It is not that Xenophanes did not have a god, or rather God. His supreme God was to be identified with the entire universe, a single, motionless entity. This God has neither human form nor a mind like a human’s. He does not speak to humans directly and does not make appearances in their circles. This leads to one of Xenophanes’ most profound inferences—profound since many subsequent Greeks who doubted the existence of the Olympians nevertheless participated in all the rituals of their cities. Xenophanes despised a ritual in which houses were decorated with pine branches because they were
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