Before I even start, let me clarify that I'm among the many Browns fans who believe the Browns sealed their OWN fate this year by losing a winnable game to the Bengals. I do NOT believe the Colts owed them anything, nor am I bitter because the Colts kept the Browns out of the playoffs. The be clear, the Browns kept the Browns out of the playoffs and though the taste was on the tip of our tongues this year, I'll take a 10 and 6 season as a giant step in the right direction and wait happily for next season as I am so accustomed to doing as a fan of Cleveland sports all my life. The following rant has nothing to do with that.
Now it's time. Tennessee and Indy got exactly what they deserved this week. After all, they quit playing professional football THREE weeks ago! While the Giants and the Patriots left it all out on the field during their last regular season game, with absolutely NOTHNG to gain from it, the Colts and the Titans seemed to forget that they were millionaire professional athletes whose sole purpose on game day is to entertain fans. I don't know about you, but I rarely find watching towels being thrown in entertaining, although in this case, had the throwing of towels been literal perhaps it would have been more entertaining than the actual end of that game!
In the case of the Giants, their end of season effort clearly propelled them over Dallas last night. Coming off of a serious threat to topple the great Patriot dynasty, they pulled off a huge playoff win. The NY defense had no business holding Dallas to only 17 points and hanging the hopes for a playoff game on special teams and a hit or miss offense is not exactly a safe bet. But the Giants learned how important showing up for the end of season games can be. They came out ready, not as thoroughly rested as I'm guessing the Titans and the Colts hoped to be, and pulled it off. So Eli will be playing while Peyton watches... just like Peyton did for the second half of the last regular season game. Apparently he likes to watch. Good for him. He's got the entire off season to do it now. He, his teammates, and the Titans deserve it.
I had to get that out of my system.
Luth
Monday, January 14, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Led Zeppelin and the source of all knowledge
Boy did I ever miss that call about the BCS Championship! Not only did I not celebrate a victory, I didn’t even see most of the last half. That roughing the kicker penalty in the first drive of the second half was all I could stand. Ah well, as a northern Ohio football fan through and through, I’m not stranger to these words: next season.
I just got back from dropping off a neighbor girl who was hanging out with my daughters tonight. On the way there, the opening notes of Stairway to Heaven caught my ears as I scanned the local radio stations. I don’t know if it’s because I recently read the Rolling Stone article about the band’s London reunion/fundraiser and that planted some kind of seed or if it’s because my LPs have been in a box for about 15 years, but I was compelled to drive around the block a couple of times to hear the whole song, gradually turning up the volume until we pulled in the driveway just in time to hear Robert Plant’s final pleading cry.
I haven’t WANTED to listen to a Led Zeppelin song in a long time, but for some reason, it sounded pretty darned good tonight. In fact, I might dig out the one Zep CD I have just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.
For a long time I’ve pulled a random CD off the rack and tossed it in my truck just to listen to something I haven’t heard in a while, but the closest to classic rock I’ve listened to was maybe The Clash or The Kinks. The desire to grab something like Aerosmith or AC DC just went away like my childhood love of macaroni and cheese after living on it through the college years.
Now that I think about it, the mac and cheese jones came back for a while too after my kids started liking it… peanut butter and jelly kind of worked that way too. Until I’d made both for my kids, I probably went close to a decade without even considering eating either of those two delicacies. I wonder if that’s why fashion trends always come back around too. One of the surest signs that something will come back is when some expert says it won’t.
When it comes to my musical likes and dislikes, I suppose I’m the expert, and I know classic rock suffered some dark days (in the case of my taste) after its resurgence on FM radio throughout my high school and college days. By then, most of my friends and I had just about had our fill and were really waiting for the next big thing to happen in rock music. About the time the radio stations decided for us that there was no new rock music worth listening to, we had grown weary of the 1000th playing of Freebird, Stairway and Light My Fire. I’m sure we weren’t alone, but the radio offered little in the way of hope, until, alas, musicians forced their hand, but radio, in its hubris, couldn’t admit that rock lived on and had to call the latest wave of new rock, “alternative,” and at that moment true rock and roll finally belched forth its death rattle.
Sure the hair bands gave it their all. Techno-punk like Akron’s own Devo and a few other strange oddities of the 80’s didn’t exactly force radio to admit they might have been wrong about forcing 20 year old songs down our ears rather than rolling with the changes, but that was pretty much it for the evolution of rock and roll. If any new rock music existed, from that moment forward it had to call itself alternative.
