Henry Imler August 31st, 2006

Discussion Outline - Week 2 Intro to Religion

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Henry Imler August 30th, 2006

Say you are a bit frazzled and tired, have had your teeth drilled
on, the culmination of which results in a generally unmotivated and
unfocused mindset when you need to prepare for your 8AM discussion
section that you are leading with twenty-two freshmen. What music would
you listen to as you are trying to center yourself and plod out a good
outline?

I went with Jamie Cullum and the Beatles (One, Help!, and the White Album). It worked out nicely.

In other news; it was funny, ironic, and a bit frustrating and
depressing so see two groups shout at each other today on campus. Good
‘ole Brother Jed and his crew
were at speaker’s circle. Each time I walked by there was a sizable
crowd. Each time I walked by the crowd got more and more hostile to the
crass evangelists. The last time I walked by I saw a shouting crowd
converged around a obscured central point. Then a small woman darted
out with a bible. I though, “Oh my, one of them stole their bible and
are making a dash for it!” In reality, it was one of the speakers. She
was just trying to get some room. She climbed a small concrete ledge
and the crowd followed her, shouting obscenities and questions alike at
her. It was an interesting display. Brashness met with immaturity,
turns out to be a volatile mix. I am not sure, but due to the
percentage of females in the crowd with angry looks on their faces
shouting at the woman with the bible, I think the speaker said
something that was not very pro-feminist.

Anyway, those spectacles are intriguing to me. I guess in that way, they are effective, spurring curiosity.

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Henry Imler August 30th, 2006

I must have missed page 113 in Postcolonialism, A Very Short Introduction. It outlines the grander scheme (directly quoted with bouts of paraphrasing):

1. P/C stands for the right to basic amenities - security, sanitation, health care, food, and education - for all peoples of the earth, young, adult, and ages; women and men.
2. Resists all forms of exploitation (to humans and to the environment)
3. Politically speaking, P/C seeks to assert the right of autonomous self-government of those who still find themselves in a situation of being controlled politically and administratively by a foreign power.
4. Once this independence is achieved, the nationalism that founded the state is transformed and is not used against the minorities and seeks to establish minority rights, women’s rights, and cultural rights, within a broad framework democratic egalitarianism that refuses to impose alienating western ways of thinking on tricontinental societies.
5. While encouraging personal authenticity of sincerity and altruism, it questions attempts to return to a national or cultural ‘authenticity’ which P/C regards as largely constructed for dubious political purposes.
6. It considers the most productive forms of http://unsoundargument.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=115thought that that interact feely across disciplines and cultures in constructive dialouges that undo the hierarchies of power.

Some thoughts on these points:

I don’t know anyone that would deny 1) in the West to others at present. The question of how to get that to people is the question for westerners. I think that most in the West don’t want 2). The historical question is another matter. That is one of the horrible legacies of the West. It is what got us into this mess. However, there are bad eggs dispersed through the world. The love of money does lead to evil. You find that in all economic systems. It has not been the solely the bane in the West. The first two I understand and I think that there is a lot of work to be done so that there is no more exploitation and rights are enforced.

Now it gets interesting, for me at least. Take number three and especially number four. How can one “refuse to impose alienating western ways of thinking” is they are going to make sure that the state is set up with a system of rights for everyone within a democratic egalitarianism framework? Is not a system of rights for everyone within a democratic egalitarianism framework the very hallmark of the West?

All in all, while I recognize the problem, what Young outlines on page 113 seems to be a cut and paste of Western values that Young likes (or that the P/C likes). I am not sure how that is much different from other models of Western intervention… when presented from the “other.” On the other hand, Young says that all he presents is directly from the “other”, the oppressed, and the people that are in the vacuum of postcolonization. I am with him on the problem. I am still unsure where to do from there. But, alas, I am only a few days removed from first contact. I’ll have my thoughts from class up later.

