It is truly my desire that this weblog be a place for myself and others to exhibit real integrity and honesty. I hope to do more question asking and humble pondering than making penetrating observations. But I’ll have to fight my pride on this. Sinfully, I would love for this to be a place where I deposit my jewels of wisdom in elegant prose that will dazzle all readers. But this would not really benefit me or anyone else most likely. Please feel free to hold me to that goal if you see me drifting from it.

There are so many things that I feel like I ought to know by now but don’t, and from talking to friends I know that I’m not alone in this. This can be particularly scary for a seminarian, who is looking ahead to the day when (hopefully) he will be asked to lead a body of fellow believers in the wisdom and truth of the Scriptures. I want to ask the kinds of questions that I’m usually too embarrassed to ask, and I want anyone who thinks that they might have a good answer or insight to share their comments. But I do ask that you would do so in a similar spirit of humility, praying for the wisdom to “think God’s thoughts after him”, as Cornelius Van Til put it.

Remaining in quiet embarrassed ignorance will only hurt me and those whom I am called to serve, and so I am challenging myself and all others to ask the easy questions as well as the hard ones.

More on this topic to come…

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

- John Steinbeck

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

- John Locke

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

- Don Marquis

copied from journal entry dated 2/7/2000, 1:45 AM

I really wish these things wouldn’t strike me so forcefully at such inopportune times. If I don’t write it down now it will be gone in the morning.

A Theory on the Mind

1. A Collective/Comprehensive Philosophy

• Made up of memories, data, observations, etc., as well as established/accepted beliefs.
• Dinstinct and detached from emotion.
• Contains elements that we have forgotten or are unaware of as well as those that can be recalled by the conscious.

2. The Animal - like Freud’s “unconscious” in some ways.

• source of all emotions, drives, desires, etc…
• distinct from all moral/value judgments
• basic instincts of man qua man
• not governed by logic/reason or conscience

3. The Conscious/Operative Philosophy

• seat of logic/reason
• the part of us that is able to call up or access data from the Collective.
• competes with the Animal for control of actions 
• possibly the seat of morality (the Conscience)
  • Problem: There may be things that logic tells us are ok, in view of our comprehensive philosophy, that our consience still tells us are wrong. Therefore the Conscience may be another part.
• able to shut itself down (or are we able to shut it down?) almost completely.  Not all the way. Therefore we can operate by the Animal instead.

 

Enough for now - I need some sleep!

 

This entry was where I first started trying to work on my Comprehensive Philosophy project. It’s not anything like a solid or coherent, developed theory - just at attempt to get down a sketch of some ideas while I had a moment of clarity. My understanding of these things has developed and changed significantly since this point, but I think there is still some useful stuff in here.