I’m not sure why this is pouring out of me tonight… I guess I just had to share the Stairway story ‘cuz it really did sound good. And not in some longing for the old days way, but just good, like rain on the roof as you lay in bed or a harmonica crying through a valley. No memory was necessarily associated with it. It was just a cool song again… after years of switching to the CD player or hitting search on the tuner when one of those classic songs came on in the past.
As I type this it occurs to me that this is somehow twisted up in a recurring thought I’ve been coming back to lately. It’s the result of the many debates, discussions and even arguments I had while a graduate student of rhetoric: where does knowledge come from? The specific version of this for students of rhetoric is, are words the source of/creators of knowledge, or do words form later out of necessity to describe a pre-existing truth that’s just “out there?”
Fashion trends obviously are influenced by culture and society, but I don’t know if I can buy that about my musical tastes. I mean, I’m sure culture and society are a small factor, but can that really explain why a song I used to like, but grew tired of suddenly catches me in the right moment? The station that played it has probably played it another thousand times since I stopped listening to it habitually. I’ll tune in to it every now and then to see what’s on, but generally skip past after hearing one of the same hundred or so songs.
So how does this get back to the epistemological question? I’m not sure exactly, but I can’t help but think it does. Do the words that describe fashion trends cause those trends to come back? I think they do in some ways. Maybe not just the words, but talking about the trend more surely must. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point covers some tangent of this by describing the “cool” people who started wearing Hush Puppies again just as the company considered calling it quits, but unless the rest of us started talking about those cool people, their choice in footwear would have had little effect on the rest of us and no effect on the company or foot fashion trends.
I also can’t help but think this concept fits squarely with the previous few posts… ok, maybe not squarely, but tangentially. When it comes to religious faith, the source of knowledge is clearly at the root of the issue. I’ll contend that our socio-cultural-political climate of late wouldn’t even allow me to discuss this with anyone outside of a college lounge, not classroom. Even academia’s quest to go overboard about being objective has them backpedaling from their previously infamous criticism of religion in the classroom. (much like modern media and its former liberal bias) But in the context of my last posts, I’ll risk saying it here: I believe man is the source of the knowledge we take from the Bible. The fact that man has written it and translated it through several languages over the last thousand or so years is beyond question, but where man got those ideas seems to be the real issue. So there we are again back at do words create knowledge or do we create words to describe knowledge that exists on its own?
In my quest to find answers that satisfy me to questions like this, I wandered through a few other books that some think need a capital B. Lao Tzu’s The Way, English versions of the Koran, a number of books on variations of Eastern philosophy (I still dig those) and various stages of Bible study from the traditional K-8 indoctrination leading to confirmation in a United Church of Christ to courses on the Bible as Literature as an undergrad, and studies of a handful of saints and other Christian figures as rhetoricians. The one thing the religions I’ve glanced at have in common is that they all claim the source of knowledge was divine. It was “out there.” We only use words to describe and discuss it, not create it.
Obviously, my current thinking about that is beyond skepticism, but as I sit back and take an inventory, I’m even more convinced, but maybe for a different reason. After all, is there really a difference between saying man (through his words) creates knowledge vs. knowledge was given to man by God, but then that knowledge had to be shared with his fellow man through man’s word? Either way, man creates, alters, adjusts, tweeks and otherwise makes what he wants out of that knowledge. Maybe that’s why so many people think rhetoricians are strange, because what we argue about doesn’t really matter.
But that only solves the problem for folks who believe God is the source of all knowledge. There are plenty of folks out there who disagree and thus still struggle with epistemology. I think I’m joining them because when it comes to what form that knowledge takes, and, more importantly, which God created it, the books just don’t jive. I mean, if Allah (pbuh) is the source, then Christians have really strayed from that path, and of course, like the Christian path, Allah’s (pbuh) was divinely delivered so there’s no questioning it. In fact, the Bible foreshadows Mohamed and the Koran refers back to the Bible. Somewhere in there some signals must have gotten crossed… then again, we only have man’s interpretations of both.
That’s about all I can take right now and I’ve got a new Chuck Palahniuk book I can’t wait to dig in to, so that’s it for now.
Luth
Out
I just got back from dropping off a neighbor girl who was hanging out with my daughters tonight. On the way there, the opening notes of Stairway to Heaven caught my ears as I scanned the local radio stations. I don’t know if it’s because I recently read the Rolling Stone article about the band’s London reunion/fundraiser and that planted some kind of seed or if it’s because my LPs have been in a box for about 15 years, but I was compelled to drive around the block a couple of times to hear the whole song, gradually turning up the volume until we pulled in the driveway just in time to hear Robert Plant’s final pleading cry.
I haven’t WANTED to listen to a Led Zeppelin song in a long time, but for some reason, it sounded pretty darned good tonight. In fact, I might dig out the one Zep CD I have just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.
