Is anyone here familiar with Plato's Allegory of the Cave? We discussed it in english class the other day, and I found it to be strikingly applicable to religion. You can find an overview here: Allegory of the Cave.
It appears to explain everything at first, but then comes a puzzling discontinuity. If the cave (and the lack of undrestanding associated with it) are what breed the 'goddidit' notion, then why are so many people still there, even after we've discovered that Zeus doesn't cause lightning, Posiedon isn't responsible for tsunamis, and that the earth isn't flat? They keep forgetting that the difference between the bible and mythology is that the latter has been acknowledged to be a bunch of morally and scientifically outdated fictional stories, whereas the former hasn't. They took Zeus pretty seriously back then, and yet modern theists can dismiss their claims immediatly, because a lot of people will agree with them. I used to think "wow, Zeus and Posiedon, etc. kill so many people for not worshipping them, and turn people into animals and bugs when they say something out of line. I'm sure glad Yahweh doesn't do stuff like that." ...right
It appears to explain everything at first, but then comes a puzzling discontinuity. If the cave (and the lack of undrestanding associated with it) are what breed the 'goddidit' notion, then why are so many people still there, even after we've discovered that Zeus doesn't cause lightning, Posiedon isn't responsible for tsunamis, and that the earth isn't flat? They keep forgetting that the difference between the bible and mythology is that the latter has been acknowledged to be a bunch of morally and scientifically outdated fictional stories, whereas the former hasn't. They took Zeus pretty seriously back then, and yet modern theists can dismiss their claims immediatly, because a lot of people will agree with them. I used to think "wow, Zeus and Posiedon, etc. kill so many people for not worshipping them, and turn people into animals and bugs when they say something out of line. I'm sure glad Yahweh doesn't do stuff like that." ...right
John Adams Wrote:The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
