I am a postbaccalaureate student at Cal State San Bernardino. I first graduated from college in 1975 with a BA in sociology and then pursued a career in journalism for the next 15 years. I am going for a degree in philosophy now because I believe my earlier choices of major and livelihood were mistakes.
My life has taken me on an intellectual odyssey. The odyssey began during an adolescent flirtation with fundamentalist Christianity and has continued through several revisions of my religious, political, and social worldviews. As a Christian teenager, I was fixated on winning souls for Christ, being under the impression that humanity had no g…
I am a postbaccalaureate student at Cal State San Bernardino. I first graduated from college in 1975 with a BA in sociology and then pursued a career in journalism for the next 15 years. I am going for a degree in philosophy now because I believe my earlier choices of major and livelihood were mistakes.
My life has taken me on an intellectual odyssey. The odyssey began during an adolescent flirtation with fundamentalist Christianity and has continued through several revisions of my religious, political, and social worldviews. As a Christian teenager, I was fixated on winning souls for Christ, being under the impression that humanity had no greater need than to be reconciled with God. I thought no problem was more pressing on any person than their estrangement from God occasioned by the fact of original sin. During my first year of college, I came to realize that most of my religious beliefs were in error. For the next few years I embraced a more liberal version of Christianity, but by my mid-20s had drifted into atheism.
I still felt something like a missionary urge to participate in the world's salvation, but it was no longer clear just how that salvation might be accomplished. I was drawn to liberal politics for a few years but became disillusioned with it. During my 30s I came to realize that the advancement of science had effected much, if not all, of whatever diminution of human suffering had occurred in historical times. I became avidly interested in the history of science and mathematics. I learned that science had once been a subdiscipline of philosophy, but I did not see this as a commendation of philosophy itself. I had somehow come under the impression that the study of philosophy was a useless endeavor.
In due course I got the idea of writing a book presenting an apologetic for scientific thinking. Researching the origins of science obviously entailed researching the origins of Western philosophy. It also quickly became obvious that I could not defend the efficacy of science without becoming conversant in epistemology. And so the book is on hold while I get some more education.