For a long time I’ve pulled a random CD off the rack and tossed it in my truck just to listen to something I haven’t heard in a while, but the closest to classic rock I’ve listened to was maybe The Clash or The Kinks. The desire to grab something like Aerosmith or AC DC just went away like my childhood love of macaroni and cheese after living on it through the college years.
Now that I think about it, the mac and cheese jones came back for a while too after my kids started liking it… peanut butter and jelly kind of worked that way too. Until I’d made both for my kids, I probably went close to a decade without even considering eating either of those two delicacies. I wonder if that’s why fashion trends always come back around too. One of the surest signs that something will come back is when some expert says it won’t.
When it comes to my musical likes and dislikes, I suppose I’m the expert, and I know classic rock suffered some dark days (in the case of my taste) after its resurgence on FM radio throughout my high school and college days. By then, most of my friends and I had just about had our fill and were really waiting for the next big thing to happen in rock music. About the time the radio stations decided for us that there was no new rock music worth listening to, we had grown weary of the 1000th playing of Freebird, Stairway and Light My Fire. I’m sure we weren’t alone, but the radio offered little in the way of hope, until, alas, musicians forced their hand, but radio, in its hubris, couldn’t admit that rock lived on and had to call the latest wave of new rock, “alternative,” and at that moment true rock and roll finally belched forth its death rattle.
Sure the hair bands gave it their all. Techno-punk like Akron’s own Devo and a few other strange oddities of the 80’s didn’t exactly force radio to admit they might have been wrong about forcing 20 year old songs down our ears rather than rolling with the changes, but that was pretty much it for the evolution of rock and roll. If any new rock music existed, from that moment forward it had to call itself alternative.
I’m not sure why this is pouring out of me tonight… I guess I just had to share the Stairway story ‘cuz it really did sound good. And not in some longing for the old days way, but just good, like rain on the roof as you lay in bed or a harmonica crying through a valley. No memory was necessarily associated with it. It was just a cool song again… after years of switching to the CD player or hitting search on the tuner when one of those classic songs came on in the past.
As I type this it occurs to me that this is somehow twisted up in a recurring thought I’ve been coming back to lately. It’s the result of the many debates, discussions and even arguments I had while a graduate student of rhetoric: where does knowledge come from? The specific version of this for students of rhetoric is, are words the source of/creators of knowledge, or do words form later out of necessity to describe a pre-existing truth that’s just “out there?”
Fashion trends obviously are influenced by culture and society, but I don’t know if I can buy that about my musical tastes. I mean, I’m sure culture and society are a small factor, but can that really explain why a song I used to like, but grew tired of suddenly catches me in the right moment? The station that played it has probably played it another thousand times since I stopped listening to it habitually. I’ll tune in to it every now and then to see what’s on, but generally skip past after hearing one of the same hundred or so songs.
So how does this get back to the epistemological question? I’m not sure exactly, but I can’t help but think it does. Do the words that describe fashion trends cause those trends to come back? I think they do in some ways. Maybe not just the words, but talking about the trend more surely must. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point covers some tangent of this by describing the “cool” people who started wearing Hush Puppies again just as the company considered calling it quits, but unless the rest of us started talking about those cool people, their choice in footwear would have had little effect on the rest of us and no effect on the company or foot fashion trends.
I also can’t help but think this concept fits squarely with the previous few posts… ok, maybe not squarely, but tangentially. When it comes to religious faith, the source of knowledge is clearly at the root of the issue. I’ll contend that our socio-cultural-political climate of late wouldn’t even allow me to discuss this with anyone outside of a college lounge, not classroom. Even academia’s quest to go overboard about being objective has them backpedaling from their previously infamous criticism of religion in the classroom. (much like modern media and its former liberal bias) But in the context of my last posts, I’ll risk saying it here: I believe man is the source of the knowledge we take from the Bible. The fact that man has written it and translated it through several languages over the last thousand or so years is beyond question, but where man got those ideas seems to be the real issue. So there we are again back at do words create knowledge or do we create words to describe knowledge that exists on its own?
In my quest to find answers that satisfy me to questions like this, I wandered through a few other books that some think need a capital B. Lao Tzu’s The Way, English versions of the Koran, a number of books on variations of Eastern philosophy (I still dig those) and various stages of Bible study from the traditional K-8 indoctrination leading to confirmation in a United Church of Christ to courses on the Bible as Literature as an undergrad, and studies of a handful of saints and other Christian figures as rhetoricians. The one thing the religions I’ve glanced at have in common is that they all claim the source of knowledge was divine. It was “out there.” We only use words to describe and discuss it, not create it.
