Okay... Ill treat this as if it were homework.

1. A myth, according to the teacher, is a story about the gods which seeks to explain life around the storyteller.

2a. Philosophical ideas began replacing myths, specifically in the form of empirical (scientific) thought.
2b. In this passage, Plato has stated that we as humans manipulated necessity through intelligience and are thus in control of our universe, despite of how it was created. As such, it eliminates the religious connotations of myth, and begins the philoshophical/scientific concept.

3. I cannot really think of any modern sotries. :/ I hope anyone else did/can.

2.a) From the mouth of me, people wanted visible(or other sensible/detectible proof) of knowledge, thereby replacing what was commonly known off-hand, but not proven with concrete knowledge, losing much, but gaining even more in the field of knowledge.
b) Plato seems struck on the fact that we eventually had to overcome this immersibility in our shared thoughts, and brought to us a full circle proof of how we were brought to the realization of knowledge, and how it is so much greater than faith. The oral tradition basically turned elders into gods, where the younger generation held full faith in the elder generation. Plato stated that knowledge is far greater than faith, and a much more valuable persuit.

3. they are out there (think urban myths) but their meaning has changed not away from one of blind faith, but it now encompasses technology, and so spreads via chain e-mail, rather than word of mouth. quick example: people were afraid to use tanning salons, so a myth arose of people dying, and this caused both interest and fear.

Hopefully someone will help me with this and expand but this is some of what i got from this passage.

I believe that one thing Plato might be saying is the our intelligence can control our natural abilities and habits as a human and from some perspectives and in some ways, can make them better. Since these philosophers are stuck on beauty i will use that as an example. As humans we have the natural instinct to be curious about things, if we became curious about such a thing as the true beauty in life, then we could use our intelligence to help us find the true beauty and better out understanding of it. I guess it could also mean that we have the technology and such today because of our natural curiosity of materials,and used our intelligence to create such things, i believe there are many different ways this passage can be taken.

I don't know though its only one of my thoughts, i am probably way off. I LOVE YOU MISTER BAKER <3

Through my observation I have extracted this theory from Plato’s passage, I believe what he is trying to say is that both necessity and intelligence correlate with each other. Necessities are the essential characteristics that make up life, for example shelter, food and water are necessities, and intelligence is the ability to comprehend information and knowledge. When used together they create of sense of curiosity, that is completely natural, and is natural human nature. Humans naturally pursue a better state then they are currently in, this is bases on curiosity that trigger us to strive for the better. Plato ends his passage be saying that because of the combination of necessities and intelligence we have created the meaning and for everything else, based on necessities and intelligence.

I believe that Plato is saying that we used intelligence to basically find and control our necessities in life, human evolution, human growth, human survival, and whatever you may call it. This means that we have control over our own universe, and it is the choices we make using human inteliligence, which defines the universe for us. This concept sort of questions the validity of a myth because we have learned that we have created the world for what it is, not of a higher power with little scientifical and philosophical evidence to back its argument up.

I think that Plato is trying to say that for us humans, intelligence (consisting of curiosity, learning and knowledge) is more important to us than the basic necessities of life. Perhaps, Plato is saying that intelligence has always been the more powerful one; therefore it has the ability to control what the necessities are for us.