School starts next week.

In case you're curious, here's a look at my classes.

1. Beginning Tennis

2. Intermediate Tennis

3. Music Improvisation

4. Flamenco Interpretation

5. Ancient Philosophy

6. Philosophy of the New Testement

7. Philosophy of freedom, fate, and choice

8. Concepts of Classical Physics

This should be a fun semester. For some reason, I always end up taking nothing but serious classes that require tons of reading and writing, so I thought I'd add some chill classes for this semester, such as flamenco.

On a side note, an interesting thing happend to me the other day while I was playing tennis.While I was rallying with my hitting partner, our ball rolled into an adjacent court occupied by four elderly men. One of the men retrieved the ball and handed it to me. He then told me I had a nice body and then winked at me.

It was a strange experiance. Suffice it to say, I've been hit on before but never by men or old men for that matter. I'm going to have to reassess my image... or stop playing at those tennis courts.

Nothing much else new to report other than the fact that I'm really looking forward to school starting; I've had an eventful, albeit, painfully ordinary summer (whatever the hell that means).

My posts wouldn't be complete without posting an inquiry or addressing some sort of controversial issue.

So here we go.

Returning to the Abraham question I posted in my previous post, many of you believed that if God were to ask you to kill a person as an act of faith (just as God asked Abraham), many of you agreed that you'd consider it, or at the very least, consider it a noble act for the sake of God, perhaps as a gesture of gratitude or simply an act of faith.

My question: If one considers killing a single person for God's sake as a noble act, would it still be noble to kill many people if God asked someone to? Where does one draw the line?

People applaud Abraham for his faith and his willingness to kill his own son as a gesture of faith, yet when people such as Al Qaeda kill other people as gestures of faith to God, it is looked down upon. It is considered evil.

So is it simply an issue of numbers?

To those same people who believed it would be okay to kill one person, such as your own child or whoever, for God's sake, would you also kill two people?

How about 2,792 people? (the number of people who died on 911)

Or is it perhaps the fact that Al Qaeda doesn't believe in the Christian interpretation of God that makes their acts wrong?

If God approached the Pope and told him that he needed to kill thousands of people as a gesture of unrelenting faith, love, gratitude, or whatever other reason, ought he to be considered highly if he did so, just as Abraham was?

In case you haven't sensed it yet, I've just equated Abraham from the bible to violent religious fundamentalists. In the case of the story of Abraham and Isaac, Abraham was a man who believed it was okay to trade a person's life for a simple gesture of faith, to treat another human as a currency of exchange, a means to an end. His intent was to show God how much he LOVED and TRUSTED him despite the consequences to humanity.

Al Qaeda has openly admitted through their words and their actions that they would gladly trade not only their lives but the lives of others as gestures of faith and adherence to their interpretation of God.

Their obsession with God has placed them in a position at which they can no longer see the humanity in humanity, and I feel that the examples of Abraham, to a lesser degree, make that same statement.

At any rate, you know my position on the question: blind faith is dangerous.

What's your position, factoring in the additional aforementioned considerations?

If God asked you to jump off of a cliff to your death, having given you no information, assurances, or details of the afterlife and the consequences of your actions, would you do it?

Would you trade your existence on this earth for a leap of faith?

You probably know my answer if you read my earlier posts, but I thought this would be an interesting question for anyone to answer, as I hear from many people that their dedication to God knows no bounds.

To make such a trade, what would that say about one's view of the value of humanity?

EDIT:

An even better question concerns the story of Abraham from Genesis.

In case you are not familiar with the story, Abraham had a son named Isaac who he loved very much. God, as a test of Abraham's faith, commanded him to sacrifice his own beloved son. Abraham, feeling that he must follow God's will, tied his son to an alter and "stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son." It was then that the Lord intervened and said "Abraham, Abraham... here am I". And to make a pretty short story even shorter, God basically hooked Abraham up with the "Platinum package" of blessings for him, his descendants, and all the nations of the earth.

