gave out; nor is the world uncreated, nor is there a spontaneous production of all things, as Pythagoras and the rest dreamed

Name / Date	Philo of Alexandria
Resource	http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book44.html
Comment	Growth of mountains evidence of an old earth, Volcanoes, Atlantis

And so in like manner some portions of the mountains are broken off, and others grow in their stead: but after a long lapse of time the additional growth becomes conspicuous, because the trees having a more rapid nature display their increase with great rapidity; but mountains have a slower character, on which account it happens that the additions which take place in their case are not perceptible by the outward senses except after a long time. And these men appear to be ignorant of the manner in which they are produced, since if they had not been, perhaps they would have been silent out of shame; but still there is no reason why we should not teach them; but there is nothing new in what is now said, neither are they our words but the ancient sayings of wise men, by whom nothing which was necessary for knowledge has been left uninvestigated; when the fiery principle which is contained beneath, in the earth, is thrust upwards by the natural power of fire, it proceeds to its own appropriate place; and if it meets with any respite or relaxation, though ever so slight, it draws up with it a large portion of the earthy substance, as much as it can; and when it has emerged from the earth it proceeds more slowly; but the earthy substance being compelled to follow it for a long time, being at last raised to an immense height, is contracted at the top, and at last comes to end on a sharp point imitating the general appearance of the flame of fire...

in consequence of which Sicily, which had previously formed a part of the mainland, was now compelled to be an island. XXI. And it is said that many other cities also have disappeared, having been swallowed up by the sea which overwhelmed them;... And the island of Atalantes which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies.

Name / Date	Theophilus
Resource	http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/theophilus-book3.html
Comment	Plato says the earth is more than 100 million years old

But I wish now to give you a more accurate demonstration, God helping me, of the historical periods, that you may see that our doctrine is not modern nor fabulous, but more ancient and true than all poets and authors who have written in uncertainty. For some, maintaining that the world was uncreated, went into infinity; and others, asserting that it was created, said that already 153, 075 years had passed. This is stated by Apollonius the Egyptian. And Plato, who is esteemed to have been the wisest of the Greeks, into what nonsense did he run? For in his book entitled The Republic, we find him expressly saying: "For if things had in all time remained in their present arrangement, when ever could any new thing be discovered? For ten thousand times ten thousand years elapsed without record, and one thousand or twice as many years have gone by since some things were discovered by Daedalus, and some by Orpheus, and some by Palamedes." And when he says that these things happened, he implies that ten thousand times ten thousand years elapsed from the flood to Daedalus. And after he has said a great deal about the cities of the world, and the settlements, and the nations, he owns that he has said these things conjecturally. For he says, "If then, my friend, some god should promise us, that if we attempted to make a survey of legislation, the things now said," etc., which shows that he was speaking by guess; and if by guess, then what he says is not true.

Inventions/Discoveries

Name / Date	Tertullian Ad nationes 197 CE
Resource
Comment	Inventions

The green fig of Africa nobody at Rome had heard of when Cato introduced it to the Senate, in order that he might show how near was that province of the enemy whose subjugation he was constantly urging. The cherry was first made common in Italy by Cn. Pompey, who imported it from Pontus. I might possibly have thought the earliest introducers of apples amongst the Romans deserving of the public honour of deification. This, however, would be as foolish a ground for making gods as even the invention of the useful arts. And yet if the skilful men of our own time be compared with these, how much more suitable would deification be to the later generation than to the former! For, tell me, have not all the extant inventions superseded antiquity, whilst daily experience goes on adding to the new stock?

Philosophy and the Gods

Name / Date	Justin's On the Resurrection
Resource	http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-resurrection.html
Comment	Matter can neither be created or destroyed

Those, then, who are called natural philosophers, say, some of them, as Plato, that the universe is matter and God; others, as Epicurus, that it is atoms and the void; others, like the Stoics, that it is these four--fire, water, air, earth. For it is sufficient to mention the most prevalent opinions. And Plato says that all things are made from matter by God, and according to His design; but Epicures and his followers say that all things are made from the atom and the void by some kind of self-regulating action of the natural movement of the bodies; and the Stoics, that all are made of the four elements, God pervading them. But while there is such discrepancy among them, there are some doctrines acknowledged by them all in common, one of which is that neither can anything be produced from what is not in being, nor anything be destroyed or dissolved into what has not any being, and that the elements exist indestructible out of which all things are generated.

