Xenophanes
Even before the Sophists, Xenophanes had attacked religion as a relativistic human invention. He noted that the Olympian gods acted suspiciously like humans. They lie, steal, philander, and even murder: “Homer … attributed to the gods all the things which among men are shameful and blameworthy—theft and adultery and mutual deception”. Xenophanes also noted that dark-skinned people had dark-skinned gods and light-skinned people had light-skinned gods. He went so far as to say that if animals could describe their gods, they would have the character- istics of the animals describing them:
Mortals think that the gods are born, and have clothes and speech and shape like their own. But if cows and horses or lions had hands and drew with their hands and made the things men make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and each would make their bodies similar in shape to their own.
With regard to religion, Xenophanes observed that not only do humans create whatever “truth” exists, but they also create whatever religion exists. Moral codes, then, are not divinely inspired; they are human inventions. However, it would be incorrect to conclude that Xenophanes was an atheist. What made him most controversial was that he actu- ally postulated a supreme god with characteristics unlike those of any of the Olympian gods that were popular at the time. Waterfield (2000, pp. 26–27) summarizes those characteristics:
