Number 92 : May 1998 |
Dear Theo,
Thanks for the publication. Sorry I can’t type.
At least one christian has no objection to the title on page 10 of Commensal 91. There’d be no objection to "Hemlock - or how to accept defeat gracefully" either. I have to say, after reading Dave Botting’s article, that not every christian or philosopher claims that the purpose of religion is to save money on policemen and prisons. I’d like to know more about existentialism ever since I read that the Road Runner reminds someone of the existentialist Jesus.
I was interested when you (Theo) claimed (Commensal 91, page 12) that "religions .... seem to have developed as counter-cultures". A Californian Mensan sent me a tract which shows that Jesus himself is an Anti-messiah. This makes sense to me, but I do not want to start off any new religions, because I think we have too many already.
I think that Roger Farnworth (C91, page 37) could have defined what he meant by consciousness. He writes like a psychologist. Biologists, I know, believe that consciousness is the result of evolutionary processes; but, do philosophers ?
Valerie Ransford
Valerie : I should have been more precise about my objection to Dave Botting’s title, because it came over as though I thought Christians should be treated as a protected species immune from criticism or satire. This isn’t at all what I had in mind. Rather, my objection was that, as any Christian with even the mildest pretensions to orthodoxy knows, the crucifixion isn’t considered to be a defeat but, when combined with the resurrection, a victory. It isn’t a rather nasty end to Jesus’ career, but the focus of it. As anyone who’s listened to Messiah let alone read the Bible knows, its the moment at which "The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all". Now I’m not claiming that this really represents how things were, though it is central to what most Christians believe. However, it is serious stuff and certain idle allusions to the crucifixion seem to portray a reprehensible ignorance of what it’s all supposed to be about.
I don’t think the, in some ways, parallel account of Socrates is any better - again, to describe this as a "defeat" trivialises the situation since alternatives to the hemlock were available to Socrates. As says my trusty EB CD :-
Socrates, who treated the charge with contempt and made a "defence" that amounts to avowal and justification, was convicted, probably by 280 votes against 220. The prosecutors had asked for the penalty of death; it now rested with the accused to make a counterproposition. Though a smaller, but substantial, penalty would have been accepted, Socrates took the high line that he really merited the treatment of an eminent benefactor: maintenance at the public table. He consented only for form's sake to suggest the small fine of one mina, raised at the entreaty of his friends to 30.
The claim to be a public benefactor incensed the court, and death was voted by an increased majority, a result with which Socrates declared himself well content. As a rule at Athens, the condemned man "drank the hemlock" within 24 hours, but, in the case of Socrates, the fact that no execution could take place during the absence of the sacred ship sent yearly to Delos caused an unexpected delay of a month, during which Socrates remained in prison, receiving his friends daily and conversing with them in his usual manner. An escape was planned by his friend Crito, but Socrates refused to hear of it, on the grounds that the verdict, though contrary to fact, was that of a legitimate court and must therefore be obeyed.
I’d be interested to read your Californian tract, though how can any tract "show" anything so revolutionary ? "Argue" maybe, "allege" probably but "show", never - not even in a work of extensive scholarship, let alone a tract.
Theo