Name / Date	Cicero
Resource	http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Cicero0070/NatureOfGods/0040_Bk.html
Comment	Eating your God? Crazy!

Then why do we add more gods? And what a multitude of them there are!1 For you reckon each single constellation as a god, and call these gods by the names either of animals, as the Goat, the Scorpion, the Bull, the Lion, or of inanimate things, as the Argo, the Altar, and the Crown.) But even if we grant this, how can what remains be, I do not say granted, but in any way understood? When we speak of corn as Ceres, and of wine as Liber, we use, it is true, a customary mode of speech, but do you think that any one is so senseless as to believe that what he is eating is the divine substance? And as for those whom you assert to have attained from the human state to the divine, it is for you to give an explanation of how that could have happened, or why it has ceased to happen, and I shall be glad to be informed.

Name / Date	M. Felix
Resource
Comment	God, the Intelligent Designer

Look attentively at the sea; it is bound by the law of its shore. Wherever there are trees, look how they are animated from the bowels of the earth! Consider the ocean; it ebbs and flows with alternate tides. Look at the fountains, how they gush in perpetual streams! Gaze on the rivers; they always roll on in regular courses. Why should I speak of the aptly ordered peaks of the mountains, the slopes of the hills, the expanses of the plains? Wherefore should I speak of the multiform protection provided by animated creatures against one another?--some armed with horns, some hedged with teeth, and shod with claws, and barbed with stings, or with freedom obtained by swiftness of feet, or by the capacity of soaring furnished by wings? The very beauty of our own figure especially confesses God to be its artificer: our upright stature, our uplooking countenance, our eyes placed at the top, as it were, for outlook; and all the rest of our senses as if arranged in a citadel...

Now if, on entering any house, you should behold everything refined, well arranged, and adorned, assuredly you would believe that a master presided over it, and that he himself was much better than all those excellent things. So in this house of the world, when you look upon the heaven and the earth, its providence, its ordering, its law, believe that there is a Lord and Parent of the universe far more glorious than the stars themselves, and the parts of the whole world.

Name / Date	Pliny the Elder
Resource	http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137&query=head%3D%2371
Comment	"You can't take it with you!"

CHAP. 68. (68.)--WHAT PART OF THE EARTH IS INHABITED.

and yet the man who has most extended his boundary, and has expelled the inhabitants for ever so great a distance, after all, what mighty portion of the earth is he master of? And even when his avarice has been the most completely satisfied, what part of it can he take with him into the grave?

History and the Gods

Name / Date	Tacitus
Resource	http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/histories.5.v.html
Comment	Moses a contemporary with Jupiter

Some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of Crete, who settled on the nearest coast of Africa about the time when Saturn was driven from his throne by the power of Jupiter. Evidence of this is sought in the name. There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the neighbouring tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a barbarous lengthening of the national name. Others assert that in the reign of Isis the overflowing population of Egypt, led by Hierosolymus and Judas, discharged itself into the neighbouring countries. Many, again, say that they were a race of Ethiopian origin, who in the time of king Cepheus were driven by fear and hatred of their neighbours to seek a new dwelling-place. Others describe them as an Assyrian horde who, not having sufficient territory, took possession of part of Egypt, and founded cities of their own in what is called the Hebrew country, lying on the borders of Syria. Others, again, assign a very distinguished origin to the Jews, alleging that they were the Solymi, a nation celebrated in the poems of Homer, who called the city which they founded Hierosolyma after their own name.

Name / Date	Tertullian Ad nationes
Resource
Comment	Primitive man, First Language

Psammetichus thought that he had hit upon the ingenious discovery of the primeval man. He is said to have removed certain new-born infants from all human intercourse, and to have entrusted them to a nurse, whom he had previously deprived of her tongue, in order that, being completely exiled from all sound of the human voice, they might form their speech without hearing it; and thus, deriving it from themselves alone, might indicate what that first nation was whose speech was dictated by nature. Their first utterance was BEKKOS, a word which means "bread" in the language of Phrygia: the Phrygians, therefore, are supposed to be the first of the human race.

