The Pathway Between the Seas - a review

David McCullough wrote Pathway Between the Seas (PBS) which is about the building of the Panama Canal, one of the greatest building achievements in world history.

I just finished this book on Sunday but had started in February. It is a very long book, around 600 pages, but I enjoyed it. McCullough does a great job of funneling many details and descriptions into many different themes, based on a single thread.

Why it is a such a good book
I most enjoyed the characters in PBS. McCullough does a great job of tying in many different biographies and placing them in the context of the building process. One of my favorite parts was the U.S. political battle as to where the canal was going to be built and how Panama became an independent nation.

How a 600 page book can be a quick read
PBS is a very long book filled with a lot of detailed information and it is easy to get lost in all of it. I'm not sure if this is a weakness of the book. McCullough does a great job of controlling the amount of information given to the reader, but the nature of the topic causes it to lean toward too much information. I found it best to pay attention to the main characters and do my best to remember their names. (Even if they weren't easy to remember.) Also, I tried to hold onto the main theme of each chapter, which was not too hard to do because the writer is a master at creating narratives.

Who should Read it
If you enjoy history and are comfortable weeding through a lot of details while holding on to a main theme, I would suggest that this would be a good summer read. The length of the book is challenging, but it is definitely worth reading.

What I learned
One general idea I gleaned from this book was that large movements are often controlled and determined by individual leaders. The failure of the French was caused by the naivete and ignorance of the French leaders. The success of the Americans was caused by the tenacity, organization skill and discipline of individual leaders. It surprised me that even such a large project as the Panama Canal (Its scale is massive, absolutely incredible. The locks that were built are so big that they would be part of the sky line in New York City. Only the Empire State Building and a couple other skyscrapers would be larger.) would be greatly determined by individuals. It helped me realize why one's individual actions can have momentous consequences for other people around us.

Why are Taylor Men Passive?

The other day I stated on my facebook a question, "Why are Taylor men passive?" Two people who were not from Taylor commented. (My lovely sister Sarah Pulliam Bailey and not so lovely looking Eddie Burris) Thank you to both of them for commenting and I hope they continue to dialogue with each other on this issue.

The reason I asked this question was because Taylor men are quite passive. The most recent evidence is regarding the number of males who applied for Lighthouse trips next year. For those of you not familiar with Taylor or Lighthouse, Lighthouse is a campus organization that sends out students on short-term mission trips for J-term every year. Approximately 25% of the applicants were males.

Men are a minority on campups so there should be less male applicants then female applicants simply because there are less men on campus but why is it so low?

Eddie Burris blames the feminist movement, Sarah disagrees. I'll let them debate that point.

I think that there are deeper reasons for this serious problem. I strongly believe that it comes down to two issues: gender relations and identity.

First, gender relations.
Men on campus don't see themselves as authorities or examples to women. Some think this is linked with how women see themselves and men, but ultimately, it comes down to how men see their relation with people. Guys don't want to be leaders and those who are leaders are often hurt by people's rejection of their authority. If you want to insult a guy, don't listen to him, acknowledge what he says or respect one of his requests. This doesn't obeying a every guys wish, but boy it is extremely insulting when you ignore a guy who is in a leadership position. (This is not to say that this excuses men. God calls men act like Christ [and women]. Christ took insult all the time, but did not quit or become passive. Men have no excuse!)

Second, identity.
A man's identity is a really big deal, a really, really, really big deal. If a man loses his identity (generally) or does not have one, he will more likely be passive and counter-productive. Furthermore, if he doesn't have a strong identity or a stable identity the same result will occur, passivity. (Generally speaking of course.) Especially with young men, there needs to be a battle for us to fight, and it has to be one which we think we can win! (So don't suggest to a guy that he defeat world poverty.) Fighting a battle can be a major part of a guy's identity. I do not mean by "a battle" literally fighting or picking up a big cause. I mean holding to something that is seen as important and worth sacrificing for. More importantly, most of the time, a male's identity is more then likely trapped in an addiction. Specifically, a lot of men are addicted to pornography and sexual sin. There are more and more studies coming out on the addictive nature of pornography. There are other substances that are addictive in nature to men, but I want to specifically point out pornography because it is becoming more of an issue for the church.

Conclusion
So that is what I think about that. I would be especially interested in hearing people's comments and observation about this problem. By the way, I can't go on lighthouse because I have school.

passing note: people often point out video games are the problem, I think that they are a consequence of the problem, not the problem itself.

Antony Flew, 1923-2010

One of the major philosophers of the 20th century has died. Antony Flew was an English philosopher who defended atheism until 2004 when he publicly claimed to be a theist. Sadly, he was minimalist and as far as we know, never acknowledged anything more then an Aristotelian God.

