Mom & Pop Home School

Day by day the days go by. Not much is happening around here. Still pluggin’ away. But in case you were wondering how I got this weird, it’s partly from reading things like this:

1) A spoof that aptly portrays some of Pop’s clients.

2) A whole new way of looking at “feminism” and the environment. Hint: the two are merging in an unexpected way.

3) New discoveries in autism research.

Do you ever wonder whether God is trying to bring a particular concept to your attention at a particular juncture in your life by having it crop up repeatedly in different forms over a short period of time?

I was listening to another speech from BYU today while scrubbing the sink. It’s a talk by Juliana Boerio-Goates, who is evidently a well-respected member of the chemistry faculty at BYU, who is performing important research on nanoparticles, and who is also Catholic (she alludes to this in the relevant portion of her remarks, which is why I mention it). The speech was entitled, “Discovering the Riddles of the Universe, One Calorie at a Time”. I found that sufficiently intriguing to giver her a listen. Most of the speech focuses on some very interesting information relating to energy, especially in the forms of heat and light, and some interesting observations about crystal size and magnetism. But what really caught my attention, especially in light of my earlier post on the subject, was her comments at the end regarding the relationships between faith and reason. There doesn’t seem to be a text option this go ’round, but here’s a direct link to the video file: http://byubwmv.byu.edu/byudevo/2006/forum02282006.wmv. On the video, the comments I’m referring to begin at the time code “29:24″. You can drag the progress bar doohickey over to the right until it says 29:24 (or thereabouts) if you don’t want to listen to the whole thing. The speech is also available in MP3 format, but I didn’t check the time on that; presumably it would be about the same.

Thoughts?
 

I caught part of a speech by Richard N. Williams on TV today while flipping channels, and was intrigued enough to track it down online. It is an interesting exploration of the relationship between reason and faith. Here’s taste to whet your appetite:

…Thus it is fair to say that the modern view is essentially that reason and logic ultimately ground knowledge and truth, whereas faith is what we are forced to rely on when we lack indubitable certainty. Faith, on this view, is a sort of positive thinking, what we cling to when we do not know. It is a believing haunted from the fringes by doubt. This is the seemingly paradoxical stuff that many self-styled intellectuals exult in–a seedbed of tragic heroism characterizing the lives of thoughtful persons.

…

In place of the common conceptual dimension anchored by faith at one end and reason at the other, I suggest that there are really two dimensions. It might be helpful to picture them as perpendicular to one another. One dimension is anchored on one end by reason and on the other end by its opposite: irrationality, promiscuous subjectivity, or even solipsism. The other dimension is anchored on one end by faith and on the other by the opposite of faith. I have pondered a bit about what the opposite of faith is. I believe the anchor opposite faith is darkness, nihilism, despair–that state of the soul that comes from living “without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). To portray faith and reason in this relationship leads us to the conclusion that faith is not what one settles for in the absence of reason and knowledge; it is a type of knowledge, sure and trustworthy and eminently attainable. Portrayed in this way, one could very well have great faith and be also entirely reasonable and rational. That is what we strive for most of the time.

I’d very much like to hear your thoughts, dear friends, on the content of this speech. Please read, or listen to, the entire speech, though, don’t just go by the above excerpts. The audio file is about half an hour long. (I like to listen to this sort of thing while folding laundry or working in the kitchen.)

I should warn some of you that Brother Williams is LDS and approaches the subject very much from an LDS point of view. He makes reference several times in passing to our belief that a restoration of Christ’s original gospel was made necessary by the apostasy of the church in the early Christian era. I am not interested in debating this belief. Rather, I am interested in your comments regarding his ideas about faith and reason, truth and knowledge. I think he makes a lot of sense, but I need to roll it over in my mind a little more. Any thoughts?

Click here for media options.

Click here for audio. 

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Our church is having its semi-annual general conference this weekend, and anyone who is interested (or just curious) is welcome to listen in live on the internet. Speakers are selected from the First Presidency, the Apostles, and other general church officers and leaders. Sessions are held on both Saturday and Sunday at 10:00am and 2:00pm mountain time. I would be happy to answer any questions about it here. To access the live feeds, go to this page: http://www.lds.org/broadcast/gc/0,5161,7536,00.html.

The sessions will also be available in the broadcast archives a few days after the conference if you’re interested but miss something. You can view past conferences there now. The link is: http://www.lds.org/broadcast/archive…,510-1,00.html

Here is�something�I wish I had written. It so beautifully and powerfully�expresses some of the deepest feelings of my own heart. An excerpt:

�Raising children and mentoring the next generation is the most important thing we can do to change the world. It is the primary role of all women and all men, married or single. It is who we are. It is why we were born. We must train up the leaders of the future with confidence, power and grace. We must deliver. We must achieve results. We are the stateswomen of the 21st Century. If we fail, the world will fail. If we shrink, hesitate, or doubt, precious time will be lost. We are the leaders of today. Our choices and our actions are the most important choices and actions occurring in the world today.�

�http://www.tjed.org/articles/index.php?/archives/19-Steel-to-Gold-Feminism-vs-Stateswomanship.html

�

�

This seems fairly obvious to me, based on my own experiences and observations of people with whom I come into contact. But it’s nice to have research that backs it up.

http://www.childtrends.org/Files/Child_Trends_2002_04_17_FS_Marriage.pdf