Today, instead of a summary of a particular lecture, I'll just give you some tidbits from the 12 that I've heard since I last summarized one for you - or maybe it's 18? (I hear 6 approximately 1 hour lectures per day). By the way, if any of you want to borrow my notebook when I return, you're welcome to-they gave us notes, and I've taken some too-there's a wealth of information in them that I'd love to share and discuss!
There are six major worldviews today:
1) Secular humanism (secular = nonreligious, humanism = humans are great, often belief in progress and our chances for self-induced utopia)
2) Postmodernism (absence of truth and/or metanarrative-large story with explanatory power)
3) Biblical Christianity
4) Marxism/Communism
5) Cosmic humanism (Eastern religions, new age)
6) Islam
Doesn't make sense...
Buddhism: can you get rid of desire without desiring to get rid of desire?
Postmodernists: How can an accident (brains) study an accident (the world) and create anything meaningful?
They use language to prove that language doesn't have meaning. They use their brains to prove that their brains can't be trusted!
They say, "It is wrong for you to impose your system of ethics on someone else." Wait-wrong?
Testing a worldview...
~Test of reason: does it make sense?
~Test of the inner world: does it make sense in my experience?
~Test of evidence: is it supported?
~Test of the real world: what happens when it is applied?
Foucalt (who said words are power grabs, not a statements of meaning) and Nietzsche (who said God is dead) are the two most quoted philosophers in Western thought
5 Unavoidable Facts of Truth (if you deny them, you affirm them)
#1 - Truth exists
#2 - It can be known
#3 - It corresponds to reality
#4 - It can be expressed (in words)
#5 - It is personally relevant
3 Big Challenges to Creation Science
1) Distant starlight and the age of the universe
2) Radiometric dating
3) Homology (i.e. the similarities between creatures)
Let me know if any of this doesn't make sense... I know I ripped it totally out of context, so it may not, and I'd be happy to explain-I just don't have time at the moment. And there's some great stuff (a mini philosophy course, for instance) that I only have information on in my other notebook, so I couldn't tell you about, but hopefully that gives you a sense of all the great things I'm learning.
1 comment:
I love what you are learning! Although it sounds like they are shoving a lot of information into a short time(Wow, 6 one hour lectures? Taking good notes must be important for remembering all of that!), it looks like you are having a great time! Although I understand the information you gave just fine, I would ask you--have your views/worldviews/ideas on cultures or other such-- been changed at all by what you are learning? Just curious. :)
--Josiah C.
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