Obviously, my current thinking about that is beyond skepticism, but as I sit back and take an inventory, I’m even more convinced, but maybe for a different reason. After all, is there really a difference between saying man (through his words) creates knowledge vs. knowledge was given to man by God, but then that knowledge had to be shared with his fellow man through man’s word? Either way, man creates, alters, adjusts, tweeks and otherwise makes what he wants out of that knowledge. Maybe that’s why so many people think rhetoricians are strange, because what we argue about doesn’t really matter.
But that only solves the problem for folks who believe God is the source of all knowledge. There are plenty of folks out there who disagree and thus still struggle with epistemology. I think I’m joining them because when it comes to what form that knowledge takes, and, more importantly, which God created it, the books just don’t jive. I mean, if Allah (pbuh) is the source, then Christians have really strayed from that path, and of course, like the Christian path, Allah’s (pbuh) was divinely delivered so there’s no questioning it. In fact, the Bible foreshadows Mohamed and the Koran refers back to the Bible. Somewhere in there some signals must have gotten crossed… then again, we only have man’s interpretations of both.
That’s about all I can take right now and I’ve got a new Chuck Palahniuk book I can’t wait to dig in to, so that’s it for now.
Luth
Out
Monday, January 07, 2008
Why those last two posts don't conflict and some other stuff.
Let's continue with our dialogue about religion. I'll start:
Prove it.
That's usually where the dialogue about religion I had in mind stops. Discuss any issue of any importance regarding any topic other than religion, and that's the standard to which we hold the other conversant. But when it comes to religion, that standard is gone.
As I've mentioned here before, when it comes to the affairs of men (and women) on this planet, that should be the standard. If you can't provide solid, empirical evidence, wrapped in a logical argument for your plan, then why should men accept it?
The answer to that last question in every case except where religion is concerned is, "they shouldn't."
That's the dialogue we should have more of.
Now let's have some fun with this...
For instance, did you hear the one about the biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute who says he was fired because of his religion and is suing for a half a million? The research lab says they fired him because he refused to do the job. He even wrote that he didn't want to do it in a letter to his boss. Ok, that's a little nuanced... he didn't want to work on the "evolutionary aspects of the NIH grants" for which he was hired. He's a biologist. He studies evolution.
His lawyers argue that he was never asked if he believed in evolution when he was hired so that wasn't a job requirement and therefore it can't be used to fire him. (Wouldn't that be like asking doctor if he believes in the power of medicine? Does anyone really ask that?) His lawyer also says that believing in evolution requires as much "faith" as believing in creation.
It's true that believing in evolution requires faith, but not in the sense that the lawyer is trying to suggest by invoking the two defintions of the word. Scientific faith (not to be confused with Scientology) is the same faith required to drive on a two lane highway. You're separated by only a foot or two by oncoming traffic doing at least 55 miles per hour. If you and an oncoming driver sneeze at the wrong time, you both die. You have to have faith in that other driver's ability to not sneeze. But that kind of faith doesn't require belief in mythical beings or man's words describing what those beings think. It comes from repeated observations of other drivers on the road.
Science does in fact require that kind of faith. Faith that other researchers have done their work, that your data is solid and that the conclusions are true, repeatable under controlled conditions, etc. Faith in conclusions supported by observable evidence achieved over repeated testing is not the same as faith in a religion. The laywer knows this, but he won't point it out to the jury.
They won't have the dialogue about religion that they should. The lawyer, who knows why the biologist who refused to report on his research was fired, won't argue the merits of his case, he will argue the merits of firing someone because of his religion. He will paint the Insitute as devil-worshipping for this. The Insititute's lawyers will argue that they simply want complete reports supported by empricial evidence, but they won't dare mention that there's no empricial evidence of creation because the jury will then use the biologist's lawyer's paint brush to paint them as devil worshippers as well and the Insititue will lose their case based not on the merits of the case, but based on human insecurity and inability to look at the facts in a case involving religion.
Or here's another for instance: if I call Mike Huckabee's arrogance or campaign spending hypocritical in terms of the Christianity I studied, I can prove that with Bible verses that directly address it, but when he says abortion and same sex marriage are wrong because God says so, he can't prove that. I can provide evidence that God (if he exists) aborts more babies than anyone on Earth and I can provide evidence that the word "homosexual" is NEVER used in the Bible. But no one has shown me any evidence that God doesn't approve of or at least condone these things.
That's the kind of dialogue I'd like to have more of, but I'm never allowed. People always say, don't argue politics or religion. Or they get mad at my questions and tell me I just have to "believe."
