Reading: Introduction

What is philosophy? What makes a perspective Christian?

 What Is Philosophy?  

What is philosophy all about, and why should we study it? The second question is easier to answer than the first. Studying philosophy gives us insight into the world and our place within it and thus provides us with a guide for conducting our lives. Understood as the history of human thought, philosophy relates to the beginning of nearly every other major academic discipline - from physics to psychology, from religious studies to biology, and so on. Not only does philosophy force us to think hard about difficult and fundamental questions, it also teaches us how to think - providing us with analytical skills we can use in many other areas. As for the question of what philosophy is about, it is helpful to begin, as many great philosophers have, with the idea that the nature of philosophy is itself a matter for philosophical debate. Phrasing it this way gives us a sense of what to expect throughout this course, because whatever particular topics philosophers are concerned with, their practice is always one of questioning. Philosophers from many different time periods and cultures have asked questions and tried to answer these questions in ways that can be compared and contrasted. For example, some philosophers believed that true knowledge came from contemplation and understanding of the human mind, while others felt that reliable knowledge came from sensory experiences and testing ideas against the physical world. The following are some questions philosophers might consider: How do I know that what I believe is true? What is the difference between right and wrong? What makes an action just? What makes a painting beautiful? Does God exist? Are ideas and concepts more “real,” or is physical matter more “real?” What happens to us after we die? What kind of government is justified? In this unit, we will look at the question “What does it mean to study philosophy?” 

retrieved from  http://www.saylor.org/courses/phil101/#

The foregoing is what I would call a typical introduction to Philosophy 101 in just about any college that one might attend. The issues in philosophy really do not change all that much. We are confronted by similar issues as the rest of the people in the world are. So a philosopher attempts to give a reasoned explanation for why one thinks about the world in the way one does.

For example, if one is convinced that the only proof of a fact has to come to me by my own personal experience, then one will simply ignore history, because that is simply the record of other people trying to discover if a fact was provable in their lives as they lived it. Also, one will not want to learn anything from a teacher since the teacher’s experience will always be different from my own. So today, we have many examples of friends who look at life very differently because they have differing experiences. We hear the line, “That may be true for you, but it is not true for me.” How can a fact be both true and not true? How can that be? Well, it can be if only my experiences prove anything to me. Your experiences convince you of your truth, mine convince me. So we agree that it is only our experience that makes any difference. We do not even disagree at the fundamental level of life because we are both depending on our own personal experience to know the truth of a factoid.

Into such a world as we find today, comes the Christian who asserts that God is real, even if we cannot see him, touch him, smell him, hear him, nor taste him. The person who only accepts her own personal experience as an indicator of truth will scoff at the Christian who says, I have no sensory experience of God, but I know he is real.  I have no sensory experience of the dead being raised, but I know Jesus is alive. I have no sensory experience of the truth of the Scriptures, but I know the Bible is true. All of us need to realize that no matter where we live in the world today, there are any number of people who will scoff at our understanding of the world because they have a different philosophical perspective.

That is why we need to know something of the world of philosophy, but I will quickly say that this course is a slow slog through the difficult questions that face each of us. We will only touch the surface of any one of the issues what we take up. What I desire for you is that you will see the importance of being able to think things over. While you are thinking about your life and what it is all about, I want you to be able to realize how readily we engage in making a statement that does not bear scrutiny. I want you to know that you can, on the other hand, begin the journey toward a deeper understanding of our world and your place in it.

The issue for us to be digging into as we go along in this course is, “What makes my perspective ‘Christian’?” There are many people who have decided on a specific approach to the world and called it Christian. I am not going to be making any definitive statements about what is Christian and what is not. That is for us all to evaluate as we study the Word of God and the world in which we find ourselves. What I do believe you will discover is that as a Christian, I must be very careful in how I present my thoughts and ideas. I cannot go off on some wild tangent and call it Christian. There is a long history of Christian philosophy which we can study and benefit from in our own ruminations on our world. This history will assist us in keeping a careful eye on our own thoughts.

As we make our way through the next several weeks, keep asking yourself is what you are reading or seeing or hearing is in any way helpful to you in being able to be a Christian with a perspective on the world. That is how you become a Christian philosopher!

Welcome to the next twelve weeks!