Agnosticism and Atheism

The readings this weekend have caused me to give some thought as to where I fall in the spectrum of faith. Having been raised in the Episcopal Church I would say I have ingrained in my upbringing a certain level of faith in the existance of God. However I have never been an extremely devout Episcopalian. I have a frivolous liking for certain seasons in the church season over others based merely on the hymns sung then. This is one reason i'm not sad to have been here at school during the lenten season which always depresses me hymn-wise and also why i'm glad that the Easter season falls over spring break as that is one of my favorite times in that regaurd.
I think the reason my favorite part of church is the hymns is because I associate good memories with many of them. On the lake where I spend my summers we hold something called hymn sing on sunday nights in August. It is quite informal with only a few set memorial hymns sung at the beginning and a few closing ones reserved for the end. Otherwise people can call out whichever they wish to sing. It is here where I truly feel the closest to God. Surrounded by the mountains and lakes, with the hymn punctuated by the occasional loon call. The community spirit that encompasses the gathering never gets old and a good time is had by all as we move through the church season in whatever order occurs. They are all given attention with the younger kids enjoying christmas and easter while the adults provide selections from other sections of the hymnal. Hymn sing is one of my fondest memories and I always look forward to summers spent with friends and neighbors singing for the joy of it. Many hymns are memorized now because they have been part of the tradition since before I was born, while occasionally a visitor will present a new option to the group which is sung with the same amount of gusto and the beloved favorites.
I seem to have rambled some. My main point is that people exercise their faith in different ways and on different levels. Personally I have always felt that there is a God even if I have not always been the strongest believer. If I feel closer to that God when I am at Hymn sing in the summer than church during the year than that is just the way I happen to live my faith. Others may get more out of elaborate services and prolonged readings of sacred texts, that is ok too. Everyone is entitled to their own faith and level of it, be it prodigious or minimal.

passing of time.

the old saying "time flies when you're having fun" holds alot of truth for me. i often find that time does go by very fast when i'm doing somthing that takes up all my attention i pay very little attention to time and the next time i look up it's hours later.

a prime example of this is when i am at the lake where my grandparents live in the summer. when i'm there i totally lose track of what day it is and what time. the days pass in a blur of swimming, sailing, etc before i know it te summer is past and it is back ot the set and clock regulated life of school. i wrote a short story about how much time in my life has been devoted to time at the lake and it always seems like not enough.

we percieve the passage of time in different ways depending on our environment and how we track time. also there is almost always some discrepency in clocks in different places. this affects how we know where we are supposed to be an when. my old highschool recently fixed the spazzing clocks so now people will have to pay more attention instead of depending on not being late to class because the clock on the other side of the building was earlier.

overall time is a matter of point of view. different people follow time in different manners . some are strictly by the clock, some are more laid back. it's a pretty fluid thing.

One question that I had in relation to the perception of time is how do those who have lostthe sense of sight percieve time? They cannot see the physical representation in clocks, sundials, the position of the sun, time of day, etc. Do they have a sharper sense of internal time?
Also why is it that some peoples internal sense of time appears to be sharper than other peoples? I cannot think of any concrete reason for the phenomena.

Religious stories

I my world religions class we are reading a book called Jesus a Revolutionary Biography. i'm finding it very interesting because it talks mainly about not the bible or scripture but who Jesus was and how alot of the writings about him (currently talking about the cannonical gospels) are stories written many many years after his death. the author John D. Crossan spends alot of time talking about the symbolic relations between Jesus and prior figures like Moses and John the baptist. the entire thing is very interesting and is opening up alot of the symbolism and the fiction that i was unaware of in relation to the Bible.

connections between Locke and Sherlock Holmes

In the Phillips article it states “The mind (or "the understanding") is described in Locke's writings in very passive terms--the mind is a receptacle (an empty cabinet, a wax tablet, a piece of blotting paper) for storing whatever ideas come from experience.” This caught my eye having recently read the Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in which the detective Sherlock Holmes states "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." The connection was pretty immediate do the time periods line up for Doyle to have been influenced by Locke?

(CR) actor vs. spectator

The following quotes from the article on constructivism by D.C. Phillips were interestingt ome for reasons i'll explain later:

"When one applies constructivism to the issue of teaching, one must reject the assumption that one can simply pass on information to a set of learners and expect that understanding will result. Communication is a far more complex process than this. When teaching concepts, as a form of communication, the teacher must form an adequate model of the student's ways of viewing an idea and s/he then must assist the student in restructuring those views to be more adequate from the student's and from the teacher's perspective. Constructivism not only emphasizes the essential role of the constructive process, it also allows one to emphasize that we are at least partially able to be aware of those constructions and then to modify them through our conscious reflection on that constructive process."(Confrey, 1990, p. 109)

"Starting from the constructivist position that the knower is an "actor" rather than a "spectator," Dewey staunchly advocated the use of activity methods in the
schoolroom--for students are potential knowers, yet traditional schooling forces students into the mold of passive receptacles waiting to have information instilled, instead of allowing them to move about, discuss, experiment, work on communal projects, pursue research outdoors in the
fields and indoors in the library and laboratory, and so forth."

These quotes interested me because they seem to relate to my experience going to a charter school from 7th-12th grade. The quotes, specifically the second one, remind me strongly of how the classrooms at Parker functioned. At Parker we more often than not were 'actors' engaging in activities and discussions instead of sitting and listening to the teacher lecture on any given subject. I always enjoyed this way of learning. I'm a hands-on learner so i always enjoyed doing activities and discussions and being the 'actor' rather than a 'spectator'. It was always more engaging an I alwayas thought i learned more and remembered better when we worked actively instead of passively.

Thus begins a new semester

Welcome to the reality of a new semester!. This blog previously devoted to Intro to Honors last semester will now serve for Constructing Reality this semester.
I look forward to learning about different views of reality in our and other cultures. I hope that this class is as interesting as last semester was.