(September 18, 2012 at 5:08 pm)genkaus Wrote: I disagree with your interpretation of the allegory - namely that the religious doctrine is the shadow and atheists are the people who have seen the real world - for a completely different reason. Basically, I don't see that there is anything chaining the people and forcing them to look only at the doctrine. They are free to look away, free to see the real world and yet they don't.
All right, I'll give you as much to say that theists are able to look away from doctrine freely, in a literal sense. The allegory of the cave is not a literal interpretation, but I agree with your idea that we are able to look away from doctrine if we so choose. In the cave, the chains imply that the prisoners cannot see the truth no mater how hard they try. This interpretation is not applicable to today's world, as you stated, because we can see the truth.
My point about Zeus and Posiedon was to refer to a time when humans really didn't know the truth. In the allegory, the man returns to the cave, but the cave dwellers don't believe him. However, in modern society, the chains are much less physical than metaphorical. The theists can leave the cave, but they don't. The metaphorical chains are the desire to believe. Correct me if I am wrong, but I would assume that most theists want god and heaven to exist. Some of them may ignore atheistic arguments because they have don't want to believe that he isn't real. I'm sure that there are many theists who have other reasons for believing, and I'm not saying that the allegory applies to all theists, but at least to some. The cave refers to the times when religion originated, so when they base their belief in a diety off of a religion created by dwellers of the cave, it makes it seem like they are still in the cave themselves, in a sense.
John Adams Wrote:The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
