jdhomrighausen

“What, for that matter, do we mean by 'explain' or 'interpret'? In the academic world, such terms typically mean that one will subject some object of student to analysis, decomposition,an alien evaluation of what is important in it and what not, and the reconstitution of select elements is a structure predetermined by the chosen academic discipline of reference and its favoured mode of discourse. Do we really succeed in interpreting or explaining only when we have translated our subject matter into a discourse alien to it? Or is it possible to remain closer to the source, as it were, and to present an account 'from within' that will be sufficiently aware of its own presuppositions and limitations to be accessible to others?” (14)

“Spirituality is a relationship with this Mystery/Reality/Truth/God. As a relationship, it exists only in the way a conversation exists. If a conversation turns into a monologue on either side, it evaporates, for it can exist only in the interchange itself. So it is with spirituality. It is not merely a statement about God or to God. Nor is it merely a statement claimed to emanate from God. It exists only in so far as it is involved in exchange between the self and God.” (20)

Taken from L. William Countryman, The Poetic Imagination: an Anglican Spiritual Tradition, which wasn't as good as I thought it would be – I didn't know the poems he was analyzing, so it was dry for me.

Not writing makes me lose my voice. Eventually I don't even know my own thoughts. I forget them. Yuck.

I made a big mistake in signing up for six heavy classes this fall. Six classes and two choirs (19 semester units) is no problem. But they're all reading/writing sorts of courses – one of them even freshman composition (don't ask me how I went through two years of college avoiding that). Spring I will take six academic courses again, but one will be math and another communications, leaving only four heavier classes.

MJC is a great place to be. It has more courses and extracurriculars to get involved with. It has a much bigger philosophy program, with three tenured professors rather than one. I can find people I like anywhere with no problem.

Monday I went and talked to Dr. M (philosophy prof) about symbolic logic. I had a hard time seeing how it fit with philosophy – the class is not oriented towards phil majors, as most of the students in it are simply taking it for GE. I was wondering if there was a philosopher who I could map out the arguments of in symbolic logic. But that isn't the point, Dr. M said: symbolic logic helps you verify the logical structure of an argument – the “valid logical moves” - but most philosophers don't explicitly think of the logic, but rather the content of their arguments. Are the contents, the concepts meaningful?

After that I made some remarks on why I am interested in the philosophy of religion class. I thought I knew my motivations, but I do not. Trying to understand why I am pursuing a subject forces me to think back to my first spark of interest in it, and understand my reasons then. There's one reason why blogging about my academic life is crucial. I'll never find a voice as a scholar later if I don't develop it now.

A friend of mine told me I tend to criticize others' arguments but rarely make any of my own. She is likely right. It's lazy. Here is Jonathan, not being lazy, and writing my own thoughts. Later.




Topics for later: said motivations, Matteo Ricci and his mnemonic arts

“'Scare copy' was invented. Without Listerine, Postum, or a Buick, the consumer would be left a spinster, fall victim to a crippling disease, or be passed over for promotion. Ads developed an association between the product and one's very identity. Eventually they came to promise everything and anything – from self-esteem, to status, friendship, and love.”
- Juliet Schor, 'Work and Spend”, handout in English composition class

“When men have produced sufficient necessities and reasonable comforts and conveniences to supply all the population, they should spend what time is left in the cultivation of their intellects and wills, in the pursuit of the higher life.”
- John A. Ryan, a 1920s Catholic social reformer, quoted in Schor

My school is completely cutting its linguistics program.  Enrollment's low and so is the budget.

:(

Went to a concert of Biber's Requiem in F Minor and Steffani's Stabat Mater.  It was at this Episcopal Church that has very trendy architecture: concrete walls in a giant circle, a circular altar in the center, and a bunch of pews going in a circle around the altar.  I would think it'd be hard to do services like that, but otoh it better represents the idea of being in an equal community than the old "one person stands at front and tells everyone what to think" architectural style that my church uses.  I like it.