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Henry Imler August 30th, 2006

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Henry Imler August 30th, 2006

In my Postcolonial Comparative Religion class we had to write a maximum two page response of our impressions of the book along with questions that arose durring the reading. I could seriously write ten fold about what I read in Postcolonialism, A very Short Introduction by R.J.C. Young. So that is shy this is so short and underdeveloped.

This week’s reading was my first taste of the postcolonial. As a westerner, on top of that, as a white male westerner, the issues brought up have not affected me. Since they don’t affect me, I have not thought on them. In reading the work a swirl of issues flooded around me. Many of them centered on basic assumptions about things, the others flowed from the outworking of those assumptions. Like the book suggests, they are hard to put in an eloquently structured form. Here are some of them. |inline

• Ethics , Personal
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Henry Imler August 29th, 2006

I am watching the Glenn Beck program on CNN and a guest had a good remark:

Iran needs a nuclear reactor for conventional electricity like Al Capone needs a box of M-16s and glocks to go duckhunting.

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Henry Imler August 29th, 2006

My first impressions of Postcolonialismcan be found here: Unsound Arguement: Complicitness; my second can be found here: Further P-C Thoughts.

Note that these are just impressions of a new topic with some questions that come to mind upon first exposure.

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Henry Imler August 29th, 2006

Seriously.

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Henry Imler August 29th, 2006

Check out the first sentence of President Tom’s letter to the Chancellor of Germany:

If it had not been for Germany being a great contributor to progress in science, philosophy, literature, arts and politics;

If it had not been for a more important and positive influence of Germany in international relations and promotion of peace;

Moreover, if it had not been for the persistence of a strong will by
certain global powers and special groups to constantly portray Germany
as defeated and indebted country of World War II in order to continue
their extortions;

And if it had not been for the presence of Your Excellency at the
top of the executive branch of your country as an experienced
stateswoman with bitter and sweet experiences in two dissimilar
societies with different political systems and traditions,

And at the same time, if it had not been for the advantages that are
limited to women, such as stronger human sentiments and certain
manifestations of the divine compassion and kindness, specially in the
position of a mother and being at the service of the people, and the
common responsibility of all people with faith in God to defend human
dignity and worth and to prevent violations of their rights and their
humiliation, and proceeding from this conviction that we are all
created by the Almighty and He has bestowed upon us all dignity and no
one has any special privileges over the other, and under no
circumstances could a society be deprived of its rights, barred from
pursuit of progress and perfection or be controlled or humiliated;

Finally, if it had not been for the oppression, however different,
of our nations, our shared responsibility to promote justice as the
most basic foundation for promotion of peace and human equality, I
would not have found the motive to write this letter.

Now that is a helluva sentence!

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Henry Imler August 29th, 2006

I did it. I know it is evil, but I just apple’d up. I pulled the trigger on a refurb’ed 30 Gig gen 5 Ipod. They had a pretty decent deal running at Apple.com.

I have not gone the way of the bight and shiny paladin of computers,
I have not not yet gone Mac, because I want to still go back. Well
that, and they are a third more expensive.

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Henry Imler August 28th, 2006

In my last post, I referenced an argument put forth that aimed to show not only that God was mutable, but also that He must exist inside the temporal realm. I do not hold to that conclusion. While I think that God does change, much like a man changes his position while walking, God does lie outside of time.

This does not seem possible at first glance. If something changes, then those changes must be in sequence. If they are in sequence, then they are done in time. If the sequences are done in time, that which undergoes the sequences must also be in time.

I would say that while from the perception of an individual inside of time, God does seem to change within the temporal sequence. However, God only invades time as to interact with that which is in it, yet is still separate from the creation and as a result, is separate from time.

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Henry Imler August 28th, 2006

… you think to yourself, “Alright, I only have one whole book and sixty pages of another book to finish and I will have all my reading done for the week.”

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Henry Imler August 27th, 2006

I think that is hillarious. As a new grad student in religious studies, I am feeling that way all over.

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Henry Imler August 27th, 2006

Yesterday I posted about wondering about Augustine’s ideas on God. This morning I read a post at Prosblogion about the impossibility of God being changeless and creating the world out of free will. Alan Rhoda frames the argument as follows: Can a Timeless God Freely Create?

