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Ethiopians say that their gods are flat-nosed and dark, Thracians that theirs are blue-eyes and red-haired. Fragment B16

This statement is one among several of Xenophanes's clever attempts to demonstrate the human tendency to project our own qualities onto our deities. The traditional theological conception, he claims, is based entirely on such projections and thus fails to hit on any theological truths. The truth, according to Xenophanes, is that there is a single god, unlike human beings in form or thought, who is unmoving, but all-seeing, all-hearing, and all-thinking, and who controls the world with his mind.

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