Why are atheist stuck in Plato's Cave?

I often wonder what's the knowledge base of an atheist to say God doesn't exist or that there isn't any life after death. We're a type 0 civilization with very limited information on this 3rd rock from the sun yet they know the nature of reality in a universe that some Scientist say is part of infinity or unimaginably large. We haven't even fully explored our own backyard.

What's Plato's Cave?

Plato's allegory of the cave is about prisoners in a cave who think the shadows on the cave wall are real. They think the shadows are objective reality. One of the prisoners escapes and when he leaves the cave he sees that there's so much more to reality than the shadows on the cave wall. He goes back into the cave to tell the other prisoners but they get mad at him because they believe the shadows are all that there is. They will kill anyone that tries to free them from the cave.

The story illustrates how people can be tied to perceptions of reality and they can't see outside of these perceptions. Plato believed in a world of ideal forms and the material world was a shadow of these ideal forms. So the ideal form of goodness is eternal and unchanging but you can have degrees of goodness on earth which is temporary and it changes and decays.

Kurt Godel was a Platonist and I think Plato had it right in this regard. Werner Heisenberg said this:

“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.” ― Werner Heisenberg

Let's look at what science shows.

Einstein sent a letter to Michele Besso's wife when he died that said this:

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

This is such a profound quote and illustrates the shadow on the wall.

Einstein treated time like space. So if all of space is out there then all of time is out there. So 1970 exist in 4D spacetime today and it's just as real as 2022.

Think about it. Our whole lives are built around the distinction betwen past, present and future being objectively real. When we're born, when we die, when we go to work or when we go on vacation are all built around the distinctions between past, present and future being real. Notice, he didn't say time wasn't real, he's saying are perceptions(shadow) of time is an illusion.

The reason this has to be given weight is because so many of Einstein's predictions have been observed. In fact, the recently discovered time crystals are due to Einstein's view of spactime.

The Nobel Prize­-winning physicist Frank Wilczek conceived the idea in 2012, while teaching a class about ordinary (spatial) crystals. “If you think about crystals in space, it’s very natural also to think about the classification of crystalline behavior in time,” he told this magazine not long after.
www.quantamagazine.org...

So because crystalline structures formed in space he thought they should also form in time.

Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real
www.quantamagazine.org...

Time Crystals Made of Light Could Soon Escape the Lab
www.scientificamerican.com...

Physicists link two time crystals in seemingly impossible experiment
www.livescience.com...

'Time crystals' work around laws of physics to offer new era of quantum computing
www.space.com...

So there's 4D spacetime and then our perceptions of time or the shadow on the wall, that can change relative to our motion in space. So you have time dilation and the twin paradox. Our perception of time is just more personal and that's why it's hard to let go of the shadow. "I will meet you at 3 P.M." "Tell her to call me at 7 in the morning to wake me up." So it's easier to see space differently and as out there because most people don't talk in terms of longitude and latitude but time is personal and prevelant in our everyday lives. So it's harder to let go of our perception of time.

Recent work from Cognitive Scientists Donald Hoffman says this also:

The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality

The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions.
www.quantamagazine.org...



Hoffman wrote a book called The Case Against Reality and his work is amazing. He's basically saying what we see as the physical universe is really like icons on a desktop. They're an interface that helps you navigate the computer easily. If you had to know the whole truth behind the icon which would be computer code and how the computer works, you can never simply open a document folder.

Hoffman is saying spacetime is like the desktop and the "physical" universe are just icons of our perception that we use as an interface to navigate our universe but there's a deeper more complex reality behing our perceptions.

This is also what the Bible says. Paul went up to the third Heaven and saw unspeakable things.

So science supports idealism but most atheist can't see outside of the shadow(materialism). They take the knowledge accumulated over a short life span to draw conclusions about the nature of reality. Think about that. You live for 60 years and you say based on your 60 years on this 3rd rock from the sun and the physics of a type 0 civilization, you're going to draw definite conclusions about what could be an infinite cosmos.

I will end with another Heisenberg quote:

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” ― Werner Heisenberg

What you've related here is eminently reasonable as far as it goes. The mystery is how you get from there to Jesus and God. Your post reminds me of that cartoon where a couple of scientists are working at a blackboard. The board is full of equations and in the middle is a cloud with a caption, "And then a miracle happens!" You can't get from Plato's Cave to Jesus in any kind of credible manner. The argument goes nowhere.

a reply to: neoholographic

Great post. Starred & Flagged.

