Evangelicals and Cosmology -

[Iwasamwillbe]

Have you ever noticed that the way most of the evangelicals of yore described the structure of the universe was basically Diet Platonism?

Any evangelical in the 80s to the end of the 2000s that was somebody explained the cosmos as essentially composed of two parts: a physical, material, spatiotemporal reality (which may or may not have infinite space and/or time) juxtaposed to an infinite, nonphysical/metaphysical, spiritual, eternal, transcendent reality. The spiritual world supercedes and is even the source of the material world, and events that draw on the "energies" of the spiritual world can even override natural law.

This is quite similar to many strands of Platonism, just with the "spiritual world" substituted for the "realm of forms".

I never really noticed that until now, since evangelical stuff was just background noise for me, until I watched a certain moral panic movie for my own personal amusement. I also wonder how much of this stuff is actually biblical in nature.

 

[gobbogobb]

I too took philosophy 101

 

[Dom Cruise]

I have a vivid memory of my family's pastor actually telling the congregation about Plato's allegory of the cave during church once in the 1990s, I was maybe only 6 or so at the time and it blew my mind because I had never heard that concept expressed before.

So I think you're really on to something here.

 

[Robert James]

It's like christian theology spent a big chunk of it's development time back in the days of the Romans and would be influenced by the major philosophies of the time or something. Plato was around before Christ was born and his teachings would of been well known. Not to mention quite a bit of European culture is built on those concepts so it would make sense for the main religion to adopt them. Depending on what type of Christian you are the bible is either the word of god or the word of god interpreted by man and therefore flawed and likely to be influenced by the period it was written. So it is very likely that Platos teachings played a role in developing some of the lessons taught in Christianity, (insert joke about catholic preachers here).


The question I have for you is what was the "Moral Panic" movie about and most importantly was it correct?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Christianity is heavily influenced by Hellenic philosophy, that’s babby-level theology.

 

[BoingBoingBoi]

oh gee wiz it's almost like the Chrisitian God is just the Form of the Good.

 

[Chad Nasty]

I find it more intertwined with the concepts of quantum theory. The concepts rooted in locality from what I've read leads to two possibilities: everything was preordained from the beginning or its just "Gods rolling dice". Ever since reading that entanglement is provable, I've had a lot of questions.

 

[Positron]

There really isn't anything wrong with Plato's theory of Forms except it cannot be empirically proven. Religious truths are likewise impervious to empirical proof, so the fact that the two answer each other is -- okay?