Reductio ad Absurdum: How to most efficently communicate with theists

[Pat Mustard]

I like the Allegory of the cave. I've never heard that before.
It seems to me that ex-theists would stand the best chance of using the Socratic method on theists successfully as they have lived in the cave before.
It's also no wonder that people who have never been a theist would think theists are stupid, having themselves never experienced living in a cave.
I willing to bet that quite a few fancy that they would have seen through the illusion of the shadow even if they were born in the cave.

I wouldn't use Platonic idealism to argue against christians myself, especially considering that a lot of christian theology is a melding of platonic idealism with the earlier mesoptamian ideas in judaism. The works of Augustine of Hippo essentially brought in neo-Platonism as an essential part of chrisatian dogma.

Remember, Plato's allegory of the cave is essentially saying that what we experience in our everyday lives, what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think is only a dim shadow of true reality, which we as corporeal beings cannot truly experience.