1. God is absolutely immutable.
2. God has freely created.
3. A free act proceeds from a free decision from among several mutually exclusive possibilities.
4. Therefore, God made a free decision to create from among several mutually exclusive possibilities. (2,3)
5. A free decision from among several mutually exclusive possibilities involves a change of ‘intentional stance’ from regarding something as indeterminate (as one of several possibilities) to regarding it as determinate (as the chosen course of action).
6. Therefore, in freely created God undergoes a change in his intentional stance. (4,5)
7. Therefore, God has changed in some respect. (6)
8. Therefore, God is not absolutely immutable. (7)

The lynch-pin of the argument and one of criticisms of a perfect and unchangeable God is number six. In exercising free will, one is changed, whether or not that one is a person or God. Further more, I like what Rhoda hints at towards the end of the post, where he implies that does not employ mere logic in His exercise in free will. This point was first brought to my attention by Carmen Price, a philosophy doctoral student at Washington University in her capstone paper at Columbia College: “The Necessity of Considering Motivations…”.

What are religions and philosophy’s that hold both one and two to do? Logically, I think that Rhodes has excluded the possibility of holding to both, so it seems to follow that one of them must be dumped or modified as to allow for the other. Which one takes priority over the other? I think that two takes the priority. Without it, one’s God is reduced to a being without free will, something along the lines of Aristotle’s Prime mover. Since the big three monotheistic faiths, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, all hold to a God that is active to varying degrees within It’s creation, this conclusion (Aristotle’s God) must be rejected. Instead it is better to either accept that God undergoes some sort of change in His interaction within time.

• Christianity
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Henry Imler August 27th, 2006

I have a notebook and a desktop computer. I spend a considerable
amount of time on each of them. I use both to listen to music and to
work on school work. My problem is making sure I have the right files
in font of me when I go to work or listen to music. I wanted something
that would sync up folders for me. I wanted something that was easy to
use, fast, and reliable. I had looked for some open source solutions,
but they all had problems with my three requirements. Then I stumbled
on SyncToy,
a powertoy that Microsoft developed for digital photo users. Dispited
this, it works with any folder set and any file contents. I have set it
up to sync my music and MU folders. You can set it to run every day at
a certain time. You can also set what type of sync-ing you want to do:

• Synchronize: New and updated files are copied both ways. Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other.
• Echo: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right.
• Subscribe: Updated files on the right are copied to the left if the file name already exists on the left.
• Contribute: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions.
• Combine: New and updated files are copied both ways. Nothing happens to renamed and deleted files.

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Henry Imler August 27th, 2006

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Henry Imler August 27th, 2006

As part of my class on Augustine, I have to do a one-page relfection on the reading for that week. This week’s reading is books 1-5 of the Confessions. This was my reflection for this week.

An interesting topic that I would like to know more about Augustine’s worldview is his view of God. I do not want to inquire about the religious aspects of God. Augustine makes very clear in passages such as 1:11 that describe God’s holiness, goodness, mercy, and wisdom. Instead what I would pick Augustine’s brain about is the metaphysical aspects of God, such as his views on the problems of omnipresence, pantheism, free will, necessary simplicity and God’s relation to time.

Augustine at once maintains that God is separate from His creation and is present everywhere in it. Being everywhere would seem to imply that God pervades through everything. This idea of God pervading through everything sounds a lot like pantheism, which is impossible since Augustine says that God is separate from His creation. I am not sure how he would reconcile those two ideas.

From what I can tell, Augustine seems to have God being completely outside time, holding to “B Time”. This is into contrast to “A Time” where God is contained within the same time that His creation is in. One first encounters God relationship to time in 1:9, “You are before the beginning of the ages, and prior to everything that can be said to be `before’.” The phrase, “before the beginning of the ages”, puts God at least in sequential order to creation, but still allows for God to be within the realm of time. The last part of the sentence implies that God has existed before there was a time to speak of. If this is so, how is it possible for God to intervene within the realm of time?