Name / Date	Tertullian Ad nationes
Resource
Comment	Altar to the Unknown Gods

Well, but even the gods of the Romans have received from (the same) Varro a threefold classification into the certain, the uncertain, and the select. What absurdity! What need had they of uncertain gods, when they possessed certain ones? Unless, forsooth, they wished to commit themselves to such folly as the Athenians did; for at Athens there was an altar with this inscription: "To THE UNKNOWN GODS." Does, then, a man worship that which he knows nothing of? Then, again, as they had certain gods, they ought to have been contented with them, without requiring select ones. In this want they are even found to be irreligious! For if gods are selected as onions are, then such as are not chosen are declared to be worthless.

Christians

Name / Date	M Felix
Resource
Comment	Wretched Christians

But you in the meantime, in suspense and anxiety, are abstaining from respectable enjoyments. You do not visit exhibitions; you have no concern in public displays; you reject the public banquets, and abhor the sacred contests; the meats previously tasted by, and the drinks made a libation of upon, the altars. Thus you stand in dread of the gods whom you deny. You do not wreath your heads with flowers; you do not grace your bodies with odours; you reserve unguents for funeral rites; you even refuse garlands to your sepulchres--pallid, trembling beings, worthy of the pity even of our gods! Thus, wretched as you are, you neither rise again, nor do you live in the meanwhile.

Science and Reason

Name / Date	Augustine
Resource	http://www.christianmind.org/chr/history/Augustine1.htm
Comment	Science, reason and Holy Scripture

39. Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

Name / Date
Resource	http://history.hanover.edu/texts/presoc/emp.htm
Comment	Evolution

Part. anim. i. 1 ; 640 a 19. So Empedokles was wrong in saying that many characteristics appear in animals because it happened to be thus in their birth, as that they have such a spine because they happen to be descended from one that bent itself back.

Name / Date
Resource	http://history.hanover.edu/texts/presoc/emp.htm
Comment	Reincarnation

369. There is an utterance of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, eternal, sealed fast with broad oaths

whenever any one defiles his body sinfully with bloody gore or perjures himself in regard to wrong-doing, one of those spirits who are heir to long life, thrice ten thousand seasons shall he wander apart from the blessed, being born meantime in all sorts of mortal forms, changing one bitter path of life for another. For mighty Air pursues him Seaward, and Sea spews him forth on the threshold of Earth, and Earth casts him into the rays of the unwearying Sun, and Sun into the eddies of Air; one receives him from the other, and all hate him. One of these now am I too, a fugitive from the gods and a wanderer, at the mercy of raging Strife.

383. For before this I was born once a boy, and a maiden, and a plant, and a bird, and a darting fish in the sea. 385. And I wept and shrieked on beholding the unwonted land where are Murder and Wrath, and other species of Fates, and wasting diseases, and putrefaction and fluxes.

Name / Date	Plutarch
Resource	http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_defectu_oraculorum*.html
Comment	Many worlds

Name / Date	Plutarch
Resource	http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_defectu_oraculorum*.html
Comment	Science vs theology

48 "To sum up, then: while every form of creation has, as I say, two causes, the very earliest theological writers and poets chose to heed only the superior one, uttering over all things that come to pass this common generality:

Zeus the beginning, Zeus in the midst, and from Zeus comes all being;158

but as yet they made no approach towards the compelling and natural causes. On the other hand the younger generation which followed them, and are called physicists or natural philosophers, reverse the procedure of the older school ein their aberration from the beautiful and divine origin, and ascribe everything to bodies and their behaviour, to clashes, transmutations, and combinations. Hence the reasoning of both parties is deficient in what is essential to it, p493since the one ignores or omits the intermediate and the agent, the other the source and the means.

Name / Date	Seneca the Younger
Resource	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_mythology
Comment	Lightening is released as a result of the collision of clouds

Seneca the Younger said[2] (long after the assimilation of the Etruscans) that the difference between "us" (the population of the Roman Empire) and the Etruscans was that

Whereas we believe lightning to be released as a result of the collision of clouds, they believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning: for as they attribute all to deity, they are led to believe not that things have a meaning in so far as they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have a meaning.

Agnosticism / Atheism

Name / Date	Protagoras
Resource	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras
Comment	Agnosticism

Protagoras was a proponent of agnosticism. In his lost work, On the Gods, he wrote: "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life."[7] (80B4 DK)

Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue. He is also believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that man is the measure of all things. This idea was very revolutionary for the time and contrasting to other philosophical doctrines that claimed the universe was based on something objective, outside the human influence.

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