The music was mild and calm.  It seemed very early Baroque, much calmer even than Vivaldi.  It's hard to focus on the music exclusively because of both its musical quality and the fact that it's in Latin, so you can't even understand the lyrics without reading the program notes.  Not like when I heard Mozart's Requiem in London, that ALWAYS holds my attention because it tells its story more dynamically.

So I sat and read William James "The Will to Believe" while listening to the music.  The Steffani piece especially had a wavy, rhythmic quality that lent itself to being background music.  I hope the composer intended that...

Notes on History 4A from 3/9 and 3/11

**Augustus

Augustus brought in pax romana.  he obeyed laws and seemed humble, so people liked him.  people enjoyed this peace.  he also unified army and solidfied borders from barbarians, though he failed to defeat them.

social stratification was huge: senatorial class, equestrian class, and lower classes.  republic went away as lower classes lost their power.  monarchy needed to keep empire together and strong.
augustus made laws about morality, prohibited divorce, and punished people with less than three kids.

**Early Roman Empire: 14-180 AD

"Five Good Emperors" (96-180)  Worked well with Senate and people, unlike previous Judio-Claudian emperors.  But they created peace and prosperity.
However, they didn't attend well to defenses, and they didn't have the reserve forces that they needed.  Augustus had these, but they didn't.

They did have.....50 million people, many cultures living in harmony together, citizenship given evenb to foreigners.  tolerance and diplomacy were important :)  Trade, agriculture boomed.  Agriculture turned to big agribusiness.  But senate was still mostly rich people.  Power was in the hands of a few.

women began to have more right, and idea of "natural rights" took hold in law.  general liberalization...

**Culture and Humanities

Golden Age of Literature (Augustan Age):
Virgil: wrote morality poem funded by augustus.  had themes of greek and roman continuity, ideals of duty, piety, and faithfulness.
Horace: satirist of human weakness, sexual immorality, greed.
Ovid: young poet who ridiculed old values.  was exiled for his Art of Love.
Livy;: historian who wrote a huge book on history of rome.  he saw history in terms of moral lessons and human character.

Silver Age (post-Augustus)
Seneca: Stoic philosopher
Tacitus: historian who also wrote about history of Rome.  He thought history had a moral purpose. wanted to record evil deeds of wealthy people.

**Religion at time of Christianity....

People went to Hellenistic religions in East for more emotional religious practices.  They promised higher spiritual afterlife and had elaborate rituals with deep emotional appeal.

Mithraism: mystery religion from Persia based on chief God of Zoroastrianism.  mithra was god of sun and was popular among soldiers.

**Jews:

At Jesus' time there 4 groups of Jews:
1.  Sadducees: adherence to law and cooperation with romans
2.  Pharisees: adherence to ritual and nonviolent liberation from roman rule
3.  Essenes: waited for Messiah, wrote dead sea scrolls
4.  Zealots: military extremists who wanted to kill romans

Jesus: law unimportant, focus is on transformation of inner person.  heavely kingdom, not earthly one.  hailed as messiah by some jews.  was a real person, not a myth one like mithra or isis.

by 100, christian churches had established all over eastern empire and somewhat less in western empire.  early christians were mostly jews.  though they had power, roman authorities ignored them...until they saw xians as threatening public order.  during reign of Nero, persecution became widespread.  they began establishing hierarchy of priests, bishops, etc.  attractive to all classes, including women.  diocletian last emperor to persecute christians.

Constantine - noble of roman empire, was given to visions and religious conversions.  he saw a cross whole on the road and
had it painted on all banners, flags, shields.  after that he defeated his rival to the throne.

~312 constantine defeated rival for emperor and passed edict of milan, guaranteeing freedom for christians.

~400 = non christian religions began being suppressed.  roman temples and pagans were destroyed, slaughtered.  mobs killed jews left and right.

~415: christians began huge civil wars over theological questions like trinity, nature of christ, diet, baptism, marriage, clothing, etc.

****Why did Rome fall?  And why did it last so long?

Gibbons: Christianity made Rome fall!

