Vege wrote: No, they get educated. I assume you are referring to schools. They don't teach children to not believe in your god. You, however, want the chance to shove your beliefs down other people's children's throats. I see you are very resentful at not being able to do that. Why?
You belong in the Middle Ages. The rest of us have learnt a bit since then.
No Vege. It is you and those with your philosophy who are shoving your denial into the hearts of the young. I cannot be angry since you don't value questions of the heart including what is God and how they must be respected. You prefer to celebrate meaningless ingenuity as opposed to deepening questions. It is the modern spirit killing philosophy. I prefer to support the minority of educators who understand what Prof. Needleman understands for the sake of the young. We have chosen our paths.
From a discussion between Jacob Needleman and Richard Whittaker:
……………..JN: Eros is depicted in Plato's text, The Symposium, as half man, half god, a kind of intermediate force between the gods and mortals. It is a very interesting idea. Eros is what gives birth to philosophy. Modern philosophy often translates the word "wonder" merely as "curiosity," the desire to figure things out, or to intellectually solve problems rather than confronting the depth of these questions, pondering, reflecting, being humbled by them. In this way, philosophy becomes an exercise in meaningless ingenuity.
I did learn to play that game, and then to avoid it.
My students at SF State were very hungry for what most of us, down deeply, really want from philosophy. When we honor those unanswerable questions and open them and deepen them, students are very happy about it, very interested in a deep quiet way.
RW: It is really very hard to find that, I believe.
JN: Some years ago I had a chance to teach a course in philosophy in high school. I got ten or twelve very gifted kids at this wonderful school, San Francisco University High School. In that first class I said, "Now just imagine, as if this was a fairy tale, imagine you are in front of the wisest person in the world, not me, but the wisest person there is and you can only ask one question. What would you ask?" At first they giggled and then they saw that I was very serious. So then they started writing. What came back was astonishing to me. I couldn't understand it at first. About half of the things that came back had little handwriting at the bottom or the sides of the paper in the margin. Questions like, Why do we live? Why do we die? What is the brain for? Questions of the heart. But they were written in the margins as though they were saying, do we really have permission to express these questions? We're not going to be laughed at? It was as though this was something that had been repressed.
RW: Fascinating.
JN: It's what I call metaphysical repression. It's in our culture and It's much worse than sexual repression. It represses eros and I think that maybe that's where art can be of help sometimes. Some art……………………………..
