phy. Socrates (470-399 B.C.) encouraged the questioning of everything, with the general idea that ultimate truths would be discovered through philosophical dialogue (Robinson and Groves 19). It is through this dialogue and thinking that Plato (427-347 B.C.) developed his own ideas concerning a set of unchanging, perfect ideas and forms that made up the universe (Frost 11). Plato, who authored Timaeus and The Republic, found that these forms and ideas also make up man, making him, as the Sophists would agree, the measure of the universe (Frost 56, 104). Plato also helped to rationalize religion, explaining that diety and the idea of good made sense if they were thought of as identical (Otto 94). Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), like Plato, was a monist. Author of hundreds of texts, Aristotle significantly contributed to philosophy of religion in his creation of deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning uses known premises to build a valid conclusion. This allowed later philosophers to deductively work out theories and ideas (Robinson and Groves, 28-29)
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