It should be pointed out that Flew did much more work then just atheism in philosophy. He was a leading scholar on David Hume, major critic of John Rawls in political philosophy and did work in philosophy of education. This is only some of what he did work in.

Responses to Criticism against berkeleyan/Edwardsian Idealism

In my last post I gave my argument for why I am an Idealist. Specifically, to be is to be perceived. The ontological status of the physical world is based upon one's perception of it. In my last post, I answered an objection regarding relativity of idealism, whether physical reality is simply relative to one's perception.

The Problem of Pantheism
The first problem that I want to work with is the problem of pantheism. On facebook, Ryan Mullins brought this problem up:

The physical world is made up of God's thoughts. God's thoughts and actions are equivocal. God's actions are a part of his being. So, the physical world is a part of God's being.

The problem is that neither Berekeley nor Edwards would want to be pantheists. Neither do I. There are a couple of responses an idealist can give. First, is God a simple substance? Second, just because God thinks something, that does not mean it is an thought of God in this particular world. (Abraham inquiring God to consider a change in his plan.) I think God is powerful enough to be able to think of something while not it being revealed to us.

Problem of relations of minds
This is a serious problem for the idealist. It goes like this:

We are God's thoughts, we are ideas of God, our mind's are, but our minds also create ideas and perceive God's ideas. What is the relation between God's mind and our's?

This problem is very serious because the existence of our minds is based upon God's thoughts. I don't know the answer to this question. It's a major problem, but I don't see how it gives reason to say that idealism is false.

3. the boxed God problem
This is a very serious problem for the idealist. It took me a long time to work through this problem:

The idealist is coming to his position based off of problem for the naive and representational realists. God, how the idealist believes he exists, his ontology, is based off other understanding of the world. His beliefs about God do not stem from who God reveals himself, rather they result from responding to how he understands.

I will expand on this in my next post. Note: There is a lot here that needs to be developed. Sorry the Butler game is more important!

Halftime is over, Go Butler!!!!!

Why I am a Berkelian/Edwardsian Idealist

During my spring semester, freshmen year, I was sitting in my history of philosophy II course, listening to Dr. Jim Spiegel discuss John Locke's theory of perception: We experience the world in terms of primary qualities and secondary qualities. Primary qualities would include bulk, figure, texture, and motion. Secondary qualities would include colors, smells, tastes etc. All qualities are experienced by humans who derive ideas from them, simple and complex ideas.

A question about how humans experience the world should naturally come up about the world itself. There needs to be something underlying these qualities, upholding them. Locke called this underlying thing a "material substratum." It is non-experiential and non-observable. Locke postulates that it exists because there needs to be something underlying all these qualities. They can't just sit out there without anything upholding them. How else can they have regularity and unity?

Locke's Doctrine was heavily critiqued by a bishop, an Irish bishop, named George Berkeley. (note: Berkeley was a man of the church, Locke was not and in fact was unorthodox. Theologians should take special not of that point! Irish people should take note that Berkeley is Irish.) Berkeley attacks Locke (And representationalist realism) on two key points. First, why do we need to postulate that there is a material substratum? Locke's make-up of the world (ontology) includes: minds, ideas and substratum. Berkeley argued that there is no need for a mysterious material substratum because its purpose is fulfilled by God. He upholds the universe by his thoughts. Unity and continuity in the physical world can be explained by saying that they are God's thoughts and their existence stems from him as ideas. Second, Berkeley attacked Locke by saying that you don't even know anything about this material substratum. If everything is known by experience, how do you know this thing exists? You can't in Locke's system.

So, according to Berkeley, the reality is made up of minds and ideas. There are two types of minds, finite and infinite minds. There are two types of ideas: real ideas and imaginary ideas. Humans are finite minds. God is an infinite mind. A real idea would be an idea that is contained in the mind of God and an imaginary idea would be an idea that we make up in our heads (imagine sci-fi horrifying monster.) Real ideas are public, imaginary ideas are private. A real idea would be the black phone right next to my computer screen. These ideas stem from God.

That's not too bad, esoteric and irrelevant to our regular lives, but wait. The repercussions of this is "esse est percipi," (To be, is to be perceived.). What? In order to exist, you must be perceived. That's odd. That means if a tree fell in the woods and no one perceived it hitting the ground, there would be no sound of it falling and in fact, there would be no tree. The reason, though, that we find trees laying on the ground with the appearance that they have fallen from their standing position is not just because you or some other finite mind perceived them. Rather it is because God perceived them, as an infinite mind, they did fall and with a noise.

