Hi Spitfire,
I'll have to brief right now, and write a longer response later. I usually work the whole weekend, but didn't have to work today and i usually don't have access to the I-Net on Sunday since I have to use library p.c.'s but i'm at a friends for awhile. Monday I'll be back at the library and write you a more involved response.
No need to apologize, you bring up some good questions--questions i have thought about myself when thinking about Atlantis. First off, I don't believe anyone can prove, or disprove for that matter, such things as Atlantis.
But I agree, Plato's story could be metaphorical or allegorical, yet i keep in mind such things in history as... Virtually every mainstream archaeologists and historians thought at one point that Troy was some metaphorical or fabled story that Homer concocted to sing the glory of a epic batttle between the Greeks and the Trojans. One persistant, lone man, going against the excepted paradigm and facing much ridicule, worked his butt off to prove that Troy, in fact, did exist and that Homer was more or less reciting actual history.
Now we know that not only did Troy exist but that there were 7 Troys all built and rebuilt on top of each other!
There have been many, many such examples of people, especially in the "scientific" world, going through similar ordeals of being labled "cranks" and other negative labels because of the small minds that make up consensus thought. These lessons lead me to have an open mind about such things.
But back to Atlantis: There are many things which suggest an advanced pre-history civilization, not the least of which are the numerous non-connected peoples of the world who have recorded in their history, and handed down through their myths, legends, and oral or written traditions, something about such a civilization. And interestingly, some cultures, whom many anthropologists believe had no interactions of any sort with one another, have even similar names for this mother civilization. There are "coincidences" around the world of prominent cities in the old worlds of the Middle East, Central and South America, and even European that have very similar names or words that that sound very similar, describing similar things.
Then there are the genetic, blood type, language similarities etc., anomolies around the world like with the Basques peoples. Some language experts have said that Gaelic seems to be related somehow to Cherokee language. This is interesting since Cayce said that the Atlanteans were the "Red" race, and said that when the last part of Atlantis was destroyed many people from there went to various places like North America, South America, Egypt, the Pyranese mountains where the singularly unique Basque people reside, and other places. Certain Native Tribes of America, have been noted to have a strong underlying red hue, and look at the true Celtic type. Many of these above mentioned peoples also have an unusually high percentage of type O negative blood with a certain Halogen type as well.
None of this proves Atlantis, of course. There definitely could be other explanations.
One reason why i do believe Atlantis existed is because of Edgar Cayce and his Readings (which i'm sure many here are sick of hearing about!
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Like mentioned earlier, Cayce was extremely well documented and had a very, very good track record for various things ranging from healing sick people, to very accurate global predictions, to many verified personal predictions for others, to predicting trends in science, well pretty much anything you can think of, he touched upon. And the more and more time that goes by, the more and more the Readings are validated by mainstream belief systems. I read the few criticisms of Cayce by supposed objective researchers etc. For example, the "Skeptics Dictionary" online. I read that and laughed my butt off, it was the least researched and "scientific" article i had ever read. Just to give blatant example, the author says that Cayce gave "30,000 Readings". There have been many, many books or sources (perhaps up into the hundreds) which have cited the true amount of documented readings that are kept in the actual Cayce library in Virginia Beach. All books based or sourced somehow on the readings, state the actual real number of readings, something like 14,300 or so (not the exact amount--possible off by a couple hundred). This figure of 30,000 is glaringly off from the 14,000 and some hundred odd readings of which almost every Cayce researcher has stated in their books or articles.
But, once again, I guess i couldn't "prove" even Cayce to you. However, to give an example of where people thought Cayce was blatantly in historical error is the Readings given in the 1920's to mid 1940's about the Essenes. People scoffed at the Readings then, about him saying that the Essenes allowed woman in their community and other supposed biblical scholar "truths". Cayce even predicted when the Essene documents (the Dead Sea Scrolls) would be found, and this finding happened after he died in 45'.
Atlantis was a huge part of the metaphysical aspects of Cayce's Readings, in many life readings for indivuals then, he traced some of their earliest incarnations in Atlantis.
More later.....