Monday, November 7, 2011
Christians and atheists cannot agree because reality is more complex than a simple dichotomy can describe.?
uming God must either exist or not exist creates a paradox which cannot be answered. This is because humanity has literally changed the definition of reality in the last 350 years. The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (about 400 BC) defined reality as idealistic and solipsistic, meaning that subjective experience was considered absolutely real and objective reality was considered an illusion created by our minds. Based on this philosopby, St. Augustine (about 390) invented the concept of the soul to explain how both conscious awareness and Christ's promise of eternal life was possible. Educated western civilization universally accepted this view until science began to discover, beginning with Gallileo (about 1590) that the physical realm is actually real and subjective experience is an illusion created by our living brains. This means that God actually does exist in subjective experience and simultaneously that He does not exist in objective reality. Is compromise possible?
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