A few trips planned out -

Well, today - early today - I will be flying to Chicago to see a very important friend of mine. It's almost 2AM and my plane leaves @ 7:55AM so I need to get some sleep but I guess I am pretty excited. Hope my friend won't be mad at me for being so tired today. :) I come back home on May 29.

On June 17 I fly out to Burbank to go surfin' with a CA friend. Should be lotsa fun, there will also be some dim sum eatin' going on, and maybe some beer sampling - who knows??

I still am thinking about lots of different topics. The topic of Christian counseling is always intriguing to me - how much psychology can Christians allow to influence their worldview when counseling people? Still wondering why Christians don't focus on the resurrection and only concentrate on eternal life in heaven - this is contrary to biblical teaching. Also going to read a book on Ancient Christian Hermeneutics when I get back from Chicago, should be interesting.

Hope I get a couple of hours of sleep tonight...

Still don't know when I am moving to Norman, OK, but I told my brother he should check out the poli sci program there so that in the future he could possibly attend law school at OU - ranked #67, don't know out of how many law schools though. Jessica refused to guess how many law schools there are in toto. It would be cool to play rugby with my brother again.

Theology v. Philosophy

In contemporary theology, the situation is just about nothing short of a disaster. The theologians have relied upon Continential philosophy including Kantian philosophy. This type of philosophy claims that one cannot make any true statements about reality in itself, only appearances. Hence, one cannot make any kind of propositional statements about God. This reduces the theologian to taking biblical statements in the Bible and using them for theology, instead, the theologian is reduced to claiming X is what the Bible asserts, but all we can say is X. For example, if the Bible mentions how God changes his mind, a majority of theologians - this type of interpretative theology is referred to as narrative theology - will claim that we cannot systematize God changing His mind, but only view it in the context that it takes place in. So no meaningful statements can be made about God. Perhaps the most significant factor in all of this is that it produces a gap between academic theologians and the folks in the pews. Those in the pews are not aware that they cannot make any meaningful statements about God.

The problem with all of this is that theologians have given Kantians way too much credit. Plantinga discusses this in his book, Warranted Christian Belief, but Plantinga mentions that no one ever asked the philosophers if they should take Kant's argument as conclusive. Plantinga claims to have refuted Kant's argument that one cannot make statements about reality or God. I think the one thing this shows is that philosophy does have something to say to theology. Though theologians do often ignore this fact. --this has made me feel more secure in my decision to pursue a degree in philosophy rather than theology

Limited Posting

I have to confess, I have moved back in with my mommy and am awaiting to hear from the University of Oklahoma concerning my apartment assignment. Until then, I will remain at my mommy's house which is in my hometown of Flower Mound, TX, pop. 50,000+ a nice suburb, but those of you w/ sympathies towards the poor would not like Flower Mound because we are all a rich bunch of spoiled brats and do not deserve any sympathy - we all got our money from our parents. Anyway, all that to say is that at my mom's I no longer have high-speed internet but have dial-up and no longer have cable television, but regular tv, with about 6 English channels and 4 Spanish channels. Hence, blogging, and im'ing will be severely limited.

Starting to read

I still have to do six journal abstracts for Dr. Blount, though I am not all that concerned about finishing them, I still feel a slight bit of pressure to have them completed by tomorrow (Wednesday).

I started reading Naming & Necessity by Saul Kripke. It is a significant book in philosophy dealing with philosophy of lanugage, modal logic, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. I have read the preface and the first lecture, it consists of three lectures in all, and the preface is somewhat of a summary of the whole book.

I have also started reading The Brothers Karamazov. So my reading goals should be accomplished this summer. I am not doing too well on the sleeping thing so far - I think the queen sized bed that I sleep in at my mom's house should remedy that situation.

This Friday I am moving in with my mom for the summer - or until I move to Norman (OU). I still need to get boxes to pack all my books in - the reason that I have so many books is due to my problems with lust, I lust after books, I have to have all the books I can - but other than my books, I really don't have that much to move.

Some philosophical movies... hmm...

Well, blogger has changed their format, but that is neither here, nor there.

I have decided that next time I teach an intro to philosophy class that it will revolve around three movies - but in actuality I keep adding movies to it - so far these movies include The Matrix, Blade Runner, and Vanilla Sky. For The Matrix, I will discuss Plato's Republic especially the allegory of the cave, yet I can also throw in some Descartes, which would then lead into Vanilla Sky. WOW!! Watched this movie for a second time tonight, must say, reminded me of Descartes, so would nicely tie in with Descartes Meditations. Moreover, Vanilla Sky also has element of existentialism in it. Blade Runner would go along nicely with John Searle's Chinese Room. Searle's chinese room basically deals with the question of consciousness and AI. Both relevant questions for philosophy. Hopefully by incorporating movies into an intro course for philosophy, student interest will be much higher.

