The Root of All Road Rage

Can be found Here.

Christian Scholars Conference

I've registered for the Christian Scholar's Conference to be held at Lipscomb. I'll show up Friday morning.

Christian Scholars’ Conference 2008
The Christian Faith, Life of the Mind, and the Public Square
June 26-28, 2008

---

Lipscomb University is pleased to host the 28th annual Christian Scholars’ Conference, June 26-28, 2008. This year’s theme, “The Christian Faith, Life of the Mind, and the Public Square” brings together scholars and practitioners to stimulate academic dialogue about the intersection of faith, academics and the public square. Bill Frist, Jim Wallis, Steven V. Monsma and Shaun Casey will address issues surrounding public policy, service and faith. The conversation will stretch from faith influencing policy to politics appropriating the “language” of religion, exploring the nexus of faith, scholarship and the body politic. Break out sessions will bring together fellow academics for collaboration and dialogue.

This Brought Tears to My Eyes

A place where Christians say they are Sorry.

Epistemic Unreliability

JTB of Rude Truth has a great post here. She describes how earlier in her life she hesitated to vote because she found it so difficult to determine the reliability of all the information that was needed in order synthesize a viewpoint and then make an informed and valid decision.

Epistemic unreliability is the phrase she used. I like that. It is admirable in these days to admit humility in the midst of the sea of conflicting and complicated information that swirls about us. Some can't live without certainty and feel they must be right and have the answers. So, they are vulnerable to the people who have the key, who give them the interpretive tools with which to filter everything. Once the commitment is made and an identity acquired and embraced, no conflicting information can convince them differently. We need better tools to help us. In that regard, JTB found this.

EasyBeats - Friday on my mind

A short, upbeat, fast paced, and happy 60's tune that came to us from Australia. Never heard it on the radio much but a friend in college loaned me his 45 rpm single of it. Hearing it fills me with pep, energy and excitement.

Consciousness is a funny thing. I know what I hear when I hear this. I wonder how others hear it?

Why Evolution Should Be Taught in Schools

Yes, evolution should be taught in schools. I'm glad I learned about it at Harding University where despite my teacher's apparent desires and the ruling Board of Directors intentions, I eventually came to realize that it is the best explanation for what we see around us.

Check out "Why Evolution Should Be Taught in Schools" at the blog called Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution. The main points are below with a few closing sentences.

Why Teach Evolution? #1 - It is Good Science
Why Teach Evolution? #2 - It Enhances Critical Thinking
Why Teach Evolution? #3 - It Offers an Opportunity to Discuss Biblical Inspiration
Not Easy, but Essential

"The questions raised above are difficult and there are no easy answers. But Christian educators must be willing to tolerate a certain amount of unresolved tension in the science classroom.....

We all want our children to have the best education possible, to succeed in their various life pursuits, to learn how to think critically about the world around them, and to develop a theologically robust God-centered worldview. Teaching evolution as a valid paradigm for understanding the life sciences, at the appropriate age level, is entirely consistent with these goals."

So True

1. 
   Law of Logical Argument
   Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Free Market Fundamentalism

I don't understand economics. I'd be the first to admit that. There is an aspect of the field of economics that aspires to the level of a field of science. But, at the other end, given its complexity and the fact that it involves people, it also involves philosophy and religion and aspects of the subjective. And I don't know the boundary between these two poles. I came across the term "free market fundamentalism" and it caught my eye. Here is a Wikipedia entry

Market fundamentalism (also known as free market fundamentalism) is an expression used by skeptics of laissez-faire capitalism to denote an allegedly unjustified and exaggerated belief that free markets provide the greatest possible equity and prosperity, and that any interference with the market process decreases social well being. "Fundamentalists" state that markets tend towards a natural equilibrium, and that the best interests in a given society are achieved by allowing its participants to pursue their own self-interest.^[1] The expression is usually rejected as a 'pejorative term' by the persons and organizations to which it applies.^[2]

According to John Quiggin, the standard features of "economic fundamentalist rhetoric" are "dogmatic" assertions and the claim that anyone who holds contrary views is not a real economist.^[3] John Ralston Saul claims this is simply a form of bullying.^[4] This approach flows from evidence that neoclassical economics provides us with a scientific explanation of economic phenomena, an explanation that economists state represents the status of scientific truth (if, and only if, all the assumptions involved in deriving the economic analysis are simultaneously satisfied). However, as Kozul-Wright points out on his book The Resistible Rise of Market Fundamentalism, this "ineluctability of market forces" neo-liberals and conservative politicians tend to stress, and their confidence on a chosen policy, rest on a "mixture of implicit and hidden assumptions, myths about the history of their own countries' economic development, and special interests camouflaged in their rhetoric of general good".^[5]

Interesting.

Live the Life You Love

I need to spend more time with this blogger who is an artist of words:

From Anamchara The Website of Unknowing,

I saw a bumpersticker once that said, simply enough, “Live the Life you Love.” This reminds me of the quotation attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” One of my working definitions of mysticism is “the art of living in heaven here and now.” Bolstered by Biblical passages like Luke 17:21 and Romans 8:35-39, I believe that Christian mysticism is all about going to heaven before we die.

...

Evangelical and Evolutionist

Here's an interesting blog by a guy much smarter than me.

Quintessence of Dust

Here's what he says about himself.

Quintessence of Dust explores issues of science and Christian faith, focusing on genetics, development, evolution, neuroscience, and related topics, regularly discussing intelligent design, creationism, and other scientific issues that worry evangelical Christians. My main theme is scientific explanation.

Genuine Truth in Temporal Existence - K. Jaspers

from a Karl Jasper's lecture in 1935, in the middle of his discussion of Nietsche and Kierkegaard:

Masks: With this basic idea is connected the fact that both, the most open and candid of thinkers, had a misleading aptitude for concealment and masks. For them masks neccessarily belong to the truth. Indirect communication becomes for them the sole way of communicating genuine truth, indirect communication, as expression, is appropriate to the ambiguity of genuine truth in temporal existence, in which process it must be grasped through sources in every Existenz.

From "Reality, Man and Existence: Essential Works of Existentialism" ed by H. J. Blackham. Bantam Books. (I bought this book in 1974 and forgot about it until recently uncovering it while going through my things).

Determinism, Free Will, and Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism

How the mind works and the nature of free will has always vexed me. Here's a conundrum:

"if the mind is a causal agent, then any bodily event it effects is over-determined. Suppose that a mental event, M, causes a brain event, B. Whatever the nature of B, it will have been the case that B was preceded by a series of other brain events. The brain events are, according to the determinest view, connected in a law-like manner. How does the mental event insert itself into this otherwise lawfully governed sequence of physical events?"

from page 66 of "Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism" by Nancey Murphy.