Philosophy Friday: Question 1

Socrates (ca 470-399 BC) once said that the unexamined life was not worth living. I am curious to know what you think that means and why? I’ll post what I think it means sometime in the middle of next week. First, though, I wanted to get your views on it.

Philosophy 101: It’s officially a wrap

Woot - one class is in the bag. Final grades were posted on Saturday evening and I received an “A” (96.6%) for the course. I can live with that, especially since I have not taken a college level course since 1999.

I did start my Philosophy 351 (Christian Apologetics) class this morning, but I’ll talk about that class in another post.

Philosophy 101: The End…

Sorry I have missed the last few weeks of dragging you guys to class with me.

I apologize but work has kept me hopping and school class has kept me fairly busy also. I am a little sad for it to be ending, I had an absolute blast with it. So, I will quickly catch you all up on what we have been doing in the class.

Week 5 Discussion Questions were as follows:
1. What would be your suggestion for explaining the apparent design in nature, and especially in biological organisms? Would you incorporate elements from Darwin? Intelligent Design?
2. Do you agree with Behe’s claim that irreducibly complex systems could not have evolved according to the Darwinian theory?

If anyone wants, I can attempt to briefly expound on what Behe’s concept of Irreducibly Complex systems are. It’s a pretty simple idea, but it has huge implications for the Darwinian theory of evolution, in my opinion.

Also during Week 5, we began writing our major paper for class. The subject of the paper was to summarize our worldview and how does our worldview handle the concepts of God, Metaphysics (Ultimate Reality), Ethics, Epistemology (theory of knowledge), and Anthropology (study of man). The paper is to be 1,000-1,500 words in length.

Week 6 Discussion Questions were as follows:
1. Do you think reality could have been different in some respect? How would might this effect some philosophical concepts? Explain.
2. How would you define knowledge? What conditions must be satisfied in order to know something?

Ooooh, good questions, and hard too. By the way - feel free to give answers to any of these. Don’t be shy! As far as other assignments, it was to continue our debate on the topic of Does God Exist? and to keep working on our paper we began in Week 5.

Week 7 Discussion Questions were as follows:
1. Which position do you favor: deontologism or consequentialism? How does utilitarianism weigh in your decision?
2. What would you consider to be the best possible reason God could have for allowing some evil to occur? How would you define ethical rightness and wrongness? What is it that makes the difference?

Another good set of questions followed by a lively round of discussion in the class. I also finished up my paper and turned it in this week. Mine clocked in at 2,425 words total. For those paying attention in this post, you will know that this is over what was required, but honestly, I cut as much out of it as I could and still had these many words left. Still waiting on the grade to come back for it, so I hope I do not get penalized for it too much. Also, the Does God Exist? debate finishes and I spent the week creating a power point presentation of the debate for our final assignment.

Week 8 Discussion Questions were as follows:
1. Do you think that sometimes you could have chosen or done otherwise? Explain.
2. Explain the concept of freedom using the possible worlds framework discussed earlier in class.

Okay, so I can say that on all the previous discussion questions, I typically did not have too much trouble answering them right away. I usually had my initial response to the question posted by Tuesday or Wednesday by the latest. This final week was different. The first question I was able to respond to rather quickly (Monday I think). The second question took a lot more brain work and was fairly challenging for me. I did not have a response formulated until Thursday. I definitely had to do some sleeping on it.

Overall, the class has been great and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Not sure you all enjoyed it as much as I have, but oh well, that’s what you get for visiting my blog - lol.

As far as my current grade (minus receiving grades on my paper and the power point debate), I am standing at a 97.0% in the class. The professor had me call him at his home today and we talked for a little while. He was just telling me that I had nothing to worry about and I would end up with a solid A, perhaps even an A+ in his class. He did pay me a nice compliment when speaking with him. The call was to give me direction and guidance on an educational and career path, so that was very nice of him to encourage me in that way. The compliment he gave me was that he was very thankful that I was in his class because he said I did all the heavy lifting in teaching it. He said in most of his classes he has much more interaction with the students, but because I had been so well read and had good depth of insight, he pretty much let me field the majority of the questions and he just popped in to make sure things were running smoothly. He also said that it would be a terrible shame if I did not go on to finish this degree, get the masters and then work on a doctorate because I had the skill, desire and talent to excel in this field. So that made me really happy to get affirmation that I am doing the right thing.

Alright, I will post one more time on this class once final grades come back. Next class up is Philosophy 351: Christian Apologetics - which I am soooo jazzed about. I cannot wait until that class begins - woot!!!

For those who wish to be read the debate that took place in my group, you may either download or read the PDF version of the power point presentation by following this link: Does God Exist?