Later Christian writers felt it important to answer Julian the Apostate's criticisms of Christianity in his book Against the Galileans. They quoted liberally from the book, and, partly because of their interest, we have substantial portions of a book that might otherwise have been lost.Read through "Against the Galileans," and cite here a line or two
After reading a little bit of Julian the Apostate's Against the Galileans and the first quote that I noticed was "What could be more foolish than a being unable to distinguish good from bad?" I thought this was kind of funny but also very true. I think its funny because you just think how could one not do that but its so true because i mean that could really happen and it does and he's write i think it is foolish. Another quote i saw was “For that the power to distinguish between good and less good is the property of wisdom is evident surely even to the witless; so that the serpent was a benefactor rather than a destroyer of the human race.” this was just really interesting because it talks about how the serpent was the destroyer and i just learned more about it.
ReplyDelete"Though it has in it nothing divine, by making full use of that part of the soul which loves fable and is childish and foolish, it has induced men to believe that the monstrous tale is truth."
ReplyDeleteHere we can see him comparing the religious tales of Christianity to that of children's stories. To me, this is understandable - Romans grew up and worshipped gods that commanded respect at all times and were rather morally grey. While I won't get into an argument here, we will simply state that many Christians believe their God to be kind, loving, forgiving, and gentle, while also simultaneously quick to anger at taunts. For someone who grew up with stories of gods starting wars out of jealousy, or of gods raping women and begetting bastards of various degrees, the Christian stories are downright fanciful in comparison.
"I wish to say in the first place that if my readers desire to try to refute me they must proceed as if they were in a court of law and not drag in irrelevant matter"
Here, we see that he won't even give them an option of raising their own questions and arguments until they fully defend their religion from him. To me, this is incredibly unfair, as he can listen to their defense and decide it's simply not good enough. Or, when their turn comes to bring up their arguments towards his religion, he can brush them off and not listen to them. This was never intended to be a fair trial because he had already made up his mind.