The key topic from this section of the course was the quote from Socrates. The quote is "The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates was truly a man unique to his time. He questioned everything about the way he, and the rest of his society, ancient Greece, lived. Socrates was not afraid of telling the trued, and truly lived and died by this quote. Socrates died for his beliefs, but did not fear the death that was given to him. Socrates truly believed in this statement, and it still holds true today. We, today, are like the Athens citizens of Socrates' time. We do not think about what we do and do not examine anything, but merely do it because that is what we are supposed to do. The majority of people will never examine their lives and their society, but only live their lives day by day in complete bliss. If we were truly to examine our lives we could completely change society for the better, because we would no longer do things without thinking or without reasoning.

One of the ideas that I want to remember that I learned this section is that science is merely an attempt to portray the truth, and is not always the true thing. Humans do not know everything and they never will, but I had always thought that science was an accurate portrayal of our world and our surroundings, but once we were asked to think about a simple question we found that we could not really come to a definite answer. We were asked to say how many planets there were, but that question is a lot harder then I once thought. I had always thought it was an easy answer, but I now notice it is not that easy because the answer can differ on our definition of planet which itself is not definite.

Another thing I would like to keep in mind about this section of the Junior Theology course is Plato's Allegory of the Cave. When I first read through it and was the class was asked if we thought we were in the cave or out of the cave, I thought we were people outside of the cave. After thinking it through I saw how true it was that most people are in the cave. The people outside of the cave are those who can reason through everything, and examine their lives fully. I thought about it and noticed we are in the cave; we are deep in the cave. We never think about anything, we only do it to get things over with. As Aristotle said there are two kinds of people, and to explain the two different categories used a metaphor. He compared the two types of people to ships at sea, one type of people was a rudderless ship who followed what the ocean and rolled with the waved, and the other type were those who guided their own ship. This is the same as being in the cave or being outside of the cave. We are inside the cave blind to the real word, and we today are a ship without a rudder.

The third thing I would like to remember about this section of the coarse is the snail question. A simple question that seemingly does not relate to life at all, at least that is what I thought after first seeing it. I was seriously mistaken. The snail question has everything to with life and everything to do with my life today. The snail question shows us the difference between thinking and reasoning. Most people will answer a snail question just by thinking. They will take a guess at what they think is the answer, and will sometimes even bet on it. This is the wrong way to think about it. We are told now to not think about the answer but reason to it. It is true, all I did was think about it and take my first guess as the answer, but I was wrong. I even still get them wrong because I do not know yet how to reason, and I am hung up on merely thinking.

I do not think that I can fully answer this question, but what I think it would take to come out of the cave in our lives today is questioning. I think that we need to question our lives. We need to not only question our own lives, but we need to question the world around us. We need to not take anything for granted, but instead question society and its ways. It would be very hard to do this because today we are so interested in material goods that we take everything for granted. We do not feel the need to question anything, because we are blessed, and we are given everything we will ever need. So to answer this question, I say we need to give up the views of the society we live in today and begin to really look at life for what it is. In the words of Aristotle, we need to steer our own ships.