Response to johnnyfavorite's questions

[hohum]

apparently you finally got the college thing worked out, after a near-infinite number of fits and starts. what changed? what is your major? what do you plan to do with the degree, when you get it? Two events locked me onto school, I think. #1 was bumping into Religious Studies, my major. I took a class called "Life After Death" for an elective and

Comments

follow-on questions

[johnnyfavorite]

well, here i am killing time to avoid having to figure out a gnarly programming problem i'm having tonight. heh!

i can remember thinking you must have had some pretty fierce "you're not the boss of me" feelings toward your parents. like, maybe appreciating what they were trying to do for you, but chafing at their restrictions nonetheless. i guess all that's solved if you can do school without them.

i can't recall you ever mentioning anything about religion here. do you consider yourself religious/spiritual?

another issue i can remember you having was with bosses at restaurants where you were serving. i would think that would be enough motivation for you to overcome the bankroll/disinterest problem? did you just manage to borrow enough school money that it wasn't a problem?

Re: follow-on questions

[hohum]

I consider myself an atheist, but maybe religious in a functional sense-- as in, there are some things I approach "religiously" that many people would say did not qualify as religious. (For example, when people say baseball is their religion, or music is their religion, a common reaction is, "Oh, but that's not really a religion." But if you think about the purpose many religions serve, or the dedication involved, the parallels are not really that silly

Re: follow-on questions

[hohum]

humanity and nature in general*

[autumnia]

It's good to see that you've finally found something that truly interests you in school. I agree completely: pursue that which excites YOU, not because you're trying to make your parents or anyone else happy.

As for what you can do post-college, well, don't worry about that now. Get through one goal first and worry about the rest later. Seriously, I know plenty of people (myself included) that got a degree in X and ended up not using it, and working in field Y instead. I'm also one of those people that never went to grad school and I'm not bothered by it. My parents had hinted that I should go back to school but honestly, there's no point in wasting money just for a piece of paper -- I would want to go back if there was something I wanted to learn about.

[hohum]

I'd feel pretty uncomfortable pushing "goal two" off until post-graduation. I want to dig my hands in ASAP!

[essius]

What areas of religious studies interest you most? topics within those areas?

Top five books related to the field?

Lastly (I mean as long as you're answering questions), do you still have an interest in philosophy? I recall you used to comment (sporadically) in the philosophy community-might have even been where we first met.

[hohum]

Above and beyond, the theoretical and philosophical aspects of religious studies interest me the most. I'm not really in this major for "facts," though learning about the specific histories and rituals of religions can be fascinating. (And useful during arguments.) To some extent, I like learning about religious texts, and sometimes find myself wowed by bits of wisdom and poetry. I also enjoy reading about it from a sociological perspective, though those tend to be reductionist and generalize-y.

Only one comes to mind, and it's been my favorite so far: The Sacred Canopy by Peter Berger. I've enjoyed a lot of articles and shreds of other works, but that book rocked my world.

I think my first answer answered your last question!

[essius]

Right on. That definitely looks like an interesting read. I recognize his other book, for which he is more famous: The Social Construction of Reality (the inspiration for the title of John Searle's great book, The Construction of Social Reality).

Any thoughts on the New Atheism and the work its chief proponents are spitting out? (e.g., Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell)

[hohum]

I'd like to read that book, too. Berger may not be the hippest thinker these days, but I still appreciate his ideas. He reneged on the secularization thesis, which was a core part of his argument in The Sacred Canopy, and I'm guessing perhaps his other book, too. I have a lot of respect for zigzagging like that, actually...

New Atheism? Does this include thinkers of the Dawkins variety? I haven't heard of this movement. I'm guessing it's atheism + activism 2 rid the world of religion.