I'm Not A Believer

I feel somewhat guilty for my lack of faith. Both my mother's and father's family were religious, however I guess with some of the personal struggles my mom had with being a single mom, religion was just not one of her priorities and also given her pastor told her that being involved with a black man and giving birth to bi-racial children was wrong, no wonder she never turned to the church for strength and spiritual guidance.

I have attended church and in fact my grandfather was a deacon and I had to attend church every Sunday while staying with my grandparents each summer. I never got what it was all about. There were people preaching, singing and then the best part....a trip to the candy store when it was all over.

Anyway getting back to my guilt. I am a pretty free spirited person. Live and let live and live by your own rules, but when it comes to religion I feel like people make a very quick judgment on whether I am good or evil. I need concrete evidence that God exists. There is none. I do believe in forms of spirituality. Whichever form a person believes in to help guide them through life's difficult times or to help them live a life worthy of living is valid.

I find my spirituality not through formal religion but through seeking ways to live a physically and emotionally healthy life full of truth, sharing and understanding.

Thought This Was Relavent

Artificial Intelligence

Progress in the development of artificial intelligence has without a doubt come a long way and will continue to develop probably far beyond what we can imagine today. But I wonder if the development of intelligence in the human race will develop at an equal pace. I can just see it now, despite the fact we are an intelligent species, we do and believe some really outrageous things, particularly when it comes to co-existing with technology. How smart can we be when we post our uncensored opinions, compromising pictures and personal details on a public electronic bulletin board for millions to see (My Space). How smart can our government officials and leaders be when they transmit pornographic images using their computers at work and think it can not be traced to them. I guess what I am saying is that, while we have intelligent members of our species that can develop and further perfect artificial intelligence, I do not believe the masses will have the intelligence to use it and will ultimately be manipulated by government, corporations and the power elite through the use of artificial intelligence.

Our Reality Is Not Only The Physical

It seems that reality is dual in that what constitutes reality is both physical and mental. The way I mentally translate or interpret my physical reality is my reality. My mental state helps dictate or determine the reality around me. An example might be people who are religious and influenced by religious teachings and practices have their reality altered by it. What a person believes (the mental) impacts their physical reality.

Very Challenging Assignment....Indeed

My philosophy professor is quite sneaky. He figured if we can explain feminism and empiricism to children...then we should be able to explain it and understand it ourselves... Not only is he sneaky..he was pretty smart to use this as a teaching technique.

I thought about this assignment all week. It was a very simple assignment. Have a bunch of college students explain something to children. How hard could that be. But I soon remembered that this was philosophy we were talking about, and I first had to decipher the philosophical text I was assigned to read (ugh!). Well it was far easier that Kant I tell you that and since I am female and I somewhat a pragmatist (i didn't know this until this assignment) it really became much easier for me to tackle this.

I do have some thoughts on feminism that are probably not so feminist. Please do not take this the wrong way, I am a strong believer that women are smart and shouldn't be discriminated against in the workforce, and in general, because of their gender...however I have learned over time that men and women are different -- period.

Each gender has strengths the other does not. While I believe we should teach our young girls that they can accomplish most anything. We should not send them out into the world thinking they are physically equal to men. We are not. I learned this through practicing martial arts. I trained just as hard has the men. However, when I went up against a new male member of the dojo with no training, their punch and strikes were powerful. While mine may have been powerful for a woman of my size and level of training, I could not match that of a man. That is not a deficit for women it just is. Women go through hormonal ups and downs monthly and all through their lives. We have to deal with it. These are not faults, these are just the facts of life and our biology and if we would approach it that way, maybe feminists would not be seen as anti-men. Whew!

Wholly Philosphical Disaster Professor Foster!

OMG! This is exactly what frightened me about taking philosophy...reading text on Kant had my mind running in circles. I do have a slight reading comprehension problem so I take plenty of notes and re-read passages to insure I understand what I am reading. The reading material this week just had me running in circles and confused. I think we were studying the rationalists and empiricist's theories on knowledge...I think. I completely enjoyed our assignments previous to this even though some of the concepts and material were a little confusing I was able to digest the information and spew out coherent responses on both the discussion board and blog. I didn't even do that poorly on the quiz.

Well I'm off to take the quiz now...wish me luck....

Skeptically Speaking

News media were asked not to show this and other "disturbing" images of 9/11. If we have no direct access to information we can not have knowledge -- I suppose these are the words of a skeptic.

Today we have so much information to sort through to be educated, to make informed decisions, to understand the world around us and to interact and manage the people we co-exist with that we have no other choice but to believe most things until we have reason to be skeptical. We have been trained to seek out information related to current events from mainstream media sources (television news, newspapers and magazines). We grow up learning that if news media icons such as Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric report on something it must be true. However we really can not arrive at true justified beliefs through mainstream sources and would probably have to be directly involved or experience an event to claim knowledge of anything.