The Truth Comes Out

We talk a lot about people following idols as having other gods or another faith, but rarely do you hear those people acknowledge it, so I was interested to hear my professor say on Monday that "creationism and sociobiology are the same mindset, just different valences. Both start with a set of presuppositions that determine the way the whole world works. Therefore, it's possible to convert people from one to the other, because it's exactly the same way of thinking." She also made the point that unlike other social institutions, religion is more complicated to study from an anthropological point of view, because rather than just "joining the club" the way you do if you decide to go to a certain university or if you want to partake in horseback riding or any collective group that anthropologists might find interesting to study, religion implies belief, and belief is a tricky thing because "to believe in something implies to not believe in a whole lot of other things." I just found these to be interesting insights coming from someone who doesn't follow Christ, and it brought me back to our discussion of whether those who don't have faith have access to Truth or not.

Also, on an unrelated note, I thought some of us might be interested in attending the Books and Coffee seminars next semester. We might enjoy hearing about, talking about, or even (gasp! do we have time for such a thing?) reading the books they are discussing, which are as follows:

25 January:
Daniel Morris, Professor of English, discusses Michael Berube's What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts: Classroom Politics and "Bias" in Higher Education (W.W. Norton, 2006).

1 February:
Angelica Duran, Professor of English, talks about the winner in the student poll selected from among the following titles nominated by members of the Student English Association:
Terrorist by John Updike (Knopf, 2006); The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Books, 2003); The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (Random House, 2001); or The Syringa Tree by Pamela Gien (Random House, 2006).

8 February:
Ralph Webb, Professor of Communication, discusses Deborah Tannen's You're Wearing That?: Mothers and Daughters in Conversation (Random House, 2006).

15 February:
Nancy Peterson, Professor of English, discusses Sherman Alexie's Ten Little Indians (Grove/Atlantic, 2003).

22 February:
Sandor Goodhart, Professor of English, discusses Myla Goldberg's Bee Season (Anchor, 2001).