The Greek philosopher Plato couldn’t have known what he was starting when he wrote about Atlantis. In one of his many dialogs, or accounts of conversations his teacher Socrates had with Athenian scholars and statesmen of his day, he introduces us to the lost land of Atlantis: “In front of the pillars of Heracles [i.e. beyond the Strait of Gibraltar] there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together. … Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island.”
In the next dialog, written around 360 BC, Plato has his great-uncle Critias recount the fall of Atlantis 9,000 years earlier, after the Atlanteans conquered most of Mediterranean basin. Having defeated Libya, Egypt and much of southern Europe, it attacked Athens. Bad move. Not only did the Athenians fight them off, but the Athenian gods took vengeance, sending “portentous earthquakes and floods, and one grievous day and night befell them, when the whole body of your warriors was swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner was swallowed up by the sea and vanished.”
Needless to say, there was no city-state of Athens 9,000 years earlier, so did Plato create up the whole story out of thin air, perhaps as a fable to glorify the might and virtue of Athens? Or was he embellishing some ancient legend about a real island? One tradition holds that he was recounting a three-century old story told by the father of Athenian democracy, Solon, who had heard it from Egyptian priests.
Fable or not, writers ancient and modern have re-told, embellished and generally had a fine old time with Atlantis, either as allegory (Thomas More and Francis Bacon took Atlantis as their starting points for promoting utopian societies) or fact. Dozens, if not hundreds, of locations have been suggested for an actual island or continent of Atlantis. One popular candidate is the small Greek island of Santorini, or Thera, remnant of a massive volcanic blast dated to about 1600 BC, the “Minoan eruption.” Although the location doesn’t fit — Atlantis is supposed to have been west of the Mediterranean, not within it — the fact that an explosion four times the intensity of Krakatoa virtually annihilated an entire island resonates with Plato’s story. Other favored locations include Troy, the Dogger Bank in the North Sea (which was land until rising sea levels flooded it around 6000 BC), the Canary Islands, Greenland and (of course) the Bermuda Triangle.
In a grim turn of events, the Nazis appropriated Atlantis for their own ideology of racial superiority, building on the writing of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society (precursor of the New Age movement). Dictated in Atlantis, no less, her 1888 book The Secret Doctrine illuminated the evolution of entire races, including the genesis of superior Aryans. Nazi propagandists ran with her hogwash, using it to justify the genocide of “inferior” races.
Like the Garden of Eden, Atlantis lives on in legend, each generation adding another layer to the story. What’s real and what’s myth? As the editor said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Barry Evans (barryevans9@yahoo.com) has his own theory about Atlantis, which features dinosaurs. Obviously.
This article appears in What’s Killing Us?.
I would be cautious about lumping Hebrew theology in with that of the Greeks. There is not a hint of the primitive superstition of ‘the gods’ in the bible. In fact, the Hebrews utterly disbelieved in ‘the gods’ of the nations around them, both before and after Greece had risen and fallen. Not only was the idea of ‘the gods’ mocked, but it was forbidden. Naturally they fell prey from time to time, but they were excoriated in a manner that puts modern disdain for primitive superstition to shame. To worship the gods was not just foolish, it was idolatry.
It is striking actually, that a modern skeptic like yourself holds not a candle to the disdain held for such foolishness during the most lucid periods of Hebrew history.
The Greek gods were deifications of the forces of nature. They were creatures inside the system. As John Lennox reminds us, the Greeks had to get rid of their gods to do science but the Hebrews didn’t. The Hebrews believed in a God who CREATED the universe and did not confuse God with the universe itself.
The Hebrew God is a very sophisticated philosophical position, it is not primitive. The fascinating thing about the bible is that it is not written in modern academic philosophic language that goes back to the Greeks. The way in which it is written conveys far more than merely philosophy but the philosophy it implies has a logical purity found no where else. It packs an enormous amount of useful information into minimal structure. It is extraordinary and utterly unique.
I know, I know, but I feel as if I have done a disservice by not giving an example to support the claim in may last post that the bible packs enormous information into minimal structure. I want to give 1 example by looking at the first 5 verses of Genesis.