*1: barbarians: 214 BC - Chinese built Great Wall to keep barbarians out.  Huns had to leave, they pushed out Goths and Vandals, who went through Spain and attacked Western Roman empire.  

because romans didn't want to fight, the empire hired mercenary barbarians to fight other mercenary barbarians.  this worked in short term, but meant that soldiers had no loyalty to empire.

*2: disease.  malaria broke out in countryside, so people moved to cities to escape it.  this spread more malaria.  smallpox as well, and all of these made barbarian invasion easier.

*3: taxes: gov focused on keeping city-dwellers happy, so they gave free bread and giant public monuments to urban dwellers (to prevent riots) while taxing farmers out in country.  farmers got pissed, moved to cities because they couldnt pay taxes and barely made enough food to survive on their own (they had bad soil).  cities ended up consuming without producing.  city holidays went from 65 a year (under republic) to 175 a year (4th century).  One observer: "the circus is their temple."  Free bread, oil, bacon, wine, and MONEY (bad inflation!).
Peasants grew to dislike greedy city-dwellers, but moved to cities anyway to escape their own issues.

*Breakdown of economy: As cities gave out more free money to compensate for no revenue, inflation went up.  eventually money became worthless and barter was back in fashion.  feudal system began to reemerge as people needed more security.
Urban dwellers lived in crowded apartments despite being in midst of best public buildings ever.  most were unemployed.   Investment and capital were scarce and mostly put into usury and buying land (much like today!).  Technology and innovation were left untouched, though "techno toy" inventions were made that impressed priests and rich people.  There was no need for labor-saving technology because there were so many cheap slaves to do the needed labor.

Other aspects: Diocletian's attempted price and wage ceilings, which failed.  Laws forcing people to remain in certain jobs and forcing families to keep the same occupation.  This kept economy stable but stifled innovation and development.

**Why did rome last for so long?  diocletian and constantine gave it a new run of life.  This was "Late Empire" phase.  These two reorganized bureaucracy to make it more efficient.  Constantine also built more public buildings and moved capital of empire to Byzantium (Constantinople), which had better defense location.

Comments:

the slaughter of the romans and jews is sad.  I think this is what happens when an "in group" takes over society - they're used to helping only their own since they began under oppression, but once they gain power they are tyrannous.  like modern jews in israel.

Questions:

What would Xianity be like without Plato?  What influence did he have?

Greek and Roman turn to mystery religions is interesting - is this the first time in western history that

Feig mentioned that pagan scientists held it impossible that miracles of jesus really happened.  what was the conflict like back then between science and religion?

How does one reconcile such a bloody history with seeing meaning and good in the Church?

which jews saw jesus as messiah?  essenes?

Did gladiator games originate as religious things?  did this have its origins in animal sacrifice?

mithra in roman rels....

Why did Gibbons think Christianity made Rome fall?

Simon Price - Religions of the Ancient Greeks

Chapter Six: Elective Cults

- What were elective cults?  How were they diff from civic cults?

Elective cults were optional.  Civic cults were "churches" that people were members of by default, whether or not they cared about the gods of state polis.  Civic cults have very varying levels of participation, whereas elective cults were tight-knit, had tough initiation rites, etc.

Asclepius' cult was one for curing sickness.

- What kinds of unique religious identity did they offer?  Did they affect involvement in civic cults?

They offered a sense of belonging and identity as well as doctrinized universal truths.  Greco-Roman civic cults did not offer either.

They sometimes precluded involvement in civic cults, but this was dangerous so many of them didn't. 

- What did they and the civic cults think of each other?

Dionysus as case study - he was often part of state religion, but was never central to it, and some of his cults were centered around abandonment of reason and wild drinking, dancing.  Plato disapproved of this, as did many Greeks at the time.  But it crated a unique religious identity that state cult could not lend to individuals.
Other Dionysian cults were very tame, mild - those enjoyed by upper-class, more approved-of by society.

Revisionist theogonies.  These were post-Hesiod, more involved with Zeus.  Heading towards monotheism?  (117).

