Analysis Post #2

First of all, to continue one with the Hilde phenomenon, I still don't really understand the point of it. I think that the author had a chance to do something interesting with the mystery, but once Alberto started to have direct communication with Sophie, it sort of ruined the whole Hilde thing. I think the fact that Alberto continues to just blatantly ignore Sophie's pursuits and leave her in the dark is just stupid.
"Why did you call me Hilde? What's your relationship with Hilde's father? What does all this stuff mean?" Alberto: "Oh, he certainly is a trickster; leaving those hints all over the place! Hush now, my child! Time for philosophy!"
I think that this whole arrangement that they have isn't very healthy either. The poor mother is left in the dark as Sophie just runs off to some stranger's house and thus has a completely new set of behaviors; whenever the mother tries to confront Sophie, she beats around the bush with a tantrum of some sort or tries to out-smart her mother.

Anyways, to make a more legitimate analysis of the book, I'd first like to address the Hellenistic philosophies. I know I talked about it in the class blog, but the Skeptic-form of the Hellenistic philosophies really resonated with me. Besides Democritus with his materialistic beliefs, this was sort of the first form of religious skepticism. For me, with my unabashed atheistic beliefs, I wholeheartedly support this school of thought. Similar to the religious ideas, the Middle Ages and Renaissance provide some very interesting outlooks on the question of religion. Do I agree with them? No, but they're interesting nonetheless. I find some of the arguments to be a bit far-fetched. For instance, Anselm's ontological argument is sort of an illogical fallacy. It's sort of some circular reasoning to argue that God exist because the thought exist in our head. This is very similar to the basic argument of faith: That though we cannot see or prove god's existence, we have faith that he exist. This is still a pretty weak argument because there is no evidence to back it up. We make the assumption that the idea of god is too great to not be real. However, the same claim could be said about anything: I could found a religion in which Richard Simmons created the world between high-kicks and jazzersize because the idea sounds too glorious to not be true. In essence, after hundreds of years of arguing against some of these elden rationales, they seem too antiquated to still exist in modern debate.