Done - well, not quite yet...

All my grades have been submitted, though I did make an error, one student who did not take a test made a 'D' instead of an 'F', but I submitted the grade as an 'F' so I need to sort it out next week. I also have to finish writing six abstracts for Dr. Blount, but that is something that I should be able to finish by Tuesday, if I don't then I am a complete slacker :)

Today I bought The Brothers Karamazov - the unabridged version - from Half-Price Books, one of the greatest chain stores ever invented. I love to look for books. The Philosophia Christi Journal came today, it's the journal for the Evangelical Philosophy Society. So now it is time to begin reading good theology and philosophy once again. My roommate forgot to pay the cable bill for two consecutive months so our cable box is shut off, not a big deal, but this helps me to realize how much easier it will be to read without any tv. Now I will have a 19" LCD moniter for my computer, and I will be able to watch dvds on that, but I can't watch a dvd like I can flip through the channels and find something to watch. So, all this to say that now I will begin reading some good literature, and good theology, beginning to meet my summer goals :) WOO-HOO!!

Tomorrow, I will read some philosophy of mind and get in a good workout.

This Friday, May 14, I am moving back home with my mommy. Ah, big bed to sleep in again, sweet bliss.

I'm gettin' there

Well, tomorrow will be a 9 - 4 final philosophy papers presentation day. There are x number of students and x students will present there papers. Then each presenter will be critiqued by one of x students. Each paper presented is about 35-45 minutes. It's a good idea for a class of about 5 people, and it's a good idea for students who actually attempt to write a good paper - I'm one of those students who did not write a good paper. As I told my prof. today, I know that at SWBTS no matter how bad of a paper I write, someone will always write a worse paper. A lot of the papers presented tomorrow will be terrible, no doubt about it, not even MA quality papers, this is the problem with evangelical academic institutions, sometimes they are too gentle on the students for the good of everyone. Oh well. I confess, I am a slacker if I am not pushed. Then after presenting papers, I have to go to work, supposed to be in Dallas by 6:30, not good, especially during rush hour, not good at all. I will probably be late, but hey, they can fire me if they want :)

I'm moving back home with my mom a week from today, on May 14. I still don't know when I am going to be assigned an apartment at OU. That's fine, one thing at a time right ;) I try, but don't always do a good job of obeying this principle. I still have to turn in grades for Tarleton State University, but first, I have to make it through tomorrow.

Then I also have to remember that Sunday is Mother's Day, so to anyone who reads this blog, don't forget to call your mother or get her a card. Mom's like these things.

Grades, Grades, Grades.....

I thought the semester was over... I forgot what a hassle grading is. Somehow I got locked out of the Weatherford College grading system because I supposedly clicked to submit final grades - I swear I clicked "no" do not submit for final grades. This is a beat-down. Four students at Tarleton State University forgot to put their names on the test... how do I figure this out?! Just give them a 0 - or do I split the avg. between the students. To top it all off, I still have my own work to do, on top of submitting grades and doing everything else. This really SUCKS.

Some reading...

Came to my mom's house yesterday, finished reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, or many of you may know the story from a movie called Blade Runner, in which a young Harrison Ford starred. This time the movie is similar to the book - the book was written in 1968, the movie came out in 1982 - but they have many great differences between the two. In the movie, the main character is made out to be an android, in the book he is human. In the book the thing that separates humans from androids is the fact that humans have empathy towards others, androids are cold towards people and other androids. In the movies androids develop empathy, whereas in the book they never develop empathy.

I don't think that the book is completely coherent, because there are some parts of it where I am trying to figure out how the current course events make sense in the context of the book. Kinda like the author just made some things up because it sounded cool and added to the suspense, but does not compute as far as the story goes. The book has much social commentary, but it's one of those books that I do not know if I understood everything the first time, but don't know if that's because the book has some deep thoughts and concepts or becuase the book was not that well written. The reason I read it is because I would like to show the movie the next time I teach an intro to Philosophy class - so for that reason alone it was worthwhile. The fundamental question the book is discussing is that of AI, can we duplicate the minds of humans - completely, and the book answers "No."