Anyone Interested?

Just got the following email from the philosophy department. I don't know anything about it apart from what's here but I think I might go. If anyone else is keen let me know.


>Is anyone interested in going to watch Lisa Norriss's play 'The Writer's
>Quest for More Than a Middle'?
>
>Lisa is an experienced playwright and an ex-philosophy student.
>
>She has suggested that philosophy people may like to come along on
>Thursday the 7th of September at 7:30 pm.
>
>(I think it is on from the 4th to the 8th, but you had better check on
>the dates if you want to go on a different day.)
>
>It will be at The Open Stage, on Hagley Ave.
>
>For tickets phone 3562092, or email loopen_experiment@yahoo.co.nz
>
>I am happy to arrange to get tickets for other people if anyone wants me
>to.
>
>The flyer is in the Phil and Rels tea room if you want more information.
>
>
>Student tickets are $12. Wage-earners $15.
>
>There is a small discount for group bookings, but I doubt that it is a
>significant enough discount to make a group booking worthwhile.

Go here. Immediately.

Philosophical Powers

Conveyor belt of doom (again)

I've just been browsing the internet for a good story to kick-start the talk I'm giving on Sunday night for the 20s-30s age group at my church. The talk has been marketed as being about 'the philosophy of belief'. I'm supposed to talk about the relationship between faith and reason - or basically anything I want to say about what I've been studying in philosophy, and how it relates to Christianity. In my quest for an opening story I found a site on which hundreds of former Christians had left their stories about why they'd 'left the fold', and came upon the rather lengthy deconversion testimony of one guy whose story was pretty similar to mine, only further down the track (i.e. unlike me, he'd had enough of staring into the void and had taken the terrifying plunge, only to find it not so terrifying). It was called 'Doubt and critical mass: how much is too much?'

As I was reading it, I had this weird feeling that I was about to wake up - that I was on the verge of coming to the end of some test, like one of those training programs in the Matrix, and was about to reach the point at which something clicked in my mind, my examinor would say 'Finally!' and I'd wake up in some other world where everything would make sense.

I didn't wake up though.

How I'm going to get through this talk I do not know. Do I avoid the glaring questions in my own mind in order to 'protect' my listeners from doubt? Or ask the questions but give pat answers that I don't find satisfactory? Do I confess to them all that I don't know the answers? That I'm not sure there are answers?

At the beginning of last year I wrote this post, and the imagery comes to my mind again tonight. The more I look into this stuff, the more frightened I become; but I'm on the conveyor belt now, and I have no choice. I can't get out of this - I'm going to have to stand up there and say something, and I want to bless and help them, not throw them off cliffs, but what can I say?

I have 5 days left to figure out all the answers. (And also prepare and run a tutorial, attend an all-day essay marking workshop, run a youth group bible study, attend lectures, run a youth group camp, go to church, and keep 2 lunch dates.)