Easier work lay before the Sceptics in criticising polytheistic views of religion and their defence by the Stoics. Among the arguments employed by Carneades to overthrow them, certain chain-arguments are prominent, by means of which he endeavoured to show that the popular belief has no distinctive marks for the spheres of God and man. If Zeus is a God, he argues, his brother Poseidon must likewise be one, and if he is one, the rivers and streams must also be Gods. If Helios is a God, the appearance of Helios above the earth, or day, must be a God; and, consequently, month, year, morning, midday, evening, must all be Gods. [1487] Polytheism is here refuted by establishing an essential similarity between what is accepted as God and what is avowedly not a God. It may readily be supposed that this was not the only proof of the acuteness of Carneades’ reasoning. [1488] Divination, to which the Stoics attached especial importance, [1489] was vigorously assailed. Carneades proved that no peculiar range of subjects belonged thereto, but that in all cases which admit professional judgment experts pass a better judgment than diviners. [1490] To know accidental events beforehand is impossible; it is useless to know those that are necessary and unavoidable, nay, more, it would even be harmful. [1491] No causal connection can be conceived of between a prophecy and the ensuing realisation. [1492] If the Stoics met him by pointing to fulfilled prophecies, he replied that the coincidence was accidental, [1493] at the same time declaring many such stories to be without doubt false. [1494] [(δ) Moral views of the Stoics attacked.] Connected probably with these attacks on divination was the defence by Carneades of the freedom of the will. The Stoic fatalism he refuted by an appeal to the fact that our decision is free; and since the Stoics appealed in support of their view to the law of causality, he likewise attacked this law. [1495] In so doing his intention was not to assert anything positive respecting the nature of the human will, but only to attack the Stoic assertion, and if for his own part he adhered to the old Academic doctrine of a free will, he still regarded that doctrine as only probable.