hi nerds

i'm glad you're smart. because i have a favor to ask.

i just joined a book club of people way ridiculously smarter than me. people who are interviewed on npr and people who speak to thousands of others on a weekly basis. i am neither interviewed on npr nor asked to speak to large audiences. but i did get an A in Non-Verbal Communication at the UW. maybe that's why i get to come.

regardless, we're reading this book, truth to tell, by lesslie newbigin. i have to read it in the presence of my fiance, who is also ridiculously smarter than me, so that i can ask him to explain what the issue fought out between Arius and Athanasius was and why it was so important to the formulation of the Trinitarian formula (say what?).

it's a tough book. it forces me to examine some of my own bad theology (see actual conversation between me and jon below):

discussing descartes's philosophy:
me: okay, so on the basis of knowing nothing, descartes begins with his own existence ... and comes up with, "i think, therefore i am."
jon: right.
me: so his critics then question whether descartes exists, which leads them to wonder whether god exists.
jon: mmhmm.
me: "i think, therefore i am." i don't like it. but "i feel, therefore i am, " THAT philosophy i could get on board with ...
jon: wow, you really are ....
me: totally illogical, i know.
jon: i didn't say it.

so i like it. i like being challenged to really ponder, consider, evaluate. and here's where my favor comes in. i need you to ponder, consider, and evaluate, too. i need your feedback. i picked a few of the most interesting (to me) lines from the book. would you just pick one or two or all and tell me what questions it makes you ask, or what kind of response you have to it? it would help me out A LOT.

1. to abandon hope of speaking truthfully about reality is to abandon the adventure of life.

2. History is always being rewritten - not only because new evidence turns up, but also because old evidence is seen in the light of new experience. The historian E.H. Carr defined history as a continuous conversation between the present and the past. It is only in this way that history becomes part of an intelligible and purposeful life.

3. Einstein says, "what you call a fact depends on the theory you bring to it."

4. In Gibson's tart words, all religions were to the people equally true, to the philosophers equally false, and to the government equally useful.

5. the past 300 years have been the most brilliant in human history, but their brilliance was created by the combustion of a thousand years' deposit of the Christian tradition in the oxygen of Greek rationalism. Now, says Polanyi, the fuel is burned up. We shall not get fresh light by pumping in more oxygen.

6. Revelation is not allowed as a subject for classroom teaching. It is barred from public doctrine. Human origins are a subject for classroom teaching. They are part of public truth. Human destiny is not. It is a matter of private opinion. And if there is no public doctrine about human destiny, there can be no basis for rational discussion in the public forum about what are and what are not proper ends of human endeavor. And when there are no rational grounds for these decisions, the way is open for the sort of mindless fanaticism about single moral issues which is such a feature of our time. Bacon's vision of unlimited power, and the marvelous achievements of technology which have seemed to authenticate that vision, combined with a purely this-worldly scenario for the human story, and in the absence of any public doctrine about human destiny, creates a situation in which there are no checks on the ruthless pursuit of particular ends, moral or otherwise.

Thanks for your feedback.