So there it is. Now to the question:

If God approached you today and asked you to sacrifice the person you loved the most whoever that may be, perhaps for some positive consequence from God, would you do it?

Or say, it wasn't even for a postive consequence such as blessings, would you kill someone to show God how faithful you are to him if he asks you to?

God, Christ, and Semantics: My Conversation with a Christian Perspective

I've been speaking to a lot of people lately concerning issues of faith, God, and morals. I figured I'd post a response that I wrote to someone that explores the three aforementioned topics. I thought this would be a good way to spark some discussion on such topics as well as share my views and responses on the issue as I am currently working on my senior thesis, which regards this topic, and it would be nice to get some feedback. Oh and "RYC" means "regarding your comment" if you're not familiar.

RYC: "I know that God is God and as my creator, He is the one who is Truth. I trust His Word, the Bible, and hold that to be my standard of truth. You may choose to accept another point of view. You may choose to make your own rules about what you accept or don't accept. The fact is, God gives you the FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. But with that freedom comes a responsibility and consequences. If you pick the wrong choice, the consequences are eternal."

It sounds like your saying we should choose a perception of truth as a means to an end, that we should choose the perspective of truth because of the consequences that would be produced and not for the sake of truth as an end in itself. I think you will need to do a little bit more work to convince me that God's perspective is the ultimate, objective, and absolute word to believe.

I realize the error of reasoning that you pointed out when I said that there is no objective truth (I'm not entirely sure why I said that and you are correct in your analysis). I think what I was trying to get at is that no one person's perspective can be an absolute as long as other perspectives exist. God, regardless if he is the architect of man, has a subjective perspective because he himself chooses. He chose to create humans and this choice reflects his perspective. It just so happens that he created people who are also capable of choosing, and thus, they too have their own subjectivity. Returning to the issue of what is true, or real, or the good. I believe the only methodology one can utilize to figure this out is a phenomenological methodology. We must look at how people perceive those aforementioned things. Truth, the good, and reality are only words and ideas, words and ideas produced from responses to specific phenomena that we've assigned labels to. Humans have ultimately created this concept of truth, the good, and morality, so it is the perceptions of people that we must look at to see what these things are. We must look at the semantics of these words based off of how the global culture ultimately defines these things from all perspetives. Then, we can say that that good, or that truth, or that reality is indeed the case. That, however, doesn't suggest that the semantics of those words must remain the same. Perspectives change. People experiance things and that alters their perceptions of truth, the good, and reality. Thus, the semantics of those words change as well, and meaning is indeed always fluid and relative to the cultural perspective.

RYC & Q: "You ask me why God should take primacy. It is because He says he is the one and only God, and that we are to have no other gods before him. I take God at His word. I could turn the question around to you, why do you think God should not take primacy?"

Because he said so, you will believe it. Why? Is it because of the consequence of not living in the kingdom of Heaven that you fear will be at stake? This is a copout to finding real truth. Aside from that, You are the one making the claim that God's voice should take primacy; by asking you, I never suggested that it shouldn't. Because you are making the claim, you have the burden of proof to support that claim.

At any rate, I will still answer your question: Aside from the points I mentioned above, I do not believe that we should solely consider the view and perspective of God because God is not the sole creator of meaning, man can create meaning as well. In that sense, man is an architect like God. culturally we've created all kinds of words and concepts that reflect specifically our culture; Remember when the word "cool" use to be solely qualifier for temperature, but because of our culture, we've assigned it a new meaning to be used in other contexts suggesting approval of something, and who's to say that it can't mean that; who's to say we can't change the meanings of things. I am not saying that God's perspective should be ignored, but first we must discover what God's perspective is.

Even if the bible were the literal thoughts and beliefs of God, who's to say that God's perspective hasn't changed over the last how ever long it has been since the bible was written. How do we know God hasn't just lost hope in all of us. He did afterall (according to the bible) flood the world and killed off all humans except for Noah and some few others because of our supposed "wickedness." I guess we're long overdue for another flooding. lol.

