Thursday, January 18, 2007

Class Today

I thought about sticking this in my religion and philosophy section, but decided this doesn't count as i'm neither speculating or philosophizing.

In my history class today, my teacher was talking about the Christian model of belief, and like a good (cliche) college professor, it's both inadequately and improperly represented. What do I do, though? I so wanted to say, "Um, actually, the Bible, if it's in fact read, says that the race of man fell, in the garden, not because of the deceit of Eve, not that she was even deceitful, that was Adam's own deception, but because Adam ate of the fruit. It says that. I promise you." There were other things she said too, but this one exceptionally stood out to me.

I remember. It's the bizarre assumption (that mostly comes from a couple of hundred of years of scripture abuse and ignoring facts) that somehow Christianity is a religion that doesn't bother to use our intellect, despite the fact that many of the advances in many different fields of, well, everything, were performed by Christian men and women, or at the very least, people who had belief in a monotheist faith or deity. Several times she talked about the world "organizing itself into the more rational secular model." These comments make no sense, and I really wanted to say something. I still feel guilty, like I didn't stick up for a friend who was being humiliated, but ultimately, I think I might have come off as a knowitall, when she doesn't even yet know or understand me or my nature. I might have seemed combative. Perhaps comments and argumentation will come later, but right now I think I need the teacher to see that I'm a dedicated student that wants to learn about history in addition to being a dedicated Christian that believes in the ethics and teachings of Jesus as rooted in the Judaic tradition.

In other news, I hate poetry (as a general rule of thumb. Sometimes I'm surprised.), but I do enjoy T.S. Eliot. He underscores the philosophy I hold that, in writing, people who rock go by their initials, which is why I have taken up this practice. We Got T.S. Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Chesterton, and others. I like Eliot because he writes, essentially, really introspective short stories that seem to, by chance or design, or both, the poetic structure. I'm currently reading two collections of his stuff via dailylit.com. Unfortunately, I don't think they offer "The Hollow Men," which is, of course, his best poem. Fortunately it's public domain, which means I can find a copy of it no problem.

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2 comments:

Todd Newton said...

Yeah, don't know what to tell you about the class thing. I keep trying to tell all these atheists that science and religion used to be friends and not enemies but no one seems to listen. If she starts going on about rationality again, remind her that Martin Luther King JR was an extremely devout Christian and ask her if she thinks he was "irrational."

Did you know that a lot of female authors go by their initials so that people won't know they're female? It's an old-fashioned trend and rarely done [for that reason] these days, but an interesting fact nonetheless.

stephen said...

Why haven't we talked sooner. Eliot is my dawg.

"Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again"
-Ash Wednesday

I really like Eliot. Especially on a cloudy, cool afternoon with pipe in mouth...
"--Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks."
-Portrait of a Lady


good stuff