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SubscriptionsSites I Read
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| few more days til rachel carpenter tells the servant team boys they cant ride the 3 man swing. | | |
| http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/RolstonPeopleVSNature.html
Click on that link and read the section titled, "Feed People First? Do We? Ought We?"
And this is my response to it.. In regards to the contingencies of values, I find apparent fallacies in Rolston’s argumentation by his misrepresentation of Bible scripture- particularly from Mathew 26:10-11. The two verses of scripture reads as follows(where underlined is that of which Rolston does not include in his article), “Aware of this, Jesus says to them, ‘Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for my burial.” The disciples were concerned about the lady’s actions because Jesus had an encounter with a wealthy man in Matthew 19:16-22. Jesus final words to the wealthy man were, “If you want to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.”
During the woman’s act of service, Jesus’ responsive actions were not promoting a contingency of values for one’s self interest- as if there will always be poor people, so do not wait to satisfy poor people’s needs before you begin to value something else. But rather, this woman’s act of service is a beautiful thing & whatever monetary distribution to the poor this perfume could yield, that good deed in itself does not compare to the recognition and understanding that I, the Son of Man, will not always be in your presence for I shall be buried & resurrected. The foreknowledge Jesus’ had of his death and its implications are powerful and needs further elaboration to fully understand his intentions and teaching during this particular event.
I find Rolston’s argumentation for contingent values very convincing in light of argumentation, but in no way do I think he does justice by extending truth to Jesus for validation of his claims. For even Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Feeding man food is not the top priority for Jesus, as if all things have to come to a halt until man is fed. Believing in Jesus for who he said he was what Jesus desires- feeding the poor and being charitable is an outflow of believing. John 6:25-59 speaks beautiful words about all this.
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| Last Friday, I went to a lecture presentation by Daniel Dennett titled, "Domesticating Wild Religions." The following are my thoughts...
I will focus my thoughts on Dennett’s claim of how religions were started. He mentioned the idea of memes and gave an example of a person (whom I will refer as Bob) walking outside and hearing a noise. Bob thinks the noise was a tree talking. Bob then share this information with a friend, who then shares with his friends and before you know the whole town is raving about a talking tree. Bob initially was startled by a noise and although he was unaware of what produced the noise, he was able to provide meaning to the source of the noise- he gave meaning to the cause. Bob could not have associated the noise to something that he does not have knowledge of already. Thus, every time Bob experiences an effect, he gives meaning to its cause through the formulation of previously existing knowledge. This holds true for an effect’s cause that is true or false. With the talking tree example, the effect was a noise heard and its cause was attributed to a talking tree- this is false per say. Another example is an effect of Bob jumping and falling back down to the earth’s surface and its cause is attributed to the forces of gravity- this is true per say. Again, Bob gives explanation of causes with the foreknowledge he already possess. With this notion, humans are born with knowledge manifested in them allowing them to give meaning to causes. It’s sort of like a bank savings account; one can not build interests of their savings with $0 in their account. There has to be some amount of money already in an account for an interest process to occur. This may not be the best analogy, but it’s the best I could do.
Okay, so what does this have to do with religion? Well, I have some questions to ask first. Though I will never find an answer, I would like to know what effect did someone experience to make them derive an explanation referencing God as a cause. I could see the numerous possibilities which include: death, birth, emotions, physical pain, and other critical experiences. Next, why would anyone willingly reason and extend truth to a cause that is something outside of their own domain to further their happiness or make them feel secure? And further, elaborate on the fundamentals of religion with extensive doctrine with the possibility of apparent contradictions. Either the elaboration of doctrine further explains and validates truth or completely furthers an existing lie and skews the original explanation of experiencing effects attributed to God’s causes. According to Dennett, God is merely a product of human explanation through reasoning. Therefore religion does not extend truthful causes to the supernatural but truthful causes are discovered and explained through one’s existing knowledge. Thus, the only truth we can hold is in ourselves. With regards to the previous sentence and in reference to those who live a lifestyle while believing in the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God- they attribute the cause of all truth, ever reasoned by man, to God. Either this is 100% truth or they are living out the greatest lie ever told. There is a lot more that can be said on this… I might write a book or something.
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| I've always told myself that I want to be the old guy who sits alone in McDonald's every morning sipping on coffee while reading the papers. Today I tried it out. I was initially only going inside because the drive thru line was was ridiculously long but after I got my food, I looked at the newspaper rack and behold, there was one waiting for me. I sat down at a table by myself, ate my food and read the paper for a good 20 minutes. It felt good. It felt natural. No one in the restaurant thought I was a weirdo for eating by myself and reading the paper. I think the paper adds a lot to the situation. Because I’ve seen guys who just eat food by themselves in restaurants and don’t read the paper and it doesnt look natural. I always tell myself that they get there 10 minutes early, decided to order, and are waiting for someone else to show up to eat with them. Then I have the urge to finish my food first and leave just so I will never know if they sat alone, hoping that someone else showed up to eat with them. No one should eat alone, that is, unless they have a paper. | | |
| I've had a couple good conversations with my parents since Ive been home. Both of which we talked about my future. I still dont know what I want to do with my degree. I tell myself I will go to grad school, but I dont know what for. I am 98% sure I will be declaring a minor in Philosophy soon. I've also come to realize I would like to teach young people about life; like the 18-24 year olds. Maybe travel and teach at seminars. But that would only be a weekend deal when I teach aside from my career. I know I like to talk and I know I like people and if my traveling expenses are paid for, I would enjoy traveling because I have never done so before. These are my thoughts. | | |
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