I always liked Plato’s Cave and thanks for explaining that Einstein quote. I’m also going to read more of Donald Hoffman’s work. I agree, some people can’t see beyond what’s in front of them.

originally posted by: schuyler
What you've related here is eminently reasonable as far as it goes. The mystery is how you get from there to Jesus and God. Your post reminds me of that cartoon where a couple of scientists are working at a blackboard. The board is full of equations and in the middle is a cloud with a caption, "And then a miracle happens!" You can't get from Plato's Cave to Jesus in any kind of credible manner. The argument goes nowhere.

Spoken exactly as those fighting to remain in the cave.

a reply to: neoholographic What do you think about that one guy who got out of the cave and came back to tell the others that all they were really seeing were shadows. We only have his word for it don't we? Plato never dug that far into his story.

What if he was lying? What if he didn't and only wanted to be Emperor of the shadow people? And even if he were not lying. What if what he saw was not reality either, just the first step away from the cave. Who is to say that he took more than a step or so and really didn't get a full look at what was around. What if it is cave within a cave within a cave?

I first read his cave back in high school. I thought at the time that it was an allegory about Christians who only looked at the shadows they learned about in Sunday School. I'm pretty sure this still holds in reference to anyone who has a proscribed ''belief system'', atheist or whatever.

originally posted by: neoholographic
I often wonder what's the knowledge base of an atheist to say God doesn't exist

Atheist: prove God exists. It's not "God doesn't exist".

Atheist: would not stay in the cave. An atheist would go look to see if what the other man said is fact.

originally posted by: schuyler
What you've related here is eminently reasonable as far as it goes. The mystery is how you get from there to Jesus and God. Your post reminds me of that cartoon where a couple of scientists are working at a blackboard. The board is full of equations and in the middle is a cloud with a caption, "And then a miracle happens!" You can't get from Plato's Cave to Jesus in any kind of credible manner. The argument goes nowhere.

That’s like saying that someone left the cave and comes back to tell the others that they are living in an illusion.

The people in the cave would not believe such a person.

No human has gone to heaven and returned to speak of it.

Even if someone came back from the dead, they would not believe him.

originally posted by: schuyler
What you've related here is eminently reasonable as far as it goes. The mystery is how you get from there to Jesus and God. Your post reminds me of that cartoon where a couple of scientists are working at a blackboard. The board is full of equations and in the middle is a cloud with a caption, "And then a miracle happens!" You can't get from Plato's Cave to Jesus in any kind of credible manner. The argument goes nowhere.

After Christs resurrection, when the doors were locked in the upper room, due to the fear the disciples had, suddenly Yeshua (Jesus) appeared among them. It has been estimated that He had to be at least 11 dimensional to do so.

Yes, I left the cave!

Great thread!

a reply to: neoholographic

I belueve that entropy plays an important role in this matter.

Romans 8:20 says:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope ...

The Greek wordv translated as "futility" is ματαιότης (mataiotēs). I'm no Greek scholar, but my pitiful understanding sees a link from that word to the concept of entropy. I believe that before the adamic fall, there was no entropy in creation as The Word held everything together. There was no decay. Thinks didn't degrade into a state of disorder. Chaos did not reign over creation. When Adam brought sin into the world, entropy started because his sin introduced universal decay (entropy).

Entropy is often called "the forward arrow of time." We actually mark time with entropy, be it the winding down of a spring, the depletion of a battery or other electrical power source, or the decay of atomic isotopes. We are stuck in this perception of the forward march of time because we are locked into a world that is decaying.

Part of the ultimate fulfillment of the redemptive process will, i believe, be the elimination of entropy from creation, at which point we will be free from time and will be in eternity.

originally posted by: schuyler
What you've related here is eminently reasonable as far as it goes. The mystery is how you get from there to Jesus and God. Your post reminds me of that cartoon where a couple of scientists are working at a blackboard. The board is full of equations and in the middle is a cloud with a caption, "And then a miracle happens!" You can't get from Plato's Cave to Jesus in any kind of credible manner. The argument goes nowhere.

Not at all.

If I told you that the cell phone on which I am composing this reply just happened, that there was no intelligent design behind it, that it just created itself out of nothing, you'd tell me I was an idiot. You can see plainly that there is intelligent design behind this device because you see organization and purpose.

Yet some people will look at the universe (creation) which far surpasses this little cell phone in complexity and organization and which manifests in it's existence and processes purpose, and will say that it just farted itself into existence.

That, my friend, takes true blind faith. Those people believe in nothing. I don't mean that they don't believe in anything. Their faith is literally in the nothing, the void.

If I see design and purpose behind creation, then it follows that I should want to know who or what designed it and for what purpose. The Biblical narrative is the most comprehensive, consistent, logical and hopeful explanation to that conundrum that I have yet to find. It also fits Occam's razor as it is sublimely simple while also being incredibly profound.

You disagree? How much of that narrative - the consistent, continual and interconnected story told from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21 - do you really know and understand?

