How were the greek philosophers different from religious thinkers?

Answer 1

The Greek philosophers, namely Socrates, was/were identifying a different experience than the religious leaders. The Socratic method is basically the father of the scientific method which asks questions. Religions seem to be keen on acceptance and selflessness, where-as questions will make one an outsider to the accepted norm. Greek religion detailed a persons reverence of any particular doing,- for example If a Greek were to be charged with assault and rape...and asked why he might say...Aries commanded me to bust a move on dude, then Bacchus gave me the wine to go to Athena for some Persephone. What is missing from Greeks at all, in every sense is the "I" for "I" is a New Testament phenomenon that is mostly what god says. It is said that when it was time for the festival of Athena, all people in Greece would go and honor, even prisoners in prisons would stop being prisoners for the day and go do the honorable praying. Anything that the gods asked or commanded, usually through some type of oracle or sign, would be followed or fulfilled like lemmings. Possibly also, the mindset of people then was more like schizophrenics today. Oracles, rituals, group process and worship were much more to the point of catching up to these unknowable voices from the wind, cloud and element, but for modern man, we call this thinking and consciousness. Animism, where the individual sees all other living things as reflections of him/herself is the older paradigm that preceded the multi-theistic approach of Greek/roman religion. After Christ you find the One god...the "I" and persons are directly responsible for actions. Socrates and Philosophy moved more to question that what everyone was going with, challenging folks to question and to doubt. His "analogy of the cave" is a demonstration of objects and placement of light source to make shadows....is as best i can recall -an attempt to look at things for what they are, as discernible natural phenomenon, but not to be read into say for deciding if it was time to carve a lamb to call another Mooney vision of the gran biscuit whatever. Socratic method just makes me think: early rationality, noticing time, space, environment and influences.