For the "floaters"
Today before I left the group to be a floater our group was discussing about faith. It was cool to have conversation's with the other groups and see what they had to say.
Primarily the discussions today were about heaven and hell, and eternity. We asked questions about eternity and talked about how to think rationally about our beliefs on eternity.
The ideas of Blaise Pascal, John Calvin, and John Locke were contrasted and discussed, and we debated on the viewpoints of these philosophers as well as our own. It seemed like the hot conversation topic among the class related to Predestination and Free Will.
Here is our group discussion from today:
ReplyDeleteHaving faith was the main topic of discussion. Does everyone have faith? Is faith a religious term? Is faith something that we do consciously or subconsciously?
The conversation went in all different direction, but one topic that personally interested me in religious faith. Many apply the term faith to a religion and in this part of the world more specifically christianity. Christians have faith that if they follow Christ and live as a Christian they can obtain eternal life within the Kindgom of heaven. However, faith in other religions may not be the same. There are religions (similar to Satanism, but not Satanism) that use fear to deter people from doing things that will result in eternal damnation. As opposed to the Christina faith which gives its followers an incentive to be eternally blessed.
Although, faith is normally a religious term, it can also be used to describe a belief, such as, ex. "I have faith in my classmates that they will not shoot me in class." Having faith is word that describes a belief that in many cases oppose fear. We as a human race do not have to have fear constantly throughout the day due to our faith in people, classmates, government, etc. We have faith that those around us will do good will on their own free will, because its how we get along and thrive in a coexisting environment.
I might come back to this and continue to write later, but this is all I had time for now.
I was very proud to be part of the group discussion. Almost everyone in our group participated and gave their viewpoints and some of their experiences!! Faith is a very strong topic to discuss, not only in religious terms but also in rational terms like believing in your chair and how you have faith that it will hold you up when you sit in it. Also a topic regarding how you fear the things you do not have faith in and how you mostly avoid the things you do not have faith in, even subconsciously.
ReplyDeleteDuring the reading on Rorty in America the Philosophical, I found the concept of the term "true" being a primitive notion and "anytime your try to analyze it in terms of something else-- like coherence, or correspondence, or what works-- what you say is wrong" and its relation to analytical philosophy.
FQ: What book did Rorty believe knocked out the enterprise of epistemology itself? (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature)
FQ: What position did Rorty believe in? (Middle-of-the-road)
DQ: How do you feel on the view that every tradition is as rational or as moral as every other could be held only by a god, womeone who had no need to use the terms rational or moral because she had no need to inquire or deliberate?
Link: Describing Rorty on analytical philosophy!! http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n02/richard-rorty/how-many-grains-make-a-heap
FQ: Who was Francois-Marie Arouet better known as? (Voltaire)
ReplyDeleteDQ: Could an all-loving God cause natural disasters?
Link: http://www.egs.edu/library/voltaire/biography/ More information on Voltaire