Does Platos cave allegory argue against Christianity?
There were neo-Platonists in the early church & the various gnostic groups were heavily influenced by Plato’s ideas. However, Plato himself was neither pro-Christian nor anti-Christian. How could he be? Because Christianity did not appear till hundreds of years after Plato’s death. The cave allegory is broadly anti-empiricist. That is, it denies that the evidence of the senses is reliable. The allegory is, therefore, more favourable to religious or mystical interpretations of reality than it is to scientific interpretations. However, the allegory gives little in the way of clues as to what Plato’s attitude to Christianity would have been.
St. Augustine incorporated the ideas of Plato into Christianity. “Augustine was a Neo-Platonist,…He believed that the divine light is to the mind as the sun is to the eyes—a metaphor straight out of Plato’s allegory of the cave. Every human mind needs God’s light to uncover the forms or to see the truth. If a person thinks she has discovered this on her own, she simply misunderstood the source of their light.” http://everything.com/saint-augustines-v… http://clarionjournal.typepad.
Plato’s cave had NOTHING to do with Christianity either way. Plato lived CENTURIES before Christianity even started. He was never Christian, never heard of Christ, or read the bible because none of those things existed yet. Whoever told you this is a fool. However, if push came to shove, I’d say that the allegory would be more damning than supportive to virtually any religion that supports any form of blind faith belief, Christianity included.
