Tag: plato

Letter to an Atheist

If you’ve ever watched the Flintstones, you know all about Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. Not only cute kids but they wrote a smash hit single that went: Let the sunshine in. Let the sunshine in. Open up your heart and let the sunshine in.

This represents the way many feel about their God. They connect by opening up their hearts, and it goes with something a friend once told me. I asked why religious people never smoke dope. He said, “Because they’re stoned all the time.” 

Not everyone gets high using this method. Some get downright incensed at the sound of religion. Few of America’s founding fathers had time for faith and Jefferson once cut up a Bible, threw away all the bad parts, and glued it back together in accordance with his own views. Anger against the church is nothing new but atheists take it to a new level. Not only do they disrespect religion, they don’t believe in God. 

Protractor

Before getting to non-believers, we need a definition since all sorts of people believe all sorts of things. Let’s use a protractor.

There are six types of people. Fundamentalists are strict believers who take their faith literally; progressives are big on religion while open to discussion; lights are into faith, but not that heavy; deists believe in God but not religion; agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve; and atheists say both God and religion are a crock. So there you have it. From big God to no God, we have a wide variety of personalities. And most atheists aren’t atheists at all—they’re actually deists. 

Christianity

Like most religions, Christianity is comprised of four parts. And not all followers buy in. 

  • Philosophy – along with Paul’s letters to the Romans, much of Catholic doctrine was inspired by Plato and written by a man named Saint Augustine. And though it’s changed over the years, this philosophy has always addressed the issue of ethics and the mysteries of life.
  • Rules – initially based on Roman law (which came from strict Jewish tradition), the rules also changed over time but today, they’re certainly not for everyone.
  • Story – if you think of Christianity as a business, the story is its marketing department. They added miracles to impress past-day people into buying into this system. Could it all be true? Possibly, but it goes without saying that not everyone agrees.
  • Implementation – not only was religion rolled out once devised, leaders also had to worry about market share (wars and crusades) and day-to-day operations. It’s from these last two that the many “man made” scars have been inflicted. But let’s be honest, this system also brought much good into the world. Good performed by those who found beauty in this faith.

That’s religion in a nutshell. Some revel in the whole package (fundamentalists who get stoned) while others take a lighter approach (most Canadian Catholics). And it’s the position of “lights” that atheists may find intriguing. You see, atheists come in three pasts: they’ve either had a lousy life (original definition), were raised with faith and broke away, or weren’t raised with religion at all and could never buy in. 

Comedian Jimmy Carr calls it an epiphany when you break free from faith, which of course is ironic since an epiphany is supposed to be a religious experience. What he doesn’t say is it’s only the first one. There are at least two more. One, that recognizes the church was very much a necessity and damn fine idea. And two, that the world still needs religion. It needed it back then and needs it today. Maybe we’ll evolve to where culture no longer requires it, but I believe this change is happening way too fast and people aren’t ready for what they’re creating.

Reason and imagination

If you don’t like faith, we have two more choices. Reason is brought to us by Plato and Pythagoras — the master of math. Plus Carl Jung, who is the second most influential psychologist next to Freud. They can all prove it.

Everyone knows Aristotle studied under Plato, but Plato studied under Pythagoras for ten years. Pythagoras was the world’s first genius at mathematics. He believed through mathematics and knowing the stars you could definitely prove the existence of God. As a matter of fact, one of only two perfect IQ scores said the same thing. About 30 years ago, he gave up all material interest and went about concentrating on such proof.

Pythagoras felt it was through incrementations found in music and measurements in the sky. He said this universe is far too precise to have been created without order. It’s the manifestation of order. And Plato insisted that any serious study of philosophy include the area of astronomy. He said they go together. “As above, so below.” Pretty serious players say it’s all real and we’ll leave it at that. 

But if math isn’t your ticket, let’s talk imagination. Imagination is what occurs when you realize human fragility. That not only can your bones be crushed in an instant so can your hope. And that having a god is the best psychological medicine one can take. The finest thing the Protestant Reformation gave us was the ability to hold a personal god. It’s great. You can make yours whomever you wish. So if nothing else fits, make one up. The question isn’t who is God and what does She want from me, the question is what should it be? This is My God.  