RYC: "Our changing emotions and feelings will not allow objective truth, we need a standard of truth that is absolute - to judge by, and that standard of truth is God."

The very fact that we've chosen and interpreted God's perspective from our own filters and perspectives and labeled it as "truth" makes it ultimately a human construct. Whether you like it or not, humans are the architects of truth and meaning, and God too (but not any more so, if we can ever truly pinpoint his perspective). There is no reaon to believe that the bible, assuming that it was a true reflection of God, still reflects the perspective of God now.

RYC: "I do not think I would like to live in a world where morality was based on our individual interpretation of what is right. We are far too self-serving for that. The reason we are not in complete chaos right now is because many still hold those Christian values"

Given all of my points, we are all ready living in a world where morality is based on human interpretation of what is right because what is right will always be a creation of humanity whether it is interpreted by God or not; the very act of interpretation automatically gives the essense of what it is we are interpreting a part of our perspective.

To say that we are far too self-serving and base that as the justification for the acceptance of the remedy that is God's moral code is to assume that humans are incapable of freewill and choice, that we will always be destined to act for our own selfish desires when in reality people do altruistic acts acts all the time. This world is full of secular philanthropists and people who are truly concerned with the wellbeing of humanity for the sake of humanity.

In case you haven't noticed, I am a secular humanist. I put the most primacy on humanity and its wellbeing. I don't disagree with you that there is indeed chaos in the world, but I believe the primary source of this chaos has to do with our perceptions of humanity. You mentioned, "as a child I could walk around in relative safety, and today I fear when my daughter goes out running. It is not a nice world anymore." I don't believe this has anything to do with sin or consequences for following different moral standards than the one's outlined in the bible. It has to do with out perspective of humanity, how humans view themselves and others; it is an attitudinal problem. We create artificial and idealistic structures such as Democracy and Christianity; we tailor these structures to serve humanity, and yet at times we use humanity as means to serve the structure. We sometimes treat others more as cogs to serve the machine of the Christian value system when in reality humanity should be the end in itself and not the means; I think this was the point Jesus was trying to make by concerning himself and dedicating his life to the needs of humans as he did not concern himself with idealistic constructs of social status; he was the quintessential philanthropist. He expressed morals such as the one's list in the Sermon on the Mount, but those morals were meant to serve the well being of humanity. Humans were not meant to serve the well being of morals. In essence then, the morals Christ expressed were meant to be more as signposts for how to treat others and not as necessary imperatives that must be upheld at all times; rather, I think the point of the narratives in the bible was to give humans an experiance of how we should treat humans, as ends in themselves and not means. I think the first start then to making the world a better place is to change our attitude of humanity and morals (not as things we must obey, but rather, as things that help guide us in our interaction with humanity), then we can work through the chaos.

What's all this fuss about Harry Potter?

I hear this argument more times than I need to almost exclusively from Christians: The Harry Potter stories are evil because they portray Witchcraft or Wizardry in a positive light.

Why is that evil? I don't understand.

What is a wizard or a witch? Someone who can perform magic or maybe miracles. Why is that evil? If one were to follow a literal reading of the bible; one could argue that Jesus performed magic by turning water into wine, walking on water, raising the dead, growing back severed ears, etc. yet we do not interpret him as evil.

What is the distinction?

To take this a bit deeper, assuming that God created all humans, magic is real, and humans can use magic, why is it evil to use it? If there is a God who created humans who also fashioned them with certain abilities, why would it be wrong to utilize those gifts? Why would it be wrong to write narratives about it and let others read it for their pleasure?

I'm also curious as to why Harry Potter in particular is targeted. There are so many other popular television programs, movies, books, videogames, etc. that portray wizards, witches, and magic, yet we have no gripes about those other things.

Why Harry Potter...?

