Quote search – Philosophy August 29, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Philosophy.add a comment
Another quote search: Philosophy.
If you don’t know what this is about, look back a couple of entries.
Here’s what I have so far on Philosophy, and it even includes one of my own:
“I have at times feared philosophy, but I love it — what little I have dabbled in it. It is about knowing, and knowing can be scary, but it is also rewarding.” (Ferrell Foster, “Overwhelming Importance” blog, Sept. 6, 2006)
Philosophy “builds cathedrals before the workmen have moved a stone, and it destroys them before the elements have worn down their arches. It is the architect of the buildings of the spirit, and it is also their solvent: –and the spiritual precedes the material.” (Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 1925, pp. viii-ix)
Checking a hunch February 7, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality, Truth.7 comments
I get the sense that people from a variety of religious backgrounds are visiting this site. I know I have encountered Muslims, Agnostics and Christians in this space; but I sense when I visit the sites of people who have commented that there is a broader religious background represented. I’m curious. Please, if you’re reading this and obviously you are, let me know your faith background.
The reason I ask is that I’m reading some things that resonate with Christian truth but which are stated in a different way than I normally encounter. I love this and am looking for categories to help me make sense of this beautiful “noise,” which is becoming “music.”
Questions February 6, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Christianity, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality, Truth, Uncategorized.6 comments
We always look for answers, but maybe we should be looking for questions. They may be more important.
For instance, we evangelical Christians tend to ask questions like, “How can a person be saved?” “Is our salvation predestined or do we have free will?” “Is the Bible inerrant?”
Then the more skeptical tend ask questions like, “Does God exist?” “How could Jesus be both God and man?” “Was Jesus really God’s son?”
I wonder if it would be better to ask questions like these, “What can I do today to connect with the reality that I cannot see?” “What can I do today to help someone else?” “What can I do today to become a better person?”
You probably noticed the repeated phrase — “what can I do”. I’ve always heard we should focus on being and the the doing will follow. I wonder if we should focus on doing and let the being follow. I don’t mean “doing” in the sense of trying to fulfill certain guilty obligations. I mean “doing” in the sense that maybe it would be good to focus on what can be done by me this day. If there’s any truth there then the “doing” is not as important as what we do.
I have spent most of my adult life as a journalist. I never felt my strength was in dancing with the English language; rather, I felt my strength was always in asking questions. I didn’t mind asking questions even if they made me look dumb. As a result, I learned things I would never have learned because people really talk when people really want to know what they have to say.
What does life have to say? Are we really asking, or are we always telling life what we want it to be?
I’m thinking out loud. Someone help me.
Scripture and reason January 15, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Bible, Christianity, Emerging church, Philosophy, Religion, Scripture.1 comment so far
“… [N]othing taught in Scripture would work, could possibly be effective, except on the assumption that those to whom these words are directed over the ages have sufficient rationality to match up Scripture with the actual affiars of life.”
That is Daniel N. Robinson’s paraphrase of what Richard Hooker had to say in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Politie (1593). Robinson references Hooker in The Teaching Company’s Great Course titled American Ideals: Founding a “Republic of Virtue” (lecture 2). To continue the paraphrase:
“A providential God must have equipped us intuitively with sufficient rational power to comprehend our relationship to God, our relationship to each other, what the terms of political and social associations should be, etc. So, what we have Hooker appealing to first is the requirement that Scriptural interpretation not fly in the face of reason itself.” (p. 28)
Hooker was a “devout Christian writer, but he distinguishes between extreme literalism in the matter of Scripture and what a reasonable person’s understanding would be of what Scripture claims and means and requires of us all,” says Robinson, who is on the philosophy faculty of Oxford University.
One more quote from Robinson: Hooker was “trying to remove religion as the grounds of political upheaval, and revolutionary zeal, and one man turned against another.”
I think many of us would like to remove religion as “the ground for one man turned against another.” Religion need not be that way. Bad religion does so, but good religion does not. It is one thing to disagree with someone; it is another to demonize him.
Overwhelming importance September 6, 2006
Posted by Alien Drums in Philosophy.add a comment
Some things to think about from Alfred North Whitehead, writing in 1925 in the preface to Science and the Modern World:
“This study has been guided by the conviction that the mentality of an epoch springs from the view of the world which is, in fact, dominant in the educated sections of the communities in question.” (p. viii)
Philosophy “builds cathedrals before the workmen have moved a stone, and it destroys them before the elements have worn down their arches. It is the architect of the buildings of the spirit, and it is also their solvent: –and the spiritual precedes the material.” (pp. viii-ix)
“The key to the book is the sense of the overwhelming importance of a prevalent philosophy.” (p. x)
I have at times feared philosophy, but I love it — what little I have dabbled in it. It is about knowing, and knowing can be scary, but it is also rewarding.
I love Whitehead’s line: “the spiritual precedes the material.” I fear we do to little spiritual or philosophical thinking.