Summary

You don’t need a creator when things are going well and you’re on top of a mountain. You need God for the valleys when things are going rough. To stop you from jumping into the lake ‘cause life really sucks. That’s why my favourite story from the Bible is when God takes a walk with us along the sand. The person he is telling asks, “But Lord, sometimes there is only one set of footprints. Is that when thou hast forsaken me?” And God says, “No, you idiot. That’s when I carried you.” 

There are three paths to the father: faith, reason, or imagination—and they all start the same. Open up your heart and let the sunshine in.

The Human Condition

Alts say life is a trip that gets explained to us at the end. So what is it we’re supposed to be doing on this journey? The answer may lie in the aspects of life that are common to us all—the human condition.

Everyone gets a body, has a childhood, experiences dating, and goes to school. We all have friends, encounter nature, and eventually get a job. And everyone feels a myriad of emotions. Protestant or Hindu, rich or poor, that’s the way it is. And most of what occurs in this lifetime is the same. Imagine a tall building or a multi-level ship. You flourish by travelling between floors. Each one is a separate experience. For example, floor eight could be money. Floor ten could be love. So keep wandering and pushing buttons until they say time is up.

Body

Maybe we don’t all eat lobster but we do all eat. Maybe we don’t all compete at the Olympics but we do all compete. And maybe we don’t all have multiple lovers but everyone tangles up with someone.

  • Eating—we have our favourites and things we don’t like.
  • Sleeping—some toss and turn, some like a baby.
  • Fashion—from dressing to how we style our hair.
  • Physical—hiking, playing sports, building a model, or taking a stroll. And whether by bus or by car, we all experience motion.
  • Health—we have sick days and times we feel great.
  • Senses—in addition to taste, we get to see, hear, smell, and feel. So whether it’s colours, sounds, scents, or texture—it’s all part of being here.
Nature

We’ve all felt water and played with animals. Some like to garden, some like to camp. In the end, everyone has a relationship with nature. From petting a dog, to walking in the wilderness, all of these make up a level. Wind, rainbows, flowers, and hills—lots to perceive out there.

People

Relationships are obvious. We meet loads of people. Friends come and go, family stays. Friends are typically going through the same phases in life as we are (e.g., high school), family is different. And there are neighbours and workmates. We all get along.

  • Family—everyone has parents and relatives.
  • Friends—everyone makes friends or acquaintances.
  • Romance—those who invoke infatuation, attraction, and heartache in us.
  • Teachers—many have a mentor influence over you.
  • Co-workers—connections between people you work with.
  • Cell mates—you can get a good one, you can get a bad one, some call them spouses.
Experiences

There are also many experiences we have in common. Take for example:

  • Birth—everyone has a birthday (and better yet a star sign).
  • Entertainment—different dials for pleasures and fun.
  • Money—everyone has a relationship with money.
  • Music—some have a deep connection with rhythm.
  • Fantasy—most bond to some genre of film or novel. Others make it up.
  • Learning—like it or not, you’re going to learn something.
  • School—we all go.
  • Suffering—can’t forget the Buddha since everyone eats it sometimes.
  • Travel—we don’t always stay in the same place.
  • Work—no matter how lazy, eventually we assume an occupation and come to know the difference between doing a good job and not.
Emotions

We feel a cast of emotions. Happy and sad is just the start. Courage and fear, anger and calm. Trust, pride, shame, and envy. Frustration, pity, kindness, and disgust. Sure, love is a big one but don’t forget the ones that rile you up (like passion) and those that bring you down.

Then add in characteristics that determine your actions. Aristotle called them virtues and said their development was the education of emotion. Integrity, humility, loyalty, and forgiveness. Compassion, generosity, ethics, and patience. These are greater than emotion by means of depth.

Dynamics

Along with various sensations there are many dynamics. Sensations are physical feelings (waterskiing), emotional feelings (laughing, crying), intellectual (learning, solving a problem), primal (hunger), and spiritual (ever watch Ghost Whisperer?). Dynamics are two-dimensional planes that we also operate on (see Taoist symbol).