ABORTION: My Argument in Defense of it

I think in order to have this discussion we must first begin by looking at what it means to be a human. This is an especially important question to consider because culturally we seem to attribute a great value on human life especially those whom we consider to be innocent. We have numerous laws that protect a broad spectrum of human life from the moment one exits the womb to one's very last breath, and we punish those who seek to harm human existence. Culturally, we've attributed a specific term to those who've succeeded in causing the destruction of a human life given certain conditions: murderers.

Also, culturally, it seems to be the case that this word in particular carries an especially strong connotation, one that carries an image associated with those we've labeled as the very worst of our society. To say the least it is a strong word, much like "rape" is a strong word.

And yet, often times, I hear this term applied to people who seek an abortion. Looking from an opponent's perspective, I suppose it would make sense; after all, babies and children seem to represent the epitome of innocence, they are icons of potentialiality; and ultimately, they are members of humanity, so to sanction the killing of a child simply for the reason that they inconvenience us would seem to qualify as murder at least from our cultural perspective.

This begs the question though, do fetuses qualify as children?

This also seems to beg the question, what does it mean to be human? The question we originally started with. To be qualified as a human, is it simply enough to have the appearance of a person? The image above seems to fit the bill to an extent. The fetus in the image above has fingers, arms, legs, a head, and a body which seem to match a human body. But is that enough? If I were to create some sort of life-like mannequin with all of the same matching body parts; perhaps I even gave it its own central nervous system, a beating heart, lungs, and whatever other parts that seem to be exclusive to human bodies. Would this be enough? Would it be incumbent upon you to respect my creation as a member of humanity. Based off of our cultural criteria, I would doubt it. When was the last time you stopped by your local Macy's to say hi to the well dressed mannequin by the window. I would assume never.

Is it enough to say that potentiality suffices to qualify a fetus as a human? After all, it does seem to be the case that the common trajectory of a fetus is to become a human person. Ought we then to extend the same human rights that we give to people? I don't think so. Do we call an acorn an oak tree? After all, given the appropriate conditions, an acorn has the potentiality to become an oak tree (This is true by the way, if you plant it). If this indeed were the case, wouldn't it be incumbent upon us to extend the same oak tree conservation laws to acorns as well? If it is indeed the case that an oak tree has the same value as an acorn, should we punish those who destroy acorns to the same extent that we punish those who destroy oak trees. Likewise then, can we really say a fetus, simply given its trajectory towards becoming a human being is sufficient enough to qualify it as a human person?

If not for these reasons, what does it mean to be a human?

I think the traits necessary for something to be qualified as a human is a consciousness and exposure to human signposts. The moment at which a child leaves its mother's womb, the first person the baby sees is its mother, a human being with her own subjective perspective. It is from this point that the child is exposed to examples of what it means to become human. It learns from social interaction and experiance, and it is through this defining moment, this very first interaction in which the child's eyes meets his mothers' which dictates the development of the child's subjective perspective and characteristics. The moment of birth is the very moment at which the fetus enters the society and becomes a member of humanity since part of the definition of humanity is subjectivity, and it is exposure to other subjects that gives us that subjectivity because human actions contribute to our choices and our subjective perspective of life. Lastly, we can say human rights extend only to humans; given the name "human rights" it is meant for "humans" exlusively. Given this, aborting a fetus would not be murder; since, it has not met the criteria for "human.

Although, it is not necessarily proven that fetuses lack a consciousness. They, however, have not experienced the concept of humanity. Although, one could easily argue that occupying the womb of the mother could be an “experience” of another person, the fetus is still not exposed to any cultural paradigm that would grant the fetus its own subjectivity to justify an extension of human rights; furthermore, one inside the womb has no concept of "human"; rather, the fetus within its small bubble environment only experiences movements and phenomena from outside its bubble.

For this reason, abortion would be ok from our cultural criteria because of a fetus’ likely lack of consciousness but most importantly their lack of subjectivity, a trait necessary in order to be qualified as a human. Since, the fetus fails to qualify as a human, it is not entitled to the same moral criteria that we extend to human people; its essence qualifies simply as an object; when it exits the womb it develops its subjectivity and thus becomes a human.

Your thoughts?