Furthermore, Augustine seems to be very concerned with freewill as a necessary component of salvation and in the human condition. At the same time, God is very active within history and within each individual’s life. This is evidenced by the constant God’s prodding and positioning of things in his life that ultimately lead to Augustine’s conversion at Milan. If God is actively manipulating events, how can one say that they have chosen something of their own metaphysical free will?

Lastly, I wonder how Augustine would reply to the idea that in order to be perfect, God must be simple. In order to be simple He must be unchangeable. But if God does hear prayers and decides to act on them, then He must have changed His mind and as such is not simple and therefore not perfect.

Cross posted at the Theology for the Masses and Hundiejo.com

• Personal , Religion
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Henry Imler August 27th, 2006

Scrapple my Face: Bush: B-2 Flights Over Tehran for ‘Peaceful Purposes’

(2006-08-26) — Just hours after Iran opened a new plant capable of making plutonium “for peaceful purposes”, U.S. President George Bush assured his Iranian counterpart that any B-2 bombers that appear over Tehran in the near future would also serve peaceful purposes.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cut the ribbon on the new heavy-water
nuclear plant Saturday as part of a month-long Iranian tribute to the
effectiveness of the United Nations.

Mr. Bush hailed Iran’s “transparent diplomacy” and said, “I called
President Ahmadinejad today to congratulate him, and I told him that if
he happens to notice one of them Stealth bombers going over his town at
about 600 miles per hour, he can be assured that the pilot has only the
best intentions in his heart for world peace.”

“There’s nothing like the B-2 when it comes to giving peace a chance,” Mr. Bush added.

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Henry Imler August 26th, 2006

As part of my class on Augustine, I have to do a one-page
relfection on the reading for that week. This week’s reading is books
1-5 of the Confessions. This was my reflection for this week.

An interesting topic that I would like to know more about
Augustine’s worldview is his view of God. I do not want to inquire
about the religious aspects of God. Augustine makes very clear in
passages such as 1:11 that describe God’s holiness, goodness, mercy,
and wisdom. Instead what I would pick Augustine’s brain about is the
metaphysical aspects of God, such as his views on the problems of
omnipresence, pantheism, free will, necessary simplicity and God’s
relation to time.

Augustine at once maintains that God is separate from His creation
and is present everywhere in it. Being everywhere would seem to imply
that God pervades through everything. This idea of God pervading
through everything sounds a lot like pantheism, which is impossible
since Augustine says that God is separate from His creation. I am not
sure how he would reconcile those two ideas.

From what I can tell, Augustine seems to have God being completely
outside time, holding to “B Time”. Contrast this with “A Time” where
God is contained within the same time that His creation is in. One
first encounters God relationship to time in 1:9, “You are before the
beginning of the ages, and prior to everything that can be said to be
`before’.” The phrase, “before the beginning of the ages”, puts God at
least in sequential order to creation, but still allows for God to be
within the realm of time. The last part of the sentence implies that
God has existed before there was a time to speak of. If this is so, how
is it possible for God to intervene within the realm of time?

Furthermore, Augustine seems to be very concerned with freewill as a
necessary component of salvation and in the human condition. At the
same time, God is very active within history and within each
individual’s life. This is evidenced by the constant God’s prodding and
positioning of things in his life that ultimately lead to Augustine’s
conversion at Milan. If God is actively manipulating events, how can
one say that they have chosen something of their own metaphysical free
will?

Lastly, I wonder how Augustine would reply to the idea that in order
to be perfect, God must be simple. In order to be simple He must be
unchangeable. But if God does hear prayers and decides to act on them,
then He must have changed His mind and as such is not simple and
therefore not perfect.

Cross posted at the Unsound Argument and Theology for the Masses

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Henry Imler August 26th, 2006

This one from the Australian: Western Hostages ’safe and sound’.

Safe and sound… except for the part where they are being held hostage and are being threatened with death.

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