The Antichristian Phenomenon

As I am studying the Greek philosophers right now, there is one interesting question regarding Plato. I may just be rambling and be way off, but I thought it might be worthwhile writing it down nevertheless. To understand why, I will first explain what ideas Plato formulated:

Plato stated that there are basically two realities: one which we can sense with our 5 senses, and one which is objective and is independent to the reality which we can actually sense. This reality is also said to be timeless and cannot change. For sake of easy reference, this objective world will from now be called O, whereas the material reality that we can study will be called M. Plato’s main idea is that M is a shadow of O, because M constitutes of many attributes that makes it “weak” or “lesser” in terms of existence, such as being finite, as compared to O.

Now, I thought that O vs M is a good analogy to ask, what if we compare O to god? I don’t think this idea is very farfetched in theory, because there are actually many similarities between the Christian god and O, most notably that:

- M is a reflection of O
- O is supposed to not be able to change in nature and is timeless
- O exists independently of M

If switching the word O with god, this would happen:

- M is a reflection of god (which can be interpreted as M is god’s creation)
- God cannot change in nature and is timeless
- God exists independently of M

Now, there are however a few flaws in Plato’s theory, most notably the one about independence. Because if O exists independently of M, then how can we know for certain that M is merely a reflection of O? We simply cannot know what O is, because O is supposed to be seperate of M. We cannot study O at all.

This argument is strikingly similar to the argument that Christians keep repeating, except that they are contradicting themselves, because:

1) Christians claim that god exists in another realm of existence outside the material world and can thus not be interacted with or studied
2) Christians claim they have had personal experiences with god, such as being told something by god, or felt a divine presence

But 1) and 2) are almost mutually exclusive because:

3) Christians also claim that we cannot understand or know god

So if 1) is true, then 2) cannot be true, because how can they know it was god if they also at the same time claim 3)? So 2) is actually a contradiction to 1) and 3), because even if they claim to know that was indeed god, we simply cannot know.

While I am not trying to argue for some kind of extreme skepticism here, at least I think that using Plato’s theory as an analogy shows that Christians can never know for a certainty that god indeed exists, and if they claim they do they are contradicting themselves. We cannot logically prove whether god’s existence is true or false, particularly if using a similar argument like that of Plato’s, but I don’t think that is what is important, but rather which I have shown here. Due to logical uncertainty, I think any religious person should not be so quick rushing at saying “goddidit” or “it was god, I know it”, because according to this, how can they can truly know? It could’ve as well been Satan or any other divine being. It is exactly that kind of naïvety that they often claim anti-religious for doing, when the anti-religious do something they do not personally agree with, (“you follow Satan but you don’t know it”), but I think here I have evidence for that they themselves shouldn’t be so certain of god’s existence, or they are as hypocricial as they claim others to be.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 9:09 am and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.