Hi, Java!

I am impressed with your response to Ed! Well, Kant is hard to read! He was
constructing a whole new method of how to do philosophy
that demanded new terminology and new meanings for old terminology and he was
feeling his way, especially in the Critique of Pure
Reason. You can see the difference in his writing in the Critque and related
writings as compared to his lectures on Ethics and his
lectures on Anthropology which are much easier to read!

Back in the late sixties, I was an undergraduate philosophy major at Queens
College, City University of New York. The Philosophy
department was huge, had about 30 professors and many majors and master's
students. In my free time from my six shifts a week movie
mangement job, I was translating Kant's own evaluation of how he contributed to
Metaphysics which he wrote near the end of his life.
I found it extraordinarily difficult, since I found some of the pronouns
simultaneously referring backwards and forwards at the same
time! I got about 60 pages of a draft of a translation, when Kant, and my
exhausting life style caught up with me. A while later, the
Philosophy department had Lewis White Beck come and visit with us. He was the
greatest Kant Scholar in the US during this time. His
translation of the Critique of Practical Reason and His Commentary on that work
are still in print. He was a lovely fellow and we
really hity it off well and he gave me a good deal of his time. I talked to him
about the Kant work I had tried to translate and he
said he ahd tried also and given up!!!!! By the way it has been translated and
is in pb, I think. So, yes it is hard in German like
Heidegger is, as well as hard in English! But worth it!!!! I taught an
undergraduate course on the Critique Of Pure Reason this last
Spring semester, and 14 students signed up and 11 finished. They loved the book
and they gave the course a wonderfully high and
enthusiastic evaluation! What blew me away was some of these students were
taking a philosophy course for the first time and they hung
in and did a good job! Many of my buddies in other colleges are jealous because
they never have had the opportunity to teach Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason. So, this has been quite exciting. Followed up with
reading some of Kant's Ethical writings this summer. So,
hard, but definitely worth it.

Now for logic, you ought to get up to speed with modern logic. The stuff you
have studied was okay in the 1800's but since 1879,
logic has exploded in power and in applicability way beyond syllogisms!!!!!

Get "The Logic Book" by Moore, Bergmann, and Nelson, McGraw Hill. It comes with
a solutions manual for half of the exercises. Then go
download two software programs for free that go with the book, from the
University of Connecticut wPhilosophy department. You can get
there most easily by going to epistemelinks.net and click on "departments" and
then go to Connecticut etc. When you get the page let
it load up and you will hear some nice harpsichord music and then scroll down
the first page till you find the software. The software
is terrific and will be a tremendous aid to learning the material in the book
allowing you to check your work and grow rapidly in the
powers of logical analysis!!!!

If you do this let me know and if you have questions, I would try to answer
them! After this book, you would need to study some moadal
logics to get up to speed with where applied logic is now!

I will hold off comments and questions on contradiction in the Bible etc, for a
later time or for when you tell me you are open to
discuss this.

You sound like a great fellow to me and I hope that we can be helpful to you. I
certainly am with you about most "Christian" folk being
unable to dialogue etc. I have had many experiences, my wife also, of being a
pastor in a church and because we were insistent on
discipleship as commanded by the Lord Jesus, for all baptised people which of
course would shatter the comfort level of most
"Christians.", my wife and I found tremnedous hostility directed toward us by
"Christians", and more honesty and depth of relationship
among our atheist and agnostic friends, than we did with most of the peole in
the churches that we served. We found this to be just
another sign of God's sense of humor and his condemnation of what mostly passes
for "church."

So, welcome aboard and may we learn from you and may the relationship be
mutually beneficial!

Jon Gold

Javacrucian wrote:

> ------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stephen Shields" <sshields@...>
> To: <faithmaps@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 7:25 PM
> Subject: [faithmaps] definition of agnostic
>
> > Java wrote:
> >
> > " The term "agnostic" has more than one meaning, at least in my
> > experience. The everyday use of the term refers to an absence of belief
> in
> > general, "I don't know if God(s) exist or not". Many people do fall
> into
> > that category. In atheist circles, though, agnostic has a slightly
> > different meaning - "God is unknowable". I understand the latter
> > definition to be closer to the term's intended meaning, but the
> colloquial
> > use is so widespread that I find it prudent to ask what is meant whenever
> I
> > hear it. Of course, I could be wrong and have it backwards, I don't
> always
> > find dictionaries to be accurate when defining philosophical expressions.
> > Is there an etymologist in the house? =)"
> >
> > The unknowability definition is one that I somehow have not come across
> > before. That motivates me then to check out a couple of dictionaries.
> >
> > I first of all looked at two of the philosophical dicts listed under
> >
> > http://www.faithmaps.org/pomophillinks.htm
> >
> > specifically the
> >
> > The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
> > featuring The Timeline of Western Philosophy
> > And
> >
> > Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
> > Neither had a separate listing for "agnostic"
> >
> > That led me to my favorite standard dict (and favorite online because it
> > gives wav files for pronunciation!!)
> >
> > The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language
> >
> > Fourth Edition
> >
> > http://www.bartleby.com/61/
> >
> > And found this defn
> >
> > 1a. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
> > b. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess
> true
> > atheism. 2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.
> >
> > So, sure enough, Java, your defn is listed as the very first one. I
> > honestly did not know that. I had only thought about the term in terms of
> > 1b.
> >
> > Finally I encourage the reader to run agnostic thru
> >
> > http://www.xrefer.com
> >
> > and view the different defn.
> >
> > Finally, a question for dr. gold (java, he's a professor of philosophy in
> a
> > state university): In your reading is 1a the common technical defn
> > philosophically?
> >
> > Stephen Shields
> > sshields@...
> > http://www.faithmaps.org
> >
>
> First off, thanks for the URLs! Those will come in handy. Myself, I've
> been using the hardcover version of the American Heritage dictionary; an
> online resource will come in handy.
> Secondly, I am WAY stoked to discover there's a Ph.D. of philosophy
> here. I already surmised that this was a bright bunch, but wow =)
> I have a question for Dr. Gold too. Is Kant as difficult to read in
> German as he is in English?!??
>
> Javacrucian
>
>
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