A faith based religion won't help you understand the mind of God when what you should be trying to understand is your own mind and how to live on earth.
"Perhaps, however, some one will say, Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have applied yourself to a study, through which you are now in danger of being put to death? To this person I shall justly reply, That you do not speak well, O man, if you think that life or death ought to be regarded by the man who is capable of being useful though but in a small degree; and that he ought not to consider this alone when he acts, whether he acts justly, or unjustly, and like a good or a bad man. For those demigods that died at Troy would, according to your reasoning, be vile characters, as well others as the son of Thetis, who so much despised the danger of death when compared with disgraceful conduct, that when his mother, who was a goddess, on his desiring to kill Hector, thus I think addressed him - My son, if you revenge the slaughter of your friend Patroclus, and kill Hector, you will yourself die, for said she, death awaits you as soon as Hector expires: - Notwithstanding this, he considered the danger of death as a trifle, and much more dreaded living basely, and not revenging his friends. For he says, May I immediately die, when I have inflicted just punishment on him who has acted unjustly, and not stay here an object of ridicule, by the crooked ships, and a burden to the ground? Do you think that he was solicitous about death and danger? For this, O Athenians, is in reality the case: wherever any one ranks himself, thinking it to be the best for him, or wherever he is ranked by the ruler, there as it appears to me he ought to abide, and encounter danger, neither paying attention to death nor to any thing else before that which is base."
"But I know that to act unjustly, and to be disobedient to one more excellent, whether God or man, is evil and base. I shall never, therefore, fear and avoid things which for aught I know may be good, before those evils which I know to be evils. So that neither if you should now dismiss me, (being unpersuaded by Anytus, who said that either I ought not to have been brought hither at first, or that, when brought hither, it was impossible not to put me to death, telling you that if I escaped, all your sons studying what Socrates had taught them would be corrupted,) if besides these things you should say to me, O Socrates, we now indeed shall not be persuaded by Anytus, but we shall dismiss you, though on this condition, that afterwards you no longer busy yourself with this investigation, nor philosophise, and if hereafter you are detected in so doing, you shall die, - if, as I said, you should dismiss me on these terms, I should thus address you: O Athenians, I honour and love you: but I obey Divinity rather than you; and as long as I breathe and am able, I shall not cease to philosophise, and to exhort and indicate to any one of you I may happen to meet, such things as the following, after my usual manner. O best of men, since you are an Athenian, of a city the greatest and the most celebrated for wisdom and strength, are you not ashamed of being attentive to the means of acquiring riches, glory and honour, in great abundance, but to bestow no care nor any consideration upon prudence and truth, nor how your soul may subsist in the most excellent condition? And if any one of you should contend with me, and say that these things are the objects of his care, I should not immediately dismiss him, nor depart, but I should interrogate, explore, and reason with him. And if he should not appear to me to possess virtue, and yet pretend to the possession of it, I should reprove him as one who but little esteems things of the greatest worth, but considers things of a vile and abject nature as of great importance. In this manner I should act by any one I might happen to meet, whether younger or older, a stranger or a citizen; but rather to citizens, because ye are more allied to me. For be well assured that Divinity commands me thus to act. And I think that a greater good never happened to you in the city, than this my obedience to the will of Divinity. For I go about doing nothing else than persuading both the younger and older among you, neither to pay attention to the body, nor to riches, nor any thing else prior to the soul; nor to be so much concerned for any thing, as how the soul may subsist in the most excellent condition. I also say that virtue is not produced from riches, but riches from virtue, as likewise all other human goods, both privately and publicly. If, therefore, asserting these things, I corrupt the youth, these things will be noxious; but if any one says that I assert other things than these, he says nothing. In addition to this I shall say, O Athenians, that whether you are persuaded by Anytus or not, and whether you dismiss me or not, I shall not act otherwise, even though I should die often."
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