Orpheus and Pythagoras were two more cult leaders.  Orpheus was a hero (man with divine powers, 118) who wrote a cosmology and some hymns.  Pythagoras was a numerologist, mathematician who had secret teachings.  Both groups often practiced vegetarianism and prohibited animal sacrifices, precluding them from involvement in state cults.  Pythagorean religion lasted even through early AD period!  Both preached purity of dead, preparation for afterlife, togetherness of humankind and even animalkind.

Questions:

In my other history class this week we have covered Rome.  Rome also turned to initiate elective cults for salus and belonging.  How are Greek elective cults different from the sort that were formed in Rome during the rise of Christianity, the type that Christianity rose from?

One note: early Christian cults accepted many different types of people, especially immigrants who felt isolated from the Roman state religion.  Were Greek elective cults often the same way?  I know the Egyptians started Isis cults in Greece (123), which the Greeks later adopted for themselves.  Was this mixing of ethnicities normal in elective cults?  112 says yes.

Was Orpheus real person or not?  (119)

Why would people have converted to cults?  Same reason as today - feeling of identity, uniqueness?

Ideas:

Plato saw Dionysian wild rituals as breakdown of reason and celebration of drunkenness.  Funny - this disapproval of wild religious rituals continues to today.  Look at Pentecostal frenzy, speaking in tongues and whatnot!

Dionysus is a natural candidtate for elective cults because of his very nature - removal from reality.

GIll, Sam.  "The Academic Study of Religion."  Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 62, No. 4, Winter 1994.  Accessed on jstor.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1465226

In Gill's article, he talks about what the academic study of religion is and why it has not taken off in the last twenty years.

Terms:
- religious study of religion (RSOR): study of religion in order to further own spiritual beliefs or own religion, or done from the POV of a particular religion's doctrines.  Example: Tillich: "Religion is that which is of ultimate concern."  That is religious because it assumes nature of religion before entering task of studying it, which biases study in favor of Christian viewpoint.  It also assumes knowledge of a religion that is non-public and therefore not scientific.  Example: idea that only Native Americans can teach about Native American religions, assumes that only NAs have the right knowledge.
- academic study of religion (ASOR): study of religion from phenomenological perspective, for objective, to understand this unique aspect of human behavior and thought.  Anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists. 

Problem with ASOR is that it has no unique methods (all of its methods and paradigms are taken from other social sciences) and nothing to distinguish it other than its subject matter.  It is too mired in vagueness to figure out what it's doing.  It hasn't figured out what makes it diff from studying other aspects of any culture.  For example, they haven't even defined what religion is adequately, and they don't seem to have a problem with this ambiguity.  But this doesn't help make it a "science."

Another problem is with comparative approach - compare all religions to each other to find differences.  But this ignores universals and can become the study of comparing all religions to one.  This is how religious studies started - to compare others to Christianity in order to figure out which is best and how Christianity got to be as great as it is.

Reductive studies.  Gill argues that all studies are "reductive" in that they "render data in terms of a chosen perspective."  I agree.  I think his issue is that there is no single perspective in religious studies.

"What is religion?" - this is hard to define, and it doesn't help that each religion has its own definition of what religion is.  Essentialist, doctrine-like definitions of religion are too "religious" and exclude certain forms of cultural expression from the start.

COMMENTARY:

The defining religion problem is a bad one.  What would be point of defining religion?  To provide scope for study.  So it's good to have a large scope and understand many cultural POVs on it, but then the ambiguity becomes too large and there is no structure left.  Unlike econ, subject matter is not clear.

I think another problem is etic. v. emic - what about religion can one understand from the outside, and what about it is NOT public knowledge, NOT science?

Also emphasizes importance of studying a culture that one is NOT a part of - this is good because then one gets public knowledge.  But we may miss out on personal experience (private knowledge).  Ideally we should get both and have scholars who can separate the two.

So Paul Tillich is an RSOR, and Huston Smith is more of a ASOR though his books have also been used for personal spiritual insight.  But I don't think there's anything wrong

QUESTIONS:

How is this like the field of English, which has a lot of personal experience involved?  How much of literary criticism is "scientific" as well?

