For this post, I have some good news and some bad news.
- Bad news is that this post is a bit shorter because a lot of what we covered in class was review from last time or concepts that I already was familiar with. A major part of our class the Plato's allegory of the cave, which I'm familiar with from other philosophy classes and I wasn't really sure how to explain it well in my notes. If you are unfamiliar with Plato's Cave read this article and then go watch The Matrix.
- Good news! Not only have we toped 150 visits to the page already (big thanks everyone!) but I also have some news about the class itself. After we apparated out of class, I conversed with Dr. Poe and he said that he not only thought that the distribution of knowledge that you are reading right now was a wonderful idea, he also said that he would permit me to record him in the future. Therefore, you may very well be able to listen or watch parts of lectures in the near future. I still have to learn some of the spells that will be needed to make this happen, but I wanted you to know you have something to look forward to!
That is all for now. Enjoy this week's installment and start spreading the word among your friends about this blog!
- Victor Bennet
Last class, we said that we had the same worldview as
Dawkins. This time we are going to explain that. Everyone has a different point
of view. Up until a few decades ago, we looked at the worldview of the culture and
the worldview of the individual as the same thing. We share with Dawkins a Western worldview,
even though our points of view of the universe and God are very different. (This is Dr. Poe's explanation. I personally find terms a little harder to follow, but then again I greatly enjoyed reading Sire. -V.B.)
Christians are cultural deviants. Our culture's understanding
or view of God is very different from the way that we look at God.
After 411, “Rome” moves to Constantinople. “Rome” ended in
May 1453 when the Turks invaded Constantinople. When the church lost its
empire, it thought the world was coming to an end because they had "taken Revelation, multiplied it by Daniel, and divided by Ezekiel." They determined that
the Lord would return in 1492 (the same year Spain started the Inquisition, Columbus sailed, and Nearly Headless Nick was *almost* beheaded).
When Jesus didn’t return, the church didn’t know what to do. Thus they either had to
come to terms with the fact that they had interprated the Bible incorrectly and that they had believed what they wanted the Bible say. It was because of there preconceived notions that they were wrong. But rather than
admit that they were wrong, the Russian church said that Moscow must be the third
“Rome” and that the king must be Cesar (Tzar).
Back in the days of the Roman Empire, there wasn’t much consentience on
anything but peace, thus they gave up for their Republic for the Empire.
St Augustine read the Bible through the eyes of Plato and
when you do this, the Bible does some interesting things. Augustine’s view gave
the Middle Ages a concise view that everyone agreed on.
In Timaeus, Plato said that the Over Soul emitted matter
(but did not create it). The highest form of matter is Man (not Mankind, just
Men). This is because of the Greeks love of courage. If a man is courageous,
they rise to a higher from, but if they weren’t courageous they would become a
lower form of life (a woman). Plato had a high view of kings and believed that
everyone had their place in the hierarchy of live. Thus, this birthed the
feudal system.
St. Augustine brought in the Middle Ages. By 1250, Thomas
Aquinas was the great thinker of the Middle Ages and he loved Aristotle. If you change one ingredient of a
worldview, you will come up with a different culture because the core values
have all changed. Out of the core values come our customs and behavior, and
from those come institutions.
Lewis’ first scholarly work was a book on the change of
marriage from a business deal to romantic love. When he started writing he was
a atheist, when he finished he was a Christian.
In a culture, you have different types of ideas. Religious,
philosophical, political, social scientific, and moral/ethical ideas that make
up a cultural worldview. A lot of people like James Sire, just look at
philosophical questions that make up a view points. (And here I interject again. James Sire wrote a wonderful book called The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog that I highly recommend to anyone remotely interested in the subject of worldviews. The book gives an overview of the worlds key worldviews [theism, atheism, deism, naturalism, nihilism, postmodernism and the like] and explains their shortcomings when compared to true Christianity. This is a book that gives a good basic understanding to how the world around us thinks and is a constant part of my bookshelf. -V.B.)
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge (what do you know
and how do you know it?). Empiricism is one form of knowledge ("Jews demand a
sign") Rationalism is another ("Greeks desire knowledge"). During the
Enlightenment, you have two movements: Naturalism and Materialism. Empiricism
isn’t that big of a deal because a dog or a sunflower is an Empiricist. But
Plato said that matter is evil, therefore Empiricism is bad. What we see is not
the real world, but the real world is the world of ideals. We only see a fallen
world of reflections of the true forms. We remember how things were when we
were parts of the Over Soul, this is apriori knowledge (prior knowledge). (See Plato's Cave)
Next time we will talk about Aristotle and Rowling and how they relate.
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