Summary

Realizing you’re bound within a body is easy to imagine since you can only bend in certain ways. Seeing how you’re trapped within personality is a whole other affair. You can only do so much. Fortunately, we also have souls—and remember, everything gets explained to us at the end.

Plato said the mind can be broken into three: spirit, reason, and animal. Spirit is the soul (easy). Reason is what figures things out and decides how to live. And animals are for all-you-can-eat buffets. All three cover physical and emotional needs. The theory goes like this: souls enter this world by inhabiting a body and personality—just like boarding a car on a midway. Angels help you on, take the tickets, and buckle you in. Then you go through oodles of adventures and one day return to the mother ship (where they explain it to you).

Maybe not every person is covered by a soul, perhaps some are just actors. And maybe souls also exist within animals and objects. Who knows? In the meantime, everyone is going through similar sorts of events. Yes, everything isn’t exactly the same, it’s more like getting ten paints from a palate of twenty. But regardless of what you’re handed, it’s good to acknowledge that you’re living the human condition.

This concession is great for conversation, keeps your ego in check, and says don’t be a dolt. Dale Carnegie made a fortune by telling people about the first one. Maybe you’ll gain riches from all three. No matter, there’s lots to do.

The Soul

I was once stuck on an elevator with two very different people. We were there for hours and needed conversation but nobody knew what to say.

Charles was a wealthy, healthy, executive from New York, and Ernie a chubby trucker from the sticks. We tried cars, but Charles had a Bentley and Ernie a pickup. We tried music, but Charles liked Beethoven’s fourth symphony and Ernie said Willie Nelson. We tried women, but Charles enjoyed $1,000 a night escorts while Ernie liked to roll around in mud. After getting nowhere, I finally asked about what we had in common. “What do you guys think of beauty?” and, “Who do you find to be interesting?” Once we tapped into the right stuff we talked for hours (and even went for coffee after being rescued). Just goes to show, people aren’t that different.

Human condition

Do you know the expression, do bears s#!% in the woods? That’s the bear’s condition. We humans have our own and it includes body, personality, and soul. Everyone knows about the first two but few of us understand soul. What is it? And why is its reference always so spooky? Your soul is every non-body part you own that isn’t personality.

Our personalities say if we’re highly creative or social, and dictate how we act out in nature. Souls then hold the results. The soul’s job to observe, experience, and absorb—it’s your reflective self. Open your eyes and gaze into a photo. That feeling doesn’t go into personality, it enters the soul. So even if you’re an atheist, you have one.

Souls hold calculations, impressions, and knowledge. Everything that helps generate opinion. Feelings, thoughts, personal pleasures, and pain—this isn’t personality. Like bodies, personalities are just a way for getting around and they’re a dime a dozen. It’s souls that are interesting. That’s why the board game Funny You Should Ask flopped. It spent too much time on, which is your favourite colour of jellybean (body)? And how much do you like camping (personality)? None of which queried the soul.

Packing slips

We enter this world with an item list, like a packing slip coming from a warehouse. Some of us are tall, others are pudgy. Then we accumulate from there. On the slip is personality, loaded with instincts, desires, and quirky traits. All of which affect our actions living an eventful life. Souls are the baskets that pick up the fruit. 

In the large scheme of things, personalities aren’t that important. Like bodies, you play the cards you’re dealt. But personalities are worth understanding because they’re part of the trip. “I’m like this.” “Sally is like that.”

Here are five personality types psychologists use to describe us:

  • Openness – open to anything and creative, or reserved and conservative
  • Conscientiousness – hardworking and organized, or lazy and a mess
  • Extraversion – outgoing or an introvert
  • Agreeableness – easy to get along with or pugnacious
  • Neuroticism – the amount of anxiety you have

And we have many more like patience, honesty, humility, and pride. There are plenty of characteristics. Add in passion from the animal side and the need for social survival (status), and you see it’s too much. This package needed to be split up. So that’s what psychologists did.

Summary

Many problems with communication lie in definitions. When Plato identified the soul, he didn’t know people like Freud would come along to confuse things. And that’s the problem with social sciences—too many words. There was never any need to forget spirituality while breaking down personality further. Pieces like intuition, emotion, and reason could have added to what was already said. We didn’t need to start from scratch.

