Religion at Harvard

A Harvard education is not what it used to be, at least that is what it seems. I’d have to agree, as an individual which studies religion, and as a faithful individual, they are right. I am amazed that when I mentioned I was going to a Good Friday Mass, people asked me what Easter was all about. I don’t expect you to know what the theological points in all their nuance are. You do, however, need to know something about why Easter is important. Harvard is creating the leaders of the future (again, that is what they tell me, I’m not sure I buy it). And these leaders will know nothing about religion.

I have to add, Stephen Pinker is an interesting character. “He argued that the primary goal of a Harvard education is the pursuit of truth through rational inquiry, and that religion has no place in that.” That is a shame, because so many contemporary scholars of religion would disagree with him (not to mention Thomas Aquinas). There is no department of religion at Harvard. There is, however the Divinity Department. As a grad student in the BTI I can take some of their courses. I perused their fall catalog and found nothing substantial. It seemed every class was fascinated with some small minutia, some small corner of academic content with no relation to the world we live in. If this is what Pinker is talking about – well then I might agree with him. But I know I don’t, nor am I taking any of those courses.

Pinker goes on to say: “But reason and faith are not yin and yang. Faith is a phenomenon. Reason is what the university should be in the business of fostering.” – Every input to a reasonable process is a phenomenon. The physics, electricity, mathematics, politics, and, yes, psychology is the study of a phenomenon Stephen. Why is the study of the phenomenon of faith any different? It isn’t.

More From Kierkegaard

The true knight of faith is always absolute isolation; the spurious knight is sectarian. This is an attempt to jump off the narrow path of the paradox and become a tragic hero at a bargain price. The tragic hero expresses the universal and sacrifices himself for it. In place of that, the sectarian Punchinello has a private theatre, a few good friends and comrades who represent the universal just about as well as the court observers in Gulddasen represent justice.

BarCamp Boston, Day 1

Hacking the Brain

These worms are pretty cool. However, and this is my philosophy talking, it is one thing to stimulate a neuron making an arm twitch, but it is a wholly different to alter decisions. The process of cognition has always been unattainable for philosophy. And philosophy is science.

Hadoop

This seems like an awesome technology for analyzing huge and differentiated data as it comes into your system. This is a winner for aggregating streams of data. It does not seem to be a data store, whatsoever.

HTML5/Flash

Apparently the flash developer community hates HTML5 because it can’t do things that they’re used. I would argue that the things they think they need, they really don’t. 30 FPS in a browser is fine. If you want a true engine of some sort (for something other than demonstration purposes) you’re doing it wrong. C-level programming is still useful and necessary.

SaaS Price Points

This is the one I had the most problems with. I don’t understand the need to have a good reputation among your bad customers. Recognize the relationship is not of the kind you want, and get rid of it. The messaging is the problem. Work on the relationships with the customers you want. Don’t passively accept the world presented to you. Actively create the world you want.

Selections from Kierkegaard

I can resign everything by my own strength and find peace and rest in the pain; I can put up with everything – even that dreadful demon, more horrifying that the skeletal one who terrifies men, even if madness held its fool’s costume before my eyes and I understood from its face that it was I who should put it on – I can still save my soul as long as my concern that my love of God conquer within my is greater than my concern that I achieve earthly happiness. In his very last moment, a person can still concentrate his whole soul in one single look to heaven, from whence come all good gifts, and this look will be understood by himself and by him whom it seeks to mean that he has been true to his love. Then he will calmly put on the costume. He whose soul lacks this romanticism has sold his soul, whether he gets a kingdom or a wretched piece of silver for it.