Skip to main content

Chapter 14

The reason I choose to read chapter 14 is I was born an atheist, my country has no religions, it's not because we have nothing to believe, we believe in History. It is interesting for me as an atheist to figure out the argumentation behind religions. I still remember one of the most famous writers and scholars from China called Qiuyu Yu said: "历史被拟人化为一个生命，能看到一切、裁判一切、奖惩一切。这个历史，就具有亚宗教的人格力量。不错，历史在中国，不是太追求真实，而是追求着一种裁判和被裁判的权力。
不管是帝王将相，还是侠客游士、文人骚客，他们在做每一件大事的时候，都觉得自己的脑袋后面有一枝巨大的史笔，会记述自己所做的一切。这枝史笔在一定程度上控制了历史，从正面来说，这枝史笔传达了一种有关人间正义的基本界限."

Translated by Yi: "History was personified in China, which sees everything, judges everything, rewards and punishes everything. This endowed the word history with the power of personality. History in China is not so much the pursuit of truth, but the pursuit of a judge and the right to be judged. Whether they are emperors and ministers, swordsmen and tourists, literati and poets, they always feel that there is a huge historical pen behind their head to describe what they have done. This historical pen controls history to a certain extent. On the positive side, this historical pen conveys a basic boundary of human justice."

The reason why I post the Chinese version is that I am terrible at translating, I believe if you are interested in this, you can look up other translation by more intelligent people than me.
I found this philosophy from China suit the seven question provided in our textbook. These seven questions, according to the textbook " constitute a fair summary of what has to be explained for a system of theology to be complete. Not all religious argumentation will cover all seven questions, and other questions may arise, but these seven reasonably define religious argumentation: (1) what the nature of God is? (2) What is the nature of human beings? (3) What is moral behavior, religious life? (4) What are sin, evil, and the meaning of suffering? (5) What is the human’s relationship to God? (6) What is the nature of salvation? And (7) what is the role of the church? (P.223)"  Each question can be explained by history, history is the god in China, the one that records everything everyone has done, and judge everything has done, then finally stay in people's mind when people trying to do something and alert people about right and wrong.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chap 5

Chapter five focuses primarily on identifying and developing propositions for problems that people think are relevant. It goes over 6 steps for choosing a valid proposition based on a perceived “feeling of doubt.” While all six steps may not be necessary, the collectively ensure a well thought out and firm proposition. The six steps include identifying the question, surveying implicated objectives (or understanding what is the goal accomplishment in regard to the question), searching for new information, considering alternative options, considering costs and risks of each potential proposition, and then finally choosing one of the propositions. The authors then go on to talk about analyzing and strengthening the proposition chosen. This includes identification and ranking of the issues that the proposition addresses as well as understanding how the decision makers will react to these issues and propositions. In general, with all these methods of critically analyzing the proposition, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chapter 10

There were a couple of terms I found in this chapter that I wish were explained a little more. First, the concept of uncritical responses to refutation is only covered briefly. I think that this is one of the most fundamental barriers to effective public argumentation in the United States right now. I find this issue most concerning for the liberal party. Recalling the last election and the concept of 'incremental' argumentation, I feel that people demonstrated a massive failure of critical thinking by voting for third parties or not voting. People who were disappointed with Hillary Clinton's candidacy in place of Bernie Sanders decided to either continue voting for Bernie or not vote altogether. Neither of these strategies amounted to effective support of their cause, and they constitute the uncritical "knee-jerk" reaction described in this chapter. In this case, uncritical response to opposition worked directly against the interests of the decision-makers. A...
1 comment
Read more

Chaper 8

Chapter 8 of Argumentation and Critical Decision Making continues down the route of talking about support for argumentation. This chapter specifically focuses on values as support for arguments, how to recognize them and the best ways to attack them. Values are defined as “ concepts of what is desirable that arguers use and decision makers understand” (121).  There are several types of values mentioned such as stated, implied, positive, negative, terminal, instrumental, abstract and concrete values.  Stated values are state directly what concepts they hold. For example, words such as “freedom” or “health” are stated values because they mean exactly what they're trying to portray. Not all values are as explicit. Some are more vague and called implied values. One of the examples that the book uses to show the contrast between the two is in the case of work equality. When talking about the subject saying, “ Equal pay for equal work” would be a stated value and “ Women deserve th...
Post a Comment
Read more