The Background to the Debate about God.

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Sian                7th November

The Background to the Debate about God

Plato

  • Born in 427BC, died 347. Pupil of Socrates. Socrates condemned to death, for corrupting the young, getting them to think for themselves, challenging views of parents/elders.

  • Left Athens and travelled. Returned, established a school, ‘The Academy’, dissolved by the Roman Emperor Justinian 529AD.

  • Plato’s God – Demiurge. Didn’t create matter. Raw matter has always existed. Demiurge took matter, moulded it. Potter doesn’t make the clay, shapes it. Demiurge used pre-existent matter to fashion universe. Enabled universe to share in perfection putting it into mind or soul otherwise wouldn’t be present in matter.

  • Demiurge used model to work from, matter being in space/time imperfectly resembled perfectly heavenly forms, which existed outside time/space. Time was ‘moving image of eternity’ only an image of eternal forms, not identical.

  • When people saw examples of truth, justice, beauty or goodness, these were pale reflections of the perfect form of ‘truth’ etc.
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  • Forms weren’t created by the Demiurge and didn’t do anything. Forms didn’t create, nor were they created, simply there. Demiurge used them as models to make the universe.

  • Forms were timeless, spaceless and immutable. Material Demiurge worked with was temporal and spatial. He used imperfect material to fashion something of which its original was perfect. Universe had to be imperfect model, because in time and space whilst forms weren’t.

  • Demiurge had to capture in a moving material the essence of something unchanging. Did as good a job as he could, accounts for imperfections in the world.

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