October 28th, 2009
The modern theory of education, heavily influenced by the captains of early 20th century industry, calls for indoctrination to factory standards: sitting still for long periods of time, remaining quiet in group situations, responding to bells, obedience within a linear hierarchy of absolute authority, acclimation to a high degree of control and constraint. In the last 10-20 years we have increasingly adopted a “prison model” atop the “factory model” as well, with locker searches, drug dogs, etc.
The structure of education is teaching children just as much as the content of their textbooks … it is forming their lifelong impressions of their relationship with society.
Agree? Disagree? Discuss…
Tags: authority, constraint, control, education, factory, obedience, prison, society, structure
Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments »
October 13th, 2009
An atheist, Joe the Peacock, giving advice to Christians on their methods of evangelism. Note his use of a great GK Chesterton line.
Witnessing is interruption marketing.
It’s unfortunate but true – just about every method of “witnessing” to non-believers equates to human spam. To start, I’ll list just a few of the methods we all know about:
- Knocking on doors and talking to strangers about your new church / Christ / a church-related event designed to get new members
- Cold-calling people from the phone book / phone lists to invite them to your church / discuss Christ and his teachings
- Direct mail campaigns
- Holding up signs on street corners
- Walking up to strangers at Starbucks / the mall / anywhere besides your church
- Handing out literature (i.e. “Chick Tracts“)
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: atheism, Christianity, evangelism, marketing, spam, witnessing
Posted in Religion | No Comments »
September 11th, 2009
A thought-provoking excerpt from the opening remarks in the great debate between Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault. (Check out the video highlights or read the full transcript!)
Moderator:
All studies of man, from history to linguistics and psychology, are faced with the question of whether, in the last instance, we are the product of all kinds of external factors, or if, in spite of our differences, we have something we could call a common human nature, by which we can recognise each other as human beings.
So my first question is to you Mr. Chomsky, because you often employ the concept of human nature, in which connection you even use terms like “innate ideas” and “innate structures”. Which arguments can you derive from linguistics to give such a central position to this concept of human nature? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Debate, Human Nature, Linguistics, Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky
Posted in Philosophy | No Comments »
August 31st, 2009
Søren Kierkegaard’s expansive set of texts are complicated enough without considering the ambiguity or duplicity that his pseudonymous authorship presents. Involving and reacting to Hegel and other contemporaries, moving in stages, and talking deeply about matters of faith, philosophy, ‘individuals’, and systems of knowledge, Kierkegaard’s work is already significant. Yet, a reader who reads the whole of Kierkegaard’s work straightforwardly as ‘the words of Kierkegaard’ will be misled by the interplay of his texts, and led to believe in a certain kind of development in his writing, a development from an aesthetic author to a religious author. Also, the definitions of words (i.e. “sin”) can vary across the works. Only by taking into account the pseudonyms and Kierkegaard’s authorial method can one form a strong understanding of his life’s work. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Authors, Christianity, Hegel, Modernism, Plato, Postmodernism, Pseudonyms, Søren Kierkegaard
Posted in Philosophy, Religion, Writings | 1 Comment »
August 31st, 2009
From the internetmonk:
This is my own experience. I cannot remove my doubts, but I cannot erase my faith. At every level, these two experiences exist together, convincing me that I am, indeed and exactly, the kind of contradiction that Luther believed all Christians were at the center: both righteous and sinful simultaneously. (Simul justus et peccator.) While these two experiences are at war over the most basic assumptions of my life, they actually blend together into a single experience that is what one person called “the awesomeness of being human.”
At a fundamental level, I cannot get past the fact that the universe exists, and it is completely unnecessary. That there is something rather than nothing overwhelms my doubts daily. No matter how many times the brevity and meaninglessness of human life plunges me into despair, I look at the world around me, at the Hubble photos, at the beauty of the mountains or of my children, and cannot explain why these things should exist, could exist, or have any possibility of existing if some being did not call all this into existence, and sustain this universe out of pure pleasure. It is not the God of deism or of Islam or Aristotle that explains this. It is the God of Colossians 1:16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him. For him. There is no other explanation, no matter how contrary it all seems to the life I may experience today.
