I would like to make the case for my intellectual hero Socrates. I firmly believe that Socrates lived and helped to shape western philosophy. My faith in him is unshakable. Few atheists have a problem a believing the writings of Socrates (469-399 B.C.). He was a great classical Greek philosopher who is credited with laying the fundamentals of modern Western philosophy. Further, the Socratic style of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints is used by the greatest and attempted by the worst university professors. Whatever information we derive from Socrates is based on the universally validated writings of at least three scholars from antiquity - Plato, Aristotle, and Aristophanes. Amazingly, Socrates never wrote a single word. That is right, there is no proof that the great Socrates ever lived. Yet this “fictitious” individual was one of the founders of western intellectual thought. Yet there are no visceral debates regarding the existence of Socrates. I wonder why?? Personally, I feel certain that there was a great teacher/philosopher names Socrates. Further, I have enough faith to believe that his teachings are the underpinning of western thought.
Likewise, I believe that there was a great Jewish Rabbi named Jesus (33 AD). At minimum, there is as much historical data asserting the life of Jesus as Socrates. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus asserts that Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived affection for him did not cease to adhere to him. For on the third day he appeared to them alive again. Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 3, Section 1 – Further the Roman historian Tacitus, asserts that Nero blamed the burning of Rome on a Jewish sect called Christians. (Tacitus, Annals, 15, 44) Any neophyte student of antiquity is aware of the historic fact that Rome burned in 64 AD and Nero blamed it on the Christians, which started the first persecution of the Church. (About 32 years after the death of Jesus.) Strangely, there are neo-atheist like Hitchings and Dawkins who have no problem believing in Socrates, yet relegate Jesus to myth or legend. By following the assertions of the neo-atheists to their natural conclusion, the burning of Rome in 64 AD was based on the myth of the Jesus legend. Amazing!!
The neo-atheists like Hitchings and Dawkins would like to dismiss Jesus as a myth or fairytale; consequently they feel no need to explain how he literally changed the course of Western civilization. They tend to assert that his followers are simply mindless dolts with no intellectual curiosity, little more than superstitious fools. Jesus asserted, “that the last shall be first and the first shall be last”. Further, he admonished his followers to “pray for those that curse you” and to “turn the other cheek”. Admittedly, these are counterintuitive and challenge basic human instincts and the "survival of the fittest" evolutionary construct as first proposed by Darwin (1809-1882). Still other play the middle ground and sheepishly profess, “I believe Jesus was a great moral teacher” but that is all. Who but a lunatic would say turn the other cheek after you’ve been struck in the face? No, that argument doesn’t hold either. After my own intellectual search of all the facts, I have joined the ranks of the emanate Oxford Professor Clive Staples Lewis (1898 -1963). It was CS Lewis who stated in Mere Christianity (1952) “You must make your choice. Either this man (Jesus) was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.” I have chosen the latter.
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