If you can't say that you know it, then you're entire post is impeached. You speak of things of which you have no knowledge.
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originally posted by: schuyler
What you've related here is eminently reasonable as far as it goes. The mystery is how you get from there to Jesus and God. Your post reminds me of that cartoon where a couple of scientists are working at a blackboard. The board is full of equations and in the middle is a cloud with a caption, "And then a miracle happens!" You can't get from Plato's Cave to Jesus in any kind of credible manner. The argument goes nowhere.

The OP's need to be right is far greater than his desire for the truth.

a reply to: incoserv

But what if you're wrong? Zoroastrians look back to find their flame while they dance backwards into the future no longer alone.

I can't say there's a right or wrong way to find God can't even argue if we should be looking or even attempt to define such things I do want to say that Christianity doesn't seem to be for everyone.

Paths are often built by footsteps, intelligent design or just trying to get somewhere? I'm not so sure there's a predestination. Ascribing meaning to an outside world you've only just encountered isn't all that wise in the grand scheme of things.

Keep looking?

Imagine the shadow on the wall is religion (doesn't matter which, pick any one). Where does that leave your argument?

Maybe atheists just have a deeper rabbit hole?
They think the atmosphere of LO plunging to 105K when it passes behind Jupiter creates the reflective sulfur dioxide frost.

a reply to: neoholographic

This is why I say the only truly honest ones might be agnostics.

The rest of us have faith. Faith in something or faith in nothing.

Even if you have faith, can you accept that you don't truly know? I can and freely admit it. Personally, I know there is a God, but I also know that my knowledge is based purely on personal experience, not on any tangible proof. It is therefore simply faith. It's real enough for me, but that's all it is - faith.

a reply to: neoholographic

I get it.

Atheists lack a humility that they might be wrong.

Any sane and sensible people should always entertain the fact that they might be wrong about life after death, Heaven, Hell.

It's not like ANYONE has ever been there or not and reported back.

I think CERN may wake up some people.

Its at full power now, isnt it?

Who remembers all the details?

This short video by Dr. Horn ties together the things we have discussed in many threads. Maybe we need a refresher?

a reply to: DBCowboy

Atheists lack a humility that they might be wrong.

Isn't that a one sided view? Personally speaking I have never met a god matching the christian or otherwise description, so such a thiing does not exist for me. So why should I have humility in this case?

It's not like ANYONE has ever been there or not and reported back.

How do you know that people haven't been there and have an idea about after-life?

I know an American deceased girl, the one in my avatar, I call her "Alice". We spend a lot of time together. One time she showed up at my workplace insisting I should be in her christian heaven. (Yes I know, there are certain practical considerations here. Gotta love that girl : )

So anyway, she wears me down, and drags me off to see this place. The gates of American heaven have guards to keep people like me outside (I am alive after all).

They would not let me in. She was heart broken and I was not surprised.

So technically speaking I have not been in there, yet I know it exists. Heck, for that matter I know a lot of other dead kids. The church took made great effort to kill them off in the so-called dark ages. They won't go near christian heaven even if you tried to drag them and promised them the world. They know better. What was their crime? Well, they knew the fairy folk when alive. 'Abominations unto god' is what the catholics call them even to my face. But really they are just children who were horribly murdered by the Church.

I can see them, I even find deceased kids in old buildings here in the bush. So many died of neglect.

I am nobody special to see the dead, heck most folk do at some time in their lives.

I'll tell you guys something special about being dead and the after life, and what is illusion and what is, well, illusion from another angle:

The dead are ghosts to the living, and I am a ghost to the dead. Actually, I am a warm ghost to them. A warm fire for lost children in the afterlife. Sometimes I see them as I fall asleep.

(A good humoured yet evil grin ; )

Here is a short story I wrote for an ATS fictional writting competition just the other day. It describes quite well what I am describing:

On cold winter's nights, my bed is warm.
I open my eyes and look upon the countenance of the girl beside me.
Always such a pretty face propped upon an elbow, her smile, the gleam within her eyes.
As I close my eyes once more, I cannot help but smile myself.
She always has that effect on me.
Dozing half asleep, I open my eyes once more.
More pretty faces beside me.
"What are you girls doing?"
"We're waiting for our warm host to fall asleep again before we warm ourselves within you."
Oh well, these ghosts always leave by morning.

Yes I know, there will be calls to say I need an exorcist. : )

Appologies guys I couldn't resist commenting in this forum. I will quietly go away now.

a reply to: DBCowboy


Does the OP realize he's looking at a mirror and not a shadow?



I'll reserve my lack of belief but stay open to the possibility of being 100% wrong.

What happens on a quantum level when you cut off a foreskin? Do beings at seemingly non-connected locales collectively wince and say "oooohh!" while giving a thumbs up sign?