Tags: Doubt, Faith, Internet Monk, Michael Spencer
Posted in Religion | No Comments »
August 30th, 2009
“No man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is in truth and the other man in error.” [and] “But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.”
- G.K. Chesterton
Tags: Chesterton, Convictions, Trees, Turnips, Writing
Posted in Philosophy | No Comments »
July 9th, 2009
I was reading a discussion on Reddit that posed the question:
Our parents were(are) richer, happier, and healthier than we are(will be). So what are we doing wrong?
In reading the responses I came across this answer, which was some serious food for thought. Maybe nothing groundbreaking in terms of a criticism of today’s “plugged in” and “connected” culture, but stated very eloquently:
It’s information. Access to it, people vying for your attention with it. It infiltrates your personal space and occupies the mind like never before, particularly in the “millenium” generation.
I’m sure plenty here won’t agree with me since it’s difficult to explain and wrap your head around in a short post; but it’s the volume of information bombarding the mind and the inability to (emotionally) contend with that volume of information that is driving people nuts.
Go back to the 50’s, briefly. There’s 3 channels on television and radio shows are still a popular form of entertainment. That’s really the extent of your connection to the world. Granted, there was the whole atomic bomb scare, but even that pales in comparison to the numerous doom’s day scenarios we’re frightened with in the media on a daily basis (thanks Glen Beck).
Beyond your local radio and 3 tv stations, your worries really ended at the end of your block in your neighborhood and left more time to focus on building a better life.
Now, the average time someone spends thinking about things which have no impact on their well-being has been multiplied exponentially. It may not seem like much at first, but after years spent watching people die on youtube, debating angrily over the policies of another country, worrying about the opinions of your 300 facebook “friends,” or even getting upset about the points of your last comment, it begins to mold your personality.
All this information stays with you in ways you don’t realize, and invisibly shapes you until you look back and count how much thought you put into something that really doesn’t matter to your overall life objectives (happiness).
Now, we’re even taking all this information with us in our pocket, just to make sure our access to this maddening level of information never leaves our side.
So, what are we doing wrong? Not really questioning, regularly anyway, if what we’re spending time on is conducive to our well-being and simply reacting to vast amounts of mental junk food instead. Ask yourself if your behaviors and the information you absorb every day is useful. Ask how to use everything as a tool to make it useful.
Tags: Culture, Disaster, Happiness, Information Age
Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments »
July 6th, 2009
Spencer served as moderator on a panel at Cornerstone Festival this year discussing homosexuality. He posted reflections on the panel discussion on his blog, Internet Monk. He worried about urges to cast-off what is termed “heteranormativity” in order to allow the victimhood of an oppressed group become the arbiter of biblical exegesis. He then comments further on this idea:
“The mistreatment and oppression of various groups is part of the Biblical story and part of how God reveals himself in scripture, but when we come to the Gospel itself, there is a deep challenge to any idea of empowerment that is based on violence or being the victim of violence. The centrality of Christ and the cross signal a shift- for all of us, and for every group- away from our own victimization to embracing Christ as the ultimate victim through whom all of us are set free. We do not emerge from the New Testament as victimized groups.”
Tags: Christianity, Exegesis, Heteronormativity, Homosexuality, Michael Spencer
Posted in Religion | No Comments »
June 29th, 2009
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians, and plumjam from the JREF forum, who have been sitting there for centuries.
There is a strange ring of feeling and emotion in these reactions [of scientists to evidence that the universe had a sudden beginning]. They come from the heart whereas you would expect the judgments to come from the brain. Why? I think part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science, it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the universe, and every effect must have its cause, there is no first cause…
This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control…
Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, what cause produced the effect? Who or what put the matter and energy in the universe? Was the universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre existing materials? And science cannot answer these questions.” – Robert Jastrow
Tags: Ignorance, Reason, Science, Theologians
Posted in Writings | No Comments »