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If you read the Socratic dialogues and some of the things Socrates said, it’s really eerie. Socrates says extraordinary things like, "If the perfect man ever lived on earth, you know what they’d do to him? They’d crucify him." Where did that come from?

I've always figured it came from the same eternal present of the "mind's eye" by which humans consistently perceived -- albeit through a glass darkly -- certain truths of revelation. I realize plenty of atheists and agnostics can reject the virgin birth based solely on its having appeared so often throughout time as part of this or that culture's mythology or pagan religious practice. My appreciation is exactly the opposite ... it astounds me how regularly the incarnation was foreshadowed and it helps me to understand the "math" of redemption as offered to all men regardless their birth before or after Christ.

I've never thought about praying for another to "lose their faith" [in men, ideologies, Reason or the alchemy of pragmatism, that is].

What a great idea.

I became acutely aware that what we think is reasoning is very often rationalization. When you speak of rationality, there are two very distinct components. One is logical reasoning, which is about going from premises to conclusions, conclusions that should be as good as your premises. Thus, logic will get you into insanity if you’ve got the wrong premises.
The other component of rationality is having the right premises. How do you get them and how do you determine that they are right? Not by logical reasoning, surely, because then you would be reasoning from other premises in order to justify them. There is an instinct, or revelation, or whatever you want to call it, that underlies your thinking, and the only interesting problem in philosophy is how you get that.

Wow!

If you read the Socratic dialogues and some of the things Socrates said, it’s really eerie. Socrates says extraordinary things like, "If the perfect man ever lived on earth, you know what they’d do to him? They’d crucify him." Where did that come from?

It came from Socrates' admitted ignorance. After exhausting the capabilities of rational/mathematicl/logical thinking, he realized he was ignorant of what he wanted to know. Did the shoemakers know what man is? No. Did the horsetrainers? No. Did the politicians? No. Did the poets? No. It was an open question, without stability. The answer to what human nature was appeared relative to anyone who could offer an opinion. Three options were left to him after that: either to ignore that the knowledge of our human nature is insignificant (that required schizophrenia) or, to create a substitute (that required arrogance). He settled on the third option, which is called Socratic piety, awaiting an answer from those who did know.

If you read the Socratic dialogues and some of the things
Socrates said, it’s really eerie. Socrates says
extraordinary things like, "If the perfect man ever lived on
earth, you know what they’d do to him? They’d crucify
him." Where did that come from?

Phillip Johnson is a goofball. Read his books, and you can
tell he's a sweet guy with a third rate intellect who is good at
getting free lunches from all those wacky Xain
know-nothings who populate JesusRadio.

For one thing, the (goofy) quote above. Did the Greeks even
know about crucifixion? Did Socrates ever say this in
any source we have?

But who among you cares?