In order for ideas to exist they must be contained in a mind. Ideas are mind-dependent. The physical world is made up of ideas and so the physical world is mind-dependent. It may appear that an idealist is a relativist (claiming their are no absolute truths) because all ideas are mind-dependent. That's not true. (Get it? hehe) For one, the idealist is making a universal claim about reality in actuality. For another, the only thing that is different for the idealist as opposed to the representative realist, is that the world is made up of all ideas. It does not say that all ideas are relative to the observer. It says the world is made up of ideas and is mind-dependent. My experience of reading this experience is similar to yours. The reason being, we are observing the same ideas which are God's ideas. (the black color against the white screen, the squiggly lines, the meaning derived.)

In my next post I will offer some more detailed objections to Bereklian idealism.

The Prodigal God, Book Review

Recently I finished the book "The Prodigal God" written by Tim Keller. Keller is a pastor at Redeemer in New York City. He has written one other book, "The Reason for God"It is also a very good book.

"The Prodigal God" was written by Keller after hearing his seminary professor give a sermon/lecture on the parable of the prodigal son years ago. It is a short book, and one could read it in a night or two. Keller analyzes the parable from three different perspectives. First, the lost and repentant younger son, second, the proud elder brother and lastly, the loving father. I'm not going to go into detail about the contents of the book because I don't have it in front of me right now. I will say that Keller turned my understanding of this parable upside down. He says that most people will see this as a story of a father forgiving his son for rejecting him. (I would be one of those people before reading this short book.) Keller claims there is more to what Jesus was saying then meets the eye.

Jesus was telling this parable while discussing/arguing with the pharisees about various issues. It is among a couple of other parables. The context Jesus gives this parable and his audience deepens the meaning its meaning two-fold. First, Jesus is using it to reprimand the Pharisees for being "elder brothers." They are not willing to go into their father's house to celebrate the return of their lost younger brothers. Second, look how deeply the younger brother has offended the father and the father's response to this offense.

My general feeling about the book: if you haven't read it, read it! It's short and easy. It deepend my understanding of this parable and helped me better understand myself in relation to fellow Christians. This parable has special power for evangelicals today. We are often the elder brother in this story who aren't willing to step in the house of God with those who have spit in our father's face. We won't worship with them. Why not? Keller gives a poignant and very critical answer that we need to hear.

So read it if you have not already. It's worth two-three hours of your time.

Teaching to the Present and the Future

Tonight, for my Classroom Management Course, I interviewed a student teacher from Taylor. One of things we talked about was making the content relevant for the student. She is Math Education, and I am Social Studies Education so two very different subject matters. Both are very important for students in today's world. One thing that she noted about history was that one of her students told her history became interesting once he realized how much it effected the decisions that we make today and how helpful it is to predicting the future.

One the key importance about the discipline of history is that it helps us make decisions about the past. Yet, how can this be put into the classroom?

One way is to teach about the past and point out how it is effecting the present. This can be hard. "Who cares about what is going on Iraq today, much less 3000 years ago," says the naive student. Students, and people in general, don't care about what is outside of their immediate environment and does not bring about pleasure. According to Aristotle, failures at living the good life. Kierkegaard called this the "aesthetic life style." One who lives like this wants to be entertained and lives chiefly for pleasure. Their focus: the immediate environment around them.

How do you pull an aesthete out of his/her egotistical life? You take his immediate surroundings and make it bigger. You work with them to realize that we are a global society, what goes on in Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Kenya and where ever is important to their lives.

For instance, all students should be caring a lot about what is going on in Iraq right now. 1. We have American soldiers there. 2. Most the oil reserves are in the Middle East. Specifically, Iraq has 112 billion barrels. You want to drive home after school? Start paying attention and learn where the fuel you burn comes from and what that place is about. (By the way, the link to PBS is very interesting. Worth looking through.)

Another way to help students realize how important history is, is to relate to their personal life. I think biographies are extremely important here. The testimonies of Christians has been extremely helpful for my life, and I believe that if historical figures (good and bad) are taught in detail in the classroom, students will begin to realize the importance of history. [Just a thought: imagine being in a U.S. History course where it's all taught from the perspective of a specific individual in time. So what was the American Revolution like to Andrew Jackson and what it was like for a German Hessen. How could would that be!]

So there are two ways that I have come up to help students realize that history is important for their lives.

One last thought: be exited about your topic. I love history and if students see that in me, hopefully some of it rubs off. (This was one other thing that I got from my interview.)

"You have to know the past to understand the present."
Carl Sagan