In the end, it’s easy to get wrapped up in everyday life and external definitions of who I am. But don’t forget there’s another something deep inside making observations and absorbing. For believers, no one said personalities go to heaven, it’s only the soul. And for atheists, you just don’t believe they move on. Either way, when stuck in an elevator, it makes for good conversation.

Death 176

Yale University offers a free online class called, The Philosophy of Death. I took it, watching lectures only, and here is my summary—along with a few opinions.

None of the course deals with religion. It’s simply a discussion of logic. And the logic comes mostly from Plato, who lived 700 years before the assembly of the Bible and the formation of Christianity. The first topic is that of dualism.

Dualism

Like all philosophers of his time, Plato looked only at raw life, without any external influences. He ascertained there must be more to human existence than life followed by death. He concluded that in addition to body and personality, we also have soul. And our souls exist long before coming onto this planet and well after.

He goes on to explain that life in the “other world” consists of forms. For example, something like beauty on earth is just a partial representation of true (or full) beauty that exists in heaven. And this must be so in order for you to recognize beauty in the first place. He uses the same analogy with justice. How could you intuitively know whether something is fair unless you’ve had prior familiarity with the concept?

He says our souls inhabit a vessel (body and personality) for a while on Earth and then return back to their world armed with the experience. So it’s like training school or some wild Club Med vacation.

Physicalists

Opponents to Plato’s views are called physicalists. They say no, we humans exist only for a period of time, only on this planet. And for every dualist point of view, they have a counterpoint.

Dualists say “we humans have reason,” they say so does a computer. Dualists say “but we have feelings,” they say so does a dog. And when dualists say “what about consciousness,” they don’t have a good answer but discard it anyway by saying that doesn’t prove anything.

Physicalists say the person is just a body that can do some amazing tricks, and when you die you simply fall asleep forever. They also get hung up on Plato’s concept of immortality. Sure it’s great to stare at total beauty but who wants to do that forever? Dualists say perhaps time is just an instrument of this world.

Summary

Since humans are equipped with purely logic, this sort of discussion can never be solved. Not only because no one has come back to inform us but because logic itself is flawed. George Carlin used to make a joke, “Can God create a rock so heavy that not even He can lift it?” And of course, we still have the chicken and the egg. As a result, neither of these possibilities is a slam dunk. At best, we’re stuck with 50/50.

You can turn this into 51/49, at least for yourself, but before doing so consider the following: psychologists who are also atheists say for most people it’s healthier to believe. The connection with a loving God and the comfort of an afterlife makes it easier to navigate this existence. So even if you’re not a big believer in anything being out there, let others keep their peace.

P.S. There’s also the witnessing of transcendence—because once you’ve seen the fireplace turn on for itself, you’re totally sold.

Ancient Greece

The effects of Ancient Greece are strewn throughout the Western world. We use Greek terms, acknowledge Greek gods, and admire Greek philosophers, but why? Western Civilization was formed under the old Roman Empire, which was heavily influenced by the ways of Ancient Greece. Rome overtook Greece in 146 BC and quickly discovered it was a more advanced society, so they adopted much of Greek culture. Hundreds of years later, Rome split into east and west. The West became known as Western Civilization and included most of Europe. Since early North Americans were predominantly of European descent, many elements of ancient Greek culture are still ingrained within us.

Greco-Roman

The time period between the conquest of Greece and the splitting of the Roman Empire is known as Greco-Roman civilization. Along with white columns influencing Roman architecture, the Romans incorporated Greek characteristics in art, music, drama, and dance. They also adopted the concepts of individual freedoms and democracy, and the Greek system of religion—copying their gods, one for one (Zeus became Jupiter, Aphrodite became Venus, Eros became Cupid, etc.).

Alphabet and language

The first true alphabet was established by the Greeks in the 8th century BC. It was preceded by earlier writing systems of the Middle East but they consisted of only symbols or consonants. The Greeks enhanced the consonant system by adding vowels. And though Latin was the language of Rome, Greek was a fuller, more developed language that was used for many documents of the time, including the New Testament. (Note: like Canadian students take French, children in England used to study Latin and Greek.)