Linguistics also developed out of anth, but it has its own subject matter and methods that use many fields now.  How did it get to be the way it is?  RSOR vs. SSOR is like linguistics vs. learning a language.  One is for objective academic purposes, another is for personal benefit and insight.

Reflection Chapter 7: Suffering and Evil

When I am doing so much academic stuff, it's hard to find time to reflect on what I am learning.  This short essay is an attempt to get into such a habit.  I'm just going to go through some topics in the chapter in our book.

1.  In the last section there is something about "Holocaust" being a Christian concept.  This is technically not true.  "Holocaust" was a Greek word for a specific type of animal sacrifice.  Normally they would sacrifice/burn the worst parts of an animal and eat the good stuff, but in a holocaust they would sacrifice the entire animal and leave none.  Similarly, in the Holocaust the Germans tried to kill of ALL the Jews and leave none.

2.  The start of the chapter talked about causation, using the example of a lightning bolt killing someone's best friend.  I am guessing from my philosophy knowledge that the two causes talked about in the book are:
a.  lightning's physical causes (in the Aristotelian sense)
b.  the teleological cause (i.e., "God was punishing him for a sin" or "karmic punishment from past life's deeds"
Most atheists I know would reject teleological causes completely.  Or so they say.  I've met older atheists who still see teleological causes.  For example, my grandma was supposed to die from her myelodysplasia (a rare blood disease that killed Carl Sagan) but she lived 10 years longer than all her doctors said she should have.  At one point she remarked to me that she thinks this may have happened so she could see me grow more.  But she was a lifelong agnostic who left the church in her youth.

What do you think, Dr. Jackson?  Is it possible to go through life thinking that everything is a coincidence?  Why do some people do this and others need to see teleological causes?

3.  Some elements of theodicies:
a.  acknowledgement of evil vs. denial of existence of evil (i.e., "it's not evil, it's justice and good which we don't understand")
b.  not one's fault (i.e., "God testing believers") vs. totally your fault (i.e., "God punishing you" or "karmic punishment for past life's deeds" or "your own deeds led to this, with no divine intervention")
c.  result of universal laws (Karma) vs. result of anthropomorphic being's pure malevolence (tricksters, Satan) or dissatisfaction (God in city of Sodom)
d.  evil as natural, normal (Buddhim, Taoism, Hinduism ) vs. evil as fall from God's grace (Abrahamic religions)
e.  detachment from suffering and deity (Eastern religions) vs. intense personal relationship with suffering and deity that helps individual understand it (Abrahamic religions)

However, I think that in both the perspectives in (d), people must accept personal suffering.  Buddhists do this by eliminating it completely but Christians do this by explaining it in terms of God's justice and learning to accept it.  The difference is that Buddhism tells you suffering is an illusion (de-emphasizing your own natural perception) whereas Christianity tells you it's real and valid but contextualizes it in terms of God.

In some radicals sects, ascetics suffer on purpose to move away from bodily emphasis (Saddhus, Opus Dei members).

As part of my interest in theology, I am taking online classes from a couple of different schools about religion.  My community college doesn't have much in the way of classes on religion.

San Bernardino Valley College is a well-established CC in SoCal that has all their philosophy and religion classes both f2f and online.  This semester I am taking REL 100H: Intro to Religious Studies.  I wish the class had more interaction with the instructor.  It is a lot of interesting stuff that could start discussions, but the students seem mostly uninterested.

I am also trying an upper-division class in Greek Religion through University of Illinois-Springfield, which offers excellent online degrees in liberal arts, particularly english, history, and philosophy.  It's taught by a very competent, intelligent classicist who seems to know everything about ancient Greece!  I am doing better than I was afraid I would do...

During Roman republic, conservative, reactionary politics became an issue.  Everyone wanted to take over.  Democracy broke down and to end this, monarchy had to be re-established.  Julius Caesar in 46 BC.  Octavian in 31 BC, later became Augustus. He lived frugally, seemed normal, not power maniac.

Pax Romana came about by stuffing senate, crushing competitors or bringing them to gov's side.  United republic with roads, civil service participation, unity and loyalty from army.
Restored republic's morals and values by encouraging families, prohibiting divorce, paying for Virgil to write Aeneid.  Like Odyssey, Aeneid was meant to instill morality!
Created peace, stopped trying to conquer everyone and only defended borders.

