The Problem with Orthodox Christianity

Orthodoxy is Platonic. I reject Platonism. So, I reject Orthodoxy. 

What is Platonism? For our purposes, Platonism is the view that truth—specifically correspondence truth or absolute truth—is the paradigm of good. As a truth relativist, I have to disagree by default. That said, even if I were a truth realist, I would still disagree with truth being the paradigm of good. To be good is to function as intended—to lack privations—and a pursuit of truth leads to a dysfunctional and complicated mess. So, truth is not the paradigm of good unless truth is your preferred subjective core value.

Since I have only one axiom—that induction works—I would like to show how history supports what I am saying. The scientific proficiency of Western Christianity stagnated for about 1700 years. Platonism is to blame. When critics point to the Church’s historical persecution of scientific challengers as a defect of the Christian religion, they are mistaken. It was a defect of Platonism and not of Christianity. 

Consider the false kingship of Geocentrism which stifled Western astronomy for those 1700 years, specifically the Ptolemaic model. The Orthodox Church—and later the Catholic Church after the Great Schism of 1054 AD—standardized this model because Platonic metaphysics demanded a "perfect," Earth-centered cosmos.

The practical alternative existed all along. Aristarchus of Samos developed a working Heliocentric model a mere 80 years after Plato's death, precisely because he rejected Platonic ideology. Yet, his model was neglected and overshadowed for some 1800 years, or however many years stand between him and Copernicus. (Copernicus did not come up with the Heliocentric model himself; he inherited it from his peers and from the texts of Aristarchus, though it is unclear which source came first).

Humanity lost nearly two millennia of progress to this philosophical bottleneck. So, who finally paved the way for Galileo and the scientific revolution? The answer is William of Ockham, the most heroic philosopher in human history. By introducing Nominalism to Christianity, Ockham primed Western intellectualism to move for the first time in about 1700 years, or however many years stand between Plato and Ockham. Effectively, Nominalism is antithetical to Platonism. Nominalism fruited many of the world's most brilliant minds in a remarkably short period of time. Heavyweights like Newton and Leibniz were explicitly Ockhamists in their scientific methodology; they replaced Platonic axioms and statements with principles like induction and Ockham's Razor. We see this in Newton's work Principia Mathematica for example. The point is Ockham's values and teachings revived Western science by fruiting brilliant scientists later down the line. (Kepler is the only brilliant Platonic scientist I am aware of; competent Platonic scientists are a near-zero demographic).

Orthodoxy never appropriated Ockhamism into their own theology and the result is what one should expect—Orthodoxy has contributed very little to science. Its Platonic convictions condemned it to a worldview that harshly stifles practical, functional progress.

But why should scientific progress be praised, or why should anti-scientism be grounds for rejection? To answer this, I will return to my idea of good (from the second paragraph). The classical conception of God, to which Orthodoxy conforms, is a metaphysically necessary being that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. Under classical theology, "all-good" means to completely lack privation—to function exactly as intended. Therefore, the rejection of Orthodoxy is twofold. First, my core value is emet, which translates to trustworthiness to meet expectations; this means prioritizing the reliable functionality of things, hence me being a practicalist. Second, Orthodoxy defines the God's all-goodness as being functioning exactly as intended, yet Orthodoxy's pursuit of absolute truth leads to things not functioning as intended. The pursuit of absolute truth leads to scientific models being stagnant, messy and impractical. The point is that one can indefinitely increase precision and accuracy—relative to a Platonic paradigm—by indefinitely sacrificing simplicity, and that simplicity should never be sacrificed under any circumstances.

Verdict: I reject Orthodoxy. To clarify, I reject both Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, because the chief difference between the two is a disagreement about Christology in such a way that is irrelevant to Platonism. (Christology is just the study of the nature of Jesus Christ).