Literature

Greek literature begins with Homer, who is believed to have lived around 800 BC. Homer is known for two famous poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. These pieces are believed to be the oldest available literature in Western culture.

The 24 books of the Iliad describe the mythical war between the Greeks of Sparta and the walled city of Troy (believed to be somewhere in Turkey). It starts with Paris of Troy abducting Helen from the King of Sparta. It ends with the Greeks deceiving the Trojans by sailing away and leaving them a gift of a giant wooden horse. But the horse was filled with soldiers, who exited in the middle of the night and destroyed the sleeping city, thereby winning the war.

Democracy

Back then, people identified with city-states—they didn’t really have countries. In Athens and the area around it, people practiced democracy for 200 years, between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. They convened 40 times per year and practiced true democracy, where individuals voted. It wasn’t a representative democracy like we have today.

Only 20% of the population were eligible since women, slaves, and foreigners engaged in trade were excluded from citizenship. So, from an Athenian population of around 250,000, only 50,000 could vote. They conducted themselves in a theatre that held 10-15,000 people and a quorum was 6,000.

Philosophy

Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle, and Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. Each will have their own article but take this for now.

  • Plato wrote volumes about Socrates, while Socrates himself didn’t write anything down.
  • Socrates is known for the Socratic Method, which is to admit one’s ignorance about a given subject and then draw conclusions about it from an adversary by means of direct questioning.
  • Plato was a celibate bachelor who established the Academy, which is recognized as the first institution of higher learning in the Western world (the first university). It lasted for hundreds of years. He’s also known for the idea that humans can be divided into body and soul, and that the soul lives on after the body’s death. His views inspired many religious beliefs and the term “platonic relationship.”
  • Aristotle is considered the father of science and much of our modern curriculum can be traced back to him. Though he studied under Plato for 20 years and agreed with the principle of afterlife, he’s not very existential, preferring instead to look for hard evidence. So Aristotle is the practical guy while Plato is the airy-fairy, mystic.

Religion

Though Greek religion was better and more exciting than what Rome had to offer, it was still a belief system that rested in destiny. The Judeo-Christian faith rested in hope. Not only because it offered a peaceful afterlife but also because it taught that each life was unique (therefore worth living). As a result, after incorporating Greece’s religion into their own, the Roman Empire later converted to Christianity.

Western Civilization

The West is widely described as the meeting of Greco-Roman culture and Judeo-Christian faith. Initially, Greco-Roman civilization was the merger of Roman power and Greek culture. It started with Rome overtaking Greece in 146 BC. Major steps forward include the following.

  • In 285 AD, the empire had grown so vast that East was divided from West. The Eastern Empire became governed from Byzantium in modern day Turkey (later to become Constantinople, then Istanbul). To Romans, there was hardly a difference—this was mostly an administrative split.
  • In 313, Western Emperor Constantine and Eastern Emperor Licinius granted Christians the right to practice their religion, ending years of persecution. Constantine himself converted.
  • In 324, Constantine united the two empires by defeating Licinius, and ruled over them until his death in 337, moving the capital from Rome to Constantinople.
  • In 380, the reunited Roman Empire adopted Judeo-Christianity as its state religion.
  • In 395, the East-West division became permanent and the East eventually became known as the Byzantine Empire. It changed its language to Greek (instead of Latin) and would lose much of its traditional Roman flavour.
  • In 476, the Western empire fell to the northern barbarians (the Germans). But life in the Byzantine Empire continued generally unchanged until the mid-fifteenth century when it fell to the Ottoman Turks. Along the way, in 1054, Eastern Christianity severed itself from Roman Catholicism to form its own sect called, Eastern Orthodoxy.

Greco-Roman culture and Judeo-Christian faith are the initial tenets of the Western world. Sure, Britain later contributed economics and the Americans invented disco, but these guys started it all. 

Note: Read a little more about the Iliad and you can watch the movie, Troy, starring Brad Pitt. See also Civilizations, History of Western Faith, and this video about Socrates.