Plutarch Quotes
God alone is entirely exempt from all want of human virtues, that which needs least is the most absolute and divine.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. Translated by John Dryden, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough, vol. 2, Little, Brown and Company, 1859, p. 290.
At the time, it was very difficult for people who had been taught all their lives that God was directly responsible for the creation to accept the notion of evolution. At the time, there was not the overwhelming evidence proving Darwin’s theory that we have today. Nor did theologians realize that evolution and Darwinism were not inconsistent with the concept of a creator and supreme being. Nonetheless, there are still those who, like Agassiz, reject evolution and insist that the Biblical version of creation is literally true. See {586990}. Then there are people who have come up with the concept of Intelligent Design which originated with Agassiz though he never called it that. Most religious people today, in contrast, see no conflict in natural selection as described by Darwin and later proven, and the concept of God. They see the Biblical creation as metaphorical and natural selection as the product of an omniscient supreme being.
Spinoza was by no means an atheist. He was a very orthodox Jew. However his conception of God, while much in the mainstream of modern thought was incomprehensible to the religious authorities of the day. Spinoza was one of the most feared intellectuals in human history—feared that is by the established power structures. He is the only known person who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims. He was the enemy of authority and advocated personal reason as the guide for men.
Plutarch (/ˈpluːtɑːrk/; Greek: Πλούταρχος, Ploútarchos; Koine Greek: [ˈplutarkʰos]; AD 46–after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo. He is known primarily for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and Moralia, a collection of essays and speeches. Upon becoming a Roman citizen, he was named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Λούκιος Μέστριος Πλούταρχος).