Genesis 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
The first thing it tells us is something that is consistently supported throughout the bible with many passages we need not mention, not the least of which is the first chapter of John’s Gospel. John really unpacks this and interprets it in a way understood in his day with the academic philosophical language of the Greeks. It is telling us that God created the universe. That seems obvious enough, but it has a wealth of philosophical and theological implications. It means that God is not part of the system we call nature or the universe, and also that our universe had a beginning. The latter is something hotly debated up until this last century. We now have consistent scientific observations to support that last claim. It also tells us that God transcends space and time, and is consistent with other biblical passages that assert His eternal nature.
It is telling us that the nature of ultimate reality is the exact opposite of a blind unguided material process. That the ultimate reality behind the singularity is alive, powerful, conscious, free, and moral.
I always took verse 1 to be a general statement followed later by the details, but I now think that it is telling us about the initial stage of creation, because verse 2 indicates that it exists for some period of time without form and empty (some translations render it ‘void’). Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
As hard as it is for some of us to not lump the bible in with all the other nonsensical primitive superstitions in our tendency to profile and stereotype because of our prejudices, try to picture this. Does that not resemble what some theorize as a quantum vacuum?
Clearly if we are to take it seriously, there are no waters (in the h20 sense) in a formless void. if this is to be taken literally then we must take waters to be metaphor, and that this is literally a primeval universe without order or structure. Waters is a fitting metaphor because it creates a visual of chaos and undefined undulation, hence the formlessness and darkness. It is unintelligible and therefore dark. How does one see, that which is formless?
And in verse 3 God said, “let there be light”.
This is very striking because it is made clear later that that sun and moon as well as the stars (‘lights’) are not made until day 4. So gain, if this is to be taken literally (as it must) then God is not talking about the visible electromagnetic spectrum at all. Rather it is literally talking about order and intelligibility. It is talking about the observer giving this quantum vacuum definition.
Now I will stop here to acknowledge that I could be reading all of this into it. I am not saying that this is the ‘right’ way to interpret these passages. I don’t want to put that kind of restraint on such a sophisticated text. But I am saying that I do believe I am interpreting it correctly, and that it is telling us at LEAST this, but other things as well. What fascinates me is this: how can a very ancient primitive text (if it really is such) far older than Greece, accommodate a 21st century scientific theoretical framework.
It is interesting to note that God called the light day, and the darkness HE called night. That is to say, he (not you or I) defines the difference with his own sense of mind and intelligibility. Later, Jesus makes a comment to his disciples that is very interesting and helps us here.
John 9:As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.
Jesus is eluding to the confusion the disciples will face when he is crucified. He is defining day and night as understanding and confusion. And that is a primary reason I think it supremely reasonable to interpret Genesis 1:5. And it also would also verify our consideration of what to make of the formlessness and darkness and interpret it for us.
So there you have one example of the depth that can be seen in the text if we can only assure ourselves that we are not transferring our own perception onto the text. Fortunately for us, the bible interprets itself. So if we take it as a whole we have an objective reference by which to test our own musings.
Even with just this one example, I can speak for myself and say that although I must ultimately by faith in the patterns I detect (like anyone else no matter their philosophy) I find it harder to believe that it is not supernatural, than to believe that it is. It astounds me…
For any of you wrestling with those nagging doubts about the 6 day creation, do you not remember what we have already covered? If the sun was not made until day 4, and a day is measured by the sun, then who can we take it literally to be a 24 hour day?
A day is a metaphor for order vs disorder. The days (whatever else can be gleaned from them), are increasing states of order relative to the day before, or the original primordial universe. The important thing to remember in philosophical terms is that the cause of those increasing states of order (the singularities) is the exact opposite of a blind unguided naturalistic process.
just as materialists assert and assume a natural process to be the first cause of the universe, the Hebrews assert and assume that God’s will, observation, and command is the first cause. Please do try to recognize the equality in the playing field.
Barry, I know you have a love/hate relationship with cliches and metaphor. So, never throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because most philosophies are unscientific, primitive, and at bottom sometimes downright nonsense, does not mean they all are. You’d best be careful not to condemn you own in the process.