Must find time to wrap my mind around them adequately.

Thanks for the visit and the comment. We appreciate all feedback but feedback from those we cite is especially nice.

AAAAARGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Never been there, but thinking about it a lot as I fact-check my book research.

Which parts of ancient history are still visible? Is any of the Greek character observable?

that said, in solidgoldcreativity’s case I meant “down under” as in Australia.

Surely, Socrates was accused of not believing in the gods of the city, which is open to many interpretations … and surely, -though of lesser impact on history- I was stunned when I realised that saying one is a non believer in America is kinda socially not correct.

See you soon then Andreas. I had your copy of the Economist when I was walking on the ancient stones of Syracuse.

note to self… never read a peter post with liquid in mouth – i laughed so hard i nearly “spat” all over my screen

thank goodness also that i don’t make my living writing so’s i can embrace my titbits and typed o’s with zeeeel!

Yes, we will retake the world via … spelling!

Oh dear. What I was trying to say is that I still think that Socrates “was almost certainly an atheist”. I would say the same about Einstein. With large minds such as theirs, we must allow for the possibility that their religious feelings exceed the confines of our terms, however.

“… I always wonder why a person’s words must be explained and/or interpreted. And I marvel at how the reader/listener forms them into the context of his own reality. …”

Bingo. Socrates wondered the same thing. That is why he refused ever to write anything down, as I mentioned a while ago.

He predicted what in fact happened: that we would fight over his words, which he chose two millenia ago for each audience he was addressing at a given time and for that audience only.

Let me check: You’re saying that the readers’ “response” (which, presumably, you consider eristic?) was the “issue”?

Yes, I suppose. Let me say (I think a lot of you guys misunderstood me) that the overwhelming majority of readers “got it” perfectly. There is always room for some irony, when an article about eristic conversations leads to some…. eristic conversations.

All quite amusing.

I still think it’s the most fitting one line description.

The Oral Robers Obit was great, wasn’t it? Captured the sheer vulgarity of his faith without ever saying it explicitly. Show, don’t tell, as the storyteller’s law goes.

Oh, I think you’ve misunderstood me. I don’t find the letters “disturbing” at all. Some are annoying, but it’s great to get letters, and we (both The Economist and I) like to run toward and into controversies.

So I’m far from dismayed–I’m delighted OVERALL. This piece in particular was a great success from the feedback I’m now getting.

So yes, we get an equal, in fact a greater, number of favorable letters.

The best letters, in fact, are neither positive or negative per se but simply carry the debate forward.

I didn’t realize I had a patter (“story > philosophy > science > metaphysics > back to story”) until now, but I like it!

Will continue the pattern.

Another example of how religion struggles with the progress of our understanding, but how the STORIES remain timeless.

However, I hadn’t really gotten all the way down to that part of the article before I cancelled my subscription. What galled me a lot further up were the spellings manoeuvred and recognised–wherefore (thanks for the word, Dafna) the need to suck up to the British? Methinks the War of Independence was waged and won a long time ago. No American writer should cave in to spelling conventions of these global Red Coat companies.

What the British want is to re-conquer the globe by forcing their ways upon us. We must stop them, not help them.

Boy, this really gets my knickers in a twist.

You see, Andreas, you spent a lot of words in this blog post that did not clarify what you meant. Well, at least to me. And I am assuming you don’t think we are the commenters at economist.com.

I always wonder why a person’s words must be explained and/or interpreted. And I marvel at how the reader/listener forms them into the context of his own reality.

Socrates in America: Arguing about Death was not an article about religion. It was about how we talk to one another and the tension between individualism and democracy. Religion only came up en passant, and so I was forced to commit a journalist drive-by shooting.

Maybe I am off my I.F. Stone rocker, but why was your mention [that Socrates was probably an atheist] a drive-by shooting? Seemed more like a set of parentheses to me.

Can’t wait to read the reader comments coming in after that splendid tongue-in-cheek obituary in this week’s Economist for Oral Roberts.

Did you pay the author for that one? I read it three times today. Talk about a crucifixion.

Oh me oh my.

Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham.

2) I looked for my copy of Ideas and opinions by Albert Einstein and found this fitting quote. Copying and pasting from a Google search here (I hoped they re-typed it right),

The Religious Spirit of Science 

By Albert Einstein 

in Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934.

You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religiosity of the naive man. For the latter, God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands, so to speak, in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe.

But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.

3) I copied and pasted most of the text in this comment which indicates how much I had hoped the alternative, “Socrates’ views on religion were unorthodox to say the least.” was used in the original article. Ah, too late for asking for my time back in reading and writing this comment.

pardon my ignorance, andreas, your livelihood is made by writing for The Economist and the letters from readers are clearly disturbing. are the letters screened by The Economist? do they impact your worth to the magazine?

it must feel wonderful to vent on this blog in such a safe place.

also you must realize by the number of blog readers and their type of posts – few seem to share this abhorrence of the term atheist. even fewer of your blog followers bother to broach the subject of faith/religious based responses since it brings out such strong and biased feelings in people.

so wherefore the dismay? do you not get an equal number of favorable letters from the readers of The Economist? and must it always be the damned Americans that cause such a fuss. perhaps they have more free time on their hand?

personally i enjoy the hannibal blog pattern – story slips to philosophy then to science even to the metaphysic then back to story.

i seem to sometimes be the last word on a thread – i hope this is not the case. i would have enjoyed a response to my last post on the previous (similar) thread regarding readers reactions

cheers to you and your blog followers and for the record i an entirely indifferent to the question of socrates atheism, but i thoroughly loved the quote by Einsten.

Particularly liked the bit about summer turning to winter. Of course, how strange this is. Why have I never considered it? And the implication that it was Socrates’s satire that was the real bugbear. Everyone knows that humour — particularly satire — is the most dangerous art. And how it was the failure of the divine to “explain things” that had the pre-Socratics turn away. Merely that.

So much food for thought. Thanks. SGx