Joe Beaty
January 3, 2007
Jr. Faith ‘06
VI Jesus Journal
Throughout our last section of the course, we studied how Jesus was a model of faith and humanity, and read theories about how there is a higher being or god and we have more purpose and meaning on earth. The movie with the theologians who took a different look at Jesus intrigued me. They took more notice in his work in the real world and not his divinity. He was seen as a radical revolutionary, who preached he was the son of God. He taught us to be nicer to everyone, and to pronounce our faith, but still be humble. A modern day Jesus would be seen as a bum and crazy, but we wouldn’t crucify him now. Although the movie helped us find God’s divinity in the humanity of Jesus, other philosophers taught us to find God all around us.
The
arguments of God through the natural world were a nice way of showing the
possibility of a God. Paley’s Watch and Watchmaker theory explains that
everything is made by a smarter being for a purpose because we are all so intricate
and complex that we could not be designed on our own. The golden ratio is an
irrational number discovered by the ancient Greeks that proves people were made
with a design in mind because their body parts are proportional. The Anthropic
principle just states that there was a designer because the odds of earth
forming and performing on its own are very slim. I never fully understood The
Kalam argument, except that everything has a purpose outside of itself. Finally,
I also enjoyed some of the This I Believes we heard in class. I didn’t really like writing my own, but the ones by Josh Yuchasz, John Carroll, and Ernesto Haibi were good. I do not think I can have one thing to believe in because I’m learning and changing everyday, and belief isn’t that big of a deal to me. I wouldn’t follow to a T what the three guys said, but they are good words of advice. Josh told us that everyone is different in their own way. Of course this is obvious, but it’s hard to remember all the time. Sgt. Ernesto’s essay was about how he believes in the goodness of mankind. Sure, it’s a great idea, he’s a modern day profit even, but it’s not true. The world is filled with corruption and evil, and would take a few billion Ernesto’s to change the world. The most persuasive essay, I think, came from John Carroll talking about how the power of failure helps us grow. I totally believe in that, but it’s hard to learn from our mistakes.
MY final favorite thing was Bertrand Russell’s bash on religion. It is a crutch and people admit it. I think a cripple can learn to survive without a crutch. I’m not saying we take it away, but I think we should make it a smaller part of our life. Focus more on ourselves or helping our city, and we should find a way to do it on our own. Animals survive fine without religion, and there are plenty of people who do great without theology. But there are always that few that need God for some dumb reason they can’t work out on their own, and they make a big deal out of it.
You know
what I think about Jesus. He was a hippie profit that lived thousands of years
ago. HE was famous because he was martyred and had a lot of hype surrounding
the last years of his life. HE had good values, and surely knew how to draw a
crowd. If we killed Billy Graham or some other popular preacher, would he have
a bunch of stories made up about him, and be considered our savior? If you
don’t take the