Advantages of pax romana: stability, flourishing of culture
Disadvantages: poor were screwed, status quo became very important, society became seen as perfect ideal to be unchanged.

Pax Romana and how the conservative politics and complacency of the time period gave rise to a religion that helped the poor.....

Pax Romana lasted ~200 years.  After that, it all fell apart until 476 AD.

Late Roman philosophy: Stoicism adapted by Seneca and Marcus Aurelius to fit Roman issues.  Emphasis went from serving state to serving virtue, ideals, self-discipline.  They saw human worth as equality,  not like Plato who was very intellectually elitist.

Late religion became business-like, philosophically arcane.  It couldn't explain the chaos around the whole empire!  Romans wanted an individual experience in religion, a "salus" to give them health of soul.  ("salus" => "salvation")  Rational perspective and theodicy simply couldn't explain things away for them.
money, property, success, service to state emphasized.
At first their desire for personal experience led to superstition, quack prophets.
Then they lost religious identity bc of syncretism of paganism.

Judaism at this time was oppressed.  They were put down but had a strong sense of rel identity and didn't syncretize, and over time others admired this.  Jews at least had clear ideas of heaven and YHWH, so they'd rather worship YHWH than Roman emperor.  

Christ was a Jew who came out of tradition of Pharisee Jews, who were given to prayer and meditation.  He offered clear rel identity and salvation with ideas like souls, angels, personal resurrection, free will.  Said he fulfilled jewish prophecy, and was considered a weird Jew at first.  Killed 30 AD, unpopular, nobody cared.

So the chaos following the Roman empire and the loss of its religion also made xianity gain power as a new worldview.

after jesus died, st. paul made it a non-jewish thing and reached out to everyone.  faith became more important than observance of jewish law since world was about to end anyway!  he was persecuted, pagan romans thought his ideas were nuts.  his idea that earthly realm was irrelevant went all against stoicism!

HOW DID CHRISTIANITY SUCCEED?
1.  St. Paul
2.  Roman roads and peace, unity to travel freely.
3.  Common language of Koine Greek.
4.  Large empire that unified lots of cultures.

Also, Jewish hierarchy fell apart when temple sacked by titus in 70 AD.  after this, xianity grew to distrust secular power and jumped in to re-establish order.

what did xianity take from jews?
- conflict between body and spirit (though jews later dropped this)
- all powerful, personal god
- abject condition of man, fall from grace
- salvation not rational or ritualistic, but based on faith.

later jews, xians fought more and more.

Q's:

How did Augustus try to bring back morality?  How do govs do this social programming in general?

What do Greek and Roman culture have in common?

How did bureaucratic imperialism of roman empire affect structure of institutionalized christianity?

What was theodicy of late roman religion?  how was christian idea different?  idea: roman rel connected with state, so when state fell the rel made no sense.  but christ said that true rel is not part of state, it's god's kingdom.

was st. paul blind?

How did early Christian history shape Christian theology?
- evangelism to Greeks and efforts to explain Christianity in terms of Plato
- separation of heavenly kingdom and earthly gov made gov irrelevant

Winter 2009:

History 4A: Western Civilization from Ancient to end of Roman Empire
Despite the 8 AM time, I enjoy this class.  Dr. Konnilyn Feig takes some getting used to (she's quite a curmudgeon) but outside of class she is much kinder.  I wish we had more discussion, but sometimes one must create that for themselves.

Phil 1: Critical Thinking
I thought we'd study a lot of fallacies and formal argumentative strategies in this class, but it's much more focused on discussing hot-button issues.  Mr. Hoekenga is very laid-back and lets us pick our own topics.  The discussions are what you put into them; he talks a lot about religious stuff since he grew up in a very Christian background.

Chinese 2
I wish this were a morning class, but other than that I enjoy it a lot.  Chen laoshi is energetic and competent, and I think I push her to her limits when I ask her about odd grammar points.  lol...