Final Thoughts...

Of course this happens at the end of each semester, but my brain feels completely fried out. I have thought in ways I've never thought before in this class and encountered so much new information. I feel like everything is just rolling around in my head and mixing together in a fog...I need time for everything to settle. Who knows how long that will take.

I'm not a philosophy major (which you can probably tell right away just looking at my blog!), nor am I planning on studying psychology or theology or anything remotely close to it. I took this class because I picked religion as my cluster and had no idea what I was getting myself into! And I don't mean that in a bad way, just that I had no clue how in depth and complicated everything can get once you start asking questions. I guess I'm just not a very inquisitive person (for better or for worse) and once we started pulling at the various strings and unraveling the nature of religious experiences, I started to get a better picture of how vast the subject is. I knew nothing of reductionism, or pluralism or what hermeneutics were. Even all the time we spent talking about language and what a huge role it plays in some of the theories. What I am really coming away from this class with is a better awareness of how vast a pool of theories there are on religious beliefs, and also the desire to dive a little deeper into issues and question things more.

I don't think this class has changed my mind on any of my beliefs, but it has prompted me to ask more questions, and to really re-examine what I think about religion. Even yesterday while I was sitting in church, something my pastor said in his sermon reminded me of one of our class discussions and I was temporarily lost in contemplation. Plenty of questions were raised. When I say something is an answer to prayer, do I really believe that it is? Would I practice my religion the same way if no one else did it? What's the difference between what I believe as my religion and what theorists believe about their propositions?

So if the point of the class were to answer the question, what is the nature of religious experience? did we answer it? No, not really. Can it be answered? Yes, but only in the sense that everyone will have their own opinion and everyone will think they are the one who is right. So what was the point in all this? Why did we fight just to understand chapters and chapters of text, re-reading everything just to get an idea of what those guys are talking about? We are to observe and point out. And as hard as that was to do without letter my own opinions infiltrate or prejudice me against the ideas of others, it was worth the work.

All in all, a very enlightening experience. Thanks Professor Pam!