And I do believe... what I see and what I know... and what is presented to me with evidence, in a logical argument. I also believe that there's a lot about human nature we don't know, especially when it comes to spiritual or conscious needs. I believe too that religion can provide a sense of comfort in lieu of further understanding about these needs, but that it can also prevent further understanding of these needs unless we're allowed to question it objectively as we do other biological, chemical and physical processes. Questioning it objectively means asking for proof of the answers.
Any belief beyond that should be left out of the conversation when it comes to the affairs of man. It would result in a lot less bloodshed and a lot more progress toward solving the other issues facing mankind.
I have to go watch the Buckeyes win another BCS National Championship... don't even get me started arguing about that!
Luth
Out
Prove it.
That's usually where the dialogue about religion I had in mind stops. Discuss any issue of any importance regarding any topic other than religion, and that's the standard to which we hold the other conversant. But when it comes to religion, that standard is gone.
As I've mentioned here before, when it comes to the affairs of men (and women) on this planet, that should be the standard. If you can't provide solid, empirical evidence, wrapped in a logical argument for your plan, then why should men accept it?
The answer to that last question in every case except where religion is concerned is, "they shouldn't."
That's the dialogue we should have more of.
Now let's have some fun with this...
For instance, did you hear the one about the biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute who says he was fired because of his religion and is suing for a half a million? The research lab says they fired him because he refused to do the job. He even wrote that he didn't want to do it in a letter to his boss. Ok, that's a little nuanced... he didn't want to work on the "evolutionary aspects of the NIH grants" for which he was hired. He's a biologist. He studies evolution.
His lawyers argue that he was never asked if he believed in evolution when he was hired so that wasn't a job requirement and therefore it can't be used to fire him. (Wouldn't that be like asking doctor if he believes in the power of medicine? Does anyone really ask that?) His lawyer also says that believing in evolution requires as much "faith" as believing in creation.
It's true that believing in evolution requires faith, but not in the sense that the lawyer is trying to suggest by invoking the two defintions of the word. Scientific faith (not to be confused with Scientology) is the same faith required to drive on a two lane highway. You're separated by only a foot or two by oncoming traffic doing at least 55 miles per hour. If you and an oncoming driver sneeze at the wrong time, you both die. You have to have faith in that other driver's ability to not sneeze. But that kind of faith doesn't require belief in mythical beings or man's words describing what those beings think. It comes from repeated observations of other drivers on the road.
Science does in fact require that kind of faith. Faith that other researchers have done their work, that your data is solid and that the conclusions are true, repeatable under controlled conditions, etc. Faith in conclusions supported by observable evidence achieved over repeated testing is not the same as faith in a religion. The laywer knows this, but he won't point it out to the jury.
They won't have the dialogue about religion that they should. The lawyer, who knows why the biologist who refused to report on his research was fired, won't argue the merits of his case, he will argue the merits of firing someone because of his religion. He will paint the Insitute as devil-worshipping for this. The Insititute's lawyers will argue that they simply want complete reports supported by empricial evidence, but they won't dare mention that there's no empricial evidence of creation because the jury will then use the biologist's lawyer's paint brush to paint them as devil worshippers as well and the Insititue will lose their case based not on the merits of the case, but based on human insecurity and inability to look at the facts in a case involving religion.
Or here's another for instance: if I call Mike Huckabee's arrogance or campaign spending hypocritical in terms of the Christianity I studied, I can prove that with Bible verses that directly address it, but when he says abortion and same sex marriage are wrong because God says so, he can't prove that. I can provide evidence that God (if he exists) aborts more babies than anyone on Earth and I can provide evidence that the word "homosexual" is NEVER used in the Bible. But no one has shown me any evidence that God doesn't approve of or at least condone these things.
That's the kind of dialogue I'd like to have more of, but I'm never allowed. People always say, don't argue politics or religion. Or they get mad at my questions and tell me I just have to "believe."
And I do believe... what I see and what I know... and what is presented to me with evidence, in a logical argument. I also believe that there's a lot about human nature we don't know, especially when it comes to spiritual or conscious needs. I believe too that religion can provide a sense of comfort in lieu of further understanding about these needs, but that it can also prevent further understanding of these needs unless we're allowed to question it objectively as we do other biological, chemical and physical processes. Questioning it objectively means asking for proof of the answers.
Any belief beyond that should be left out of the conversation when it comes to the affairs of man. It would result in a lot less bloodshed and a lot more progress toward solving the other issues facing mankind.
I have to go watch the Buckeyes win another BCS National Championship... don't even get me started arguing about that!
Luth
Out
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