HUM II

We went pretty far off track today but the topics were pertinent none the less. We picked up from the quiz question from Tuesday concerning the question posed by Jesus. I sought to treat this as an example similar to that of the Euthyphro where the dilemma is one between the menis (faith position - actually wrath) of those who feel they are expressing the will of God, against those who feel there should be a critical, rational (metis)understanding of what is good, pious, and so forth. These in the Platonic tradition are the Ideas. In the Christian tradition the Greek philosophical theory is merged with the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. We have not discussed this more than briefly, but the philosopher theologian who accomplishes this is Saint Augustine. We also briefly talked about Roger Penrose (one of my favorites!) and Brian Greene, Einstein and his cone of Space/Time, and the soul. Pressing the conflict between faith and reason I showed a brief clip from the Monty Python movie The Life of Brian and the quiz question was do you think this clip (or the movie should you watch the whole thing) insults Christianity or not? For a fun look at how the sh** hit the fan when the movie first came out have a look at the discussion between John Cleese and Michael Palin, and the Bishop and Malcolm Muggeridge.